The secure warehouse in Motostoke felt far too large for the number of people inside it.
Every footstep seemed to carry twice as far off the reinforced walls, and Ratchet was painfully aware of each one as he was led across the concrete floor and into the meeting room. Colin was already there, standing behind a steel desk with a ledger open in front of him, his expression sour in a way that immediately told Ratchet this was not going to be easy.
Ratchet did his best to keep his shoulders straight as he took the seat opposite him. He had been told what to say. That did not stop the sweat gathering under his jacket.
Colin looked him over for several long seconds before speaking.
"Just you today?"
Ratchet forced himself not to fidget. "You can say that."
Colin's eyes narrowed. "Then this better be worth my time."
Ratchet swallowed once, then leaned forward just enough to make himself look like he belonged there. "My client has an offer you'll want to hear."
Colin gave a short, humorless laugh. "Your client… Right..."
He tapped two fingers against the desk, then let out a dry breath.
"Last time was a good deal, I'll give you that. But now with the Fairy types, the gap between what those Pokémon were worth then and what they're worth now is ridiculous. We both know I lost a huge amount of money on that transaction."
His gaze hardened.
"So what does he want now? Because I'm not interested in buying anything that isn't Fairy type. Every fund I can move is being redirected toward Fairy-type acquisition. If your client came here to sell me anything else, he's wasting my time."
Ratchet held his gaze for a second, then said, "Three thousand Fairy-type Pokémon."
The silence that followed felt so sudden it almost seemed to ring.
Then Colin stared at him as if he had just spoken nonsense.
"No," he said flatly.
Ratchet said nothing.
Colin's expression hardened. "No. Either you are lying to my face, or someone is lying to you."
Ratchet felt the pressure in his chest tighten, but this time he did not back down. "You know who I'm working with?"
Colin did not answer.
Ratchet pressed on. "Our last deal was worth hundreds of millions. You saw the quality of that shipment yourself—high-potential stock. Real inventory. Clean transfer. This is the same client."
That made Colin hesitate, though only for a second.
"The last deal was one thing," he said. "This is another. Three thousand is not a number you say out loud unless you are trying to insult me."
Ratchet spread one hand. "Then stop hearing it as an insult and start hearing it as a chance."
Colin's jaw tightened. "Even if I believed you, which I do not, I do not have the authority to make that kind of decision on my own."
Ratchet leaned back in his chair, forcing a confidence he did not fully feel. "Then call someone who does. My client is not going to sit around while Galar decides whether it wants to be brave or stupid. If you can't move, he'll sell to another region."
That landed.
Colin went still for a moment, then shut the ledger in front of him and exhaled through his nose. "Stay here."
Without another word, he turned and left the room.
The door closed behind him with a heavy metallic thud.
Ratchet sat there alone for several minutes, listening to the sound of his own breathing and trying very hard not to think about how badly this would end if anything went wrong. He looked toward the empty doorway once, then down at his hands, then back up again.
When the door finally opened, it was not Colin who entered first.
It was Kabu.
The Gym Leader stepped into the room with the same quiet weight he carried in battle, calm and contained, but impossible to ignore. Colin followed behind him, looking no less tense than before.
Ratchet got to his feet without thinking.
Kabu studied him for a moment before speaking. "You do not inspire confidence."
Ratchet did not answer.
Kabu continued walking until he reached the desk, then rested one hand lightly against its edge and looked at him properly. "But the last shipment was real. The stock was legitimate. The Pokémon were in excellent condition, and the quantity alone was enough to make most people think twice. That is not easy to pull off."
Ratchet wet his lips. "I told him you'd see reason."
Kabu's expression did not change. "I would like to meet this client of yours."
Ratchet hesitated, partly because that hesitation fit the role he was meant to be playing, and partly because he did not actually know whether Enzo wanted to be seen. "I don't know if that will be possible," he said. "But I can ask."
Kabu gave a small nod. "Ask."
Ratchet pulled out his device and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him before placing the call.
Back inside, Colin turned to Kabu almost at once. "This is madness. Even if the number is real, the amount required will be absurd. One transfer like that will trip every financial alarm we have."
