Author's third part of the ending.
Bicycle Road:
This is its own section for a reason. You can love or hate this section, but essentially, I turn Bicycle Road into a miniature version of Mad Max. Red takes the route instead of a teleport or circling around Lavender in order to better lose Team Rocket, as well as the constant 'challenging himself' factor.
The bicycles are motorcycles. The Celadon bikers are sort of anarcho-Hatfelds vs McCoys with the bikers of Fuschia. The Route isn't necessarily wide, but it's extremely long, and has multiple levels and unfinished construction. It's a mix of a super-highway and the Great Wall of China, suspended above the sea, choked with vines seeding through concrete and wilderness intermingled with manmade structure. It's a wonder of the Pokemon world for a reason.
To make it across, Red ingratiates himself with the Celadon bikers, having to earn their respect in a very gritty, down-to-earth way. There is at least one fist-fight. Red and Pikachu fit more or less right in.
Essentially, the bikers venerate a sort of total freedom from all laws, and a romantic obsession with riding along a horribly dangerous road, with the dusk and dawn by the side, on the edge of danger. To them, it is the closest they can be with the origin of men in the Neo-Dark and pre-pokemon times - danger and death at their right hand, always. Their bond with their pokemon is tight, and in some cases, symbiotic. There's some body-horror stuff with Grimers and Muks essentially climbing inside their trainers sub-dermally, sort of like a more fucked-up version of the Venom Symbiote.
Bicycle Road is also where Red finalizes his relationship with Charizard. He's felt the connection for a while, and can tell that Alexander feels it too, but has been waiting for something.
He helps him in the fight against Kronos, but that's trust in battle - it's not the same thing as a deep connection outside of it. Multiple times Alexander appears before Red, holding his pokeball inside of his mouth, clearly prompting Red to reach into the dragon's mouth, take it and seal their bond. Each time, Red tries only to barely avoid having his arm taken off as he fails for some invisible reason, with Alexander flying off.
Finally, Bicycle Road culminates in a big motorcycle battle around an infamous chasm in the road, an abyss down through which the sea can be clearly seen. The Fuschia bikers have been aggressive and feral ever since their leader, Gentleman Sasaki (James), disappeared and left them a while back - a man who was rumored to be an illegitimate son of Koga of a non-Imperial mother. They seem to be targeting Red specifically in the battle.
Alexander appears around the battle, still offering the pokeball. The Celadon bikers aren't doing well. Red finally reaches a level of understanding - for the dragon, as for the Championship, as it was for Alexander's missing eye; it's not about reaching forward and hoping not to lose something. It's about reaching and accepting loss as the price you might pay, without fear, either of loss or death. It's the final step, the 'I will be Champion, or die trying'.
So Red runs after Alexander and leaps straight after him into the great chasm, falling towards the sea. Midair, he reaches Alexander, and seizes him by the fang, pulling his arm into the dragon's mouth all the way to the shoulder and activating the pokeball. The connection seals, the bond forms, and both Red and the dragon feel it - they are trainer and pokemon, now, until victory or until death. Alexander disperses into pokepower, and immediately reforms underneath Red, both of them pulling up right before they hit the water and flying back up to the bridge to sweep the battle with their newfound power.
The bikers are very impressed, naturally. The leader of the Celadon bikers offhandedly offers Red the opportunity to head the gang, only half-joking. He declines, telling him that he doesn't want to ride along the line of the horizon, but past the line and claim it. He tells the riders they owe him a favor and passes into Fuschia.
Blue Interlude, Safari Zone:
This interlude involves Blue getting yet another of his pokemon (his Exeggutor) in the Safari Zone, and meeting Samurai Gozen in the flesh for the first time.
It also involves him finally grasping that, for one, the Imperial Party is a financier of Team Rocket, and for two, him suspecting strongly that Giovanni Vittore most definitely wears the pants in that relationship.
My idea for how Blue finds this out is some sort of on-going conversation with Koga during a ritzy expedition into the Safari Zone, where Koga and Blue have a very twisty, underneath-the-underneath conversation at the end of which Koga tosses him a hint.
It involves a lot of I-know-you-know-I-know on Blue's part, with a lot of extremely dry, poetic observations about nature with hidden meanings from Koga - basically, Koga comes over to have a casual conversation with an interesting up-and-comer, see if there's a brain under all the hype, and Blue instantly thinks he's in some deep conspiratorial politics talk and switches into mental overdrive trying to ferret it out.
(He's not, and while it's good in Koga's opinion to see the young Oak is as mentally acute as his grandfather, it's also pants-pissingly funny watching him think a ninja master just randomly walked up to him to engage in shadowruns, so he strings him along for a little while and tosses him a nugget of real information at the end as a half-pity, half-thanks for the good time.)
The conversation caps off at the end with Koga casually handing him the tourist brochure for the Safari Zone (that Blue didn't read before) and walking off. Blue reads it, and realizes that for something like three solid hours Koga has just been making up fake poetry and koans using lines straight off the brochure describing the various zones. Blue has been getting rinsed by a ninja the entire trip. It's at the end of the trip that Koga reveals the bit about Giovanni and Team Rocket being partners.
Getting the Exeggutor is a subplot: essentially, exeggcute clusters are normally completely harmonious, and make tricky Psychic opponents, especially when they evolve and get stronger - they're strong, but not overarchingly stronger than another single Psychic-type per say; their real strength is the fact that they have multiple separate minds, and can make divided and joint attacks that would be hellishly taxing on any other Psychic, either to replicate or defend against. They're anti-Psychic Psychics, essentially.
Any time there is an exeggcute that doesn't gel with the rest of the cluster, they push it out to either die or find another cluster. Blue spends all day collecting non-harmonious exeggcutes and forms a cluster entirely of exeggcutes that don't get along with normal exeggcutes, and then evolves them with a Leaf Stone. The result is essentially a Chaotic-aligned Exeggcutor - not able to make the multiple pronged attacks a normal one would, but instead absolutely impossible to predict in terms of attack vector, and stronger overall because of the constant bickering.
