A New Age

Racing toward the surrounded Silph Headquarters, Leaf receives a call from Dr. Fuji, Laura’s informant. He warns her the attack might be a corporate smokescreen and asks her to steal data from the President's PC if she gets inside. Leaf is deeply skeptical, but the request plants a lingering seed of doubt about Silph's true motives. At the police perimeter, she encounters Agent Looker, who bluntly warns her against charging in without combat experience. Trapped outside and feeling useless while Red and Blue are in danger, Leaf desperately considers ways to cheat in a fight. Looker distracts her by pointing out a glaring flaw in the renegades' apparent plan: if they steal the Master Ball while surrounded, how do they escape? The building's wireless and power are jammed. Looker suspects Red's presence, and his Miracle Eye, was the actual plan to facilitate a teleport. He tasks Leaf with poking holes in the theory by generating alternative escape methods.

Inside the building, Red, the police, and the hunters breach the secured floor using a machamp. They encounter renegades in the hallways, and the hunters retaliate brutally, their pinsir and weavile clashing with dark pokemon like mightyena. Watching the lethal combat, Red realizes the renegades are actively avoiding directly targeting the humans or their pokemon. The group eventually reunites with Blue, who successfully destroyed the lower backup generators. Blue's arcanine is badly burned by acid from a muk, and he reveals his breloom was killed in the basement. Together, they hold the line in the corridors, with Red using his loaned lapras to cast Icy Wind against an attacking cacturne and arbok. The battles abruptly stop as the building's power goes completely out. Red uses his exhausted psychic senses to detect the renegades moving President Silph up the stairs. Overwhelmed by psychic fatigue, Red passes out, muttering that moving the president upwards makes no sense and they are missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Outside, Leaf systematically eliminates impossible escape methods—flight, digging, teleporting. Searching for what doesn't make sense, she isolates the anomaly: the renegades let the lower-floor hostages go but kept the upper-floor employees. The renegades didn't need to escape the building themselves; they could simply hand the stolen data to a disguised renegade or a coerced hostage, who would walk out unquestioned when the crisis ended. She sprints to Looker, who immediately orders the police to establish a strict checkpoint to search all departing hostages.

With the power out, the police launch a massive breach. The renegades are defeated, the president is saved, and no hostages are killed. Red and Blue reunite with Leaf, who shares her deduction that seemingly prevented the renegades from smuggling the Master Ball data out. However, their relief is shattered when a breaking news broadcast plays a manifesto from the attackers. A man representing "Team Rocket" publicly claims responsibility for the Silph attack and the Rocket Casino. He defends the renegades, claiming they are oppressed and acted defensively out of fear of psychics wielding Miracle Eye. He announces they successfully smuggled out two-thirds of the Master Ball prototype to protect their own fledgling region, proving they could achieve their goals without taking lives. The broadcast ends with an open invitation for any persecuted renegades or criminals to join Team Rocket's new, organized sanctuary, officially announcing their shadow empire to the world.