March 12. Clear skies. Pallet Town's air quality: excellent...
Young Master Mao had returned from the Orange Islands to Professor Oak's Laboratory and was lying in bed, doing absolutely nothing~
Over in the Orange Islands, thanks to Archer outdoing himself, the deranged collector Lawrence III, who had an anti-human personality, had all four limbs broken and was handed over to the local Officer Jenny.
Archer, who had unexpectedly picked up a Good Citizen Pennant, practically floated everywhere for the first two days.
So being a good person felt this great!
Giovanni was astounded when he received Lawrence III's Aerospace Base. He promptly rewarded Archer with another huge batch of resources.
Archer was moved to tears. Following Young Master Blue really did pay better!
With these resources, he could put Young Master Blue's training plan into practice: raise a second team to replace his first.
Gary had told Archer long ago that there were problems with his team composition.
As one of Team Rocket's Four Generals, his specialty was actually a Koffing chain-detonation strategy. Granted, this method could deal very impressive damage in wild battles.
But against Pokémon Trainers at Elite Four level or above, he could only stand there helplessly.
Every one of them had two shields at their disposal, giving him no chance to trigger his chain detonations.
So Gary had put together a new team for Archer based on the Pokémon used by expert villains across the different eras.
The lineup included Houndoom, Ferrothorn, Bisharp, Toxicroak, Walrein, and Crobat.
Aside from Crobat, none of these Pokémon were the run-of-the-mill stock Team Rocket usually used. They were somewhat rarer, too, and required considerable training funds.
Fortunately, Giovanni had been delighted by this mission. Besides a generous bonus, he had provided plenty of rare held items, such as Toxic Orbs