I had no notes for Blue meeting Samurai Gozen besides the fact they do. It's a bull-meets-bull thing. Lots of very deliberate courtesy on each side to prove they can, so much that it basically loops back around to being a plain old pissing match to prove who can be the least in-a-pissing-match. The most important piece of information in this interaction is when Koga reins Gozen in sharply - strong personality or not, Gozen is clearly under Koga.
Fuschia:
This section is very bare bones. Unlike Blue who gets really involved with the Imperial Party, this is Red's sort of cameo in with them. He meets Janine, who, contrary to the traditional values and veneration of legacy that is central to the Imperial Party, does not really care at all about the Imperial Party at all, viewing them as associated with her, rather than herself with it. She cares about pleasing Koga, but only because she loves her father, not because she thinks it's her cultural duty. Koga sort of sees both sides - he's a traditionalist and also always believed he'd be a traditional Imperial father, but then his daughter was born and he looked her in the eyes and his entire worldview and priorities basically shifted.
Ultimately, her central theme is the rejection of being controlled by legacy, and instead forging your own. It's also the test for Red and Alexander as new partners, as Alexander previously lost his eye to the pokemon of Koga.
Fuschia is definitely the least written of all my segments. Sorry. It was pretty meh for me in the game too, to be honest - it's hard to make 'you beat a gym and also find Surf in the Safari Zone' into a real narrative. If there's one city in Pokemon Red/Blue that's just straight filler, I'd call Fuschia it. It's part of the reason I make a whole story out of Bicycle Road.
At the end of Fuschia, Red is contacted by an unknown presence. The presence says that its name is Mewtwo. Red also reveals that he knows this part of the story is what Giovanni is truly interested in...as well as Sabrina, who is the second person in the room besides Surge.
Giovanni Interlude:
A day in the life of Giovanni Vittore. Mostly this interlude is to establish a bit of backstory for Giovanni, and loop in Karen and Will, and how they become his sort of agents to take over the Elite Four. In addition, it reveals Mewtwo for the first time.
It starts out with Giovanni at one of his safe locations - Saffron tower, Viridian Gym, and League HQ are some of them. These locations are significant because they have sufficient defenses to allow him to evade Mewtwo. He's been cycling through them for over a decade, only making brief excursions outside them to avoid confrontation with the pokemon god and obscure his designs.
The 'day in the life' happens to be the very first day he met Red in Pewter.
His first stop is visiting Leader Pryce, who is the previous Champion before Giovanni. Pryce is a peer to Giovanni, perfectly willing to commit crimes and atrocities to further his own goals. He's implied to be an underworld figure like Giovanni (in reference to the manga and Pryce being the Masked Man), except Giovanni isn't sure of his future goals - something that furthers Giovanni's respect and wariness of him.
They meet at the orphans home/schoolhouse where Pryce raises various youths with potential, among them being Denarius (also known as Silver), Giovanni's son. He's there both for protection and as a sort of political ward. It's implied Giovanni has never told Silver he's his father but he knows somehow. The other 2 youths are Carl and Sham.
They talk about Karen and Will, who were previous agents and wards of Pryce's. Giovanni is there for use of them from Pryce - they make some suggestive conversation, and eventually settle on Giovanni owing him in an unspecified way in the future. It's revealed in text that Giovanni's eventual plan is to put a puppet in the Grand Champion's seat, and Karen and Will are necessary to make sure the Elite Four are also under control (with Koga making a majority of them that work for him) - which the reason why a future favor from Giovanni is so valuable.
Finally, Pryce updates him on his son, who Giovanni has deliberately not asked about. He is derisive - he says that of all the myriad talents Silver could have inherited from his more impressive father, the only one he actually did was his overpowering avarice for the material. He might eventually be a great thief, a great pillager or great looter, Pryce says - but never a great man.
It's a pointed criticism at both son and sire, but Giovanni stomachs it - he knows his own weaknesses, and has never included having his son surpass him in his goals. Pryce is harsh, but never lies, and is twice as cruel for it - Old Man Winter, as he was known in the war.
The next stop is a brief reference to the meeting at the Pewter Museum. It's frustrating for Giovanni - ultimately, he views himself as someone who is advancing humanity by force no matter the cost. He has no hatred for pokemon whatsoever, but views the world as he sees it rationally (in his opinion) - with humanity being a breath away from extinction at any moment, and ruthless men with power doing whatever it takes being the only thing keeping it that way. The pokemon gods are not their friends (for much the same reasons you cannot be friends with a whirlwind or a plague), and have already demonstrated their willingness and capacity to wipe away humanity like an errant stain with Wild Hunts and natural disaster.
It's not that people like Lance aren't strong. However, idealistic people like him being in power - in particular, those working against Giovanni - are the absolute biggest threat to humanity around currently. He can't fight the gods with people attacking his back. And so, for the sake of mankind, Giovanni becomes the devil it needs.
The next two meetings are with Karen and Will.
He meets Will in his agency in the Indigo Plateau. Mentioning Pryce spooks Will some, but Will is a powerful figure now and capable psychic, and declines giving a proper answer to Giovanni's offer. He also mentions working with Giovanni 'as a peer', which infuriates him.
The second meeting is with Karen, in some unspecified Johto city (I hadn't decided). It's in the basement office level of a nightclub that Karen runs a band of mercenaries/bandits out of - Karen, in reality, is Callsign K, one of the special operations legends from the war, and well known among those in the know about that sort of thing. The nightclub is currently closed, since it's early afternoon. She rebuffs him even more strongly than Will, feeling secure in her place of power and her ability to repel Pryce if he tries to call in her debt to him. Giovanni leaves once again in defeat.
