"How can I help you, sir?"
"The usual, but this time, there's no need for sugar in my coffee."
The waiter in the unassuming café that I am visiting, who in actuality is an agent working for the League, asked for confirmation once again.
"No sugar, sir?"
"No sugar." I confirmed. "And please hurry, I am in a rush for time. I am about to be late for work." I said as I tapped on my watch a set number of times in a specific rhythm, a secret code that we League agents use among many others that I had applied in the short conversation I have with him. He now knows that whatever information I need to pass on to the higher-ups, it is extremely important. This is urgent.
I'm only here because it's about time for Kain and I to have one of our regular meetups where I tell him what I found out during the time period that we didn't meet. I have mixed feelings about this meeting because of what I now know about Kain. I know that he indeed wants to try and improve Indigo in his own twisted way, even if it has backfired in the worst possible manner in the form of Team Rocket.
At this critical juncture, I don't know why I'm still hesitating a little when it comes to my plan regarding Kain. All I know is that I want to be absolutely sure before committing everything I have to go through with my plan, so I guess this meeting came at just the right time. If possible, I just want to see what Kain really feels about what he had done, so that I know if I had made the right choice.
Above all, I just want to see if I have the resolve to go through what I am planning to do. This meeting is also here to falsely feed him some wrong information to throw him off his guard and if possible, learn something new about him that I never thought about finding out before.
"Of course. Please come with me, sir. I will show you to your table."
I was led to a small private room at the far back of the small café. The waiter gestured for me to take a seat, which I did. Minutes later, the Chairman of the Indigo League, Kain Briggs, walked in and I stood up and gave my salute. It is only the two of us here right now. Just me and the white-haired old man in his sixties who first started me on the path of becoming a spy.
"Sir."
"2046." The Chairman gave me a nod which signalled to me to stand at ease. "It has been a long time. Anything new to report?"
"I have been promoted to Executive. The leader will be meeting me. I don't know when, it could be tomorrow or even months later, but I am guaranteed a meeting with him." I got straight to the point and cut the useless banter short by telling him a mixture of lies mixed with some elements of truth. I wasn't lying when I told the waiter earlier that I am in a rush for time. I have a mission from Giovanni to complete and he would get suspicious if I took too long, even if I do have more than a week to get the job done.
"I will be meeting the leader of Team Rocket, whoever he or she is. However, what I need to tell you is that I had just learnt from Petrel about a project that Team Rocket has been embarking on a few years back. The Mewtwo Project."
"Mewtwo Project?" The aged Chairman asked in puzzlement as he took a seat. "I supposed it has something to do with the legendary Mew, given the name."
"Team Rocket is trying to create a new pokemon based on Mew's DNA." I continued my report as I spun my tale. "They are trying to create a new pokemon capable of going toe-to-toe even against legendaries like Zapdos or Moltres. However, that is the extent that I know about this project. This project is not under my jurisdiction and the leader had made it clear that only those he authorises are allowed to know the details. I am not one of them. The number of people who knew about this numbered to less than ten, excluding the scientists. If we add them in, then it should number to about twenty people in total."
"You need to find out more about this, 2046." The Chairman stressed as he looked visibly shocked at the news I just dropped on him. "If Team Rocket has a pokemon on the level of a legendary, they will be unstoppable. Do whatever it takes to delay or stop this project completely. Also, find out about the true identity of Team Rocket's leader ASAP."
"It will be done." The four words that I had grown to hate speaking came out again. "But sir, this matter is way out of our expertise and jurisdiction. Something like this should be handled by the League instead. I still think that we need to inform Lance about thi-"
"There's no need to inform that naive and foolish warmonger." Kain waved my comments off without even trying to listen. "We don't need people like him. We need people like you, 2046."
"But he's the Indigo Champion. Surely he is more qualified and more knowledgeable in taking down-"
"The Pokemon League is nothing but an organisation set up to regulate deathmatches between pokemon and their trainers. It is an organisation ruled and composed solely of foolish warmongers that think of nothing but their own pleasures." Kain scoffed as he said this. "There's nothing and nobody intelligent to be found there. In the end, pokemon and their trainers who indulge these creatures in such mindless battles are just savage and bloodthirsty fools. If you look back on the history of every region's Pokemon League in the world, they were set up because fights to the death between trained pokemon were becoming too common and something had to be done about it. The Pokemon League is nothing but an instrument to control trainers using a set of rules and regulations. We only need those fools known as trainers if we need an army. Other than that? Just let them be. Pokemon are only useful to us as much as they are loyal to our cause."
