WARNING: Contains graphic violence, horrific descriptions detailing human trafficking, and a brief non-con scene. May be triggery. Read at your own discretion or PM if you want to skip the chapter and ask for a summary of events.

Tobias hadn't touched her since the first time. She was glad for it, but wary by what it meant, especially after all his threats. However, she would at least be grateful for it, even as she waited tensely for things to change for the worse for her.

"This room is yours," he told her a week from what had happened with him and Miranda. He pointed to the adjoining room to his office. "This is where you will stay while we're stationed here. That is also my room. Do you understand?"

Ash nodded meekly, but the thought of being forced to room with him inwardly made her shudder. She preferred being held with the others, in that dingy room, although the numbers were beginning to lessen by the day.

She didn't want to think of what was happening to all of them.

"We'll begin your training," he declared then, and she stared at him in horror. "We won't be able to do the more aggressive stuff now, or else your injuries will get aggravated, but there are still plenty of things that you can learn and do in the meantime."

Noticing Ash's look, he shook his head and smiled emptily at her.

"You should be grateful. Unlike the others, you're being treated much more kindly. Plenty of the other women are already being sold out, even to buyers who would prefer to break them in themselves. Other women who are being trained now, are being trained while being sold out to buyers. It doesn't even matter if any of them are injured –they would be sold out or trained in any case, so long as they're fuckable."

Ash whimpered and unconsciously started to back away, which only made Tobias stride closer to her. He grabbed her chin roughly and stared into her eyes with a sneering look.

"Remember your place and you won't get hurt. All you have to do is remember that," he growled.

His hand snuck down and snaked under her skirt, and one of her hands automatically flew up to stop him. But she reluctantly stopped herself at the last minute, forcing her hand to grab onto the hem of the shirt she wore, twisting it anxiously. Her other, injured arm lay uselessly by her side.

As he begun those horrid things he did to her last time, she could only wish that she was anywhere but there.

When she came the first time, she thought it was over. However, Tobias didn't step away from her, instead ducking down and pushing his head under her skirt and pressing his lips to her already moist entrance.

"W-what are you –" before she could finish questioning him, his tongue flicked out and touched her and she was embarrassed to have let out a squeal.

This time she couldn't help using her good hand to push against his head, trying to get him away from her. But one of his hands roughly grabbed her wrist and squeezed it painfully, and she cried against the wall while he licked at her.

Afterwards, having cummed again, Tobias stood up and stared at her critically.

"You'll need to learn not to cry so much, or try to get away," he muttered, scrutinizing her. "There are those who like some fight in their girls, but it's better if you didn't."

He switched moods and expressions, smiling at her and stepping into her space again. She tried not to shudder and kept very still.

"Did you like that? Did you feel good?" he purred, brushing her hair back.

She blinked back tears, biting her lip as she kept quiet and didn't answer him. He frowned and she wondered what she did wrong now.

"If a customer asks you something like that, you answer appropriately," he told her sternly. "Say yes. Answer positively to them, even if you hated it or it hurt. Do you understand?"

She nodded quickly. "Y-yes. I liked it. A lot."

Ash felt like throwing up after saying that, because she hated it. She hated him, she hated this place, and she was starting to hate herself.

Tobias nodded in satisfaction. He pointed to his couch. "Good. Now go over there and sit down. Lift up your skirt and spread your legs. We're going to keep doing this until you're used to it and know how to better react."

She stood there, frozen in shock and staring at him incredulously. When she saw his face begin to take on a dark, irritable look, she snapped out of it and hurried to the couch. Even though her face was scrunched up and ready to cry, she sat down on the couch like he told her to, and tentatively placed the heels of her feet on the edge of the couch's seats. After hesitating a moment, she began to spread her bent legs apart, and kept them wide open so that they were separated and she was ready for him to do what he wanted with her. Her hands shook as they gripped the edge of her skirt, pulling it up and leaving her lower half visible to his eyes.

When he knelt in front of her, she knew she hated it this way more, because she had to watch him assault her.

~*~*~

Giovanni watched the proceedings, lip curling in disgust. His agents were gathered in the area, ready to strike when the signal was given, but he had a special spot in the audience as a "buyer."

His skin was crawling and he wanted to grab his gun from inside his jacket and shoot down every last trafficker milling about the area.

He was going to have to do a major overhaul in Team Rocket's regime –he would not tolerate any comparison to these traffickers of any kind. It sickened him to the point where he would utterly decimate these people and show them how much they disgusted him and how much he wanted nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, in order to pull this off, Giovanni had to pose as a buyer for a "slave."

