Chapter 205: Your Genesect? Mine Now.
The expressions on Steven and the others' faces were not great.
Because yes — Wallace had been taken hostage, and the entire situation had flipped in an instant.
With Wallace in Ghetsis's hands, how were they supposed to fight? If Ghetsis decided to cut his losses and hurt Wallace, that wasn't paranoia — that was a real possibility. The man was cold-blooded by nature.
Alder couldn't keep his composure either. He hadn't expected things to go this way.
At this point, the operation was a wash. Not only had they failed to capture Ghetsis and N — they'd pushed Team Plasma into outright hostility. Team Plasma had been an evil organization the Unova League intended to dismantle eventually, but at least while Team Rocket was in the picture, Plasma had been focused on them. Ghetsis had even wanted to cooperate with the League.
And now…
"Ghetsis. Release Wallace. We'll let you walk."
Alder exhaled and kept his voice level.
He knew perfectly well that letting Ghetsis and N go now was inviting future problems. But Wallace's safety came first. Wallace had come here to help them — the Unova League.
"Heheh…"
Ghetsis's laugh was low and ugly.
"Alder. Even in a situation like this, you're still so laughably predictable. You think I need you to let me—"
He was in the middle of savoring his advantage. He had the Shiny Genesect; he had the escape route. Nothing was going to go wrong.
And then Wallace disappeared.
One moment he was right there in front of Ghetsis. The next — gone.
Ghetsis blinked, genuinely confused for a full second.
Then he looked down and saw the hole in the ground where Wallace had been standing, and his face went ugly.
Dig.
He'd been about to spend a very satisfying few moments mocking Alder, and the hostage he'd barely had time to warm his hands on had already been taken back.
"Damn it—!"
Ghetsis looked around. Alder and the others looked equally startled — this wasn't their doing.
Then Ghetsis looked toward a figure standing some distance away — a middle-aged man in a black suit, wearing an expression of mild, barely-there amusement. The man caught Ghetsis's gaze and let the corner of his mouth curl into the thinnest possible sneer.
Ghetsis's face twitched.
For reasons he couldn't explain, looking at this man made him think of how Mammon had mocked him. The resemblance was uncanny.
A moment later, Wallace was pushed up through a hole in the ground behind Giovanni by a Dugtrio, which had tunneled the entire route underground. Giovanni had sent it quietly, had it dig beneath Wallace's feet, and pulled him out from below.
The rescue worked. The side effect was that Wallace's pristine white cape was now comprehensively coated in dirt, and he looked like he'd crawled out of a mine.
Steven and the others let out collective sighs of relief.
"Wallace. Are you all right?" Giovanni helped him up without a trace of squeamishness about the state of his clothes.
"I'm fine — thank you, Gym Leader Giovanni."
Wallace looked at Giovanni with genuine, heartfelt gratitude. Giovanni really was a good man.
He'd been torturing himself with guilt the whole time — if his being taken hostage had let Ghetsis and N escape, he would never have forgiven himself. Giovanni hadn't just saved his body. He'd saved his conscience.
Gym Leader Giovanni was an exceptional human being. From this day forward, anyone who spoke ill of Gym Leader Giovanni was making an enemy of Wallace.
"Think nothing of it. We're all part of the League." Giovanni smiled, mild and pleasant.
"Worthless—!"
Ghetsis, meanwhile, was in no position to feel good about anything.
With Wallace gone, he had nothing left to threaten Alder's group with. The Shiny Genesect was formidable, but Steven and Cynthia weren't pushovers — taking them down quickly wasn't realistic.
And the other two Genesect…
Ghetsis looked at them. Badly beaten. The Shiny Genesect was unscathed, but two-on-one against Mega Metagross and Mega Garchomp hadn't gone in their favor.
The Shiny Genesect alone was something else — Ghetsis was confident it could hold its own against both Mega Pokémon simultaneously. But the problem was that after the hostage gambit had failed, Alder's group would almost certainly go straight for him next. They had the numbers. All they had to do was pin the Shiny Genesect and send the rest at Ghetsis directly.
And Wallace, Ghetsis could tell, desperately wanted a piece of him personally. The man had been furious since the "ambiguous" comment.
Ghetsis's expression shifted as he ran the numbers.
Retreat. Retreat now, regroup, rethink.
"Genesect."
The Shiny Genesect moved to his side at the call.
"Alder. I won't forget today." Ghetsis looked at the Champion, voice dropping to something cold and deliberate. "We'll meet again."
