Someone had once snarled at Giovanni, "How do you sleep at night?" He thought about them occasionally on mornings he woke particularly refreshed.
"Like the hypnotized," he answered no one, wearing a self-satisfied smile.
Next to him in bed, Persian was half-awake, puddled among the folds of the comforter. Giovanni threw his covers over the feline and set about getting ready.
From the closet, he pulled a fresh shirt and pair of slacks. He reached for the blazer he'd worn last night, but when he lifted it up to put on, he caught a whiff of Ariana's shampoo. With a sigh, he tossed it aside and reached for a clean jacket to unwrap.
On the walk to his office, he dropped by the security nexus with a stern recommendation for increased nighttime patrols. If the Zubat were menacing Ariana, there was no doubt they were an issue for others as well.
When he finally rounded the hallway corner to his office, Persian padding along behind him, he was glad to have straightened his tie and cuffs on the approach. The door to his office was open. A broad-shouldered woman in a black suit stood outside. Inside, he caught flashes of someone in red moving about - his mother.
Giovanni finished composing himself, then strode past the sentry into the room.
"I don't like where you moved the receiving couch. And that giant cat toy is filthy with hair," Madame Boss said without turning around.
Persian shrank against Giovanni's leg.
"Good morning, mother."
She ignored him, continuing to inspect surfaces and shelves around the room.
When she got to his desk, she sat in his chair and started opening drawers. There was little for her to find, of course. Any data he had was stored on harddrives and the local network these days, but his mother had a hard time keeping up with all that. There were blank forms in some drawers and of course a bag of cat treats in one. Another hid a small stash of human treats, but under a false drawer bottom, something she'd have to look harder for to notice.
Inside his head, Giovanni prepared himself for the argument about Ariana's project. Somehow Madame Boss had gotten wind of the expenses before they'd even hit her account. Was that likely, that she could have seen and made sense of Ariana's presentation since yesterday?
"At least you're not stuffing your cubbies full of knick knacks like a Rattata in autumn."
Madame Boss was on her feet again, clacking towards him in black heels. She stepped into his personal space, her forehead centimeters from his chin. Her hands grasped the lapels of his black blazer. She flattened them to his chest, then fussed with the knot of his tie.
He stood up straight and waited, hoping deeply to pass whatever rubric she was judging him by today.
"I'll be in meetings all day and I wanted to check on you before I left for Saffron. If you leave here before I return on Monday, inform me when you depart and when you arrive."
Lovingly, Madame Boss ran a hand over the red "R" emblazoned on the breast of Giovanni's jacket. She made a face as she plucked a single Persian hair off it and flicked it into the air.
"Yes, mother."
"And don't beep it to me in a secret code. Pick up the phone and call me. Before you go and when you get there. That's a command."
"Yes, boss."
She patted his chest gently with an open palm. Then, noticing a fly-away, she reached up and tried to smooth down the front of his hair where a few wisps refused to be slicked back.
Giovanni allowed all this to happen, powerless. With no coworkers around to see, either, he was free to enjoy her benevolent attention. It warmed him every time, even if it came moments after she'd flung open every closed thing in his office.
This wasn't a bust, he realized. This had just been another of one of her sporadic investigations.
Giovanni had become very familiar with them over the course of his childhood. Spending weeks on end without a bedroom door. Submitting to a humiliating "smell test" of his hair on days he'd allegedly stayed out playing sports. Returning home some evenings to find his room turned upside down, drawers emptied, trash sifted. It was a childhood that made Giovanni very good at hiding things, and very concerned for his mother's blood pressure.
She had spent so much of her life keeping them both safe and old instincts found a new outlet as their situation improved. Now she had an empire to run, but she still made time to rule over her son as an individual too.
She cared so deeply, and he stretched within himself to feel gratitude for it despite how it manifested.
With a final loving touch of his cheek, Madame Boss turned from Giovanni and headed for the door. At the threshold, she stopped and looked back.
He, fortunately, hadn't slacked in his posture.
Her eyes raked him over, from his shoes, to Persian, to his now-immaculate jacket, and lingered on his face.
"Buy her a nicer fragrance, Gio. One that doesn't leave you smelling like you just gave the cat a wash."
She stayed only a second longer, to catch his reaction, he guessed, before she turned her back and left. Her body guard followed after her, neglecting to close his door.
Giovanni waited until her footsteps trailed off down the hallway. Then, calm by force of will, he walked to his office door and shut it. He returned to his desk at the same intentionally slow pace and sat down.
Persian was in his lap in a flash, tense but purring for attention. The weight of the massive cat was a comfort.
The two of them had gotten off relatively easy in that encounter with Madame Boss, Giovanni thought as he stroked the Pokémon, but she still left an impact on his mood.
And what was she on about cat shampoo? Giovanni looked down at the clean shirt and jacket he'd unwrapped that morning. Then he noticed his tie, the one he'd plucked off the back of his chair and knotted before checking last night's blazer.
Even though he was alone in his office with just Persian, he looked around for watching eyes first. Then he lifted his tie to his nose and sniffed it.
