leader [1/1]
it's like a game of russian roulette. [giovanni, madame boss]
pokemon; drama; pg13; 2700 words
He closes his eyes and he’s six years old again, just a kid with a legacy to live up to. He’s standing in a darkened hallway with his ear pressed against a door, listening intently to the events unfolding within.
He hears his mother’s voice, toxic and beautiful, and it snakes its way through his mind like poison. There is another voice as well - male, loud and rough and unrefined. The kind of voice that everyone hears but no one really listens to.
“You’re a madwoman!” the man is saying, each word spoken with unnecessary force. “I would never dream of conducting business with your type. Do you know what kind of trouble I could get in with the police? You Rockets are wanted for crimes from Pewter to Lavender!”
A pregnant pause.
“… You don’t say?” When his mother speaks, people unwittingly lean closer, hanging on to her every word. She’s someone that people want to listen to.
“Such a pity,” she sighs, as if it truly pains her. “We could have been such a profitable business partners too…”
He hears the wooden scrape of a drawer sliding open, and then the sound of a chair being overturned.
“Wh-what the hell are you doing!?” The man’s voice is panicked - if one were to concentrate they could probably hear his heart racing from outside the room.
“I’d rather not do this, actually,” his mother says, with such terrible regret that he almost believes it. “I feel like you might leave a stain on the carpet… But some sacrifices are necessary. You know too much, and no one can say that I don’t protect my own.”
Then, a sound that Giovanni knows all too well: a trigger being cocked.
“N-no, please! I swear I won’t tell a soul about this place! I’ll keep my head down and I won’t breathe a word to anyone - ”
A gunshot.
A quiet sigh.
“I knew I should’ve waited to have the carpet cleaned.”
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s ten years old again, just a skinny boy with a troubled heart. It’s winter, and it’s one of those days when the air has a certain bite, stabbing at the skin like icy needles. Winter’s halfway through and still there’s no snow. Instead, everything has turned to bleak shades of grey and brown, and trees stretch their skeletal fingers towards an empty sky. Old, brittle leaves litter the ground, crushed to pieces beneath hundreds of feet. He and his mother walk side by side down the path, and like always her stride is full of purpose and he’s struggling to keep up.
She’s bundled up in expensive furs, pale skin stark against her long black hair, painted lips like a bloody gash across her face. She’s not looking at him (she rarely does). She’s just staring straight ahead at the winding path in front of them; at something he can’t imagine and doesn’t care to.
Everything is silent save for the sharp staccato of her stiletto heels.
Suddenly, a pitiful mewling reaches his ears, and he glances down to see a dilapidated cardboard box by the side of the path. There’s a tiny Skitty inside, its soft pink fur matted and grimy, with one ear bent at an awkward angle.
He stops and crouches down to pet it, his heart clenching with sympathy for the poor little creature. It nudges his hand hopefully, begging him to take it home, to love it and care for it.
“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” his mother’s voice purrs. She never gets angry, no, only dangerous, and he knows better than anyone that she is not a force to be reckoned with. “Leave that disgusting animal be.”
“But…” His voice trails off. He looks up at her, and sees a glint in her dark eyes that means trouble.
“But what, my dear?”
He knows it’s hopeless, but he has to try. “It’ll die if we leave it out here!” he exclaims, standing up against her. “We can’t just sit back and do nothing!”
The next thing he feels is a searing pain as her hand strikes him across the cheek, sending him crashing to the hard pavement. Her rings, bejeweled and glittering and three to each hand, cut into his skin, and the coppery taste of blood fills his mouth.
As he lies on the ground, nursing his raw cheek and trying to blink the tears from his eyes, she gazes down at him with a sort of tender scorn.
“You’ll come to understand, my dear,” she says, with a cruel twist to her lips, “that the weak are simply not meant to live. Survival of the fittest, you know. It’s a very basic principle. Now stand up, boy. I’m late enough already, and I’ve had enough of your dawdling.”
He struggles to his feet as she turns to walk away, her stiletto heels going click, click, click against the sidewalk.
The Skitty mews softly, and Giovanni hangs his head in shame.
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s fifteen again, sullen-faced and angry at the world. Each day he’s being prepped for greatness, learning the ins and outs of a life of crime.
“You’re my only heir,” his mother says with a disdainful sneer. “Once I’m dead and gone, Team Rocket will be yours. So I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of your ineptitude, won’t I?”
