Chapter 2 - Poverty

It only took a week for John to learn where he was.

Kanto. Specifically, He was near the edge of Pewter City, where the poor lived.

His father was a construction worker, who had moved to Pewter City after hearing of the Indigo League's plans to renovate Pewter City, looking for work.

Unfortunately, he didn't have much success. Not that he had that much back in their original town, anyway.

His mother was a stay at home mom, who was once a mildly successful Contest Trainer.

Both of his parents showed him lots of affection, but due to disagreements between them, they often had debates and fought each other.

Raising a child was an expensive task, and as both of his parents couldn't make that much money, they often had fights over each other.

His father couldn't get contracted to work in big projects and was forced to be a maintenance worker.

His mother couldn't get back into contests, not with her age, and was forced to look after me.

All in all, it could have been worse.

Oh, how wrong he was.

It didn't take long before the family ran out of money.

And his father had received an offer that would change their lives.

Around John's 3rd birthday, his father had received a request from an organization called Team Rocket.

Evidently, they weren't notorious criminals yet, as they were merely but a profit driven organization, which would have been fine if it was kept that way.

His father left home with a skip in his steps, happy that he had finally gotten work.

His father rarely came back, as he was too busy working constantly in Team Rocket.

While the work was rough, the money was more than worth the labour.

Their family received a decent amount of funds, and his mother lost her tense edge as we became financially stable again.

John was overly worried about what this would mean for my family.

'When would Team Rocket turn evil? How could I get my father to stop working for that organization? Why did they hire him specifically?'

Attempting to use the computer in his home to browse the internet didn't work very well. After accidentally downloading viruses and causing his mother to factory reset the computer, he was banned from using them.

Scrolling through the TV channels, John realized most of them rarely talked about the news. Most of them were mainly kid's shows (That he never watched), and there were some official League fighting channels that would rerun some of the more popular fights over and over again.

Nothing about Team Rocket, though. A brand new organization? Or hidden from the media?

That was the only thing John could think of. Could this mean they wouldn't be evil yet? Or was this an alternate dimension where Team Rocket was never evil?

Days turned into months, and months turned into years.

After constantly pestering his mom, he was given access to using the computer.

John spent a majority of his time on the internet, as there was more information there about the various things he had to search up for while planning to become a Pokemon Trainer.

Browsing through multiple threads, he learned of multiple things he wouldn't have thought about. Pokemon status conditions, the effect moves have and how they differ from the games, abilities and how Pokemon could have multiple abilities due to it being in their genes, how Pokemon physiques differ from one another, including even those from the same species. How Pokemon evolve, and most importantly, about Team Rocket.

Team Rocket was led by Sakaki Ginerva, a woman who seeked nothing but profit.

Despite being a relatively new organization, Ginerva's connections and wit allowed her to surpass rival organizations and immediately became a massive cooperation within Kanto within the few months it was created.

Clearly, she had a lot of backing from many important people in high positions; otherwise, she wouldn't have gotten so far.

Any other information was either blocked or couldn't be found, so all that led to was a dead end.

Recently, there has been news that has been troubling. News that could change the very way his life would work, and perhaps be the catalyst that led to Team Rocket becoming an evil organization.

Relations between Kanto and Johto have been getting worse, as international conflicts started sprouting out like weeds, causing bad blood between Kanto and Johto, and the once peaceful state the Indigo League has been so determined to keep.

The Indigo League was composed of multiple figureheads of both Kanto and Johto, with a focus on keeping the peace between the two nations within the Indigo continent.

However, recently there have been disagreements between both sides as well, as the Kanto and Johto representatives were fighting over problems that seemed irrelevant and pointless.

Nothing lasts forever, especially not peace.

By the time John was 8, a full-on war between Kanto and Johto had started, and his father had been enlisted for the war.

At first, he had been interested. The war that Kanto had been in was never explained nor talked about in the games, and now he got to experience it firsthand!

