CH121 (485), Covert Mission (3)

I was sure it was the Melissa I was looking for since her face matched the photo I saw in the file I had gotten from Mr. Cameron. At least I seriously doubted that it was a doppelganger or identical twin that mysteriously popped up from somewhere.

"Greg," she greeted the middleman before motioning in my direction. "That the guy?" She asked him and Greg nodded before adding a short "Yeah". They kept ignoring me and resumed speaking between themselves.

"Alright, you know the rules. For the next 30 minutes, the room belongs to you. I don't care if the deal falls through or your negotiation takes longer. If you're not done by the end of the 30 minutes you have to conclude your deal somewhere else," Greg reminded her, but I was guessing that he was mainly saying that for me.

"I know," Melissa returned. "Everyone around here knows your rules," she added nonchalantly, and Greg looked pretty smug when she said that, he even gave me a look that screamed, "You hear that?".

"Besides, I doubt we'll take that long," Melissa added and Greg nodded at that before unlocking the door. He then pulled out a folding chair from his bag and placed it beside the door. "Alright, I'll be waiting right here for you two to finish up your business," he said after sitting down and pulling out a magazine.

That seemed to be our cue since Melissa made her way inside the flat. "What are you waiting for an extra invitation? Come on in," she turned around and said impatiently when I did not immediately follow her inside.

"Let's make this clear right off the bat," I began in a flat tone. "You better use a nicer tone with me 'cause I ain't your grunt or your pal. If you don't, I won't be nice either and we both don't want that," I finished before walking inside as well. She seemed a bit surprised and I gave her a flat stare.

"I don't know how you've done your business before, but I like to do this as peacefully as possible, and that means we don't go around insulting or threatening each other," I advised her, completely ignoring what I had done just a few moments ago or the exchange I had with Greg at the black market.

Well, that made me a bit of a hypocrite in this situation, but I was playing the role of a black-market Pokemon dealer/seller, so that was just me portraying my role to the best of my abilities.

Melissa looked slightly irate at my tone, but I ignored that in favor of closing the door behind us. She used the time to calm down, showing a surprising control of her temper which I had honestly not expected.

"You're right," she actually agreed with me. "We are here for business, so let's handle our business," she said before walking further into the flat, heading to the table on the right side of the room. I followed behind her and sat down on the opposite end of her.

Once we had taken our seats, I began focusing on the task at hand. I had one of my thought streams focus on her current thoughts. The second one was going through her mind/memories, while I/the primary thought stream focused on the current situation.

"Alright, Greg said you're interested in my Ekans, so here's the potential certificate. The Ekans is close to 4 years old, at the (mid) iron stage, has a 4-star potential, and knows the move, Poison Fang," I explained while sliding the certificate towards her.

She took it and checked its authenticity. Once she had done that she slid it back to me. "The paper checks out, so let's see the Ekans," she requested to see the "goods".

"Sure," I had no problem with catering to her while my other thought partitions did their jobs, mainly the memory search one. I moved my hands to the Pokeball belt I wore and Melissa's eyes followed my hand, so she got to see my balls.

She looked slightly nervous seeing me go for my Pokeball belt, and I knew that she was a bit worried that I would try something stupid like reaching for one of my Pokemon to rob her. That was why she discreetly reached for her own belt and kept her left hand on Nidorina's ball.

I knew she was doing it despite it happening under the table because I was reading her mind. Anyway, seeing that she was not going to do anything unless I released something aside from an Ekans, I took the ball I knew contained the Ekans in question and released it.

That caused her to relax, especially after Ekans showcased that he was at the (mid) iron stage, showing that I was not trying to pull some double deception game. She moved her hand away from her belt before she asked for permission to approach the Ekans. "Do you mind if I check Ekans out?"

"Go ahead," I gave her a nod since I certainly did not mind it at all. In fact, it was better that she did because I needed some more time to go through her head since what I had found was not what I had expected at all.

Sure, I was finding some stuff on the other grunts and one of the leaders, but the other things I found caused a change in the plans I had regarding Melissa and her immediate future. From what my inner super Yamanaka had found out, Melissa tried her best to stay as clean as possible in the situation she found herself in.

The most she did in the "gang" was act as a messenger and occasionally as a courier. Moreover, she felt pretty bad for the Pokemon whenever she saw them and secretly gave them some food or treatment whenever she could get away with it.

That behavior of hers in particular was the reason I dug a bit deeper, and from what I learned, the reason she even stayed, or rather joined in the first place, was because Melissa owed the team leader, whom I had recognized from the picture in her mind, a lot. The guy had picked her up from the streets as a kid when she was starving and took her in.

Sure, she knew he was a criminal, but she was able to survive/grow up thanks to him, and he was nice enough to her, so she worked for him out of gratitude. Basically, she had THE street orphan built, and she managed to come out of it pretty well. Well, aside from the crowd she had found herself in. However, that bit was a bit out of her hands.

