The moment Shingo stepped into the dim living room, every masked face at the table turned toward him.
Ten pale masks stared back through the candlelight, each marked with a number. The sight was unsettling enough on its own, but then Shingo glanced at Tai and noticed something that had not been there before: a black 8 now stood out clearly on his white mask.
His unease sharpened into suspicion.
"You..." Shingo looked from Tai to the man seated at the head of the table. "The only group I know that uses numbered masks like these is Spider."
"We are Spider," Reiji replied. "And I'm the one who created it."
He reached up and removed his mask.
The candlelight revealed a face Shingo knew immediately.
Reiji was still two months shy of sixteen, his features young enough to look almost absurd beneath the weight of everything Spider had become. There was no point keeping the disguise on now. If Shingo was going to believe any of this, he needed to see exactly who was sitting across from him.
Shingo stumbled back a step.
"Rai?"
His eyes moved from Reiji's face to the masks around the room and back again.
"Wait... Spider is yours? You're Spider's leader?"
For several seconds, he simply could not reconcile the two ideas.
Spider had become infamous throughout the Orange Archipelago. The organization had raided a League-associated ship, killed Trainers aboard it, and later wiped out one of Mandarin Island North's most notorious gangs. The League had responded by branding Spider a terrorist organization and issuing warrants for its members.
And now Shingo was being told that the friend he knew as Rai had been behind all of it.
The irony of Spider's reputation had never been lost on Reiji. The gangs they destroyed had spent years extorting people, trafficking Pokémon, and committing crimes in plain sight, yet the League had treated them as ordinary criminal organizations. Spider, on the other hand, had crossed a line the League could never tolerate: it had decided guilt and punishment for itself.
Intent did not matter nearly as much as authority. If the League allowed independent Trainers to execute criminals whenever they believed the cause was justified, it would be surrendering control of its own legal system. Spider had challenged that monopoly openly, so the response had been inevitable.
Reiji gestured again toward the empty chair opposite him.
"So? Still interested?"
Shingo stared at him.
"You're wanted terrorists."
Reiji gave a quiet laugh. "That's what the League calls us."
He reached behind his chair, picked up an old document envelope, and tossed it across the table.
"Read that before you decide how much their version means to you."
Shingo caught the envelope awkwardly. His fingers lingered at the flap while he looked between Reiji and the papers inside, but curiosity eventually won.
The first thing he pulled out was an old newspaper.
Spider's pale mask dominated the front page beside a photograph of a damaged passenger ship. An Officer Jenny had been quoted promising that the League would identify the attackers, hunt down the pirates responsible, and bring them to justice.
Shingo kept reading.
Behind the newspaper were photographs, transcripts, recordings, and other records connecting the captain's elder cousin and the noble family around him directly to Team Rocket. The deeper Shingo went, the worse it became. Bribery, illegal dealings, cooperation with Team Rocket—the public image of an innocent family slaughtered by Spider did not survive contact with the evidence.
None of the material was especially difficult to verify either.
That was what made it uncomfortable.
If these were the crimes Spider had managed to uncover without access to the League's full investigative apparatus, Shingo could only guess what had never reached the surface.
The next set of documents dealt with the gang Spider had destroyed on Mandarin Island North.
His expression hardened as he read.
Poaching was only the beginning. The organization had trafficked people, created orphans and then recruited vulnerable children into its ranks, forced women into prostitution, and moved prohibited goods through the old districts. By the time Shingo reached the end of the file, the image of Spider murdering a collection of helpless local criminals had become much harder to maintain.
Reiji watched him quietly.
Nobody at this table was innocent, and Reiji had never pretended otherwise. Spider had killed people. Some of its members had committed crimes long before they ever joined him.
But the people they had killed were not automatically better merely because the League had been the one condemning Spider.
"Pass the files around," Reiji said. "Everyone should see them."
Miki reached for the first stack, and the others began passing documents along both sides of the table. Soon the room was filled with the rustle of paper and occasional muttered curses as people encountered details they had never known.
