Chapter 883: Interlude · [XD-00] and [XD-01]
League Calendar Year 280.
Orre region, Pyrite Town—no, Phenac City.
As the undisputed core of the Orre region, the seat of the Orre League, and effectively the sole settlement in the entire territory worthy of being designated a true metropolis.
Phenac City was naturally under the heavy, round-the-clock vigilance of the Orre League, with defenses so airtight they bordered on impenetrable.
At the very least.
To Team Rocket, who had journeyed here specifically to crush Team Cipher.
Phenac City had perpetually remained a sanctuary they dared not set foot in.
The elderly Giovanni had focused his remaining days almost entirely on his son; having zero desire to incite outright warfare against the Pokémon League, he deliberately kept his reach out of Phenac City.
Even though.
He had already deduced it.
Team Cipher's ultimate headquarters within the Orre region was likely hidden right inside Phenac City.
Perhaps.
Even the Orre League itself had long been infiltrated by Team Cipher until it resembled a hollow sieve.
Otherwise, how could they have passively watched Team Cipher take deep root right under their very noses?
Yet Giovanni still chose not to strike.
Back then, his days on this earth were running thin. Once he passed away, Team Rocket, left leaderless, would inevitably erupt into vicious factional strife.
If they were dragged into an all-out confrontation against the Pokémon League on top of that, Team Rocket might cease to exist entirely.
That was a future Giovanni refused to accept.
He wished to leave behind a pristine, intact Team Rocket for his son.
As for what nature his son chose to mold this new Team Rocket into, he, as a father, no longer cared.
As it turned out.
The intellect of the old-generation crime syndicate bosses was remarkably sharp.
Just as Giovanni had envisioned.
One of the esteemed elders of the Orre League, and the former mayor of Phenac City—Barret.
Was none other than the reigning boss of Team Cipher, the supreme underworld mastermind who had inherited the moniker of "Shadow."
Right now.
Barret was situated deep beneath the municipal headquarters of Phenac City.
Inside Team Cipher's subterranean citadel.
"Ahahahaha!!"
Barret threw both arms into the air, laughing with frantic delirium.
The reason was simple.
Within the gargantuan incubation chamber towering before him.
A Shadow Mega Sceptile had snapped open its crimson, bloodshot eyes!
[XD-00 — Shadow Hero of the Leaves].
This was the designation Barret had personally bestowed upon this ultimate experimental subject.
The "XD" lineage had been inherited from Team Snagem 250 years ago.
Back then, the codename assigned to Shadow Lugia was [XD-001 — Gale of Darkness].
And right beside this primary cultivation cylinder.
Stood another unit: [XD-01 — Shadow Fallen Blossom God]. Inside, a pitch-black Meowscarada floated with eyes tightly shut, her consciousness yet to awaken.
"As long as we command the might of the Shadow Hero of the Leaves, the Orre region is saved! Wahahaha!!"
At this moment, Barret looked utterly deranged, as though his sanity were on the verge of splintering completely.
Countless outsiders assumed Team Cipher's endgame was to dominate the world, or perhaps avenge their fallen predecessors.
Yet only Barret himself knew that was far from the truth.
World domination?
Vengeance?
In his eyes, both were utterly devoid of purpose—laughably juvenile, in fact.
Barret had never once entertained such trivial notions.
The reason he resurrected Team Cipher and engineered artificial twin Dark Gods was simple: at its absolute foundation, it was solely to deliver this barren, isolated wasteland of Orre from its slow death.
The Orre region was an exceptionally arid continent.
Across its entire landmass, 75% was swallowed by merciless desert, a meager 20% was oasis, and the remaining 5% was actual water.
Furthermore, the jagged, unforgiving topography made it nearly impossible to construct viable paved highways between settlements.
Consequently, more and more people abandoned the Orre region with every passing year.
The entire territory was gradually bleeding out its lifeforce, deteriorating into a forsaken, dead zone.
Barret refused to abandon his homeland.
His ancestors across generations.