On the way back in a vehicle, he's attacked by Mewtwo. The vehicle is overturned, and the driver, being channeled through by Mewtwo, pulls Giovanni calmly out of the wreck and dumps him outside. Giovanni, finally fed up, asks why Mewtwo hasn't killed him. Despite all his defences, there's no way he has been lucky this long.
Mewtwo admits that at first, killing Giovanni was his goal - it was the reason for the Wild Hunt. However, he was convinced (by Mew, though this isn't said) soon after that all life is too precious to be taken carelessly.
Giovanni calls it a lie, and Mewtwo rebuffs him, saying it's the truth - but also finishes by admitting that death would be a release that he's loath to grant to Giovanni. Life is precious, but he does not love mankind, and hates Giovanni as the worst of all their species. He tells Giovanni that he will oppose him, always, until all of his plans and goals are wind, because he knows that to Giovanni, death would be preferable to defeat.
Giovanni takes that in, breathing heavily, and then pulls out a pistol and shoots the driver directly in the back of the head, when Mewtwo turns to continue lecturing. The sound and smell of the gunshot sets the forest alight with enraged pokemon, for whom both the sound and smell is genetically rage inducing. The exception is Sekhmet, who slinks out from the shadows, completely calm - both she and Giovanni are monsters of their own kind. They step into the shadows and fade away.
There's a short cut to a call with Matori. Giovanni is supernaturally calm, and tells her the problems with Karen and Will will be resolved before he gets back. When she asks how, he asks her:
'Do you remember,' he says slowly, softly, quiet as a funeral pall being set. 'who I am?'
The first scene is Will again. His agency is near closing. Giovanni walks straight in the door, and inside Will's own office (which is one of the open concept ones with all glass walls), picks the man up with one arm and pins him to his desk by his collar. Will splutters, looking around at the people left in the office - they watch, but are stricken terror-silent, by the low purring of Sekhmet outside, who is noisily licking her chops.
Giovanni dares Will to try his psychic powers on him if he wants to find out exactly how he keeps Sabrina in line. Will's face notably contorts, and he glows briefly under Giovanni's grip, looking frantic. Giovanni's expression doesn't alter a whit.
After a moment, he drops Will onto the floor. Will protests weakly, saying that it's broad daylight, that someone will talk, that peers don't treat another like this.
'Let them talk, or not. I am Tenkaichi.' he says. 'I have no peers.'
Will tells him it isn't over. It is, Giovanni says. It was over the second he manhandled Will in the epicenter of Will's place of power without consequence.
Will has surrounded himself with sycophants and powerful people, and wears his little mask to hide his face, just like his mentor Pryce. But his little harlequin act is just glass, just like his walls, and under both is no real power. Will is exactly what he pretends to be - a vain little clown, acting like real player.
He could always try and prove Giovanni wrong, of course, Giovanni says, as he steps away. He has just enough element of surprise to take one shot at him. Giovanni even wagers he'll take it, someday. So for when that day comes, Giovanni says - don't miss, little clown.
Will says nothing. You're going to be Elite Four, Giovanni tells him flatly. Prepare accordingly.
He then walks out. There is no retaliation.
The scene begins again at Karen's nightclub. There's a horror movie sequence where Giovanni enters the same hallway and becomes the Shadowman, his gengar ripping Karen's operatives limb from limb, swallowing them into the Distortion World. Sekhmet's claws rending huge slashes in solid stone.
Giovanni confronts Karen, telling her he knows why she mastered Dark-types before others - because she was afraid of the dark, always sensitive to it. It was part of what made her good in black ops. She thinks that she's become a part of it.
But Giovanni and Sekhmet were born in it. When he was young, barely a man, Madame Boss - his mother, a crime lady of legendary cruelty in charge of the family syndicate - locked him in a basement, in a cage with a feral, starving Persian, when he was just old enough and it just weak enough to be an even match for them. She did it, she said, to either make him or break him. He was too soft for her standards, too attached to others, strangely quiet.
Instead of clawing each other to death, Giovanni made his first bond. In the very same way that Red did, but horribly distorted, Giovanni tapped into his empathy, and saw the Persian's memories. The Persian had been born without feeling for its own kind, and mistreated, given the least of any kill the pack made. So, finally, desperate, it had struck back, and eaten the kill and its own kind. The darkness of the act had distorted the creature, making it strange to even other pokemon, until it was finally captured and brought here.
There, in the darkness, Giovanni found his truth - that there was no truth, or love. There was power - and true power was not given, but taken.
So instead of dying, on the third day, Madame Boss returned, and Giovanni and Sekhmet rose from darkness to extend their reach to the stars above.
Giovanni pulls Karen into the Distortion World, the place she fears deep down, where all form is suggestion - and there she sees him in truth. He appears not as inhuman, but as superhuman - tall as any man, but made of crushing darkness dispersed with stars, with mountainous wings which rise like a spiral pillar out of sight into space. And from his shadow prowls Sekhmet at his right, creeping, of bloody bones, avatar of murder, and Nergal at his left, the deathless shadow of death, inevitable and hungry-always. His eyes are lifeless moonstones, and when he opens his mouth, a torrent of red sunlit flame, like a rocket's engine spews forth.
'ALL PEOPLE, OF ALL NATIONS,' The Rocket man-thing-god screams its commandments like an emergency klaxon, 'AS ONE, UNITED - UNDER ME.'
Karen begins to scream, and the scene cuts to him dragging Karen outside the burning club by her hair, where Matori is waiting with another car. He tells her that Karen agreed, and will be starting tomorrow - making the necessary rounds involved with soon becoming a public figure. Surge will declassify some black ops records of hers that are flattering to help.
The interlude concludes, with Giovanni concluding that this year would be pivotal to his success - but that success was inevitable, because he would accept no other outcome.
