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"If you had truly intended to trade sincerely, you wouldn't have ended up like this. You brought this upon yourself. Now, be on your way."
After commanding Nidoking to defeat Magcargo and Camerupt one after the other, Sato walked up to Homura, whose face was now filled with despair, and spoke coldly.
"At the end of the day, the winner is king and the loser is nothing. Why so much nonsense? Kid, just wait—Team Magma won't let you off, ah—!"
Facing death, Homura remained stubbornly defiant. Knowing he was doomed, he chose to spit out threats at Sato before dying. But before he could finish speaking, Sato thrust a blade into his throat, ending his sinful life.
Ever since Sato had entered this world, this unexpected "butterfly" had quietly begun altering the course of the future.
Now, Homura—who in the original future would have become an Admin of Team Magma—had fallen at Sato's hands, never to stir chaos in the Hoenn region again.
After killing him, Sato swiftly looted everything of value from Homura's body, then had Nidoking use Flamethrower to reduce him to ashes. As for Homura's Pokémon, Sato showed no mercy—they were all executed on the spot.
With even the strongest among them dead, the other Team Magma members in the cave stood no chance—especially since they were already gravely injured.
To bury the truth here as thoroughly as possible and prevent Team Magma from uncovering what happened, Sato held nothing back. After stripping the remaining members of anything valuable, he eliminated them one by one.
As for their Pokémon, he did not slaughter them all indiscriminately. The fiercely resistant ones were killed on the spot; the rest were released back into the wild.
Notably, Seviper survived by sheer luck. It had remained inside its PokeBall and avoided most of the explosion's damage. Though the ball was later shattered, forcing it out into the cave, it only suffered severe Homurburns and escaped with its life.
After finishing everything, Sato had Nidoking and Kecleon—both capable of using Flamethrower—set the cave ablaze, thoroughly destroying all traces of the battle. Finally, he ordered Nidoking to seal the cave entrance with fallen rocks.
Sato estimated that the intense fighting in the dead of night must have alerted people nearby. He also knew that those cornered Team Magma members would not have waited passively—they would certainly have sent out a distress signal.
He didn't know why Team Magma had been traveling through the forest so late at night, but he was certain it wasn't for anything good. There were very likely more Team Magma operatives in the vicinity.
Thus, Sato dared not linger. He immediately switched to his Ryuzaki Shinichi identity, dressed in black, and under the cover of night rode Crobat toward Mauville City.
Sure enough, not long after Sato left, a squad of ten Team Magma members arrived near the cave. With the help of Poochyena and Mightyena tracking by scent, they quickly located the rock-sealed entrance.
"Homura's distress signal cut off here. Open the entrance."
The tall, gaunt man at the front frowned darkly as he looked at the blocked cave, a bad feeling rising in his chest. He immediately ordered his men to clear it.
"Yes, Lord Blasie."
The surrounding Team Magma members responded at once.
This tall man—Blasie—was one of Team Magma's three top Admins in the future, on par with Homura. A close friend of Homura, he had abandoned his current mission the moment he received the distress signal and rushed over to provide support.
Soon, the rocks sealing the entrance were cleared away. But when they entered, all they found was a layer of cooled ashes. Every trace had been purified by fire.
"Damn it!!!"
Seeing the scene, Blasie knew Homura and the others were almost certainly dead. Veins bulged across his forehead as he roared in fury.
But rage would not change reality. He quickly forced himself to calm down. After sending one subordinate outside the cave, he took out a communicator and reported the situation to their leader.
Both he and Homura had been carrying out a mission to Verdanturf Town.
Now that Homura had been killed, whatever he had been carrying was very likely taken by the enemy. That meant their operation might already be exposed.
Blasie needed to inform their leader immediately so the original plan could be altered at once, preventing the enemy from exploiting it against Team Magma.
Meanwhile, with Crobat's help, Sato successfully reached the skies above Mauville City. He landed on the rooftop of a secluded suburban house before quickly slipping into the city proper.
So much had happened that night that Sato had no desire to sleep. After finding a hotel and confirming he wasn't being monitored, he began organizing the spoils he had taken from Homura and the others.
In truth, Team Magma was poorer than he had expected. Aside from the contents of Homura's spatial backpack, the others carried little of real value.
After sorting through everything, besides the two TMs Homura had previously offered in exchange for Seviper, Sato's main gains were seven anonymous bank cards with unknown balances, five mid-grade Fire Stones, and one Fire Spin TM.
Once he finished dealing with the valuable items, Sato began examining the miscellaneous belongings—especially letters, notes, and similar documents—carefully reading through each one.
Team Magma's presence deep in the forest at midnight was far too suspicious. Sato refused to believe they had come without a specific objective.
He knew very well that Team Magma, alongside Team Aqua, was one of the Hoenn region's most notorious criminal organizations—and their ambitions were terrifying.
Just as Team Aqua had once used the Kyogre crystal to manipulate wild Pokémon, these groups were fully capable of unleashing disasters that could endanger all of Hoenn—or even the entire world. Criminal organizations obsessed with controlling ancient super-legendary Pokémon were extraordinarily dangerous.
Sato had no grand dream of becoming a savior. But neither did he want these extremists turning a good world into chaos. If the opportunity arose—and if the risk wasn't too great—he would gladly sabotage their evil plans.