Whether notorious villains or heralded folk heroes.
Had all been born upon this soil, raised upon this soil, and laid down their very lives for this soil.
He refused to turn his back on it.
Thus, Barret resolved to transform the climate of the Orre region.
To make this land hospitable for humanity and Pokémon once more, to invite prosperity, and to elevate Orre into a thriving territory standing shoulder to shoulder with Kanto, Hoenn, and the rest.
That was the dream Barret had clung to without wavering.
Yet bringing such an ambition to fruition was monumentally difficult.
With humanity's current technological prowess, it was virtually impossible.
To manifest such a miracle, one had to rely on a miraculous force—the power of the divine.
Thus.
Barret had initially hoped to beseech the Hero of the Leaves, Groudon, Kyogre, and Xerneas to journey to Orre and perform their sacred miracles.
He had been that naive once.
He had personally set foot across Kanto, Hoenn, and Kalos for this very cause.
Yet upon coming to understand these entities.
Barret abandoned the pursuit outright.
The Hero of the Leaves had vanished for well over two centuries, presumed to have slipped into deep slumber or perished outright after that apocalyptic war long ago.
Groudon and Kyogre wouldn't heed mortal pleas in the slightest; waking them would only earn an apocalyptic thrashing.
Xerneas was compassionate indeed, yet it awakened only once every millennium, leaving zero trace of where it slumbered.
Barret realized.
With mortal limitations.
He might spend his entire life without ever laying eyes upon them.
Therefore.
He resolved to resurrect Team Snagem, restarting the divine genesis initiative.
Simultaneously.
Throughout this process.
Barret's "ambition" mutated into something vastly more colossal!
He was no longer content with merely borrowing the power of the four deities to patch Orre.
He wanted the Orre region to possess four indigenous guardian deities uniquely its own!
Barret sought to acquire the genetic code of these four beings, cloning them directly so they would become Orre's permanent guardians, endlessly bestowing their vitality to sustain the land for all eternity.
Yet he found nothing!
He had no inkling where to even begin searching.
Until, by sheer happenstance, he acquired intel regarding a fossilized wing shed by Celebi from a band of Pokémon hunters.
A sudden, brilliant realization struck Barret.
Celebi was the legendary Voice of the Forest.
It wielded the mystical authority to seed lush canopies and bestow vitality.
More crucially.
Celebi possessed the power to traverse the corridors of time.
Even if Celebi's raw strength proved insufficient to permanently revitalize the vast expanse of Orre, its temporal mastery could be weaponized to harvest the other deities from history!
Could they not engineer a Shadow Celebi, venture into the past, and extract tissue samples directly from those primordial deities?
Thus.
Barret began combing through the historical chronicles of the Pokémon League.
He searched back and forth.
Major cataclysms were abundant.
Yet pinpointing an exact, verifiable coordinate in time proved impossible.
Whether the dates were genuinely lost or deliberately expunged from historical records, no one could tell.
Even if Barret wished to leap through time, he had no temporal target to aim for.
The sole anomaly that could be pinpointed with absolute certainty...
Was the very first Pokémon Hero recorded in League history.
The Hero of the Leaves.
Active around the close of League Calendar Year 48.
Engaged in an apocalyptic confrontation against an enigmatic dark Pokémon, delivering Kanto and the wider world from ruin.
Barret had no alternative.
Conveniently.
The legendary Hero of the Leaves, endowed with boundless, perpetual life force, was already one of his original divine candidates.
He decided to synthesize the Shadow Hero of the Leaves first, and then utilize its overwhelming strength to subjugate the other three deities.
This would not only deliver Orre from ruin.
It would bestow upon the land its very own faith, its own guardian god!
Two birds with one stone.
The Hero of the Leaves in League chronicles was extraordinarily mighty.
So mighty that even Ho-Oh and Lugia were said to rank beneath him.
Therefore, Barret believed that relying on the Hero of the Leaves to bring the other three deities to heel was guaranteed.
He could even capture a few more while he was at it.