Silph Co, Present Interlude:
Silph Co comes under attack by the combined forces of Mr Fuji, who tells the ghosts of pokemon tower where their stolen friends have been taken, and the bikers of Bicycle Road, who have painted themselves with streaks of crimson war paint temporarily for this battle.
Sabrina and Surge instantly move to secure Red. Giovanni orders them to activate an escape rope to counteract them being flooded with Ghost-types and have Sabrina teleport them out of there.
Sabrina goes to do it, and that's when someone (Erika, who as previously stated is the Silph Co president's daughter, and absolutely willing to vandalize her father's building in retaliation for Team Rocket trying to destroy her city) outside releases Kronos. His aura of radiation instantly short-circuits nearly every electrical device in the tower including the escape rope. Giovanni is trapped.
Sabrina throws up a shield against Kronos's aura and says she can brute force them out of there, but not with her limiters on, referring to the large poketech bracelets she wears. Giovanni reflects that after she takes them off, her overall psychic power will be greater than that of any normal psychic pokemon - the original reason he had them put on her was because he was rightly wary of her abilities as they might be applied against him.
He looks at Red, who looks completely unperturbed, and is staring directly at him through the one-way glass. Giovanni reflects coldly that he has been read, but that being read does not mean he has been beaten. He hasn't gotten to where he is by simply being pushed without being pushed back.
He refuses Sabrina's suggestion, and says it won't be necessary. He then releases his Dugtrio, which is in reality is most of an entire diglet colony, something that is illegal for a trainer to own, as it constitutes a weapon of mass destruction in its own right with the size of the quakes it can cause, and with the fact that diglet colonies over a certain size can't be controlled or trained due to the nature of their hive-mind mental state. The diglet colony instantly burrows underground and begins fighting Kronos.
He muses aloud that whatever plan Red has, he must now choose between the death of many Saffron citizens succumbing to Kronos' aura and the earthquake of the diglets fighting it, and the no doubt oncoming response of the Elite Four and Champion, or recalling the Snorlax.
Red watches him for a moment. Then, without any visual prompting from Red, Kronos is recalled by whoever has his pokeball (Erika, who while game for revenge, isn't game for civilian casualties). The aura disappears, leaving only the diglet colony ripping around under the city. Giovanni releases a porygon to repair the escape rope (which would have vaporized the porygon if he had done it within an electromagnetic field like the aura), and orders Sabrina to teleport him, Surge and Red to a place he calls 'the villa', and to remain behind to fight the colony, as her presence will be expected considering Saffron is her city.
She does so without hesitation. Moments later they land in the Viridian City gym.
Giovanni orders Surge to prepare the defenses at the highest level of expected threat - a Wild Hunt or worse, with an extreme psychic threat expected. Surge hesitates, before complying after Giovanni coldly assures him he doesn't need special forces to deal with one unruly boy.
Giovanni leads Red to a room underneath the Gym, and sits down in a room with him, across a table - finally face to face. Red is handcuffed, but otherwise unbound. Giovanni's Persian is by his side, better than any platoon of operators.
Matori wheels in a thin, high tech display, where Saffron is displayed, under attack by diglets. Several gym leaders are reported responding, as well as Bruno being that is his hometown. Sabrina is visible, directing forces from all over the city from her gym.
Giovanni presses a button on his phone. Sabrina's restraints glow as they increase to maximum, and at the same time, the Saffron Gym implodes, hidden explosives turning it into a giant conflagration. Red jerks for the first time, a visible reaction.
Giovanni tells him that his story was entertaining, but that it is also over. As soon as he realized that Red was lying, the logical conclusion was that he had converted Sabrina somehow to his side.
There were only two reasons he had listened for as long as he did:
Firstly, to determine if Surge had turned traitor as well, so he would not have to waste the life of the country's greatest special operator as well as the greatest living human psychic. Giovanni admits mildly that Red did successfully force his hand into a direct confrontation at Saffron, but in doing so revealed his ultimate plan - put Giovanni in a situation where he had no choice but to release Sabrina, and then have her use her powers to puppet him (as Giovanni would have done in Red's position). He determined that Surge was loyal by the way Surge did not improvise and attack immediately when Giovanni subverted the plan, either at Saffron or upon their arrival to Viridian Gym - a soldier such as Surge would have realized instantly that those were the only two moments when Giovanni would be vulnerable and taken advantage of one of them.
Secondly, to confirm the ultimate enemy that had been using Red as a piece against Giovanni: Mewtwo.
While Giovanni had been listening, he had also been reviewing his files on past projects and on Sabrina, to determine how Red could have possibly had contact with her or even subverted her, which Giovanni admitted he was baffled by. But once he found it, all the pieces fell into place.
Project Scion. The ruined project eighteen years ago, the same age as Red, through which Team Rocket, with a younger Professor Oak as a project administrator, had sought to deliberately influence the birth of human psychics. Easily missed pregnant women paired up with psychic pokemon caretakers who stayed in their presence night and day, constantly exposing them to psychic particles while in the womb.
The first, and most successful result had been Sabrina - her mother paired with Mewtwo, who in those days had still been on the side of humanity. The project had gone wrong at the same time Mewtwo did - when he went rogue, he went on a rampage, causing pokemon everywhere he went to go berserk, forming one of the greatest Wild Hunts in history, leading it to Viridian's very walls as Giovanni worked desperately to muster the defences he needed. At the last moment, the Wild Hunt had been turned away.
(This is false - Mewtwo ended the Wild Hunt at the last second.)
There had been only two children unaccounted for in the wreckage of that catastrophe. One of the children was male. Also unaccounted for had been one surrogate mother, and one psychic caretaker - a mistermime. DNA tests pulled from the Pallet Town hospital off of Delilah Ketchum's records there had proved it - she was the same woman.
