Team Rocket had finally done it. Jesse, James and Meowth had finally managed to nab the twerp's powerful pokémon pal pikachu and they also nabbed the twerp in the process.

And Giovanni was thrilled. He could have reached his goal and had also found a way to rid himself of Jesse and James's constant presence. They were always in and out of his office, looking for praise and glory. Let them look. Those were things they would never receive from the leader of Team Rocket. Though now he was willing to give them a little cash flow.

So Giovanni had set them up as guards to watch Ash Ketchum while he decided on the next course of action. The boy's pikachu sat in an electric proof cage on Giovanni's desk, glaring intelligently as the boss man studied it. The cage's design was actually disgustingly simple. An occupant of the cage would be able to escape with minimal effort. All that stood between this pikachu and freedom was a lock so flimsy that it looked as though it had been taken from a child's diary, the type where every lock has the same flimsy key and a good yank would cause the thing to break.

But it would hold for now. Giovanni turned back to the monitor the one attached to the security camera showing the prisoner. Ash's hands were bound behind his back with nothing more than a silken cord. The cage he was held was locked electronically. A single button on the wall would cause the bars to open or stay shut, being held together by the powerful force of magnetism. But the idiot squad hadn't even bothered to tie the boy's feet. And they were once again spending more time daydreaming instead of working. Incompetent fools. But soon Ash would be moved to a secure facility and it would no longer matter.

Giovanni saw pikachu watching him. "Do you want see?" he delightedly asked the pokémon, turning the monitor so it could watch its trainer. The pikachu hissed menacingly as it saw the screen.

Giovanni chuckled and leaned back into office chair. It was a nice chair, one of the perks of being the leader of a multibillion-dollar crime syndicate. It came with a mahogany desk and pretty fancy paperweight. He stroked the persian he had sitting in his lap while he mused.

What to do, what to do? He had so many options to make the child suffer at Giovanni's every whim. When Ash Ketchum had first come to Giovanni's attention he had welcomed the idea of a distraction for Jesse and James. He had dismissed the rumors of the boy's pokémon's power as a tale that those bumbling fools had created in order to try to gain credit and ascend the corporate latter. Jesse and James were an odd fit in the Team Rocket organization. Jesse had been one of many recruits that had been lured by the power and wealth that Team Rocket promised and James had followed lured by the charms Jesse. Jesse was looking for quick wealth and James was just looking at Jesse. Neither of them should have lasted long, yet here they were. Giovanni suspected that their talking Meowth had a lot to do with why they were still part of Team Rocket but he couldn't be sure.

So he had had to find tasks that they could perform. They were just kids and they were not nearly loyal enough to the company to be entrusted with any tasks concerning the organizational structure of Team Rocket. But they lacked the competence to do actual fieldwork. So Giovanni had unleashed them on the world to harass trainers. He used their reports to discover trainers with either the potential to aid Team Rocket or destroy it. He also sorted through their schemes, piling them into ones that had had potential and could, with the right amount of force and finesse, be used to his advantage and the others into piles of ingenious stupidity that only Team Meowth was capable of.

And they had done great things with the Ketchum boy. They had done totally retarded things, but a few brilliant ideas had arisen from the ashes of their stupidity. Too bad that the team always screwed up before the finale. And Giovanni had watched the progression of Ash Ketchum. He had watched as the boy won gym battle after gym battle. He watched as the child ran into legendary pokémon as though they were rattatas, a mere dime for a dozen. He watched as Ash Ketchum defeated some of his most trusted minions. Yet even as Giovanni witnessed the boy's growing power he was reluctant to reassign Team Meowth and place a more competent team in charge of dealing with the rising threat of Ash.

So he watched as the boy became an even more competent trainer and larger pain in his own side. He saw the child battle Giovanni's most brilliant creation, the Mewtwo model and not only defeat but also protect it from Giovanni's effort at a recapture. He read the reports on the boy's acquisition of all sorts of rare and dangerous pokémon and as he met the greatest minds of Pokémon research. And he watched as Ash Ketchum's rescue of his mother from Professor Hale's destroyed mansion. As Delia Ketchum's relieved face flashed across televisions everywhere Giovanni finally was transported to memories that were long since buried.

Her name had been Annie Hanako. He head met her on one of the smaller isle in the Cinnabar region in small village. He was there personally pursing a lead on the legendary pokémon Mew, hoping to use the sighting to discover tangible proof of its physical existence. He had been a more ambitious man in his younger days, back before Team Rocket was a name to dread, back before he himself was a man to fear.

She was sweet and beautiful; a young and happy woman who had borne the death of her parents completely on her own and come out the other side intact and vivacious. She saw the silver lining in every dark cloud and would always find the best in people. She found the best in him. She had discovered his broken form after a vicious Rhydon attack. Giovanni had been certain that death was coming to claim him when and angel descended from the Heavens. As he healed in her house they soon became friends, then more. Giovanni, though not a sentimental man, may have even ventured so far as to say that he loved Annie.

After he healed and after he explored the island for clues of Mew he left, but not alone. Annie was amazed by the world, drinking up the sights and sounds and the people that existed far from her home. Together they went to the theatre, to the pokémon coordinator competitions, to the finest restaurants in the finest cities, Goldenrod, Saffron and all the big places. They went on luxury cruises and air balloon rides. But Giovanni had been naive.