Such as Suicune, who could purify contaminated water; Landorus, who rendered barren soil fertile; Enamorus, who nurtured thriving reproduction among living creatures...
Barret's "ambition" expanded once again.
Yet.
At the end of the day.
He merely yearned to make the Orre region better.
Was that so difficult to comprehend?
Not at all.
Countless predecessors had walked this exact path before him.
Cyrus of Team Galactic sought to forge an immaculate world devoid of spirit.
Maxie of Team Magma and Archie of Team Aqua sought to expand land and sea to foster flourishing habitats.
Lysandre of Team Flare sought to preserve humanity in an uncorrupted, beautiful existence without strife.
These were all Barret's forebears.
All were underworld bosses forged from a yearning for some idealistic utopia in their hearts.
Thus, Barret's emergence was hardly incomprehensible.
Target locked.
Barret led Team Cipher marching relentlessly forward.
He crossed swords with the Pokémon League, alienated Team Rocket, and clashed repeatedly with secret syndicates across other continents.
He suffered immense setbacks.
Even losing his shadowy throne as the undisputed underworld ruler of Orre.
Yet none of that mattered.
Barret held zero regard for personal prestige.
So long as Orre could be reborn into paradise, whatever was lost along the way was worth the cost—even his very life!
And now.
"Success, at long last!"
Barret lowered his arms, his eyes tracing the contours of the Shadow Sceptile before him with rapturous devotion, a satisfied sigh escaping his lips.
Twenty years.
Even with the prior technical foundation of Team Snagem's Shadow Lugia to build upon.
It had still demanded two full decades of grueling labor.
To successfully engineer the Shadow Hero of the Leaves and the Shadow Fallen Blossom God.
The reason was simple.
When [XD-001 — Gale of Darkness] was synthesized, its combat capability had been lackluster.
Wielding barely sixty to seventy percent of the authentic Lugia's original might.
It was essentially a functional reject.
Yet Barret's ambition was boundless; he demanded the replication of an immaculate Shadow Hero of the Leaves and Shadow Fallen Blossom God.
For instance.
The Shadow Sceptile currently flexing its crimson-rimmed eyelids inside the incubation chamber permanently maintained its Mega Evolution state, standing nearly four meters tall.
Save for the absence of a Totem aura.
It was identical in every physical metric to Kazuya after administering the Primal Reversion injection in his third life!
The Meowscarada in the adjacent cylinder was no different.
Her state did not reflect her youthful appearance from League Calendar Year 48.
Rather, it mirrored her peak iteration from League Calendar Year 100, when she was revered across the islands under the divine title of the Fallen Blossom God!
One had to realize.
Within the genetic samples harvested for both subjects...
Team Cipher had woven in an exorbitant array of rare genetic catalysts acquired throughout their decades of operations.
Mew DNA, Celebi DNA...
Those were merely the foundational baseline.
They had even spliced in residual Lugia sequences, and genetic extracts of the Prince of the Sea, Manaphy, plundered from a crew of Water People pirates...
It could be stated without exaggeration.
[XD-00]
Represented the crowning magnum opus of Team Cipher since its founding.
In Barret's eyes.
A supreme deity whose latent ceiling far eclipsed the original Hero of the Leaves!
As for [XD-01]...
"Lord Shadow, the vital readings for XD-01 are surging; she appears on the verge of awakening."
"Mm, pay her no mind. The Fallen Blossom God is merely a complimentary byproduct; keep all monitoring focused entirely on the Hero of the Leaves."
Barret waved his hand dismissively.
Such was his regard for the Shadow Fallen Blossom God.
The Fallen Blossom God was undeniably formidable.
Historical archives credited her with remarkable feats.
Yet in both renown and raw combat output, she lagged noticeably behind the Hero of the Leaves.
It was solely due to the rumored "father-daughter" and "master-disciple" ties she shared with the Hero of the Leaves that Barret had casually harvested her genetic samples along the way.
Merely to serve as a sidekick and loyal lackey for the Shadow Hero of the Leaves.
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