K_S
Unrepentent Giovanni and Rocket fan
- Partners
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AN: Ran through Grammarly 4/13/2021 but in bits and bobs. Will need to fuller sweep for small errors that might have been missed. 85% done though as of 4/14
He’d expected these divinely dictated "trials" of his "healing" to be pulled from the anals of old mythologies. A mix-match of torments cobbled together to impossible tasks. And there was a punishment slant to this moment. His mind, half-awake, felt poked and prodded, and while a pain it wasn't agony. The sensation was comparable to something was burrowing in his head, and since fighting back, or trying to, made the pain worse...
He didn't.
And after a frisson of shock not his own set his spine to tingle, the presence in his head shifted attention from battle to sifting through memories. Egotist that it was the psychic intrusion meandered along the thoughts related to recall and Legends. The results were a melding of Mythology 101 and the tales of his life, sloppily stitched together to form a borderline incoherent whole.
Once upon a time... gentler tales started such, this one being the uncensored grimoire of ancient times, there was no such gentling.
So it began;
In ancient times there'd been a madman who declared himself the emperor of Kalos. To prove might and madness both he'd wrangled with a pyroar while aflame in some tribute or other to gain the boon of a pelt that'd gift him immortality in battle.
The Legend's held their word, the man had earned the hide, and it was blessed, and bloodstained, as all old-time giftings of the Legends were back in those days.
In modern times, a near-decade ago Giovanni'd revisited the story and added his own embellishments.
The Hide Armor of the Unnamed Tyrant had been Team Rocket's first breakthrough.
True, indisputable, confirmation of the Legend's existence that wasn't hearsay or his own sighting.
Giovanni's personal bit of hearsay, his viewing of a Legend, had been a thing of utter desperation. His "encounter" had started when he'd been woken by the sound of shattering glass. Shaking off sleep he'd raced down the hall, throwing open his son's bedroom door to see golden talons of a gigantic bird had plowed through the forced opening of a broken window. The avian was rooting through the room, and it'd been madness as the lights were trying to die and the bird's wing strokes were part thunder, part smoldering. The very air sizzled and steamed as rain met a "god" of fire and the resulting steam had been like stepping into a nightmarish sauna.
The walls burned on the outside. Never truly catching as it was a hellish downpour of hail and rain outside. The beast hung half on half off the outer wall of the building for support, embers rained from the things every wingstroke as it fought for balance and reaching all at once.
Giovanni had frozen before the sight of that monstrosity. Not believing. But belief fell to facts. Heart hammering, he realized the angle of the reaching limb, the slant of the gouges in the floor, all pointed towards his son's bed and it'd only been chance the talons hadn't connected, sharp or grip. Swearing, Giovanni lunged, intent on snapping up his boy and bolting.
The basement's panic room... He could make it in less than five at a dead run, he just needed this one thing to go right...
Of course, it hadn't.
The bird, all sunlight and malice, had seen, heard, and it twisted about to better see him in turn.
And the Legend's regard was a pressure akin to boulders slammed against his back. No mere man could stand against it. And he hadn't. Struck down to his knees by a glare, near senseless from the bird's attention, Giovanni couldn't see. Wasn't permitted to even stand, and so at his Legends feet, in the ruins of his son's room, he'd been forced to assume a pose that the ignorant would take as prayerful.
If he couldn't stand, so he wouldn't, he crawled. Calling assurances to the sobbing, fear paralyzed child, he was here, he was coming... The smoldering carpets, the blindness that made him travel by touch and memory were of no moment...
He just needed one more moment, and the "gods" did not grant him even that.
A warble of victory from above, as claws found their target and gripped.
His boy's scream would haunt him as he was dragged up and away. Waking and sleeping, for years and years. p
Picking up the pelt for the first time, that ultimate proof of a Legend's death, he heard those screams again, echoing in his memory, and if he wasted a day or so imagining it with sun-hued feathers in steed of golden fur, snapped talons and beak shavings serving as bindings instead of whatever claws had been threaded through the thing...
That was his business.
As for the Hide, acquiring it was wholly business.
Passed from original owners next of kin to be owned by a collector of the bizarre. It'd been child's play to divest the man of his find and his life, and for a while, Giovanni Sakaki had owned the armor of Kalos's sole emperor. It was near indestructible as many tests with modern weapons had proved. Resisting fire and bludgeoning and electricity by twisting the heat and force of any attack away from the cloth. The immaterial forces of psychic-type attacks had passed through it like mist, and the keenest minds sharpened by sadism had been unable to even wrinkle the material...
As for what it was... it was utterly worthless, despite being an assurance that Legends could die. It'd been crafted for one man and resisted the touch of any other. He'd seen video footage of it unclasping and sliding off of any who tried to put on. And while it arrested the force of any attack directed at it... the deflection was inherently flawed. The fabric would be undamaged, its hairs unruffled... but estimates, backed by tests where it had been pinned to mannequins with a passing nod to human build, guaranteed that come the first projectile, the first elemental attack from any 'mon...
Well, the feet of the wearer would be the first thing to go.
Further tests, and the inability to get a sample by any means to find out what beast had sacrificed its skin to make the flawed archaic armor, had affirmed the relics' worth. Needles, tweezers, scissors, even cotton swabs, could garner nothing. No DNA, or hairs, or dust for dating. Even water immersion had failed, the thing mirroring old religious legends by parting the water in the tub it'd been cast into and making a mess of one test room floor.
So the relic had ended as it'd started. A mystery. But not a worthless one. Team Rocket had made a fortune selling the damned thing on a black market. Another collector of the bizarre without any quibbles about the law had taken the golden hide...
And if that man had been later killed, his bank accounts emptied, his property looted for bits and bobs of other Legends... Well, Team Rocket was at its heart a criminal enterprise.
And so, all accidental, this hodgepodge of history and legend got its very own moral.
Caveat Emptor.
As for the incidentals... The Emperor of the tale had been a would-be dictator whose reign was so short he'd not gotten his name into the history books. He'd lasted mere minutes after gaining his divine gift, not even living long enough to crawl to the battlefield to learn the limitations of the pelt. The burns of his trial had carried him off to an inglorious death via medical complications well beyond his time, and thus a legend had been born from the stripped and blessed hide of a Legend, the tale's conclusion an inglorious one for Beast and Emperor both.
It was a fitting story, a fitting moral, both dovetailed beautifully into the madness the Boss of Team Rocket found himself embroiled in now.
The scorn of that thought allowed him to connect mind to body in the form of a reaction. He huffed his amusement.
And that was the end of his detachment.
One blink and his sight cleared in stages. The bland view of dark and square resolved into a ceiling of some sorts, save it was too dark to discern color because it was literally too dark to see much of anything... Giovanni tried to get a better view. To sit up. But the motion went all wrong and got him nothing save a weak jolt through his frame.
He tried smaller motions, then.
Wiggling toes and fingers, taking heart from those small motions he worked his way up to rolling over and exchanged one view of square and blankness for another. The only difference between the room's far wall and its ceiling was the shut and shuttered window on the far wall. There was no furniture save the bed he lay on so therefore there was nothing to tell him where he was.
And while a lesser man might be furious, if not stymied, Giovanni was familiar with this forum of helplessness. The joys of limited mobility in the morning were not new. And it was a mercy that he was not bound by wires, or that he had to make his shaking hands work off a breathing mask and tubing before he could do anything else.
Comparing the last few weeks of his life to now... This moment was near heaven.
Straining his ears Giovanni listened while he regrouped his energy. It was curious that now, that he was turned on his side, he could hear the sounds of wind, the muffled crash of sand and surf. And that was a curiosity as much as this baren room. Sound, while not omnipresent, wasn't so selective as to work like this. Letting his eyes roam away from the window killed the sound as if it were a tv and his attention was the mute button. Looking at the window dead on made the noise return, continued regard made it intensify to near headache inspiring levels.
Closing his eyes made the sound dim, and he did so to better trace a mental path over maps and routes of Johto and Kanto both. If his memory wasn't failing him... or compromised.... there'd been no beach for nearly a hundred miles in any direction from Illex.
So, he wasn't where he'd started, and considering what had happened before waking up this likely was his "trial" then.
He'd expected to be in agony, ringed round with brimstone, irritate Legends poking and prodding him with talons and fangs, at the very least.
This room, he mused, rolling back onto his back to better stare at a blank vista that wouldn't give him a headache, was a bit of a letdown in comparison.
Time passed, he wasn't sure how long, but in that span of stillness and silence Giovanni tallied facts to facets.
He wasn't burning, or burned, or rotting, or puking blood, or drowning in air. He also wasn't totally alone. The soft sheets that'd been tossed over him told that tale, and as he gripped at the fabric to better push it out of the way he strained his ears. When there were no tells, the quiet breathing of another, footfalls, Giovanni was satisfied his solitude would hold. Once he'd managed to sit up without falling out of the bed or flat on his face, he considered his next steps.
This fey exhaustion was familiar, akin to the Pressure of a hateful Legend. Having infuriated many of those the Rocket Boss was confident he'd find a workaround. Until then there was little to do besides gather what strength he could and struggle to stay awake.
The latter wasn't as hard as it'd seem. A creeping sense of something wrong gnawed at him. He only pushed aside the impulse to poke and pry at his memories by the minuscule tug on the sheets, as something small gripped and caused the sheets to go taunt on the bed's far edge in an effort to climb up.
In his childhood long gone it'd be Persian, awake now that he was awake and wanting scritches for the reward of being observant. She'd loom over him in his youngest days, mewling and yowling for attention even as he gave it to her. At the beginning of their... partnership... her head had been big enough to fit in both his hands. His fingertips lost in her silky fur, he swore and ran them over her favored stroking spots. This was the "last time" he'd vowed he'd "just been going to the bathroom, he should not have to snuggle his cat into submission after doing something so pedestrian as having to go". She'd purr then, scrunching her eyes into near-invisibility as he got the span over her shoulders just right...
And like with awakening and the tale that'd bound him until he'd completed it, the nostalgia felt like a weight, the reminiscence required to be finished before he could speak.
"Persian?"
A chitter, definitely not his cat, answered, as was a thud as whatever it was fell from its perch of "nearly up" to the floor below.
Giovanni blanched for when he spoke what had come out of his mouth wasn't his voice, or rather wasn't as it had been just this afternoon. Higher pitched, not quite pre-adolescent, and definitely not his familiar, commanding baritone he'd wielded almost all his life.
He sounded like a child... and that realization was like a curtain pulled back in his head, and all the memories of before, not just his near dying, came roaring back.