At the moment, he was stationed inside an empty warehouse at the docks of Vermilion City, sitting down with a bunch of other buyers, as a group of traffickers were setting up for the "auction." In a moment, they would start parading around their captives on the stage, and then the bidding would begin.

He was hoping Ash would be here.

His latest information said that this group of traffickers had been in Saffron City, which was where the latest bunch of large cluster captures had been taken. If she'd been captured, then she could have been part of this group, though he wasn't sure she could have made it that far. Her Charizard, his old companion, could have taken her the distance, but there weren't any sureties.

Then again, there were smaller factions around in each city, even individuals, who could have been the ones who'd lured her in. He just had no absolutes right then, and until he found any information on her, then he had to settle for aggressively going after every lead he got.

Before he could start thinking of other things, one trafficker stepped up and addressed the crowd.

"Please be seated. We will begin momentarily. If everyone will have their paddles ready, we'll start with our first merchandise."

Giovanni's grip tightened around the paddle, so tight he almost snapped it off. He told himself he had to be calm, but when the first girl was pushed onto the stage and stumbled into view for everyone to see, he nearly snarled. She looked horrible –there were bruises all over her arms and legs, and there was a cut on her lip. Her eyes were red, like she'd been crying heavily.

If this girl looked like this, he didn't want to see how Ash looked. He would murder someone immediately.

If someone harmed a single hair on her, there would be hell to pay. And Giovanni would willingly deliver that punishment himself. The young girl, somehow and someway, had made a huge impact on him in the short amount of time she had managed to get to know him, and he her.

He wouldn't take kindly to her being in pain or being hurt in any way.

Giovanni sat there through the auction, his dark onyx eyes darkening even more as he watched each person pass through the stage, and yet not a single one was Ash. This was clearly becoming a dead end, and he was eager to shut down the operation now and have every single one of these people, traffickers and buyers alike, suffer at his and his organization's hands.

Each slave went through, announced as to what "category" they fit in best, and then the bidding process would start. A lot of them, mostly women and children, were sold off as sex slaves. Giovanni inwardly sneered, wondering if these people all had such problems retrieving a woman for themselves that they had to resort to getting themselves a personal slave to force themselves onto.

But seriously, he noted what and who was buying the slaves. Some of them were personal buyers, which meant the slaves would go to an actual home to serve their new "masters" there. A few buyers were owners of brothels, and some other seedy places that discreetly (or not so discreetly) offered "extra" services. Two were rival massage parlor owners, and the others variously distributed the slaves between strip clubs, peep and touch shows, and other venues. He had no doubt the ones not bought, would still be sold out by the traffickers themselves.

Actually, he had no doubt the top of those that were captured were kept by the traffickers and to be sold personally by them for the profit and repeated profit. Which made him wonder if he had to consider that Ash was kept with the other traffickers, considered too "good" and too high-quality to just be bought and sold by buyers, and if he was going to have to hunt down deeper into this group.

Though he pitied and felt sorry for the other slaves being sold, even those that were sold into labor work, his priority had and always would be Ash.

So he raised his paddle and twirled it, and then chaos was being sewn throughout the building as his agents burst out of their hiding and wrecked havoc.

It wasn't long until everyone in that building, from the buyers to traffickers, were all rounded up and tied securely. Looking through all the slaves there, even the ones previously bought, he saw that Ash wasn't there for sure. In any case, all of them were brought together and were being treated for the moment, for any injuries or ailments that could be treated on the spot. When the law enforcement came, Team Rocket would be long gone and the slaves could be further taken cared of, and returned to their homes.

For the moment, though…

The trafficker that had been announcing the whole thing sat in front of him, tied up and sweating bullets as Giovanni examined him. After a moment of silence from Giovanni, the man snapped in front of him.

"What is it? Why are you here? I don't understand why you're doing this or why Team Rocket is involving themselves. You stayed out of our affairs and we've stayed out of yours!" he yelled in a panic.

Giovanni sat on a crate and kept examining the man.

"You know…I'm starting to regret letting you and yours fester around for this long," Giovanni tilted his head. "But I'm correcting that now. Anyway, I want information. Tell me everything that you know," he ordered.

The man squealed easily and Giovanni gained a lot of knowledge from this. But he didn't get anything specifically on Ash, so he was starting to get frustrated.

