Chapter 798 - 798 - Half Right

Amber stumbled onto the beach of an uninhabited island, his clothes soaked through and his legs barely supporting him. He had no idea how long he'd spent fighting the waves, but by the time he reached dry land, he could hardly take another step.

He collapsed onto the wet sand, breathing heavily as the surf washed around his boots. His Team Aqua bandana was gone, and the saltwater stung the cuts he'd picked up during his escape.

After resting for a while, Amber managed to sit up. He brushed the sand from his face, pulled a waterproof pouch from inside his coat, and retrieved his communicator.

There was only one person he needed to call.

He contacted Archie and reported everything that had happened in the Orange Archipelago, starting with the operation against the cargo ship and the unexpected confrontation with the League.

Then came Spider's interference, the loss of most of his submarine crew, and finally the destruction of the submarine itself.

Amber's voice grew quieter as he reached the end of his report. Team Aqua had suffered one of its worst defeats, losing a vessel specifically equipped to capture a Legendary Pokémon without even completing the mission.

He had expected Archie to be furious. Instead, the communicator carried a hearty laugh.

"Come back, Amber. We can replace the submarine, and casualties happen. Nobody expected Steven Stone himself to come after us."

Archie sounded remarkably unconcerned.

"Besides, he's the League's rising star. They're trying to build up his reputation right now, so I suppose we were unlucky enough to give him an opportunity."

"Boss, I'm sorry. I..."

Amber clenched his fist and struck the sand. Archie had trusted him with an important mission, yet he'd returned with nothing but losses. The fact that his leader wasn't angry somehow made the failure feel even worse.

"We'll talk when you get back," Archie interrupted. "And don't forget, we're after the real Sea God, not that bird."

"Understood, Boss."

Amber bit back his frustration. He had no choice but to accept the order and return to Hoenn, though he hated leaving such a humiliating defeat behind.

Archie was about to end the call when he brought up another matter.

"Oh, and those Spider pirates..."

He paused briefly before continuing.

"Leave them alone. The Orange Archipelago is Team Rocket's territory. Let Team Rocket and the League deal with them."

His tone hardened.

"Of course, if they ever show up in Hoenn, I'll make sure they learn what it feels like to be swallowed by the sea."

"Yes, Boss."

Amber ended the call and slowly got to his feet, brushing the sand from his hands. The wind tugged at his soaked coat as he looked out over the ocean, still furious about everything that had happened.

Team Aqua hadn't conquered these waters, and tonight had made it painfully clear how much stood in their way. He intended to return someday and settle the score.

For now, however, he had orders to follow.

Amber gave a sharp whistle, summoning a Pelipper from the sky. The Pokémon landed beside him, allowing him to climb onto its back before taking flight toward Hoenn.

The journey would take him west across a vast stretch of ocean. Unlike Kanto and Johto, which shared a landmass separated by Mt. Silver and the Indigo Plateau, Hoenn and the Orange Archipelago were divided by open sea.

It would be a long flight, but Amber had plenty of time to think about his defeat.

After the incident near the Seven Grapefruit Islands, Will returned to his hotel aboard a helicopter.

He had deliberately separated from Lorelei and the other League personnel. There were matters he needed to handle privately, and putting some distance between himself and the investigation would make it easier to disappear if the situation turned against him.

Once inside his room, Will hung up his damp coat and sat at the desk. He took out an encrypted communicator, opened a secure channel, and sent an urgent report to Matori, Giovanni's secretary.

Someone from Spider had identified him as a Team Rocket mole.

Will described the encounter in detail, emphasizing that the masked stranger had known about his hidden allegiance without being given any obvious clues. He wanted Team Rocket's leadership to find out who had leaked such sensitive information.

He was still unsettled by what had happened aboard the cargo ship. If Spider had been determined to expose him, Will couldn't have afforded to stay there until the League arrived.

Fortunately, the stranger had appeared just as unwilling to turn their confrontation into a fight to the death.

Will had taken the opportunity to leave without fighting. Later, when Lorelei asked about Spider, he simply claimed the masked pirates had already disappeared by the time he reached the cargo ship.

But he couldn't stop wondering why Spider had let him go.

Blackmail was the most obvious explanation. If the organization's leader intended to use his identity as leverage, Will might spend the rest of his career paying to keep that secret buried.

There was also the possibility that Spider had secrets of its own. Perhaps its leader feared that exposing Will would provoke a retaliation neither side could afford.

Or perhaps Spider wanted to use him for something.

That final possibility troubled Will just as much as the others. He had no intention of becoming another organization's puppet, especially when he'd worked so hard to establish himself within the League.

Reporting the incident to Team Rocket was his first step toward protecting himself. Meanwhile, he began considering how he could leave the League if his position became impossible to maintain.

He hoped Giovanni would have an answer before matters reached that point.

Kanto, Viridian Gym.

Matori hurried through the corridors, her heels clicking against the floor. Her short purple hair was neatly styled, and her black business suit was as immaculate as ever, but the message on her tablet had left her visibly troubled.

Will wasn't some disposable Team Rocket grunt. He was a member of the Elite Four, one of the organization's most valuable assets within the League.

If his identity had been compromised, the consequences could threaten years of careful planning.

Matori went straight to Giovanni's office and presented the encrypted report. She explained what Will had encountered in the Orange Archipelago, then waited for her boss's instructions.

