Orion didn't answer right away.
Metang hovered near Valeria's chair, one steady red eye tracking the small movements of the room, and Orion nodded toward it instead of answering.
"How has he been, since evolving? Does the extra weight still catch him off guard?"
Valeria's shoulders eased, the question landing somewhere gentler than the one she'd asked a moment ago.
"Better every week. He used to overcorrect on every turn, throw himself sideways trying to compensate. Now he just adjusts. Doesn't even seem to think about it anymore."
She rested her palm flat against Metang's casing again.
"He's gotten protective, too. Followed me into three different labs last week because he didn't like how loud one of Dad's machines was."
Metang's hum shifted, a note higher, and drifted a few inches closer to her chair. Orion let himself smile at that, small and genuine, the first easy thing to happen since he'd walked through the door.
Then Valeria's expression changed.
"I saw what he did to you. At the park."
The warmth in the room didn't disappear so much as narrow, the way a hallway narrows before it opens into a doorway.
Orion's smile faded slower than the moment probably deserved.
"You were there?"
"Not that day. I saw the footage." Valeria's jaw tightened. "And I read the report this morning, before you even knocked."
She didn't wait for him to ask what she thought of it.
"Every incident is real. I checked myself." Her voice stayed level, the kind of calm that clearly cost more effort than raising it would have. "That's what makes it worse. He didn't need to lie. He just needed to point a spotlight at real accidents and let people fill in the rest with fear."
Orion said nothing yet, letting her finish.
"He's not being careful. He's building a leash and calling it a jacket." Her eyes stayed fixed on some middle distance past his shoulder. "That's a villain, in my book. I don't care how many nieces he brings up on camera."
Something in Orion settled, hearing her say the thing he hadn't quite managed to say himself the night before.
"I read it too. Twice. I kept thinking if I looked closely enough, I'd find the part where he was lying."
He shook his head.
"There isn't one. Latias told me the same thing, calmer than you just did. You can't argue someone out of the truth."
Valeria's eyes sharpened, waiting.
"So I've stopped trying to prove him wrong. What I need now is someone who can prove the report is wrong, not in what it says happened, but in how it was built." He held her gaze. "Someone who can't resist doing that. Someone who'd want to look better than a rival even more than they'd want to help me out."
He let that sit a second before finishing it.
"I don't know anyone like that. Not through my own circles. But you might."
Valeria didn't answer right away. She sat with the question the way she sat with an unfinished equation, turning it over instead of forcing an answer before it was ready. Metang drifted closer, sensing something in her go quiet, and she kept her hand resting on his casing without seeming to notice she'd done it.
Her gaze drifted past Orion, toward the wall behind him, where a small brass plaque sat bolted beside the door. The engraving on it wasn't in a script Orion recognized, and it didn't match anything else he'd seen in this building. Some gift, maybe, or a leftover from a visit that predated his ever walking these halls.
Can't resist proving someone wrong. Wants to look better than a rival.
Her hand went still against the cool metal.
Orion caught the shift before she said anything, the same half second of stillness he'd learned to read in a Pokémon right before it made up its mind.
"What?"
Valeria didn't look away from the plaque.
"Doom."
She said it quietly, almost like she was testing whether the word would do something dangerous just by being spoken out loud in this room.
Orion didn't need her to explain who Doom was. He knew the armor, the reputation, the way the news treated Latveria like a country that ran on rules the rest of the world hadn't agreed to yet.
What he didn't understand was the way she'd said the name.
"How do you know him?"
Valeria's fingers pressed a little harder against Metang's casing.
"He's not just some villain on the news to us. He's family, in the complicated way. He and my dad go back before I was born. Competing, mostly. Sometimes actually working together, when it suited both of them."
She glanced up at Orion, then away again.
"He's called me brilliant to my face more than once. He also once threatened to annex a chemistry lab because Franklin broke one of his instruments."
Metang drifted closer as she spoke, his hum dropping lower, a slow current of sound that seemed to settle somewhere just under the words instead of over them.
"This isn't like asking a friend for a favor, Orion." Valeria's voice stayed even, but something underneath it had gone tight. "You'd be asking me to bring one supervillain in to fight another one. And Doom doesn't do favors. He does leverage."
Orion watched her for a moment before he spoke.
"Then don't."
Valeria's eyes came up, sharp with surprise.
"I mean it. If this isn't something you want to carry, I'll find another way. I'd rather lose the debate than put you in a position you're not ready for."
He said it plainly, no performance in it, the same steady tone he used with a Pokémon deciding whether to trust a stranger's outstretched hand.
Valeria didn't answer right away. She looked down at Metang instead, at the slow pulse of light along his frame, and let the offer sit there long enough that it became a real choice instead of a reflex.
"No." She said it quieter than her earlier anger, but with more certainty underneath it. "I want to do this. I just want to do it my way."
Orion tilted his head slightly, waiting.
"I make the contact. Not you." Valeria's voice sharpened back into its usual precision, the emotion folding itself back under logic where she clearly preferred to keep it. "Doom doesn't respond to strangers asking for favors, and he definitely doesn't respond to being managed. If this happens, it happens because I asked him, on my terms."
"And your parents?"
"They'll know when there's something worth telling them." A faint, humorless smile crossed her face. "Which might be never, if he says no."
She stood, the motion unhurried, Metang rising with her like he'd been waiting for exactly that cue. Her hand found the edge of the desk, not for balance, just something to anchor the moment before she committed to it fully.
"Give me a day," she said. "I'll reach out tonight."
Orion nodded once, something between gratitude and worry settling into the same quiet look.
Valeria was already moving toward the door, already thinking three steps past the conversation they'd just had, Metang trailing close behind her like a shadow with a heartbeat.
***
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