Chapter 212: Pokemon: I Transmigrated Twice [212]
"Feeling conflicted, aren't you? Miss Shirona."
Stephen raised his hand and made a "please sit" gesture to Cynthia, smiling warmly. "Keeping such a big secret in your heart—these past few days, you must not have been sleeping well, right?"
Cynthia, still in her growth phase but already showing signs of her sharp figure, took a deep breath. After a while, like a balloon deflating, she asked, "What do you want?"
"I don't want anything. On the contrary, I'm more curious about what you want."
Stephen said calmly, "I'm a little curious—what are you so nervous about, rushing over here from Sinnoh in such a hurry?"
Cynthia bit her lips tightly. Finally, she couldn't hold it in anymore, and the words she had buried deep in her heart poured out like a flood. "If Hoopa falls into your hands, Team Rocket could strike any region at any time! I can't let that happen!"
She had kept these thoughts bottled up for far too long. Once the floodgates opened, the words spilled out uncontrollably.
Stephen bent slightly, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "First of all, I'm not that interested in Hoopa. It came to me on its own. Second... why are you so convinced that if I had Hoopa, I'd attack the regions?"
"You guys, back at Indigo Plateau and Lily of the Valley Island—"
Cynthia was about to argue back, but her words stopped halfway in her throat. Because, thinking back to those two events, she realized that neither Stephen nor Team Rocket were the primary instigators.
"Looks like you've figured it out," Stephen said with a shrug. "At the end of the day, wasn't it Shadow and Caishen who acted first in Indigo and Lily of the Valley? We just picked up the leftovers—just like with that Jewel of Life incident. Although you probably won't believe me, the Jewel of Life that Sheena had from her ancestors a thousand years ago was a fake. The real one was sealed in the ruins the entire time. So when the news said I stole the Jewel of Life from Sheena, it was completely false."