Kabu remained standing, his eyes on the shut door for a moment before answering. "And if the number is real and we let it pass?"
Colin rubbed at his temple. "We would be staking a fortune on a market that has existed publicly for less than a day."
"Yes," Kabu said. "And if it is real, that same market will not remain this cheap for even a week."
Colin frowned but did not interrupt.
Kabu went on. "The public announcement changed everything. Once the registry is published, every region will know what species to look for. Every collector, breeder, sponsor, and League office with enough money will start moving. If Galar secures a stockpile like this first, we do not simply buy Pokémon. We put ourselves ahead of the new typing before the rest of the world has even finished reacting."
Colin looked away, thinking.
Kabu's voice remained even. "It would strengthen Galar's reputation. It would give us research access, battle leverage, and visibility before anyone else can build momentum. If the last shipment was legitimate, then dismissing this one without hearing the full offer would be the greater risk."
A few moments later, the door opened again, and Ratchet stepped back inside.
"He's coming," Ratchet said.
Colin looked up sharply. "He agreed that quickly?"
Ratchet did not answer that.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then, the space near the far side of the room warped with a sudden shimmer of light, and Enzo appeared without warning.
Ratchet stood at once and moved aside. Enzo said nothing to him, only crossed the room at an unhurried pace and took the seat Ratchet had been using as though it had always belonged to him.
He looked first at Colin, then at Kabu, then briefly at the terminal on the desk.
"So," Enzo said, his tone calm but edged with impatience, "why is this taking so long? Have you decided?"
Colin's face darkened at once. "Mind your tone. You are speaking to a Gym Leader."
Enzo glanced at Kabu, then back at Colin. "I could be speaking to the Champion himself, and it would not change the question. Have you decided?"
The air in the room tightened.
Colin leaned forward. "You are not in a position to talk like that."
Enzo's expression did not shift. "I am in the exact position to talk like that. I have the stock. You want the stock. The timing is perfect. If Galar hesitates, I sell elsewhere. So I will ask again. Have you decided?"
Kabu remained silent, watching.
Colin answered instead. "We have not decided because we have no reason to trust a number that large without verification, and even if the inventory is real, there is no world in which we authorize a payment of that scale all at once. It would trigger scrutiny immediately. We would need stages, approvals, structured release, and phased payment."
"No," Enzo said.
The single word landed harder than it should have.
Colin stared at him. "No?"
"No staged payment. No repeated negotiation. No half commitment while you wait to see how the market moves." Enzo leaned forward slightly, his gaze steady. "You will assign fixed prices to every Fairy type species on the newly published registry. You will apply those prices to my inventory. And you will buy the full stock under one agreement."
Colin's expression sharpened. "That is not how deals of this size are done."
"That is how this one is done."
"And if we refuse?"
Enzo shrugged once. "Then I go to another region and let them profit from your hesitation."
The words sat in the room for a second.
Colin turned toward Kabu, looking for pushback, but the Gym Leader still had not spoken.
When he finally did, his tone was quiet enough that everyone had to listen.
"If the inventory is real, we cannot afford to let another region touch it first."
Colin looked at him. "Even at this scale?"
"Especially at this scale," Kabu replied. "The first region to secure a serious Fairy-type stockpile will define the pace of the next stage of the market. If Galar moves first, it will not just look bold. It will look ahead."
Enzo said nothing. He did not need to.
Colin's expression hardened. "If this is fake, you will not leave Galar alive."
Enzo's face remained unreadable. "Then it is fortunate for both of us that it is not."
For several long seconds, Colin said nothing.
Then he looked down at the figures on the terminal, exhaled through his nose, and finally spoke.
"Seven hundred and fifty million," he said. "That is the highest I can justify without causing a massive alarm."
Ratchet felt his pulse jump.
Across the desk, Enzo did not react immediately.
Seven hundred and fifty million.
A little over two hundred and fifty thousand per Pokémon on average.
For a bulk sale of more than three thousand Fairy types, that was good. Better than good, really.
