Okay, posting a day early to make up for last weeks post. Unfortunately, this is just a segue to more action in the fic. We're laying down some stuff for the future and get the mystery going. I hope you enjoy it.
Archer wanders the hallway of HQ; his mind a swirl of questions that have yet to be answered. His mission a couple weeks ago still plagues his mind. He's dealt with psychics before but never one like that woman.
Layla. That was the name Camden cried when she popped into the room.
He remembers looking up at her, pointing his gun at her, then she dove forward towards the desk. A stupid move, one he may not have expected, but when he shot her; her body disappeared. His Houndoom had leaped into action, as if expecting her illusion.
Then there's the look of recognition in her eyes staring at his pokemon, the way she said 'it's you'.
It sticks with him.
The puzzle keeps getting bigger and messier. He needs to clean up some of the mess. Their numbers grow each day, though they'll never reach the size they once were, Archer needs to focus on getting Giovanni back. To do that, he needs to know why he left.
Petrel has been hard at work, restoring files and reviving old contacts, old files in the database. Each file recovered sits in Archer's computer, the answers waiting for him to uncover them.
Just that thought sets him in motion, his long strides carrying him to his office, past the training and briefing rooms restored by Proton and Ariana.
When Giovanni disbanded years ago, Arche, the other executives and those grunts not captured retreated to the Sevii Islands. The base there was to consolidate all assets until the leader decided it was time to return. All those contacts and financial resources were to fuel future plans; such as the forced evolution idea Archer had come up with.
Then that child came along.
Team Rocket truly disbanded then, Giovanni long gone since the Silph mission and the executive forced to retreat into the shadows to wait for a time to come back.
Archer had grown tired of hiding while the regions celebrated their win and growth. All those opportunities to make money, gone. Their leader, gone and no way to know why or where he went.
No more, Archer thought to himself one day. He called the others up, digging them out of the identities they created and pulled them back to it.
And now, they're building back up to what they once were. Team Rocket's name migrating circles in Johto and Kanto, the betting rings back on, the underground trading flourishing... It's like a dream.
Archer grins to himself, sliding into the seat on his desk and booting up the old monitor. Petrel's current goal is to update all the technology in the base, but that will take even longer with their current resources funding research for their current plan.
Unsure where to start, Archer types in Layla's name, knowing if she's in any of the systems it'll pop up. The bar comes up empty and he deigns to look her up on the internet. It takes a couple minutes of searching, but he finds a last name and re-types the info back into the search bar.
This time a file does come up, a mission from years ago, but instead of Layla's name it's a Juniper. Archer opens the file to see that it's her mother and the mission was sanctioned by Giovanni and carried out by...
"Oooh, interesting," Archer's brow raises as he reads out the name Dominic, no last name listed.
The memory comes back to him then; Archer meeting with the older man who requested to use his Houndoom for a mission. Such a small world to run into the subject of the mission years later. He marks down Dominic's name on a scrap piece of paper and tries to search his file but it comes up blank beyond a basic file of his information. Which is practically blank anyway. He makes another note to talk with Petrel about it.
He finds the mission and reads about a brain scan being the goal of it, for what though?
Archer pulls up the internet once again to search Juniper's full name and he gets his answer right away.
"Human capture styler?" he says out loud, gazing at a younger version of the woman dressed in a ranger uniform.
Why would Dominic need a brain scan of her? What was he trying to catch? Why wouldn't a regular pokeball work?
He goes back to the database to search for the scan to see what it was used in. He comes up with nothing again and goes back to Dom's page. He searches for missions and finds, listed under his file, 'Serena Abduction'.
Archer starts at that, the famous mission of one brother ultimately betraying another for reasons unknown. None of the mainland branch of Team Rocket knew why he did it, they were only used to help him do it. It was so long ago and she was such a young girl... Archer grew to have more respect for the man after that.
He tries to get more info on that, but again it comes up empty. With a frustrated growl, he starts from the beginning and looks up the year 1995 (?), empty, he goes to the finances to see if there were any big purchases that year. Normally this info is highly secured, only viewable by Giovanni and Madam Boss themselves. Now that they're gone, Petrel managed to dig it up and make it available for only the executives.
The year before the abduction, Archer finds a purchase, a large one, for an island called New island.
He sits back in his chair after writing the name down, his mind full of even more questions than before. What has he stumbled into? Why does it feel so much bigger than what's in front of him? What is Giovanni hiding?
Connected to the purchase, in the file of the island, is a link named M2P. Clicking on it brings up nothing, and this time, Archer makes a note to talk to Petrel about that first. Whatever's in that file is the answer to what's happened and what's happening.
First, he's going to investigate that island.