This interest slowly turned into dread and terror as he began to experience the cruelty of war firsthand.

The war had not only led to cruelty; but the development of war-time tactics utilizing a Pokemon's destructive capabilities to its fullest potential.

Kanto and Johto swiftly proceeded to start experementing with tactics that they could only theorize of before, in order to find the most efficient, cost-effective strategy to destroy the opposing side.

The television would often display acts of cruelty or straight up war crimes, though it seemed that there wasn't a concept of war crimes in Indigo.

The war brought scrutiny over multiple other regions, though it seemed they decided to take a passive role in this war.

Squadrons of Pidgeottos and Pidgeots would drop Electrodes as make-shift bombs, the resulting explosion taking down entire houses and buildings, or drop key pokemon onto the battlefield where they would be able to cause the most chaos and devastation to create pressure on the enemy.

Platoons of Dark types decimating outposts in the middle of the night, or Ghost types doing reconnaissance as they feed crucial information for the war.

Poison types with the ability to emit their toxins out into the air would use their poison to completely block out certain areas from being accessed by a majority of the pokemon, or use them alongside pokemon with Flying type moves to send gusts of poison towards the enemy.

Squadrons of Fire type Pokemon would use their fire to burn down forests and cause forest fires to destroy the surroundings and force the opposing side to either deal with it, or ignore the problem entirely, destroying the landscape.

Water type Pokemon would flood entire areas, or be used to deal with the fires that the enemy had started. They were also indispensable for being able to create fresh water, meaning that any team with a Water type wouldn't have to worry about water so long as that Pokemon lived.

Ground types would bring supplies back and forth through the ground, making it nearly impossible to disrupt supply lines without extreme measures.

Psychic types would be used to move strategic assets around swifty with their Teleport, meaning that slow moving tanks could easily be brought straight to the front lines, or use it to bring Electrodes and other pokemon who knew Explosion into strategic areas.

Grass types woul be used to create biochemical weapons, which would be used on Pokemon and humans alike.

And this was only what would be shown to the masses through the media, alongside propaganda and lies indistinguishable from the truth.

Pokemon being used to commit genocide and violence, ecological destruction, all for the sake of what?

Trainers going into the war with excitement, the grandeur of winning the war and becoming a war hero, only to come back injured or dead, with their belt a few Pokeballs short. Some would come completely empty of them.

And they would only come back because they were injured. Those who could still stand, speak, and command their Pokemon were still out there in the war, fighting a fight of which the origins were dubious at best.

Those without Pokemon were considered useless burdens.

His mother would hug him every night as she wished for his father to come back.

Every now and then, alarms would start blaring within Pewter City, and they would have to evacuate to the underground bunker, which was protected by a group of Psychic types maintaining a barrier along the bunker.

He could never get used to the sounds of explosions.

When he came back with his mother, his house had been reduced to nothing but rubble. A squadron of flying types had dropped Electrodes onto his house.

It sounded humorous, didn't it? To have your house be destroyed by Electrodes dropped from the sky.

John was forced alongside his mother to temporarily stay in the refugee camps. They weren't the first, nor the last to enter.

When he was 9, his father stopped sending notes back.

His entire team had been ambushed during an attack on Johto's suppy lines, a suicidal mission at best, and his corpse was missing. He was presumed to be dead.

John was considered lucky to even be able to receive this information. Most wouldn't even know the state of their family members.

John didn't consider himself lucky.

Every day, people in the refugee camp would pray for the end of the war. The response to their prayers was more attacks, and the continuation of the twisted war.

At one point, a quarter of the northern part of Pewter City had become nothing but rubble after a fierce fight.

The bunker had caved in due to the fight, as the psychic types were forced to be a part of the fight.

John came out fine, but his mother was found dead amongst the rubble 3 days later after the League sent Trainers to help clean up and prepare a new bunker.

He had feared for the worst when he couldn't find his mother after the cave in. Many feared alongside him, as they too had someone missing.

