Pokemon: The Spy and the Idol

He let the higher-ups talk down to him during briefings, cutting him off mid-sentence to explain things he already knew ten times over. He let his subordinates dump work on his desk, then complain when he didn't finish it fast enough. When things went wrong, people blamed him reflexively — the "new guy," the kid. They shouted at him, slammed documents onto his desk, sneered at his tie being crooked, told him to get coffee if he wasn't doing anything useful.

And Hiroshi always apologized.

Always.

He'd bow with that same apologetic smile and say things like, "I'll do better next time," or "Thank you for pointing that out." People mistook it for weakness. They didn't know his kind of patience could break cities.

Behind closed doors, they laughed. Makima's golden boy can't even run a printer. They mocked him. Dismissed him. Even those who felt bad — the junior officers who apologized for yelling at him — didn't mean it. They just didn't want to get in trouble. 

Even Makima took her hits. The reform being buried made her look powerless. The political opposition — always eager to take shots — whispered that her plans had failed. That she didn't have the support she claimed. That her new assistant was going rogue. She pretended not to notice. In public meetings, her smile was thinner. She didn't defend Hiroshi. Didn't shield him. She let the narrative slide.

And why not?

The humiliation of Makima.

The stalling of her reforms.

The rumors that even her own people were slipping away.

It was exactly what they wanted. A pressure cooker for the rot to bubble up and show its face. Give the traitors time to breathe, get comfortable, and think they'd won.

Just a little longer. That's all they needed.

Saturday Morning – Hotel Safehouse Suite

Hiroshi Kobayashi stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of his hotel suite, watching the Saturday dawn break over Tokyo's skyline. Saturday, a day off from work for the whole team. Five days had passed since Operation: Indefinite Stay began – 14 days of living a double life inside the PSIA Kanto branch. In the reflection on the glass, he saw a young man in an unassuming t-shirt and slacks, a far cry from the crisp suit of an Assistant Director he'd worn all week. "Elusive Fox," they called him in the shadows, yet the guise he'd adopted was that of a wide-eyed rookie bureaucrat. It had worked: for fourteen intense days, Hiroshi had played the naive upstart, quietly observing and probing the very organization meant to guard Japan's security.

Only three of his Pokémon ever left this suite during the week-long covert infiltration. Daisy – his graceful Gardevoir – and Akemi – the diminutive Kirlia , with a fake electric collar– had accompanied him openly at PSIA headquarters, masquerading as harmless "pet" Pokémon on the Assistant Director's belt. Meanwhile Alakazam slipped in and out unseen, teleporting to hack networks and plant eavesdropping devices under the cover of psychic invisibility. The rest of Hiroshi's team remained hidden in his suit to avoid drawing any public attention. In a world that treated Pokémon as militarized tools and status symbols, a man with more than two advanced-stage Pokémon would have drawn far too many eyes. Hiroshi couldn't risk that – not when he was surrounded by vipers.

He turned away from the window as Daisy emerged silently from the bedroom, her red eyes soft with understanding. The elegant Psychic-type had been awake all night, using telepathy and illusion to keep tabs on several persons of interest. Now she inclined her head, wordlessly confirming the final pieces of the puzzle were in place. On the sofa, Akemi perked up – the little Kirlia sensed Hiroshi's resolve solidify. Alakazam stood in a corner with arms folded and spoons in hand, mentally collating the terabytes of data he had siphoned from PSIA servers. Everything was ready.

Hiroshi allowed himself a rare, tight smile. "It's time," he said quietly. His voice broke the hush of the morning. In that simple statement lay a mix of satisfaction and grim determination – they had what they came for, and now Phase Two awaited. Fourteen days among enemies had been taxing, but they had succeeded in pulling back the curtain on a vast web of corruption.

They had a briefing to attend in the bowels of the city. Hiroshi gently rolled down his shirt sleeve to cover a faint bruise on his forearm (a souvenir from "accidentally" bumping into a burly Section Chief to lift his keycard). Minor scrapes aside, they had emerged undetected.

"Daisy, Akemi, take us there," Hiroshi said. The Gardevoir and Kirlia closed their eyes in unison, focusing on the mental image of their destination: a secret underground facility several blocks away, known only to a handful of trusted operatives. In a swirl of psychic energy, the hotel suite vanished from around them. When the light blinked out, the team found themselves in cool, stale air beneath the streets of Tokyo – the safehouse war room where their allies waited.

The Safehouse Briefing – Mapping the Web of Corruption

It had been two weeks since Hiroshi and his team arrived back in Tokyo, stepping back into their original identities and into the bureaucratic heart of PSIA under Makima's official directives. They were no longer the hidden blades operating abroad—now they had a new, far subtler battlefield: the sterile offices and buzzing corridors of PSIA's Kanto Branch.

To everyone else, Hiroshi Kobayashi appeared every inch the naive Assistant Director, appointed through sheer nepotism—a greenhorn whose clumsy charm and fumbling inexperience made him seem utterly harmless, a political pawn for Makima's agenda. He wore suits slightly too loose, as if they belonged to an older brother; his polite bows were a fraction too deep, his smiles too quick and eager. From top to bottom, Hiroshi was meticulously constructed to be underestimated.

Behind his carefully curated persona, however, Hiroshi's mind raced like a veteran operative. Every word he uttered, every friendly gesture and supposed mistake, was deliberate. Even his apparent lack of experience was a finely calibrated weapon: it disarmed suspicion, causing those around him—especially the senior officials he suspected of corruption—to lower their guard.

In the heart of enemy territory, every action mattered, no matter how trivial.