On the outskirts of Saffron City, the former building complex was now nothing but a vast expanse of rubble, like an ugly scar upon the earth. Night hung low, and the air was thick with dust from shattered concrete and the acrid smell of scorched metal.
On this deathly silent plain, a war without gunfire was raging.
Dozens of enormous searchlight beams tore through the darkness, illuminating the ruined walls as brightly as daylight. Beneath them, the Pokémon League's official rescue teams were conducting a large-scale operation. Wearing heavy protective suits, the workers operated roaring excavators and cranes, systematically clearing the surface of the ruins. Their publicly declared mission was to search for any possible survivors of that earth-shattering explosion. Reassuring announcements played on a loop over the loudspeakers, describing the Pokémon League's determination not to abandon even the slightest hope.
Yet in the shadows of this public rescue operation, so radiant with humanitarian concern, another team was operating in an entirely different way.
It was Lorelei's Special Operations Group. There were few of them, but every member exuded a sharp competence utterly unlike that of ordinary rescue workers. Avoiding the searchlights, they moved through the dark corners of the ruins. Rather than heavy excavation machinery, they carried the Pokémon League's most advanced life detectors. The devices' probes rested close against the ground, silently emitting special pulses as they scanned the depths of the rubble over and over like ground-penetrating radar.
They were not saving lives, but hunting. They were not looking for survivors, but evidence-evidence sufficient to wipe away the disgrace suffered by the Pokémon League's Elite Four. More precisely, they were looking for the young man who had humiliated them. Lorelei stood atop a broken reinforced-concrete platform, the cold wind stirring her long burgundy hair. She held a