He swore, and damn the Legends and their inflicted weakness he clawed at the wall and bed frame until he was standing, stooped, but up. A frantic look about the room affirmed Silver wasn't there. The only things that'd he'd missed for not being up were a pile of boxes beside a door and the door which was the only way in or out.
Paternal impulse wrestled with exhaustion, the twinges of aching muscles and Legend inflicted fatigue warned him he should rest. The bed was temptation incarnate, he could sit on the edge, rest his eyes...
But the Boss of Team Rocket was a master of temptation, in inflicting and driving others to fall to their pet vices while mastering his own. Giovanni pushing the thought of rest out of his head. He'd rest once assured Silver was well, and not a moment before.
Hobbling like a man many years his senior Giovanni staggered to the door, straightening in stages. The doorknob turned under his hand with no resistance and he nudged his way into the hall. A chittered squeal from behind stopped him from closing the door behind him. The Rocket turned, watched, braced on the door frame, as a weedle bunched its way across the bed towards him. The creature's myopic eyes were wide in wild shock.
Giovanni Sakaki stared at the beast, even as, with a whine, it reared and waved its suckers at him so madly it knocked itself over with a soft cry.
"Beedril?"
The weedle screamed at him, near Screeching, small limbs twisting it from prone to standing once more in a blink. Trainer and 'mon stared at each other, and after a long moment, and a swallow, Giovanni limped back into the room. Not daring to kneel, he'd not be able to get back up if he did, Giovanni stretched his arm out in an old invitation. Understanding the bug scrunched, poison-tipped tail wagging in an old tell, before uncoiling and pulling a small hop from bed to the trainer's wrist.
When the suckers sunk in, and the bug tightened his small limbs on his trainer's arm, scaling higher... Well, this odd local and missing son were not all the surprises that were in store for the Rocket Boss it seemed. Sensations flooded the Rocket's mind as the long-neglected Gift of the Forest flared to life in the back of his head. He felt the insect's anger and pain, the utter humiliation of having lost what he'd fought to earn, and an old instinctual fear of a world gone too big too fast.
And under that, soul-deep was the brittle sharp and venom seeped rage all poison types could harbor in the right circumstances. A deep need as true as a heartbeat to tear and rend and sully the bastard that'd done this to them.
To feel his poison warp and rend the leafy bastard's photosynthesizing hide...
Having scaled wrist, up arm, to shoulder, each step leaving a snippet of a 'monicidal fantasy in his trainer's mind, Weedle glared about him from his new perch, quivering. The urge to kill and maim roiling off the bug like a Sweet Scent, and to that, Giovanni tipped his lips up in a tight smile.
"Sooner rather than later," Giovanni rasped, curious how his voice could sound young even as emotion not wholly his own, warped it so hard it near crackled. "But not now," Promise complete he ran a digit over the bug's hairy back. "More importantly. Have you seen Silver?"
With a chur the bug reared, running its frame about Giovanni's cheek, and though seeming affection the proximity kicked a slew of memories, some his, some the bug's, and melded them together in his head.
The frantic battle, last moments.
Nidoking being thrown aside by a psychic blast, Persian forced to slumber mid-swing, the black essence of a night slash dimming until natural light alighted her claws, as slumber dragged her down. At that moment they’d lost their main front fighters, and Giovanni's efforts, to recall his beasts were met with failure as they'd been "freed" before the conflicts start and the old tech meant to pull them out of danger failed per the Legend's meddling.
Silver’s Ursaring had been pulled away, wrangling with beasts more smoke than substance, swinging wild paw strokes to keep the twin avians from were approaching. The bear, seeing slashes weren't working, swapped to spitting hyper beams. Taking its last stand between its two masters, the Rocket and the boy who'd been its original trainer. Roaring, the brown hairy beast was charring the earth about it with the excess heat of each attack but the light show had made the birds pull back.
Rescue failed, Giovanni accepted Persian and 'King as losses as he gathered the last of his flagging strength to snag at Silver's shirt and drag the boy back.
Celebi's next psychic blast missed the target and the ground Silver likely would have been occupied crunched and crumpled as if it were paper being set upon by a giant, invisible fist.
The shock of nearly dying set the boy to go... well not limp, but platable. And he followed Giovanni's shove towards the tree line, it seemed miles away but once they hit it the Legends would have a harder time hitting their targets, and once five steps out of the clearing all tech would function.
The Rocket'd call for extraction, and he'd see how the stolen Kantoian military tech did when pitted against a Legend. Any of the Legends dare they try to pursue.
Above, his boy’s Murkrow was wheeling, trailing spite, and spitting dark bolts. Such was the essence of Nightshade that flew from the avian that was trying to offer what protective cover it could. Beedrill darted about the black bird, tossing poisoned needles and swiped at anything that dared float too close.
A shame Celebi wasn't a complete fool. The creature's double team melded with a substitute made a small swarm of look-alikes that could take some damage. and the grassy Legend had set a swarm of them to fly to keep the tamed 'mon up high from pulling an aerial rescue
Both flyers were slowing, a clear sign of exhaustion. They weren't falling from the sky but Giovanni had Beedril’s pokeball in hand just in case. He spared what attention he could from verbally herding Rhydon about the field to keep tabs on the flyers. The earth type’s contribution to the combat was to rip up trees and boulders and hurl them at whatever Legendary he could. He also kept a chain of earthquakes going, all to keep the Legends off the ground. Thus not closing in on the humans below and ending things prematurely.
The effect of the continual earthquake made for a stagger-laden run for the tree line, still it wasn't utterly unfamiliar and Giovanni was able to keep his feet more often than not. Silver though fell and scrambled like a drunkard, and Giovanni's slow pace was hampered further in having to help the boy up more than once.
Celebi, with a twitch of a hand, warped a projectile's trajectory to avoid getting pelted in the face by some fixture of its clearing. The first time the Legend had done so Silver had to grab Giovanni and throw them both aside to avoid being crushed by a stone bigger than the both of them put together. The second, a tree, had sailed beyond sight, throwing its shade over the humans trying to get to standing and running again as it sailed well beyond the clearing's bounds. Another... and Legend or not the thing had damned bad aim... had Sneasel hopping over a boulder screeching insults. Not understanding ricochet, the dark type had hissed, flicked her head feathers back, and tossed a snowball at Rhydon who was digging out another boulder for throwing. Celebi's holy pool was a muddy morass at the ground types clawed feet.
"Behind you!" Silver screamed. And that'd been enough to stop a feud in the making. The dark type had twisted about to ice beam another damned Celebi look alike. Another toss, another miss, and a boulder was deflected into some small floating... thing... that managed a squeaky toy sounding scream at impact.
Silver, hellishly young, took moment in the madness to huff out a laugh, then the boy scrambled back. Near knocking Giovanni over. Their route to out was cut off by the searing heat of sunlight channeled into a killing force. Foliage rose from where the beam had cut, alongside smoke, and rising from the charr was a living wall of plants that grew out of the earth so violently the soil crackled, pebbles snapping like dry twigs, and anything under that light would have burned and smothered under flora all at once.
Shooting his last bullet, making Celebi shimmer away into whatever void teleporters traveled to avoid taking a hit, Giovanni barked for another earthquake and Rhydon obeyed. Arms slung over his son's shoulders, half being supported, half leading, the Rocket shoved them away from the now slumped wall of floral matter.
Celebi was a grass type getting too close to that much plant matter was asking to be killed.
The burning in the Rocket's lungs was starting to peak, and after a few meandering steps, Giovanni's legs buckled. Kneeling, panting, he managed to shove Silver enough that the boy wasn't taken down when he fell, and the boy looked back at him, namesake eyes wide and shimmering. Ripping his phone from his belt Giovanni tossed it to the boy, who was skilled enough to catch it, no fumbling. And despite himself, Giovanni cracked a small bloody smile.
"Get to the edge, hit the red butting once it lights up," He rasped, throat tightening, he managed to force out the last few words. It wasn't perfect, but would be enough, "Code: E.L. Lock, priority one."
A nod, and the boy, his boy, turned about, ready to run. But things weren't going to go to plan.
Despite its docile appearance Celebi was a hellish advisory, and his Son was too much like his father in one way. When the Legend shimmered into existence, blocking the path with green flames, Silver refused to simply run about the new obstacle. Taking up a knife he'd slashed at the Legend, and took two fingers in one strike.
Considering one of the Tao Duo had had to withdraw to heal shot-out fangs, Giovanni technically shouldn’t be complaining. But having to bark at Silver to pull back, to run around, because the boy got too hyper-focused on getting a hit in…
Well if he lived through this Giovanni was going to make the Mask of Ice pay for all his "training" he'd inflicted on Silver.
Leafy face twisting in spite, the creature floated back, dispelling pseudo twins to focus better on regenerating its fingers. Silver’s replying smile to the Legend's glare was tight and bitter, he set his knife, perhaps to throw, but the intercepting sweep of a feathered forelimb of one of the Tao Duo stilled the attempt.
Swearing, Silver scrabbled back from the bird of an alien region, face going pale as old phobias reared to life in his head.
More to spite the bastard than anything else, Giovanni threw a pokeball. And while the catch was obviously not going to hold, it interrupted the floating Sylvain creature. The Legend reappeared in a flash of red light, at the tech's failure, but the unspoken threat of capture stilled all the other Legendaries from approaching. Silver, scrambling along the battlefield, took the reprieve with both hands.
The boy snapped up Sneasal, who was tossing up ice walls between his trainer the other bird of the Tao Duo in a desperate attempt to make it go away.
A squawk at the meager defense, a flash of light, and the first wall buckled, absorbing the hit. A second scream, that made the air about the legend go violet, and the wall came down, all the walls, and like many a grandiose psychic there was that moment, where everything held perfectly still when it shouldn't have. The shattered ice, the crackling power that'd broken it wrapped about the shrapnel in the making, and the air hummed as supernatural energies built.
Not wanting to die like that, much less risk his son being mutilated in the downpour, Giovanni snapped his fingers, called on Rhydon. The earthen beast slammed his paws into the earth and a rock tomb snapped into being before both trainers. A cry from above, an aborted squawk warned of one of the fliers going down. Silver poked about the impromptu shield to recall his bird, then Sneasel, ever the wiser of the pair, hooked icy claws into her trainer's coat and dragged them both behind the earthen barrier.
And for a time there was nothing but a whiteout, as psychic mixed with ice and made an ice storm of a failed attack.
