"Nurse Joy, I'm leaving my team here for now. Please help them recover when you have a free moment."
Shauntal placed the Poké Balls of the team she had used against Feng Che onto the laboratory tray, then escorted him out of the Pokémon Center.
"Now that your registration is officially locked in, it's time for the Elite Four to hold a session with Champion Alder. We need to hammer out the exact details of your primary jurisdiction."
Shauntal vaulted gracefully onto the back of her Drifblim, mapping a direct course toward the League Headquarters' central conference room.
By the time Feng Che and Shauntal stepped into the chambers, Champion Alder, Caitlin, and Grimsley were already seated, waiting for their arrival.
"You took your sweet time returning. I trust Nurse Joy didn't make things too difficult for your station?"
The League's resident Nurse Joy was notoriously single-minded, harboring an absolute indifference toward social niceties whenever research was on the line. Anyone daring to break her focus while she was actively parsing a Pokémon's genetic code would invariably invite her absolute, lightning-fast wrath.
Feng Che walked smoothly down the aisle, pulling out a chair to take his designated seat directly beneath Alder's executive podium.
"Since Elite Feng Che has successfully finalized his Dragon-type certification, he operates as an official, high-tier anchor of our Unova Region from this point forward," Alder opened, his tone hearty yet calculated.
"Regarding the impending division of labor, my office expects Elite Feng Che to carry a significant portion of our administrative load."
"I intend to permanently assign the absolute, uncompromised oversight of the entire Unovan Public Security and Peacekeeping Bureau directly to Elite Feng Che's console."
Alder dug his political trap in plain sight, laying it out before the entire inner council.
The public security index of the Unova Region was an incredibly chaotic, multi-layered logistical nightmare, heavily choked by geopolitical friction. Worse yet, assuming this specific mantle guaranteed his stable would immediately lock horns and engage in a head-on collision with the entrenched forces of Team Plasma.
"Zero objections, Champion Alder. My vanguard will systematically level and organize the public security of this region until the lines clear flawlessly," Feng Che answered with an easy, tranquil smile.
This administrative transfer played perfectly into his overarching strategy, granting him a flawless, ironclad institutional mandate to forcefully plant his flags across the Unovan underground networks.
"An exceptional display of civic devotion! As fate would have it, the absolute bulk of our veteran international Inspectors and League Rangers have already been dispatched on long-range external campaigns by my desk," Alder bellowed with a booming laugh, leaning back in his chair.
"For the immediate chronological window, Elite Feng Che will have to navigate this operational grid completely single-handed. However, let your spirit rest."
"The exact millisecond any high-tier Inspector reports back to headquarters, my office will programmatically redirect their transfer files straight to your command."
Hmph, a mathematical impossibility, Alder sneered inwardly, his rustic old-man smile never shifting a millimeter. I deliberately assigned those agents to remote sectors across the global tracks cycles ago. Not a single Inspector will rematerialize within this jurisdiction for at least the next one to two months.
Feng Che lacks any native roots or local syndicates to back his plays; his work will hit an absolute administrative bottleneck from day one.
The moment the local security indices collapse and public chaos erupts across the metropolises, my office will command more than enough leverage to draft a high-priority structural complaint straight to World League Headquarters.
Even if Sky Lord Sky commands absolute sovereign authority over the global supreme board, he will find it exceptionally difficult to openly shield a subordinate who has demonstrated total regulatory incompetence.
Alder had recently leveraged a lifelong personal relationship with a high-tier administrator inside World League Headquarters to siphon Feng Che's complete historical data packet.
After auditing the young Elite's terrifying track record, the old politician computed that the teenager was an exceptionally dangerous, unyielding predator.
His combat torque didn't merely hover at the absolute bleeding edge of the Champion threshold—he had single-handedly bankrolled an immense mountain of historic achievements for the global supreme command.
I am the reigning, certified Champion of the Unova Region. So long as my console refuses to manually abdicate this throne, absolute zero entities command the authority to forcefully pluck the fruit from my branches, Alder vowed coldly. He was fully prepared to weave an endless lattice of bureaucratic traps to permanently exhaust the newcomer.
