The news of Yuan Ba's return alongside the elite vanguard of the Yuan Clan spread like wildfire across the entire Sinnoh Region.
At the Bertha Estate.
Bertha violently slammed her teacup onto the floor, shattering it into porcelain pieces as her expression shifted rapidly between deep anxiety and calculations.
"Yuan Ba has actually returned... The wicked truly live forever. The entire geopolitical landscape of the Sinnoh Region is about to undergo a severe transformation."
"Given his aggressive, unyielding temperament, the exact millisecond he logs the metric data of how severely our house has suppressed the Yuan Clan in his absence, he will personally launch a head-on siege against our gates."
"Issue a high-priority directive across all operational blocks—reinforce the security lines immediately to sabotage any sudden, high-intensity ambush orchestrated by Yuan Ba and his vanguard."
Down in Celestic Town.
Professor Carolina intercepted an underground intelligence brief mapping Yuan Ba's return, her internal psychological metrics throwing a trace of unease.
"Yuan Ba has successfully recovered his coordinates... I cannot yet compute what kind of chaotic variables his presence will inject into the volatile Sinnoh landscape."
"However, the current defensive architecture of Celestic Town has evolved; our stable no longer harbors any fear toward a direct military challenge from the Yuan Clan."
"It is merely an unfortunate diplomatic detour. Our office had only just finalized a stable non-aggression pact to restore direct communication channels with their house a short while ago."
Professor Carolina finalized her assessment before issuing a strict directive to keep the Yuan Clan's main estate under constant, high-density surveillance.
The Conspirators of the Underworld
Meanwhile, within the Unova Region...
Team Plasma.
The High Sage Zinzolin sat huddled alongside Giallo inside a dim, reinforced chamber, systematically mapping out the logistics for the impending Dragon Festival.
"The outcome of the Dragon Festival will definitively hard-code who secures the absolute right to command the entire native Dragon Clan of the Unova Region."
"Therefore, my office earnestly requests your core to authorize your personal entry into the tournament brackets, Giallo."
"My own framework has already been permanently blacklisted and exiled by the clan elders."
"But your registry remains untainted. The exact millisecond your stable secures the commander mantle over the Unovan Dragon Clan, you will command more than enough manual resource leverage to deploy thousands of tracking units to scour the global tracks for your missing wife and child," Zinzolin briefed, his eyes locked onto the gaunt, thoroughly exhausted expression caking Giallo's face.
Throughout the recent six-month chronological window, Giallo had slid into a state of profound, absolute psychological desperation.
The tracking logs and life-force signatures of his wife and infant child appeared to have been completely expunged from the material plane by an elite entity; his search operations had consistently yielded absolute zero data.
"Furthermore, Giallo... should your stable successfully claim the supreme commander rank over the Dragon Clan, your station will gain exclusive clearance to wield the ancestral Dragon Flute."
"According to our classified research logs, that legendary flute was manually forged from a pristine, shed horn-shard harvested from Kyurem—the ultimate husk of the Tao Trio."
"The artifact houses an advanced elemental resonance engineered to track and isolate the precise genetic code and bloodline plasma of our specific lineage."
"Sustained beneath the tracking multipliers of that Dragon Flute, the statistical probability for your console to successfully locate your missing child will scale drastically."
The exact millisecond the brief finalized, Giallo violently rose from his seat, his posture tightening with renewed focus.
"The parameters are locked. My stable will officially enter the brackets for this Dragon Festival."
The broken vanguard leader had successfully reconstructed his psychological resolve.
Right at that tactical intersection, a sharp, high-priority acoustic signal erupted from Zinzolin's personal communicator terminal.
"Zinzolin. Identify your current coordinates."
The cold, absolute voice of Ghetsis boomed through the speaker grid.
"Authorize an immediate high-speed transit back to the central Team Plasma Headquarters. The inner council requires your presence to finalize a critical strategic agenda." Ghetsis terminated the link without waiting for a confirmation script.
The Shifting of the Guard
At the primary Team Plasma Headquarters block...
The exact microsecond Ghetsis clipped the secure connection, the brilliant scientist Colress stepped smoothly out of the shadow of the central terminal, tracking the intense trace of panic caking the Grand Sage's face.
"Lord Ghetsis, the data network merely flags the arrival of a newly transferred Elite-four asset materializing within the Unova borders. What mathematical variable inside his profile is causing your console to display such severe psychological agitation?"
Colress idly pushed his thin glasses up his nose, his tone laced with clinical curiosity.
"The Hunter Syndicate—an absolute, multi-region criminal hegemon commanding peerless martial leverage—was completely liquidated and wiped from the global charts within weeks by World League Headquarters," Ghetsis growled, his features darkening.
"Our active military torque operates at a near-identical baseline capacity to the Hunter Syndicate. We are programmatically required to reinforce our lines to sabotage an identical purge."
"According to the high-encryption intelligence leaks routed to my desk, this specific foreign Elite dispatched to govern Unova was the absolute vanguard unit who single-handedly broke and captured six independent, High-Elite commanders of the Hunter Syndicate back-to-back."
"My long-term analytics heavily indicate this newly arrived Elite is being groomed by the global board to assume the sovereign Champion throne of Unova." Ghetsis's face turned thoroughly venomous as he ran the numbers.
"Your office is already perfectly aware of Alder's current structural degeneration."
