harleyscars Chapter 153 The Escort's Plan
Chapter 153 The Escort's Plan
Chapter 163 The Escort's Plan
"Damn it! Why is that monkey still chasing me?!"
An elderly man with gray hair and beard, wearing a beige police uniform from Liyong City, ran frantically on the street outside the police station.
Behind him, a Pokémon with flames burning on its butt followed closely.
The Pokémon was small in size, but its pursuit was incredibly swift.
From an outsider's perspective, all one could see was a bright streak of fire leaping and bounding along in a zigzag pattern, using the ground, road signs, bus stops, and trash cans along its path to accelerate. Each leap left a shallow, charred mark.
But in the terrified look in the eyes of the old man being chased, the approaching flame behind him seemed like a demonic claw from the abyss.
The unsuspecting Unova citizens on the street might not recognize the species of that Pokémon, but the old man was different. He had been a professor at a top university in the Sinnoh region, teaching public relations, a subject that had nothing to do with Pokémon. However, he was very familiar with Chimchar, one of the beginner Pokémon in Sinnoh.
What's scary isn't the breed of this little fire monkey, but what it's about to do!
Although the old man was wearing a police uniform, he dared not call for help or turn around to fight back. He could only continue running with his frail human body.
Why would someone nearing sixty years old desperately flee through the streets? Why must he be forced to run away in such a pathetic state in front of this incredibly weak monkey? Where exactly did Quixote's near-perfect plan go wrong?
Smura, one of the seven sages of the Plasma Group and in charge of promoting the group's ideology, couldn't help but ask himself these questions.
Amidst his heavy breathing and rapid heartbeat, images from the past sixty years flashed before his eyes—
Among them were the pride and joy he felt when he worked hard to obtain his degree; the resentment and indignation he felt when his peers ostracized and surpassed him in the field of research; and the passionate swearing-in ceremony he made with six other like-minded scholars in a café in Raven City... But what remained deep in his memory was the tremor he felt from the depths of his soul when he looked up at the sky during the king's coronation ceremony not long ago.
From that moment on, he truly regarded the Plasma Group, the organization he had helped create from the very beginning, as his lifelong faith.
Having witnessed the great glory of the chosen heroes and heard the call of distant gods, the rules of the mortal world have long become irrelevant.
If it were the university professor named Smura from the past, he would never have gotten involved in such a conspiracy. But Smura, the sage of the Plasma Group, could calmly taint his hands with corruption.
If no one ventures into the mire, how can people reach their ideal destination?
This whole thing started with N's departure—
A monarch traveling incognito cannot be without the accompaniment of a high-ranking official, and Smura is the one among the Seven Sages chosen to secretly protect N.
But the so-called protection is not just about the physical level; more importantly, it is about maintaining the purity of Wang Sheng's ideals.
The Elven League is adept at using a facade of harmony to conceal its own filth. If N is deceived by their glamorous appearance and abandons their ideals and the Order, the consequences will be unimaginable—so declared one of the Seven Sages.
Smura himself was quite dismissive of these concerns, believing that N wouldn't abandon his beliefs simply because of a mere alliance. However, the Seven Sages were, after all, seven individuals, and the high-ranking members of the order, comprised of elites from various fields, each had their own ideas. Ultimately, Vio and Quixote joined forces to persuade all the high-ranking members to launch a secret operation called "Escort."
Much of the "escort" operation involved propaganda work within the cult, so Smura was naturally chosen as the overall head of the operation. As a veteran, he certainly wouldn't personally act as a bodyguard secretly following the group, but since it concerned the collective faith of the Plasma Team, and sometimes involved classified matters, he had to carry out the work alone and discreetly.
Smura likes to call his work "publicity." From his youth, he discovered that he had an incredibly keen insight into the social sphere, able to instantly discern what the masses liked and disliked.
He is not a psychologist, nor does he possess superpowers such as hypnosis, but he is a quick learner. The history of public relations cases is an inexhaustible treasure trove of experience. His rich experience and superb academic qualities allow him to always be one step ahead in understanding the situation and to always be in a position of effortless negotiation.
Based on this ability, he can conceive a brilliant speech in an instant, remotely control the surge of collective consciousness like the King of Thorns leading the tide, discover grievances and fears where no one is paying attention, and turn uneasy emotions into flames of anger... In face-to-face conversations, he can also turn unfavorable arguments into favorable viewpoints, and plant originally unacceptable viewpoints in the minds of the audience.
But coalition officials and police seem more inclined to call his underhanded actions “incitement.”
In the 115th year of the League Calendar, the first Pokémon liberation movement march erupted in the Unova region. In Raven City, known as the "Fashion Capital," more than three thousand citizens and twenty artists spontaneously took to the streets, smashing their Poké Balls. This performance, almost a piece of performance art, shocked the entire Unova region, becoming the first wave of a new era.
In 116, a large-scale protest erupted in Fantawild City following a "Pokémon abuse incident." Through the machinations of a then-unknown organization, the protesting trainers clashed violently with the League police, resulting in the arrest of three trainers.
But the day after they were detained, an even larger protest erupted, with demonstrators nearly setting fire to the League building in Sailbridge. Under pressure, the League was forced to release the three imprisoned trainers ahead of schedule. In this incident, the cult, which had been secretly developing for many years, revealed its true colors for the first time, and the name "Team Plasma" appeared in Unova's newspapers for the first time.
To this day, nearly a hundred protests and public riots have erupted in the Unova region, all of which demonstrate Team Plasma's courage and determination to completely change the world.
While such demonstrations aroused some resentment among the United States population, they also brought a steady stream of new followers to Team Plasma. Moreover, each uprising pushed the United States Alliance one step closer to the brink of collapse.
Today, more than half of the United Federation officials have begun to yield to the power of the Order, no longer resorting to threats of violence as they did in the early years of its development, and have gradually adopted a more yielding and compromising approach to coexistence. The idea of "Elf liberation" has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts and has almost become the political correctness of the United Federation's intellectual and artistic circles. Those who disagree with it are fiercely attacked by the so-called public.
—Apart from the Seven Sages, no one knew that these grand movements had a common planner: this old man with white hair and beard.
In this city of Liyong, Team Plasma had always been aware of the shady dealings at the power plant—the female engineer named Arno had attended several gatherings among the followers, and after a slip of the tongue, the news that Director William had used Pokémon to develop the factory through self-destruction had eventually led them to the round table of the Seven Sages of Team Plasma.
As N was about to embark on his journey, the seven wise men unanimously agreed that allowing the true nature of the power plant to be fully revealed by the king would have profound educational significance.
Smura's original plan was to directly expose the factory's dark secrets, allowing N, who was touring the country, to witness firsthand the greed of humanity, so that the king, who felt pity, would see the irreconcilable conflict between humans and Pokémon.
But Quigish, the original advocate of Team Plasma, N's adoptive father, and one of the Seven Sages, thought such a revelation was too gentle. He maintained his expression, which seemed to be always filled with compassion, and subtly pointed out that if things could be made irreversible, it might strengthen N's determination to change the world.
As their eyes met, Smura understood the unspoken meaning in his old friend's words and silently nodded his aged head in response...
The power plant's fate of destruction was sealed at that moment, just like the college student who died in a fire in a deep alley six months earlier.