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Team Rocket
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Literature Text
Organization Name: Team Rocket
Region of Operation: Kanto, Johto, Sevii Islands
Leaders: Rocket Boss Giovanni, Rocket Executive Proton, Rocket Executive Petrel, Rocket Executive Ariana, Rocket Executive Archer
Current Status: Disbanded
Legendary Pokémon involved in past operations: Mewtwo
Criminal behaviors: Theft, burglary, illegal capture and transfer of Pokémon, Pokémon abuse, assault, money laundering, bribery, corporate invasion/takeover, kidnapping, destruction of private property, murder and illegal drug possession and distribution among many others.
Overall societal impact: Extreme (prior to first disbandment), Considerable (during revival and formation of "Neo" Team Rocket)
HISTORY
KANTO TEAM ROCKET
Team Rocket’s origins are still somewhat of a mystery in the modern day, as most of the files regarding the organization’s early activities have either been lost or purposely destroyed; even so, though, there is still a lot to say about this once ruthless and dominating organization. Team Rocket was originally founded by the mother of the man who would make the organization into a virtual empire as merely a small drug-smuggling organization, but after sickness forced her to give up command to her son, Giovanni, the organization took off in the criminal world. Instead of simply wasting their time on drugs, Giovanni had grand plans for the organization and decided to turn to a much more uncommon good to smuggle: Pokémon. The illegal trafficking of Pokémon was not uncommon back in those days, but most of the time it was only petty theft and there was rarely any chance that an owner would never see their Pokémon ever again. Under Giovanni’s command, however, Team Rocket began to steal Pokémon of all types in massive quantities, selling them to the highest bidder at an increased price and making a significant profit in the process. The actual buyers of these stolen Pokémon ranged anywhere from rich clients looking to get ahold of rare Pokémon to simple scientists that needed cheap and durable test subjects for whatever experiments they chose to conduct. Over the span of a few years, Giovanni managed to elevate Team Rocket to the top of the charts and essentially created the largest criminal organization in all of Japan, a task that would be more than difficult even for a trained organization like the Yakuza. After a while, Giovanni decided to step things up a notch and began spreading the influence of Team Rocket across many different sectors of the market, such as establishing the Rocket Game Corner (which was actually only a front for a hidden base underneath the building) in Celadon City and taking over the Nugget Bridge near Cerulean City and using it as a makeshift recruitment office. For a time, things seemed like Team Rocket was only going to get stronger and stronger as time went on.
However, this nightmare did not end quite as Giovanni predicted it would, thanks in part to the intervention of a legendary trainer known today as Red. At the time Red started his journey, Team Rocket was at the peak of its power and was quickly gaining control over the entire Kanto region; though he had not intentionally set out to defeat Team Rocket, Red had a bad habit of running into members of the organization and did not take too kindly to their actions. His first interaction with the organization occurred in Mt. Moon, where he managed to prevent a small squad of Team Rocket Grunts from stealing rare fossils; not too long after that, he managed to defeat the Team Rocket member controlling the Nugget Bridge before foiling a burglary attempt at local home, where a grunt attempted to take off with a stolen TM. Next, Red arrived at the Celadon Game Corner and, smelling something suspicious, battled against one of the security guards in the building and unveiled the hidden base that was beneath the building. There, he came into contact with Giovanni for the first time, and although Giovanni was an experienced trainer, he managed to lose to Red badly. Giovanni escaped from the area before the local authorities could arrest him, but Red’s job was not finished yet, as Giovanni left in his place a Silph Scope, which at the time as the only way one could identify the Ghost-type Pokémon that haunted the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. There, Red came across a horrible sight: in order to acquire Cubone skulls for their organization, a bunch of grunts attacked the man in charge of the Tower’s upkeep, Mr. Fuji, held him hostage in the top floor of the tower and killed a local Marowak that happened to be the mother of the Cubone they were targeting. Here, Red too managed to intervene and shut down their operation, though the terrible damage had already been done. With this setback, Giovanni attempted one final hurrah and attacked Silph Co. with a large battalion of troops, taking the President of the company hostage and demanding that he hand over the Master Ball, a special device that was only in its prototype stage at that time but was nonetheless important for its capacity to capture any Pokémon without fail. Red entered the building in the hopes of ending this once and for all, and although the organization and Giovanni himself threw everything they had at him, Red was victorious and drove the organization to the brink of destruction in the region.
Meanwhile, another project that Giovanni was personally endorsing was starting to go awry in more ways than one. A few years prior to the height of their power, a top secret cloning project was undertaken by a scientist only known as Dr. Fuji (it is unknown if it is the same Mr. Fuji immortalized in Lavender Town of the Kanto region for his efforts at taking care of Pokémon in life and after death) that would change the world beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Giovanni, the leader of the once powerful Team Rocket, had employed and ordered Dr. Fuji to use his untested cloning plans, something he had been working on for years, to create the most powerful Pokémon ever known. His official order: create an amplified and super-powered clone of Mew, one of the first Pokémon known throughout recorded history and perhaps the greatest of all-known creatures in terms of versatility and combat capacity. This task was originally deemed impossible because nobody had seen a Mew in many centuries, but during an expedition through the jungles of Guyana, a fossilized Mew hair was discovered among some abandoned ruins. Amazingly, there was just enough genetic material within the hair for a replication to be performed; this is what began the now infamous Project Mewtwo and, after its conclusion, the Mewtwo Incident.
