Chapter 204: Giovanni: This League Would Fall Apart Without Me
"Zekrom. And those Genesect."
Alder's eyes sharpened as he took stock of the Pokémon arrayed against them. Each one radiated immense power.
Zekrom he'd expected. The Genesect were a surprise.
According to Officer Looker back in Nimbasa, Colress had revived them from ancient specimens and modified them — and their combat capability was exceptional. He hadn't expected there to be this many.
"Don't worry, Champion Alder. We can handle the Genesect. Let Leon and Gym Leader Giovanni take N and Zekrom."
Wallace offered the suggestion calmly.
And if Leon couldn't bring down Zekrom — then Giovanni's ace, Primal Groudon, would be the trump card.
"Agreed. There won't be any surprises today."
Cynthia's voice was equally composed. This battle had no room for upsets, and she knew it.
Team Plasma wasn't Team Rocket. No deep bench of elites, no Mammon lurking in the wings. N and Zekrom were a difficult combination — but not an unmanageable one.
"Then I'll leave it to all of you." Alder's voice went low and steady.
As for the Plasma grunts and elites Ghetsis had brought — the Unova Elite Four, backed by the police units, would clean those up.
The assignments settled, everyone moved.
"Four Champion-tiers."
Ghetsis surveyed the four facing him — Alder, Cynthia, Steven, Wallace — and the corner of his mouth pulled into a cold smile. Not a trace of fear.
"Someone of your… particular aesthetic," Wallace said, eyebrows drawn together in distaste, "really doesn't deserve an elegant ending. I'm sorry to say."
He couldn't stand Ghetsis. The man radiated hunger — a cloying, suffocating ambition that clung to everything around him.
Honestly worse than Mammon.
"Heheh… and who are you to talk about taste?" Ghetsis's sneer sharpened. "You ambiguous little—"
Wallace's eyes went wide.
"You—!!"
Wallace was genuinely, thoroughly angry. He actually was.
He was a handsome artist, and this — this wretch had the nerve to call him ambiguous?!
Nobody had ever insulted him like this in his life—!
"Steven. Cynthia. Don't either of you get in my way. I am going to personally teach this man a lesson."
Wallace had decided to go all out.
"On you?" Ghetsis's contempt didn't waver. Four Champions? His Genesect could handle four Champions.
"You're going to regret this. Evil Team Plasma."
Wallace's eyes went cool. It seemed this man needed to be introduced to the Dance of the Water Veil firsthand.
On the other side of the road—
In the prismatic light of Mega Evolution, a Charizard and a Beedrill transformed. Mega Charizard X and Mega Beedrill emerged, their presences sharpened and intensified.
"So that's Mega Evolution."
N watched the two Pokémon settle into their new forms, and something stirred behind his usually vacant eyes.
"Yes." Leon's voice was measured. "N, I've heard about you from Alder."
"Team Plasma's goal is to liberate Pokémon from humans — but forcibly separating them against their own wishes. Is that really right?"
Leon met N's lightless gaze directly.
Anyone paying attention could see it — Team Plasma had Ghetsis at its center, and N was the figure pushed to the front. The Hero of Ideals, recognized by Zekrom. But in practice, a puppet being used for Ghetsis's ambitions — for his power, for his influence.
"..." N was silent.
"Take Mega Evolution." Leon kept going. "It doesn't just need the right Mega Stone and Key Stone. It needs the bond between a Trainer and their Pokémon — without that, the Pokémon loses control entirely. The bond is what makes it work."
"The world today is one where humans and Pokémon have long become something whole together." Giovanni's voice was low and resonant. "That is the most beautiful form this world can take. Separating them isn't just impractical — it would reduce everything to chaos."
"..." N's lips thinned. His eyes grew darker.
Everyone said the same thing. Every person he'd met seemed to deny what he believed. Why?
Did his ideals really have something wrong with them?
"Ghetsis has been using you," Giovanni said. "He's been trying to harness your power for his own ambitions."
"Father is not that kind of person." N finally reacted — a small shake of his head.
"My ideal… is to give Pokémon true happiness. My ideal…" The light came back into his eyes, slowly. His gaze steadied. "…is not wrong."
"Zekrom!"
ROOOAR!
Zekrom's deep draconic cry split the air. The obsidian body rose from the ground, lightning crackling along its frame, arcing through the clouds overhead.
Thunder.
"Protect!"
Mega Beedrill blurred upward, positioning itself above Mega Charizard X. A green barrier snapped into place.
BOOM.
Thunder crashed against the Protect with a flare of blinding light, the shockwave rattling the ground below. A hit with real power behind it.
But through the blazing electrical discharge, the green barrier held.
"Words alone clearly aren't going to fix what you've been taught." Leon's expression hardened.
"Gym Leader Giovanni — I'll take Zekrom. You handle N. How does that sound?"
Leon reached for another Poké Ball. A Dragonite materialized beside the Charizard.
