Chapter 333: Battle with Giovanni
Silver Town. Team Rocket's temporary headquarters.
Giovanni was sitting on the sofa with one hand pressed against his forehead, his Persian curled beside him, its eyes half-closed. The room was quiet in the way that rooms around Giovanni tended to be quiet — not peaceful, but carefully maintained.
"Three days," he said, without looking up. "Have you found Ryan?"
The two operatives standing behind him exchanged a brief glance. The one on the left spoke first. "No trace, sir. He got out of the perimeter clean after the extraction. But we did confirm something — Domino appears to have defected. Current intelligence puts her as one of Ryan's secretaries at the Guild headquarters."
Giovanni's hand moved from his forehead to Persian's fur, stroking it slowly. He was quiet for a moment. "Leave me."
Both operatives bowed and withdrew. The door closed.
A few seconds later, it opened again.
Silver stepped inside, his expression carrying the particular careful neutrality of someone who had grown up reading a room before entering it. "You wanted to see me."
Giovanni stood. He crossed the room, and for a moment — just a moment — the careful architecture of coldness that had been his default for as long as Silver could remember was simply not there. He pulled his son into a brief, firm embrace, and Silver went still with the surprise of it.
"Take this." Giovanni pressed something into Silver's hand without releasing him. "And then leave. Don't come back to Team Rocket. Live quietly somewhere — somewhere no one is looking for you. Use a different name if you have to."
Silver pulled back enough to look at his father's face. "What are you—"
Giovanni nodded once.
The Deoxys materialized beside Silver without sound. Silver had time to register its presence, and then a soft buzzing filled his head, and the room went dark.
Deoxys caught him before he hit the floor. It looked at Giovanni over the unconscious boy's shoulder, the question communicated without words.
Giovanni looked at Silver's face for a long moment. "I was never any good at this," he said quietly. "He looks like me. His character is nothing like me — that's from his mother. That's better." He exhaled. "I've burned every bridge there is to burn this time. The League, the Guild — both of them coming down on us at once. I chose that, and I'll answer for it. But Silver didn't choose it. He's young. Seal the memories — everything connected to Team Rocket, everything that leads back to this. Take care of him after."
Deoxys held his gaze for a moment. Then it nodded.
It shifted Silver's weight carefully, moved to the window, and was gone — a white streak diminishing rapidly against the early morning sky until it vanished entirely.
Giovanni watched until there was nothing left to watch. Then the softness left his face completely, replaced by the expression that Team Rocket's members recognized and were careful around. He looked down at Silver Town's streets, at the operatives moving through them, at the scale of what he'd built and what he'd chosen to spend it on.
"It's time," he said, to no one.
On the outskirts of Silver Town, the combined force had finished assembling.
Ryan stood at the front of the formation and did a rough count. Between the Guild's main force and the League contingents that had arrived over the past day, they were just over a thousand strong. He could see Mew moving at the edge of the group — a small, pink presence that most of the assembled Trainers were trying not to stare at too obviously. Beside it, Lugia moved with the easy authority of a Pokémon that had been in large operations before and knew how to hold its position.
Ryan caught Mew's eye and smiled slightly. "After this is settled — I want a match."
Mew regarded him with the specific expression of a Pokémon that was simultaneously ancient, deeply curious, and slightly amused by everything. It responded through telepathy, the voice landing lightly in Ryan's mind: A spar is fine. We'll discuss it afterward.
Ryan filed that away with quiet satisfaction. This wasn't just about the spar itself — it was about what came after it. Charizard's path to a full Domain breakthrough ran through the Rebirth Origin, and the Rebirth Origin required a second Origin to anchor against. Mew, as a Pokémon whose Domain was creation itself and whose genetic composition included the blueprint of every Pokémon that existed, was the single best possible catalyst for that process. If Ryan could demonstrate the gap in their respective strengths clearly enough, the conditions for the Origin transfer would be there.
If Charizard reached a full Domain with Mega Evolution and the Bond Phenomenon both active simultaneously — Ryan didn't finish the thought. He'd think about the ceiling later. Right now there was a battle to run.
Lance appeared at his shoulder, looking at the assembled force with the expression of someone who was used to commanding large operations and was quietly assessing this one. "Everyone's in position."