However, there is still more to the story; the scientist employed by Giovanni was not following orders simply because it was his job: he was doing it to restore his family. For reasons unknown, this scientist's daughter had died by some tragic cause far too early in her young life; if he could succeed with this project, he believed that he could restore his family and perhaps save whatever humanity he had left after the experiment. Undeterred by the challenge, Dr. Fuji and his colleagues began a long and difficult process, attempting to clone the DNA and produce fruitful copies of the original. All, however, led to utter failure. In response, the scientists began to physically manipulate not only the hair's genetics but the genetics of other Pokémon, hoping to find a stable method of producing a viable clone that was both more powerful than and just as stable as the original one. In the process, many lives were born and ended before they were even lived, but eventually, one clone was produced (on February 6) that would eventually become Mewtwo; about the same time, the scientists were experimenting with four other clones, one of a Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, and the clone of Dr. Fuji's daughter, dubbed Ambertwo. From what the records show, it is known that Mewtwo (at around the age of 6 months or so) had some brief psychic contact with the other three beings before tragedy struck; although the infant Mewtwo made friends with the four within moments of meeting them, it was forced to watch them disappear forever, as they all died shortly after this brief psychic connection was made. This caused a chain reaction of psychic energy to go off in the infant's head, and a massive dose of relaxant was needed to calm and stabilize Mewtwo's brain waves. In truth, the other specimens would have never survived; Mew's DNA was the only sample ever found that could handle the recombination and alteration required for the cloning process developed by Dr. Fuji, though it was later mastered and utilized for the prospect of cloning fossils. Although many scientists believe that this occurrence was forgotten by Mewtwo after his awakening, it is possible that the retention of such a horrifying memory would explain the intense savagery and hatred Mewtwo demonstrated towards his creators shortly after his full awakening.
Nearly a year later, an unexpected accident occurred that would turn the world of Pokémon on its head: Mewtwo woke up ahead of schedule. Although Dr. Fuji had long since given up his hope of restoring his family, he loyally (and perhaps foolishly) continued studying and working with Mewtwo, hoping that he would succeed with at least one part of the project. He got his wish unexpectedly when, on an otherwise unassuming day, Mewtwo's brain waves began racing at an incredible pace…and it awoke. Bursting the glass cage containing him, Mewtwo did not even have a few minutes to himself before all of the research staff around him were preparing to test its powers. Perhaps still holding a lost memory deep in his heart, Mewtwo refused to let anyone test him as a weapon, and it promptly destroyed the laboratory it was contained in. The lab itself was once known as the Pokémon Mansion before Cinnabar Island was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, and it is duly noted that, while some believe from scraps of journal entries that Mewtwo was literally born of a Mew, this is merely a false hypothesis and more or less metaphorical in meaning. Shortly after the lab’s destruction, Mewtwo met face-to-face with the man responsible for his creation: the former head of Team Rocket, Giovanni. Giovanni played his trump card and offered to give Mewtwo a purpose in life if it would work with him as a partner; not realizing his intentions, the newly-matured Mewtwo agreed. For nearly 14 months, Giovanni used his vast resources to train Mewtwo, helping it learn how to control its immense psychic powers…but when Giovanni finally revealed that he only ever planned to use Mewtwo as a tool, Mewtwo fought against him and escaped into the wild, setting in motion the events of the Mewtwo Incident. Several months later (approximately 17 years ago from the present), a group of young kids was invited to attend a prolific celebration in their honor, granting them the chance to battle the most powerful Pokémon trainer alive on an isolated fortress on a small patch of land called New Island. It was only after arriving that Mewtwo revealed itself to be the challenger they had been seeking; believing all non-cloned life-forms to be inferior, Mewtwo captured all of the trainers' Pokémon, cloned them, and forced the two sides to fight one another. In the middle of the conflict, however, a Mew appeared and began battling with its deranged counterpart (it is unknown if it was directly related to the Mew that the original sample was taken from) until one of the young trainers stepped in the way of their blast and became petrified by their combined psychic energies. While it is uncertain how it happened, it appears that the sympathy that all of the other present Pokémon displayed towards this tragedy, including the cloned ones, was enough to destabilize the intense psychic bond, freeing the young trainer. It was only after this that Mewtwo realized that all life deserved to exist and, regretting his decisions, journeyed off with Mew and the cloned Pokémon to parts unknown. A few years later, another incident involving Mewtwo and Team Rocket was reported in the Johto region, but details on this event are even scarcer, possibly due to the creature's proven ability to psychically tamper with the memories of others.
At this point, Giovanni had little left going for him, and had only one thing left to do in his mind: Make sure that Red never saw the light of day again. This opportunity came to him as expected when Red traveled back to Viridian City to claim his final badge, only to find out that the Gym was the original front Giovanni used when first modifying Team Rocket; in other words, Giovanni was the last and most powerful Gym Leader in the entire Kanto region, specializing in the Ground-type. Both sides fought against each other fiercely, but despite all of the power that Giovanni had and his skills as a trainer, it was not enough; Red beat him and earned his final Gym Badge in the Kanto region. Unable to cope with this loss, Giovanni lost his mind and realized that if a single trainer could best him in battle, then he was the weak link in the organization from the very beginning. With this, Giovanni made the biggest move in his career and officially disbanded Team Rocket, leaving on his own journey to train improve himself until he finally became just as powerful as the young trainer that had single-handedly destroyed his life’s work.
SEVII ISLANDS TEAM ROCKET
This is not to say that Red was finished with Team Rocket, however; in truth, a small group of Team Rocket Grunts were occupying a warehouse of sorts (filled to the brim with stolen Pokémon) on Chronos Island of the Sevii Islands and had no idea of the Team’s disbandment as a result of their general isolation off the Kanto mainland. This particular group was assigned to assimilate programs and technology that could possibly accelerate the evolution process in Pokémon while in the meantime searching for the presence of a large Ruby and Sapphire in the Sevii Islands area to sell for monetary gain; though normally not valuable enough to devote an entire branch to them, rumors of a pair of these stones of enormous size had been circulating around long enough for just about anyone to learn about them. While Red managed to acquire the legendary Ruby and defeated (alongside the former Elite Four member Lorelei) a group of grunts rampaging through Icefall Cave (one of the very few places in the word known to be home to Lapras), a scientist under their pay stub acquired the Sapphire and took it back to the Rocket Warehouse. Red pursued the scientist and entered the building, where he was able to defeat the two Team Rocket Executives present at the time, Arianna and Archer. Although they did not initially believe that Team Rocket was really disbanded, seeing the Earth Badge in the possession of Red was enough to convince them, ending the activity of Team Rocket’s Sevii Islands branch completely (the Sapphire they had stolen was also subsequently recovered and put into good hands, namely those of Celio).
