"Got it." Darkrai took the note and phone, then slipped into the shadows. Carrying two things across town was nothing to it. It would be back soon.
Before it vanished completely, Reiji added, "Make sure Officer Jenny sees the note right away."
He watched Darkrai disappear, then released Spinarak and let it settle on his shoulder while he waited. This time, he was going to use Officer Jenny to throw the underground black market into chaos. Once the place blew up, he could snatch Riolu back in the confusion.
Charging in head-on would be stupid. Sneaking in at night would not be much better. Either way, Team Rocket would come after him afterward.
The only real play was to turn the whole underground market into a mess so Team Rocket would have bigger problems to deal with. Then he could take Riolu back without drawing suspicion, and the chaos would cover his tracks. The dirtier the water got, the better. If he stirred it up hard enough, he could pull Riolu out and collect a little interest on top.
Oddly enough, the bigger the job got, the calmer he became. He stood in the night wind and looked up at the sky. Day or night, it always looked the same here—dark, heavy, sunless, moonless, starless.
He ran through the plan again and again in his head, checking for holes. The goal was simple: get Riolu back, keep Team Rocket from tracing it to him, and grab a little extra on the way out.
At this point, the plan was as tight as he could make it. All that was left was to wait for Darkrai.
A few minutes later, Darkrai returned and slipped back into his shadow.
"Officer Jenny found the note and the phone," Darkrai said. "She didn't come right away. She's making calls."
"Good. You two head down first. If that owner makes any move at all, kill him immediately and take Riolu back."
"If the place outside goes crazy before that, that's your signal too. Kill the owner first and get Riolu out. If there's a chance after that, take Gengar into the shop and grab anything valuable. If there isn't, forget it."
"Bring Riolu's Poké Ball. A Pokémon that's already been caught can't be captured again with another ball. I'll wait up here for you. Once you're back, we leave this city."
"Understood." Darkrai sank back into the dark.
At the same time, Gengar popped out of Reiji's shadow with Riolu's Poké Ball clamped in its mouth. Then it vanished too, following Darkrai underground.
There was a reason he brought Gengar. First, it could pass through walls. Second, it could carry things through walls. If you were going to steal something, you brought Gengar.
Reiji himself had no reason to go down. If the job was only to get Riolu back, then staying aboveground made more sense.
Once he went below, getting back out would be a pain. Darkrai and Gengar could move through walls and sink into shadows. He was just a human. If he went down there, he would only slow them down.
So he stayed outside the power plant and stood there in the cold wind, waiting for good news.
…
The underground black market was still just as lively as ever. Plenty of trainers went home to sleep at night, but just as many stayed awake. Most of the city's nightlife was probably packed into this place.
The moment Darkrai and Gengar got back underground, they went straight to the hatchery owner's room and hid inside his bedroom, waiting for a chance to move.
They did not have to wait long.
Footsteps came from outside—fast, urgent footsteps. The second Darkrai heard them, it knew the time had come. It threw a Dark Void at the owner sleeping on the bed.
At the same instant, Gengar reached a pudgy hand out of the shadows and used the Poké Ball to recall Riolu from the cage. Riolu saw Gengar appear, and the shock on his face was obvious even as the ball pulled him in. He had not expected them to find him this quickly.
The moment Riolu was safely back in the ball, Gengar drove a Poison Jab into the man on the bed and killed him with the poison.
Right then, someone knocked on the door.
Darkrai and Gengar dropped back into the shadows together. Just before Gengar vanished, a cold blue ghost flame flared in its hand and flew toward the corpse on the bed. Reiji had told it to destroy the body.
When the person outside got no answer, he started to worry. Then smoke began leaking through the crack under the door. That was enough. He ordered his Pokémon to blast the bedroom door open and found the whole room burning.
"Damn it. Who did this?"
"Alakazam, use Confusion. Pull all the air out of the room."
"Ka-dii." Alakazam obeyed at once, crushing the air out of the room with psychic force. A wave of heat burst outward, then the flames died the moment the oxygen was stripped away.
