CH123 (487), Covert Mission (5)

I spent the rest of the week and the first half of the next following up on the information I plucked out of Bob and Melissa's minds. Frankly, the number of grunts/low-level criminals associated with the smuggling ring I ended up paying a visit to was way higher than I had initially expected.

Each time I arranged a "meeting" with one of them, I would go through their minds as well and verify their involvement in my case, as well as any accomplices they knew that I had not yet added to my list. Due to that, the list kept expanding until the number of grunt on it closed in on the three digits.

It seemed that quite a lot of people had slipped through the orders net, but that was understandable since they focused more on the administration level here in Kanto. Not to mention that the main focus of the order's previous operation was focused on the main group on the eastern continent.

Still, the low-class members here in Kanto were also out of luck since I was doing as thorough a job as I could to ensure that I caught as many of them in my net as possible.

Actually, the list I kept could have been quite a bit longer if I really added all the criminals I fished out of the minds I checked, but since my time was limited I focused on the ones that were truly involved in my case.

Visiting 92 people all across Kanto and arranging a "chance meeting" with them so that I could scan their minds and place some mental triggers took up all my time.

Frankly, the only reason I managed to squeeze all that work into just 10 days was only due to teleportation reducing the travel time between places to a minimum, and I believed that with all my heart. Teleportation, banzai!

I had to visit the 6 most populous Major Cities of Kanto along with more than 10 smaller cities and around 30 towns. Half of the grunts had the idea of vanishing between the masses while the others chose to go with a compromise between hiding somewhere remote but still with a lot of people. Hence, the towns and smaller cities.

Now that I thought about it, out of all 92 guys and gals I tracked down, only 4 truly bothered finding somewhere truly remote and quiet to hide. The only reason I managed to find those 4 was that each one of them bothered checking up on one of their friends, who happened to be among my targets.

A bit ironic that being a decent friend was the reason they got exposed. Still, none of them were what could be considered even semi-decent folk, even if they were not too bad, so I readily added them to my list.

Well, talking about bad and decent folks, many of the people whose minds I intruded, were not that bad/evil. What I meant by that was that while they would definitely land in jail, I did not get the urge to strangle or torment them.

Considering the rather high number of targets, I naturally ended up coming across some people that ended up fitting in one of the other two groups. Unsurprisingly, the number of bad/evil guys/gals was much higher than the one of somewhat decent guys/gals.

In fact, aside from Melissa, I stumbled only into 3 more decent-ish people, and considering that I had managed to find flowers in a sh*t pile so to say, I decided to "reward" them by marking them as decent on my list. Since I was planning to hand in my list during the capture phase, the remark would grant them much better treatment than their colleagues would get.

The 47 bad guys and gals got the exact opposite treatment. I marked them down as evil and added a short explanation of just how evil they were. Though there were 5 of them that were just as bad as Bob had been, if not worse, so aside from marking them down as evil, I gave them the same treatment as Bob as well.

Anyway, I managed to finish with all grunts shortly before lunch on Giratiday. Since I still had until Dialday night before I had to be back home for the new year with my parents, I decided to take the rest of Giratiday off to recharge my batteries for the last part.

I had saved the team leaders for the finale, and unlike what the file Mr. Cameron had given me at the start said, I had found 5 team leaders that had managed to slip through the orders net. I managed to discover the additional two team leaders thanks to the liberal amount of mind intrusion I used throughout the first part.

Nonetheless, I knew which city each one of the identified leaders was hiding in, I just had to find their hideouts and check their minds to see if I had missed anyone. So on Palkiday morning, right after breakfast, I made my way to my first stop, Aero City.

Following the clues and directions I plucked from the minds of the grunts, I managed to find the rough location of the team leader I came looking for within just 10 minutes. It took another 10 minutes to spot the exact building she was hiding in, and then it took me another 10ish minutes to come up with a plan on how to read her mind without raising her suspicion.

I had to wait until she left the house she was laying low in for my plan, so I had no choice but to keep an eye on the place until that happened. Luckily, that took less than 20 minutes, and I immediately began following her from a safe distance.

