Chapter 122: Giovanni: "I'll Bring Mammon Down Myself"
Back at the villa.
Mammon called Kagura.
"Come over when you can."
If the Hoenn League was assembling allies to come fight Team Rocket, Mammon wasn't interested in waiting passively. And the incoming confrontation gave him a natural opening to handle something that had been pending.
Kagura's situation. Devon Corporation. The thread that needed pulling.
He'd move when the moment was right.
The following morning. Lilycove City airport.
Giovanni stepped out of the terminal in a black suit of impeccable quality, unhurried, carrying himself the way people do when they've spent decades never needing to rush.
"Mr. Giovanni." A young man in a league jacket stepped forward. "Welcome. Champion Wallace — former Champion, that is — asked me to receive you."
"Thank you."
The car took him to the League building. Giovanni noted the architecture, the scale, the general organizational competence evident in how the staff moved. Hoenn kept a clean operation. He'd give them that.
And here I am, he thought, with a certain private amusement, being received as a guest.
The conference room was already populated when he arrived. He did a single pass around the room — the Hoenn Elite Four, the two Champions, the officer in command.
And two visitors from other regions.
A woman in a black coat, gold hair. Champion Cynthia of Sinnoh. They had a mutual understanding — they'd never met, but they knew of each other, and the intelligence files would be thorough. Her eyes met his with the calm assessment of someone gathering data.
And a young woman — dark hair in a ponytail, one streak of green at the front, athletic build, expression bright with the particular energy of someone for whom "Team Rocket" is an exciting concept rather than a years-long operational headache.
From Paldea, he recalled. Nemona. Recent Champion.
He offered the room a measured smile and found his seat.
"Before we begin — I want to acknowledge what this situation represents." Giovanni's voice was low and even. "Team Rocket emerged from my home region. The fact that they are operating in Hoenn, causing problems significant enough to require cross-regional assistance — that is, ultimately, a Kanto problem that has spread. I am sorry for the difficulty this has caused."
He stood and offered a brief, genuine bow.
"Sit down, please," Steven said, standing as well. "What happened with Mammon isn't something you need to account for personally."
"He's right," Cynthia added.
Giovanni settled back into his chair. His expression had the quality of someone carrying something they were accustomed to carrying — not theatrical, just present.
"I want to bring him back," he said. "That's why I'm here. Not only to counter Team Rocket's operations, but to reach him directly."
"Is that possible?" Steven asked.
"I intend to find out."
Wallace was looking at Giovanni with an expression that had evolved from faint suspicion to something more complicated. The man's grief seemed real — not performed. His self-reproach had the texture of genuine reckoning.
All right, Wallace thought. I'll revise my first impression.
"If Giovanni is able to talk sense into Mammon directly, that would be the ideal outcome," he said.
"Agreed," Steven said. "But we should also have a plan that doesn't rely on that working."
"Of course." Giovanni's tone was practical. "Tell me what you know about their current deployment."
Steven brought up the composite image on the screen. Giovanni studied it. Mammon's photo — the smile Mammon had worn his whole life, now somehow more concerning in context.
His son.
Still his son, regardless of everything.
I'll bring you back, he thought. Even if I have to do it myself.
Rustboro City.
Devon Corporation headquarters occupied the most prominent building in the city — all glass and clean lines, the confidence of an organization that had never had reason to be modest.
Mammon, Caitlin, and Kagura entered through the main lobby.
The receptionist smiled with practiced warmth.
"Good morning. How can I help you?"
"We'd like to see President Stone. Nothing scheduled — but you might relay a message for us." Mammon's return smile was easy and unthreatening. "Tell him someone from the Buried Tower in Johto would like a word."
The receptionist hesitated fractionally, reading the three of them. Then picked up the phone.
She was good at her job. Good at her job meant recognizing when "these don't look like ordinary visitors" was more useful information than "they don't have an appointment."
Two minutes later: "The President will see you. Please follow."
The elevator opened onto the top floor.
Joseph Stone's office was everything the building's exterior promised — organized, clean, functional, with the careful taste of someone who had very deliberately learned what good things looked like and then surrounded himself with them. Silver-grey hair. A purple suit. Eyes that were precise and very much awake.
"Thank you for making time," Mammon said, looking around with genuine appreciation. "Small iron ore company to Devon Corporation in a few decades. That's a genuinely impressive story."
Stone's expression was attentive in the way of someone deciding which category this conversation belonged in.
"And you three are?"
"We're here about something that happened some years ago." Mammon's tone shifted slightly — the pleasantness remained but something underneath it didn't. "A particular operation. A girl on a certain Rayquaza. The Buried Tower in Johto. I imagine you haven't forgotten."
Stone's face changed.
