Chapter 58.2- Oak

“Uh, uhhh. Keep telling yourself that. You lost, Giovanni, and I know it hurts. How does it feel to stand defeated at my feet?” Oak said, clearly uncomfortable with how calmly the terrorist was taking his words. He wanted to rub it in, and a very large part of me loved seeing it.

The bell suddenly rang, signifying the end of the trial, and Oak turned to the Dusknoir. “Our bargain is concluded. Thank you,” he said, before bowing to his Pokémon, and the Pokémon bowed in return. I watched in shock as the Pokémon turned purely into a cloud before folding entirely in on itself.

“Isn’t that just interesting?” Giovanni spoke up, having previously fallen silent at Oak’s words.

“Oh, shut up,” the boy replied as he turned on his heels and began to march out of the forest.

Suddenly, a voice boomed out across the forest, clearly coming from some sort of powerful speaker. “The test is concluded. Those who passed the test will receive an alert on their wristbands. We matched two metrics together: the number of trainers eliminated, as well as the time spent in the field before getting eliminated. Every trainer was given a numeric value based on known strength, and it is that numeric value that matters in our calculation of the first metric,” the voice said, and I did indeed receive a ping on my wristband. Twenty points for lasting until the end of the event, but only five points for the single trainer I’d eliminated in my search for Giovanni.

I turned back to the trainers I was spying on with a frown. All their wristbands were visibly glowing green in contrast to my band’s red glow. Fuck. Giovanni was still in the tournament. There was no prison in his future, it seemed.

XXXXX - DONNELL OAK

I looked at Giovanni with a visible scowl on my face. I didn’t bother trying to hide my displeasure. The deal I’d made with Dusknoir seemed to have been for naught. I should have just allowed the Ghost-type to kill the man and be done with it.

I was just leery of crossing that line. Agatha was self-defense, and Dusknoir had not been acting on my orders then. After I’d used him to take out over a dozen trainers in my search for Giovanni, it would have been a bit ridiculous for me to suddenly ‘lose control’ of him when he was faced with a man I was well-known to hold extreme hatred for. It would have been stupid and practically guaranteed to land me in another ACE prison.

I was jolted back to reality by Sabrina’s sudden appearance at my side. I didn’t even think or stop to consider her possible discomfort when I swept her into my hands in a giant hug. I opened my mind to her in its entirety, and I felt a sudden change in my surroundings. I didn’t need to look around to know we had teleported to the common room we shared in Viridian.

In the privacy of the room, held in her arms, I broke down into tears. Hashirama was gone. Another member of my team gone, just like that. Just because I wanted to save arguably stronger members of my team for later on. I had wasted his life for such a stupid reason, and the only reason he hadn't been stronger was my fault. I neglected my team. I didn't spend as much time training with Hashirama or Snorlax as I did with Igneel and Broly. It was the truth. Maybe if I had spent more time working on his control and power, I would still have him next to me. Maybe if I had even spent more time working on my own body, I would have been able to avenge him with my own hands. If I were just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, a little bit better, I would still have him here. Hashirama's death was my fault, and there wasn't even the thought of vengeance to distract me from that knowledge. There was no vengeance because Agatha was dead, and I wasn't the one to put her down. I failed.

XXXXXXX - The Pokemon Professor

I looked through the recordings for the second time, with the President by my side. There was a barely visible smirk of satisfaction on his face that I ached to remove. The video looped again, and I was treated to the sight of my son losing control of his Pokémon, maiming another trainer's Pokémon, then losing that Pokémon to Agatha's rampage, before somehow smuggling a replacement Pokémon into the center to kill Agatha herself.

"What do you want?" I asked the man. If he was showing me this, then Donnell would not be punished. He wanted something from me. It was as clear as day.

"Oh, nothing but the best for the league as it exists now," he said, his crafty smirk becoming more pronounced, and I resisted the urge to punch him in the face. Blackmail was nothing I was not used to. That mess with the girl from Pewter still haunted me to this day, so I had some expertise in being shaken down. That Goodshown would blackmail me was nothing unexpected, but that he would use my son against me like this crossed a line. A line that I would have expected him, of all people, to respect.

"Speak plainly, Charles. Do not attract even more of my ire," I warned.

A/N; Here’s some more of the new chapter