Twenty-Five
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Agent 009 (Deceased)
Agent 008 (AWOL)
Agent 007 (Deceased)
Agent 006 (Deceased)
Agent 005 (Active)
Agent 004 (Deceased)
Agent 003 (Deceased)
Agent 002 (Deceased)
Agent 001 (Active)
The higher the number, the higher his Elites were ranked.
The higher the number, the faster they were being terminated.
Three months following 009's death, his agents had been targeted one by one.
Killed one after another.
Giovanni stared coldly at number 8, knowing damn well that his best were being killed by Ash Ketchum.
Ketchum was targeting everything he owned.
Big or small.
A warehouse of plywood? Blown straight to hell.
Ammunition stock? Looted, and the building burned down to ashes.
It was impossible for him to be causing the mayhem he had been. Unless his theory was confirmed.
Three months ago Ketchum had been reported to have been inside of the excavation site in Cerulean Cave.
Hours following that report, the site had lost contact with base.
When his scouts investigated the area, he learned that his forces had been wiped clean.
500 men, millions of dollars of equipment gone in a single few hours.
Ketchum was good, but not that good.
Which meant that he had found his prize.
Mewtwo.
The final pawn in his take over of the worlds Leagues.
His eyes shifted from 008 and to 005 as the 'Active' flashed once and changed to deceased.
Giovanni turned away from the monitor on his desk and to face the wall behind him in thought.
He only had one agent left.
And despite the low ranking, he knew that the agent may very well be his only hope in stopping Ketchum.
"Matori!" He called out.
"Giovanni sir," His secretaries voice answered from the PA overhead.
The Rocket boss spun in his chair to face his monitor once more, "Recall 001 to base immediately, and set security level red."
His secretary did not respond right away, "Yes sir. At once."
It was no doubt, now that his Elites were out of the way that Ketchum would be directing his attention to headquarters.
And he was sure that Mewtwo would be in tow.
He would have to capture both of his tools at the same moment.
His two crowning achievements spelled death and destruction wherever they went, and if they were coming for him, he would be ready.
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Ash lay against a fallen log, apple in his hand, and Espeon laying across his lap.
Across from him Mewtwo sat cross legged in front of the camp fire they had lit a mile south of the ammunition compound they had just raided.
It had been three months since he came in contact with the cloned Pokemon, and since then they had been travelling at an ungodly pace across Kanto and Johto.
In the course of that time they had raided, scavenged, hacked, destroyed anything relating Team Rocket.
He was physically and mentally drained, but he kept going.
Sleeping for an hour at most per day before setting off towards a new location.
Giovanni was within his sights now, and within days he was sure that the Rocket boss would be dead.
Any factories or warehouses where Team Rocket generated income had been priority during the last few months.
Neutralizing Team Rockets funds, cutting them away from purchasing the equipment they valued so dearly.
And then most important of all, hunting Giovanni's Elites.
There were 9 in total.
7 of which he had killed since joining up with Mewtwo.
He was an Elite which made him the eighth, the ninth and lowest of the bunch however.
He could not locate no matter how hard he tried.
It was as if they didn't exist.
There were no records, no files or documents.
If there were, he would know.
Mewtwo was peculiarly smart in odd ideas, insisting on using a Porygon to hack and break the Rocket database and returning information to a private hard drive.
It worked extremely well.
Scarily so.
He figured the Rocket database to be one of the most secure, and heavily guarded net defenses across the world. But in minutes a Pokemon had breached, and secured hundreds of gigabytes of data.
He did the G-Men a favor and sent them a spare drive containing everything they had uncovered.
Contact with the G-Men had been severed, so he had no idea what the current situation back at headquarters was like.
Were his mum and the girls still there?
Was Anderson still a pain in the ass?
The tough questions ate at him, but as he continued his journey with Mewtwo across the regions, his mind continued to narrow strictly on Giovanni.
'Ash,'
He and Mewtwo had gotten to a first name bassist.
He grunt in response as he bit into the ripe fruit, 'You know of my plans once we reach Giovanni and silence him, but what of yours?'
He still didn't know.
Suicide was still the most likely answer, but that wasn't written in stone quite yet.
He may return to Pallet, he may not return at all.
He may just...
Go.
Where?
He didn't know, but he'd find a road and continue walking.
He shrugged, "I unno," He muttered, "Once Team Rockets gone... Well I don't really have a purpose anymore do I?" He looked up to the night sky, where a blanket of stars twinkled overhead, "Kill myself probably, going home doesn't sound like a very good idea. I'm bat-shit insane, probably going to be prone to PTSD sometime once this is over... I'll be a liability, so..."
He made his hand into the shape of a pistol and placed it against the side of his head, "Bang. Problem solved."
'You have no will to live?' Mewtwo asked seriously, 'none at all?'
"Nah..." Ash found himself chilled at how calm he said it, "What do I have? A future? No. Friends? I can't consider the people who will look at me like a monster a friend,"
'Your old travelling companions you mean?'
He grunted, "They can... Put on a smile, laugh, and act like nothing happened. But if they see me, they'll wonder. And one day ask just what happened. And I know that when they do, I'll see in their eyes everything they've thought about me. The eyes show what a person truly thinks and believes Mewtwo, I've met enough, and done enough to people to know that that is true,"
'So you plan to disappear once this is at an end?'
"I dunno, once Giovanni's dead. Only then will I know. Because only then, will this all be over."
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