He had thought that he had been making her happy, but Annie was not as foolish or innocent as Giovanni had hoped. She asked questions about where the money came, who his friends were, why business was conducted at the house and not the office. So Giovanni had proposed. He could still picture Annie's sweet smile as she saw the ring, still here sweet laughter as he slipped it on her finger.

He could still feel the cold rising from the empty side of her bed, the ring left on the table with a note that contained only a single line. "I can't." Giovanni spent a fortune looking for her, searching for a sign so he could bring her back. He would beg, promise to give it all up for her.

But he never found Annie.

Then there she was, smiling and hugging that wretched boy, the one who kept ruining all his plans. At first there had been pure rage. No one was foolish enough to enter his office as he tossed his furniture into the walls, smashing the expensive stolen paintings, shattering the antique vases and other wealth that he had so carefully cultivated over the years. And then the rage had cooled into something more insidious.

Giovanni had vowed that Team Rocket would destroy Ash Ketchum. Giovanni begun to put the same effort and funds into the ruin of the child as he had in his search for his precious Annie. He left Team Meowth in charge of antagonizing the boy overtly, but had littered the child's journey with many of those in his employ, tracking his every move, waiting for the perfect moment.

And sure enough it had come. And for once Jesse, James and Meowth had not blown it at the last minute. And Giovanni was finally able to meet the child who shared a face with the woman he had loved, the women who had left him, betrayed him.

A knock sounded at Giovanni's door. His secretary, Margaret, stood in the open doorway. "Sir, the results you asked for are in."

"Bring them here then see that I am not disturbed."

"Yes sir." She strode confidently over to him, placing the sheet in his hand then leaving with the air professionalism that Giovanni wish all his employees possessed. As she closed the door with a soft click Giovanni turned his attention to the test results.

It had been a morbid curiosity that had made him run the test. That and a desire to cause Ash as much pain as possible. When the boy had been transported to HQ Giovanni had had him brought straight before him. He had gloated a bit; telling the child how he was going to use his body in experiments for all the trouble the boy had caused him. Oh yes he had great plans for Ash. He could use the child to test the applicability of research conducted on pokémon. He could test the affects of pokémon attacks on the human body. Giovanni could even begin the first attempts on gene splicing, attempting to combine human DNA with that of the pokémon. But he had a test that needed to be run first.

Giovanni stared in shock at the results, all his plans, his schemes flying out the window. Giovanni slumped in his desk as his rage drained out of him.

"Mrow?" the persian its head at its trainer. Giovanni gave it an absent scratch as the news flowed through him.

Ash was his son.

Giovanni let out a hoarse bark of laughter. That changed everything. The child no longer needed to be destroyed. He was a symbol of Giovanni and Annie had had, the only remnant left of the love they had shared. The boy was both a dream and memory that had found its way to exist in reality. He was a treasure beyond anything Giovanni had ever managed to steal.

But the knowledge left Giovanni with one question. What was he to do now? He couldn't simply order the boy's release, and the child was far too much like his mother to ever allow himself to aid and abet something he viewed as evil. Giovanni doubted the revelation of Ash's origins would be enough of a shock to destroy his moral code. Giovanni tapped a pen on his desk as he thought and planned.

It would work. There would be no one to question him as long as he did not overtly betray the ideals of Team Rocket, and what was one more screw up by Team Meowth? It would be accepted as something that should have been expected. Plus Giovanni would not have to find a new assignment for them nor would he be responsible for paying them the reward. It would work.

He buzzed the holding cells, calling James to come carry the pikachu so it could have a few more minutes with its precious trainer before they were both carted off to their fates. As he spoke into the phone he flicked the pen, the steel ringing against his finger. It spun, bumping into the cage on the desk. Giovanni barked at James. The teenager was an anxious person and had panicked when he realized whom he was talking to. Giovanni spun the chair as though to relieve irritation. When it had made a full circle the pen had disappeared. Soon James had come, stuttering and wandering off with the cage as fast as he could.

All that was left was to wait.

It didn't take long. Soon alarms flashed in the buildings and explosions ripped through the structure. Giovanni watch on the security camera as the little rat pokémon used the pen to melt the lock and proceeded to electrocute Team Meowth so badly they were launched through the walls. It blasted the cage that held its trainer, demagnetizing them with three quick bursts of power. Then camera was struck and the screen went snowy.

Giovanni leaned back in his chair and began to pet his persian once again. He would keep Team Meowth on the boy, and have his spies continue to document the child's every movement. Giovanni couldn't be a father to Ash, but that didn't mean he couldn't watch the child, that he couldn't be proud.

With a smile that bordered on nostalgic Giovanni spun his chair and smiled as he watched as smoke rose from the holes being knocked into his building. It stayed as his security team came to escort him to the helicopter. It grew as his employees begged for his forgiveness for allowing the Ketchum boy to escape yet again.

Yet it shone as the television showed Delia Ketchum holding her son, safe and sound from what could have been a traumatic and even fatal ordeal. One would have been hard pressed to as to who actually looked happier at that moment as Delia Annie Ketchum thanked whatever watcher over her son. And as she sobbed out in joy Giovanni was once again holding the door for her as they entered the opera once again.

"It was the least I could do for the woman I love."