"In tandem with that directive, Elite Four Feng Che, there exists a secondary, high-profile matter requiring your manual intervention."
"Our region is rapidly approaching the launch window for the annual Unova League Championship. Regulatory protocol mandates the presiding Champion personally step onto the field to execute the definitive Title Exhibition Match against the newly crowned tournament winner."
"Regrettably, my physical biology has encountered a minor wave of chronic fatigue and system degradation of late. Therefore, my office requests your station assume the vanguard line, stepping onto the field as my personal proxy to deliver that exhibition match," Alder proposed, his expression a picture of simple-minded, rustic honesty.
"Consider it done, Champion Alder. My stable will comfortably manage the battlefield logistics. Does your desk command any secondary operational instructions for my house?" Feng Che inquired, his eyes narrowing into a highly amused, razor-thin smile.
"Ah, there does exist a remarkably severe, systemic bottleneck that has been inducing an absolute psychological migraine across my council—our active nursery inventories are suffering from a catastrophic supply deficit."
"Regardless of how frantically Nurse Joy accelerates her biomolecular cultivation loops, the net volume of mass-produced Unovan starter Pokémon remains utterly insufficient to parry the immense, surging registration numbers of our incoming rookie trainers."
"Elite Feng Che, let us verify if your highly celebrated corporate networks possess the capacity to step forward and resolve this crisis for our League," Alder pushed, systematically advancing his lines to stack the operational pressure.
"An absolute non-issue, Champion. Any structural headache disturbing the Champion's sleep maps precisely as a core mandate for my house."
"Simply unseal the precise, itemized numeric deficit directly across this counter, so my logistical teams can prepare the shipment grids," Feng Che countered with absolute composure, his tone entirely level beneath his cloak despite Alder's aggressive, step-by-step containment play.
"The... exact numeric metric?"
Alder's train of thought choked instantly. His primary strategic intent had merely been to weaponize the systemic starter shortage to permanently bottleneck and humiliate Feng Che, but he hadn't calculated the teenager would forcefully reverse the leverage to trap his own console.
"Could it be that the reigning Champion of Unova lacks the baseline administrative capacity to compute the exact numeric parameters governing his own region's rookie registration logs?"
"If your office lacks the data to isolate the precise deficit, exactly what baseline metric was driving the Champion's psychological migraine?"
Feng Che cast a deeply mocking, thoroughly cynical gaze straight onto Alder's face, explicitly forcing the politician to lay out a definitive, uncompromised accounting before the room.
Alder tracked the shifting focus of the chamber; the sharp, analytical eyes of Grimsley, Caitlin, and Shauntal pivoted concurrently, locking onto his podium with intense, heavy silence.
A thoroughly venomous, hyper-calculating young fox... Alder cursed viciously behind his stoic mask.
"My console simply lacks real-time access to the live server decimals at this exact second... The estimated metric floats at roughly one hundred independent rookie trainers requiring an immediate allocation of starter Pokémon," Alder fabricated rapidly, throwing out a massive number to break Feng Che's bluff.
"The supreme leader of the Unova Region possesses such a profound, deep-seated devotion toward his rookie trainers... that his database cannot even retain the verified headcount of the children waiting at his gates?"
A sharp, unvarnished trace of absolute intellectual mockery sliced across the margins of Feng Che's lips, causing Alder's rustic composure to completely cave and disintegrate into a dark, blue-veined grimace.
"Regardless, my stable accepts the parameters of this challenge. Since the entire institutional apparatus of the native Unova League has proven utterly incapable of resolving a common nursery deficit... my house shall personally step forward to rewrite the ledger."
Feng Che's closing statement was a fraction of a millimeter away from openly spitting in Alder's face, branding the Champion an incompetent, deadweight bureaucrat in front of his entire Elite Four.
