Viper left the private room with the same expression he wore for everything—flat, measured, unimpressed—yet his steps were a fraction lighter than usual. Not because he enjoyed negotiations, but because the kid had been useful. Usefulness was rare.
The corridor outside the Exchange Center wing was all cold concrete and salt-stained metal, lit by strip lights that hummed like insects. He walked alone, boots steady, mind already sorting the next five problems he'd have to solve before the sun set. The exam. The recruits. The VIP gallery. The inevitable stupidity.
His office door recognized his print with a soft click.
Inside, everything looked right at first glance. The same clean desk. The same sealed files. The same chair pushed in at the exact angle he preferred. Then his eyes narrowed.
Something was wrong.
Not broken. Not stolen. Just… off. A detail out of place in a room that lived on control. The curtain beside the narrow window hung a finger-width lower than it should. The smell of the air had changed—barely. A trace of cold, like a draft that didn't come from the outside.
Viper stepped in and reached for the curtain.
"Still fixing corners," a voice said behind him, calm as a knife laid gently on a table. "Some habits never die."
Viper didn't flinch. He didn't even turn immediately. His hand paused on the fabric.
"Only when someone's been inside my room," he replied, voice dry.
A soft chuckle.
When Viper finally turned, Nero was there like he'd always been there, leaning in the darkest part of the office, posture relaxed, presence wrong in a way that made the light feel thinner. He wore the same immaculate black that marked people who didn't belong to the recruitment machine, people who cleaned what the others weren't allowed to name.
"Nero," he said, and the word carried a little less edge than it should have.
Nero's smile was small. "Viper."
Viper's gaze swept the room once, then returned to him. "Did you come to drink, or did one of my men make a mess?"
Nero's expression didn't change. "Neither, but I accept a drink."
That alone made Viper smile.
Nero took a slow step forward, not loud, not fast, just enough to claim the space without asking permission. "Giovanni sent me," he said, casually, as if he were talking about the weather. "To look for 'talent'."
Viper's jaw set. "And?"
"I only see trash." Nero's eyes were pale and cold, the kind that didn't bother pretending to sympathize. "Koga's daughter is decent, but Koga would never let her go."
For a heartbeat, Viper said nothing. His mind flicked back to the kid's face. The posture. The calm. The way his shadow looked too heavy under the lights. The way the numbers on the scanner kept flashing GREEN like the machine was broken.
"I think there's someone interesting," Viper said at last.
Nero's eyebrows lifted. "You?" His tone carried the surprise without mocking it. "Well, that's rare."
Viper's mouth twitched. "Don't get excited."
Nero's smile returned, sharper now. "Who?"
Viper leaned back against the desk, arms folding. "You know the procedure. Three hundred recruits enter the island. One Poké Ball each to ensure good results. Some get standard stock. Some get… defective stock."
Nero nodded once, like he already knew the strategy.
Viper's eyes narrowed. "One of them got a Koffing. Fully defective. The kind that usually guarantees a grave or a demotion."
Nero's gaze sharpened. "And?"
"And he didn't die," Viper said. "He didn't crawl back begging either." A pause. "He came to me and sold me eighteen Pokémon."
Nero didn't blink. "Eighteen."
"Eighteen," Viper repeated, satisfied by the weight of the number. "And all were Green potential."
For the first time, Nero went still. Not shocked like a normal person. Shock, for him, was silence.
Then he exhaled. "Backed."
Viper had thought the same thing the moment the scanner kept flashing. He also knew what backing looked like on this island, protection, favors, and handlers. Strings.
He'd seen none.
"That's what I assumed," Viper admitted. "But I looked." His eyes hardened. "No handlers. No escorts. No team. No extra help. Just… results."
Nero's gaze drifted to the office.
Viper's voice lowered by a fraction. "And his shadow was wrong."
Nero's eyes returned to him, amused. "Wrong how?"
"Too dark," Viper said.
Nero's smile widened, slow and pleased. "So that's why you thought of me."
Viper didn't deny it.
Nero stepped closer, and the room felt colder for no good reason. "Alright," he said. "You've convinced me." His tone turned almost light. "Looks like I'm staying for the exam."
Viper's own expression eased. "Good timing. The gallery is going to be crowded."
"How crowded?"
Viper's voice went flat again. "VIPs. Too many. Koga's people. Sabrina's… Archer's side. Ariana's side. And the ones who think they're invisible."
Nero's eyes gleamed. "So, you want a leash in the room."
"I want order," Viper corrected.
Nero's smile became a promise. "Relax." He turned toward the door, already fading into the space as he belonged to it more than the light did. "Everyone will behave."