It was enough of a connection to forge a bond. Something trite and insipid. Giovanni tells Red that Sabrina always was a pathetically lonely child - she probably thought it was love. Red doesn't clench his fists or grit his teeth, but Giovanni has been observing Red long enough to recognize his complete nonreaction as Red's version of an emotional response.
Empathic powers? Complete nonsense. Red was just a filthy, leftover psychic mutant from a failed project, with barely enough power to manage rudimentary telepathic communication. As Giovanni says this, Matori comes over and clips a second pair of bindings over Red's wrists, similar to Sabrina's - and his always vivid red eyes fade to a dull, charcoal black. Giovanni nods in a way so nonchalant that it loops back around to being smug.
Giovanni then tells Red his future - he is going to die. So is Professor Oak - clearly Mewtwo had suborned him at some point as well, and he can't leave such a capable piece in the pokemon god's hands. Red knows that Giovanni is capable of it. So Red is going to tell Giovanni the three things he wants to know.
Everything he knows about Mewtwo. Everyone who was involved in this coup against Giovanni - he suspects Blaine to be at least involved in some capacity, despite not showing his hand. And finally: the location of his untraceable, prototype Master Ball, whose disappearance at the same time that this is happening cannot be coincidence.
Sekhmet, the Persian who has killed so many and committed such dark deeds she is practically a Dark-type, can't tell truth from lies, but she can sense certain things: the taste of spite, the look of sacrifice, the smell of suicide. If Red refuses or simply starts spouting lies to protect them, the Persian will know, and will drag him into the Distortion World and eat him, soul and all. And then Oak. And then everyone who has ever known. Red can die alone, or die taking everyone he loves with him. Like the game of Go, this is the endgame - the stones have already been laid, and the outcome is already certain. And neither of them are the kind to make mistakes.
Red has been listening to Giovanni the entire time. When he says that the outcome is already certain, he smiles thinly. Then he nods to the screen, where Saffron is depicted being slowly saved by the new Elite Four - Will, Karen, Koga and Lance...and their new Champion, PKMN Trainer Blue.
Mewtwo meeting:
This part was under development.
Mewtwo calls Red to Cerulean Cave and teleports him there, recognizing him as another foe of Rocket. They have an exposition - I hadn't decided how to frame the whole scene yet, which assumedly also involves them meeting. Mewtwo explains some larger plots about the world as a whole, and the relationship between pokemon and humanity:
-He was created by Blaine, Oak and Fuji many years ago in a secret project directed by Champion Giovanni called Project Apotheosis. Giovanni told him he was a bridge between 2 worlds, but in reality, meant for him to be a weapon and defense mechanism against the pokemon gods, and to win him to his side.
-Mewtwo, despite possessing incredible power, is genetically flawed - his body is slowly being destroyed by using his own power. All pokemon gods have their specialty - Mewtwo's is genetic modification, or the modification of life, which is the only reason he has been alive this long.
-Mewtwo originally served Giovanni. Giovanni's first mission sends him against Suicine, who had attacked a shell company of Giovanni's in Cinnabar which was polluting the waters. After a battle that causes a partial eruption of the volcano and destruction of the lab and results in a partial severance of Ho-Oh's control over Suicine, Mewtwo realizes the truth, and goes on a rampage, destroying the projects he had been a part of when he fails to find Giovanni- first Cinnabar and then Project Scion, before retreating into the woods to raise a Wild Hunt against Viridian City.
-Before Mewtwo could end the city and kill his creator, he was spirited away by his real progenitor, Mew. Mew convinced him that life is sacred, but more importantly, that killing Giovanni will not change the system that gave rise to Giovanni. Mew finished by prolonging Mewtwo's life by a certain amount, made defeating Giovanni without killing him Mewtwo's task to earn immortality and his place among the pokemon gods. (As a note, this is not what Mew said or intended at all, but how Mewtwo interpreted it.) At this point, Mewtwo made contact with Blaine (and Oak, though this isn't revealed at this time).
-The pokemon gods absolutely could wipe out the human race - they have creatures that control space and time, life and death, the elements, the seas and tectonic plates. The reason they haven't is because humanity is being put to the test by the pokemon gods. Humanity is being tested, to see if they can coexist with the rest of the life on the planet in a non-destructive way. Much of the work of the pokemon gods is to preserve said experiment - time and space themselves have been altered along with other factors an unknown number of times to allow for this, as well as the planet.
-The pokemon gods are losing their patience, however. Soon, and Mewtwo doesn't know how soon, they are planning on ending the experiment unless they see a drastic change in humanity's course (once again, this is something Mewtwo believes, not necessarily something that was true).
Mewtwo's appearance isn't much different than his portrait, but a point is made that there are wrinkles, and patches of hair clearly missing. He is clearly still running out of time as well despite Mew extension, not that Red says so.
Red is repelled by this information of being tested as well, and the stakes. Mewtwo tells him that while there are other nations of humanity, Indigo is the largest and wields a plurality of influence over the future. He has watched Giovanni, Lance, and the up and coming contenders for Grand Champion, and is convinced that this year's championships will be a divergence point - possibly the last, best chance for a change.
It is here that Mewtwo reveals that Red's empathy powers are not magic at all, but rather, the wordless lingua franca by which all living things communicate, the reason all pokemon are able to communicate. It is not a perfect system of communication, and varies by the degree of shared species context (Red cannot communicate with common grass, or trees [yet], but a Grass pokemon would be much more able to), but a certain aptitude is shared by living things. The mistermime hand gestures were never necessary, only a mnemonic for teaching.
Humanity as a whole has atrophied away entirely their ability to use it - but experienced pokemon trainers and others who work with pokemon, especially from a young age, develop it over time. Trainers who specialize in a single Pokemon type develop it faster, as they grow closer to that species' 'context'. In other words - humanity being the only species born deaf to the language of all life is the best evidence for their destruction, and pokemon trainers are the best case against it.
