A/N: This fic is undergoing rewrite and revision. Some chapters may lose continuity with later chapters for the time being. The original fic is backed up and can be made available as a PDF to anyone who's interested. Please PM me for details.
"Di Mercurio."
There was hardly any movement in the waiting room. Some idle chatter between admins, but no one stood. Matori glanced up from the planner spread across her desk and indifferently eyed the three admins seated across the room from her. There should have been four. Frowning, she read her planner again, then took her pen and crossed the name out. No more Di Mercurio. She wasn't about to lose any sleep over that. She moved to the next name.
"Ikeda."
This time someone stood. A middle-aged admin, his hair cropped short in a military style, grunted as he pushed himself to his feet and walked to the door. His uniform was neatly pressed, but the dark fabric barely hid his beer belly, and the lines on his face made Matori question his real purpose for being summoned to the final interviews. Certainly, he was too old. Master Giovanni wanted someone fit. Capable. Ikeda knocked at the door, and as he was bid to enter, disappeared behind it with a soft click. Matori shook her head and returned to her work.
"You know, he was late like that, last time," one of the two remaining admins said. She was Saki Tachibana, someone Matori felt she knew quite well. Saki was well above average height for a Kantonian woman, was physically fit and often active. They weren't friends; Matori didn't have need for friends. But she was pleasant when she came to the office to drop off her reports from the field, and had once worked as a trainer in Master Giovanni's pokemon gym. Her reputation certainly preceded her.
"And the time before, and the time before," the man next to her snickered. "I think if there's one person we can rule out, it's Di Mercurio. Well, Ikeda, too. But Di Mercurio for sure." He was Tao Kuang, a Johte. No prior connections to Rocket like Tachibana, Matori knew, but sly like a thievul. Archer's lieutenant, in fact, and while his pokemon weren't as strong as Tachibana's, he got along well with the twins. Either of them, Matori decided, would be a good choice.
"I don't know what Master Giovanni's thinking, calling Ikeda back," Tachibana muttered, throwing a dark look towards the closed door. "What does he even do? He's in engineering, isn't he?"
"I thought he was in maintenance," Kuang answered. "You know, I saw him training the other day?"
"Yeah?"
"He still hasn't gotten his poliwhirl to evolve."
"Oh my god. He knows you can just buy a water stone, right?"
The door burst open. Three pairs of eyes turned. Another admin stood, panting, in the doorway.
"I'm here," he gasped, drenched in sweat and red-faced. His threadbare uniform hung awkwardly from his slight and scrawny frame, and his messy green hair had lost its fight with the humidity. It was tangled and wet and plastered to his face, and he took his hat from his head to run a gloved hand through the locks.
"You're late," Tachibana told him.
"I'm three minutes early," the newcomer replied. He passed by Tachibana to sit on Kuang's other side, collapsing into the chair and leaning his head far back to catch the cool air of the AC.
"That's late," Kuang repeated, "what were you doing, polishing pokeballs for coins again?"
Yes, Kuang or Tachibana certainly both would have been good picks, but then... then, there was Lance. Younger than the others. Rude. Abrupt. Matori only dealt with Lance sparingly. He rarely came to the office to submit any reports for the security division. Their correspondence had mainly taken place through the internal messaging system in the past, with his messages so short they had been bordering on impudent. He had less skill as a trainer than Ikeda, and no prestige Matori knew of. And he was always late like this, hustling for poken instead of preparing for his interviews like the others. No, Matori didn't like Lance much at all. She would rather Tachibana or Kuang get the promotion.
"For your information," Lance said, "pokeball maintenance is megaimportant for trainers. Not like you'd know, yours look like ya've left'em in the basement for the last three decades."
"Exactly," Tachibana piled on, "it's important for trainers. One shitty zubat does not a trainer make. But then, I think we wouldn't expect much more from some Goldenrod street trash."
"Master Giovanni's going to kill himself if he has to listen to that accent every day." Kuang and Tachibana broke into a fit of cruel laughter. Lance scowled and leaned forward in his seat, turning away to ignore them as he pulled a pokeball out of his pocket to fiddle with. The room returned to quiet chatter, and Matori resumed her work. The interview was short. Twenty minutes, tops, before Ikeda returned from inside, bowed politely to Matori, and left the waiting room. Matori sighed as she read over her planner again, and was just looking up to call Kuang when the speaker buzzed at her desk.
"Send Lance in," came Giovanni's order. Matori pursed her lips.