Alone, and one of the last pokemon standing, Beedrill swirled about the ruination of Illex's holiest clearing. It'd been warped near unrecognizable by the violence enacted on it. Trapped in an artificial winter, ripped up by malice, and slathered with poison, and amongst the destruction was a legion of enemies. Unable to see any friendly trainer, Beedril panicked. Triggering its own mega-evolution, its altered limbs became a swirling blur, splaying the clearing and enemies in sheets of poison and acid.
But none of them were real, they only faded into sunlight after taking the lightest of taps.
Still, Beedril tried, might and main, to grab Celebi with its stingers and malice and kill the abomination that'd lied to its trainer.
Staggering from the sanctuary of ice sheathed stone, eyes going to the sky, he listened. To the sound of running feet. Silver was running, and that would have to do. All Giovanni could do was offer distraction, buy time, so he did. Squinting up and seeing the familiar flicker of displaced space and time, ever a precursor of teleportation, the Rocket snarled.
“Beedrill, at your six o clock, poison jab!”
It was enough, and ironically the master of time did not counter an order steeped in the terms of Its own domain. The creature shuddered as the stabbing limbs struck home, leaves about the point of impact curling and browning as the poison took hold. The following order to use Venoshock, to stab another venom, one that would escalate the poisoning from agony to agonizing death, did not need to be said. Sliding his stinger out, Beedrill buzzed in hate, more than content to make a kill and kill everything and every one its trainer asked it to.
It was of course then that the birds of another region shook off their fear of being caught. Perhaps it was seeing the tech fail in containing their peer, regardless of reason's they descended. Twin personifications of forces that Giovanni had found impractical and thus had dismissed, the Rocket knew little more than their names and that they weren't native to either Johto or Kanto. Their misplaced physical presence was enough to still any retreat, or rescue, however.
Silver’s horror of them was a mix of old fears and new, the realization of just how deep these water were in was settling in to roost as the smokey talons and wings herded him from clearing's edge to the center.
Giovanni, knowing how this was going to go, called out, and Rhydon, ever loyal, shook off a coat of hoarfrost and responded. Sweeping in low and fast, clawed foot leading, Rhydon's attack was like a miniature avalanche hitting home. One of the avian behemoths staggered under the sweeping kick to its ankle, having to twist about to better balance. A jumped high kick, a feat done more from the strength of Rhydon's tail than his stubby, stony, limbs, slammed onto where the avian's privates would be if the beast were possessed of such. The Legend responded as any base creature might, folding near double with a warbled squawk, and one mega punch up caused the bird's smokey beak to click together and its eyes to roll back.
The surprise attack was enough to jar Silver out of his stupor, and he got back to running. But he was not fast enough. Granted, there wasn’t a “fast enough” when a creature that harnessed time was their antagonist. The world turned sepia, color bleaching towards near tan but never quite touching the hue, then everything stopped.
Flexing regrown hand, shaking off a few droplets of green blood in irritation Celebi shimmered into existence before the Rocket, and Silver, and all the rebellious lesser 'mon that'd stood against it.
And it seethed.
Its aura was a gold akin to the sun’s light, but there was a stain of artifice to the lot because the sun was Ho-Oh's and that bird was not one to share. The leafy creature hung suspended upon the air of a misplaced moment and its frustration made this corner of suspended animation shake from its wraith.
Dying he might be, but Giovanni Sakaki was not a man to be cowed. Even by apocalyptic shows of power. And this one, that was leveled against a captive audience, more wounded and comatose than awake and aware, was pathetic.
He’d spat such at the things feet when the Legend had demanded his gratitude, his adoration, and pleas for clemency. He’d not bow to a thing that with a few more moments and a bit more luck he would have had under his control.
Giovanni's only regret was in doing this was that he’d dragged Silver into this mess. And as artificial sun spiked in brightness, stealing sight via a deluge of light and the world faded away, Giovanni Sakaki resolved in the silences of his own mind that he’d live long enough to get his son out of this.
Clearly, this mental... scatteredness and forgetfulness was meant to counter such resolve. He'd have to find a way to reward Celebi for its audacity at a later time... But for now, he tipped his head, allowing Weedle to twine his suckers around his neck. A wiggle and Weedle lay against the curl of a collar bone snuggled a pulse point with a soft chirrup. The contact helped ground Giovanni in the moment, pushing back all the worthless reminisce and tales in his head so he could function.
Once sure the creature was secure the Rocket straightened and staggered out of the room and into the hall. Cursing the Legends with each step because each step hurt like hell.
To spite the pain he did a sweep of each room he found.
A small meowth joined him in his nocturnal wanderings, following him about a kitchen by the front of this... house... he supposed it was. A glance outside showed palm trees and sand and the sky, pitch black and cloudless and moonless, affirmed it was either very late or stupid early and little else beyond that.
Unlike the window near where he'd woke he could not hear the surf no matter how hard he stared out, and he leaned against the door, looking at the path leading out into the dark. There was a beach, just barely visible in the distance, but seeing was not hearing, and Giovanni turned away from the distant shore after a cursory sweep of the front affirmed there were no footprints.
Deciding he wasn't quite done with searching the house yet, at least not until he had supplies, preferably a working wardrobe, he closed the door behind him and went back in.
A pushy nudge and soft murr broke into Giovanni's attention as he combed through cabinets and drawers. Weedle arched against his cheek, oozing irritation at their tag along and bemused the Rocket studied the feline as it capered about his ankles. The thing was too small and too quiet to be his Persian unevolved. And per the slant of whiskers and angle of its hips, it was obviously male. It was unbelievably stupid as well. One gesture, as if going to open the kitchen's fridge, had gotten the thing distracted, and it'd been child's play to pull an empty pokeball, labeled "K. MewMew", off its hook on the wall and encapsulate the quiet cat with a flick of his wrist.
Distraction done, and discarded, he set the 'mon's pokeball besides its beloved fridge to be found by whoever else was here, Giovanni got back to work. Having tackled all the rooms, he expanded his search from "Silver" to "anyway to get information". There were no computers, no televisions, no periodicals. Only marked boxes and shrouded furniture that once unveiled was reviled to be rattan and aged but not so far gone as to be grungy. The layout of boxes and the like told a tale of someone having just moved here.
Him... and whoever else was meant to be here? The owner of the cat that wasn't his cat? There were precious few hints so he could only assume and the assumptions left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Expanding his search from "information" to "carriable valuables" Giovanni searched the whole place from top to bottom. Working his way from front to back, and only skipping the room closest to his own. The sounds beyond it, of soft breathing, and murmurs of a woman's voice clearly speaking while she dreamed, assured him it wasn't Silver behind that door.
And that would do for now. He was not willing to risk a confrontation with the house's owner with only Weedle to back him up.
Not having the means to carry much he made a pile in the room he started in. And though tacky and a rookie's move he decided to hang professional pride and dig through a woman's purse. Within, the IDs were curiously smeared under the lamination, pictures, and text illegally illegible. The cash though was familiar, so the money joined the pile that'd consisted of over-the-counter pain medicine, a knife, water bottles flitched from a box of dishes, and a few clean soft towels. Setting the purse, superficially, to rights, Giovanni poked and prodded through the few other rooms. A backpack, too large and sturdy to be anything save meant for hard travel, had been a windfall and found by accident. Curiously, despite being made for serious use the backpack had been stuffed to near bursting with childish things. He hauled it into the bedroom he'd started in, dumping everything and shoveling the deluge of stuffies to the floor he began to pack what he'd stollen thus far.
There'd been one room, another oddity as off as the window of the bedroom, that troubled him.
It should have been a closet. The shape and size seemed right for that assumption, but pushing the sliding door open and stepping in had found that his eyes had deceived him.
While small it had the prerequisite things to be a bathroom. The decorations were in a similar style as the living room and kitchen, rattan to the point of being ratty. The base staples of the room were ripped straight out recall. They were from the last hotel he'd been in while setting up the final steps for overtaking Azalea Town on the sly.
A flick of a switch and the fluorescent lights kicked in and he'd looked over the familiar furnishings with a quirk to his lips. Weedle hissed at something and expecting... enemies, and attack perhaps, Giovanni followed the bug's head stinger to see... A mirror, his reflection.
And for the longest moment, Giovanni did nothing. While Weedle chirred bloody murder at himself Giovanni took in the features of a face he only recalled vaguely and had seen in pictures less than a handful of times.
The image before him was taken from well before the time he’d been the focus of the media for his philanthropic front. Before the forced studio shoots that were part and parcel of owning a gym.
Reaching out, Giovanni brushed his fingers over the mirror, it was cold, near icy, and an exploratory tap set the echoes of impact up his fingers and made the glass ripple like water.
Like the room, like the window... everything was wrong, subtly, awfully, wrong.
Nestled against his pulse, Weedle shivered, understanding soul-deep the wrongness of everything about him. Reaching down, Giovani twisted the tap, and after a moment, as if the plumbing were trying to contemplate its own purpose only to recall that it was to run… it ran. But reaching down, pulling the door of the cabinet under the sink back, a glance down confirmed another oddity and reaffirmed his fears.
There were no pipes.
This place, despite seeming realness, was somehow divorced from reality, an utter facsimile then. Giovanni closed the doors after pulling out a first aid kit from a place where pipes should have been, setting the find on the sink's edge he considered water, and reflection, and indulged a bit of vanity.
Smoothing back his hair, wrangling a cowlick over his left ear since his hair was too long and it just grew out like that... The habits of late adolescence came to him without a thought and he indulged them while mulled. A lifetime ago, decades ago, he’d wanted to mimic the rebels of his time. It'd been a hellish year of wrangling with tangles and having to do so much to keep it styled as he’d been cursed with genes that kept his hair straight and would permit nothing else unless he’d slathered his head in hair products.
Except for that damned cowlick.
The sheer inconvenience now would have been enough to get him to the barber post haste. He'd kept his hair religiously short, learning how to tend it on his own mainly because most barbers couldn't get it right. Back then he'd been made of stupider stuff. Holding out a year and a half before deciding enough was enough.
The looming horror of having that cowlick on his identification, mainly his drives license, had been enough to drive him to the barbers.
As for now... Well, there wasn't one, or a razor, and he wasn't going to use the purloined knife for something that'd leave scalds of evidence behind. So water and fingers made for a crude styling. And it stayed, somewhat, with Weedle only a bit damp at efforts end.
At the shrilled complaint against his ear, Giovanni grimaced, and it wasn’t perfect, but he could glare at the reflection hard enough that Weedle would feel it.
In theory.