He’s learned to stay silent when she insults him. No matter what anyone says, words will never hurt as much as a backhand across the face. So he keeps his mouth shut and listens, like she expects him to.
Sometimes she simply imparts a few words of wisdom upon him.
“Trust no one,” she says one day, as she lounges languidly in front of the fireplace. The red hot flames dance and flicker in her dark eyes. “But always appear trustworthy. Subordinates need a leader they can believe in, a leader who is aloof and yet available at the same time. A good leader needs to be a confidante to those beneath them.”
“Always be wary of spies,” she says another day, as she sits behind her desk and surveys her kingdom. “You must learn to identify in a single glance whether someone is keeping secrets. When a person shifts their eyes in a certain manner, always be wary of an attack. And be prepared to strike first. That is vital. If their fingers twitch at their side, they may be carrying a concealed weapon. So you must always stay on your toes, no matter what company you might find yourself in.”
He knows that her advice will be useful someday, when he becomes her unwilling successor. But for now he’s just a pissed-off teenager, trying to pretend he’s normal when he’s not, and so he just nods like a good child to show her that he’s listening.
Sometimes her lessons come in a more practical form.
On Christmas day she takes him out to the countryside. It’s a white Christmas this year, and for miles all around there’s nothing but a soft blanket of pure white, in stark contrast with the slate grey sky. Giovanni watches the blank scenery pass by without much interest, occasionally pausing to un-fog the glass. He’s not totally sure where she’s taking him, but he has an idea. She makes this trip twice a year - once in the summer and once in the winter - and has always returned with a grimace and a foul temper. This is the first time he’s ever gone with her, though. She must be feeling optimistic.
The sleek black sedan makes a sharp turn on to a back road, barely visible and still covered in quite a bit of snow. After nearly half a mile of uncomfortable jostling and jolting, the car pulls up to an unimpressive little building. One would never have suspected it of housing an evil organization if not for the barred windows and the guards stationed at the door.
“Come,” his mother says simply, and exits the car. He follows suit obediently, more than a little curious as to what she wants to show him.
The guards incline their heads respectfully to his mother as they pass through the doors, but show none of the same courtesy to Giovanni. The grunts are not fond of the Madame’s bratty son, thinking him to be an unworthy successor to the Team Rocket throne. (Secretly, he agrees, for far different reasons.)
They walk through the sterile white hallways, and he tries to keep his curiosity in check. But it gets the best of him, and he foolishly peers inside one of the rooms to get a better look.
The walls are lined with gleaming metal cages, and each cage contains a monster. Some are misshapen, their bodies bulging with grotesque muscle. Others look like they’ve been sewn together from bits and piece of other creatures, a mad doctor’s dream come to life. Others still look like skeletons, their bones jutting out at awkward angles through their fur.
He feels bile rising to his throat, and has to look away.
“Failed experiments,” his mother says with a frown. She raises one pencil-thin eyebrow. “Quite unfortunate, really, that so many healthy test subjects had to go to waste. But it’s all in the name of a very worthwhile endeavor. That’s why I’ve brought you here today, boy. It’s about time you saw the true power of Team Rocket.”
She leads him away from the horrific creatures in their cages, to a room with “Observation Lab 3” painted on the door. Inside are a host of Team Rocket’s most adept scientists, swathed in their immaculate white lab coats. One of them sneers at Giovanni as he steps into the room.
“I see you’ve brought the boy along, Madame,” he drawls. His quirky smile is tight-lipped.
“I hope this isn’t a problem.” His mother’s voice clearly intones what will happen if it is a problem.
“No, no, of course not… No problem at all…” The scientist clears his throat nervously. He walks over to a control panel and presses the intercom button. “Prepare Test Subject 74A for observation,” he says, speaking into the microphone.
Through the thick glass of the observation window, they can see a metal gate being raised. A few moments later, a massive creature emerges from the darkness behind the gate. It looks almost like a Nidoking, but it has grown to nearly twice its usual size. Its massive jaws gnash mercilessly, its sharp claws scrap against the walls, and its powerful tail thrashes from side to side, nearly shaking the foundations of the building.
“It’s beautiful,” his mother murmurs, eyes alight.