"Domino!" Giovanni called out, and his petite but ruthless agent looked his way, stopping her current harassment of one of the traffickers to the side.

The blonde female pulled back her hand, pouting as she had to stop the slaps she'd been eagerly dealing out, though she eyed the blood on her uniform's gloves in disgust.

"Yes, Giovanni? What do you need me to do?" she turned to him, sighing in aggravation but pulling away from her victim.

"There's a crate over there. It contains what these people call 'snuff films.' Retrieve it. I want to see them before we anonymously send them to the police," Giovanni didn't know the term, but it brought an uneasy feeling in his gut.

"Yes, sir," he watched as she dragged a few others with her and they headed over to where Giovanni had pointed out the crate was. Then he turned back to his newest "informant."

"Do you know this girl?" Giovanni asked stoically, taking out one of the photos he'd pilfered from Ash's room from inside his jacket, and showed it to the man.

The man's eyes widened. "That's what this is all about," he mumbled. "It's about that girl."

Giovanni scowled and dealt the man a backhand.

"Quiet," he hissed at him. "Answer the question. Do you know her?"

The man winced and peered more closely at the picture. Then he cringed.

"That girl called Giovanna?" he asked him hesitantly.

Giovanni refrained from showing an overt reaction on his face, but he recognized the feminine form of his own name. So Ash used an alias, did she? Using his name no less. Smart girl. And he felt a brief flutter at the thought that she'd thought of him and had used him as a base for a name.

"And what if it is? What of it?" Giovanni kept his stoic façade, waiting for him to get all the information he could and not revealing anything that could jeopardize that.

"She told…Tony her name was Giovanna Akagi," the man muttered, and Giovanni recognized the last name. If he remembered right, the day Ash ran off, he'd just sealed a deal with Cyrus Akagi about a business venture. She would have seen that, and probably took on Cyrus' last name. "She was part of this group, from Saffron."

Okay, so she had managed to get all the way to Saffron City on Maximus. He was finally getting some facts about Ash's journey out, but he needed more.

"Why isn't she here then?" Giovanni didn't understand why she wasn't with this group, all of whom had come from the Saffron capture as well.

The man swallowed heavily. "She's in…she's in Kalos."

Giovanni stared at him blankly.

"Kalos?!" Giovanni roared, standing up and towering over the frightened man, who flinched back in terror. "What is she doing in Kalos?" he bent down lower, close to the man's face, and hissing menacingly into it.

The man started to stutter, but forced himself to be clearer at Giovanni's glare.

"S-she's with Tony," he said quickly. "He took an interest in her, I think. It sounded like he wanted to personally train her himself."

At that, Giovanni's mind drew a blank again and he stared at him with a disbelieving look. And then, before anyone could register anything, before the man could see it coming, a red haze drew itself across Giovanni's vision and he lashed out, smacking the man across the face. The force of the blow was enough to send the man flying off the chair. Still tied up, he lay on the floor, groaning in pain.

However, Giovanni wasn't done and was blindly attacking the man viciously, furiously stomping on the man's body before dropping to his knees and just dealing blow after blow on any area that he could hit, holding onto the man with one hand and punishing him with the other.

A touch to his shoulder caused him to jump up and whirl around to face the culprit, only to see one of his Elites flinch back. Pierce held up his hands, eyes wide.

"Boss…are you okay? Do you want us to take care of him?" Pierce pointed at the man lying barely conscious on the floor beside Giovanni.

Giovanni turned to look at the man and the rage grew inside again. He snarled and bent down, grabbing the man's collar and dragging him off to the side. He dumped him there and then addressed the group of traffickers tied up and watching him fearfully.

"Which ones of you are low-ranking?"

As expected, with his display, the ones higher-ranked obviously ratted out those who were lower-ranked, and Giovanni had the lower-ranked set nearer to the hostages. He grabbed one of them though.

"Are you a low-rank member?" Giovanni gave the younger man a hard stare.

"Y-yes," the kid, because he didn't look older than 19, nodded reluctantly.

"And all those over there –they're higher-ranked, while those that were picked out with you are lower-ranked, yes?" Giovanni wanted confirmation.

At the boy's confirmed nod, Giovanni let go of him and ordered some of his agents to bring the high-ranked members over to the man that he'd nearly beaten to death. They were all sat down on chairs, their ties tied to the chairs, and then the original man was put onto a chair and tied to it as well.

And then Giovanni grabbed the can of gasoline that he'd spotted off to the side, and strode over to those members, pouring the gasoline all over them. He ignored their screams of protest and the deathly silence of everyone else around him.