"Our ambush operations across the historical tracks successfully delivered severe, irreversible cell trauma to his core roster. While his public facade maintains a highly refined illusion of stability, his primary partners have systematically collapsed, dropping below the baseline Champion threshold."
"If my calculations hold, Alder might actually choose to broker a covert mutual alliance alongside our house tonight."
"Although the old man has historically banked immense institutional favor for anchoring the Unova League, Alder harbors a pathological obsession with holding absolute executive control over the regional infrastructure."
"Had the global League council not been tethered by his historical achievements, his decaying framework would have been forcefully stripped of the Champion title cycles ago."
Ghetsis openly bared the raw reality of Alder's highly precarious, ice-thin political status.
"To be completely transparent... it is precisely due to Alder's lazy, decentralized administration that Team Plasma was permitted to expand its parameters at such a preposterous velocity."
"Sustained beneath his complete policy of non-interference, our syndicate successfully weaponized the shadows, converting into the absolute paramount hegemon dominating the entire Unovan underground network."
"Concurrently... verify the tracking logs regarding that unfilial wretch, N."
"The exact millisecond he finalized the execution loop to break Alder on the public stage, that boy's signature completely uncoupled from our network, vanishing from our tracking grids." Ghetsis noted, a sharp surge of paternal irritation leaking from his posture.
The Mirage of the Dunes
Meanwhile, back on the high-intensity central arena of the Unova League...
Feng Che's Flygon was continuously fanning its wings at extreme rotational velocities, mass-producing an immense, roiling matrix of Sand Tomb torrents.
The cascading walls of loose desert sand formatted a perfect kinetic shield, completely intercepting and absorbing the sub-zero lances of Froslass's incoming Ice Beam.
The absolute-zero blue beam slammed directly into the swirling sand barrier, the intense thermal drop instantaneously converting the loose sand grains into a solid, brittle block of compacted ice.
CRACK!
A colossal structural fracture ripped down the center line of the frozen sand block. Flygon violently burst out of the ice prison, taking flight back into the upper airspace without registering a single point of cell damage.
"Elite Feng Che's Flygon commands a remarkably high-order manipulation over terrain mechanics, fluidly deploying shifting sand streams to completely neutralize incoming elemental hazards," Shauntal analyzed softly, her voice flat as her pen recorded the data.
"However... as a certified Ghost-type Elite, my stable commands parameters that far transcend common physical armor."
"Froslass, unseal the forbidden rite—Curse!"
A massive, razor-sharp icicle needle crystallized flawlessly within Froslass's translucent palms.
The ice phantom ground its teeth, violently driving the freezing spike straight into its own cranial visor. A split-second later, an immense, suffocating shroud of pure, black underworld malice erupted from its body, the dark energy streams screaming across the distance to track Flygon's positioning.
Sensing the incoming supernatural hazard, Flygon franticly wrapped its entire bipedal chassis inside a massive, multi-layered defensive dome of loose sand.
"A superficial optimization. A physical sand shield lacks the atomic density required to fully isolate or parry the conceptual execution lines of a Ghost-type Curse. After all, the space between individual mineral grains houses more than enough variable clearance for spirits to breach," Shauntal countered with intense professional pride, her glasses catching a sharp blue reflection from the arena lighting.
The roiling black malice completely enveloped the spherical sand shield, before sinking through the seams to vanish from view.
A moment later, Flygon violently burst out of the dissolving sand dome, its entire body heavily draped in a thick, pulsing aura of dark purple spiritual energy.
The desert dragon unleashed a piercing, high-frequency Screech that carried a intense concussive frequency, the acoustic shockwave hitting Froslass head-on.
The ice phantom clamped its claws over its auditory receptors, collapsing onto the arena floorboards as its equilibrium shattered. Yet, a cruel, cynical smirk split Froslass's features during its fall.
So long as the target remains pinned under the continuous execution loops of the Curse, its internal stamina pools will systematically drain to absolute zero within a fixed chronological window, Shauntal calculated.
However, the jester's smile on Froslass's face instantaneously froze.
The Flygon pinned beneath the purple curse energy suddenly unraveled into a harmless, cascading rain of loose sand particles that showered down over Froslass's visage.
The entity they had cursed was nothing but a high-fidelity Sand Clone phantasm!
The ice phantom was instantaneously buried beneath a massive dune of heavy sand.
The authentic Flygon violently broke through the arena floorboards directly beneath Froslass's blind spot, its wings hummed with kinetic energy.
"An exceptional display of high-tier battlefield misdirection."
"The primary strategic intent behind mass-producing that sand shield wasn't to isolate the Curse... It was engineered explicitly to blind our monitoring sensors, allowing the real Flygon to safely tunnel into the sub-soil layer," Shauntal noted, her literary mind immediately decoding the mechanical sequence.
"Yet, my Froslass refuses to register defeat to a common ground burrower."
The heavy sand dune anchoring Froslass's frame was instantaneously frozen solid by an absolute-zero thermal drop.
Thousands of jagged, high-velocity Icicle Spears violently erupted out of the ice sheet, Froslass's burning optical sensors tracking Flygon's flight path as it attempted to pierce the desert dragon into a sieve.
"Flygon, overwrite the bedrock—Earth Power!"
A magnificent, deep-earth golden aura violently vibrated across the airspace, the intense kinetic pressure waves causing the local atmosphere to buckle into visible ripples.