“… What did you do to it?” Giovanni asks. His tone is flat and undisturbed but underneath it he’s barely keeping himself from shaking in horror. This… thing is no longer a Pokémon - it’s a fiend.
“Oh, all sorts of steroids and growth hormones,” she replies, offhanded. “Most of the other subjects died, but this one… This one was deemed fit to live. And now Team Rocket’s goal of the ultimate killing machine is finally complete. Watch.”
She nods at one of the other scientists, who pulls a lever. A small door in the testing room swings open, revealing a frightened little Butterfree. The Butterfree flies out of its cage and sets off around the room, searching for an escape route and finding none. The colossal Nidoking watches it with disinterest, following its panicked, looping path with its eyes… Until one of the scientists says two simple words into the microphone.
“Kill it.”
Giovanni swears he sees the thing’s eyes glow red for a fraction of a second before it lets loose a blood-curdling roar. It lunges at the helpless Butterfree and spears it with its knife-like claws in an instant, then sets itself to the task of ripping it apart in every imaginable way. For the second time since setting foot in the building, Giovanni is forced to look away from the gruesome sight before him.
“Merry Christmas to me,” Madame Boss whispers, just loud enough for her son to hear.
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s twenty-two again, an unfeeling, well-trained machine of his mother’s creation. Little by little he has been taking over his mother’s duties: conducting shady business deals here and there, overseeing the training of new recruits, giving commands to the admins.
Madame Boss is still beautiful, yes, but the years have not been easy on her mind. Sometimes he’ll catch her muttering to herself, unintelligible things like strings of numbers or the lyrics to some haunting children’s song, and other times he’ll find her staring off into the distance with empty eyes. Her moods are more erratic these days - irate tirades are exchanged in an instant for loving praise, and she often laughs at nothing.
He wishes he knew what was going through her mind to make her this way.
Secretly, he hopes that she is being tormented by guilt for all the things she’s done. He feels no remorse for wishing this, because in his mind there is no one in the world more deserving of insanity.
He returns to the mansion late one evening to find the place swarming with grunts. They all pause when he enters, hardly daring to breathe, and he scans their faces for a clue as to what has happened. They offer him nothing but a sort of reverential awe and wariness.
“You there.” He points to the nearest grunt and motions him over. “What is going on here?”
“It… It’s your mother, sir,” the grunt says nervously. “She’s dead. Shot by an unidentified sniper while she was leaving that gala downtown… Medical help wasn’t able to make it on time…”
He continues his rambling, but Giovanni isn’t listening.
His mother is dead. Really, truly dead. He struggles to comprehend this, and finds it both satisfying and painful. Never again would he look into those vindictive, glassy dark eyes and see only scorn reflected back at him. Never again would he hear that deadly voice trickling into his ears like sickly sweet syrup. Never again would he feel the sting of those damned rings cutting into his flesh.
It all feels far too sudden. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. Such things were not important. It wasn’t that he had never asked her about the past - about his father and her life before Team Rocket. The past was just that, and there was no need to remember it.
It was that, in all the times he had been alone with her and her growing madness, he had never truly seized the opportunity. He had never been able to hurt her the same way she had hurt him. Now his mother is gone, nothing more than a harmless corpse with the lifeblood cooling steadily in her veins.
Madame Boss is gone, and there is no one left to hate.
He feels lost when he realizes this. He had spent his entire life despising his mother, and now that she is gone so unexpectedly… What does he have left? His purpose for living (vengeance, or at least a semblance of it) has been rendered meaningless. His most bitter and enemy and at the same time, most trusted ally, has been vanquished.
And then it hits him.
“Team Rocket.”
Team Rocket is all he has left. The one thing his mother stood for above all else is the only thing remaining of his so-called life. He could almost laugh at the irony, if he weren’t a step away from hysterics. That conniving snake of a woman had planned this from the start. And he couldn’t just run away. It was almost as if she was taunting him from beyond the grave, waving a gun in his face and daring him to play roulette.
Giovanni’s dark eyes are like chips of ice as he draws himself up and surveys the scene before him. The grunts are still watching, wide-eyed, wondering whether he’ll flee like a coward or stand and fight.
“My mother may be gone,” he declares, and his voice echoes through the room, “but Team Rocket will never die.”
Silence.