"Then let's move."
The formation lifted — flying mounts ascending in a broad wave, the ground units moving in parallel below — and turned toward Silver Town.
Giovanni was waiting outside the town perimeter when they arrived.
He was standing in the open, Persian at his heel, with the stillness of someone who had decided exactly what this moment was and had made his peace with it. Around him, Team Rocket's forces were already deploying — the chimera wave units fanning out, the conventional forces taking position behind them.
Ryan looked at Giovanni across the gap between the formations and felt something that wasn't quite respect but was adjacent to it. Giovanni had built something real. He'd done it through methods that had caused genuine harm, and he was going to answer for that, but the architecture of what he'd constructed — the discipline, the operational sophistication, the willingness to commit everything — that was real.
Ryan didn't say any of that. Instead he looked at Kyuryu.
Kyuryu opened its mouth. The fusion beam — ice, lightning, and fire combined in the signature compression of its merged form — crossed the gap between formations in a fraction of a second, aimed directly at Giovanni's position as a clear, unambiguous opening signal.
Giovanni's Crobat was already moving. It swept under Giovanni and lifted him skyward in a single smooth motion, the beam passing through the space he'd occupied a moment before and detonating against the ground beyond. Giovanni looked down at Ryan from altitude, extended one hand, and made a single deliberate gesture — pointing sideways. Come fight me properly. Somewhere with room.
Ryan smiled. He looked back at his assembled force. "Deoxys — Giovanni's Deoxys is in there. That's yours when you find it. Everyone else — don't hold back."
He released Deoxys from the Master Ball. It materialized beside him, and for a moment it simply looked at Silver Town with an expression that Ryan recognized. He didn't say anything to it. It knew what it was here for.
Ryan kept Charizard, Greninja, Zygarde, Florges, and Zeraora on his belt. He released the rest — the full roster, every heavy-hitter — into the main engagement, with Xerneas anchoring the line alongside Mew and Lugia. The three of them together could hold the chimera wave almost indefinitely. The rest of the Guild force and the League contingent could work the conventional flanks.
Six Pokémon was more than enough for Giovanni.
Crobat brought Giovanni down into an open clearing on the town's edge — enough space for a real battle, away from the formations. Ryan walked into the clearing from the opposite side with Kyuryu moving alongside him at an easy pace.
"Still going?" Ryan asked.
"Obviously." Giovanni's voice was flat and professional. "Let's see what you have."
Ryan nodded at Kyuryu. Kyuryu opened its mouth and fired again — the full fusion beam, no warm-up, directly at Giovanni.
Crobat moved. Fast — genuinely fast, its four wings generating bursts of speed that covered the lateral distance before the beam had fully committed to its angle. Giovanni landed in a new position, unhurried, and released a Pokémon.
Dugtrio emerged and immediately went subsurface.
Ryan released Zeraora.
Zeraora felt the vibration in the ground before Dugtrio surfaced and sidestepped with the casual precision of a Pokémon whose reaction time operated below the threshold of what most opponents could read. The Dugtrio emerged into empty air. Zeraora had already moved to its flank, blue-white electricity condensing rapidly across both fists.
Giovanni released a Nidoking. Horn Drill, aimed at Zeraora's center mass — a good instinct against a target that relied on speed, since Horn Drill's accuracy was tied to speed differential.
Zeraora glanced at it.
The electromagnetic lift generated under its feet took it off the ground a half-second before the Horn Drill committed to its trajectory. The attack passed below. Zeraora came down on Nidoking's left side — inside the arc of the horn — both fists driving in simultaneously. The Plasma Fist impact hit Nidoking squarely in the abdomen and the discharge that followed was immediate and total. Nidoking left the ground, traveled a significant horizontal distance, and did not get back up.
Ryan looked at Giovanni across the clearing. "I think we both know where this is going. Bring out the ones that are actually going to make this interesting — the longer we spend on the warm-up, the longer your people are getting taken apart over there."
Giovanni looked at him for a long moment. Then, for the first time since the clearing, something that might have been wry acknowledgment crossed his face.
He reached for his next Poké Ball.
(End of Chapter)
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