When Matori called his name, Lance's eyes shot up from the pokeball and for a second, he soured. Matori, however, was not going to repeat herself, and stared pointedly at him until he slowly began to push himself to his feet. Light footsteps glided across the floor; she watched him as he passed her desk by. He certainly looked like something a meowth would drag in off the street. How could anyone dare to present themselves to Master Giovanni in such a manner, she wondered. But maybe it wasn't her place to say. The analog clock above her desk tick, tick, ticked on in the silence. Lance opened the heavy walnut door and disappeared inside.
Giovanni's office wasn't huge by any means, but it wasn't small, either. The floor was a charming dark hardwood, and the far wall was dominated by huge windows nearly floor to ceiling. Various shelves and display cases lined the room, interspersed with a few pieces of expensive-looking art on the wall, but what took command of the room was the ornate desk in the center, walnut, just like the door. Giovanni sat behind this desk in his usual crisp suit, leaning comfortably back in his seat. Lance silently trudged through the space to the comfortable armchair across from him to sit as well, Giovanni offering him a patient smile all the while.
"Welcome back, Mr. Di Mercurio," he greeted smoothly, "I expect you've been busy since our last meeting."
"Yessir," Lance replied as he removed his hat, inclining his head ever so slightly, "the correction facilities' always busy this time of year. New recruits'n all."
Giovanni let out a short chuckle and leaned forward onto his desk, steepling his fingers in front of him. "Don't sell yourself short," he said, amusement crinkling at the corners of his eyes, "keep in mind, won't you, nothing happens in this organization without my hearing of it." They sat in silence for a minute, Giovanni's focus boring into Lance as the latter, meanwhile, drummed one set of fingers anxiously against the armrest of his seat. To his credit, Lance did not budge by a hair's width, and green eyes never strayed from brown. Neither man made to break this silence for a minute longer. But as always, it was never Giovanni who folded first.
"You're right," Lance agreed, though perhaps more disgruntled than he ought to have been. He turned the pokeball in his hand over once, tossed it lightly into the air, then activated the expansion mechanism and leaned forward to place it just in front of Giovanni. It was only when he took it that Lance began to explain himself.
"'Bout three weeks ago, we rooted out a Cipher shitlord bunkerin' down with some of the raw recruits," he continued, "bitch thought he could just waltz right in and take whatever he wanted, so I took out his kidneys. Not before I got that, though."
"And what's so special about this?" Giovanni prompted.
It looked like an ordinary pokeball in every way. Nothing was housed in it, at least, not anymore. Lance grimaced at the memory and had to try very hard to keep himself from rubbing his bandaged ribs. Who knew a larvitar could have caused so much damage? He'd been the only one with the balls to get close enough to put the damn thing down. And that was when the confusion had started. Larvitar shouldn't have been able to cause that much damage, and that one had been 'roided up, or something. No one else seemed to have been concerned. Pokemon from Orre were weird, they'd said. Pokemon from Orre couldn't be compared to their Johto or Kanto counterparts. Lance had been the only one to notice that the pokeball, in fact, was not an ordinary pokeball.
"It's been modded," he explained, "you can tell when ya open it. Chip's startin' to warp in a weird way, limiter and compressor are damaged by design. Don't see those kinds of scratches on 'em any other way. Cipher's workin' on some weird-ass tech. Pokemon that used to live in this one was a nightmare. Big, mean, stupid. More than normal."
Giovanni did as Lance suggested, flipping the pokeball's lid open to peer inside. He let out another chuckle before reaching to hand the pokeball back, and Lance flipped it shut and pocketed it. "I hear this has been your pet project since then," Giovanni said, though he didn't wait for Lance to confirm, "burning the midnight oil a little harder than normal, eh? That's the kind of work ethic I like to see. The kind of initiative."
"I didn't expect to be called back," Lance admitted.
"Oh, no one did," Giovanni dismissed, "you're more frustrating than anyone has time to deal with. But I like you, Di Mercurio. I like how you get things done without needing to be told." Lance was quiet again. Giovanni took it in stride, pushed himself to his feet and motioned carelessly towards the door. "Ms. Tachibana and Mr. Kuang are wonderful, of course. Raw power, raw skill... Qualities that ought not be overlooked, wouldn't you agree?"
"Yessir."
"So why are you here, Mr. Di Mercurio? Why do you think I've had you brought back to me, today?"
There was a right answer there, somewhere. There always was with Giovanni, especially when Team Rocket was the matter at hand. Always a right answer, a right move, and always, always consequences. Lance knew that better than most of the grunts and admins in the organization. Sometimes, you could get away with playing the idiot, and Giovanni would tell you what the right answer was. This was not one of those occurrences. Instead, he moved around his desk to lean back against it, towering over Lance's seated form as he simply waited.