His parents were buried in the graveyard. An area that was slowly expanding in size as the war raged on, but not to the extent that it should have, as graves would overlap with one another to conserve space.

He kneeled over his parent's graves, his dirt stained clothes and greasy hair made for a pathetic sight.

Tears flowed down his eyes as he stared at the simple grave made to respect the fallen. The city and its workforce didn't have time to pretty up a grave, not when they were constantly needed elsewhere.

His parents, despite not being his real parents, had loved him just as much, and it broke his heart to see them dead by his feet, with his father's corpse not even being recovered.

John placed a flower over the graves of his parents and stood up. He shook the dirt off his pants as he turned around and left.

The alarms blared once more, and John stared into the sky. The once blue skies brought nothing but dread.

He had never thought his life would escalate to this point. Where was the fun adventure? The companionship and friendships he would create along the way, as he explored this new world?

A sigh, and barely audible footsteps masked by the sirens of the alarms woke John from his trance. "A pathetic sight, isn't it?" The stranger spoke.

John turned around to look at the man who spoke to him.

The man looked gruff, around 6'1 with a muscular physique. He wore a black trench coat with a gray button-up shirt. His pants were baggy and held up by a belt. His hair was hidden behind a black hat as he smoked a cigarette. He didn't appear to have any Pokeballs at first glance.

"I'm not just talking about you, though I won't lie, you are as pathetic as your surroundings. But rather, isn't this whole war pathetic?" The man asked, puffing a cloud of smoke.

John cringed at the smell, and turned to walk away. Getting involved with strangers during wartime, especially as an orphan, as that led to nothing but trouble.

He had better things to do. Things to plan for, and somehow survive in this world until he could get a grasp of his life with his own two hands.

"Don't you want to change this war? Don't you want to change things? To change how the word follows the whims of those who don't understand the consequences of their greed and actions?" The man asked, still standing in his position, staring at the sky.

John stopped walking, his head turned around.

"This world is corrupt, and those who live inside it are faced with corruption. This system was rigged against us from the very beginning." The man breathed out another puff of smoke, his fingers grasping his cigarette, before dropping it to the ground, stomping on the cigarette and twisting his feet left and right, before stepping off of it.

John focused his eyes on the man. This was fishy. This whole situation was fishy. Who'd speak of the world and its corruption to an 8 year old? His eyes only got more vigilant as he slowly stepped back, his eyes on the man at all times.

The man chuckled. "Look at this, a kid who can't even be 10, so wary of strangers. Don't you think this is rather messed up?" The man sat in a squat to get at eye level with him. In his eyes was a firey, determined gaze.

"My name is Giovanni. I want to change the world. Your father worked under me for some time, and I had a good impression of him. So how about it, kid? Do you want to change the world, too?" He asked in a surprisingly kind tone, stretching out his hands.

This... What the hell!?

Why was the boss of Team Rocket speaking to him?

Wait, no, he wasn't the boss. Giovanni isn't the boss yet. It was Ginerva Sakaki. Did that mean he overthrew the current boss? Or was the position simply handed to him?

Would Team Rocket fall into criminality after his accession?

Did he even have a choice? Would Giovanni really give him one?

Despite his kind words and tone, John could see the endless coldness hidden beneath that mask.

John didn't think he'd like what would happen if he said no.

He could only gulp and hold the man's scarred, calloused hands, calculating how to get out of this situation.

Why would the soon-to-be boss of Team Rocket visit him specifically?

"Good," Giovanni smiled. A genuine, terrifying smile. "Very good. You made the right choice, kid."

The world spun, as John's vision faded.

Briefly, he thought he could see an Alakazam beside Giovanni.

'You... Damn... Bitch..!'

Thud!

...

"For the needs of the many, forsake the few.

"With the lives of the few, will we better the many.

"And if society refuses to change, despite everything...

"Then I'll burn society to the ground, and arise a better future.

"For the many."