Chapter 67: The HELL! Damn Team Rocket!
The results Mammon had cited were real. Kukui couldn't deny that.
But he didn't accept the argument. Because the way he saw it, every word of it was sophistry — dressing up outcomes to obscure motives, reversing cause and effect to suit the narrative.
Yes, those things happened. But why did they happen?
Team Rocket's reasons were entirely self-serving. That was the whole difference.
"Is that everything you wanted to say?" Kukui's voice was measured.
"Oh?" Mammon watched him with a half-smile that wasn't quite a smile, waiting.
"That's your side of the story. Stealing Pokémon from random trainers, running genetic experiments on Pokémon, hostile takeovers of private businesses, accepting illegal contracts under the table…"
Kukui went through them one by one. He didn't need to look any of it up. It was the exact reason the Kanto League had Team Rocket on their official wanted list.
"And just last month, Team Rocket seized the St. Anne. Used a trainer event as cover to lure trainers aboard and try to take their Pokémon."
Kukui kept his eyes fixed on Mammon. A fresh example. Recent. On the record.
"Are you still going to argue with me?"
He didn't even need to pick apart Mammon's earlier points. Team Rocket's rap sheet spoke for itself.
"I don't deny any of that," Mammon said easily. "But what does that have to do with me?"
The St. Anne incident was real — he'd heard about it from Giovanni. Archer's operation, apparently, planned around some exceptionally rare Pokémon. It had fallen apart when two unusually strong young trainers dismantled the entire ship's worth of Rocket grunts by themselves.
"…" Kukui blinked.
"Professor, that was the Kanto branch. What does the Kanto branch's conduct have to do with the Alola branch?"
Mammon said it with complete confidence, executing a flawless organizational divorce.
Kukui fell silent.
"Stealing Pokémon from passersby is a low-return, low-intelligence operation — it's not something we'd bother with. Genetic experimentation causes harm that has no justification. And hostile takeovers?" Mammon spread his hands. "We're building our own companies from the ground up. Why would we need to steal someone else's when we can build something in the global top hundred?"
He knocked down each item on the list in turn.
"You're saying your Team Rocket is different from the Kanto one."
Kukui had caught up.
"Isn't that self-evident?" Mammon smiled.
Kukui sat with it. A stream of thoughts moved through his mind as he ran back over everything that had happened since Team Rocket appeared in Alola.
After a long moment, he looked at the boy across from him with a steady, evaluating gaze.
He thought he understood now. This wasn't someone who'd joined Team Rocket to grow the organization. It was more than that. Mammon wanted a Team Rocket that was his.
Why else draw such a sharp line between the Alola branch and the Kanto one?
"What are you actually after?"
"Legitimacy. I want Team Rocket to operate legally in Alola."
"Absolutely not."
No hesitation.
"Mammon. Have you thought through what that would mean?"
Legalizing Team Rocket in Alola? That was a death wish for the region. Even if the Alola branch hadn't committed any obvious atrocities locally, the Kanto branch was a wanted criminal organization. Granting Alola's Team Rocket legal status would be a direct, public confrontation with the Kanto League.
That was essentially a declaration of war.
"Don't get worked up, Professor." Mammon smiled, and his tone shifted to something conversational. "I know it's impossible. I'm not pressing you on it."
"What I'm saying is: fighting us accomplishes nothing for you. Does it?"
He picked his words carefully, steering around the things that would make Kukui's back go up.
"A stronger Alola is nothing but good for me. That's genuine."
"Honestly — what harm does it do Alola to have us operating quietly in the background?"
"There are things your side can't handle easily, or doesn't know how to handle quickly. We're quite good at those things."
"Organizations like Team Skull — the kind that prey on ordinary people — we won't tolerate them. That's not policy, that's principle."
"And when Ultra Beasts appear, we move first. Our people protect civilians. That's already happened."
He laid it out piece by piece.
"All we want is to coexist on this island without interference. Peacefully."
The friction with Kukui's group was actively bad for the Alola branch's long-term development. Mammon wasn't going to stay in Alola indefinitely — and once he left, a Champion-tier trainer plus a full roster of Kahunas pressing down on the Alola branch would hit their operations hard. Even with Lusamine as a hidden asset, that pressure would accumulate.
"…"
Kukui went quiet for a long time.
Underneath the quiet, a storm.
His rational mind was screaming at him. You don't negotiate with a tiger. Especially not this one. The Alola branch was a powerful, hungry predator wearing a civilian's face, and every day of coexistence was a day it spent digging deeper into the region.
But the alternative — a full confrontation, trying to root them out completely —
Could he even win that? And right now, at this particular moment, with the League still not established, fighting a head-on war against Team Rocket wasn't a fight he was positioned to win. He could appeal to Kanto for support, but the Alola branch could just go dark and wait it out, and then they'd be even harder to find.
"I'll need to discuss this with Hala and the others," Kukui said finally. "This isn't my call to make alone."
"Of course." Mammon's smile didn't change. "I only ask that you approach us with a clear head, Professor. I can promise you — every member of the Alola branch is a law-abiding citizen."
Kukui: "…"
Law-abiding. Right.
He didn't believe a word of it, obviously. The Alola branch wasn't the Kanto branch — it didn't run around making enemies of everyone in sight. But law-abiding citizens?
That was a spectacular load of garbage.
If anything, that was exactly what made them more dangerous. The Kanto branch's brazen, high-visibility crimes had been their weakness — they'd telegraphed everything. The Alola branch had stripped all of that out. Low profile. Quiet growth. A venomous snake waiting in the shadows for the right moment to strike.
And the ambition underneath it was every bit as vast.
Mammon looked harmless, sitting there with his pleasant smile. But Kukui had seen his other face. This was someone with iron nerves and no sentimentality whatsoever, wrapped in the appearance of an agreeable young man.
Kukui felt the weight settle into his chest.
This was genuinely complicated. Agree to coexist — let Team Rocket operate freely in Alola's underground, and hand them exactly the foothold they needed to slowly consume the region from within.
Or go to war — with unclear odds, at the worst possible time, against an opponent who could simply disappear and wait.
The HELL!! Kukui's head was pounding. Damn Team Rocket! Why did you have to come to our Alola?!
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