Confidence

(Mars' Pov)

This new recruit had potential. I could tell by how hard he was working compared to the rest of the people here. He was running left and right, helping person after person, all with a big smile on his face. His presence brought some much-needed comfort to the people here. I could tell that he was lifting the morale amongst his fellow team members.

Truly, unlike the others, he was worthy of joining the new world Cyrus would create. I could see that the people around him kept falling asleep and making errors. It had gotten to the point where I had to snap and threaten them in order to focus more on their work and stay awake, but that only seemed to make things worse. One of the recruits had almost made the whole place blow up with how badly he had wired everything.

At first, I had some traces of suspicion of the new recruit, but every time I would place my eyes on him subtly, I could tell that he was running all over the place, fixing the mistakes that the others had made. He had even stopped one of the electric conduits from exploding. I would have to deal with the failure of electricians that Saturn sent me once we got back to Hq. But for now I could at least feel peace that there was one good member among them.

If this was a simple matter of gathering electricity, we could simply create an electric pokemon farm and force them to power up our machines. But the type of power we needed had to be pure, created by anything other than pokemon.

From the legends and information we had gathered, the lake guardians were special. They had the power to control the willpower, emotion, and knowledge of living beings. And by nature, anything that a pokemon generated was imbued with those three attributes. If we used pokemon generated electricity to create the red chain, then the lake legends should be able to take the very power we used in their control. This also meant that we couldn't use pokemon to capture them. We would have to use technology. Something that was pure and free of emotions.

So far, we had generated a lot of power, but the amount of energy needed to create an item that can control the gods of time and space was outrageous, especially when the item was being created against their will. But we would succeed. I believed in Cyrus, and I knew he would create the perfect world for us.

Hearing my Espeon let out a yawn, I was reminded again of the new recruit. Diamond Aspen, a name I hadn't heard before. This meant that Saturn did not know of his potential and determination. I had commanded Espeon to keep an eye out for any humans that had psychic potential, and judging by the way she reacted to him, he should have quite a good amount of potential. Espeon had not reacted negatively toward him, which also meant that he didn't have any bad intentions. If anything, he was truly determined to the cause judging by how Espeon let herself be picked up by him.

One could always use a psychic next to them, so I would make sure to bring him under my wing. I had some ideas as to how he could be of use in the future, and all of them would be great for the cause.

—- — —

(Lucas' Pov)

Everything is coming out great. It was almost too good, to be honest.

The people I was working with had gotten sloppier. They were falling asleep; they were actually messing up the wiring on their own. Best of all, they were taking all of the brunt from all of the delays and damages that were happening.

Every time I would notice Mars was looking at me, I would make sure to run to "fix" any of the issues I had caused. Which probably got me some good points in her book. I was still feeling the rush of "adrenaline" or fairy energy, and I theorized that maybe this was part of the reason they were messing up so badly. Honestly, fairy typing was a big mystery to a lot of researchers, so I couldn't say for sure what it was doing at the time. It was one of the few things I would have to make sure to research once I got out of here.

I had a plan, a very risky plan, but I felt confident I could execute it.

Sometimes, you can run into an issue when you do too good a job. The wiring and all of the materials that Team Galactic had brought were of top-notch quality. So good, in fact, that I could probably supercharge whatever the electricity they were trying to send was going to. This would either make the whole system collapse and make them lose a lot of energy or, well, give them a ton of energy. Which, to be honest, wouldn't be too ideal. But I had the feeling in the back of my head that I could pull it off

Well, for now, I would simply continue to work on messing things up. Judging by the growing frown on Mars, there was definitely someone on their way. So all I had to do was continue to stall.

Time passed, and things kept getting more and more tense. Charon had packed up and left just a few minutes ago before telling us to hurry up. But by this point, I had fulfilled my mission. I had been able to make sure this entire mission was a failure by this point and got a couple of hours to figure out how to make this escalate into a bigger issue.

Overloading was risky, but I believed I had figured out a way to do it. I had to admit that I wasn't an expert when it came to this, but if everything went according to the book, I should be able to cause the batteries to collapse and lose their energy.

I was almost done building what I needed when I heard Mars let out a loud command.

"It is now or never! They got here sooner than expected. You all have 5 minutes to finish this project, pack up, and evacuate. If this project turns out to be a failure, I will make sure you all face proper punishment. Most of you have completely made this a waste of time. I will stall him for as long as I can."

Her expression was deadly serious as she fixed up her hair a bit and walked outside to stall for time. She probably would prefer to keep this under the radar. So she would try to keep the visitor busy for long enough to clean up in here.

The entire place began to run wild as everyone began scrambling to pack up and leave. Fueled by adrenaline-like energy, I looked out of the window to see who had come before I was filled with dread.

Georges, my fighting teacher, was standing outside with an angry look on his face. The expression on his face was unlike anything I had ever seen.

The moment I saw him through the window, the energy that had been filling me with confidence vanished, leaving me with a realization. I had maybe been too confident about overloading the batteries. The stupid fairy typing was as much a liability as it was a boon. The unbridled confidence that had allowed me to infiltrate directly into the camp had also caused me to trust my electrical skills a bit too much.

The moment the confidence went away, the doubt crawled into my heart.

"Shit!" I exclaimed before running over to where I had been working. I had to make sure I had done everything right.

"Kid, don't be stupid. This mission was a failure. We have to evacuate before Mars has to retreat too." One of the people I had been working with said as he packed all of their stuff into a bag and ran to the Espeon that was teleporting everyone away.

"No, this whole time, the wiring has been sloppy! I have to make sure this won't come to bite us in the ass later!" I was partially lying and partially telling the truth.

I had a gut feeling that I had done something wrong. But with everyone rushing, it was hard to pinpoint what it was. I was trying to retrace all of my steps, but there were hundreds of cables and connections all over. And I had put my hands in all of them in the past few hours.

Hearing my words, the person I was working with hesitatingly ran to my side before helping me look. Without the fairy aura I had subconsciously been releasing this whole time, his mind was clearer than ever. And, in just a few moments, he opened his eyes wide open before cursing.

"Shit! Shit! Shit! How did we fuck up this badly? We gotta get out of here fast to warn Hq!" he said, full of panic.

He began looking around at the mass of people running all over the place before shouting as he saw someone disconnecting some equipment.

"Don't touch anything!"

But he was a moment too late.

The evacuation caused everyone to disconnect a lot of the tools they had used, which caused a disruption in the flow of electricity.

The lights exploded in the building causing the whole place to be covered in a layer of darkness. The few traces of sunlight beginning to peek through the windows were our only source of light.

"Shit, evacuate now! This place is going to blow!" He shouted before everyone ran to the Espeon to evacuate.

~Author's Note~

The FBI has raided my home. I had to go into hiding for some days, but now I know who the traitor was; I should have never trusted Manfred. Thankfully my family was able to evacuate, but I am trapped inside our house in the emergency hiding location.

Send me your power stones so that I can plan a proper retaliation. Uploads might not be super consistent still, but it is the fault of the darn FBI. They have executed a containment protocol code named Baldurs' Gate.