He could threaten to sell to other regions, and if pushed, he would. But the truth was that very few regions could move this kind of money and absorb this much stock in one go without collapsing into delay, infighting, or political noise.
Galar was united when it mattered, and more importantly, it was probably the only region Giovanni had left for him.
That alone made the number worth taking.
Enzo let the silence stretch just long enough to make Colin wonder whether he was about to walk away, then finally gave a small nod.
"Accepted," he said.
The word seemed to take some of the tension out of the room, though not much.
Colin reached into a locked compartment beneath the desk and pulled out a secure black transaction card. He placed it on the metal surface between them and pushed it forward.
"Seven hundred and fifty million," he said again. "Transferred and verified. Once the stock is confirmed, this deal is final."
Enzo picked up the card, checked it once, then slipped it into his jacket.
"Pleasure doing business with you," he said.
Before Colin could answer, Enzo sent a signal with his TR device.
A pulse of psychic distortion rippled through the far side of the room, and a second later, Hypno appeared out of nowhere, its yellow eyes glowing faintly as it stood beside a full transport pallet stacked with more than three thousand Poké Balls in locked rows.
Every person in the room froze.
Even Colin, who had already approved the transaction, stared at the pallet with hope.
Kabu said nothing, but the shift in his eyes made it clear that even he had not expected the stock to appear so fast.
Enzo rose from his chair.
"The full shipment," he said calmly. "Exactly as promised."
Hypno's gaze passed once over the room, then settled back on Enzo.
Without another word, Enzo stepped back toward Ratchet.
Then, with one final glance at Colin and Kabu, Enzo spoke.
"It was a pleasure doing business with Galar."
Hypno's psychic power flared.
A heartbeat later, Enzo, Ratchet, and Hypno vanished from the warehouse entirely, leaving Colin, Kabu, and the League staff alone in the cold room with a pallet containing one of the most valuable Fairy type stockpiles in the world right now.
The cold steel walls of Motostoke vanished in a pulse of psychic distortion, and a second later, Enzo was already recalling Hypno back into its Poké Ball.
Without wasting time, he asked Porygon Z to take them to the camp. A burst of warped space wrapped around him and Ratchet, and the next thing either of them saw was the familiar clearing of the camp.
The reaction was immediate.
Every head turned the second they appeared.
Ronnie was already halfway to his feet. Viper looked up sharply from where he had been sitting, and even Proton, who usually had more restraint than the others, was staring at Enzo with narrowed eyes and obvious expectation.
Beside them, Anna had leaned forward without even realizing it, her eyes bright with curiosity as she looked from Enzo to Ratchet and back again, as if she were trying to guess the answer before he said it out loud.
The whole camp seemed to tighten at once, every pair of eyes fixed on him, waiting for the answer before anyone even asked the question aloud.
Enzo brought Hypno back out again and order him to go tajke care of the nine pikachus and chamender still in the container, before turning toward the group.
He gave a small shrug.
No one spoke for a second.
Then Ronnie took a step forward. "Well?"
Enzo shrugged again, as if he had just returned from something mildly inconvenient rather than one of the biggest deals of their lives.
Viper's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that."
Enzo said nothing.
The silence stretched.
Ronnie was practically vibrating now. Proton crossed his arms, though even he was watching too closely to pretend he was calm, and Viper finally clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Come on," Viper said. "Spit it out already."
Enzo looked from one face to the next, enjoying it far more than he should have. Then, with the same infuriating calm, he said, "Nothing much. Just seven hundred and fifty million."
For half a second, nobody reacted.
Then the camp exploded.
Ronnie was the first to move. He shouted so loudly that one of the nearby Pokémon startled, then charged straight at Enzo and grabbed him in a rough, breathless celebration. Proton followed a second later, far less restrained than usual, catching Enzo from the other side as the two of them nearly crushed him between them in their excitement.
Anna clapped both hands together, laughing in pure delight, her whole face lighting up as she bounced where she stood, too happy to even pretend she was staying calm.
Viper threw his head back with a sharp laugh, the kind that came out when disbelief and satisfaction hit at the same time. "You did it, kid!"