“You could easily have climbed down.” The Rocket drawled. Then killing water hunted about. He sullied one towel in drying, wiping the excess of water off of the bug type, and then tossing the towel into a basket by the door. Hopefully, it was there for clothes pick up, but if it wasn’t… Well, it wasn’t his problem.
God above, he was eighteen again. On second thought, the Rocket conceded with a grimace, considering his hairstyle, he was likely seventeen since he’d gotten himself to a saner hair length mere days before he’d gotten his driver's license at eighteen. Giovanni had decided simple and tenable was preferred to the rebel look and had lopped almost all of his hair off in a fit of last-minute introspection.
He looked... like a kid. Worse, with Weedle about his neck, the bug type like a bit of misplaced jewelry, the poison point adding a more modern punk slant to the look, the Rocket recognized the style. Borderline grunge groupie, a stereotypical rebellious rocker. All he had to do would be saddled with oversized pants the youth of Kanto adored and he'd be set. A shirt wasn't even necessary nowadays.
Disgust, and memories of so many bad choices, minor annoyances in the greater scope but still… The things he’d done and worn flashed behind his eyes and he recoiled in mental horror at the mere recollection of... everything.
Face burning, Giovanni shook his head. Mentally shoving the misplaced mortification back in his head. It was insane that even though the psychic type had got so many basic things wrong, Celebi could still capture, and inflict, adolescent mortification on a man well beyond such foolishness.
But, here and now, he wasn't an adult…
There was a horror to that. A muffled fear. He wasn’t an adult, and there were assumptions found in that.
That his family, his famiglia... might be alive and well... That... was a thing of his childhood nightmares come to life. Wrestling the instinctual fear down Giovanni dimmed the terror to something manageable. It was a concern if the Madam were alive and well.
But not an irreversible one.
While the hellish matriarch who’d ruled his childhood was very much dead in his time, if she were alive here would she be the same woman? Or was she a shell, a husk based off of a Legend's assumptions? Was the woman, sleeping peacefully a mere room away, Team Rocket's Madam? Her proximity to him said it was unlikely. Madam Rosaline had never slept in the same premises as him since he'd been a young child. But if he was wrong there was an opportunity.
She wouldn't have to wake, a knife to the throat, and the crisis could be averted. He didn't have Nidoking to spray the shallow grave in acid to make sure she wouldn't come back... But he wasn't unarmed.
Weedle, sensing the spike of his pulse if nothing else, reared and rubbed. Churring softly, the bug's concern obvious. Woodenly Giovanni reached up, traced a finger down the bug's back while considering places to dump bodies and focus on his breathing.
Calm or at least breathing slowed and heart steady, Giovanni straightened, snapping up the first aid kit he killed the light and left the impossible room behind. It was mere steps between it and the room he'd woken in, and passing hers... he didn't stop.
For now, he wouldn't act until he was sure.
Because if it was her she couldn't live. She'd kill him kill Silver slow just for spite, then him as an afterthought. But for now the headache of having to cover up a murder with only a Weedle as a partner...
He'd handle it when he must and not a second before.
The old anxiety of not being master of his own fate flickered about his mind and made a familiar acidic taste flood his mouth… Even as he settled on the bed's edge and flipped open the kit. The contents were relatively good quality, nothing expired, so he slid that into the packs. Then he dragged the nearest box over, ripping it open, and began to paw through it for what goods it held. Frivolities, report cards, an attendance award declaring a "perfect score" for someone named Moon.
So clearly this was "Moon's" room. Not quite as bad as "Red" or "Blue" would have been, but a bit unsettling all the same. And disheartening. Didn't parents know how to name their children?
Giovanni slid the papers away and dug deeper. Something had rattled metallically at the box's bottom and hopefully, that'd be of some use. Or value. He'd settle for a black market deal to get cash for some of this junk in a heartbeat.
Swallowing the thick taste of terror, Giovanni pulled out a pile of foulders. Identification, birth certificates, he wasn't fussy at this point and found more academic records for his trouble. The type a child might hoard to brag about.
Terror had become a near companion in the following years. He’d ripped Kanto to the bedrock looking for Silver, and then he'd buried the fear. Rage that had taken hold in grief’s place. He'd shifted, from living in terror to becoming a terror. Setting first Kanto, then Johto’s, criminal worlds under his boot. He'd made an organization to raze the regions to the ground at his command, and while he hadn't he'd applied pressure were needful. The economy and powers that be were pinned and penned playing an over-glorified game of cops and robbers while he used the bedlam to sift through data and legends.
He'd twist impossibility to his own needs. Warnings, and morals be hung. He’d been damned losing his son, and his agony was such all would share in it.
And they had, whole countries. For years and years. And only by chance he’d stumbled upon his child. He’d got Silver back, only to be repudiated for being "evil".
Really, between Celebi and Oak it would be a trial to figure who he needed to get rid of first. Both had done near irreparable harm with their mind games.
Hands shaking, having not read a lick, Giovanni shook his head, lips peeling back in a snarl.
"If I stop blinking for thirty seconds. Pull my hair. Repeat until I tell you to stop."
A chirp and wiggle affirmed he'd be obeyed.
Hoeen, this boy had come from Hoeen. The dogged academic records were part of an exchange program of some sort. He'd torn through "Moon's" portfolio to find a cover letter explaining the process. The documentation was needed to apply for a gym leader sponsorship program...
Save there was something about Kakunas instead of Leaders. Probably some mistake from the Legends misunderstanding, though the mental tangent of oversized cacoons running gyms set his lips to quirk. Shaking his head, amused, amusement fell to swearing as Weedle decided it'd been thirty seconds give or take, and pulled hard, The Rocket glared at his bug attachment.
"Pull my hair out again and you're getting a bath."
The find was intriguing but not what he needed. Pulling the rest of the papers out he laid them on the floor and under... there was a catch of batteries, wires, and a phone. He dug the latter out and its charging wire, and found the thing at fifteen percent.
Leaving it to charge Giovanni went back through the papers, hunting for Moon's trainer's license, regional ID, or medical records. Any of the three would grant him access to this region's pokemon centers, something he would need considering his present partner's unevolved state.
It felt... beyond odd... not to feel stubble as he ran a finger under his chin as he read. Tracing the lines of his face confirmed what the mirror had shown, the frown lines and scars that'd marked his face had been smoothed by Celebi's.. healing. And while he hadn't lingered too long in the bathroom... he was positive that the white about his temples that'd been steadily growing in had been erased as well.
Sorting the wires into piles, immediately useful and not, he found a few other technological odds and ends. An old MP3 player, some educational geared games for a tablet... A broken tablet. The latter he tossed back into the box with its "games", the former he put into the backpack. It wasn't so old as to be worthless, at least worth fifty bucks, so it'd come along.
He wondered as he pulled another box, ripping it open if Silver had been enamored with such frivolous tech. He'd watched and rewatched his child from what surveillance cameras he could. Rewinding the footage from the Rocket bases. The tournaments from the Kanto and Johto League were a wellspring of data as Silver had to frequent those institutions to keep his team, legally.
Even while his health had failed Giovanni had never been without information on his son's whereabouts. It'd been an evening ritual to watch whatever gym leader event or badge battle his son had gotten involved in before seeking slumber.
He found himself missing the updates even as he worked, a world away.
The last box gave with a little struggle, and within, he found clothes. Gaudy, SeaFoam island style, with floral patterns, printed on leis, and neon-bright colors. Such was the first impression of Moon's style. Digging deeper found that first impression going downhill, fast.
Deciding Moon was either color blind, or possessed of cruel relations who were draconic in picking the child's clothing, he worked on a shirt that wouldn't cause instant blindness if he spied it via a reflective surface. Sifting through the clothes, wincing at everything that might fit, he tried a few shirts, fought with a few pants, and found all the socks and underwear wouldn't fit in the slightest. Packing some of the less eye-searing pieces in his catch. Most were either too big or too small, but there was enough give they could work.
So they'd do.
Small teeth tugged on his hair, despite him being aware and Giovanni stiffened at the tug. Tipping his stinger, towards the door Weedle quivered in a silent warning, then crawling a path behind his trainer's neck scaled up to his head and burrowed among his hair. A tap on the door frame, a woman's voice, awake and clearly not asleep any longer, sounded.
"Moon, sweetheart, is everything alright? Your lights on."
To his silence, the doorknob rattled as it was twiddled under nervous fingers. After a moment the woman spoke again, dropping the questioning note in her voice.
"I'm coming in."
Near buzzed on the rush of relief-
This woman wasn't the Madam. He was safe from that horror.
Sheer relief made Giovanni's mind blank, and the moment to say something came and went. The door was pushed open, pushing some brick-a-brack aside, and the woman who'd spoken entered.
She was a pretty thing. A bit younger than his actual age, dark skin near warm coca in hue, with beautiful black eyes. A hastily tossed on sundress rustled about her as she came in. Her hair was coiled about her head like a crown, styling slack, but considering the hour that was more than understandable.
And when she looked at him, sitting ringed round by the scattered remnants of boxes and packing... She didn't quite meet his eyes. Looking a bit too low and to the left. Still, she smiled despite the mess, tone patiently unbelieving.
"Moon it is three in the morning. Arceus, I know you're eager to get started on your journey but it's too early. Go. To .Bed."
Her regard was familiar like he was the centerpiece of her world. And it was a curious thing to be the focus of such regard.
Weedle's stinger tail tapped against Giovanni's skull in anticipation. A head tip would end in the bug attempting a flying tackle and poisoning. He stared at this woman and her misplaced affection, not quite believing it was real.
Still, he'd act as it were, see where playing along got him.
His apology was accepted, hook, line, and sinker. And just speaking to her drew attention to how he obviously wasn't hers. From their differing looks to his thick accent. Strained and exhausted, Giovanni didn't bother with the usual effort of muffling how he spoke to better blend in and she didn't bat an eyelash for it. She wasn't Kalosian, or from Johto, or Kanto, she didn't talk right. And she was by no means Italiano, and yet in her mind, he was hers.
"I'll turn in, and pick this up in the morning." He promised, and she, a simple thing, smiled and nodded. Leaving him to his devices.
He waited until she was gone until he was sure her door was closed. Then gave her five minutes more. A chirp, a nudge, from the top of his head as Weedle worried, but he wasn't lost in his head, just deciding.
And the decision made he tipped his head back and Weedle rose with a squirm.
"Lock that." He ordered, gesturing to the door, sweeping the last of his goods up he slung the backpack over his shoulder, and though standing hurt he'd done so. And if he could stand, he could walk. And would as far as need be. "We're done here."