Miki understood the material better than most. What had happened to her family was different in location and circumstance, but the pattern was painfully familiar: powerful people wanted something, somebody weaker stood in the way, and the law had done nothing to protect them.
For the next half hour, hardly anyone spoke.
By the time the final documents returned to the center of the table, the mood had changed completely. Several members who had once wondered whether Spider had killed innocent people no longer looked troubled by the question.
Reiji barely paid attention to them.
His eyes had remained on Shingo.
Shingo could feel it too. He knew everyone was waiting for his answer, and Tai's actions over the past few days suddenly made much more sense. Tai had saved him because of Reiji. He had risked turning against another Team Rocket operative, brought Shingo safely to Mandarin Island North, and then led him directly into Spider's inner circle.
Shingo studied the people around the table.
Reiji already had considerable influence around Mikan Island. Tai was embedded inside Team Rocket. The others concealed their identities, but none of them carried themselves like amateurs, and several gave Shingo the impression of experienced Trainers.
Spider was clearly much more than a street gang in matching masks.
"What are you actually trying to do?" he asked.
Reiji smiled.
"Make the world a better place."
Shingo's expression immediately told him how well that answer had landed.
Reiji laughed. "All right, forget that. We look after our own. Everyone here has something they want badly enough that achieving it alone would be difficult, so we help each other get there."
Shingo frowned as he considered that.
For the others, however, the answer struck much closer to home. Almost everyone sitting at the table had joined Reiji because there was something they could not reach alone—revenge, strength, security, freedom, or simply a place where they belonged.
Reiji leaned forward slightly.
"What about you? Nothing you want?"
"Of course there is." Shingo nodded, then shook his head. "But whatever I want, I'll earn it myself."
There was no hesitation in his answer.
That stubbornness made Reiji's smile widen. He was beginning to understand exactly what Shingo valued.
"Fine. Then how about a few friends chasing their own goals alongside you?"
"Friends?"
Shingo looked around the table again, this time with less fear and more amusement.
"You're all wearing masks. That's a strange way for friends to talk to each other."
Reiji laughed.
"Fair point. Conveniently, that brings us to the second thing I wanted to deal with tonight."
His gaze shifted toward Tai.
Tai understood immediately.
He got up, crossed to the side of the room, and hauled Gai to his feet. A blue psychic glow wrapped around the prisoner before lifting him into the air where everyone at the table could see him clearly.
Gai looked awful.
His black coat was wrinkled and stained from captivity, his hair was a mess, and his bound body twisted desperately against the psychic hold. Whatever had been used to silence him was still doing its job; no matter how hard he struggled, he could not make a sound.
Tai returned to the table and placed a small voice recorder in front of Reiji.
Then he pressed play.
A nervous, eager voice filled the room.
"I want to report Spider. I know who the members are. Spider's leader is Reiji from Mikan Gym. Naoki—the former leader of the Rock Gang who escaped from Trovitopolis—is one of them. Gulzar from Kumquat Gym is also—"
The recording continued.
Within moments, several Spider identities had been handed directly to the person Gai believed was a Team Rocket officer.
Around the table, the meaning of the masks became painfully clear.
Reiji looked up at the trembling prisoner.
"And that," he said, "is why we wear them."
Gai's eyes widened as he finally understood what had happened.
The Team Rocket officer he had approached to betray Spider was Number Eight.
Spider itself had been waiting for him.
His entire body began shaking, and a dark stain spread across the front of his trousers before urine started dripping onto the floor beneath him. Nobody laughed. The silence around the table was far worse.
Reiji clicked his tongue.
"What did you think was going to happen?"
The stupidity of it still annoyed him.
Gai had known Spider repeatedly operated around Mandarin Island North while somehow avoiding Team Rocket's strongest Trainers. He had known their attacks ran too smoothly for a group supposedly fighting everyone at once. Yet it had apparently never occurred to him that Spider might already have someone inside the local Team Rocket command structure.
Instead, he had walked straight into Tai's hands and traded everyone's identities for the promise of a reward.
Now he hung helplessly above the table, surrounded by the very people he had tried to sell out, and finally understood just how badly he had miscalculated.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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