JOHTO TEAM ROCKET
Following the initial disbandment of Team Rocket, many of its former members were arrested and incarcerated, but a considerable portion of the former organization still stayed in hiding. After three years of preparation, four of Giovanni’s greatest employees, known as the Team Rocket Executives, staged a full-blown comeback in the nearby Johto region, a place where they knew they could work in secret for a while without the local authorities becoming too suspicious (an action that they obviously could not take in the Kanto region). Executive Proton was assigned to begin lopping off Slowpoke Tails at Slowpoke Well in Azalea Town to sell at a high price (even a criminal group needs some form of income); Executives Petrel and Ariana were assigned to construct an underground base in Mahogany Town that would also serve as the home of a powerful radio amplifier that could force Pokémon to evolve instantly (a produce of their work in the Sevii Islands branch that would allow them to make great profit on the black market by producing and selling fully-evolved Pokémon in a short period of time); and Archer, the new ‘head’ of the Team, controlled things from the shadows and did his best to make sure everything went smoothly and according to plan. As Red did with Giovanni, however, a young trainer (whose identity is kept anonymous for the sake of safety and privacy) managed to thwart their efforts in Slowpoke Well, angering Proton a great deal and alerting the rest of the Executives that someone was gunning for them, even if it was only indirectly. That same trainer later foiled the plans of the new “Neo” Team Rocket at their base in Mahogany Town, though not without some help. The radio signals that Petrel and Ariana were using to evolve Magikarp at the Lake of Rage were proving to be more dangerous than helpful, especially when the device accidently mutated a Magikarp while it was evolving, creating a furious, shiny Gyarados that almost destroyed all of the other Pokémon in the lake by itself. The Champion of the Indigo League,, Lance, took great notice of this and began studying the new actions of Team Rocket, eventually discovering where their base was and joining the afore-mentioned trainer in infiltrating the base; there, they confronted and defeated both Petrel and Ariana and managed to shut down the radio device that had been powered by a group of six captured electrodes. Furious over this loss, Archer ordered an all-out attack on the Goldenrod Radio Tower and took it hostage. Petrel disguised himself as the Director of the Radio Tower and used it to sing praise for Team Rocket across the world, while the rest of the team did their best to make sure that on one could enter the Radio Tower until Archer could accomplish their true goal, which was contacting Giovanni. Through a bit of deception and a lot of battling, however, the young trainer that had helped Lance before entered the Radio Tower, defeated the three Rocket Executives that had been faced before, and ultimately battled against Executive Archer, who too lost his fight. Archer quickly came to realize that perhaps Giovanni was right in leaving, as even together he and his fellow Executives were unable to maintain the integrity of the organization against a single, determined trainer. In response, Archer took the same action as Giovanni and disbanded Team Rocket, this time for good; an incident in the Kanto region involving a stolen part from the local Power Plant was later associated with the organization, but this event passed after about a day and the group was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Today, it is still unknown if Archer ever really did get in contact with Giovanni, but even if he did, it seems more than likely that he chose not to respond for a reason. As with Giovanni, the four former Rocket Executives fled the area after the incident and have not made any further actions since, though most of the organization’s former members were arrested and incarcerated.
CURRENT/FORMER LEADERS
Name: Rocket Boss Giovanni
Pokémon: Rhyperior, Golem, Marowak, Sandslash, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Krookodile, Gliscor, Garchomp, Hippowdon, Dugtrio, Honchkrow, Kangaskhan, Persian
Bio: Little is really known about Giovanni’s personal life aside from the fact that his mother was the one who originally created Team Rocket, which is a shame considering how strongly his organization managed to influence the Kanto region. At its peak, Team Rocket was all but unstoppable and it seemed like nothing could defeat it; this is a direct reflection of its true leader, as Giovanni was always known to be a cruel man that enjoyed nothing more than earning money and torturing both humans and Pokémon in any way he could. Giovanni’s cold heart is not an uncommon feature among many crime bosses, but he took it a step further in making Pokémon the main source of his abuse, essentially creating an entirely new sector of mob-scale activity and paving the way for future organization such as Team Galactic and especially Team Plasma. Despite all of his power, Giovanni was not a regularly cocky individual and took even minor threats seriously, often times resulting in punishment or attacks that were much more severe than they had to be. His reputation as a cold, cruel boss discouraged many grunts from ever attempting to raise their status in the organization (and thus have increased contact with him), which might explain why grunts were present practically anywhere and everywhere during the organization’s peak. While Giovanni only became Gym Leader of Viridian City as a front to cover his initial expenses many years ago, his job taught him a great deal about battle and ultimately made him the most powerful Gym Leader in the Kanto region at the time; the fact that he occasionally used Mewtwo (while the creature was under his control) to defeat his opponents only made it more impossible for anyone to earn the Earth Badge, which in turn created a short in Pokémon League challengers during his tenure as Gym Leader. Although Giovanni was once quite brash and thought that no one could really stop his plans at any time, his meetings with Red taught him a very painful lesson about pride, after which he vanished from sight. Today, it is unknown where exactly Giovanni is, but it is still assumed that he is very much alive and in training. Giovanni’s family is all but nonexistent now due to time and natural death, though he is believed to be succeeded by a single son whose identity and location are currently unknown.