Once gone he’d figure out what he could, get Silver, then get them the hell out of this… pretend never Neverland.
He’d expected these divinely dictated "trials" of his "healing" to be pulled from the anals of old mythologies. A mix-match of torments cobbled together to impossible tasks. And there was a punishment slant to this moment. His mind, half-awake, felt poked and prodded, and while a pain it wasn't agony. The sensation was comparable to something was burrowing in his head, and since fighting back, or trying to, made the pain worse...
He didn't.
And after a frisson of shock not his own set his spine to tingle, the presence in his head shifted attention from battle to sifting through memories. Egotist that it was the psychic intrusion meandered along the thoughts related to recall and Legends. The results were a melding of Mythology 101 and the tales of his life, sloppily stitched together to form a borderline incoherent whole.
Once upon a time... gentler tales started such, this one being the uncensored grimoire of ancient times, there was no such gentling.
So it began;
In ancient times there'd been a madman who declared himself the emperor of Kalos. To prove might and madness both he'd wrangled with a pyroar while aflame in some tribute or other to gain the boon of a pelt that'd gift him immortality in battle.
The Legend's held their word, the man had earned the hide, and it was blessed, and bloodstained, as all old-time giftings of the Legends were back in those days.
In modern times, a near-decade ago Giovanni'd revisited the story and added his own embellishments.
The Hide Armor of the Unnamed Tyrant had been Team Rocket's first breakthrough.
True, indisputable, confirmation of the Legend's existence that wasn't hearsay or his own sighting.
Giovanni's personal bit of hearsay, his viewing of a Legend, had been a thing of utter desperation. His "encounter" had started when he'd been woken by the sound of shattering glass. Shaking off sleep he'd raced down the hall, throwing open his son's bedroom door to see golden talons of a gigantic bird had plowed through the forced opening of a broken window. The avian was rooting through the room, and it'd been madness as the lights were trying to die and the bird's wing strokes were part thunder, part smoldering. The very air sizzled and steamed as rain met a "god" of fire and the resulting steam had been like stepping into a nightmarish sauna.
The walls burned on the outside. Never truly catching as it was a hellish downpour of hail and rain outside. The beast hung half on half off the outer wall of the building for support, embers rained from the things every wingstroke as it fought for balance and reaching all at once.
Giovanni had frozen before the sight of that monstrosity. Not believing. But belief fell to facts. Heart hammering, he realized the angle of the reaching limb, the slant of the gouges in the floor, all pointed towards his son's bed and it'd only been chance the talons hadn't connected, sharp or grip. Swearing, Giovanni lunged, intent on snapping up his boy and bolting.
The basement's panic room... He could make it in less than five at a dead run, he just needed this one thing to go right...
Of course, it hadn't.
The bird, all sunlight and malice, had seen, heard, and it twisted about to better see him in turn.
And the Legend's regard was a pressure akin to boulders slammed against his back. No mere man could stand against it. And he hadn't. Struck down to his knees by a glare, near senseless from the bird's attention, Giovanni couldn't see. Wasn't permitted to even stand, and so at his Legends feet, in the ruins of his son's room, he'd been forced to assume a pose that the ignorant would take as prayerful.
If he couldn't stand, so he wouldn't, he crawled. Calling assurances to the sobbing, fear paralyzed child, he was here, he was coming... The smoldering carpets, the blindness that made him travel by touch and memory were of no moment...
He just needed one more moment, and the "gods" did not grant him even that.
A warble of victory from above, as claws found their target and gripped.
His boy's scream would haunt him as he was dragged up and away. Waking and sleeping, for years and years. p
Picking up the pelt for the first time, that ultimate proof of a Legend's death, he heard those screams again, echoing in his memory, and if he wasted a day or so imagining it with sun-hued feathers in steed of golden fur, snapped talons and beak shavings serving as bindings instead of whatever claws had been threaded through the thing...
That was his business.
As for the Hide, acquiring it was wholly business.
Passed from original owners next of kin to be owned by a collector of the bizarre. It'd been child's play to divest the man of his find and his life, and for a while, Giovanni Sakaki had owned the armor of Kalos's sole emperor. It was near indestructible as many tests with modern weapons had proved. Resisting fire and bludgeoning and electricity by twisting the heat and force of any attack away from the cloth. The immaterial forces of psychic-type attacks had passed through it like mist, and the keenest minds sharpened by sadism had been unable to even wrinkle the material...
As for what it was... it was utterly worthless, despite being an assurance that Legends could die. It'd been crafted for one man and resisted the touch of any other. He'd seen video footage of it unclasping and sliding off of any who tried to put on. And while it arrested the force of any attack directed at it... the deflection was inherently flawed. The fabric would be undamaged, its hairs unruffled... but estimates, backed by tests where it had been pinned to mannequins with a passing nod to human build, guaranteed that come the first projectile, the first elemental attack from any 'mon...
Well, the feet of the wearer would be the first thing to go.
Further tests, and the inability to get a sample by any means to find out what beast had sacrificed its skin to make the flawed archaic armor, had affirmed the relics' worth. Needles, tweezers, scissors, even cotton swabs, could garner nothing. No DNA, or hairs, or dust for dating. Even water immersion had failed, the thing mirroring old religious legends by parting the water in the tub it'd been cast into and making a mess of one test room floor.
So the relic had ended as it'd started. A mystery. But not a worthless one. Team Rocket had made a fortune selling the damned thing on a black market. Another collector of the bizarre without any quibbles about the law had taken the golden hide...
And if that man had been later killed, his bank accounts emptied, his property looted for bits and bobs of other Legends... Well, Team Rocket was at its heart a criminal enterprise.
And so, all accidental, this hodgepodge of history and legend got its very own moral.
Caveat Emptor.
As for the incidentals... The Emperor of the tale had been a would-be dictator whose reign was so short he'd not gotten his name into the history books. He'd lasted mere minutes after gaining his divine gift, not even living long enough to crawl to the battlefield to learn the limitations of the pelt. The burns of his trial had carried him off to an inglorious death via medical complications well beyond his time, and thus a legend had been born from the stripped and blessed hide of a Legend, the tale's conclusion an inglorious one for Beast and Emperor both.
It was a fitting story, a fitting moral, both dovetailed beautifully into the madness the Boss of Team Rocket found himself embroiled in now.
The scorn of that thought allowed him to connect mind to body in the form of a reaction. He huffed his amusement.
And that was the end of his detachment.
One blink and his sight cleared in stages. The bland view of dark and square resolved into a ceiling of some sorts, save it was too dark to discern color because it was literally too dark to see much of anything... Giovanni tried to get a better view. To sit up. But the motion went all wrong and got him nothing save a weak jolt through his frame.
He tried smaller motions, then.
Wiggling toes and fingers, taking heart from those small motions he worked his way up to rolling over and exchanged one view of square and blankness for another. The only difference between the room's far wall and its ceiling was the shut and shuttered window on the far wall. There was no furniture save the bed he lay on so therefore there was nothing to tell him where he was.
And while a lesser man might be furious, if not stymied, Giovanni was familiar with this forum of helplessness. The joys of limited mobility in the morning were not new. And it was a mercy that he was not bound by wires, or that he had to make his shaking hands work off a breathing mask and tubing before he could do anything else.
Comparing the last few weeks of his life to now... This moment was near heaven.
Straining his ears Giovanni listened while he regrouped his energy. It was curious that now, that he was turned on his side, he could hear the sounds of wind, the muffled crash of sand and surf. And that was a curiosity as much as this baren room. Sound, while not omnipresent, wasn't so selective as to work like this. Letting his eyes roam away from the window killed the sound as if it were a tv and his attention was the mute button. Looking at the window dead on made the noise return, continued regard made it intensify to near headache inspiring levels.
Closing his eyes made the sound dim, and he did so to better trace a mental path over maps and routes of Johto and Kanto both. If his memory wasn't failing him... or compromised.... there'd been no beach for nearly a hundred miles in any direction from Illex.
So, he wasn't where he'd started, and considering what had happened before waking up this likely was his "trial" then.
He'd expected to be in agony, ringed round with brimstone, irritate Legends poking and prodding him with talons and fangs, at the very least.
This room, he mused, rolling back onto his back to better stare at a blank vista that wouldn't give him a headache, was a bit of a letdown in comparison.
Time passed, he wasn't sure how long, but in that span of stillness and silence Giovanni tallied facts to facets.
He wasn't burning, or burned, or rotting, or puking blood, or drowning in air. He also wasn't totally alone. The soft sheets that'd been tossed over him told that tale, and as he gripped at the fabric to better push it out of the way he strained his ears. When there were no tells, the quiet breathing of another, footfalls, Giovanni was satisfied his solitude would hold. Once he'd managed to sit up without falling out of the bed or flat on his face, he considered his next steps.
This fey exhaustion was familiar, akin to the Pressure of a hateful Legend. Having infuriated many of those the Rocket Boss was confident he'd find a workaround. Until then there was little to do besides gather what strength he could and struggle to stay awake.
The latter wasn't as hard as it'd seem. A creeping sense of something wrong gnawed at him. He only pushed aside the impulse to poke and pry at his memories by the minuscule tug on the sheets, as something small gripped and caused the sheets to go taunt on the bed's far edge in an effort to climb up.
In his childhood long gone it'd be Persian, awake now that he was awake and wanting scritches for the reward of being observant. She'd loom over him in his youngest days, mewling and yowling for attention even as he gave it to her. At the beginning of their... partnership... her head had been big enough to fit in both his hands. His fingertips lost in her silky fur, he swore and ran them over her favored stroking spots. This was the "last time" he'd vowed he'd "just been going to the bathroom, he should not have to snuggle his cat into submission after doing something so pedestrian as having to go". She'd purr then, scrunching her eyes into near-invisibility as he got the span over her shoulders just right...
And like with awakening and the tale that'd bound him until he'd completed it, the nostalgia felt like a weight, the reminiscence required to be finished before he could speak.
"Persian?"
A chitter, definitely not his cat, answered, as was a thud as whatever it was fell from its perch of "nearly up" to the floor below.
Giovanni blanched for when he spoke what had come out of his mouth wasn't his voice, or rather wasn't as it had been just this afternoon. Higher pitched, not quite pre-adolescent, and definitely not his familiar, commanding baritone he'd wielded almost all his life.
He sounded like a child... and that realization was like a curtain pulled back in his head, and all the memories of before, not just his near dying, came roaring back.