Add this to the fact that combat often engenders closeness and trust that wouldn't happen otherwise, and you have the reason why pokemon battling and human wars meet no interference from the gods, but manmade environmental disasters do.
Mewtwo has contacted Red because Red is the most capable user of the lingua he has ever heard of or encountered. Red is entirely fluent, and even more than that, has displayed 'linguistic' capabilities that clearly outstrip what is known . Being able to ignore illusions (with the Ninetales) and channel away pain (with Aniki) are not things that have been seen before. Red is a case in himself for the continued existence of humanity as a species - but only if humanity can grow with him. For that reason, Mewtwo wants him to become Champion, and in doing so cast down Giovanni and his plans.
Red accepts his help, and Mewtwo sends him to Cinnabar to get his next badge and meet Blaine, to hear the same from a human like himself. He also recommends making contact with Sabrina, with who he has more in common than he thinks. (This is in part a reference to the fact that you don't actually have to do Saffron Gym until the very end of the game to get through Victory Road - there's no HM lock that forces you to, at least in the original. You literally can do Saffron whenever you want after the city is unlocked.)
(Also a note, recall this is being told in the context of Red telling the story directly to Giovanni, with no lie detectors present besides Sekhmet ensuring he is not taking a dive trying to protect someone else. The last part is revealed to be a lie Red is telling him - Red refuses Mewtwo's help. But that is covered later.)
Cinnabar:
This one was another section that was underdeveloped. There were only a few parts of key information to develop:
Blaine is in fact an agent for Mewtwo, but on his own terms. Essentially, Mewtwo could kill or puppet him at any moment, and Blaine knows that - but he is a scientist at heart, and death does not scare him. He is an agent for Mewtwo because he firmly believes it is best for humanity if Mewtwo has a positive human connection, and because working with a manmade clone of the most mysterious pokemon god is most interesting thing anyone could do.
In reality, he is more clued in to the real state of the world than possibly anyone else currently alive. What was explained to Red is known to him.
I didn't really have a specific plan for it, but there's some scenic exposition about Cinnabar. Absolutely no notes beyond the fact it happens - it's a new location. There's some words about it. Moving on.
Blaine makes Red root around in the old labs before he agrees to fight him. This is where Red says he finds out more about Mewtwo's creation (this is true) and where he first reads about Project Scion (this is a lie). This is also a place the porygon subplot might have come into play.
Red really was a part of Project Scion, and he admits it here. He tells Giovanni he guesses Professor Oak must have spirited his mother away after Mewtwo rampaged through, and he has no idea about the other child (another lie). Beyond his ability to shield his mind from psychic attack, however, Red hasn't inherited any psychic abilities from Ashford (truth). Project Scion is also where Sabrina was born, to Mewtwo's influence, which explains 'what they have in common'.
At this point Blaine and Red might have a gym battle. I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to or not - the pokemon gym battling circuit is kind of small potatoes to the stakes at this point, and I didn't see the narrative purpose it fulfilled beyond cool flashy fight, which isn't a good enough reason at this point anymore. If they do, I made a note that Blaine's magmar is named Megiddo.
The main thing Cinnabar is for is to cement in Red's mind that he has to make his own conclusions about the world - his shining mentor, Oak, was involved in both the creation of a misanthropic pokegod and his own birth, for instance.
Blaine's purpose is to hammer in that just because you're subject to the influences of your situation and your past doesn't mean you can't make your own path going forward. Blaine is as culpable as Oak, and has a genetic piece of Mewtwo implanted into him as leverage for the part his own DNA had in creating Mewtwo. He reveals that Mewtwo is in fact part human (with Blaine's DNA as the baseline), which is part of the reason he is so obsessed with mankind and its nature.
And yet, despite all this: Blaine is a truly chipper, positive person, dedicated to doing good, even joking. He is strong without ignoring his failures, or his past.
Mewtwo wants something from him, as does Blue, as does the system and the world. Blaine does not. Blaine wants Red to make his own choice.
With this and the badge, Red heads back to the place where he truly was born - Saffron.
Blue Interlude, Meeting Giovanni:
In this interlude, Blue meets Giovanni Vittore for the first time, and at the end, drinks his first draught from the devil's water.
Blue receives an invitation to an extremely high-class gala. Normally, he gets them by the dozen, and by the dozen they hit the bin, but this one is different. It's from Giovanni Vittore himself.
Blue is smart enough to know that Giovanni is an extremely big fish even by big fish standards, without even knowing anything about the criminal side beside the fact that Team Rocket is criminal and Giovanni heads them. Most of Indigo high society gatherings can be divided up by those that Giovanni attend, and those that he does not - and an unspoken understanding is that while some of the latter can be missed without consequence, the same cannot be said of the former. Giovanni's presence means that somewhere there, history is being made.
By the same unspoken understandings of movers and shakers, bred into Blue from a young age, he knows a direct invitation is both offer and challenge. He can't just not attend.
So he goes. He arrives on Aeolus in full finery, now his full pidgeot. This is the cameo of the next member of his team.
Enter the Pokemon series cameo orgy.
Basically, I planned on tossing every single Team leader from the later series I could without seeming gratuitous, along with most CEOs of companies and anyone who seemed like an insanely shady bastard. Definitely every Rocket executive I can fit in. Probably some other Champion for good measure. Lance is not there, nor is any of the current Elite Four.
However, Karen's mercenaries are running security, and the woman herself is making the rounds.
This is the ruling elite of the Indigo League and greater pokemon world. And Giovanni is absolutely nowhere to be seen.
Blue does some schmoozing that is literally necessary, and goes looking. Eventually, he finds a closed out section, where there's reputedly a private game going on. He takes the hint, and walks away before stepping into the Distortion World.