The exact millisecond the session adjourned, Alder's face had turned completely ash-black. He gathered his slates with furious speed, stomping out of the grand conference double-doors without allocating a single parting nod to his council.
"Feng Che, your decision to forcefully execute such an aggressive, public humiliation targeting Alder requires extreme caution. Banish any illusion that his station will abstain from launching a covert retributive campaign," Caitlin's high-purity telepathic frequency sniped smoothly across his private neural link.
"His internal psychology houses an exceptionally narrow, petty, and vindictive behavioral loop."
"According to our family records, he commands an immensely dense, deeply rooted lattice of factional relationships that have spent decades intertwining through the central bureaus of World League Headquarters. That historical armor ensures standard disciplinary actions can never breach his perimeter." Caitlin supplemented, her expression remaining deadpan.
"On a secondary note... my biological older brother has officially crossed the regional borders to set up his grid within the Unova mainland. His station has issued an explicit request to secure a private audience alongside your person."
"Jiachen?" Feng Che recalled the memory logs of the sophisticated young heir he had run with during past campaigns. "An extensive duration has expired since our paths last intersected across the tracks. Superb—route the precise coordinate markers to my slate, and my house shall coordinate a formal visit to his estate."
Feng Che closed the track with an easy, relaxed nod.
The Return of the Prodigal Heir
Three days later, Feng Che cleared the outer security perimeters to step into the grand drawing-room of Caitlin's private ancestral château, finding Jiachen waiting to receive him.
The young scion was impeccably tailored in premium, high-luxury silk garments, his posture refined and aristocratic. Anchored in absolute discipline directly behind his armchair was a formidable vanguard composed entirely of peak, high-tier Elite-tier Pokémon.
"Among the three core nodes who ran that historic campaign, your console has definitively secured the absolute peak growth curve, Feng Che," Jiachen observed with a slow, appreciative shake of his head, gesturing for a servant to pour wine.
"To think you have already successfully consolidated your leverage to claim an active Elite Four mantle within a paramount region like Unova... while my own trajectory remains locked within standard corporate parameters—operating as nothing more than a wealthy, idle young lord siphoning family dividends." Jiachen sighed, his tone a mix of genuine pride for his friend and minor aristocratic weariness.
"Your station wouldn't authorize a high-priority structural invitation to route my boots to this estate simply to run a baseline comparison of our career tracks, Jiachen. Exactly what primary strategic variable is your house looking to parse?" Feng Che inquired smoothly, swirling his glass.
"My surveying teams have successfully cracked and isolated the precise coordinates of a gargantuan, ancient Psychic-type Ruin Matrix hidden within the deep uncharted sectors of the Unovan interior."
"The classified architectural texts retrieved from the threshold state that the core vault of this megalithic monument permanently houses several independent, uncorrupted Primal Unown glyphs."
"According to our ancestral archives, the exact millisecond a human practitioner successfully siphons and integrates the raw primordial frequency of an active Primal Unown core into their neural pathways, their brain walls will undergo an immediate cosmic rewrite—permanently accelerating them to ascend as a Master-Tier Psychic."
The moment the data cleared Jiachen's lips, Feng Che casually activated a subtle, low-frequency psychokinetic scan to audit his friend's internal biological metrics.
True to his calculations, Jiachen's current energetic output had hit a hard, impenetrable ceiling—permanently gridlocked at the absolute peak boundary of the Pseudo-Master threshold. His natural psychic channel had compressed, preventing his conscious bandwidth from executing the final upward rewrite to touch the apex tiers.
"My office desires to form a unified vanguard alongside your person to force entry into this ancient Psychic monument, unlocking this legendary evolutionary opportunity concurrently."
"During our historical crucible across Death Island, my survival was entirely bankrolled by your material interventions. Had your blade not cleared the path, my life-force parameters would have permanently bottomed out inside those trenches."
"My house is handing this classified ruin coordinate to your station explicitly to balance that outstanding debt of honor," Jiachen finalized, his eyes burning with absolute, unwavering sincerity as he extended his palm.