Day 21 back in the Orange Archipelago. Clear skies.
The weather was good, so Reiji got up early, fed his Pokémon breakfast, and left before the morning had properly settled in.
Senta was still asleep when he slipped out. Reiji went alone to a restaurant, booked a private room, and ordered breakfast for four.
While he was eating, people began arriving one after another. Every time the door opened, Reiji greeted the newcomer with a smile.
"Shun, first one here. Sit down and eat."
"Rai-nii, it's been a while." Shun had already seen him last night, so the excitement from then had cooled down. He looked much calmer now.
The door opened again not long after, and another person stepped in.
"Boss, calling me out this early…" A.J. started to ask whether Reiji had something for him to do, then noticed Shun sitting in the room. He swallowed the rest of the sentence and quietly picked a seat.
"A.J., meet Shun. He's my little brother. He's one of us."
Reiji had never once worried that Shun becoming Bruno's disciple would change that. His future self had already given him the answer. Shun would not betray him. Even after dying by Reiji's hand in that future, Shun had not fought back or regretted anything. That alone was enough for Reiji to trust him.
"One of us?" A.J. asked. "Including that thing?"
He meant Spider, of course.
A.J. had gathered data on every contestant. He knew exactly who Shun was. A disciple of Elite Four member Bruno was as League-insider as it got.
If even someone like Shun counted as one of them, then Spider was much deeper than A.J. had thought. And for someone like him, who already knew far too many secrets, there was no clean way out anymore.
Not that betrayal was an option anyway. The moment he even thought about turning on Spider, someone would probably erase him quietly before he could take a second step.
"Not yet," Reiji said, smiling at him. "Later? Who knows."
A.J. understood at once. Shun did not know about Spider yet. But from the way Reiji said it, that would probably change eventually.
An Elite Four disciple becoming a member of Spider. If that ever got out, the Orange Archipelago would shake from top to bottom.
Spider really was playing on a different board.
"Got it," A.J. said.
"Rai-nii, what are you two talking about?" Shun looked between them, completely lost. They were talking in circles, and every answer only made the room feel more suspicious.
"Don't worry about it now. You'll know when it's time." Reiji patted him on the shoulder.
Out of everyone here, Shun had climbed the highest. Being Bruno's disciple put him in a completely different league from the rest of them.
"Okay." Shun nodded and did not push. After spending so much time with Reiji, he trusted him completely. Reiji would never hurt him. That was all he needed to know.
Before long, Shingo entered the room too. He took one look at the three of them and let out an impressed click of his tongue.
"Rai, your friends are something else."
He opened his laptop, tapped a few keys, and information on A.J. and Shun popped up on the screen.
"A.J. You beat him at the Indigo Plateau Conference. Shun. Disciple of Elite Four member Bruno."
"I'll introduce everyone properly," Reiji said. "This is Shingo, successor to Johto's Crimson Streak. He's a very strong Trainer."
Then he turned to the other two. "And these two are my friend A.J. and my little brother, Shun."
"Your little brother?" Shingo's eyes lit up. "That's important. Your file needs an update."
His fingers immediately flew across the keyboard.
"Don't mind him," Reiji said to A.J. and Shun. "Shingo's always like this. He's obsessed with data. That's also why I called him here."
Shingo typing away without even looking at them was not exactly polite, but that was just how he was. Strong Trainers always came with strange habits. Reiji had long since stopped trying to fix it.
"Hello, everyone. I'm Shingo."
Shingo was not actually bad with people. Data simply took priority. Once he finished adding the new information, he stood up and offered his hand.
"Nice to meet you. Just call me Shun." Shun shook his hand first.
A.J. followed after that. Once everyone knew each other, Reiji moved straight to business.
"Now that everyone's here, let's start. A.J., compare the information you collected with Shingo's data. Correct anything that doesn't match, then walk us through the dangerous contestants in this tournament."
"Got it."
A.J. took out his own notebook. It was filled with contestant information he had gathered. He and Shingo started checking both sets of data against each other, looking for missing pieces and mistakes.
By the time they finished, Reiji and Shun had already eaten breakfast. After waiting for A.J. and Shingo to finish too, Shingo connected his laptop to a projector and threw the screen onto the wall.
Only then did the real briefing begin.
"This Orange League tournament is packed with strong Trainers," Shingo said.
The names worth watching appeared on the screen one by one. Reiji, A.J., and Shun looked toward the display as Shingo began his breakdown.
"First, Drake. The Orange League's Leader. He is, without question, the strongest Trainer in this tournament. I collected every battle record I could find from after he took the position, and the conclusion is simple. He's very strong. Especially his Dragonite. That Pokémon is at veteran Elite Four tier."
On the screen, Dragonite's file moved to the front.
"His Electivire, Venusaur, Gengar, Onix, and Ditto are all Elite Four tier as well. Ditto is especially annoying. It can copy almost anything, use the copied Pokémon's moves after transforming, and even defeat the original in some cases. That should tell you how dangerous it is."
A.J. stared at Drake's photo, then at the six Pokémon shown behind him, and swallowed.
"This guy came here to win the championship, didn't he?"
Drake was basically a veteran Elite Four-tier Trainer. Him entering this tournament was like an adult walking into a schoolyard fight.
Shun looked at Reiji too. Drake was the wall standing in front of everyone. Shun knew he had no chance against him. Whether Reiji could do it was another question.
"Keep going," Reiji said.
He could not beat Drake either. No point pretending otherwise.
"Besides Drake, there are a few other Trainers who deserve attention," Shingo continued. "Danny from Navel Gym, Rudy from Trovita Gym, Taro, the young master of Kinnow Island's Electric-type club, and the Trainers sent from Tangelo Island, Mandarin Island North, Hamlin Island, Ascorbia Island, and several other islands."
More files appeared on the projection.
"All of them are local powerhouses. Based on the information we gathered, each of them has one or two Elite Four-tier Pokémon. Taro from Kinnow Island has an Electivire. The others all have their own aces too. We also can't rule out the possibility that some of them borrowed Pokémon."
Everyone in the room understood what that meant.
These were Orange Archipelago locals with deep roots on their islands. Borrowing an Elite Four-tier Pokémon from an elder would not be strange at all. For a tournament tied to the Elite Four qualifiers, they had every reason to do it.
"And then there's this one," Shingo said.
A new photo appeared on the screen. "Young, already a captain, and confirmed to have three Elite Four-tier Pokémon. Again, borrowed Pokémon are possible."
Reiji looked at the young man on the projection. He did not know him.
But he did recognize Riku standing beside him.
The photo had been taken on a ship. There was also an unfamiliar woman in the shot. Reiji did not know her either.
If Naoki had been here, he would have recognized her immediately.
That woman was Aya, the person he had been pining after all this time.
"Next are Tania, Sabrina, and Gary," Shingo said. "Out of these three, the two women need the most attention. Sabrina's psychic power is rumored to be extremely strong. I haven't tested it myself, so I can't say exactly how strong."
Sabrina's file expanded on the screen.
"But she can use her own psychic power to support her Psychic-type Pokémon. As long as her mental strength holds out, fighting her is basically like fighting two Psychic-types at once."
"That's cheating!" A.J. nearly choked on his water.
"That's extraordinary humans for you," Shingo said with a helpless shrug. "The tournament rules don't ban a Trainer from feeding psychic power into their Pokémon."
He moved on to the next file.
"Tania is another one to watch. She likes using Champion Agatha's Perish Song setup. It's hard to guard against, and almost no one has a clean answer for it. The only time it has ever failed was against Rai."
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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