He swore, and damn the Legends and their inflicted weakness he clawed at the wall and bed frame until he was standing, stooped, but up. A frantic look about the room affirmed Silver wasn't there. The only things that'd he'd missed for not being up were a pile of boxes beside a door and the door which was the only way in or out.
Paternal impulse wrestled with exhaustion, the twinges of aching muscles and Legend inflicted fatigue warned him he should rest. The bed was temptation incarnate, he could sit on the edge, rest his eyes...
But the Boss of Team Rocket was a master of temptation, in inflicting and driving others to fall to their pet vices while mastering his own. Giovanni pushing the thought of rest out of his head. He'd rest once assured Silver was well, and not a moment before.
Hobbling like a man many years his senior Giovanni staggered to the door, straightening in stages. The doorknob turned under his hand with no resistance and he nudged his way into the hall. A chittered squeal from behind stopped him from closing the door behind him. The Rocket turned, watched, braced on the door frame, as a weedle bunched its way across the bed towards him. The creature's myopic eyes were wide in wild shock.
Giovanni Sakaki stared at the beast, even as, with a whine, it reared and waved its suckers at him so madly it knocked itself over with a soft cry.
"Beedril?"
The weedle screamed at him, near Screeching, small limbs twisting it from prone to standing once more in a blink. Trainer and 'mon stared at each other, and after a long moment, and a swallow, Giovanni limped back into the room. Not daring to kneel, he'd not be able to get back up if he did, Giovanni stretched his arm out in an old invitation. Understanding the bug scrunched, poison-tipped tail wagging in an old tell, before uncoiling and pulling a small hop from bed to the trainer's wrist.
When the suckers sunk in, and the bug tightened his small limbs on his trainer's arm, scaling higher... Well, this odd local and missing son were not all the surprises that were in store for the Rocket Boss it seemed. Sensations flooded the Rocket's mind as the long-neglected Gift of the Forest flared to life in the back of his head. He felt the insect's anger and pain, the utter humiliation of having lost what he'd fought to earn, and an old instinctual fear of a world gone too big too fast.
And under that, soul-deep was the brittle sharp and venom seeped rage all poison types could harbor in the right circumstances. A deep need as true as a heartbeat to tear and rend and sully the bastard that'd done this to them.
To feel his poison warp and rend the leafy bastard's photosynthesizing hide...
Having scaled wrist, up arm, to shoulder, each step leaving a snippet of a 'monicidal fantasy in his trainer's mind, Weedle glared about him from his new perch, quivering. The urge to kill and maim roiling off the bug like a Sweet Scent, and to that, Giovanni tipped his lips up in a tight smile.
"Sooner rather than later," Giovanni rasped, curious how his voice could sound young even as emotion not wholly his own, warped it so hard it near crackled. "But not now," Promise complete he ran a digit over the bug's hairy back. "More importantly. Have you seen Silver?"
With a chur the bug reared, running its frame about Giovanni's cheek, and though seeming affection the proximity kicked a slew of memories, some his, some the bug's, and melded them together in his head.
The frantic battle, last moments.
Nidoking being thrown aside by a psychic blast, Persian forced to slumber mid-swing, the black essence of a night slash dimming until natural light alighted her claws, as slumber dragged her down. At that moment they’d lost their main front fighters, and Giovanni's efforts, to recall his beasts were met with failure as they'd been "freed" before the conflicts start and the old tech meant to pull them out of danger failed per the Legend's meddling.
Silver’s Ursaring had been pulled away, wrangling with beasts more smoke than substance, swinging wild paw strokes to keep the twin avians from were approaching. The bear, seeing slashes weren't working, swapped to spitting hyper beams. Taking its last stand between its two masters, the Rocket and the boy who'd been its original trainer. Roaring, the brown hairy beast was charring the earth about it with the excess heat of each attack but the light show had made the birds pull back.
Rescue failed, Giovanni accepted Persian and 'King as losses as he gathered the last of his flagging strength to snag at Silver's shirt and drag the boy back.
Celebi's next psychic blast missed the target and the ground Silver likely would have been occupied crunched and crumpled as if it were paper being set upon by a giant, invisible fist.
The shock of nearly dying set the boy to go... well not limp, but platable. And he followed Giovanni's shove towards the tree line, it seemed miles away but once they hit it the Legends would have a harder time hitting their targets, and once five steps out of the clearing all tech would function.
The Rocket'd call for extraction, and he'd see how the stolen Kantoian military tech did when pitted against a Legend. Any of the Legends dare they try to pursue.
Above, his boy’s Murkrow was wheeling, trailing spite, and spitting dark bolts. Such was the essence of Nightshade that flew from the avian that was trying to offer what protective cover it could. Beedrill darted about the black bird, tossing poisoned needles and swiped at anything that dared float too close.
A shame Celebi wasn't a complete fool. The creature's double team melded with a substitute made a small swarm of look-alikes that could take some damage. and the grassy Legend had set a swarm of them to fly to keep the tamed 'mon up high from pulling an aerial rescue
Both flyers were slowing, a clear sign of exhaustion. They weren't falling from the sky but Giovanni had Beedril’s pokeball in hand just in case. He spared what attention he could from verbally herding Rhydon about the field to keep tabs on the flyers. The earth type’s contribution to the combat was to rip up trees and boulders and hurl them at whatever Legendary he could. He also kept a chain of earthquakes going, all to keep the Legends off the ground. Thus not closing in on the humans below and ending things prematurely.
The effect of the continual earthquake made for a stagger-laden run for the tree line, still it wasn't utterly unfamiliar and Giovanni was able to keep his feet more often than not. Silver though fell and scrambled like a drunkard, and Giovanni's slow pace was hampered further in having to help the boy up more than once.
Celebi, with a twitch of a hand, warped a projectile's trajectory to avoid getting pelted in the face by some fixture of its clearing. The first time the Legend had done so Silver had to grab Giovanni and throw them both aside to avoid being crushed by a stone bigger than the both of them put together. The second, a tree, had sailed beyond sight, throwing its shade over the humans trying to get to standing and running again as it sailed well beyond the clearing's bounds. Another... and Legend or not the thing had damned bad aim... had Sneasel hopping over a boulder screeching insults. Not understanding ricochet, the dark type had hissed, flicked her head feathers back, and tossed a snowball at Rhydon who was digging out another boulder for throwing. Celebi's holy pool was a muddy morass at the ground types clawed feet.
"Behind you!" Silver screamed. And that'd been enough to stop a feud in the making. The dark type had twisted about to ice beam another damned Celebi look alike. Another toss, another miss, and a boulder was deflected into some small floating... thing... that managed a squeaky toy sounding scream at impact.
Silver, hellishly young, took moment in the madness to huff out a laugh, then the boy scrambled back. Near knocking Giovanni over. Their route to out was cut off by the searing heat of sunlight channeled into a killing force. Foliage rose from where the beam had cut, alongside smoke, and rising from the charr was a living wall of plants that grew out of the earth so violently the soil crackled, pebbles snapping like dry twigs, and anything under that light would have burned and smothered under flora all at once.
Shooting his last bullet, making Celebi shimmer away into whatever void teleporters traveled to avoid taking a hit, Giovanni barked for another earthquake and Rhydon obeyed. Arms slung over his son's shoulders, half being supported, half leading, the Rocket shoved them away from the now slumped wall of floral matter.
Celebi was a grass type getting too close to that much plant matter was asking to be killed.
The burning in the Rocket's lungs was starting to peak, and after a few meandering steps, Giovanni's legs buckled. Kneeling, panting, he managed to shove Silver enough that the boy wasn't taken down when he fell, and the boy looked back at him, namesake eyes wide and shimmering. Ripping his phone from his belt Giovanni tossed it to the boy, who was skilled enough to catch it, no fumbling. And despite himself, Giovanni cracked a small bloody smile.
"Get to the edge, hit the red butting once it lights up," He rasped, throat tightening, he managed to force out the last few words. It wasn't perfect, but would be enough, "Code: E.L. Lock, priority one."
A nod, and the boy, his boy, turned about, ready to run. But things weren't going to go to plan.
Despite its docile appearance Celebi was a hellish advisory, and his Son was too much like his father in one way. When the Legend shimmered into existence, blocking the path with green flames, Silver refused to simply run about the new obstacle. Taking up a knife he'd slashed at the Legend, and took two fingers in one strike.
Considering one of the Tao Duo had had to withdraw to heal shot-out fangs, Giovanni technically shouldn’t be complaining. But having to bark at Silver to pull back, to run around, because the boy got too hyper-focused on getting a hit in…
Well if he lived through this Giovanni was going to make the Mask of Ice pay for all his "training" he'd inflicted on Silver.
Leafy face twisting in spite, the creature floated back, dispelling pseudo twins to focus better on regenerating its fingers. Silver’s replying smile to the Legend's glare was tight and bitter, he set his knife, perhaps to throw, but the intercepting sweep of a feathered forelimb of one of the Tao Duo stilled the attempt.
Swearing, Silver scrabbled back from the bird of an alien region, face going pale as old phobias reared to life in his head.
More to spite the bastard than anything else, Giovanni threw a pokeball. And while the catch was obviously not going to hold, it interrupted the floating Sylvain creature. The Legend reappeared in a flash of red light, at the tech's failure, but the unspoken threat of capture stilled all the other Legendaries from approaching. Silver, scrambling along the battlefield, took the reprieve with both hands.
The boy snapped up Sneasal, who was tossing up ice walls between his trainer the other bird of the Tao Duo in a desperate attempt to make it go away.
A squawk at the meager defense, a flash of light, and the first wall buckled, absorbing the hit. A second scream, that made the air about the legend go violet, and the wall came down, all the walls, and like many a grandiose psychic there was that moment, where everything held perfectly still when it shouldn't have. The shattered ice, the crackling power that'd broken it wrapped about the shrapnel in the making, and the air hummed as supernatural energies built.
Not wanting to die like that, much less risk his son being mutilated in the downpour, Giovanni snapped his fingers, called on Rhydon. The earthen beast slammed his paws into the earth and a rock tomb snapped into being before both trainers. A cry from above, an aborted squawk warned of one of the fliers going down. Silver poked about the impromptu shield to recall his bird, then Sneasel, ever the wiser of the pair, hooked icy claws into her trainer's coat and dragged them both behind the earthen barrier.
And for a time there was nothing but a whiteout, as psychic mixed with ice and made an ice storm of a failed attack.