Even the two Alolan Raticates on the ground seemed to react to the energy of the camp.
One second, they were still snapping at each other over scraps, and the next they had lunged forward and wrapped their short, heavy bodies around one another in what looked absurdly close to a clumsy embrace. It lasted all of two seconds before they immediately started fighting again.
Around them, the entire mood of the camp changed in an instant.
Months of work.
Months of hunting, buying, moving, hiding, planning, and waiting.
It had all paid off.
A little apart from the others, Ratchet watched the celebration without saying a word.
The sight of Ronnie and Proton grabbing Enzo like that, of Anna clapping with that open happiness on her face, of Viper laughing without restraint, of even the damn Raticates somehow joining in, stirred something in his chest he did not quite know what to do with.
For a brief moment, he found himself thinking that he would not have minded belonging to something like this.
He said nothing.
Viper stepped closer and slapped Enzo on the shoulder hard enough to make the gesture feel almost like a blow. "That's what I'm talking about," he said with a grin.
Enzo let the noise wash over the camp for a few moments before looking at Ratchet.
"How much do you still owe?"
The question cut through the high of the moment so sharply that Ratchet blinked.
"What?"
"Your debts," Enzo said. "How much?"
Ratchet hesitated, then ran a hand through his hair. "I... I'd need to make a list."
"Then make one."
The camp slowly quieted again as Ratchet crouched down, pulled out his device, and started going through names, numbers, and old obligations with a face that grew more uncomfortable the longer he worked. What had sounded manageable in his own head for so long began to look uglier when it was all written down in one place.
When he finally finished, he handed the total over.
Enzo took one look at it and frowned.
"Fifty-five million?" Enzo said.
Ratchet gave a weak nod, his eyes dropping to the ground. "My father was a gambling man. When he died, the debts didn't die with him. I inherited them, and I tried to pay them off the only way I knew how. Gambling. Scamming. Anything that brought in money fast." He shook his head faintly. "Looking back, it wasn't exactly a smart plan."
Enzo stared at him for a moment, then let out a short laugh.
"No," he said. "It really wasn't."
Enzo turned toward Proton and held out the transaction card.
"Take him," he said. "Use this to clear every debt Ratchet has."
Proton took the card and glanced at it once before slipping it away. "All of them?"
"All of them," Enzo said. His voice lost some of its earlier ease and turned colder. "And if any of them try to squeeze more out of him, kill them. Make it clear Ratchet is not someone they get to intimidate or control anymore. They either accept the payment, or they die."
Proton's mouth curled into a satisfied smile.
"Got it," he said, then jerked his head toward Ratchet. "Come on."
Ratchet did not move at first.
He just stood there staring at Enzo, as if he had not fully understood what had just happened. In his entire life, no one had ever stepped in for him like that. No one had ever cut through the chains around his neck and called it simple. The emotion that rose in his chest hit him so suddenly that it twisted his already ugly face into something even worse.
Then, before anyone could say anything, Ratchet lowered his head and made a deep bow toward Enzo.
"Thank you," he said, his voice rougher than usual.
Enzo waved it off.
"There's no need to thank me," he said. "You were useful in this deal, and I plan to keep using you. I need a contact in Galar, and you've already proven you can handle yourself well enough."
Ratchet lifted his head again, and this time the gratitude in his eyes mixed with something steadier.
"I accept," he said.
Before the moment could grow too heavy, Ronnie stepped forward.
Ratchet instinctively tensed. Usually, whenever Ronnie got that close, a punch to the stomach followed a second later. But this time the green-haired grunt only gave him a crooked grin, winked once, and smacked him hard across the back.
Ratchet blinked.
Then, slowly, that ugly smile of his spread across his face.
Without another word, he turned and followed Proton out of the camp.
Once they were gone, the atmosphere around the clearing shifted again, turning looser than before. The deal was done. The money was in hand. The stock was gone.
For the first time in a long while, they could actually breathe.
Enzo's secure device buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
The sender made his eyes sharpen at once.
It was Giovanni.
Enzo opened the message.
"Well done, Enzo. When you come back from Galar, come and visit me."
