The line at Pokémon Home had not thinned since it opened, and Orion had stopped expecting it to. He rang up a starter kit of Poké Blocks for a teenager who kept glancing at the Sanctuary portal like it might vanish if he blinked, then reached down to scratch behind Pikachu's ear when the electric mouse leaned into his hand for exactly that.
"Pika."
Orion glanced down at the small shape leaning into his palm.
"I know, Pikachu. Busy morning. But you're handling it well."
Pikachu's cheeks gave a small, satisfied spark, and the teenager laughed and asked if that meant Pikachu liked him. Orion told him it meant Pikachu liked attention, which were not always the same thing, and the boy seemed to take that as a win anyway.
Latias moved along the counter behind him, sorting a stack of intake forms with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this exact motion a thousand times and never once found it dull. The morning had the particular good tiredness of a shop finally settling back into its own rhythm after two days of being something much larger than itself.
Somewhere near the back of the line, a phone buzzed. Then another.
Orion noticed it the way he noticed most small disturbances now, a change in the room's texture before he understood why. Heads bent toward screens. A woman near the display shelf murmured something to her husband, and he pulled out his own phone to check.
"Turn it up."
Someone reached past the display shelf toward the shop's small television, mounted above the reading nook mostly for background noise, and it came alive with a familiar chime.
The anchor was mid-sentence, her tone the easy, transitional kind reserved for stories that hadn't earned real gravity yet. Behind her, a small graphic noted that the three streamers who had fallen into unexplained comas weeks earlier in Hell's Kitchen were showing the first real signs of waking.
Latias's hand stilled over the forms. She looked up at the screen, and something in her expression eased, just slightly, just for a moment.
Orion felt the same small loosening in his own chest. He thought of Jessica's steady voice in that hallway, the way she had refused to leave until she understood what had happened. It was a good thing to hear. He let himself have it for exactly as long as the anchor gave him.
"And in other news."
The graphic behind her changed.
LEXCORP RELEASES POKÉMON PUBLIC SAFETY REPORT.
The chime that followed sounded almost identical to the one before it. Nothing in the room's small television warned anyone that the second story mattered more than the first.
The anchor's eyes stayed fixed on the teleprompter, her posture straightening into something more formal.
"Earlier this morning, LexCorp published a comprehensive safety report examining the recent Central Park Pokémon Integration Festival. The report's central recommendation, a voluntary public safety registry for trainers and their Pokémon, is already drawing significant attention from city officials."
Orion set down the tablet he had been holding.
He had known this was coming. Lex had told him as much, standing in the middle of his own festival with that careful, patient smile, talking about safeguards and precedent and what happened when people with fewer scruples decided to follow where Orion had led. He had said the press would have questions soon enough. He had not been wrong.
Knowing it was coming and watching it arrive were not the same thing.
The anchor read further into the report, each line flatter than the last, the detached rhythm of someone reciting rather than reporting. A child's arm caught in a vendor tent's banner display. A Shinx's sparks, harmless but startling, flying near a crowd of onlookers. Numbers attached to each incident, percentages, projected risk models built from a handful of afternoons in a park.
Orion listened to every word. None of it was false. That was the part that sat wrong in his chest, colder than the version where Lex had simply lied.
Latias set the forms down entirely.
"It's accurate. Every single thing in it actually happened."
"I know."
"That's not an easy thing to argue with."
"No. It isn't."
He came around the edge of the counter, close enough that his shoulder nearly touched hers, both of them half turned from the customers still filtering through the line. Latias's presence brushed against the edge of his mind the way it did when she was reading something in him faster than he could say it out loud.
She studied him for a moment.
"You're not surprised."
"I told you he'd do something like this. Back at the festival."
Orion held himself steady, the way he did when a Pokémon needed to believe that nothing in the room was about to fall apart.
"I just didn't expect it to feel like this once it actually happened."
Latias didn't answer right away. She let her shoulder settle against his, just for a moment, the same small steadying gesture she'd used a hundred times before when there wasn't anything useful left to say.
The broadcast cut to a live shot. A studio, a different anchor, a familiar face already seated across the desk from her.
Lex Luthor did not look like a man under scrutiny. He looked, if anything, like a man who had been waiting for exactly this invitation.
He knew precisely how this would read. Concerned, measured, a businessman troubled by what he'd found rather than a man who had gone looking for it. The report would be quoted for weeks. His name would sit beside words like accountability and oversight rather than control, and there was a particular satisfaction in that, one he had no intention of letting reach his face.
Lex folded his hands on the desk in front of him.
"I want to be very clear. This isn't an attack on Mr. Oak, or on the wonderful work being done at Pokémon Home. I have three nieces who adore that Poliwag video. This is about making sure that wonder doesn't come at the cost of a child's safety."
The anchor asked him what, specifically, he believed needed to change.
Lex spread his hands slightly, palms up.
"A voluntary registry. Nothing coercive. Simply a framework, so that when incidents occur, and they will occur, because these are living, unpredictable creatures, we have the information and the accountability structures to respond responsibly. I'd think Mr. Oak, of all people, would want that kind of transparency."
The anchor leaned in slightly.
"Would you be willing to say that to him directly?"
Lex's smile did not so much widen as settle more comfortably into place, the expression of a man who had been asked exactly the question he wanted.
"I would welcome the opportunity. In fact, I'd like to propose something. A public debate, televised, between myself and Mr. Oak. Let the people who actually have to decide whether to trust these creatures with their children hear both sides argued honestly, and make up their own minds."
The shop had gone quiet enough that Orion could hear the low electric hum of the display case beside him.
Somewhere near the register, a woman he didn't recognize looked up from the screen and found him with her eyes, and then another customer did the same, and then the whole small crowd was doing it, waiting to see what his face would do.
Orion looked at the screen a moment longer, at the studio and the calm expression waiting there like a hand extended in greeting that wasn't quite a greeting at all.
Latias's presence pressed lightly against the edge of his mind, the words meant only for him.
Every eye in the room, apparently.
He let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
"He wants a stage. A stage where the only thing that counts is who argues better in front of a camera."
"And?"
"And that's never been the argument I'm interested in winning."
He didn't say yes. He didn't say no. He let the words sit there, unfinished on purpose, and turned back toward the counter where the next customer in line was still waiting, patient, a little wide eyed, entirely unaware of what she'd just watched happen over his shoulder.
Latias watched him pick the tablet back up, watched his hands steady around it in a way that told her he was already three moves ahead of whatever came next.
"You have a plan."
"I have the beginning of one."
It would have to be enough, for now.
***
Give power stones to support this book.
Advance chapters in P@T0n Najicablitz.