And then a raucous cheer travels through the crowd, deafening in its volume. Quietly, he whispers to himself:
“You win this time, mother. But the war’s not over yet.”
pokemon; drama; pg13; 2700 words
He closes his eyes and he’s six years old again, just a kid with a legacy to live up to. He’s standing in a darkened hallway with his ear pressed against a door, listening intently to the events unfolding within.
He hears his mother’s voice, toxic and beautiful, and it snakes its way through his mind like poison. There is another voice as well - male, loud and rough and unrefined. The kind of voice that everyone hears but no one really listens to.
“You’re a madwoman!” the man is saying, each word spoken with unnecessary force. “I would never dream of conducting business with your type. Do you know what kind of trouble I could get in with the police? You Rockets are wanted for crimes from Pewter to Lavender!”
A pregnant pause.
“… You don’t say?” When his mother speaks, people unwittingly lean closer, hanging on to her every word. She’s someone that people want to listen to.
“Such a pity,” she sighs, as if it truly pains her. “We could have been such a profitable business partners too…”
He hears the wooden scrape of a drawer sliding open, and then the sound of a chair being overturned.
“Wh-what the hell are you doing!?” The man’s voice is panicked - if one were to concentrate they could probably hear his heart racing from outside the room.
“I’d rather not do this, actually,” his mother says, with such terrible regret that he almost believes it. “I feel like you might leave a stain on the carpet… But some sacrifices are necessary. You know too much, and no one can say that I don’t protect my own.”
Then, a sound that Giovanni knows all too well: a trigger being cocked.
“N-no, please! I swear I won’t tell a soul about this place! I’ll keep my head down and I won’t breathe a word to anyone - ”
A gunshot.
A quiet sigh.
“I knew I should’ve waited to have the carpet cleaned.”
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s ten years old again, just a skinny boy with a troubled heart. It’s winter, and it’s one of those days when the air has a certain bite, stabbing at the skin like icy needles. Winter’s halfway through and still there’s no snow. Instead, everything has turned to bleak shades of grey and brown, and trees stretch their skeletal fingers towards an empty sky. Old, brittle leaves litter the ground, crushed to pieces beneath hundreds of feet. He and his mother walk side by side down the path, and like always her stride is full of purpose and he’s struggling to keep up.
She’s bundled up in expensive furs, pale skin stark against her long black hair, painted lips like a bloody gash across her face. She’s not looking at him (she rarely does). She’s just staring straight ahead at the winding path in front of them; at something he can’t imagine and doesn’t care to.
Everything is silent save for the sharp staccato of her stiletto heels.
Suddenly, a pitiful mewling reaches his ears, and he glances down to see a dilapidated cardboard box by the side of the path. There’s a tiny Skitty inside, its soft pink fur matted and grimy, with one ear bent at an awkward angle.
He stops and crouches down to pet it, his heart clenching with sympathy for the poor little creature. It nudges his hand hopefully, begging him to take it home, to love it and care for it.
“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” his mother’s voice purrs. She never gets angry, no, only dangerous, and he knows better than anyone that she is not a force to be reckoned with. “Leave that disgusting animal be.”
“But…” His voice trails off. He looks up at her, and sees a glint in her dark eyes that means trouble.
“But what, my dear?”
He knows it’s hopeless, but he has to try. “It’ll die if we leave it out here!” he exclaims, standing up against her. “We can’t just sit back and do nothing!”
The next thing he feels is a searing pain as her hand strikes him across the cheek, sending him crashing to the hard pavement. Her rings, bejeweled and glittering and three to each hand, cut into his skin, and the coppery taste of blood fills his mouth.
As he lies on the ground, nursing his raw cheek and trying to blink the tears from his eyes, she gazes down at him with a sort of tender scorn.
“You’ll come to understand, my dear,” she says, with a cruel twist to her lips, “that the weak are simply not meant to live. Survival of the fittest, you know. It’s a very basic principle. Now stand up, boy. I’m late enough already, and I’ve had enough of your dawdling.”
He struggles to his feet as she turns to walk away, her stiletto heels going click, click, click against the sidewalk.
The Skitty mews softly, and Giovanni hangs his head in shame.
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s fifteen again, sullen-faced and angry at the world. Each day he’s being prepped for greatness, learning the ins and outs of a life of crime.
“You’re my only heir,” his mother says with a disdainful sneer. “Once I’m dead and gone, Team Rocket will be yours. So I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of your ineptitude, won’t I?”