Name: Rocket Executive Archer
Pokémon: Golbat, Weezing, Houndour, Houndoom
Bio: Archer was once one of the top Rocket Executives during the height of the organization’s power and was in turn the head of the organization’s Sevii Islands' branch. There, he tirelessly worked on his own projects here and there and fiddled around with experimental radio equipment (which would later be used in the revival of Team Rocket three years after its first disbandment) while the remaining members of the branch hunted the islands for the legendary Ruby and Sapphire items. After being defeated by Red and informed of Team Rocket’s dissolution, Archer went into hiding alongside Ariana and came back at full-force three years later, attempting to revive the name of Team Rocket within the Johto region. Much like Giovanni, Archer was intelligent and extremely confident in himself, though not confident enough to not pay careful attention to detail and be exposed to immediate attack. Acting on Giovanni’s behalf, Archer took control of what remained of the organization and directed it to start conducting experiments and illegal operations in order to quickly garner funds; with enough money, Archer figured that he could spread Team Rocket throughout the Johto region just as Giovanni had in Kanto and possibly bring Team Rocket back from the brink of annihilation. Despite his efforts, however, Archer fell into the same trap that Giovanni did three years prior and let his guard down when a single trainer made it their mission to stop their efforts. Hoping to live up to Giovanni’s assumed wishes, Archer adamantly defended Team Rocket, but lost his battle just the same. Archer dissolved Team Rocket for good after that battle and went into hiding; his current whereabouts are unknown and may never be known for a considerable amount of time.
Name: Rocket Executive Ariana
Pokémon: Arbok, Vileplume, Muk, Murkrow
Bio: Much like Archer, Ariana was once one of the top Rocket Executives in the entire organization and worked alongside Archer during his tenure as the head of Team Rocket’s Sevii Islands’ branch. After the organization was dissolved, Ariana went in hiding alongside Archer and worked with him to piece together the organization’s revival in the Johto region three years later. Similarly to Archer, Ariana was an exceptionally intelligent woman and enjoyed a good battle just about anywhere, which was often used as a calling card for anyone that dared to oppose her in the organization. While she may have only been second-in-command to Archer, Ariana did most of the legwork in reviving the organization and was in charge of making sure that two new Executives, Proton and Petrel, did their jobs and were not slack on their efforts to make money and control the region. Ariana generally did not like hiding in the shadows all of the time and instead boldly supported the organization wherever she went, though she usually did not do so much in public. Although a bit hot-tempered in some cases, Ariana proved to be calm enough to hold the organization together under Archer’s command and did so quite well up to the final dissolution of the organization. It is lastly noted that it is rumored that Ariana is in fact the mother of Giovanni’s son, but whether or not this is true is still a mystery; nonetheless, as with Giovanni himself, Ariana’s current whereabouts are unknown and it is likely that they will remain so for some time.
Name: Rocket Executive Petrel
Pokémon: Zubat, Raticate, Weezing
Bio: Petrel was never exactly the ideal candidate for a Rocket Executive, but his talent of being a master of disguise made him extremely valuable in constructing a building underground in Mahogany Town without anyone becoming suspicious of the activity in the slightest. Unlike his contemporaries, Petrel had an odd of reputation of truly being a nice guy, fair-and-square with all of his decisions and with almost no mean streak in him at all. This made it difficult for Petrel to ever live up to his idol, the original Giovanni, though he often did his best to disguise himself as him and pretended to be the real boss just for laughs. Ariana did not like him whatsoever, but she was forced to work with him under Archer’s command to make sure that his talents did not go to waste and that he didn’t do anything foolish. During the revival of Team Rocket, though, Petrel’s good side got the best of him, as he was nice enough to give passwords and keys to the trainer that eventually thwarted their plans simply for losing a battle. Instead of fleeing like the rest of the organization when Archer dissolved it, Petrel stayed behind, hoping to disguise himself as a night guard and sneak into the Goldenrod Radio Tower to contact Giovanni once again. He was eventually caught after numerous attempts at this and incarcerated for a short time, but his prison sentence was reduced to only about a year for revealing many of the locations where the grunts were likely to hide out, leading to the rest of over 100 former members of the organization. Today, Petrel works as an innkeeper in Mahogany Town and has given up his criminal career entirely, though there are rumors that he did in fact make contact with Giovanni and knows exactly where he is.
Name: Rocket Executive Proton
Pokémon: Golbat, Weezing
Bio: Little is known about Proton as he was the last Rocket Executive to be hired, but even then his actions in and outside of the organization are still worth noting. Although he was only a lowly grunt during the glory days of the organization, Proton later proved himself to be worthy of being a Rocket Executive by killing the careers of anyone that dared to get in his way. Unusually cruel even for a member of Team Rocket, Proton took immense pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering on others, which may explain why Archer put him in change of cutting off Slowpoke Tails at the Slowpoke Well for profit. Despite his status as an Executive, however, Proton was never that good at battling and found this to be a major problem during Team Rocket’s revival, as he was easily defeated by the young trainer that would go on to end the organization not once but twice. Proton managed to evade capture for his actions and is still at large today, though it might only be a matter of time before his cruel streaks gets him in water too hot to handle.
CURRENT ACTIVITY/INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY
At the moment, Team Rocket is completely disbanded and it does not look like there will be any attempts in the near future to revive the once glorious organization. The fact that most of the Rocket Executives and Giovanni himself got away does leave open the possibility of another revival, but given the current state of their situation, it is unlikely that this will happen at least within the next decade if ever at all. Oddly enough, this likely future is actually the fault of the organization itself, as it taught both the Kanto and Johto regions what to look for. During the organization’s peak, local police forces were effectively useless and no part of the government could adequately deal with Team Rocket, mainly due to its sheer size and enormous reservoir of resources. Today, police and government officials are much harder on suspicious criminal activity in general and have been able to thwart most attempts at forming such organizations again in the region, making the Kanto and Johto regions much safer today than they have ever been before. In turn, this crackdown led to a significant evolution in the way future criminal organizations would operate. Team Rocket’s power was great while it lasted, but once the dominoes started falling, the openness of its operations ultimately doomed the organization and led to the incarceration of most members. From then on, organizations such as Team Aqua, Magma, Galactic and even Plasma would learn to hide their activities as much as possible and only reveal themselves when they felt they had all of the cards, which further facilitated the evolution of administrators and leaders into far more intelligent and often times radical individuals and therefore greater threats to the world as a whole.
