Day -2254
Giovanni glared at his former partner, his hands balled into fists. "You betrayed me!" he yelled above the wind whipping over the mountaintop. He slowly raised one finger and pointed it squarely at the betrayer. "For half of my life!" he shouted as the wind picked up strength. "For thirty-seven years we worked together only for you to betray me now!"
The Traitor grinned at Giovanni. "You were the one that wanted to extend your reach to the stars above! That's not what I wanted! Me and my men are leaving now, and you'll never see us again!"
Giovanni started forward, leaning against the wind. "Never!" he roared. "Team Rocket has come too far to give up now!" He pulled one arm close to his mouth and shouted into the microphone on his arm. "Deploy the Mew Drone!"
A split second later, a purplish figure encased in metallic armor popped into existence several feet ahead of Giovanni. With a wave of its hand, the air around the pair was shifted, and there was suddenly no more wind.
The Traitor narrowed his eyes. "Not bad, Old buddy," he said as the force field that kept the wind back was pushed back behind him as well. "But I've got something on my side that you could never have."
Giovanni paused at that, then laughed. "There is nothing on this planet that I cannot have. It will all be mine! I already have power, that some have said, is close to divine. The stars in the sky will shine for me alone!"
The traitor smirked. "That's true, old friend. But who said anything about this world?"
From out of nowhere, a crack in the sky appeared behind the Traitor and his men that quickly expanded into a wide gash of darkness in the sky. From out of the blackness, a piercing, hellish scream boomed, bowling over Giovanni and sent the Drone spinning.
Giovanni ground his teeth as he got to his feet and glared at the Traitor's rapidly receding back. "After him!" he commanded the Drone. The Drone shot forward, but all but two of the traitors were already through, and the gash was rapidly closing. Just before the gash closed completely, Giovanni thought that he glimpsed a pair of red eyes glaring out at him.
Giovanni glared at the two traitors that had stayed behind, and pointed at them. "Take them into custody!" he shouted, and instantly the Drone had them hanging in the air upside down.
Giovanni walked up to the traitors, switching glares from one to the other. "I trusted both of you," he said, shaking his head sadly. "With my life! You were both Adminisrators of the highest order." He glared at the man. "How could all of you betray me like this?"
The man glared back at Giovanni, but didn't say anything. It was the woman traitor who piped up. "Giovanni, your way is not the only way."
Giovanni laughed. "You are right." Giovanni grabbed her face and spoke into her ear. "At least, not yet." Giovanni laughed and let go of the woman. "Your boss may be out of our reach for now, but he won't be forever. He can't go anywhere. He's trapped. It's only a matter of time before we break in and crush him and his feeble band." He turned from the pair and waved a hand dismissively. "Take them away."
A sharp crack sounded as the Drone teleported away, and for a moment the wind returned. But a second later, there was another crack and the wind was once again held at bay.
"Take us back to the base," Giovanni ordered the Drone. The Drone nodded and a half second later they were back in the Team Rocket Regional Base.
Giovanni ignored the others in his party and the Grunts going about their business in the halls and headed straight for his office. He needed a drink. Giovanni sighed and held his hand against his forehead as he walked. The Traitor wasn't supposed to get away like that! He was Giovanni! He OWNED half of Kanto, and the other half was too scared of him to do anything about it. He was going to take over the world!
Team Rocket was unstoppable!
Giovanni let himself into the office and closed the door. He looked out the wide window at the forest that surrounded the base and sighed as he sank into his chair.
It didn't used to be like this. He didn't used to ache in every part of his body after a rough mission. Not like this. Giovanni sighed. How could he not have seen the Betrayal coming? He should have seen it!
There must have been some sign!
Giovanni shook his head as he pulled the bottle of scotch out of a drawer of his desk. "I'm getting too old for this," he muttered to himself.
Giovanni stared into his drink, and for the first time in recent decades, allowed the doubts to creep back into his mind.
Day 1500
Location Unknown
The desert stretched on for miles, but the one known to those few who knew of his existence as Oz did not notice. One foot was placed confidently in front of the other, constantly moving forward, a constant reminder of his pledge to himself all those years ago.
"The Rockettes failed, sir," a voice in his ear informed him. Oz grunted and continued moving. The news was unfortunate, but it didn't really matter. It was just a formality. A nod at the rules that had been placed before him.
Oz paused at the top of a sand dune and crouched, a thin smile spread across his cracked lips. The men on the other end of the line were sweating right now, just like he was. The only difference was that he had nothing to be scared of. He had faced the Pokemon Legions of Effeular, had glared into the beak of Ho-oh, and had survived an encounter with Mewtwo himself. What did he have to fear?