He’s learned to stay silent when she insults him. No matter what anyone says, words will never hurt as much as a backhand across the face. So he keeps his mouth shut and listens, like she expects him to.
Sometimes she simply imparts a few words of wisdom upon him.
“Trust no one,” she says one day, as she lounges languidly in front of the fireplace. The red hot flames dance and flicker in her dark eyes. “But always appear trustworthy. Subordinates need a leader they can believe in, a leader who is aloof and yet available at the same time. A good leader needs to be a confidante to those beneath them.”
“Always be wary of spies,” she says another day, as she sits behind her desk and surveys her kingdom. “You must learn to identify in a single glance whether someone is keeping secrets. When a person shifts their eyes in a certain manner, always be wary of an attack. And be prepared to strike first. That is vital. If their fingers twitch at their side, they may be carrying a concealed weapon. So you must always stay on your toes, no matter what company you might find yourself in.”
He knows that her advice will be useful someday, when he becomes her unwilling successor. But for now he’s just a pissed-off teenager, trying to pretend he’s normal when he’s not, and so he just nods like a good child to show her that he’s listening.
Sometimes her lessons come in a more practical form.
On Christmas day she takes him out to the countryside. It’s a white Christmas this year, and for miles all around there’s nothing but a soft blanket of pure white, in stark contrast with the slate grey sky. Giovanni watches the blank scenery pass by without much interest, occasionally pausing to un-fog the glass. He’s not totally sure where she’s taking him, but he has an idea. She makes this trip twice a year - once in the summer and once in the winter - and has always returned with a grimace and a foul temper. This is the first time he’s ever gone with her, though. She must be feeling optimistic.
The sleek black sedan makes a sharp turn on to a back road, barely visible and still covered in quite a bit of snow. After nearly half a mile of uncomfortable jostling and jolting, the car pulls up to an unimpressive little building. One would never have suspected it of housing an evil organization if not for the barred windows and the guards stationed at the door.
“Come,” his mother says simply, and exits the car. He follows suit obediently, more than a little curious as to what she wants to show him.
The guards incline their heads respectfully to his mother as they pass through the doors, but show none of the same courtesy to Giovanni. The grunts are not fond of the Madame’s bratty son, thinking him to be an unworthy successor to the Team Rocket throne. (Secretly, he agrees, for far different reasons.)
They walk through the sterile white hallways, and he tries to keep his curiosity in check. But it gets the best of him, and he foolishly peers inside one of the rooms to get a better look.
The walls are lined with gleaming metal cages, and each cage contains a monster. Some are misshapen, their bodies bulging with grotesque muscle. Others look like they’ve been sewn together from bits and piece of other creatures, a mad doctor’s dream come to life. Others still look like skeletons, their bones jutting out at awkward angles through their fur.
He feels bile rising to his throat, and has to look away.
“Failed experiments,” his mother says with a frown. She raises one pencil-thin eyebrow. “Quite unfortunate, really, that so many healthy test subjects had to go to waste. But it’s all in the name of a very worthwhile endeavor. That’s why I’ve brought you here today, boy. It’s about time you saw the true power of Team Rocket.”
She leads him away from the horrific creatures in their cages, to a room with “Observation Lab 3” painted on the door. Inside are a host of Team Rocket’s most adept scientists, swathed in their immaculate white lab coats. One of them sneers at Giovanni as he steps into the room.
“I see you’ve brought the boy along, Madame,” he drawls. His quirky smile is tight-lipped.
“I hope this isn’t a problem.” His mother’s voice clearly intones what will happen if it is a problem.
“No, no, of course not… No problem at all…” The scientist clears his throat nervously. He walks over to a control panel and presses the intercom button. “Prepare Test Subject 74A for observation,” he says, speaking into the microphone.
Through the thick glass of the observation window, they can see a metal gate being raised. A few moments later, a massive creature emerges from the darkness behind the gate. It looks almost like a Nidoking, but it has grown to nearly twice its usual size. Its massive jaws gnash mercilessly, its sharp claws scrap against the walls, and its powerful tail thrashes from side to side, nearly shaking the foundations of the building.
“It’s beautiful,” his mother murmurs, eyes alight.
“… What did you do to it?” Giovanni asks. His tone is flat and undisturbed but underneath it he’s barely keeping himself from shaking in horror. This… thing is no longer a Pokémon - it’s a fiend.