While Melissa finished up her examination of Ekans I also finished settling on a new plan for her. I scrapped the old one which would have ended with the negotiations failing and our meeting just remaining a fading memory of a failed deal while I left with all the knowledge she had on the other grunts as well as the team leaders.

At the end of the whole operation, she would have been swept up as well, and she would have ended at court. The new plan still had me leave with all that information, but her end after the whole thing would be quite a bit better. For starters, she would get to avoid the whole court part.

While I was pretty sure that she would have gotten a fine at most, once she went through the interrogation, my plan would save her the stress, time, and money the whole process would have taken to reach that point.

What I was going to do was actually sell her the Ekans and in return for that, along with her freedom as well as intact reputation, I would do some slight mind manipulation. I planted the idea of turning her life around in her mind. The trigger for the idea to bloom would be the capture of her "old" team leader since he was the link/fetter to her current criminal life.

Once my command triggered she would move to a city that she was at least somewhat familiar with, but where she knew she could stay uninvolved from the criminal elements.

After that, she would focus on doing something she liked that would earn her some honest money. I knew that she was more than capable of that by now. I also added the idea of training her Pokemon even if she decided against becoming a full-time trainer because being strong was a good idea even for regular people, but that was only a suggestion that only worked if that was something she did not really mind doing it.

That was pretty much the whole mental command I buried in her mind, where it would sleep until the end of the operation. Once everything on my part was settled I asked Melissa what she thought about the Ekans, and I could see and feel her satisfaction with the Pokemon.

Usually, an Ekans like this could go from anywhere between 800k to 900k, but since this was a black market deal, and I was actually planning to give Ekans to her for cheaper in return for messing with her mind, even if it was for her good, I quoted a slightly lower starting price.

"750k and Ekans is yours," I offered without really expecting her to accept it since we both knew that this was just the start of our haggling struggle. "750.000 Poke!? I think you meant 250k," she returned, ruthlessly cutting the price by two-thirds, causing me to snort.

"Does this look like some Weedle to you? 700.000 is already generous on my part," I countered. Just because I was planning to give her the Ekans for cheaper did not mean that I was going to hand it over for that cheap. It had to be a bargain not charity since that would have caused unnecessary suspicion.

"I could get one at the regular shop for that price. 400k," she returned and I skeptically raised my left eyebrow. "No, you couldn't. Still, I feel a bit bad for you listening to your haggling skills, so I'm willing to part with Ekans for 650.000, but just because I saw the synergy between you two," I threw out some stuff that sounded right.

When I saw that she was actually considering it, I nudged her a bit mentally to continue haggling since I knew that 650k was close to pretty much all she currently had in savings. She would need some dough to pay for her new life, which was why I had her continue haggling.

"If you really think so, how about 500k instead," she asked and since I knew she would accord my next offer I went a bit lower than I had down so far.

"Well, I'm a man of my word, so I'll reluctantly part with Ekans for 560.000 since he is behaving surprisingly calmly around you. I can't go any lower than that or my boss will sell me to make up for the difference," I bluffed, implying that Ekans was usually not this well-behaved around others, going a reason why I was willing to go so low, while also justifying why I won't go any lower.

"Deal," Melissa hurriedly agreed, extremely happy to have gotten a steal. She pulled out a card from her personal pocket space and handed it to me. "This anonymous card has 500k on it. The code is on the back," she shared while began pulling out 60.000 Poke in cash from her bag.

I used the phone app to confirm her claim and after it checked out, I put the card away. I did the same with the money she pushed over before handing her Ekans' ball. By now, I had found all the information she had in her head. Heck, I probably knew more than she did since she could most likely not remember most of it without doing some serious soul-searching.

Anyway, I had what I came for, and I had set the mental trigger as well as the command, so I was ready to leave. In fact, I did just that. The moment the transaction finished I told her it was a pleasure doing business with her and left the room.

I gave Greg a nod and strode out of the building and left the whole block behind. As far as I was concerned, me selling her a deep green Ekans with an egg move for a relatively low price along with helping her deal with the follow up was enough to balance out any possible karma that had sprung forth between us due to me messing with her head.

My actions might even have tilted it in my favor. I mean, I was not even planning to keep the money I made off of her, fairly I'd like to add. No, I pulled out my phone, did a quick online search, and found the donation-run orphanages here in Viridian City. After a quick comparison, I found two that needed more help than the others and paid them a visit.

Once I had confirmed that the brass was clean and that the money would really be used for the purpose it was given, I donated 300k to each orphanage. With that my trip to Viridian City was complete, and I had gotten what I wanted.

I got the location of Melissa's team leader from her along with 5 other grunts related to the case that she had some contact with and knew the rough location of. I also knew exactly what they looked like since Melissa knew it, so I would be able to find them once I went around their hiding places/towns/cities, even if I did not know their exact hiding spots.

Still, I did not immediately head to one of those places. No, I decided to leave those leads for later since I wanted to deal with Bob first. So, I made my way to Lavender City instead and began scouting out the area I knew Bob was staying at.

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