The precision remained but something else moved through it — things that, in someone less controlled, might have come to the surface more visibly. He was still, for a moment, in a way that wasn't composure but was adjacent to it.
Then his eyes moved to Kagura.
Kagura looked back at him.
Her expression was the particular blankness of someone who has decided exactly how angry they are and decided not to show it yet.
"I was contacted by the Johto Pokémon Association," Stone said at last. His voice was lower than before. "They needed technical support for an operation. I brought a team. When we arrived — I didn't know there was a person there. Not until the operation had already begun."
He stopped.
"I am aware that's not sufficient."
"No," Kagura said. It was the first word she'd said since entering the building.
"The girl who was there." Stone's voice was careful. "She was — she was a Lorekeeper. I learned that afterward. The Meteor Falls Clan."
"Her name was Shelly." Kagura's voice was level. "She was twenty-three years old. She had found Rayquaza. It had accepted her."
Stone closed his eyes briefly.
"I know."
"You knew her mission. The prophecy. What she was carrying." Kagura continued at the same pace, each word placed deliberately. "And she died at a location that your technology helped compromise."
"Yes."
The office was very quiet.
"You're her sister," Stone said. Not a question.
"Yes."
He looked at her for a moment. Then stood.
"I won't insult you by explaining my reasoning at the time. Or by telling you I had good intentions. What happened was wrong, and my involvement caused irreversible harm, and I have known that since the day I left Johto."
He didn't move from behind the desk. He didn't reach for a phone. He just stood there.
"I'll accept whatever you've decided."
The sound in the room was only ventilation and the distant noise of the city thirty floors below.
Kagura's hands were at her sides. Her fingers moved once, then stilled.
"I haven't decided anything," she said finally. "Yet."
Stone waited.
"There's someone else involved in what happened. The Johto Pokémon Association. And another party." Her voice tightened fractionally. "I'm not here for an ending today."
Stone nodded, once.
"Then what do you need from me?"
Kagura looked at Mammon.
Mammon tilted his head toward Stone with an expression that said: your call.
She turned back to Joseph Stone.
"Information. About who gave the final order. Who was in command at the site. And everything Devon Corporation has on file about the operation."
Stone sat back down. His hand moved to his desk.
"I'll have my legal team retrieve everything we have. It may take an hour."
"We'll wait."
They waited in a meeting room on the same floor.
Caitlin poured tea that a staff member brought. Kagura stood at the window, looking at the city.
The Meteor Falls waterfall was north of here. If you knew what to look for, you could see the canyon edge from this angle.
She'd grown up in the sound of that water.
"You could have gone harder in there," Mammon said, not critically.
"I know." She didn't turn from the window. "He's not done paying for it yet."
"You're saving the rest."
"I'm saving the right moment." She watched a Pidgeot cross the sky above Rustboro. "He was honest. I wasn't expecting that."
"People often are, when they think they're about to face consequences they can't avoid."
"Maybe." A pause. "Or maybe he's been honest about it to himself for years and just never had anyone to be honest to."
Mammon considered this.
"Either way," Kagura said, "that's not forgiveness. It's just information."
"I know," Mammon said.
Caitlin sipped her tea and didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say that would improve the situation.
An hour later, Joseph Stone came in personally with a secured file.
He set it on the table in front of Kagura.
"Everything Devon had involvement in. Names, dates, the decision chain. Including the two parties who coordinated the operation."
Kagura opened it.
Her eyes moved across the first page.
Then she closed it.
"I'll read it properly later."
"If you need anything further," Stone said, "contact me directly." He set a card beside the file.
He stood for a moment, then: "She was brave. What she was doing." His voice was quiet. "I've thought about that a great deal."
Kagura didn't respond.
After he left, she picked up the card and put it in her pocket. Then picked up the file.
"Let's go," she said.
Outside the building, the afternoon light was doing something warm and indifferent across the Rustboro streets.
"How do you feel?" Caitlin asked, which was the only sensible question.
Kagura was quiet for a moment.
"Like it's not over," she said finally. "But like I can see where it ends."
Mammon's phone buzzed. He checked it, and something shifted in his expression — not alarmed, just recalibrated.
"Update from our people. The cross-regional allies have assembled in Lilycove."
"Giovanni's there," Caitlin said.
"He is." Mammon pocketed the phone and looked at the direction of the waterfall, just visible above the city's roofline. "Old man came all the way to Hoenn."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Kagura. What's your read on the timing?"
"For Rayquaza?"
"For everything."
She thought about it.
"The prophecy is still active. The meteorite is still coming. I can work on the summons with what I have — it's not ideal without the battle between the two anciients, but I've been planning for this." She paused. "And now I have Devon's files. Which means I have the name of the person in the Association who gave the order."
"Which means?"
Kagura smiled — a particular smile that had nothing to do with warmth.
"Which means the list is shorter."
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