Viper watched him go, then finally reached up and fixed the curtain exactly one finger-width.
Nero left Viper's office the way he entered it, quiet, effortless.
Nero walked without hurry, boots barely making noise on the concrete. He didn't look over his shoulder. He didn't need to. Shadows did that for him.
Halfway down the corridor, he lifted two fingers and touched the comm on his ear.
"I want everything on one recruit," he said, voice calm, almost bored. "He sold eighteen Green potential Pokémon. Recently."
There was a pause—short, efficient. The kind of pause that meant the other side was already moving, not thinking.
A voice answered immediately, crisp and fast. "On it, boss."
Nero didn't acknowledge it with words. He just let his hand drop and kept walking, eyes forward, expression unreadable.
A defective Koffing.
And a shadow that looked too dark for a kid.
His mouth curved, barely.
"Let's see what you are," he murmured.
Day 50 arrived.
Nero walked through two checkpoints without being questioned. The guards didn't even pretend to stop him. One of them straightened so fast it looked painful. The other avoided eye contact like it was a survival instinct.
The door to the VIP viewing room opened with a soft mechanical hiss.
And Nero stepped into a room that was too full.
Other years, this space had been a formality with two or three bored executives, maybe a scientist with a clipboard, one faction leader pretending not to care. Today it was packed. Leather chairs occupied. Assistants standing behind their superiors. Low conversations layered over each other like a nest of snakes: politics disguised as small talk, alliances disguised as laughter.
It smelled expensive and dangerous.
The moment Nero entered, the sound died.
Not dramatically. Not with gasps.
Just… a clean cut, like someone had pulled a plug.
Two seconds of silence. Two seconds where every pair of eyes turned toward him, measured him, decided what they were allowed to say again.
Nero didn't acknowledge any of it. He didn't scan the faces. He didn't return nods. He simply crossed the room at an unhurried pace and chose a seat near the back, where the tinted observation glass gave a perfect view of the plaza below.
He sat.
The room slowly remembered how to breathe. Conversations restarted in cautious fragments, softer than before, as if volume itself was a risk.
Then a voice slid into his mind from across the room—smooth, confident, and intimate in the way only telepathy could be.
"Good morning, Senior Nero. What brings you to a children's exam?"
Sabrina.
Nero didn't look at her. He didn't need to. He replied the same way he might answer a clerk asking for his name.
"Orders."
A laugh brushed the edge of his thoughts—light, amused, almost polite.
"How rare." The tone shifted, playful. "Don't worry. You won't have problems from my side. But Archer and Ariana…" A pause, like she was savoring the gossip. "They're misbehaving."
Nero's gaze stayed on the glass, on the plaza far below where hundreds of recruits were beginning to form lines like ants.
He answered without emotion.
"Let them."
Sabrina's amusement dimmed slightly. Nero's voice remained flat.
"I'll handle it."
Down on the plaza, the loudspeakers crackled to life, and then another visitor arrived
Koga arrived like a habit.
No footsteps. No announcement. Just a presence settling into the chair beside Nero as if the space had always been reserved for him.
"Senior…" Koga said quietly, eyes on the glass instead of Nero's face. "Didn't expect to see you here."
Nero didn't turn. His gaze stayed on the plaza below. "Giovanni sent me."
That answer hit Koga like a cold draft. Nero felt the shift beside him it was small, but real. Koga was careful by nature, but even careful men had priorities.
"My daughter," Koga said after a beat, voice smooth. "Janine. I assume this isn't… about her."
Nero let out a short laugh. No warmth in it. Just amusement at the predictability.
"Relax," he said. "I'm not here for your daughter."
Koga didn't relax. He simply changed the angle, because that was what experienced players did.
"Then who?" he asked, light as if it didn't matter. "If there's someone, you're here to watch…."
Nero finally turned his head.
The look wasn't threatening in the usual way. It was worse. It was the look of someone deciding whether you crossed the line.
"Koga."
The word landed cleanly.
Koga froze for half a heartbeat, just long enough to confirm he understood. Then his expression smoothed itself back into something polite, controlled, and carefully empty.
"My mistake," he said, and there was genuine respect inside the apology, the kind you gave to a blade you didn't want pointed at your throat. "I asked what I shouldn't."
He stood without another word and walked away, leaving Nero alone again in the corner of the room.
The conversations around them resumed, quieter than before.
Then Blaine entered like he didn't belong to any of it.
He walked in, greeting people who hated each other as if they were colleagues, smiling at factions like they were background noise. He wore none of the tension the room demanded. His eyes were bright with the stubbornness of a scientist who believed only science mattered.