The Chairman stood up and placed a hand on my shoulder in what he thinks is an encouraging manner.
"Talented operatives like you, on the other hand, are rare to come by. Don't you see the peace that was maintained thanks to your help? Look back and see how many people and pokemon that you had helped saved, think about-"
"At the cost of many other people and pokemon that I had condemned with my own two hands!" I exploded as all my repressed emotions and thoughts about my line of work erupted like a volcano. "You weren't the one who have to personally put the pokemon down! The ones who the Rockets' scientists deemed as failed experiments! You weren't the one who have no choice but to stand and watch as the Rockets killed people and pokemon alike, because MY COVER CANNOT BE BLOWN! And for what? The greater good? Hah!"
I paced about agitatedly before turning towards the Chairman again.
"I am sick of this, sir. Sick of living the life of a double agent. Sick of being a spy, all because of the greater good."
Kain let out a long sigh.
"Maybe not now, but you will see the things that I see someday, that this is the best way to protect Indigo. This is all for the greater good."
"And what exactly, to you, is the greater good?"
"The peace and safety of Indigo as a whole. To create a place where people need not fear being born different." Kain replied as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. "Even if it means lifting up one side of the spectrum at the expense of the other, as long as Indigo as a whole can prosper then it is the right thing to do. I will simply use the benefits reaped from the prosperity to help those who were exploited."
"You are telling me that you just admitted to exploiting Kanto and its people, and then letting Johto profit through such exploitations." I said in utter disbelief. At least this time, he's being honest. "Isn't that what you were trying to prevent? Rooting out all the corrupt Johtonians in your cabinet?"
"They are corrupt because they exploit Kanto for their own gains, it's different." Kain defended his argument with righteousness as he said this. "I'm different. Whatever Indigo had profited through this exploitation, I directed a large part of it back to the bottom to help the exploited people back up on their feet. Yes, Johto did get a larger share of Indigo's fruits of labour under this method but in the end, Kanto always received what they rightfully deserved. As a result, Indigo as a whole had prospered. It's a win-win situation. It's all for the greater good."
"That doesn't justify the exploitation you subjected Kantonians to."
"Look, it is impossible to please both Kanto and Johto." Kain cut me off with a look of warning. "I don't expect you to understand because I am the expert here when it comes to governance, but if I tried to please both regions, they will just end up economically cannibalizing each other. It's not sustainable. When that happens, war in Indigo will break out once more."
"How would you know that will happen if you never even tried?"
"I don't need to try. That outcome is as obvious to me as day is to night if you looked back at Indigo's past." Kain scoffed. "Every single of my predecessors had tried to please both regions and as a result, Indigo had always been one of the poorest nations. The only region that is even worse off than us is that barbaric place known as Alola. Under my administration for the past four decades, Indigo's economy as a whole has been revitalised and is reaching heights that had never been reached before. I told you, to do great things, one must do it for the greater good."
Kain took another drink from his mug on the table.
"Why else do you think I started Project Illusion and trained all 359 of you? Look at how many disasters we had prevented. Yes, I know it's immoral, but how else are we going to effectively combat organisations like Team Rocket? Yes, we cannot prevent them all and there are casualties no matter what we do, but we kept the damage to Indigo to a minimum. As a whole, the damage Indigo had suffered had been minimised. 358 lives in exchange for the security of the Indigo? It's a price I'm willing to pay. This is all for the greater good."
Ignoring me, Kain continued his speech.
"Of course, there will always be fools who don't see the larger picture at hand, because they are so hung up on their respective regions that they fail to see that if we all want to survive in this harsh world, Indigo as a whole needs to thrive regardless of who profits from who. Why, there used to be a problematic group named SKIP that forced my hand to exterminate them for good. The extermination was so thorough that hardly anybody knows about them today. Fools, the lot of them. Can't they see that nothing good will happen if Kanto is separated from Indigo? Kanto and Johto have to survive together by letting one survive at the expense of the other, and then the one on top must then give aid to the one at the bottom to push it up further than what it had been before. No matter what I tried, that is the only way I know of that can ensure Indigo's survival."
"I'm sure there must be another way. Surely there will be people qualified for the job who will help you if you asked?"
"In politics, to trust another is to be a fool. I had been a fool once, and once is enough. Enough of this." Kain ordered a stop to this entire conversation as his expression turned stern once more. "Continue your mission. Find out more about this unknown Mewtwo Project and also the identity of the true leader of Team Rocket. Failure is not an option."
Kain took his leave after I gave my salute. I left soon after.