Professor Wormwood
Region of Operation: Kanto, Johto, Sevii Islands
Leaders: Rocket Boss Giovanni, Rocket Executive Proton, Rocket Executive Petrel, Rocket Executive Ariana, Rocket Executive Archer
Current Status: Disbanded
Legendary Pokémon involved in past operations: Mewtwo
Criminal behaviors: Theft, burglary, illegal capture and transfer of Pokémon, Pokémon abuse, assault, money laundering, bribery, corporate invasion/takeover, kidnapping, destruction of private property, murder and illegal drug possession and distribution among many others.
Overall societal impact: Extreme (prior to first disbandment), Considerable (during revival and formation of "Neo" Team Rocket)
HISTORY
KANTO TEAM ROCKET
Team Rocket’s origins are still somewhat of a mystery in the modern day, as most of the files regarding the organization’s early activities have either been lost or purposely destroyed; even so, though, there is still a lot to say about this once ruthless and dominating organization. Team Rocket was originally founded by the mother of the man who would make the organization into a virtual empire as merely a small drug-smuggling organization, but after sickness forced her to give up command to her son, Giovanni, the organization took off in the criminal world. Instead of simply wasting their time on drugs, Giovanni had grand plans for the organization and decided to turn to a much more uncommon good to smuggle: Pokémon. The illegal trafficking of Pokémon was not uncommon back in those days, but most of the time it was only petty theft and there was rarely any chance that an owner would never see their Pokémon ever again. Under Giovanni’s command, however, Team Rocket began to steal Pokémon of all types in massive quantities, selling them to the highest bidder at an increased price and making a significant profit in the process. The actual buyers of these stolen Pokémon ranged anywhere from rich clients looking to get ahold of rare Pokémon to simple scientists that needed cheap and durable test subjects for whatever experiments they chose to conduct. Over the span of a few years, Giovanni managed to elevate Team Rocket to the top of the charts and essentially created the largest criminal organization in all of Japan, a task that would be more than difficult even for a trained organization like the Yakuza. After a while, Giovanni decided to step things up a notch and began spreading the influence of Team Rocket across many different sectors of the market, such as establishing the Rocket Game Corner (which was actually only a front for a hidden base underneath the building) in Celadon City and taking over the Nugget Bridge near Cerulean City and using it as a makeshift recruitment office. For a time, things seemed like Team Rocket was only going to get stronger and stronger as time went on.
However, this nightmare did not end quite as Giovanni predicted it would, thanks in part to the intervention of a legendary trainer known today as Red. At the time Red started his journey, Team Rocket was at the peak of its power and was quickly gaining control over the entire Kanto region; though he had not intentionally set out to defeat Team Rocket, Red had a bad habit of running into members of the organization and did not take too kindly to their actions. His first interaction with the organization occurred in Mt. Moon, where he managed to prevent a small squad of Team Rocket Grunts from stealing rare fossils; not too long after that, he managed to defeat the Team Rocket member controlling the Nugget Bridge before foiling a burglary attempt at local home, where a grunt attempted to take off with a stolen TM. Next, Red arrived at the Celadon Game Corner and, smelling something suspicious, battled against one of the security guards in the building and unveiled the hidden base that was beneath the building. There, he came into contact with Giovanni for the first time, and although Giovanni was an experienced trainer, he managed to lose to Red badly. Giovanni escaped from the area before the local authorities could arrest him, but Red’s job was not finished yet, as Giovanni left in his place a Silph Scope, which at the time as the only way one could identify the Ghost-type Pokémon that haunted the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. There, Red came across a horrible sight: in order to acquire Cubone skulls for their organization, a bunch of grunts attacked the man in charge of the Tower’s upkeep, Mr. Fuji, held him hostage in the top floor of the tower and killed a local Marowak that happened to be the mother of the Cubone they were targeting. Here, Red too managed to intervene and shut down their operation, though the terrible damage had already been done. With this setback, Giovanni attempted one final hurrah and attacked Silph Co. with a large battalion of troops, taking the President of the company hostage and demanding that he hand over the Master Ball, a special device that was only in its prototype stage at that time but was nonetheless important for its capacity to capture any Pokémon without fail. Red entered the building in the hopes of ending this once and for all, and although the organization and Giovanni himself threw everything they had at him, Red was victorious and drove the organization to the brink of destruction in the region.
Meanwhile, another project that Giovanni was personally endorsing was starting to go awry in more ways than one. A few years prior to the height of their power, a top secret cloning project was undertaken by a scientist only known as Dr. Fuji (it is unknown if it is the same Mr. Fuji immortalized in Lavender Town of the Kanto region for his efforts at taking care of Pokémon in life and after death) that would change the world beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Giovanni, the leader of the once powerful Team Rocket, had employed and ordered Dr. Fuji to use his untested cloning plans, something he had been working on for years, to create the most powerful Pokémon ever known. His official order: create an amplified and super-powered clone of Mew, one of the first Pokémon known throughout recorded history and perhaps the greatest of all-known creatures in terms of versatility and combat capacity. This task was originally deemed impossible because nobody had seen a Mew in many centuries, but during an expedition through the jungles of Guyana, a fossilized Mew hair was discovered among some abandoned ruins. Amazingly, there was just enough genetic material within the hair for a replication to be performed; this is what began the now infamous Project Mewtwo and, after its conclusion, the Mewtwo Incident.