Most of the higher-ups respected him because he is powerful and talented.
Some resented him because he didn't fear them.
Blaine's gaze swept the room once, landed on Nero, and he headed over without hesitation.
"Mind if I sit?" Blaine asked, already halfway into the chair, like permission was a formality.
Nero nodded. "Of course, Professor Blaine."
Blaine settled in, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked out through the glass at the recruits below as if they were specimens in a terrarium.
"The Boss sent you to pick someone, too?" Blaine asked, tone casual.
Nero's mouth curved into the smallest possible smile. "Something like that."
Blaine's own expression shifted less friendly now, more focused. "Research is still… slow," he said carefully. "But we saw something." His eyes didn't move from the plaza. " If it's real, it'll accelerate everything."
Nero didn't ask what. He didn't need the details to understand the weight in Blaine's voice.
He gave a single, acknowledging nod.
"If you need Shadow Unit support," Nero said, calm as paperwork, "you'll have it."
Blaine exhaled—relief, thin but genuine. "Appreciated."
Below them, the plaza shifted as lines tightened and the machine at the center was rolled into place.
In the VIP room, the factions kept whispering.
Viper's voice hit the plaza first—hard, amplified, impossible to ignore.
Even through the tinted glass, even muffled by the VIP room's insulation, the Public Address system carried that same tone: practiced authority, boredom sharpened into cruelty.
The room went quieter.
Not silent—never fully silent when factions were breathing in the same space—but the casual chatter died down as attention tilted toward the window. Chairs stopped creaking.
Nero leaned back in his seat and let the sound wash over him while he pulled a thin report folder onto his lap. Yesterday's briefing. Short. Clinical. Mostly useless. Except for one name.
Enzo.
Nero flipped the folder open with two fingers. The paper was thin, the ink cheap—Trial Island reports were never written to impress, only to warn.
Name: Enzo.
Origin: Cerulean City. Status: Orphan—registered through the Cerulean orphanage system. No family ties. No sponsor. No faction tag.
Assigned Drop Asset:Koffing — flagged DEFECTIVE.
Yet the next lines didn't match the first.
Current Known Team:
A Koffing still active.
A Corvisquire described as "abnormally large for species baseline."
A Gastly acquired in the southern sector.
And then the part that made the report feel like a bad joke:
Sold 18 Pokémon in a single transaction—all rated Green potential by Exchange scanners.
The last note was written like the grunt who typed it was afraid the letters might bite:
" No confirmed links."
"Subject behavior: calm under threat. Avoids attention. Chooses targets deliberately."
Estimated Human Killcount (Trial Island): 2. Bodies recovered: partial. Cause: localized blast.
Nero's eyes lifted from the paper, already searching the plaza.
Nero's gaze lifted toward the plaza.
Hundreds of recruits in grey, lined up in long columns on the concrete. Heat shimmered over the machine at the center—a bulky impact target with a reinforced plate and a digital scoreboard mounted above it. An ugly device designed to make strength quantifiable and failure final.
Nero searched the crowd the way a predator searched tall grass. Not for motion. For the absence of it.
He found him near the edge of the formation—hood up, shoulder against a wall, posture relaxed in a way nobody relaxed on Day 50.
And then the detail that mattered.
The hooded recruit looked up.
Not at the machine.
Up. Toward the tinted glass. Toward the VIP room.
As if he could see straight through the window.
Nero's mouth curved slightly.
Not sympathy. Not admiration.
But curiosity.
You know we're watching.
Below, Viper's voice continued—rules and penalties delivered like weather. The kind of speech that made weak recruits swallow hard and strong recruits stop pretending they weren't afraid.
The exam began.
Janine went early.
She moved as she belonged above the crowd, not inside it—calm, straight-backed, the kind of confidence that came from growing up around poison and discipline. A Venonat appeared beside her, eyes glowing with controlled light.
"Psybeam," she said.
The beam hit the target plate with a metallic hum that made the air vibrate. The scoreboard flashed:
332
A collective exhale rolled across the plaza. Above, in the VIP room, Koga's faction swelled invisibly—smiles tightening, shoulders lifting, people trading glances like points had just been deposited into an account.
Henry followed.
A Drowzee stepped out, blinking, uncertain.
"Headbutt," Henry snapped.
Impact. A dull thud against metal.
284
Henry stared at the number as it had insulted him.
Then his expression twisted, and he kicked the Drowzee in front of everyone—hard enough to make the Pokémon stumble and blink in humiliation.