Holding his breath, the trainer stepped inside and looked at the owner on the bed. The body was already burned beyond recognition, and the whole room stank of charred flesh. He had no intention of staying longer than he had to.
"Ka-dii?" Alakazam focused for a moment. It had just caught a strange presence leaving the room. That had to be the Pokémon that carried out the hit.
"Alakazam, you found something? Go after it."
The world blurred for a second, and trainer and Pokémon appeared inside the shop. Just in time to see a fat black hand grabbing items off a shelf.
"Alakazam, Psychic!"
Blue light flashed in Alakazam's eyes. A violent psychic blast slammed toward the black hand and tore through the shelves around it. The display racks flew apart. But just before the attack hit, the hand snapped back into the shadows.
"Heh-heh, that was close," Gengar muttered from inside the dark, wiping sweat from its forehead. "That Alakazam hits hard."
"I told you not to get greedy," Darkrai said. Even it had tensed up for a second there. "Enough. We're leaving. Stop stealing."
"Heh-heh, fine, fine." Gengar peered out at the Alakazam one last time, then followed Darkrai through the shadows and headed back to the surface.
"Alakazam? Where?" The trainer stared at the wrecked shop floor. The black hand was gone. He turned to Alakazam.
"Ka-dii." Alakazam looked toward the door and lifted its spoon, showing that the target had escaped.
"Damn it." The trainer snatched up his radio and growled, "Our mole sent word. Officer Jenny is on the way. The owner is dead. Pack everything and pull out through the tunnel."
"Understood. Boss, you're not coming with us?" one of the Team Rocket security men asked. He was the strongest guard in the shop beneath the Alakazam trainer, and several rookie squads answered to him.
"The owner's dead. Your job is to protect Petrel's property. I still need to give Boss Petrel an explanation. I'll come after I clean this up. Did the owner do anything unusual lately?"
"Unusual? Ask the Victreebel Squad. The owner had them doing private jobs for him. If anyone knows what he was up to, it's them."
"Damn it. That pig again." The Rocket boss cursed under his breath. If Petrel had not ordered him to protect that bastard—and if the pay here had not been so good—he never would have stayed in this job to begin with.
That pig had obviously stolen from the wrong person again. He had Petrel behind him, so he thought nobody would dare hit back. That made him careless. Greedy too.
Now he was dead, and someone had reported the whole market. If they had not gotten warning from the mole inside the police, the League might have swept the whole place in one go.
"Have the Victreebel Squad meet me at the back entrance. The rest of you start pulling out."
He had already lost too much time. Officer Jenny's cars had to be getting close by now.
By the time the mole passed along the warning, the police were already on the move. They might even be surrounding the power plant already. Their only option now was the escape tunnel.
"Boss, I…" The Victreebel trainer followed behind him. Under questioning, he did not dare hide anything. He spilled the whole story from start to finish. He had made a nice profit on the job and never imagined it would turn into something this bad.
"You've been around long enough," the boss snapped. "I warned you before. Don't get tangled up with that pig. See where it got you?"
"Boss, I didn't know it was this serious. I just stole a Riolu from the Pokémon Center. Nobody should've noticed."
He regretted it so badly his gut twisted. If he had known it would end like this, he never would have touched the job.
He had stolen one Riolu. That was all. And now the owner was dead, the black market had been surrounded, and Team Rocket was about to lose everything they had poured into this place.
"Just a Riolu?" The boss let out a cold laugh. These kids still had no clue what that meant.
People who owned Pokémon like Riolu were usually rich, powerful, or both. At this point, they had better pray the other side already took Riolu back. Then maybe they could still find the trainer and drag him in. If not, the people upstairs were going to skin them alive.
That was exactly why he had not run yet. Once he calmed down and thought it through, the pattern was obvious. The other side had arranged a hit, then reported the market, all for one reason—to get Riolu back.