Once she reached the crowdier parts of the city, I got closer, and as soon as I found an acceptable opportunity, I "coincidentally" passed by her, while making eye contact in the passing. I used the chance to plant a mental suggestion in her mind that gave her the idea to go to the closest massage parlor for a relaxing massage session.

Thankfully the suggestions took, and Tara made her way to the closest massage parlor she could find. I headed there slightly ahead of her and used some mental persuasion to ensure I could act as a masseuse. I also made sure that I would be the one assigned to Tara, and when she came into the parlor a few minutes later, I got to be her masseuse just as I wanted.

All the work I put into learning how to massage my Pokemon paid off since Tara noticed nothing wrong with the massage while I spend the next 30 minutes thoroughly going through her head. By the end of it, she even praised my performance, and I had to give her a perfunctory smile in return even though I really did not feel like it.

Tara definitely belonged to the group that had been marked as evil, though she managed to escape the Bob treatment. Nonetheless, I managed to find another 3 grunts that definitely had to be added to the list of smuggling ring members, so that was good.

Anyway, once she left, I did the same, and looking at my watch I could say I was off to a good start. I managed to deal with the first team leader within a bit more than 90 minutes. If I kept that up, I would be able to finish everything today, unless I ended up adding too many grunts to the list.

Regardless, I left Aero City and made my way to Saffron City for my next target. This dude chose to hide in the capital of Kanto. Well, considering that Saffron City was the city with the highest population in Kanto, I could not say that it was a dumb idea since it made it easier for him to hide among them.

Still, massive city full of people or not, I ended up lucky enough to locate and deal with my target within just 1 hour. Nonetheless, I had to admit that this guy had balls of steel since he actually hung around/hid pretty close to the Saffron City Gym.

His hideout was a literal gym in that area, and I managed to get close to him by acting as a gym goer. Not sure if it counted as fortunate or not, but I did not find any new people to add to the list during the mental inspection. Though I did add all the crimes I found inside his head.

My next stop was Celadon City, where I spent close to 40 minutes stealthily roof-hopping until I managed to spot my next target. My luck seemed through the roof since the lazy bum was taking a nap, so I managed to finish my job while he was dreaming about his road to crime boss hood.

I had to add another 2 grunts to the list, but I also only had to check another 2 team leaders, so that was good. I left without waking up Sleepy Sam and directly headed to Pewter City. The dude here along with the one in Celeste City were the ones I found in Tara's head.

Anyway, I left Pewter City two hours later after finishing my lunch and headed to Celeste City with one new name added to the list. Thankfully, Ivan knew exactly where the last team leader was staying, so I directly went to his hideout.

Once there, I let one of the Spearow out to check whether Nate was in or not. Spearow flew straight to one of the tilted windows and settled beside it before it began singing/shrinking. When not a single reaction came after 5 minutes of screeching, I determined that Nate was out right now.

I was now left with two choices. One, keep staying here until Nate came back, and the other one was to go out and try to find him myself. I knew what he looked like thanks to Ivan, so I decided to try my luck since I had been quite lucky today.

I ended up finding him in the park observing the other parkgoers. Quite frankly, I did not like the way he was looking at some of the couples. My bad feeling got confirmed when I began looking through his mind while sitting on the bench beside the one he sat on. This psycho was fantasizing about ambushing some couples and dragging them to a more secluded part to have fun with the lady while forcing the guy to watch.

Thankfully, he was aware that he could not live out his fantasy right now since he was trying to lay low. Still, I quickly found proof that this was not just any fantasy of his, but something he had actually done quite a few times in the past.

Honestly, that was not even the worst thing this b*stard did in the past, and I could without a doubt day that Nate made it to the top of my sh*t list.

The only good thing that came out from the mind sweep was that I had confirmation that there were no other team leaders and that no additional grunts made their way onto the list. This meant that I only had to check up on the 6 extra grunts before my job could be considered complete.

Still, there was no way I would leave it at simply handing over the information had gathered. No, I had accumulated way too much anger and frustration throughout this mission, and I was planning to release that anger as well as frustration on the 1st placeholder of my shit list.

Nonetheless, due to the time, it took me to finish up the team leaders, I only managed to check up on 3 of the 6 grunts by the end of the day. That left me with 3 grunts to check up on tomorrow before I could hand in the report, and I could not wait to be done with it.

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