The plaza murmured. The VIP room shifted.
On the far side, Sabrina's presence went cold—not outward anger, not yet, but that quiet psychic displeasure that made other people instinctively lower their voices. Archer and Ariana's people noticed immediately.
They smelled opportunity the way sharks smelled blood.
Ariana's side started offering loud congratulations to Koga—too loud, too pointed—smiling in Sabrina's direction like they were daring her to react. Archer's group joined in, casual cruelty dressed as politeness, nudging the room toward conflict.
Sabrina didn't bite.
She watched Henry's behavior for one more heartbeat, then stood with smooth finality. Her chair barely made a sound. Her face was expressionless, but the telepathic pressure she carried went razor-thin.
"This was a waste of time," she said aloud.
Then she left.
Not storming. Not dramatic.
Just… removing herself like the room wasn't worth breathing in.
And the moment she was gone, the tension didn't disappear.
It just changed targets.
Archer and Ariana resumed their low war without needing Sabrina's shadow to sharpen it. Koga's people relaxed by a fraction. Everyone recalculated.
Nero kept watching the hooded recruit.
Enzo didn't move for a long time. He stayed still as if stillness was armor. He watched every score, every reaction, every micro-shift in the crowd.
Then a recruit stepped off the stage—Zubat user, decent form, nothing special.
Enzo moved.
He slid away from the wall and walked straight toward the boy, stopping him like they were old friends. Nero couldn't hear the words through the glass, but he didn't need to. He saw the pattern: the timing, the choice, the angle.
Nero's smile returned, faint and amused.
Making friends… during an exam.
Not desperation.
Selection.
Above, Ariana and Archer's conversation grew louder— She leaned forward in her chair, voice pitched just loud enough to carry—polite on the surface, sharpened underneath.
"Executive Archer, congratulations," she said, smiling like she was being generous. "Even if you don't have as many recruits in the top ten as I do… your prodigy still managed second place. That's something to celebrate."
A few people in her circle chuckled softly. Not because it was funny—because it was a signal.
Archer's eyes narrowed by a hair. He understood the message perfectly: quantity beats you; I just didn't say it directly.
He replied with the same calm he used when cutting someone open with words.
"I'm a pragmatic man," Archer said. "I prefer quality over quantity."
The room's temperature shifted. The factions around them adjusted in tiny movements—shoulders turning, smiles tightening, people choosing which side they were going to pretend they weren't on.
They acted like the ranking was done.
Nero didn't.
He didn't care about their theatre.
Enzo had turned away from the Zubat boy and started walking toward the stage.
Hood still up.
Hands calm.
A single Poké Ball in his grip.
He climbed the steps without hesitation.
Nero's gaze narrowed.
Enzo reached the center stage and released the Pokémon.
A Koffing.
Blaine laughed—actual, spontaneous laughter, loud enough to cut through the VIP room's murmur.
"That might be the most defective Koffing I've ever seen."
Nero frowned.
The report had mentioned a Gastly. Mentioned an abnormally large Corvisquire. Mentioned behaviors that implied preparation and depth.
And he's using… that?
A micro-disappointment touched Nero's thoughts—thin as a blade edge.
He's hiding his strength… now?
On the plaza, Viper jumped out of the stage.
It was just Enzo and Koffing in front of the machine.
Enzo didn't posture. Didn't give a speech. Didn't look around for approval.
He simply… set it up.
And then the world clenched.
The explosion wasn't wide like a wildfire.
It was focused.
A shaped charge. A brutal, concentrated bloom of force that hit one place with surgical intent—light and pressure collapsing inward, then slamming outward in a tight, ugly radius.
The machine screamed.
Metal warped. The reinforced plate folded. The scoreboard above it flickered violently.
For a moment, the plaza vanished behind a wall of dust and white smoke.
Silence followed.
Not the silence of shockwaves fading.
The silence of people realizing something had happened that shouldn't have.
The smoke thinned.
A small crater—ragged, scorched—sat where the impact zone had been. The machine was broken, bent at angles that looked like a snapped spine.
And there, in the center, Koffing lay like a weapon that had fulfilled its purpose—blackened, fainted…
…grinning.
The scoreboard blinked once.
Twice.
Then updated.
560
In the VIP room, everything stopped.
Ariana froze mid-sentence. Archer's mouth remained half-open as if he'd forgotten what he was saying. Even Koga's faction went still, like someone had pressed a hand over their throat.
For one perfect second, nobody spoke.
Nero didn't move.
Then he laughed.
Not warm. Not friendly.
A short, sharp sound that carried no joy at all—only recognition.