However, there is still more to the story; the scientist employed by Giovanni was not following orders simply because it was his job: he was doing it to restore his family. For reasons unknown, this scientist's daughter had died by some tragic cause far too early in her young life; if he could succeed with this project, he believed that he could restore his family and perhaps save whatever humanity he had left after the experiment. Undeterred by the challenge, Dr. Fuji and his colleagues began a long and difficult process, attempting to clone the DNA and produce fruitful copies of the original. All, however, led to utter failure. In response, the scientists began to physically manipulate not only the hair's genetics but the genetics of other Pokémon, hoping to find a stable method of producing a viable clone that was both more powerful than and just as stable as the original one. In the process, many lives were born and ended before they were even lived, but eventually, one clone was produced (on February 6) that would eventually become Mewtwo; about the same time, the scientists were experimenting with four other clones, one of a Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, and the clone of Dr. Fuji's daughter, dubbed Ambertwo. From what the records show, it is known that Mewtwo (at around the age of 6 months or so) had some brief psychic contact with the other three beings before tragedy struck; although the infant Mewtwo made friends with the four within moments of meeting them, it was forced to watch them disappear forever, as they all died shortly after this brief psychic connection was made. This caused a chain reaction of psychic energy to go off in the infant's head, and a massive dose of relaxant was needed to calm and stabilize Mewtwo's brain waves. In truth, the other specimens would have never survived; Mew's DNA was the only sample ever found that could handle the recombination and alteration required for the cloning process developed by Dr. Fuji, though it was later mastered and utilized for the prospect of cloning fossils. Although many scientists believe that this occurrence was forgotten by Mewtwo after his awakening, it is possible that the retention of such a horrifying memory would explain the intense savagery and hatred Mewtwo demonstrated towards his creators shortly after his full awakening.
Nearly a year later, an unexpected accident occurred that would turn the world of Pokémon on its head: Mewtwo woke up ahead of schedule. Although Dr. Fuji had long since given up his hope of restoring his family, he loyally (and perhaps foolishly) continued studying and working with Mewtwo, hoping that he would succeed with at least one part of the project. He got his wish unexpectedly when, on an otherwise unassuming day, Mewtwo's brain waves began racing at an incredible pace…and it awoke. Bursting the glass cage containing him, Mewtwo did not even have a few minutes to himself before all of the research staff around him were preparing to test its powers. Perhaps still holding a lost memory deep in his heart, Mewtwo refused to let anyone test him as a weapon, and it promptly destroyed the laboratory it was contained in. The lab itself was once known as the Pokémon Mansion before Cinnabar Island was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, and it is duly noted that, while some believe from scraps of journal entries that Mewtwo was literally born of a Mew, this is merely a false hypothesis and more or less metaphorical in meaning. Shortly after the lab’s destruction, Mewtwo met face-to-face with the man responsible for his creation: the former head of Team Rocket, Giovanni. Giovanni played his trump card and offered to give Mewtwo a purpose in life if it would work with him as a partner; not realizing his intentions, the newly-matured Mewtwo agreed. For nearly 14 months, Giovanni used his vast resources to train Mewtwo, helping it learn how to control its immense psychic powers…but when Giovanni finally revealed that he only ever planned to use Mewtwo as a tool, Mewtwo fought against him and escaped into the wild, setting in motion the events of the Mewtwo Incident. Several months later (approximately 17 years ago from the present), a group of young kids was invited to attend a prolific celebration in their honor, granting them the chance to battle the most powerful Pokémon trainer alive on an isolated fortress on a small patch of land called New Island. It was only after arriving that Mewtwo revealed itself to be the challenger they had been seeking; believing all non-cloned life-forms to be inferior, Mewtwo captured all of the trainers' Pokémon, cloned them, and forced the two sides to fight one another. In the middle of the conflict, however, a Mew appeared and began battling with its deranged counterpart (it is unknown if it was directly related to the Mew that the original sample was taken from) until one of the young trainers stepped in the way of their blast and became petrified by their combined psychic energies. While it is uncertain how it happened, it appears that the sympathy that all of the other present Pokémon displayed towards this tragedy, including the cloned ones, was enough to destabilize the intense psychic bond, freeing the young trainer. It was only after this that Mewtwo realized that all life deserved to exist and, regretting his decisions, journeyed off with Mew and the cloned Pokémon to parts unknown. A few years later, another incident involving Mewtwo and Team Rocket was reported in the Johto region, but details on this event are even scarcer, possibly due to the creature's proven ability to psychically tamper with the memories of others.
At this point, Giovanni had little left going for him, and had only one thing left to do in his mind: Make sure that Red never saw the light of day again. This opportunity came to him as expected when Red traveled back to Viridian City to claim his final badge, only to find out that the Gym was the original front Giovanni used when first modifying Team Rocket; in other words, Giovanni was the last and most powerful Gym Leader in the entire Kanto region, specializing in the Ground-type. Both sides fought against each other fiercely, but despite all of the power that Giovanni had and his skills as a trainer, it was not enough; Red beat him and earned his final Gym Badge in the Kanto region. Unable to cope with this loss, Giovanni lost his mind and realized that if a single trainer could best him in battle, then he was the weak link in the organization from the very beginning. With this, Giovanni made the biggest move in his career and officially disbanded Team Rocket, leaving on his own journey to train improve himself until he finally became just as powerful as the young trainer that had single-handedly destroyed his life’s work.
SEVII ISLANDS TEAM ROCKET
This is not to say that Red was finished with Team Rocket, however; in truth, a small group of Team Rocket Grunts were occupying a warehouse of sorts (filled to the brim with stolen Pokémon) on Chronos Island of the Sevii Islands and had no idea of the Team’s disbandment as a result of their general isolation off the Kanto mainland. This particular group was assigned to assimilate programs and technology that could possibly accelerate the evolution process in Pokémon while in the meantime searching for the presence of a large Ruby and Sapphire in the Sevii Islands area to sell for monetary gain; though normally not valuable enough to devote an entire branch to them, rumors of a pair of these stones of enormous size had been circulating around long enough for just about anyone to learn about them. While Red managed to acquire the legendary Ruby and defeated (alongside the former Elite Four member Lorelei) a group of grunts rampaging through Icefall Cave (one of the very few places in the word known to be home to Lapras), a scientist under their pay stub acquired the Sapphire and took it back to the Rocket Warehouse. Red pursued the scientist and entered the building, where he was able to defeat the two Team Rocket Executives present at the time, Arianna and Archer. Although they did not initially believe that Team Rocket was really disbanded, seeing the Earth Badge in the possession of Red was enough to convince them, ending the activity of Team Rocket’s Sevii Islands branch completely (the Sapphire they had stolen was also subsequently recovered and put into good hands, namely those of Celio).