Oz closed his eyes and paused, thinking things through. Cronus would be furious, and was probably demanding at that very moment that he be pulled from his solo sojourn. Let him fume. What was he going to do? Quit? Lose the support that had made his efforts thus far so successful?
Oz smiled, his darkly tanned skin moving smoothly over large, rippling muscles. All of his life he had prepared himself. He knew that this would come. The time when all the planning and preparations would come to fruition.
Oz gathered his dusty brown cloak around himself and got to his feet, pushing a lock of his hair from out of his face, letting his cool blue eyes scan the horizon, probing to see what might be. That had always been the difference between himself and Cronus. Cronus was concerned with making what could be into reality. While Oz weaved the tapestries of what was into what would be.
Oz sighed and spoke into the microphone. "Well, we knew this would happen eventually." he said as he got to his feet and resumed his solitary march through the desert. "Were they made by anyone?"
The voice on the other end took a moment to respond. "No sir," the male voice said nervously. "Except for the Winter agents that recovered the Target, sir."
Oz stopped at that, and looked up into the cloudless sky. That was something he wasn't expecting. "Winter agents," he muttered quietly. "Fascinating. This may prove to be fun after all." he grinned. "Call in the nearest chopper and pick me up."
"I thought you were staying out there for another week, sir?" the dispatcher said. "You said that--"
"Never mind what I said," Oz said, the excitement in his voice palpable. "Just get me back. I think I'm going to enjoy the next few days."
Day 1500
Location Unknown
The man in the Pokemon League cap looked down through the one-way mirror into the isolation room where one of the Legacy Children was being held. His brown eyes studied the man lying in the bed.
He was of average height, with a shock of red hair. He had been brought in wearing denim jeans and a T-shirt. The man's eyes narrowed. Who was this?
He had studied this particular Legacy Kid before, of course, but seeing him here was something man pursed his lips and leaned against the one-way mirror. Why had he been chosen to be a Legacy? The reasoning for choosing the other Kids was obvious. But why him? Why Kyle? It didn't make sense.
Not that Cronus' moves were making a whole lot of sense these days. Reports had come in that Cronus had hired a new crony right about the time that he started acting strangely, but there had been no intelligence on who the new person was.
Behind him, the door opened, and the man shifted his gaze slightly to see who was coming in through the reflection. It was the boss.
The man turned and snapped into a salute as Lorelei entered the observation room. "Ma'am," he said. "No change in his condition."
The woman nodded and limped up to the window beside him. "Very well, Carl."
There was silence for a long moment as Lorelei stared down at the new prisoner. Carl knew better than to interrupt her silence. Lorelei was, after all, the military genius that had single-handedly turn the Wars around. But it had certainly cost her.
Not for the first time, Carl studied her. She seemed to be a walking contradictions at times. He had seeen pictures of her before the Wars, and her long, beautiful red hair. Now her hair was mostly a silver that seemed to shimmer whenever it moved, with only a strand of red hair remaining close to her face. Her aging face was now a patchwork of scars, both old and new, capped by the eye patch that covered the place where her left eye had been. She had coped with the loss surprisingly well, and had even risen to it. She was the only person that Carl knew that had an Articuno eye patch.
"Carl, I think that we can trust this kid." She turned to Carl, and grinned slightly, her eye sparkling. "I know that that pretty much goes without saying after the Psy-screen, but it still needed to be said." Lorelei looked down into the isolation room, and spoke softly. "But we need to send Cronus a message. He sent his men into territory protected by us. We've warned him against this."
Lorelei closed her eyes for a moment and thought, then turned, her eye still closed, to Carl. "I want to see five preliminary targets on my desk in an hour," she said, half smiling. "I'll go through them and we'll deploy your squad to hit one of them tomorrow at 0500." She paused. "And take the new kid with you."
Carl frowned. "Ma'am, permission to speak freely?"
Lorelei's eye opened slowly, fixing her steely gaze on him. "Granted," she said darkly, her tone telling him that his had better be good.
"Ma'am, he hasn't trained with us. He could compromise the mission. Permission to leave him behind?"
Lorelei smiled thinly. "If he's going to survive this, he's got to know what's at stake." Her eye narrowed. "Permission denied." Lorelei turned, then paused and looked back at Carl. "I know how passionate you Pallet Town boys can be, kid. I knew your father in the Wars. You're doing a good job living up to his legacy. Just keep on doing what you're doing now, and you'll be fine." and limped out the door, and Carl knew that her mind was already going through the list of targets that he would probably choose from.
Carl sighed and nodded to his electric type in the corner. "Let's go, Raichu. We've got a lot of stuff to go over before we can call it a night."