Alastair Harper
Goldenrod City
ARPers: Everyone

Leviathan tensed at Lenore’s words, <Alastair. Lenore is absolutely right at the prospect of danger. But there’s something she’s either left out or is not picking up. There’s a… thing with these people. It’s psychic signature promises power enough to raze buildings in a single shot and malevolence enough to do it as a fun little exercise. It’s Wrong, and Evil.> The Starmie managed to put capital letters on those words.

Alastair was more than a little surprised at Leviathan’s vehemence on this new creature’s character. The starfish wasn’t [i]a[/]moral, exactly, but he was certainly undermoral. The water type did not usually hold stock with moral judgements and preferred instead to do things that were “interesting”, thanks to a century of life. Alastair even doubted the star stuck with him out of anything resembling loyalty in a typical sense: Alastair was just one of the more interesting people the Pokemon had encountered, and sticking with the trainer had increased the psychic’s power besides. So, by anything resembling a rational thought process, Alastair should have wet his pants.

But Alastair was irked more than anything at this new development. Life and death situations had long since been able to muster up the same impact on him as they should have. He still felt absolutely terrified, of course, but there was no sting in it. His annoyance was far more prominent. Not only were these people going to destroy the city that he thought of as his home, they were apparently going to do it with a powerful creature that by all rights they should have kept as a backup. While Goldenrod was the home of Harper Industries, the company in its decrepit state was hardly the be all and end all of Johto. There was no tactical value in using an unstoppable superweapon to take it with the small exception of morale. Yes, using such a creature would be damaging, but it was entirely too possible that it would become a rallying point in convincing everyone to ally against this group. It would have been far more intelligent to keep the creature as an ace in the hole to take out a far more valuable target.

Alastair wanted to think there was no one smart running things from his opponents’ ends, but he had not gotten as far he had by being arro-

Why the hell were there Team Rocket munitions here? And why was Lance staring at them with hatred? Had he found out about “Uncle Van’s” origins and take offense to that? Did he know about Alastair’s? Did he think that Team Rocket had done them some wrong?

The only “wrong” Alastair could think the Rockets did was either that Lance knew about Alastair’s shadow wars or if they had some sort of hand in taking out Oliver and Mary. The latter, in Alastair’s thoughts, was far less probable than the former: while Oliver and Mary were probably not particularly sympathetic to the Rockets, Giovanni had no particular difficulty in twisting them to his whims before. So Alastair was going to cautiously proceed with the former assumption. He wasn’t going to reveal anything to his brother (a lot of his intelligence was very sensitive), but he’d have to keep an eye out.

<Alastair. I’m reasonably certain Giovanni is in that helicopter. I haven’t met anyone else with quite that kind of psychic imprint.>

Alastair wanted to berate Giovanni for stupidity while simultaneously cursing his luck, but realized that Giovanni had ulterior motives. The megalomaniac couldn’t have wanted a region historically under his influence to be destroyed, so he would defend it. They had the same objective in this, no matter Alastair’s personal feelings on the man. And if Alastair could arrange “friendly fire” without endangering that objective, so much the better.

Then another thought then occurred to Alastair: could Goldenrod be more valuable than he previously thought? Something Giovanni and these players had information on that Alastair did not?

It would explain the superweapon without assuming his foes were afflicted with terminal stupidity.

Plans bloomed in Alastair’s mind. Lance wasn’t going to go, so the younger Harper wasn’t going to either. Several elements began to slide into place as Alastair’s mind flew into trying to survive this fight. He grabbed his Burst heart. He was going to need it.

“All right. Lenore, if you would not object, try to defend Lance. My brother may be doing something dumb,” making his feelings on the subject well known, “but you’ve been hired to keep such things from being fatal. Helena, I suggest you leave. My brother is stubborn and Lenore and I are both massively powerful, but you don’t have to stay here.” Especially since I’m worried about Giovanni getting the same idea about “friendly fire” that I did, and you’re already in place to carry it out. “I have plans in the works, but we’re going to have to see how this situation plays out. They appear to be interested in mass destruction, so try to stay unnoticable. They’re the juggernauts, but we’re the guerilla fighters, and if we’re going to hamper them at all, we’re going to need to go for the oblique angle. I don't think they'd care about a couple of ants, which is exactly what we're going to seem to them.”