JOHTO TEAM ROCKET
Following the initial disbandment of Team Rocket, many of its former members were arrested and incarcerated, but a considerable portion of the former organization still stayed in hiding. After three years of preparation, four of Giovanni’s greatest employees, known as the Team Rocket Executives, staged a full-blown comeback in the nearby Johto region, a place where they knew they could work in secret for a while without the local authorities becoming too suspicious (an action that they obviously could not take in the Kanto region). Executive Proton was assigned to begin lopping off Slowpoke Tails at Slowpoke Well in Azalea Town to sell at a high price (even a criminal group needs some form of income); Executives Petrel and Ariana were assigned to construct an underground base in Mahogany Town that would also serve as the home of a powerful radio amplifier that could force Pokémon to evolve instantly (a produce of their work in the Sevii Islands branch that would allow them to make great profit on the black market by producing and selling fully-evolved Pokémon in a short period of time); and Archer, the new ‘head’ of the Team, controlled things from the shadows and did his best to make sure everything went smoothly and according to plan. As Red did with Giovanni, however, a young trainer (whose identity is kept anonymous for the sake of safety and privacy) managed to thwart their efforts in Slowpoke Well, angering Proton a great deal and alerting the rest of the Executives that someone was gunning for them, even if it was only indirectly. That same trainer later foiled the plans of the new “Neo” Team Rocket at their base in Mahogany Town, though not without some help. The radio signals that Petrel and Ariana were using to evolve Magikarp at the Lake of Rage were proving to be more dangerous than helpful, especially when the device accidently mutated a Magikarp while it was evolving, creating a furious, shiny Gyarados that almost destroyed all of the other Pokémon in the lake by itself. The Champion of the Indigo League,, Lance, took great notice of this and began studying the new actions of Team Rocket, eventually discovering where their base was and joining the afore-mentioned trainer in infiltrating the base; there, they confronted and defeated both Petrel and Ariana and managed to shut down the radio device that had been powered by a group of six captured electrodes. Furious over this loss, Archer ordered an all-out attack on the Goldenrod Radio Tower and took it hostage. Petrel disguised himself as the Director of the Radio Tower and used it to sing praise for Team Rocket across the world, while the rest of the team did their best to make sure that on one could enter the Radio Tower until Archer could accomplish their true goal, which was contacting Giovanni. Through a bit of deception and a lot of battling, however, the young trainer that had helped Lance before entered the Radio Tower, defeated the three Rocket Executives that had been faced before, and ultimately battled against Executive Archer, who too lost his fight. Archer quickly came to realize that perhaps Giovanni was right in leaving, as even together he and his fellow Executives were unable to maintain the integrity of the organization against a single, determined trainer. In response, Archer took the same action as Giovanni and disbanded Team Rocket, this time for good; an incident in the Kanto region involving a stolen part from the local Power Plant was later associated with the organization, but this event passed after about a day and the group was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Today, it is still unknown if Archer ever really did get in contact with Giovanni, but even if he did, it seems more than likely that he chose not to respond for a reason. As with Giovanni, the four former Rocket Executives fled the area after the incident and have not made any further actions since, though most of the organization’s former members were arrested and incarcerated.
CURRENT/FORMER LEADERS
Name: Rocket Boss Giovanni
Pokémon: Rhyperior, Golem, Marowak, Sandslash, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Krookodile, Gliscor, Garchomp, Hippowdon, Dugtrio, Honchkrow, Kangaskhan, Persian
Bio: Little is really known about Giovanni’s personal life aside from the fact that his mother was the one who originally created Team Rocket, which is a shame considering how strongly his organization managed to influence the Kanto region. At its peak, Team Rocket was all but unstoppable and it seemed like nothing could defeat it; this is a direct reflection of its true leader, as Giovanni was always known to be a cruel man that enjoyed nothing more than earning money and torturing both humans and Pokémon in any way he could. Giovanni’s cold heart is not an uncommon feature among many crime bosses, but he took it a step further in making Pokémon the main source of his abuse, essentially creating an entirely new sector of mob-scale activity and paving the way for future organization such as Team Galactic and especially Team Plasma. Despite all of his power, Giovanni was not a regularly cocky individual and took even minor threats seriously, often times resulting in punishment or attacks that were much more severe than they had to be. His reputation as a cold, cruel boss discouraged many grunts from ever attempting to raise their status in the organization (and thus have increased contact with him), which might explain why grunts were present practically anywhere and everywhere during the organization’s peak. While Giovanni only became Gym Leader of Viridian City as a front to cover his initial expenses many years ago, his job taught him a great deal about battle and ultimately made him the most powerful Gym Leader in the Kanto region at the time; the fact that he occasionally used Mewtwo (while the creature was under his control) to defeat his opponents only made it more impossible for anyone to earn the Earth Badge, which in turn created a short in Pokémon League challengers during his tenure as Gym Leader. Although Giovanni was once quite brash and thought that no one could really stop his plans at any time, his meetings with Red taught him a very painful lesson about pride, after which he vanished from sight. Today, it is unknown where exactly Giovanni is, but it is still assumed that he is very much alive and in training. Giovanni’s family is all but nonexistent now due to time and natural death, though he is believed to be succeeded by a single son whose identity and location are currently unknown.
