The air at Team Rocket Headquarters felt like solidified lead, so heavy it was hard to breathe.
The moment Ye Li stepped into Giovanni's office, he felt that stagnant pressure. The thick Persian carpet swallowed his footsteps, letting him slip like a ghost into this chamber built of despair and anger. Every high-ranking executive of any standing was present. Apollo, Team Rocket's iron-fisted executive, stood with his arms crossed, his muscles taut as granite and his jaw clenched into a cold, hard line. Beside him, Matori, the secretary renowned for her shrewd efficiency, kept pushing up her glasses. Yet the eyes behind those lenses had lost their usual sharpness, leaving only undisguised anxiety. The other operations team leaders all wore grim expressions, as though they had just attended a close relative's funeral only to learn that the entire inheritance had been frozen.
The enormous holographic screen was the room's only light source. Cold streams of data illuminated their ashen faces. On the screen, the logos of major news outlets flashed in succession, their scathing headlines stabbing at Team Rocket's nerves like knives.
"Rainbow Game Corner-a breeding ground for crime beneath a glamorous facade!"
"Pokémon League cracks down, exposing Team Rocket's illegal funding network!"
"An interview with a victim: a family destroyed by 'games'..."
Alongside these shocking reports, a bright red graph plunging off a cliff occupied the other half of the screen. It showed the revenue of the Rainbow Game Corner, and indeed Team Rocket's entire gray-market business empire, hurtling irreversibly into the abyss.
"You've all seen the situation."
Giovanni's voice rang out, so steady it held not a ripple, as though he were commenting on a chess game that had nothing to do with him. That absolute calm was more oppressive than any roar. He sat upright in his