An Unlikely Alliance

"Lance? Lance wake up."

I heaved a loud moan, my mind exiting its void. I blinked awake only to find myself staring up into two great pools of brown. "Kair?"

"Lance, what happened?" She helped me sit up where I realised we were not alone.

In fact this was far from the case. A swarm of Team Rocket agents surrounded us, immediately making me swallow. "What are they doing here?"

"It's alright Lance, they're with me," Kair reassured me, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I called in reinforcements with the help of my friend." She signalled me to a steely gazed man who watched us carefully from a distance. "What happened here?"

I let my eyes trail across the destruction. The ground was covered in burn marks and what was left of the bridge now floated aimlessly about the surface of the waters. Clair was at the shoreline, busily patching up the injuries her Dragonair had sustained in the attack, and various other Pokémon hung about, licking their wounds. My Dragonite along with Kair's Charizard carefully treaded over to me once they saw I was awake, Dragonite giving me a gentle nudge in the arm. She looked beaten and bruised. Everyone did.

"It was Sa'lu," I said. "She did this. She intends to take on the Dragon Clan."

Kair's eyes became downcast and disappointed. "I was hoping you wouldn't say that," she whispered, ashamed of her own grandmother's actions. "Come on. We should be getting you back to the gym."

Wounds were treated and Pokémon healed. We reached Blackthorn Gym late in the afternoon only to be greeted by a sight I was not expecting. My mother; who had been looking after the Gym in our absence, was entertaining a guest who sat in Clair's chair by the fire place. A Persian by his side and swirling a glass of wine in his ring laden hand, his intense, dark gaze turned to face me upon my entry.

I stopped in my tracks suddenly, Kair and Clair almost colliding into the back of me.

"What is he doing here?" I growled, but the mother of my children pushed past me and entered the living area.

"I had a feeling if Sa'lu was behind this, then you would be needing his help."

"I don't need the help of a mobster."

"Watch your words Dragon Master," Giovanni's threat was low toned and dangerous. He waved a hand and directed me into a seat in front of him that his men immediately shoved me into. "I'm here to call a temporary truce."

"What?" the shock on my voice was clearly evident.

"The Dragon Holy Lands as well as the Dragon Clan have been under my protection for many years now at the willing of my late wife. I have a sound investment in many of the trainers there, including yourself."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Couldn't quite fathom…

"You can't be serious. The Dragon clan are a free people. We are not owned by the mafia!"

But he merely smirked and placed his glass down on the table that separated us. "By my ex-mother-in-law's meddling, she challenges me and forces me to play my hand. Allay or foe, I will not tolerate people who choose to mess with my investments."

His claim to Dragon territory was as ridiculous as his threats toward the Shadow Dragon Master. "What stops you from joining her in this endeavour? The last I heard you two were bed buddies."

The look of utter distain swept over the crime lord's face. "I detest that you even voice that idea. Sa'lu is nothing more to me than a business partner. One that, if she insists on interfering with my business, will find herself cut off from Team Rocket practices."

I found it all hard to believe. "So Mr. Team Rocket, what do you propose we do then?"

Resting his elbows on each chair arm, he pressed his fingers together in contemplation. "We fight her, of course. But firstly I need you to tell me exactly what happened out there."

My uneasy glance fell among the other faces in the room. Faces that watched us with great eagerness. Shifting in my seat, I made a point of brushing dirt from my trousers and tugged at my cape that now seemed to strangle me.

"She called on a Shadow Dragon. One conjured utilising the Shadow Arts."

Giovanni's slow nod was not expected, nor was the click of his fingers as he summoned one of his men to bring in a sketchbook. "I organised to have some of my late wife's work brought over for my daughter to study."

He was handed the sketchbook where there he proceeded to carefully flick through its pages. He found what he was looking for, flipped the book to face me and placed it on the coffee table before me. My heart seemed to freeze in my chest there and then. Because there it was… the very beast I'd faced only hours before. The Shadow Dragon.

"Aisha wrote little on this creature, which I had originally attributed to an overactive imagination," Giovanni filled. "But she gave us just enough information to know what it is and where it comes from, as well as how to defeat it."

Exhaling loudly, I couldn't help but recall some of her writings that I'd already read. Change indeed was upon us. "Don't spare on the details."

Giovanni cut right to the chase. "It is a trans-dimensional creature - meaning that it resides in a dimension above our own but is capable of entering into our own reality. In the universe it comes from it is made up of anti-matter energy. Light, dark… I suppose you could say it hold similarities to a ghost type Pokémon. In fact, in our realm, these are the attributes it takes on - a Ghost/Dragon. So it can be defeated. The problem is that defeating it will take something of equal strength, something along the lines of a Legendary Pokémon." Giovanni heaved a sigh and spread his arms wide in a mock display of disappointment. "Unfortunately, Legendary Pokémon happens to be something that I am in short supply of."

"So we need to do the next best thing," I nodded, following his gist. "We need to expel it back into that other dimension."

Giovanni nodded. "Exactly."

"But how do we do that?"

Giovanni leaned forward in his seat and pointed to the Dragon on the sketchbook, or rather its lacking fang. "That Dragon Fang is the key. It will open that gateway for us."

"Which just so happens to be in the possession of Sa'lu."

"We have to get that fang back," for the first time in our meeting, Clair spoke up.

"I suppose you already have a plan in the works?" I raised an eyebrow at the Team Rocket Boss.

As always, he was a man with a plan. "I am amassing a battle squadron as we speak. We leave for Mt. Silver in an hour."