Now, there's no longer any doubt in my mind. Like I suspected, Kain is beyond redemption. He's too deeply entrenched in his mindset that everything he does is right and that there is nobody else other than him who could do a better job than him.
Kain is used to working alone because he doesn't trust others to do a better job than him. Because he always works alone, he is too inefficient in solving the problems plaguing Indigo. There is only so much that he can achieve alone. Even if he is giving his very best, in this case, his very best is still not enough.
Ignoring his despicable side, even someone as brilliant as him has their limits. The only way to overcome them is to find someone that he can work with as a team, which he didn't.
Because of Kain's inability to admit that he is too distrustful of anyone else that is not under his full control, Kain had fucked up big time when it comes to the Kanto-Johto divide. So what if Indigo as a whole had prospered under his administration? He never sees Indigo's citizens as people, but mere statistics. What he is doing is further widening the unseen rift between the two regions. If this were to continue, there wouldn't be an Indigo left for him to rule.
Now, I'm certain.
For the greater good, Kain is definitely the first person that needs to be removed. Only after that will I deal with Giovanni and Team Rocket. This will be my last act as the Rocket's Exterminator.
For the greater good, it will be done.
I won't accept any objections.
This is arguably the hardest infiltration mission I have undertaken. I really hope that this is worth the trouble. After this is over I still need to hurry and complete whatever Giovanni tasked me to do, so I need to finish this as fast as I can.
'Two more coming our way, Master Jayce.'
I held up my right hand and gave a signal. Ninetales got herself down in a crouching position in preparation of what is to come. We can all hear the approaching footsteps.
Three, two, one. Now.
With a faint glow of psychic hue, ninetales caught the patrolling guards in a Hypnosis. We quickly slipped past them and headed towards our destination. Nosy is in charge of wiping all footage of us from the security cameras of the Indigo League HQ.
For the sake of my goals, I have to reach Lance's office undetected. He's the only one left that I can trust to make things right, because he is the Indigo Champion. If this fails, then I will have no choice but to involve the former members of SKIP. I don't want to get them involved because I have no idea if their sentiments for Giovanni from their SKIP days would affect their judgement in getting rid of Giovanni and his dangerous plans for Indigo. I don't want to risk that, no matter how low the chances are.
Lance, however, wouldn't have such considerations because he is a third party.
It took me a long while, but we finally reached the door of his office. I am sure that nobody is in right now. To undertake this self-imposed mission without Team Rocket and Kain finding out is hard enough as it is. I cannot dawdle here for too long.
"Nosy."
With a whirr and a click, Lance's office doors unlocked itself thanks to Nosy's intervention. I cautiously opened the door a little and used an eye to quickly scan my surroundings for any possible traps. I didn't spot any, so we quickly entered. Zoroark and ninetales immediately hid themselves in different corners of the room just in case any unexpected situations might suddenly happen. Exeggutor is hidden by zoroark's illusion ever since the start of the infiltration and I signalled for zoroark to expand the illusion to envelope the entire room.
I took out the small slip of paper from my pocket and placed it on Lance's desk in a position that definitely will not go unmissed. Along with it is a hard drive containing some of the information about Kain and Team Rocket that should never see the light of day. I will feed Lance the information that I had gathered over the years, little by little. Only when I'm sure that Lance had fully believed in whatever I presented to him will I give him all I have. I don't need him to botch up my own plans simply because he cannot believe in his own good luck and tell the whole world what he just found out from me. Secrecy is of the utmost importance if we want to take both Kain and Team Rocket out for good.
There are things that I can do and things that I cannot do. Among the list of things that I cannot do, two of them are at the very top of the list.
The first is the impossibility of taking down the entirety of Team Rocket's forces by myself. To rid Indigo of Team Rocket, taking down their leaders will never be enough. Someone else will simply take their place, so there is a need to deal a devastating blow on the entire organisation. The second thing that I need to see done but will never be able to do so on my own is to find a way to destroy the M2 Bind. It is a construct made to specifically restrain and control Mewtwo. The entire machinery is too complex for me to even understand and it is built to be near indestructible. There is no way I can do anything about it alone. If I want to free Mewtwo, I need external help.
The only problem that I cannot do anything about is that whatever I know about Team Rocket and their future plans is not complete. Yes, I had found out a lot about Team Rocket in the years that I went undercover, more so than what the Indigo League will ever uncover on their own, but I know for certain that there are things that Giovanni and Ariana will never let me know. It's a contingency plan on Team Rocket's part. Even for us Executives, we will never know the full scale of operations, the organisation's future plans, their full manpower, and the location of all their bases. Each of us only know a different part and aspect of Team Rocket and even though some of our authority and job scope will overlap with each other, we will never know the full picture. Thus, even if one of us got captured or betrayed the organisation, Team Rocket will never fall. The organisation will always have something to fall back upon and start anew like an undying weed.