“Oh, all sorts of steroids and growth hormones,” she replies, offhanded. “Most of the other subjects died, but this one… This one was deemed fit to live. And now Team Rocket’s goal of the ultimate killing machine is finally complete. Watch.”
She nods at one of the other scientists, who pulls a lever. A small door in the testing room swings open, revealing a frightened little Butterfree. The Butterfree flies out of its cage and sets off around the room, searching for an escape route and finding none. The colossal Nidoking watches it with disinterest, following its panicked, looping path with its eyes… Until one of the scientists says two simple words into the microphone.
“Kill it.”
Giovanni swears he sees the thing’s eyes glow red for a fraction of a second before it lets loose a blood-curdling roar. It lunges at the helpless Butterfree and spears it with its knife-like claws in an instant, then sets itself to the task of ripping it apart in every imaginable way. For the second time since setting foot in the building, Giovanni is forced to look away from the gruesome sight before him.
“Merry Christmas to me,” Madame Boss whispers, just loud enough for her son to hear.
-x-
He closes his eyes and he’s twenty-two again, an unfeeling, well-trained machine of his mother’s creation. Little by little he has been taking over his mother’s duties: conducting shady business deals here and there, overseeing the training of new recruits, giving commands to the admins.
Madame Boss is still beautiful, yes, but the years have not been easy on her mind. Sometimes he’ll catch her muttering to herself, unintelligible things like strings of numbers or the lyrics to some haunting children’s song, and other times he’ll find her staring off into the distance with empty eyes. Her moods are more erratic these days - irate tirades are exchanged in an instant for loving praise, and she often laughs at nothing.
He wishes he knew what was going through her mind to make her this way.
Secretly, he hopes that she is being tormented by guilt for all the things she’s done. He feels no remorse for wishing this, because in his mind there is no one in the world more deserving of insanity.
He returns to the mansion late one evening to find the place swarming with grunts. They all pause when he enters, hardly daring to breathe, and he scans their faces for a clue as to what has happened. They offer him nothing but a sort of reverential awe and wariness.
“You there.” He points to the nearest grunt and motions him over. “What is going on here?”
“It… It’s your mother, sir,” the grunt says nervously. “She’s dead. Shot by an unidentified sniper while she was leaving that gala downtown… Medical help wasn’t able to make it on time…”
He continues his rambling, but Giovanni isn’t listening.
His mother is dead. Really, truly dead. He struggles to comprehend this, and finds it both satisfying and painful. Never again would he look into those vindictive, glassy dark eyes and see only scorn reflected back at him. Never again would he hear that deadly voice trickling into his ears like sickly sweet syrup. Never again would he feel the sting of those damned rings cutting into his flesh.
It all feels far too sudden. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. Such things were not important. It wasn’t that he had never asked her about the past - about his father and her life before Team Rocket. The past was just that, and there was no need to remember it.
It was that, in all the times he had been alone with her and her growing madness, he had never truly seized the opportunity. He had never been able to hurt her the same way she had hurt him. Now his mother is gone, nothing more than a harmless corpse with the lifeblood cooling steadily in her veins.
Madame Boss is gone, and there is no one left to hate.
He feels lost when he realizes this. He had spent his entire life despising his mother, and now that she is gone so unexpectedly… What does he have left? His purpose for living (vengeance, or at least a semblance of it) has been rendered meaningless. His most bitter and enemy and at the same time, most trusted ally, has been vanquished.
And then it hits him.
“Team Rocket.”
Team Rocket is all he has left. The one thing his mother stood for above all else is the only thing remaining of his so-called life. He could almost laugh at the irony, if he weren’t a step away from hysterics. That conniving snake of a woman had planned this from the start. And he couldn’t just run away. It was almost as if she was taunting him from beyond the grave, waving a gun in his face and daring him to play roulette.
Giovanni’s dark eyes are like chips of ice as he draws himself up and surveys the scene before him. The grunts are still watching, wide-eyed, wondering whether he’ll flee like a coward or stand and fight.
“My mother may be gone,” he declares, and his voice echoes through the room, “but Team Rocket will never die.”
Silence.
And then a raucous cheer travels through the crowd, deafening in its volume. Quietly, he whispers to himself:
“You win this time, mother. But the war’s not over yet.”