Alone, and one of the last pokemon standing, Beedrill swirled about the ruination of Illex's holiest clearing. It'd been warped near unrecognizable by the violence enacted on it. Trapped in an artificial winter, ripped up by malice, and slathered with poison, and amongst the destruction was a legion of enemies. Unable to see any friendly trainer, Beedril panicked. Triggering its own mega-evolution, its altered limbs became a swirling blur, splaying the clearing and enemies in sheets of poison and acid.
But none of them were real, they only faded into sunlight after taking the lightest of taps.
Still, Beedril tried, might and main, to grab Celebi with its stingers and malice and kill the abomination that'd lied to its trainer.
Staggering from the sanctuary of ice sheathed stone, eyes going to the sky, he listened. To the sound of running feet. Silver was running, and that would have to do. All Giovanni could do was offer distraction, buy time, so he did. Squinting up and seeing the familiar flicker of displaced space and time, ever a precursor of teleportation, the Rocket snarled.
“Beedrill, at your six o clock, poison jab!”
It was enough, and ironically the master of time did not counter an order steeped in the terms of Its own domain. The creature shuddered as the stabbing limbs struck home, leaves about the point of impact curling and browning as the poison took hold. The following order to use Venoshock, to stab another venom, one that would escalate the poisoning from agony to agonizing death, did not need to be said. Sliding his stinger out, Beedrill buzzed in hate, more than content to make a kill and kill everything and every one its trainer asked it to.
It was of course then that the birds of another region shook off their fear of being caught. Perhaps it was seeing the tech fail in containing their peer, regardless of reason's they descended. Twin personifications of forces that Giovanni had found impractical and thus had dismissed, the Rocket knew little more than their names and that they weren't native to either Johto or Kanto. Their misplaced physical presence was enough to still any retreat, or rescue, however.
Silver’s horror of them was a mix of old fears and new, the realization of just how deep these water were in was settling in to roost as the smokey talons and wings herded him from clearing's edge to the center.
Giovanni, knowing how this was going to go, called out, and Rhydon, ever loyal, shook off a coat of hoarfrost and responded. Sweeping in low and fast, clawed foot leading, Rhydon's attack was like a miniature avalanche hitting home. One of the avian behemoths staggered under the sweeping kick to its ankle, having to twist about to better balance. A jumped high kick, a feat done more from the strength of Rhydon's tail than his stubby, stony, limbs, slammed onto where the avian's privates would be if the beast were possessed of such. The Legend responded as any base creature might, folding near double with a warbled squawk, and one mega punch up caused the bird's smokey beak to click together and its eyes to roll back.
The surprise attack was enough to jar Silver out of his stupor, and he got back to running. But he was not fast enough. Granted, there wasn’t a “fast enough” when a creature that harnessed time was their antagonist. The world turned sepia, color bleaching towards near tan but never quite touching the hue, then everything stopped.
Flexing regrown hand, shaking off a few droplets of green blood in irritation Celebi shimmered into existence before the Rocket, and Silver, and all the rebellious lesser 'mon that'd stood against it.
And it seethed.
Its aura was a gold akin to the sun’s light, but there was a stain of artifice to the lot because the sun was Ho-Oh's and that bird was not one to share. The leafy creature hung suspended upon the air of a misplaced moment and its frustration made this corner of suspended animation shake from its wraith.
Dying he might be, but Giovanni Sakaki was not a man to be cowed. Even by apocalyptic shows of power. And this one, that was leveled against a captive audience, more wounded and comatose than awake and aware, was pathetic.
He’d spat such at the things feet when the Legend had demanded his gratitude, his adoration, and pleas for clemency. He’d not bow to a thing that with a few more moments and a bit more luck he would have had under his control.
Giovanni's only regret was in doing this was that he’d dragged Silver into this mess. And as artificial sun spiked in brightness, stealing sight via a deluge of light and the world faded away, Giovanni Sakaki resolved in the silences of his own mind that he’d live long enough to get his son out of this.
Clearly, this mental... scatteredness and forgetfulness was meant to counter such resolve. He'd have to find a way to reward Celebi for its audacity at a later time... But for now, he tipped his head, allowing Weedle to twine his suckers around his neck. A wiggle and Weedle lay against the curl of a collar bone snuggled a pulse point with a soft chirrup. The contact helped ground Giovanni in the moment, pushing back all the worthless reminisce and tales in his head so he could function.
Once sure the creature was secure the Rocket straightened and staggered out of the room and into the hall. Cursing the Legends with each step because each step hurt like hell.
To spite the pain he did a sweep of each room he found.
A small meowth joined him in his nocturnal wanderings, following him about a kitchen by the front of this... house... he supposed it was. A glance outside showed palm trees and sand and the sky, pitch black and cloudless and moonless, affirmed it was either very late or stupid early and little else beyond that.
Unlike the window near where he'd woke he could not hear the surf no matter how hard he stared out, and he leaned against the door, looking at the path leading out into the dark. There was a beach, just barely visible in the distance, but seeing was not hearing, and Giovanni turned away from the distant shore after a cursory sweep of the front affirmed there were no footprints.
Deciding he wasn't quite done with searching the house yet, at least not until he had supplies, preferably a working wardrobe, he closed the door behind him and went back in.
A pushy nudge and soft murr broke into Giovanni's attention as he combed through cabinets and drawers. Weedle arched against his cheek, oozing irritation at their tag along and bemused the Rocket studied the feline as it capered about his ankles. The thing was too small and too quiet to be his Persian unevolved. And per the slant of whiskers and angle of its hips, it was obviously male. It was unbelievably stupid as well. One gesture, as if going to open the kitchen's fridge, had gotten the thing distracted, and it'd been child's play to pull an empty pokeball, labeled "K. MewMew", off its hook on the wall and encapsulate the quiet cat with a flick of his wrist.
Distraction done, and discarded, he set the 'mon's pokeball besides its beloved fridge to be found by whoever else was here, Giovanni got back to work. Having tackled all the rooms, he expanded his search from "Silver" to "anyway to get information". There were no computers, no televisions, no periodicals. Only marked boxes and shrouded furniture that once unveiled was reviled to be rattan and aged but not so far gone as to be grungy. The layout of boxes and the like told a tale of someone having just moved here.
Him... and whoever else was meant to be here? The owner of the cat that wasn't his cat? There were precious few hints so he could only assume and the assumptions left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Expanding his search from "information" to "carriable valuables" Giovanni searched the whole place from top to bottom. Working his way from front to back, and only skipping the room closest to his own. The sounds beyond it, of soft breathing, and murmurs of a woman's voice clearly speaking while she dreamed, assured him it wasn't Silver behind that door.
And that would do for now. He was not willing to risk a confrontation with the house's owner with only Weedle to back him up.
Not having the means to carry much he made a pile in the room he started in. And though tacky and a rookie's move he decided to hang professional pride and dig through a woman's purse. Within, the IDs were curiously smeared under the lamination, pictures, and text illegally illegible. The cash though was familiar, so the money joined the pile that'd consisted of over-the-counter pain medicine, a knife, water bottles flitched from a box of dishes, and a few clean soft towels. Setting the purse, superficially, to rights, Giovanni poked and prodded through the few other rooms. A backpack, too large and sturdy to be anything save meant for hard travel, had been a windfall and found by accident. Curiously, despite being made for serious use the backpack had been stuffed to near bursting with childish things. He hauled it into the bedroom he'd started in, dumping everything and shoveling the deluge of stuffies to the floor he began to pack what he'd stollen thus far.
There'd been one room, another oddity as off as the window of the bedroom, that troubled him.
It should have been a closet. The shape and size seemed right for that assumption, but pushing the sliding door open and stepping in had found that his eyes had deceived him.
While small it had the prerequisite things to be a bathroom. The decorations were in a similar style as the living room and kitchen, rattan to the point of being ratty. The base staples of the room were ripped straight out recall. They were from the last hotel he'd been in while setting up the final steps for overtaking Azalea Town on the sly.
A flick of a switch and the fluorescent lights kicked in and he'd looked over the familiar furnishings with a quirk to his lips. Weedle hissed at something and expecting... enemies, and attack perhaps, Giovanni followed the bug's head stinger to see... A mirror, his reflection.
And for the longest moment, Giovanni did nothing. While Weedle chirred bloody murder at himself Giovanni took in the features of a face he only recalled vaguely and had seen in pictures less than a handful of times.
The image before him was taken from well before the time he’d been the focus of the media for his philanthropic front. Before the forced studio shoots that were part and parcel of owning a gym.
Reaching out, Giovanni brushed his fingers over the mirror, it was cold, near icy, and an exploratory tap set the echoes of impact up his fingers and made the glass ripple like water.
Like the room, like the window... everything was wrong, subtly, awfully, wrong.
Nestled against his pulse, Weedle shivered, understanding soul-deep the wrongness of everything about him. Reaching down, Giovani twisted the tap, and after a moment, as if the plumbing were trying to contemplate its own purpose only to recall that it was to run… it ran. But reaching down, pulling the door of the cabinet under the sink back, a glance down confirmed another oddity and reaffirmed his fears.
There were no pipes.
This place, despite seeming realness, was somehow divorced from reality, an utter facsimile then. Giovanni closed the doors after pulling out a first aid kit from a place where pipes should have been, setting the find on the sink's edge he considered water, and reflection, and indulged a bit of vanity.
Smoothing back his hair, wrangling a cowlick over his left ear since his hair was too long and it just grew out like that... The habits of late adolescence came to him without a thought and he indulged them while mulled. A lifetime ago, decades ago, he’d wanted to mimic the rebels of his time. It'd been a hellish year of wrangling with tangles and having to do so much to keep it styled as he’d been cursed with genes that kept his hair straight and would permit nothing else unless he’d slathered his head in hair products.
Except for that damned cowlick.
The sheer inconvenience now would have been enough to get him to the barber post haste. He'd kept his hair religiously short, learning how to tend it on his own mainly because most barbers couldn't get it right. Back then he'd been made of stupider stuff. Holding out a year and a half before deciding enough was enough.
The looming horror of having that cowlick on his identification, mainly his drives license, had been enough to drive him to the barbers.
As for now... Well, there wasn't one, or a razor, and he wasn't going to use the purloined knife for something that'd leave scalds of evidence behind. So water and fingers made for a crude styling. And it stayed, somewhat, with Weedle only a bit damp at efforts end.
At the shrilled complaint against his ear, Giovanni grimaced, and it wasn’t perfect, but he could glare at the reflection hard enough that Weedle would feel it.
In theory.
“You could easily have climbed down.” The Rocket drawled. Then killing water hunted about. He sullied one towel in drying, wiping the excess of water off of the bug type, and then tossing the towel into a basket by the door. Hopefully, it was there for clothes pick up, but if it wasn’t… Well, it wasn’t his problem.