Giovanni remained seated in his leather chair, his back turned toward her.

"Interesting. Someone actually figured out Will's identity?"

He sounded more intrigued than concerned.

"Especially when Team Rocket has never even contacted him directly. Now that is interesting."

Matori frowned.

"Boss, only the two of us know who our undercover agents are. Neither of us would leak that information, and the agents themselves don't know each other's identities."

She glanced at the report again.

"How could Spider possibly find out?"

Those League infiltrators were central to Team Rocket's long-term plans. They had been recruited and positioned with extraordinary care, precisely to prevent anyone from connecting them to the organization.

Giovanni leaned back in his chair.

"You're assuming someone leaked it. What if nobody did?"

Matori looked up.

"What do you mean?"

"Consider this. What if Spider's leader came from the future?"

Giovanni spoke as casually as if he were discussing an ordinary business matter.

"Imagine he's seen the war between Team Rocket and the League. He's watched us activate our undercover agents, so naturally he knows who they are."

He paused, letting the possibility sink in.

"Then he comes back to the present. Suddenly, secrets that haven't even been revealed yet are common knowledge to him."

Matori stared at him.

"Someone from the future? Boss, if that's true, wouldn't he know everything we're planning? How are we supposed to deal with someone who already knows what we'll do?"

The implications were terrifying. Even Team Rocket's most carefully concealed operations could be exposed before they began, leaving the organization trying to outmaneuver an enemy who already knew its moves.

Giovanni merely smiled.

"Why wouldn't it be possible? Have you forgotten that young man who recently traveled into the future?"

Matori fell silent.

Giovanni hadn't forgotten the incident for a moment. He had witnessed the young man's return through time, and he himself had visited the future before. The idea of someone possessing knowledge from another era was hardly unbelievable to him.

What interested him was how far into the future the young man had gone.

Ten years? Twenty?

If Spider's leader had learned about Will and the other infiltrators by witnessing Team Rocket's future war with the League, that conflict must already have happened in the era he'd visited.

And Team Rocket's plans called for that war to begin in the not too distant future.

The timing fit well enough to make Giovanni suspicious, even if he couldn't prove his theory.

Matori rubbed her forehead, trying to make sense of it all. They now had reason to suspect the young man possessed knowledge of the future, and they had also uncovered his identity behind Spider.

That knowledge didn't make him any easier to handle.

"Then what should we do, Boss?"

"Nothing rash."

Giovanni turned slightly in his chair.

"If he really knows what's coming, he's being remarkably quiet about it. He hasn't been running around exposing our secrets."

He gave a faint chuckle.

"He probably knows about Sabrina too, yet he hasn't done anything with that information."

That was what Giovanni found most interesting. Someone who knew Team Rocket's plans, its infiltrators, and potentially its future defeats had every reason to use that knowledge.

Yet Reiji had kept most of it to himself.

"What is he trying to hide? And what exactly does he want?"

Giovanni's curiosity was only growing. Team Rocket's infiltration of the League had been proceeding according to plan for so long that he was beginning to find the whole operation predictable.

A young Trainer with possible knowledge of the future was something different.

He might introduce complications nobody had anticipated, and Giovanni was eager to see what those complications would look like.

"Boss, he's on the other side," Matori reminded him. "We already tried recruiting him, and that failed. There's no chance he'll join us now."

She knew Giovanni's habits too well. Whenever he encountered a particularly talented Trainer, he had a tendency to become interested in recruiting or cultivating that person, even when doing so demanded considerable resources.

Team Rocket had already invested heavily in promising individuals before. Matori didn't want to see another expensive gamble on someone who was openly working against them.

Giovanni laughed. "Relax. I'm not planning to recruit him."

He turned his chair toward the window, where sunlight filtered through the trees in the garden outside.

"I'm curious about something else. What will that kid do when he sees just how rotten the League really is?"

His smile widened. "What happens when those old fools in charge disgust him, and he realizes he can't change a thing?"

Giovanni seemed genuinely delighted by the possibility. He wanted to know whether Reiji would tolerate the League's corruption, turn against it, or find some entirely different way to respond.

For someone who might already know the future, even a small change in his decisions could have consequences nobody could predict.

And that made him worth watching.

Giovanni laughed again before finally returning to the matter that had brought Matori to his office.

"Tell Will to stay where he is and continue his assignment. No unnecessary moves. As long as that kid keeps his mouth shut, we carry on as usual."

"Understood, Boss."

Matori recorded the instruction on her tablet.

"Should we offer Will some compensation for the trouble?"

"No. This is the worst possible time to contact him more than necessary."

Giovanni dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand.

"He's an Elite Four member. If he can't even protect himself or find a way out of a dangerous situation, I'll be very disappointed."

Matori nodded and left the office to deliver the instructions. She still had plenty of work ahead of her, beginning with reassuring Will that Team Rocket wasn't abandoning him.

Once the door closed, Giovanni remained by the window, considering the young Trainer who had managed to uncover one of his organization's best-kept secrets.

For the first time in quite a while, he was genuinely looking forward to seeing how events would unfold.

[End of chapter]

[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]

[Check out my Patreon to read 20+ chapters ahead]

[[email protected]/BellAshelia]

[Thanks for your support!]