"Attila!" he barked out, and the blond, muscular man quietly but quickly strode over to his side. "Lighter," Giovanni held his hand out for the man's lighter.

Attila unquestioningly gave it to Giovanni, and then went back to his place with the rest of the Rockets, leaving Giovanni to stand alone in front of the gas-soaked high-ranked traffickers.

"You are all going to burn here, before you finally burn in Hell," Giovanni said coldly.

He flipped the cover of the lighter off, switched it on, and then threw it at one of their feet.

Giovanni remorselessly watched their burning carcasses, reveling in their screams of agony and suffering.

~*~*~

Attila said nothing about his lighter being thrown at the traffickers and left to be burned with them. Aside from the fact that Giovanni was the one who did it and he was his boss who had all say, Attila could always buy another one, especially with the check he received as his salary from the Team.

And these bastards deserved this.

Everything important had been packed up, so they'd left quickly after the men and women traffickers had begun to be burned alive in their spots in the middle of the warehouse, which then spread out to the rest of the area (aided by more gasoline being thrown around the warehouse to quicken the burning down of the building). There was a strange silence surrounding those that were left, and Giovanni was standing unapproachable and silent to the side, not facing any of them.

Although Attila agreed that those people deserved what they got, he couldn't help but cringe at the smell of burnt skin and the continued screams of the people inside. The people outside, particularly the former slaves/hostages, were eerily staring at the burning warehouse unrepentantly, and some even had small, strange smiles on their faces.

He couldn't blame them either, for enjoying the misery and deaths of those that had kidnapped and enslaved them, even though it was slightly terrifying to see so many people unaffected by such a brutal end, and the lingering smell and screams. The rest of the Rockets were pointedly looking away from the building and the former kidnapped people, going about their business meticulously. The remaining traffickers and buyers were staring horrified at the building.

Only Giovanni and the former slaves seemed completely unaffected by the callous murder.

The truth was that Team Rocket had never really gone this far. They didn't usually go off on a murder spree, despite the fact one or two people would occasionally go missing off the streets (but they were usually shady people or just outright criminals). But this…this was on another level.

And yet Attila couldn't say he felt sorry for any of these traffickers masquerading around as people. He couldn't find it in him to really regret the actions the Team were now taking, or feel anything but disgust for the traffickers that they were more or less hunting down now.

He knew and felt that these traffickers deserved every single punishment they got. They were despicable and if Giovanni, for some reason, suddenly decided that he was going to go after every last one of them and burn them all alive, then Attila wouldn't disagree or refuse to do what was asked of him to get these bastards to suffer.

Giovanni moved and Attila watched him carefully, but all his boss did was walk over to the group of former slaves.

"Do any of you have experience with a gun?" Giovanni asked flatly.

When a few of them hesitantly raised their hands, Giovanni gestured to some of his Rockets to come over, and then proceeded to have them hand over their firearms to the few that had raised their hands.

"You are to guard them," Giovanni pointed over to the still restrained buyers and the traffickers that were left. "My Team and I aren't supposed to be here, and will probably be arrested if we stay. We've called the police and they will come here to retrieve you all, treat you, and then send you back to your homes."

When he was sure they understood, he turned to the lower-ranked member he'd talk to before, who flinched when Giovanni neared him.

"I had no use for those higher-ranked members anyway," Giovanni started indifferently. "I would hope that my assumption that you and the rest of your cohorts will be more willing to testify was correct."

At the young man's hurried nod, Giovanni smiled coldly. "Good," and then he turned to the buyers, his smile turning into a sneer. "I would hope you all will cooperate as well, but I don't think it's too needed."

Those tapes better have something about Ash, because he was steadily growing furious at the thought of that "Tony" being anywhere near her.

He was going to tear that man from limb to limb…

~*~*~

Honestly, Giovanni regretted not finding out what a "snuff film" was first, before he went off and decided to watch a few. He felt himself dry heave the first time he put in one of the videos, watching as a five year old little boy was carved from the throat and down to his navel, exposing his insides. And then they tore out his intestines, slowly severed a leg, and then finally decapitated him.

Giovanni had to take a break and stand away from his monitor, calming himself down before he went to his liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of vodka. The next few gulps calmed him even more, and he decided that having alcohol in him would help him watch the videos better, so he refilled his glass before he sat back down.

He also thought that just skimming the videos would be okay, but he still couldn't stomach watching the bits he saw. He almost completely stopped at all, until the last one opened up to only the room. It was quiet and then there were voices, and then he was seeing Ash in the film.