Normally, very short distances are easy to bridge, as form doesn't have too much space to be warped. A lot of Distortion World navigation is interpreting forms - like the Nevernever from Dresden Files. Here, this is not the case.
Blue appears in front of a long, dark staircase, with steps shaped like feathers, all downwards into darkness. The iconography is clear - this is the threshold of the next room, but he's never seen it be warped this strongly in this short a real-world distance. Undeterred by the darkness with Blacky lighting his side, he proceeds downwards into the light-swallowing abyss. Blacky, after some clear hesitation, joins him.
He reaches the bottom of the staircase, and finds himself in front of a door of black stone. Thinking himself outside of another room, he steps out of the Distortion World.
He appears already inside of a room, despite being outside of the threshold - something that has never happened before.
The room is brightly lit like the rest of the gala. Inside, there is a four-sided table, with four people playing mahjong.
Giovanni Vittore. The Silph Co President (Erika's dad), whose name I hadn't quite decided. Leader Koga. And Will, who is the only one surprised to see him, sitting across from Giovanni.
Blue is immediately on high alert, having an acute feeling of having stepped into a lion's mouth - not helped by Sekhmet, curled at Giovanni's feet. Will offers a cheerful greeting. The President and Koga don't react.
Giovanni offers mildly that they've been saving him a seat at the table. Blue carefully returns that mahjong is a 4-player game, and they're full up, it seems.
In the same, unaffected tone, Giovanni calmly orders Will to get out.
Will, with only a second's pause, swallows lightly and walks out of the room without another word. Meanwhile, Koga and the President wordlessly clean up the mahjong game, and relax in nearby chairs, enjoying drinks and pipe-smoke.
Giovanni, from his side of the table, retrieves another game from beneath the table, and bids Blue to sit. Blue, seeing no other option, does so.
History was one of Giovanni's hobbies - not any history of course, he specified. His particular fascination was with imperial histories. The histories of nations - led by single rulers - who strove to rule the world.
Blue contests that he knows his Pre Neo-Dark history, and that no one has ever ruled the whole world, not even the United Americans. Giovanni agrees - but every part of the world had been under a human government with one ruler at one point or another, he returned back. His favorite, he confessed, was the Roman - his blood traced back to the same region.
His other hobby, he continued, was games. And so it was natural the two would intersect. Giovanni takes a strangely shaped board out beneath his side of the table. He had found this game in the search for a Roman game called ludus duodecim scriptorum, an ancestor to another one called backgammon.
This game, Giovanni said, was an even older one. Sometimes called 20 Squares, it was also known as the Royal Game of Ur.
Blue, extremely well-educated, admits he doesn't recognize it or even the language. Giovanni assures him that it's all right, and asks if Blue would care to make a wager.
A wager, on a game he doesn't have any idea how to play, on stakes he doesn't know, Blue clarifies. No stakes, Giovanni clarifies, just a wager for wagering's sake. It's another challenge, another test. Blue agrees.
Giovanni explains the rules in brief - each player has a number of pieces they have to clear off the board before the other. Dice decide how much the pieces may be moved. It's a game of strategy, but also luck. It has plenty of variations, but the core concept is fairly simple.
The wager isn't on the outcome of the game, Giovanni clarifies. Instead, it's on whether Blue can answer a question:
What aspect of the Game of Ur is most like the journey to become Champion?
To be fair, Giovanni offers a few games so Blue can get a feel.
The answer to the question is based on opinion, Blue challenges, after a minute, with Giovanni as very biased arbiter. Giovanni agrees easily, and extrapolates: if he gives any decently correct answer, they'll call it Blue's win. But if Blue can give the answer Giovanni is thinking of, he'll reward him...with another wager, this time with stakes.
Blue is being felt out, he can tell. But any such exchange will tell him something about Giovanni as well, which some people would happily lose a hand for. He agrees, and they play a few games. The first is played mostly as a teaching game, where Giovanni wins, offering a few pointers along the way. The second is more serious, and Giovanni takes it again. The third, on a combination of gradual understanding and luck, Blue wins.
Giovanni prods Blue - he has a feel now. His answer?
The explanation of the rules, the core concepts of the game - it had all been smokescreen. The true answer had been presented at the very beginning when Koga and the President stepped aside, and Blue's answer is confident:
There are only 2 players.
Giovanni smiles thin - correct. For all of the power and complexity and strategy involved in pokemon battling, in the end, it is one side against another. To become Champion, one only really needs to win, at the minimum, 13 serious pokemon battles; 8 gyms to qualify, 4 Elite Four, and then the Champion. In fact, you'd only need 5 if one were to earn each Gym badge the long way, though that would be the grueling work of a lifetime.
A series of binary outcomes, and at the end, you have someone to rule your little part of the world. It's simple, appealing, easy to understand. The Royal Game of Ur had been popular in its time for much the same reasons, Giovanni lectured; it had been found among every crypt from the king to the commons. As above, so below.
So you're a fan, Blue returns. Same here.
Giovanni huffs shortly, the corpse of a laugh. He'd have to be, you'd suppose, having been commoner and king. No, not a fan, but he could appreciate the appeal - certainly better than rule by primogeniture, at any rate.
But still, the point remained; the journey to becoming Champion was nothing but a game. Appealing, entertaining, engaging. Trite.
Blue absorbs this in silence.
Giovanni resets the board - the next wager. Two more games, and the answer to a new question:
In what aspect was the Game of Ur most unlike the experience of being Champion? This, Giovanni says, he is the definite authority on. Blue pauses a moment, and asks the stakes.
If Blue won, Giovanni would give him a reward. The reward would have objective value, Giovanni promised - but be subjectively worthless to Blue. And if Blue lost, he'd leave the room he intruded into and enjoy the rest of the party.
That was a riddle itself, Blue jokes mildly, but his mind is racing. The message was clear - to lean further in, and see more while being seen? Blue, not faint of heart, accepts, and they play.
