Chapter 328: Background
Ryan walked out of the Petalburg Gym into the pre-dawn dark, the city completely quiet around him. He released Kyuryu, swung up onto its back in one smooth motion, and leaned forward. "Sorry to pull you out this early. Johto — as fast as you can."
Kyuryu dipped its head once, spread its wings without a sound, and lifted into the sky at an angle that kept the wingbeat noise low. Within seconds they were above the cloud layer, and Petalburg City was gone beneath them.
Silver Town, Johto Region.
Silver Town had been built for the Silver Conference — the stadium, the surrounding facilities, the whole infrastructure of a major regional tournament. It had hosted thousands of Trainers over the years. Now every entrance was guarded by Team Rocket grunts, the Silver Conference banner had been taken down, and Giovanni's emblem flew in its place. The town was a base of operations, efficiently converted and thoroughly locked down.
In a reinforced holding room near the center of the complex, Ethan had his hands wrapped around the bars of an iron cage and was pulling with everything he had.
It wasn't working.
"You can stop," said a voice from the doorway. "That cage was built specifically by Team Rocket's research division. A Machamp at full output couldn't bend those bars. You're not going to do it with your hands."
Ethan released the bars and turned. A red-haired boy stood in the doorway, holding a tray with two portions of food and two cups of water. His expression was flat and controlled — not cruel, exactly, but carrying the particular coldness of someone who had decided feelings were a liability and had been working on that decision for a long time.
Silver.
Kris straightened up from where she'd been sitting against the cage wall. Her voice came out quiet and tight. "I didn't expect this from you, Silver. Destroying League infrastructure, taking out the Guild branch — Giovanni is trying to start a war on two fronts simultaneously. Does he understand what that means?"
Silver crossed the room and slid the food and water through the narrow access slot at the base of the cage, then stepped back. "It was never about starting a war. The League took things from us for years and called it authority. We're taking them back. That's all this is."
"And the Guild?" Ethan's voice had an edge to it that he wasn't trying to hide. "Ryan trusted us with that branch. We were responsible for it. And now it's gone, and people got hurt — because Team Rocket decided to drag the Guild into a fight that had nothing to do with them."
"You allied with the League," Silver said, with the even tone of someone reading from a list of established facts. "That made you a factor. We weren't going to leave an allied organization operating freely in our territory while we were at war with the League. That's not naivety — that's just how war works. There are no neutral parties when sides have already been chosen."
Ethan's jaw tightened. He wanted to argue. The honest part of him couldn't find a clean counter.
The battle had been a disaster from start to finish. Raikou and Entei had both been pushed past their limits — not by a single opponent, but by wave after wave of Team Rocket's engineered Pokémon, detonating in sequence like living explosives, each one absorbing damage and releasing it on impact. The ambush had been perfectly timed. If they'd had warning — even thirty seconds of warning — things would have been different. But they hadn't, and it hadn't, and here they were.
Kris watched Silver's back as he moved toward the door. "Watch yourselves," he said, without turning around. Then he was gone, the door closing behind him with a solid click.
Ethan let out a long breath and unclenched his hands. Kris looked at him.
"Ryan will come," she said.
"I know." Ethan leaned back against the bars, staring at the ceiling. "It's Raikou and Entei I'm worried about. You saw what those fusion Pokémon did — the three-bird chimera absorbs damage and converts it. Our legendary Pokémon hit harder than anything else Team Rocket has faced, and it didn't matter. If Giovanni has Raikou and Entei in custody right now, his research team is going to take samples. More engineered fusions, based on Beast-level genetics." He closed his eyes. "That can't be allowed to happen."
Kris pressed her lips together and said nothing, because there was nothing useful to say. Silver had been right about one thing: the process didn't matter. Only the outcome did. Right now the outcome was a cage in Silver Town, and the only variable that could change it was somewhere over the Hoenn border moving very fast.
On Kyuryu's back, somewhere above the ocean between Hoenn and Johto, Ryan was making calls.
The elite team members were scattered across multiple regions, but the Pokégear network was fast, and one by one the confirmations came back. Target: Johto. ETA: variable. Ryan set the rendezvous point and closed the last call.
Kyuryu covered the distance in under an hour. Ryan brought it down onto a ridge overlooking Silver Town from the east, staying well outside the perimeter, and studied the layout below.
The occupation was thorough. Every access point had coverage, the sightlines were managed, and the density of Pokémon presence was high enough that a direct entry would be noticed almost immediately. Going in alone without intelligence on the interior layout was the kind of decision that turned a rescue mission into a second hostage situation.
Ryan was working through the options when the system spoke.
Ding. The Host might consider using a Disguise Kit. There is a highly effective option currently available.
Ryan's eyes narrowed. He had a general sense of where this was going. "Define 'highly effective option.'"
Ding. Gender-swap disguise. Calculated infiltration success rate: 95%. Probability of detection: 5%. Probability of capture: 5%.
A long silence.
Without the disguise: probability of detection at 80%. Probability of capture at 60%.
"...How are you getting these numbers?"
Ding. System calculations are accurate to 100%. The Host is advised not to question the methodology.
Ryan stared down at Silver Town for a moment, then pressed two fingers to his temple.
The system had been with him long enough that he'd stopped dismissing its assessments outright. Its track record was genuinely good. If it was saying 80% detection without the disguise, that probably meant Team Rocket's current sensor and patrol coverage was significantly better than he'd assumed — which in turn meant Giovanni had upgraded his operational infrastructure substantially since the last reliable intelligence report.
That was worth taking seriously.
The other part, however.
"I am not cross-dressing," Ryan said, to the open sky, with great clarity and finality. "That is not happening. Find me another option."
The system did not immediately respond.
Ryan was fairly certain it was doing the equivalent of sighing.
(End of Chapter)
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