For a second, he said nothing, just smiled. Viper noticed immediately and asked, "What?"
Enzo looked up from the screen and said, "Giovanni."
Viper's grin widened. "Directly?"
Enzo gave a small nod.
Enzo looked back down at the screen once more, then locked the device and slipped it away.
That message could mean two things.
A reward or a mission or both…
By the time Proton and Ratchet returned to the camp, the light was already starting to fade.
Ratchet came in wearing the kind of smile that did not suit his face at all, broad and unguarded in a way that made him look almost ridiculous, but nobody there knew him well enough to laugh at it straight away.
His shoulders seemed looser than before, his steps lighter, and for the first time since joining them, he did not look like a man waiting for the next hand to close around his throat.
Proton walked beside him with his usual expression, calm and unreadable, as though they had merely gone out to buy supplies instead of settling years' worth of dirt, fear, and unpaid blood.
Enzo was the first to notice the difference. "Well?"
Ratchet did not even let Proton answer. "I'm free," he said, and the words came out too quickly, too brightly, as if he needed to hear them aloud to believe them himself.
He laughed once under his breath, then shook his head. "Actually free."
That got everyone's attention properly.
From the fifty-five million hanging over him, only twenty-four had actually needed to be paid. The rest had folded under pressure, accepted less, backed down, or decided very suddenly that they had no interest in arguing once Proton made it clear how the conversation was going to end.
Ratchet told it badly, too fast, still riding the high of it, but the meaning came through well enough. By the end of it, even Anna was smiling, Ronnie was grinning openly, and Viper had the look of someone deeply pleased by a job done with the right amount of force.
Ratchet let out another disbelieving breath and ran a hand over his face. "I swear, I feel like a new man."
Enzo let that sit for a moment before answering.
"That feeling is going to disappear very quickly unless you start thinking."
The words landed hard enough to strip most of the warmth from Ratchet's face. He looked over at Enzo, confused at first, then uneasy when he found no hint of a joke there.
Enzo remained where he was, calm as ever, but his eyes had sharpened in a way that made it clear this was no longer the time for celebration. Ratchet had been useful, yes, and today had gone better than any of them could have reasonably expected, but that did not change the fact that he had just walked into a new kind of danger without understanding a word of it.
"You were the face of that deal," Enzo said. "Not me. You."
Ratchet frowned, still not following.
"To everyone who matters in the wrong circles," Enzo continued, "you are now the man connected to one of the biggest Fairy-type transactions Galar has seen. They know you were involved, they know money moved through you, and they know you are close enough to whoever made it happen that you might be useful."
The smile on Ratchet's face had disappeared completely by then.
Enzo did not rush the explanation. He let each part settle where it needed to, because panic worked best when a man had just enough time to understand why he should be afraid.
"That means every greedy criminal, every desperate broker, every parasite who thinks he can make a living leaning on weaker men is going to look at you and see opportunity. Some will think you are rich. Some will think you have access. Some will think that if they threaten you, beat you, follow you, or squeeze you hard enough, they can reach the people above you through your neck."
Ratchet had gone very still.
The camp had too.
It was one thing to hear that his debts were gone. It was another to realize that the same event which had cut the chains off him had also painted him into a visible position for the first time in his life. Before this, he had been prey because he was weak and owed money. Now he risked becoming prey because people would assume he had value.
"What do I do?" he asked, and for all the relief he had come back wearing, his voice sounded thinner now.
"You make sure nobody can touch you cheaply," Enzo said. "You get strong Pokémon, real protection. Then you build a layer around yourself. A few subordinates. Nothing large, but enough that people cannot simply walk up to you whenever they want. And after that, you start paying for information, because a man in your position does not survive by waiting to discover trouble when it is already standing in front of him."
By the time Enzo finished, Ratchet looked as though someone had opened a trapdoor beneath the good mood he had been standing on.
"So that's it?" he said. "I pay off the debts, and five minutes later, I need guards, muscle, information networks, and stronger Pokémon just to stay alive?"
"Yes," Enzo said, with no sympathy in his voice at all. "That is exactly it."