Giovanni is a really cautious and dangerous individual, that's all I can say about him. Lance will have to make do with the incomplete information that I am feeding him to save Indigo from this coming crisis. I had really done all I can on my part, now it's his turn. Whatever is going to happen next is not a fight that I can participate in. If Lance fails, then Indigo is doomed.
Lance is my only hope left. If he really is as justice-driven as people talked about, then this might work. I really hope Professor Oak did choose a suitable successor before his retirement. If not, Indigo will be in ruins. I don't want anybody to know who I really am yet, even if it's Lance, because I have no way of knowing for certain if I could truly trust anyone at this point. The last thing I need is for my cover to be blown because I became too trusting of others.
The only thing I can do now is to place my trust in others to do the right thing, using whatever it takes, while still holding a few cards close to my chest. I don't have any other options.
Once I made sure that I've left no traces behind, I signalled to my pokemon to prepare to make our escape. Teleportation is not an option because the countless psychics in the Indigo League HQ will immediately detect us and teleportation might sometimes leave traces if you are not careful. Our escape has to be done in the old-fashioned way.
I locked Lance's office doors behind us as we left the room, walking at a brisk pace and took a left turn at the first crossroad.
'Another pair of guards. The ones we passed by earlier.'
'Just continue walking.'
These are some of the guards that ninetales had already hypnotised on our way to Lance's office earlier. Ninetales mentally activated the hypnotic suggestion she had planted into them from that time and Hypnosis kicked in once more. Planting a psychic suggestion or trigger is tricky work, much less for a non-psychic type like ninetales, but she had never let me down before. The benefits of implanting a psychic suggestion or trigger is that it can be remotely activated anytime the user wishes to. That means that subsequent infiltrations into the League HQ will be much easier if the same people that we hypnotised happened to be on patrol again. Of course, there are several limitations, but the benefits still outweigh the cons most of the time.
We walked past the pair of hypnotised guards who acted like they didn't see us at all. I am being overly cautious today so I had zoroark cloaking us all in an illusion. With both Hypnosis and zoroark's illusion at work, detecting us is going to be difficult, especially when the other side is least expecting it.
We reached an electronic gate soon enough. Nosy is already in the Indigo League's network together with several Team Rocket porygons that I had secretly reprogrammed to obey only me. With Nosy leading them, they unlocked the gate the moment I reached and the gate opened, letting us through. The gate closed shut and locked itself the moment we crossed to the other side.
I swiftly made a few more turns and quickly found the fire escape, a flight of stairs that nobody ever uses. I found the small business bag which I had left here beforehand when I was infiltrating the Indigo HQ which contains a change of clothes. I picked it up and quickly took out the contents as we continued to walk down the stairs down a few floors. Within a minute, I had changed the top half of my attire back into those of an ordinary office worker that works in the HQ, a pair of thick rimmed glasses over my face and complete with a fake staff pass that I had prepared beforehand.
We exited through the fifth floor exit after making sure that nobody is in that particular corridor. Zoroark's illusion is still active. At this point, I cannot have exeggutor walking about with us any longer because the corridors here are a lot smaller and there is higher human traffic here. I don't want anybody to accidentally bump into an invisible exeggutor, so I recalled him back into his pokeball.
Five more minutes of walking and a right turn later, we are in the main office building of the Indigo League HQ. A large number of people are walking about the building, each of their attire similar to mine as I played the part of just another faceless employee among the hundreds that are working here everyday. I have no need for zoroark and ninetales to be walking about anymore since there are too many people around for zoroark's illusion to hide himself. He could easily be found out if somebody accidentally bumped into him or ninetales despite hiding themselves with an illusion, so back into their pokeballs they go too. Right now, I can easily hide myself in plain sight.
I took the escalators down until I reached the ground floor where the exit is at. I have to tap my staff pass at the electronic gantry to exit. The security guard manning the gantry happened to make eye contact with me and I gave him a small smile as I tapped my staff pass. A beep and a green light later, the gantry let me through and I walked out of the Indigo HQ, Nosy and the other porygons already making their escape with me as they transferred themselves into that fake staff pass during the short moment when I tapped my staff pass against the gantry's sensor. That staff pass is in actuality an electronic medium that allows me to carry Nosy and his little gang of porygons with me without being too conspicuous.
