Chapter 329: The Disguise Master
"System — you're absolutely certain this reverses completely afterward?"
Ryan was standing in a small grove on the outskirts of Silver Town, dressed in a Team Rocket female operative's uniform, staring at nothing in particular with the expression of someone who had made a decision they were not at peace with.
Ding. The Host is advised to trust the system. If the system states that the effect is reversible, it is reversible.
Ryan looked down at the uniform. He looked back up. "I'm engaged to Lillie. If I come out of this as a girl permanently, that conversation is going to be extremely difficult to have."
Ding. The Host's relationship status has been noted. The reversal is guaranteed.
Ryan exhaled slowly. The system had been with him since the beginning, and its track record was genuinely clean. Not a single promise broken, not a single calculation that had turned out to be meaningfully wrong. If it said 80% detection risk going in as himself, that was the number. If it said this brought that down to 5%, that was also the number.
He pulled up the cheat menu.
The gender-swap function had been sitting there since his first day in this world, completely untouched. He had looked at it exactly once, closed the menu immediately, and made a silent personal policy of never looking at it again. That policy had lasted until approximately forty minutes ago.
He selected it. He pressed confirm.
A warm current moved through his body — not unpleasant, actually, more like stepping into a bath at exactly the right temperature. His perception of his own physical dimensions shifted gradually and then stopped. Ryan reached up and touched his face, then looked down.
Different. Noticeably, thoroughly, completely different.
He immediately pulled the menu back up, located the function, and clicked modify — just to confirm the reversal worked. It did. He clicked confirm again and went back.
"Okay," he said, to no one. "Okay. We're doing this."
He straightened the uniform, checked that everything was properly adjusted, and took stock of his current appearance. The face was unfamiliar — not a feminized version of his own features, but genuinely different, the kind of different that meant no one who knew Ryan was going to look at him and make the connection. That was good. That was the whole point.
He walked out of the grove toward Silver Town.
The checkpoints at the perimeter were manned in small clusters — two or three operatives per station, checking credentials and waving through anyone in uniform without much scrutiny. Ryan had clocked this from the ridge before coming down: Team Rocket's internal culture ran on the assumption that anyone already wearing the uniform was already vetted. It was the kind of security philosophy that worked fine against external threats and fell apart the moment someone got hold of the right outfit.
He walked through the checkpoint without being stopped.
Inside the perimeter, Ryan let his psychic awareness expand slowly, keeping it low and diffuse — enough to map the sentry positions without producing any signature a sensitive Pokémon might pick up. What he found was more sophisticated than the visible checkpoints suggested. The outer layer was almost decorative. The real coverage was layered underneath it — concealed positions arranged in overlapping fields, each one covering the blind spots of the others. Anyone who slipped past the outer ring thinking they were clear would walk directly into a pocket formation. By the time they realized they were surrounded, the response teams would already be moving.
Ryan committed every position to memory. When the strike came, those concealed sentries had to go first and simultaneously, or the whole operation would bog down in thirty seconds.
He moved deeper into the town, keeping his pace easy and unhurried. Team Rocket operatives moved around him in both directions. No one looked twice.
Then, ahead of him, a large warehouse. Heavy guard presence — a full squad of operatives in a layered perimeter, with the kind of spacing that said whatever was inside was important. Ryan angled toward it, running the mental math on whether he could get a read on the interior from the outside.
"Hey — stop. Which unit are you with? This zone is restricted."
Three operatives stepped into his path. The one in front had the flat, assessing look of someone whose job it was to notice things that didn't fit. His hand was already resting near his Poké Ball.
Ryan let a slightly flustered expression cross his face — not panicked, just young and a little out of her depth. "Sorry — I just transferred in from another branch. I'm still getting oriented. I didn't know this area was off-limits." He made a show of looking around with genuine curiosity. "Is there a map anywhere? I really don't want to wander somewhere I shouldn't."
"Just transferred." The lead operative's eyes narrowed. "I haven't heard anything about a new transfer."
Ryan kept the expression steady and reached for a name. "I came in through Jessie. She wasn't able to vouch for me directly — I know we were never that close — but she put in a word and got me through the door." He let a slightly uncertain smile cross his face. "I haven't actually seen her since I arrived. Or James, or Meowth. I was kind of hoping to find them and say hello."
The effect was immediate and dramatic.
The lead operative went slightly pale. The casual hand near the Poké Ball moved away from it entirely. He straightened up and his whole bearing shifted — the cold professional assessment replaced by something that looked a great deal like a person who had just realized they were standing close to something they didn't want to be standing close to.
"You know Jessie personally?" he said, with significantly more respect than he'd been using thirty seconds ago.
The others in the group had adopted similar postures.
Ryan kept the confusion on his face genuine-looking. "Like I said, we weren't close. She just helped me out. Is something wrong?"
"No, no." The operative waved a hand quickly. "No problem at all. We'll defer to you — please let us know if you need anything."
Ryan nodded graciously and filed the reaction away for later. Jessie was apparently operating at a level within Team Rocket that made her name function as a social shield. That was useful information.
"One thing," Ryan said, keeping the voice curious and casual. "I actually did want to find her and say hello — but like I said, I haven't seen James or Meowth either, and I figured they'd all be together. Do you know where I could find them?"
The group exchanged a rapid series of glances that communicated an entire conversation without a word.
"Don't," the lead operative said quietly, "mention those two names in front of Jessie. I'm serious. Something happened between them — the team split up. Jessie doesn't talk about it. If you bring either of them up around her, she will make your life very difficult, and there's nothing any of us can do about it."
Ryan nodded slowly, expression shifting to something sympathetic and slightly alarmed. "Understood. I won't say a word."
"Good." The tension in the group eased somewhat. "You can pass. Just stay clear of the restricted zones — I'll let it go this time since you're new."
Ryan moved past them at an easy pace, already mapping the warehouse layout from the outside and cataloguing what the guard density told him about what might be stored inside.
Jessie and James had apparently had some kind of falling out significant enough that James's name was effectively banned in Jessie's presence. That was a thread worth pulling later.
For now, he needed the rest of the town's layout, the location of the holding cells, and ideally some confirmation of where Giovanni was operating from.
He kept walking, kept his psychic awareness low and steady, and let Silver Town tell him everything it knew.
(End of Chapter)
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