Name: Rocket Executive Archer
Pokémon: Golbat, Weezing, Houndour, Houndoom
Bio: Archer was once one of the top Rocket Executives during the height of the organization’s power and was in turn the head of the organization’s Sevii Islands' branch. There, he tirelessly worked on his own projects here and there and fiddled around with experimental radio equipment (which would later be used in the revival of Team Rocket three years after its first disbandment) while the remaining members of the branch hunted the islands for the legendary Ruby and Sapphire items. After being defeated by Red and informed of Team Rocket’s dissolution, Archer went into hiding alongside Ariana and came back at full-force three years later, attempting to revive the name of Team Rocket within the Johto region. Much like Giovanni, Archer was intelligent and extremely confident in himself, though not confident enough to not pay careful attention to detail and be exposed to immediate attack. Acting on Giovanni’s behalf, Archer took control of what remained of the organization and directed it to start conducting experiments and illegal operations in order to quickly garner funds; with enough money, Archer figured that he could spread Team Rocket throughout the Johto region just as Giovanni had in Kanto and possibly bring Team Rocket back from the brink of annihilation. Despite his efforts, however, Archer fell into the same trap that Giovanni did three years prior and let his guard down when a single trainer made it their mission to stop their efforts. Hoping to live up to Giovanni’s assumed wishes, Archer adamantly defended Team Rocket, but lost his battle just the same. Archer dissolved Team Rocket for good after that battle and went into hiding; his current whereabouts are unknown and may never be known for a considerable amount of time.
Name: Rocket Executive Ariana
Pokémon: Arbok, Vileplume, Muk, Murkrow
Bio: Much like Archer, Ariana was once one of the top Rocket Executives in the entire organization and worked alongside Archer during his tenure as the head of Team Rocket’s Sevii Islands’ branch. After the organization was dissolved, Ariana went in hiding alongside Archer and worked with him to piece together the organization’s revival in the Johto region three years later. Similarly to Archer, Ariana was an exceptionally intelligent woman and enjoyed a good battle just about anywhere, which was often used as a calling card for anyone that dared to oppose her in the organization. While she may have only been second-in-command to Archer, Ariana did most of the legwork in reviving the organization and was in charge of making sure that two new Executives, Proton and Petrel, did their jobs and were not slack on their efforts to make money and control the region. Ariana generally did not like hiding in the shadows all of the time and instead boldly supported the organization wherever she went, though she usually did not do so much in public. Although a bit hot-tempered in some cases, Ariana proved to be calm enough to hold the organization together under Archer’s command and did so quite well up to the final dissolution of the organization. It is lastly noted that it is rumored that Ariana is in fact the mother of Giovanni’s son, but whether or not this is true is still a mystery; nonetheless, as with Giovanni himself, Ariana’s current whereabouts are unknown and it is likely that they will remain so for some time.
Name: Rocket Executive Petrel
Pokémon: Zubat, Raticate, Weezing
Bio: Petrel was never exactly the ideal candidate for a Rocket Executive, but his talent of being a master of disguise made him extremely valuable in constructing a building underground in Mahogany Town without anyone becoming suspicious of the activity in the slightest. Unlike his contemporaries, Petrel had an odd of reputation of truly being a nice guy, fair-and-square with all of his decisions and with almost no mean streak in him at all. This made it difficult for Petrel to ever live up to his idol, the original Giovanni, though he often did his best to disguise himself as him and pretended to be the real boss just for laughs. Ariana did not like him whatsoever, but she was forced to work with him under Archer’s command to make sure that his talents did not go to waste and that he didn’t do anything foolish. During the revival of Team Rocket, though, Petrel’s good side got the best of him, as he was nice enough to give passwords and keys to the trainer that eventually thwarted their plans simply for losing a battle. Instead of fleeing like the rest of the organization when Archer dissolved it, Petrel stayed behind, hoping to disguise himself as a night guard and sneak into the Goldenrod Radio Tower to contact Giovanni once again. He was eventually caught after numerous attempts at this and incarcerated for a short time, but his prison sentence was reduced to only about a year for revealing many of the locations where the grunts were likely to hide out, leading to the rest of over 100 former members of the organization. Today, Petrel works as an innkeeper in Mahogany Town and has given up his criminal career entirely, though there are rumors that he did in fact make contact with Giovanni and knows exactly where he is.
Name: Rocket Executive Proton
Pokémon: Golbat, Weezing
Bio: Little is known about Proton as he was the last Rocket Executive to be hired, but even then his actions in and outside of the organization are still worth noting. Although he was only a lowly grunt during the glory days of the organization, Proton later proved himself to be worthy of being a Rocket Executive by killing the careers of anyone that dared to get in his way. Unusually cruel even for a member of Team Rocket, Proton took immense pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering on others, which may explain why Archer put him in change of cutting off Slowpoke Tails at the Slowpoke Well for profit. Despite his status as an Executive, however, Proton was never that good at battling and found this to be a major problem during Team Rocket’s revival, as he was easily defeated by the young trainer that would go on to end the organization not once but twice. Proton managed to evade capture for his actions and is still at large today, though it might only be a matter of time before his cruel streaks gets him in water too hot to handle.
CURRENT ACTIVITY/INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY
At the moment, Team Rocket is completely disbanded and it does not look like there will be any attempts in the near future to revive the once glorious organization. The fact that most of the Rocket Executives and Giovanni himself got away does leave open the possibility of another revival, but given the current state of their situation, it is unlikely that this will happen at least within the next decade if ever at all. Oddly enough, this likely future is actually the fault of the organization itself, as it taught both the Kanto and Johto regions what to look for. During the organization’s peak, local police forces were effectively useless and no part of the government could adequately deal with Team Rocket, mainly due to its sheer size and enormous reservoir of resources. Today, police and government officials are much harder on suspicious criminal activity in general and have been able to thwart most attempts at forming such organizations again in the region, making the Kanto and Johto regions much safer today than they have ever been before. In turn, this crackdown led to a significant evolution in the way future criminal organizations would operate. Team Rocket’s power was great while it lasted, but once the dominoes started falling, the openness of its operations ultimately doomed the organization and led to the incarceration of most members. From then on, organizations such as Team Aqua, Magma, Galactic and even Plasma would learn to hide their activities as much as possible and only reveal themselves when they felt they had all of the cards, which further facilitated the evolution of administrators and leaders into far more intelligent and often times radical individuals and therefore greater threats to the world as a whole.
Professor Wormwood
A report on Team Rocket. Enjoy.
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