'Ooh, so that's how an infiltration is done! I will have to try it out myself some other time!'
'Please don't.'
'Why not?'
'I just know that you are going to mess it up somehow.'
'Have a little more faith in me, would you? I am Mewtwo!'
I walked around the Indigo Plateau for another half an hour to make sure that nobody was tailing me before calling exeggutor out and telling him to teleport me out of here.
Infiltration success. It is finally done.
The first part of my plan is finally in motion. Now, the tricky part is how to ensure that the Indigo League will not be completely blindsided while still keeping my identity hidden and not drawing any attention to Team Rocket. It's still too early for unrelated people to start suspecting Team Rocket of cooking up any big plans and too early for the League to make a move. The time is not yet ripe.
In the proposal that I submitted to Giovanni in getting rid of Kain, I made it such that it is necessary for us to have an army of porygons. Since I am the one directing the whole show because it is my plan, Giovanni will very likely give me full command of the entire porygon army that I need to pull off what I need to pull off. It is by sheer luck that Giovanni and Ariana had put me in charge of managing Team Rocket's information network upon my promotion to Executive. With that appointment, I now have control of almost every single porygon in Team Rocket. This is something that works very well in my favour. With this, there are a lot more things in which I can safely do.
Gaining Giovanni's complete trust paid off after all. I can sympathise with him. In fact, a part of me wants to simply screw the League and switch sides but ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to do that. If Giovanni started a war, countless will die. People will lose their loved ones and turn to whoever and whatever that will help them get their revenge. I don't want to see people following down the path in which Jane and I had taken. Never again. I don't want to see someone else like me, living their entire lives bound by hatred.
My kind of life is not something I will want to wish on anyone.
Getting my hands on that porygon army is exactly what I had been aiming for once I gained Giovanni's trust. With them on Team Rocket's side it is too hard to get anything done on my end, but now that the cyber army made up of porygon, porygon-2, and porygon-z are under my control, everything changes.
The first order of business was to command all of them to physically appear before me. Gengar, ninetales, and exeggutor then quickly hypnotised them all, buying enough time for Nosy to quickly rewrite all of their programming. As a porygon-z, Nosy now has the ability to rewrite the programs of any porygons that are less skilled than him. As a result, Team Rocket's cyber army of porygons is now mine to control. Something as risky as this can only be pulled off if I earned Giovanni's complete trust. Doing what I did leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I really don't know what else can be done when I'm fighting alone with no one else to trust.
With the cyber army of porygons and the access granted to me as an operative of the Indigo League, hacking into the massive database of the Indigo Government to dig out every single piece of Kain's dirty secrets is now possible. Team Rocket could probably do so even without my prompting, but Giovanni and Arianna probably didn't want to do something so risky just yet when they are still undecided on what to do even if they managed to hack into Indigo's database. However, with my plan, they now have a goal to reach and a purpose for finding out whatever secrets Kain is hiding behind everyone's backs. There is no longer a need to hold back when the risk justifies the rewards, because Team Rocket is now ready to launch an all-out war.
After more than two decades of preparation, the time for Team Rocket to start a war is soon.
And so, under Giovanni's orders, Operation Skip had officially commenced. Meanwhile, I am also making preparations on my end to further my own goals. For Kain and Team Rocket to be stopped, I need a third party that can stand against them in a three-way war. I need the uncorrupted faction of the Indigo League to fight the battle that I cannot fight. For that, I need Lance. I need to make contact with him in a way that cannot be traced back to me. I don't need him to know who I am, that's irrelevant. I don't want my presence and his knowledge of my past and true identity to cloud his judgement. I just need him to know that his mysterious informant is undoubtedly on his side.
The fateful day of the clash between Team Rocket and Indigo is coming soon. My time as the Rocket's Exterminator is also coming to an end.
For everything that Jane and I had done so far, Kain and Team Rocket has to fall.
We won't accept any objections.
Name: Jayce
Official Identity: Jacob Myers
Indigo Government Identity: Operative 2046, Code Name: Gengar
Indigo Government Rank: Special Agent
Team Rocket Identity: Executive Plague
Team Rocket Rank: Executive
Pokemon Team:
1. Ninetales, female
2. Exeggutor, male
3. Weavile, male
4. Honchkrow, female
5. Gengar, female
6. Houndoom, male
7. Umbreon, male
8. Hydreigon, male
9. Drapion, female
10. Zoroark, male
11. Bisharp, male
12. Shiftry, male
13. Porygon-Z, (Nosy), genderless