Archer closes everything up and grabs his bag, tossing it over his shoulder and exciting his office with a sharp slam of his door. It would be best to take someone with him and Ariana comes to mind first. She was the closest to Giovanni since her induction as an executive, if rumors were true even well before that. Of all of them, himself included, she knows how his mind works and that's exactly what he needs on this trip. She's been an asset this whole time, he'd be a fool to keep her out of the loop.
He finds said woman in her office tending to some paperwork while many of her grunts run around the place. Each executive found a spot for themselves in the old HQ and have taken in their own cluster of grunts to send on missions and work for them. Most of the grunts under Ariana are women and girls, understandable given Proton's cruel history and Petrels indifference to their safety among the other male grunts.
Their whispers stop when Archer appears, some of them giggle while others sneer at him.
"Hello, ladies," he nods in their direction. "Are you busy?"
Ariana rolls her eyes. "Don't pretend to care. Where are we going?"
"A field trip," he grins. "Bring two of your most trusted girls. I don't want rumors spreading."
They meet in front of the base, a helicopter and pilot waiting, the fruits of Petrel's labor has served them so well. Archer feels powerful as their caravan climbs in and they take off in silence aside from the beats of the rotors.
The ride takes a couple of hours, the blue haired man not delving any information to get an unfiltered idea from Ariana. To her credit, she remains silent, during the ride, not asking her usual, bothersome questions.
"FInally," she sighs as they reach the island.
The helicopter lands and their troupe reaches what can only be described as absolute carnage. What had to be a massive building has been destroyed. Obliterated into a pile of rubble. There's no way to discern what the original building looked like, let alone function.
"What the fuc-"
"Scour the rubble," he snaps over Ariana's words, his eyes like ice when looking at the girls. "Bring me any clues you can find."
They nod, jogging off and splitting up to cover more ground in their search. Once they're gone, Archer surveys the rubble around them, his face grim while Ariana follows from behind.
"What happened here?" she starts.
He shrugs, reaching up to touch a bit of burnt machinery. "You tell me."
"I wasn't part of this," she frowns, studying what's left of some wall. "There were limits to what even I was allowed to know."
"That may be, but what do you think happened here?"
She considers it for a moment, her eyes wander as she walks into a large area sectioned off from the rest by melted beams. On one side a large machine sits towards the back, chunks of it missing and skinny metal arms splayed at its base. Her gaze moves from it to the piece Archer had touched, a dome shaped piece that would make the machine resemble a shell like structure if put back together.
To the right of it sit six cylindrical metal bases, glass splinters piled around them and frayed wires too. The six bases sit in a circle with one larger one at the head of the circle, without the glass they look like pedestals to forgotten gods.
"He was holding something here," she speaks up, touching one of the bases. "Running tests on it of some kind."
"Clearly, there was more than one subject," he gestures to the other five pedestals.
She nods. "This big one, though. It has dents on the bottom while the others don't. The scratches look like it's from being out in the elements, but something tells me he had something here and either it got away or he cleaned up the mess."
"Ariana!"
Both turn to see the grunts returning with something in their gloved hands. They look dirty and there's a bit of blood on one girl's leg as though she fell down a hole. Ariana accepts their things with a stern nod for them to patch themselves up.
"Is that a... human bone?" Archer looks at the object in Ariana's hand.
She holds it up, it's been splintered and now half the size of an adult humerus, but it's unmistakable.
The girl with the wounds nods. "Yeah, I fell into a pit full of wires, metal, glass... It was buried deep, there wasn't a single piece more."
Ariana glances at Archer. "He cleaned up after himself."
"Yes, but maybe after this happened," he gestures to the building. He points to the last thing in her hand, a wrinkled paper barely the size of his hand. "What's that?"
Ariana twists it around and gasps. "There's our answer," she turns it to Archer with wide eyes, "he wanted Mew. Possibly had it here."
Archer's eyes mirror hers, of all the pokemon in the world, Giovanni went after Mew? He gazes back at the rubble... was he trying to catch it? Or was he trying to track it? Why destroy a building capable of tracking the mirage pokemon? Why even have it?
It doesn't make any sense.
Instead of answers, he has more questions and a stronger need to open the M2P file. He hands the stuff back to Ariana and stalks off in the direction of the helicopter. Ariana gathers her girls and they follow after him.
Archer's questions only continue to pile up; is that why he wanted the Master Ball? Is that how Juniper fits in? He wanted to get a head of Silph Co.? Did that experiment fail?
"What now?" Ariana asks and, for once, Archer isn't annoyed.
On his tablet, he brings up two long time agents, scientists in their own regard and two people Archer knows will get a job done. He shows her Attila and Hun. "We continue where he left off."