He wasn't going to let this go. He'd reached out to Alder in good faith — and Alder had played him. That was unforgivable.
"You think you're walking away?!" Alder's eyes narrowed.
"You can't stop me." Ghetsis's voice was flat. "Not with what you have here."
The Shiny Genesect launched upward with Ghetsis on its back — a burst of speed that carried them airborne in an instant.
Alder's expression darkened. He was right. At that speed, there was nothing they could do. Even if Giovanni threw out Groudon — Groudon couldn't fly. It couldn't catch something moving like that.
"You'll all come to regret what you've done here today. I will—"
Ghetsis looked down at them from the air, voice carrying the particular satisfaction of someone who intends to have the last word.
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
A pale blue light washed over him from below, and Ghetsis found, to his considerable alarm, that his body had stopped responding. He was floating. Drifting. Completely outside his own control.
The Shiny Genesect tilted its head, confused, looking at Ghetsis hanging in the air beside it without any visible support.
"My, my~ I really did think you'd be able to handle this, Champion Alder. Didn't expect you all to be quite this useless, honestly."
The easy, amused voice drifted over from somewhere not far away, and almost everyone present felt something change in their expression — including the airborne Ghetsis.
"MAMMON!!"
Wallace — still caked in dirt — spun around and recognized the voice immediately.
Not far away, a young man in a long black coat was walking toward them at a leisurely pace, step by unhurried step. Behind him, Caitlin followed alongside Dark Mewtwo.
Even Leon and N, still mid-battle, stopped.
"Mammon. What are you doing here?"
Steven stared at him, and something tightened in his voice.
"Came to watch, naturally. A showdown between Team Plasma and the League — I wasn't going to miss that."
Mammon's smile was pleasant and unconcerned.
"I'll be honest with you though — I'm a little disappointed. All these Champions gathered in one place, and you couldn't even get your hands on a has-been like Sage Ghetsis? Really?"
He shook his head with a sigh that managed to convey deep personal sorrow.
The collective twitch that ran across Steven, Cynthia, and Leon's faces was unanimous.
One person did not share the expression.
"MAMMON!! You—!!"
Ghetsis glared down at him, veins visible at his temples.
His entire body was locked in Dark Mewtwo's psychic grip. He couldn't move. The only thing that still worked was his mouth.
"Oh~? It's been a while, Sage Ghetsis. I didn't know you'd taken up flying."
Mammon looked up with an expression of theatrical surprise.
Ghetsis looked like he was going to rupture something.
This was his doing. This was obviously his doing.
"GENESECT! TECHNO BLAST!!"
Ghetsis screamed the order at the Shiny Genesect below him. He was going to end this man—
The Shiny Genesect didn't move.
It stood exactly where it was. Not a twitch. Not a reaction. As if Ghetsis had said nothing at all.
"GENESECT!!"
The desperation in Ghetsis's voice was audible now.
"No point yelling," Mammon said, not unkindly. "It's not going to listen to you."
"You—! How did you—?!" Ghetsis's jaw clenched so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn't crack. But — how? That wasn't possible.
"Well, not entirely." Mammon produced a small device and held it up where Ghetsis could see it, smile perfectly sunny. "Recognize this?"
"…Colress." The word came out like a curse.
"Congratulations, correct answer. When Colress handed these three Genesect over to you, he included a Colress Machine to give you control over them. Naturally, though, control permissions come in tiers."
Mammon looked up at him, thoroughly enjoying himself.
"Colress transferred the highest-level permissions to me. So, Sage Ghetsis — your Genesect…"
All three Genesect — the Shiny and both regular specimens — swiveled in unison and leveled their cannons at Ghetsis.
"…are mine now."
A beat of silence.
"Funny thing about using machines to control Pokémon," Mammon added, tilting his head with an expression of gentle mockery. "That kind of shortcut has a way of biting you eventually. See? Right on schedule."
He was using the Colress Machine himself at this particular moment, yes — but only for now. Once this was wrapped up, he'd remove the devices from all three and formally catch the Shiny Genesect properly.
The other two he'd hold onto for the time being.
Pfft—
Wallace nearly choked trying not to laugh.
Watching Ghetsis's face cycle through expressions like he'd swallowed something deeply unpleasant was — genuinely — one of the most satisfying things Wallace had seen in recent memory. He was surprised to find himself thinking that Mammon was looking unusually tolerable today.
Well done, Mammon.
Well done.
(End of Chapter)
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