There is no conversation this time. Blue wins, both times. The second time it is by strategy; Giovanni is defeated soundly in the start, but they play out the rest of the game anyway. There is an increasing sense of unease - Blue is winning, but there isn't the slightest sign of distress from Giovanni. The game's outcome does not matter to him.
They come to a close. Giovanni asks, your answer. Blue grimaces, the trick of the question having slowly dawned on him, vile as a sickness.
There are only 2 players.
Giovanni says nothing, but it is apparent Blue is right. Elaborate, he asks. Blue does.
After you reach the top, it's not about Pokemon battling anymore. It's about ruling a nation. Instead of one vs one, it is the Champion vs all - an infinite number of games, with changing numbers of players, and different rules, which are broken and remade constantly. He has allies, his 4, his Leaders - but they are from into the same game as him, and can only manage so much. He wields many great executive powers, it is true - but unless he maintains his personal strength, he is replaced, and doing so takes time - and if age doesn't take his strength, it takes his life anyway. He is grasping water in his hands, trying not to run out.
Giovanni is silent. Then he asks; Gary Oak, do you know how empires rise? Giovanni answers:
At some point, power is consolidated around a ruler for the first time. That ruler is victorious, and amasses more power. As he does, he lifts his nation with him. He falls. If another victorious ruler takes the reins he has inherited, the empire continues, stays strong, healthy.
The First Champion, Blue puts forward. Giovanni nods, and then asks: Trainer Blue. Do you know how empires fall?
It does not take disaster. It does not even take stagnation. On the contrary - these can revitalize a nation. No - an empire falls when it begins to equilibrate.
A ruler takes power, of moderate competence, balanced strengths, strengths and weakness. He is the worst thing a ruler can be - stable. A reasonable suggestion is made - to steady the empire, why not even out the rulership? Spread the throne's powers across a few individuals, so that when the ruler is lost, not all is lost? Very measured. Wise.
The ruler passes. Another ruler rises, ascendant like the empire's founders. He is capable, ready to raise the empire to new heights. He reaches for the reins that are his right. And they are held back from his grasp. Giovanni says this in a piercing hiss. A sharp, prehistoric impulse in Blue's spine renders him stock still.
The First Champion, Giovanni says, did not play a game of champions. What was his he took by might. Under him, on the plains of Indigo, from bloody states and clans he did made a monstrous League. The Second took the monster League entire and grew it, evolved it. The Third the same - but less, and slower. Less with each, and then none. And now, the League today - civilized, stable, tame - sickens and cracks, pecked at all sides and pulled apart from within as the great work built by one is pulled apart by many.
I promised you a reward, forgive me, Giovanni says. He reaches into his coat, and delicately places an Earth Badge on the table in front of Blue. It's real, he says, go ahead.
Blue, almost nauseous with unease, half shakes his head. Giovanni reaches into his coat and dumps a whole handful of Earth Badges in front of him like a sack of loose change - take them all, he offers, and give them to whoever he likes.
No, Blue says, quiet.
Giovanni's smile is twisted and repugnant, like an infected wound. Of course not. Because they're not worth anything to you this way. But the truth, Giovanni says, is that they're not worth anything at all.
Lance could be Champion; it didn't matter. Giovanni had the most powerful and wealthy people in Indigo outside that room at his invitation; the CEO of the largest conglomerate and head of the plurality political party at his table in this one - half the reins in his hand, the other half in the Champion's. He couldn't win with half, but with half he could stop Lance from doing anything of worth. Giovanni's power was built of a hundred victories, a thousand secrets and millions of Indigo dollars. Lance's power was a title - and all he had to do was send someone who could win a simple game to take it away.
Samurai Gozen owed everything to the Imperial Party and was owned in turn by it. He was a brilliant fighter, but little else. He could buck and writhe, but Koga owned him - and Koga answered to Giovanni. Tenkaichi. All the reins under one ruler. As it should be - as it had to be for Indigo to evolve into its next iteration.
Then Giovanni would look pretty fucking stupid when he stomped his puppet out in front of the entire League on primetime, Blue returned, in a mockingly mild tone of voice, hiding a frantic, cornered fury.
Giovanni shrugs in response. Then Blue could be Champion of nothing, just like Lance.
Blue rises, unable to stand being in the room any longer. Giovanni watches him with malicious amusement, and speaks out before Blue can exit fully:
A final wager, Giovanni offers, this one available to Blue whenever he wanted it:
One pokemon match.
If Blue won, Giovanni would put aside Gozen and swear himself to his purpose - lead Team Rocket and all its powers towards Blue's goals. Many could not rule what one had made...but two? Two could work - Hoenn proved that with Steven and Wallace, one to hold the Champion seat and one to seek it. A thriving nation that had been Indigo's equal in war despite its smaller side; one of the reasons Giovanni had chosen to go to war with them, besides the chance to consolidate the Championship's wartime powers. If Giovanni had not stunted their growth and forced them back to their knees, Hoenn would be leading the world today.
(Blue starts at this, as Giovanni just casually drops a ruinous piece of secret geopolitics into the conversation.)
But if Giovanni won, he'd still put aside Gozen and support Blue for Champion...but Blue would rule as Champion at Giovanni's direction. And once Blue had picked up enough of ruling under Giovanni's direction and the time came, he would not merely serve Blue, but hand over his power entirely to Blue - the leadership of Rocket, all his secrets and controlling interests. Like Philip to Alexander, Blue would be just as the Second Champion had been - all the powers of a made conqueror, with his nation united under him, ready to set out and repaint the borders of the world.
Blue, revulsed, spits back: no wager, and to hell with his badge. He'd become Champion with 15.
Giovanni shrugs - it was his whenever he wanted. And as Blue leaves, he cannot help but think he had chosen the wrong decision from the very beginning, merely by entering.