Which meant the other trainer probably was not that strong. If he had real strength, he would not need all these tricks. He would have just taken Riolu back by force. Instead, he stirred up the market to cover the grab and hide his own identity.
"He's a smart kid," the Alakazam trainer said, rubbing his chin. "But he already exposed himself at the Pokémon Center. Have the mole pull the registration records there. Then we'll know exactly who he is."
He had already pieced the whole thing together.
One of his men had done dirty work for that pig and stolen somebody's Riolu. Somehow the owner figured out how to track Riolu to the market. Then he had the pig assassinated, took Riolu back, and tried to stay hidden while calling in Officer Jenny to turn the whole place upside down.
To do that—especially the assassination—he almost certainly had a Ghost-type Pokémon. A Ghost-type would be more than enough to kill that pig.
"You two stay on me. We're going to catch that kid and make up for this. If we don't, I might only get exiled. You two little bastards will wind up in Petrel's Pokémon's stomachs."
"Boss, don't scare me like that," the Victreebel trainer said, finally sounding rattled. Getting eaten—did that kind of thing really happen?
"I'm not scaring you. If we don't find the one who killed the owner and sold out the market, you're dead."
The boss turned and glared at both of them. He was not exaggerating. People really did die over things like this.
Especially since this whole mess had started with them. He was going to take a hit too. Even if Petrel protected him, he would still get shipped off to some miserable backwater to build a new operation from scratch.
"I understand, Boss." The Victreebel trainer let out a quiet sigh. His life was hanging on the boss now. He did not even want to think about what happened if they failed.
"I'm the innocent one here," the other boy muttered. "I got none of the benefits, and now I'm carrying the blame too." He was the Victreebel trainer's teammate, and he clearly resented being dragged into this. The other guy stole the Pokémon without even telling him. He wanted no part of that mess.
"I can vouch that you weren't involved," the Alakazam trainer said, glancing at him. These boys were his recruits, the backbone he was building in this city for the day he took charge of a market of his own.
Now that dream could wait. First they had to survive this. If they did not catch the trainer who killed the owner and reported the market, none of them were walking away clean.
…
Boom!
At the same time, when Alakazam fired at Gengar inside the shop, the psychic blast punched right through to the street outside and knocked pedestrians off their feet.
Tai had been waiting outside for Reiji to make his move, and he saw the whole thing happen. The blast nearly threw him over too.
But it passed as fast as it came.
He scrambled back up, looked around, and saw the same stunned look on everyone else's faces. Nobody knew what had happened yet. Good.
Then the first wreckage from inside the shop spilled into the street, and people rushed toward it at once.
Tai saw his opening and immediately raised his voice in a fake shout.
"Run! The League found this place! The League's surrounding the market!"
The entire street froze.
Then—
Boom!
Another explosion ripped through the far end of the street. That was Tai's backup plan. He had planted it ahead of time, and now he used it to shove the chaos even harder.
"Move! They're already running!"
People looked over and saw the shop staff hurrying out in a panic. Each of them had a pack slung over their shoulder, and they were shutting the front door behind them.
Then another blast went off.
This time, the crowd broke.
After seeing Team Rocket's own people flee, everyone on the street scattered at once. Some sent their Pokémon crashing straight through the shop door that had just been shut and rushed inside to loot whatever they could grab.
Nobody actually ran away.
Instead, people all over the street made for the nearest shop and started robbing it.
Once the looting started, Tai quietly headed for his own target.
The riot had come early, and it threw off Team Rocket's evacuation plan.
"Damn it. Who leaked the news?"
"No time. Leave anything we can't carry. Officer Jenny has the power plant surrounded. We pull out through the tunnels."
Even in the middle of the chaos, Team Rocket's retreat stayed mostly orderly.
The masked looters all over the market, on the other hand, had no brakes left. Once the place broke open, the ugliest parts of human nature came spilling out with it.
The smart ones grabbed what they could and got out immediately. They sent their Pokémon to use Dig, and soon people were smashing through the thinnest walls they could find, carving tunnels out and vanishing into the night.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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