It carried the faintest scent of watmel and soap.
He scoffed and tucked the tie back into his jacket.
Of course. He never got away with anything growing up - his mother had the nose of an Arcanine. She had the dogged persistence too. He knew this wasn't the last she'd have to say on the topic if she thought he was seeing someone again. Silently, he thanked whatever part of the universe conspired to get her off-site for the next few days.
The knock at his office door caught him off guard. He patted Persian lightly on the rear, urging it off his lap.
"We're at work, Persian, listen for visitors," he scolded.
The Pokémon slinked to the floor, then leapt onto its scratch-post tower.
Hurriedly, Giovanni slapped closed the still-open drawers on his desk, snatching a lint roller out of one of them before he did. He tried to remove the fur from his lap and jacket in a few strokes, then gave up.
"Come in," he called, and settled into a relaxed pose.
The door swung open. Ariana hurried in with a graceless excitement that caused Persian to startle on its perch.
"Giovanni. ...sir!"
She approached his desk in a hurry and spilled the contents of her arms in front of him. They were folders holding printed-off versions of the documents she had called up last night, the ones with washed out pictures and strings of numbers.
As she bent forward to arrange the items in front of him, he stared past her, then down directly at the papers. He was aware of her ample chest, visible under her unbuttoned collar and open lab coat, but was determined not to be caught looking - that was a quick way to make an employee feel self-conscious, or worse yet, like they had some power in the dynamic.
"What am I looking at here?" he asked.
Giovanni did glance at her face, trying to gauge how likely the woman was to start crying again. By the sight of her dark eyes, she hadn't gotten much sleep since he saw her off last night.
In the back of his mind, Giovanni was beginning to doubt the value of Ariana as a long-term investment. She seemed on the verge of burnout only two days into leading her first project.
"The files. For the DNA sequences that I couldn't identify. Each of them include coordinates. I looked up the locations indicated and checked them against any data I could find on Pokémon populations. That is to say, I've developed a number of hypotheses and an accompanying verification procedure to start locking down the biological sources for our codes."
Giovanni stayed silent, waiting for Ariana to volunteer any further information before he commented.
After a breath, she forged on. "If you have any specimen on-hand of the following species, I can attempt an expedited comparison-sequencing to determine a potential match."
Ariana placed a hand on one of the top sheets of paper. She twisted it 180 degrees to face Giovanni and pushed it towards him.
"The list is in descending order based on highest estimated genetic complexity within the assumed populations. It contains some guesswork, but it's a place I can start. If you require a confirmed source for the genetics before splicing."
Would there be more? Giovanni waited.
When Ariana started glancing around, uncertain, he picked up the list she had slid towards him.
It was the same strings of numbers he'd seen, but with bulleted lists of towns, biomes, and geographical features under each. On the right column of the page was another list.
Slowbro. Magneton. Lapras. He would have to consult another department to find out what Pokémon Rocket Corp. had in storage and which were issued out to field agents.
He lowered the paper to see Ariana looking about. He followed her gaze as she scanned an office where every surface had been altered by millimeters since she was here yesterday. Did she notice? Could she perceive details like that? Or was she politely distracting herself while he read?
"What access will you need to these Pokémon?"
He wondered if the procedure was a surgical one and if the Pokémon were meant to survive it.
"I'd rather not have any access to the Pokémon. If your agents could deliver labeled hair follicles, blood, or saliva samples, the most important aspect is that it not be contaminated. Sealed plastic bags are fine or I can provide capsules. My scanning machine can extract a model from even the smallest bit of organic material."
Giovanni was glad he hadn't asked his gruesome question aloud. He had been way off base about Ariana's methods. Pokémon fur should be simple enough to collect. His eyes drifted to the lint roller resting discreetly on the floor by his foot.
"I'll authorize the wrangling team on this and have them forward the samples to your lab station."
Giovanni held the paper upright, then placed it on his side of the desk, beyond her reach, to deal with after their meeting.
"Your suspension fluid will arrive with a delay, but the rest of the parts will be en route this evening."
He hadn't spoken to the Procurement department yet, but he had checked the Celadon ledgers for inventory when examining her requests yesterday. It would be a simple order. Meanwhile, he expected a full day's transit for the suspension fluid.
"That is excellent news, thank you, sir."
Ariana was nodding eagerly. She had the same frenetic energy as last night, but the daylight showed just how much it wore on her.
He read her eagerness to seize this opportunity. That was a mindset he knew well. But Giovanni didn't quite recognize her desperation. Perhaps, for as much as his mother had struggled, he himself did not share that same concept of rock bottom as she and Ariana did. And so he couldn't really know what Ariana feared in failure.
Or perhaps Ariana was driven by pure ambition. He could understand that just fine.
Regardless, he felt a growing excitement over her experiment. Presented with an identification challenge, Ariana had rapidly developed a method to solve it. That did bode well for her future as a scientist.
"Leave your contact number with the person at the desk outside, the one for your dormitory. Then go and get some rest until the samples are collected. A runner will find you when you have the materials to proceed."
She would have to rest if it was an order.