That got a short laugh out of Viper.
Ratchet did not even argue.
His debts were gone, and for the first time in his life, he did not belong to the men who had owned pieces of him one payment at a time.
Now he just had to survive being worth something.
Gathering the squad near the center of the camp, Enzo waited until he had everyone's attention before speaking.
He looked at Ratchet first. "Go into Motostoke and find us a private club for tonight. I want the whole place. No strangers. No interruptions."
Ratchet blinked, then nodded quickly.
Enzo turned to Anna next. "And you book us rooms. Prime Suites, best hotel you can find. Don't be cheap."
Anna's eyes widened. "All of us?"
"All of us," Enzo said.
Ronnie nearly exploded on the spot, throwing both fists into the air with a shout loud enough to send a few nearby Pokémon scrambling. "Let's go!"
Proton, unsurprisingly, did not look nearly as convinced. He stepped forward with a frown already forming. "That sounds like a bad idea."
Ronnie groaned at once. "Oh, come on."
Proton ignored him and kept his eyes on Enzo. "We just pulled off a deal worth hundreds of millions in a foreign region, and Ratchet is now publicly tied to it. Throwing a party right after that is exactly how people get noticed, followed, robbed, or worse. And on top of that, we all know things never end well when you get drunk."
Enzo folded his arms. "We've been living in the forest for months."
"And that was safer," Proton replied.
For a second, the two of them held each other's gaze.
Then Enzo slapped a hand against the crate beside him, not hard enough to startle anyone, but enough to cut through the brewing argument.
"No," he said. "We are not doing this today."
Proton's expression hardened slightly.
Enzo went on. "We worked for this. All of us. Months of stress, planning, hiding, buying, moving, and sleeping on dirt. We are taking one night. One. We celebrate, we breathe, and tomorrow we go back to being careful."
That got a reaction.
Viper, who had been leaning against a tree off to the side, let out a short laugh and pushed himself upright. "He's got a point."
Proton glanced at him.
Viper shrugged. "What? You want to make seven hundred and fifty million and then go straight back to staring at tents and canned food like monks? We're Rockets, not accountants."
Ronnie burst out laughing.
Viper grinned wider. "Besides, spending a stupid amount of dirty money on alcohol after a big score sounds exactly like the Team Rocket way."
That got even Proton to exhale through his nose in defeat.
Enzo smirked faintly. "Good, that's my boy. Then it's settled."
He looked around at the group. "You've got the rest of the afternoon. Do what you want. Rest, train, clean yourselves up, whatever. Be at the club by nine."
Ronnie looked like he was ready to sprint into the city that very second. Anna was still smiling to herself at the thought of an actual hotel. Ratchet had already pulled out his device, clearly taking the job far more seriously than before. Even Proton, though unconvinced, had stopped arguing.
Little by little, the camp emptied.
Once the others had gone, the clearing finally fell quiet.
Enzo remained where he was for a few seconds, listening to the fading sounds of the camp as the squad scattered to prepare for the night ahead. When he was the only one left there, he got up and headed toward the hidden container.
The metal box sat half swallowed by the surrounding vegetation, concealed well enough that anyone passing nearby would have taken it for another shape in the forest unless they knew exactly where to look. Enzo stepped closer and opened it, finding Hypno inside, together with the rest of the stored supplies.
"Everyone fed?" Enzo asked.
Hypno gave a slow nod.
Satisfied, Enzo returned Hypno to its Poké Ball, then moved quickly through the rest of the container.
One by one, he packed away the nine Pikachus and the Charmander into his backpack, making sure nothing valuable was left behind.
Once that was done, he checked the remaining contents a final time. Only Pokémon food, cooking supplies, and the equipment from the portable laboratory remained.
That was acceptable.
He locked the container, then spent the next few minutes pulling branches, loose growth, and surrounding vegetation back into place until the metal surface disappeared once more into the natural clutter of the forest floor.
Only then did he call out Corviknight.
The large steel bird landed with a heavy beat of wings, and Enzo climbed onto its back without hesitation
With a sharp command, Corviknight took to the air and carried him toward the city.