Double Duty
Continuing to wrestle with the crushing weight of his "heroic responsibility," Red embarks on a tour of Kanto's Gym Leaders, seeking their advice under the guise of specialized combat training. His first stop is the Pewter Gym, where he meets with Leader Brock to evaluate three rockruff. Red hopes to evolve one into a dusk lycanroc and uses his psychic empathy to choose the most adaptive pup, Roxy, observing that while any can be shaped, it's best to align their innate temperament with their final form. When Red hesitantly brings up his struggle to balance his power and his sense of duty, the narrative shifts into a montage of similar conversations across the region.
In Cerulean City, Red dodges Water Gun attacks from Misty's starmie in an aquatic obstacle course. Misty commiserates with his feelings of inadequacy, noting that every Leader eventually realizes that no matter how strong they get, they cannot personally defend their entire territory or prevent every tragedy.
In Vermilion City, Red trains alongside Surge's raichu, using a mental merge with his own magnezone to safely experience and absorb the sensory overload of a massive electric discharge. As they look out over the city, Surge offers a pragmatic view of society's structure: the idea of top-down control is an illusion. Everyone simply trusts others to do their part, from logistics to defense. Surge argues that if Red feels forced to do the work of fifty veteran hunters, it is because the rest of the world has failed to hold the line. He advises Red to rest, asserting that if Red wants to make a systemic difference without burning out, he must focus on convincing others to stand with him.
At the Celadon Gym, Red helps Erika feed her ivysaur mildly toxic berries to build its temperature resistance. Erika challenges Red's altruistic assumptions, explaining that his long-term, existential priorities do not align with the immediate, daily struggles of the general public. She warns that gaining power to pursue his unique goals will inevitably make people suspicious, as they will correctly recognize that he is not prioritizing their immediate needs. Politics is the art of group coordination, and ignoring a group's lived experience in favor of abstract goals will always generate friction.
In Fuchsia City, Red spars with his glimmora against Koga's garbodor. Koga warns that extending one's sense of responsibility across regions without prioritizing one's own people is fundamentally unsustainable. A leader who fails to focus their resources locally will eventually be outlasted and replaced by someone who promises to put their constituents first.
Finally, in Viridian City, Red's claydol is swiftly defeated by Giovanni's rhyperior. Giovanni reveals he easily predicted Red's strategy: knowing Red is a psychic, he anticipated Red would choose a Psychic/Ground dual-type over a Dragon/Ground to counter Rock attacks, and he trained his rhyperior to outspeed exactly that profile. Over lunch at a Kalosian restaurant, Red asks how the ex-Champion handles his failures. Giovanni reveals he does not grieve individual losses deeply because he has taken responsibility for the entire world and the future of humanity. He views his efforts as a massive, ongoing tapestry; minor blemishes and individual failures are acceptable, and inevitable, as long as the final design holds.
Returning to the Interpol base, Red meets with Looker, who schedules a meeting with Elite Agatha. Looker's casual mention of Red getting into heads prompts Red to drop his mental partitions. The startling truth of Red's tour is revealed: his quest for advice was a cover for espionage. At Looker's behest, following the discovery of the Cinnabar lab and Blaine's suspicious arrival, Red has been intentionally partitioning his memories of these Leader meetings, acting as a spy to quietly search for subtle emotional reactions or anomalies that might expose which Leaders are compromised by Team Rocket. Though the vestiges of his partitioned self feel shame over the deception, Red's unpartitioned mind coldly sets the guilt aside, meticulously reviewing his memories to hunt for the rot in the League.
Lessons — The Illusion of Centralized Control. Surge observes that society operates on the comforting illusion that someone, somewhere, is orchestrating the big picture. In reality, there is no centralized control; a functioning society is merely the sum of countless individuals trusting each other to do their specific fraction of the work.
Lessons — Political Priority Misalignment. Erika explains that altruistic intentions are often met with suspicion because people prioritize their immediate, lived struggles over long-term or abstract threats. Gaining power to solve the latter while ignoring the former means failing to represent the public's actual interests.
Lessons — Predictive Modeling / Generalists vs. Specialists. Giovanni demonstrates that while a generalist trainer relies on broad type advantages, a specialist can defeat them by deeply modeling their opponent's psychology. By anticipating that Red's identity as a psychic would bias his choice of levitating Ground-types, Giovanni could train a specialized counter.
Lessons — Scope of Responsibility (The Tapestry). Giovanni illustrates a method for managing world-spanning responsibility without succumbing to burnout or paralyzing grief: viewing one's efforts as a massive tapestry. By focusing entirely on the success of the macro-level design, one can accept individual failures and losses as inevitable minor blemishes rather than devastating defeats.