She'd grown up well, looking just as pretty as she had when she was younger, if only in a more grown up way though. She still had some baby fat at her age, but he could already see she was going to be absolutely beautiful. In fact, she already was…

And then it was all ruined and his thoughts came to an immediate screeching halt, when the woman who had brought her into the room smacked her across the face and Ash dropped to the floor like a ragdoll.

Shit, he'd forgotten this was with the pile of fucking snuff films and that Ash had been brought into the same room all the others had been killed in.

It was like a train wreck and he couldn't stop watching. Ash fought back as much as she could, but then that fucking crazy woman had a rope around Ash's neck and was choking the life out of her –"Cat got your tongue, Princess? Ah well. Try to scream loudly for the cameras, won't you?" –then there was a knife and she was cutting Ash, and then it was pointed directly and too close to Ash's eyes, and that woman was threatening to dig out one of Ash's gorgeous eyes –

"Why don't I dig out one of those honey eyes of yours?"

The video cut off and Giovanni let out a loud curse, standing up abruptly and grabbing his lamp, tearing it from its place and throwing it against his wall.

~*~*~

She picked at the thread of the new slip she was wearing. Tobias had made her change into it and said she was going to wear that from now on. But it was cold and thin, and too revealing for her to comfortably wear, especially around others and in public.

It was nightwear, and what she knew those gossipy housewives back in Pallet would whisper was meant to seduce men and make a woman look sexy.

"Are you hungry?" Tobias asked her, and she glanced up at him miserably. "Come eat."

She reluctantly came over and sat down beside him, knowing she was being treated better than the others and that she should take this time to keep herself healthy and strong. If she did, she would have a better chance of escaping. She hadn't given up on that, and she wouldn't no matter what.

No matter what he did to her, no matter what happened, she just had to keep that thought in her head. She was going to get out.

"Open," he ordered, and she forced her mouth opened, trying not to retch or alternately bite down on his fingers as he personally fed her.

Some juice from the raspberry leaked out of the corner of her mouth, and Tobias gripped her chin, leaning forward. The moment she saw his tongue slip out of his mouth, Ash closed her eyes and held herself still, trying to not flinch away as he licked the trail of the juice clean. When he forced his tongue into her mouth, she didn't react and definitely didn't bite it, as much as she wanted to.

When he pulled back, she looked down at her lap, and tried to keep her eyes from watering. He continued to feed her and she mechanically ate.

He finally left when they were both done and she let herself cry then.

It led to Ash having another restless night later on and waking up feeling even more miserable than before. However, she was brightened by the face of someone she hadn't expected.

"Pika!"

"Pikachu!" Ash quietly exclaimed, grabbing hold of her trusty companion.

She felt tears prick her eyes, but they were happy tears this time. She hugged him tightly, though she let go when she felt a small, hard ball. When she moved away, she saw that Pikachu held Maximus' pokéball.

"Maximus!"

His pokéball shook a little and she smiled gratefully.

"I'm so happy you two are here, but what if you get caught? They'll hurt you!" Ash said worriedly.

"Pika pika. Pikapi!" Pikachu said stubbornly.

She smiled a little at her Pikachu's dedication and followed after him, sneaking out of the room. After a dizzying amount of hallways and stairs, Ash couldn't believe it when she'd made it outside. However, as soon as she stepped out, she was caught by a worker.

"Hey you! Aren't you Tony's girl? What are you doing out?" he narrowed his eyes at her.

She cringed back and stared at him fearfully. Pikachu bravely took a step in front of her, yelling at the man.

"Move away, you rodent!" the trafficker snarled at her Pikachu.

He strode over to her and harshly grabbed her wrist. Pikachu let out a thunderbolt and the man let go screaming. However, the attack was weak enough that he only stumbled back and didn't stop him long enough. Pikachu had underestimated the man's resilience, and was thrown back by a kick to his ribs.

He was forced to watch as the man grabbed at Ash and threw her to the floor, violently beating her in response to Pikachu's attack on his person. Pikachu growled and forced himself up, and it was at that same time as he let loose a very powerful thunder attack, that Maximus escaped from his pokéball.

The man was horrifically electrocuted, screaming at the electricity rushing all through his body, only for Pikachu to stop and Maximus to spot his mistress and let out a terrible roar.

Maximus blew fire from his mouth and aimed it at the man, burning him alive and encasing him in fire.