"Because I'm better than them." His answer did not disappoint. Giovanni's small smile grew wide and self-satisfied.
"That's one way to put it," he agreed, "you're not content with your one job, are you? And you're not the typical sadistic meathead we use to keep our mareep in order, eh?" It was only when he snapped it up and waved it at him that Lance realized Giovanni had his file out, and he watched as his boss flipped it open and perused the papers. "A full ride to Blackthorn University's engineering program... an estranged father who worked for Silph Corp... your quaint little side project, there, from Cipher. And I hear you've been doing pokeball maintenance for grunts in the field division?"
"Need the money," Lance tried to explain, but Giovanni continued over him.
"I think you've made your interests quite clear, Mr. Di Mercurio. Your other prototypes—how many have been successful?"
For a second, Lance nearly opened his mouth to ask how Giovanni of all people knew about his hobby, the prototype pokeballs he tinkered with in his dorm for fun, but his breath caught quick in his throat. Of course Giovanni knew. Giovanni always knew. Instead, he nodded and began to rattle off his pet projects. A pokeball meant to strengthen itself in the dark. A pokeball meant to be augmented by the radiation of evolution stones. A pokeball with a stronger power source. A pokeball that could function as a TM. Every idea Lance had dreamed as a child, every half-working prototype he explained, Giovanni's glee with the situation only seemed to grow. He had been in the middle of explaining his idea for using a double feedback loop to improve the capture rate of an ultra ball when Giovanni finally cut him off.
"Mr. Kuang has been skimming off the top of Team Rocket's finances for months, now," he said, "and Ms. Tachibana recently decided a very rare jewel would be better suited to her wardrobe than for any plans I or the research division may have had for it." That was it. That was all he said. He leaned across his desk and opened a drawer, pulling something out and setting it next to him on the wood, within Lance's reach. It was then Lance finally broke eye contact, stared confusedly at the handgun Giovanni had placed expectantly in front of him, and the room was yet again thick with silence.
"I don't...?" Lance began.
"You want your mother to live comfortably, don't you?"
Lance swallowed hard. Slowly, he nodded. Again, Giovanni seemed pleased.
"Then make the right decision."
Lance reached out and took the cold metal of the gun in his hand, turning it this way and that as he eyed it. Without another word, he rose to his feet and turned on his heel. Giovanni watched idly as he left the room, buffed his nails on his suit jacket's sleeve as he waited patiently. Nothing for a second. He didn't flinch as the first gunshot tore through the air, smirked as he heard the scuffle. A second gunshot rang out, and only a moment later, Lance returned, poker-faced. He handed the gun carefully back to Giovanni, then resumed his seat as if nothing had happened at all. Giovanni clapped him amicably on the shoulder and then resumed his seat behind his desk.
"You see?" he said, "initiative. I'll have you sign some papers, we'll reassign your residence, and then you can get fitted for a new uniform. By the end of the week, you'll have a brand-new ID card, to boot! Yes, I think you'll fit right in. A gearhead like you is exactly what I need." He shuffled some papers around on his desk, sorted them, and set a few in front of Lance, having him sign and sign and sign and sign until his wrist hurt and his eyes strained. Every time he finished one, another paper would be shoved in front of him. Soon, though, it was done; Giovanni took the last paper from him and completed the stack, setting it all into a bin to be sorted.
"Now what?" Lance asked.
"You'll return tomorrow afternoon," Giovanni instructed him, "until the paperwork clears, under no circumstances are you to speak to anyone of this arrangement, do you understand?"
"Why?"
Giovanni's patient smile thinned. "Because I'm telling you as such." Lance shut his mouth. "Ah, but of course, I can't just keep calling you Di Mercurio, can I? It's a mouthful. And Lance of the Pokemon League is such a dear personal friend of mine..."
Giovanni took another paper, thinking carefully, and then decisively lowered a pen to its face. Lance leaned forward to get a good look.
"Congratulations, Executive Proton. Your promotion is well-earned."
Lance stood and gave a small half-bow.
"Thanks, sir. I'll return tomorrow."
Giovanni bid him leave, and so Lance did, striding past the corpses of Tachibana and Kuang on his way back to the hall. Matori was typing furiously at her computer. Ikeda was already back, doing his best to gather the bodies and clean the stains.
Yeah, Lance thought as he walked, Executive Proton.
It had a nice ring to it.