"Works for me." Giovanni gave a short nod.
(He would've preferred to just throw out Groudon and let it Primal Revert all over Zekrom, if he was being honest. Just to feel what it was like to command a legendary in actual combat. Mammon made it look ridiculously satisfying, and Giovanni was only human.)
But the others had argued that Groudon was better kept as a hidden trump card. No point tipping their hand early — Rocket spies were a real possibility. Giovanni cooperated.
"You'd underestimate Zekrom's power this much?"
N's expression didn't change as he watched Leon prepare to face the Dragon of Ideals alone. Zekrom had lost to Primal Kyogre — but that was Primal Kyogre. One Champion alone shouldn't be able to hold it.
That was what N believed.
In practice — Leon held just fine.
Zekrom was immensely powerful, but Leon operating at full capacity with a Mega-Evolved Charizard was at a level that genuinely defied easy categorization. Running his whole team, Leon might even have the edge. The man had once pushed a freshly-unsealed Eternatus to its limits with a single party of six.
The one who actually started struggling was N.
Against Giovanni's Mega Beedrill and the Nidoking deployed shortly after, N found himself in serious trouble. His Klinklang and his Archeops had already been knocked out of the fight.
Giovanni glanced at the exhausted Klinklang barely keeping up with Mega Beedrill, then looked back at N.
If he weren't playing the role of upstanding Gym Leader right now — honestly, against a young Champion like N, he had about forty different ways to end this cleanly. The most straightforward being to have Beedrill close in and press the tip of its drill against N's throat.
This wasn't a sanctioned match. Taking the opposing Trainer out of the equation was always the most efficient solution.
But League-affiliated Trainers held to a certain code. Unless the other side abandoned all rules entirely, the League side played by them too.
Giovanni himself didn't particularly care either way.
What mattered was that without Zekrom, N wasn't his match — and with Zekrom currently occupied keeping Leon busy, N had no backup coming.
If anything, Giovanni thought this battle was going considerably smoother than they'd planned. Take down N, who was the most complicated piece, and Team Plasma wouldn't be able to cause any real waves.
And then—
"GYM LEADER GIOVANNI!! HELP ME, GYM LEADER GIOVANNI!!"
A desperate cry cut through the air.
Giovanni blinked and turned instinctively — just in time to see a red blur streaking at terrifying speed across the road, with Wallace tucked under its arm, wailing as though his soul was leaving his body.
The Shiny Genesect.
"WALLACE!"
Cynthia, Steven, and Alder spun in unison, faces shifting. None of them had anticipated this — that the Shiny Genesect's speed was on a completely different level.
One moment Wallace had been there. The next, gone.
Extreme Speed. There was no other explanation.
Ah.
Up on a mountainside some distance away, Mammon watched with an expression that was genuinely hard to describe.
Of course he'd come to watch. A clash between Team Plasma and the Unova League — he wasn't going to miss that.
What he hadn't expected was to witness Wallace getting kidnapped. Again.
Was this man actually congenitally predisposed to being captured? How did he keep ending up in this situation? Every single time—
"A Shiny Genesect that knows Extreme Speed." Mammon looked at the red figure with interest. "That's the one from the movie."
No question about it. That was the apex individual of the Genesect lineage.
Normally, Genesect couldn't learn Extreme Speed. The only exception was that one special specimen from the film — the one that had briefly traded blows with Mega Mewtwo Y. A singular individual.
Worth noting: the official distribution event for that movie Genesect had given it not just Extreme Speed, but also Shift Gear — another move ordinary Genesect couldn't learn.
Hm. Mammon was genuinely intrigued.
"Ghetsis. Stop this. Release Wallace, and you can still negotiate leniency."
Alder's voice was firm as the Shiny Genesect deposited Wallace — bridal carry, somehow — in front of Ghetsis and stood guard.
Wallace stared daggers at Ghetsis, but with the Shiny Genesect right there, he couldn't move.
Helpless. Pitiful. Trapped.
The situation was, to put it diplomatically, awkward.
"Heheheh~ Hahahahaha~!"
Ghetsis's laughter broke out — wild and triumphant.
"Tsk, tsk~ Wallace gets captured again."
Mammon, still watching from the mountain, had a very strange look on his face.
The other two regular Genesect were being pressured by Steven and Cynthia's aces — that part of the battle was going as expected.
But the Shiny Genesect was on a completely different tier. Wallace and Alder together hadn't been enough to handle it, which was how it had ended up snatching Wallace mid-fight.
This Ghetsis was feeling pretty emboldened.
Giovanni quietly opened a Poké Ball behind his back.
Honestly, Giovanni thought, this League would genuinely fall apart without me.
A winning situation, and Wallace still managed to get himself kidnapped and hand the enemy a lifeline?
Even without him playing double agent on the inside, this group couldn't have beaten Mammon. That much was obvious.
(End of Chapter)
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