God above, he was eighteen again. On second thought, the Rocket conceded with a grimace, considering his hairstyle, he was likely seventeen since he’d gotten himself to a saner hair length mere days before he’d gotten his driver's license at eighteen. Giovanni had decided simple and tenable was preferred to the rebel look and had lopped almost all of his hair off in a fit of last-minute introspection.
He looked... like a kid. Worse, with Weedle about his neck, the bug type like a bit of misplaced jewelry, the poison point adding a more modern punk slant to the look, the Rocket recognized the style. Borderline grunge groupie, a stereotypical rebellious rocker. All he had to do would be saddled with oversized pants the youth of Kanto adored and he'd be set. A shirt wasn't even necessary nowadays.
Disgust, and memories of so many bad choices, minor annoyances in the greater scope but still… The things he’d done and worn flashed behind his eyes and he recoiled in mental horror at the mere recollection of... everything.
Face burning, Giovanni shook his head. Mentally shoving the misplaced mortification back in his head. It was insane that even though the psychic type had got so many basic things wrong, Celebi could still capture, and inflict, adolescent mortification on a man well beyond such foolishness.
But, here and now, he wasn't an adult…
There was a horror to that. A muffled fear. He wasn’t an adult, and there were assumptions found in that.
That his family, his famiglia... might be alive and well... That... was a thing of his childhood nightmares come to life. Wrestling the instinctual fear down Giovanni dimmed the terror to something manageable. It was a concern if the Madam were alive and well.
But not an irreversible one.
While the hellish matriarch who’d ruled his childhood was very much dead in his time, if she were alive here would she be the same woman? Or was she a shell, a husk based off of a Legend's assumptions? Was the woman, sleeping peacefully a mere room away, Team Rocket's Madam? Her proximity to him said it was unlikely. Madam Rosaline had never slept in the same premises as him since he'd been a young child. But if he was wrong there was an opportunity.
She wouldn't have to wake, a knife to the throat, and the crisis could be averted. He didn't have Nidoking to spray the shallow grave in acid to make sure she wouldn't come back... But he wasn't unarmed.
Weedle, sensing the spike of his pulse if nothing else, reared and rubbed. Churring softly, the bug's concern obvious. Woodenly Giovanni reached up, traced a finger down the bug's back while considering places to dump bodies and focus on his breathing.
Calm or at least breathing slowed and heart steady, Giovanni straightened, snapping up the first aid kit he killed the light and left the impossible room behind. It was mere steps between it and the room he'd woken in, and passing hers... he didn't stop.
For now, he wouldn't act until he was sure.
Because if it was her she couldn't live. She'd kill him kill Silver slow just for spite, then him as an afterthought. But for now the headache of having to cover up a murder with only a Weedle as a partner...
He'd handle it when he must and not a second before.
The old anxiety of not being master of his own fate flickered about his mind and made a familiar acidic taste flood his mouth… Even as he settled on the bed's edge and flipped open the kit. The contents were relatively good quality, nothing expired, so he slid that into the packs. Then he dragged the nearest box over, ripping it open, and began to paw through it for what goods it held. Frivolities, report cards, an attendance award declaring a "perfect score" for someone named Moon.
So clearly this was "Moon's" room. Not quite as bad as "Red" or "Blue" would have been, but a bit unsettling all the same. And disheartening. Didn't parents know how to name their children?
Giovanni slid the papers away and dug deeper. Something had rattled metallically at the box's bottom and hopefully, that'd be of some use. Or value. He'd settle for a black market deal to get cash for some of this junk in a heartbeat.
Swallowing the thick taste of terror, Giovanni pulled out a pile of foulders. Identification, birth certificates, he wasn't fussy at this point and found more academic records for his trouble. The type a child might hoard to brag about.
Terror had become a near companion in the following years. He’d ripped Kanto to the bedrock looking for Silver, and then he'd buried the fear. Rage that had taken hold in grief’s place. He'd shifted, from living in terror to becoming a terror. Setting first Kanto, then Johto’s, criminal worlds under his boot. He'd made an organization to raze the regions to the ground at his command, and while he hadn't he'd applied pressure were needful. The economy and powers that be were pinned and penned playing an over-glorified game of cops and robbers while he used the bedlam to sift through data and legends.
He'd twist impossibility to his own needs. Warnings, and morals be hung. He’d been damned losing his son, and his agony was such all would share in it.
And they had, whole countries. For years and years. And only by chance he’d stumbled upon his child. He’d got Silver back, only to be repudiated for being "evil".
Really, between Celebi and Oak it would be a trial to figure who he needed to get rid of first. Both had done near irreparable harm with their mind games.
Hands shaking, having not read a lick, Giovanni shook his head, lips peeling back in a snarl.
"If I stop blinking for thirty seconds. Pull my hair. Repeat until I tell you to stop."
A chirp and wiggle affirmed he'd be obeyed.
Hoeen, this boy had come from Hoeen. The dogged academic records were part of an exchange program of some sort. He'd torn through "Moon's" portfolio to find a cover letter explaining the process. The documentation was needed to apply for a gym leader sponsorship program...
Save there was something about Kakunas instead of Leaders. Probably some mistake from the Legends misunderstanding, though the mental tangent of oversized cacoons running gyms set his lips to quirk. Shaking his head, amused, amusement fell to swearing as Weedle decided it'd been thirty seconds give or take, and pulled hard, The Rocket glared at his bug attachment.
"Pull my hair out again and you're getting a bath."
The find was intriguing but not what he needed. Pulling the rest of the papers out he laid them on the floor and under... there was a catch of batteries, wires, and a phone. He dug the latter out and its charging wire, and found the thing at fifteen percent.
Leaving it to charge Giovanni went back through the papers, hunting for Moon's trainer's license, regional ID, or medical records. Any of the three would grant him access to this region's pokemon centers, something he would need considering his present partner's unevolved state.
It felt... beyond odd... not to feel stubble as he ran a finger under his chin as he read. Tracing the lines of his face confirmed what the mirror had shown, the frown lines and scars that'd marked his face had been smoothed by Celebi's.. healing. And while he hadn't lingered too long in the bathroom... he was positive that the white about his temples that'd been steadily growing in had been erased as well.
Sorting the wires into piles, immediately useful and not, he found a few other technological odds and ends. An old MP3 player, some educational geared games for a tablet... A broken tablet. The latter he tossed back into the box with its "games", the former he put into the backpack. It wasn't so old as to be worthless, at least worth fifty bucks, so it'd come along.
He wondered as he pulled another box, ripping it open if Silver had been enamored with such frivolous tech. He'd watched and rewatched his child from what surveillance cameras he could. Rewinding the footage from the Rocket bases. The tournaments from the Kanto and Johto League were a wellspring of data as Silver had to frequent those institutions to keep his team, legally.
Even while his health had failed Giovanni had never been without information on his son's whereabouts. It'd been an evening ritual to watch whatever gym leader event or badge battle his son had gotten involved in before seeking slumber.
He found himself missing the updates even as he worked, a world away.
The last box gave with a little struggle, and within, he found clothes. Gaudy, SeaFoam island style, with floral patterns, printed on leis, and neon-bright colors. Such was the first impression of Moon's style. Digging deeper found that first impression going downhill, fast.
Deciding Moon was either color blind, or possessed of cruel relations who were draconic in picking the child's clothing, he worked on a shirt that wouldn't cause instant blindness if he spied it via a reflective surface. Sifting through the clothes, wincing at everything that might fit, he tried a few shirts, fought with a few pants, and found all the socks and underwear wouldn't fit in the slightest. Packing some of the less eye-searing pieces in his catch. Most were either too big or too small, but there was enough give they could work.
So they'd do.
Small teeth tugged on his hair, despite him being aware and Giovanni stiffened at the tug. Tipping his stinger, towards the door Weedle quivered in a silent warning, then crawling a path behind his trainer's neck scaled up to his head and burrowed among his hair. A tap on the door frame, a woman's voice, awake and clearly not asleep any longer, sounded.
"Moon, sweetheart, is everything alright? Your lights on."
To his silence, the doorknob rattled as it was twiddled under nervous fingers. After a moment the woman spoke again, dropping the questioning note in her voice.
"I'm coming in."
Near buzzed on the rush of relief-
This woman wasn't the Madam. He was safe from that horror.
Sheer relief made Giovanni's mind blank, and the moment to say something came and went. The door was pushed open, pushing some brick-a-brack aside, and the woman who'd spoken entered.
She was a pretty thing. A bit younger than his actual age, dark skin near warm coca in hue, with beautiful black eyes. A hastily tossed on sundress rustled about her as she came in. Her hair was coiled about her head like a crown, styling slack, but considering the hour that was more than understandable.
And when she looked at him, sitting ringed round by the scattered remnants of boxes and packing... She didn't quite meet his eyes. Looking a bit too low and to the left. Still, she smiled despite the mess, tone patiently unbelieving.
"Moon it is three in the morning. Arceus, I know you're eager to get started on your journey but it's too early. Go. To .Bed."
Her regard was familiar like he was the centerpiece of her world. And it was a curious thing to be the focus of such regard.
Weedle's stinger tail tapped against Giovanni's skull in anticipation. A head tip would end in the bug attempting a flying tackle and poisoning. He stared at this woman and her misplaced affection, not quite believing it was real.
Still, he'd act as it were, see where playing along got him.
His apology was accepted, hook, line, and sinker. And just speaking to her drew attention to how he obviously wasn't hers. From their differing looks to his thick accent. Strained and exhausted, Giovanni didn't bother with the usual effort of muffling how he spoke to better blend in and she didn't bat an eyelash for it. She wasn't Kalosian, or from Johto, or Kanto, she didn't talk right. And she was by no means Italiano, and yet in her mind, he was hers.
"I'll turn in, and pick this up in the morning." He promised, and she, a simple thing, smiled and nodded. Leaving him to his devices.
He waited until she was gone until he was sure her door was closed. Then gave her five minutes more. A chirp, a nudge, from the top of his head as Weedle worried, but he wasn't lost in his head, just deciding.
And the decision made he tipped his head back and Weedle rose with a squirm.
"Lock that." He ordered, gesturing to the door, sweeping the last of his goods up he slung the backpack over his shoulder, and though standing hurt he'd done so. And if he could stand, he could walk. And would as far as need be. "We're done here."
Once gone he’d figure out what he could, get Silver, then get them the hell out of this… pretend never Neverland.
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