Chloé arrived with breakfast and the morning paper, which Sieg had been expecting. The expression on her face when she set them down was the specific brand of amused that only appeared when she knew something he didn't yet know and was enjoying the gap.
"You're probably going to want to read the front page," she said.
He picked it up. Felt his face do something he hadn't intended.
The headline was the Sea Mauville operation. The story covered most of the front section, carried with the breathless energy of regional news that had stumbled into something bigger than it usually handled. The description of how two trainers had dismantled a Team Aqua operation inside an abandoned underwater facility was rendered with a level of dramatic specificity that suggested the reporter had been given a great deal of help from someone who wanted the story told a certain way.
The Joy family's media interests, Sieg noted. Not subtle.
There was a sidebar interview with Cynthia, accompanied by a photograph. Her expression in the photo was doing something that might charitably be called "admiring," and the quote underneath it read: Sieg is a trainer worth respecting. He was the one who turned the situation. I have a great deal of respect for him.
Sieg put the paper down.
The whole point had been to keep a low profile. To build the League record quietly, accumulate clearance, and establish a reputation that was useful without being visible. Now he was on the front page of a regional paper with a future Sinnoh Champion quoted as vouching for him specifically, riding a wave of Joy family media amplification that would keep this story in circulation for at least a week.
He thought about Archer reading the morning briefing. He thought about what that looked like from the Rocket side of things. He thought about the phrase undercover operative and what it was supposed to mean.
There was nothing to do about it now. The only thing to do was wait and see what shape it took next.
He ate the breakfast Chloé had brought, which was good, and let himself enjoy the twenty minutes of quiet that followed. It had been a long day before it, and a long night, and the warm, uncomplicated company of someone who simply wanted to make sure he was alright had a quality that he did not make a habit of examining too closely.
He was in the middle of suggesting they go walk off breakfast when the knock came.
The investigator was Jenny by family, but the uniform was different from the standard patrol variant, darker, fewer decorative elements, the Pokéball configuration at the belt arranged for access rather than display. She stood in the doorway with the posture of someone who had delivered formal summonses before and had learned that giving people time to object was counterproductive.
"Trainer Sieg. You're formally requested. Please come with me."
She released two Charizard before he had finished processing the sentence.
They were Senior-rank, thirty-six, thirty-seven, somewhere in that bracket, which was not Elite, but Charizard at any functional level were not things you encountered in the general population. Having two as standard transport spoke to institutional resources that most Gym Leaders couldn't access on their own.
"Hey," Sieg said to Chloé, already moving. "It's the Sea Mauville follow-up. I'll be back."
He swung up onto the nearer Charizard before it had fully settled from its release, and felt the immediate, pointed displeasure of a fire-type that had not consented to this particular arrangement. The Charizard did not throw him. It expressed its position on the matter through posture alone.
Sieg reached into the dimensional ring and found what he was looking for by texture, a cluster of Energy Cubes he'd prepared for his own team, spiced to the high end of the palatable range because Krokorok had recently developed a preference for hot food and Sieg had been adjusting the batch accordingly.
He held one out at Charizard's shoulder level, within the line of its peripheral vision.
The Charizard glanced at it with the studied indifference of a Pokémon that had been well fed on quality food its entire life and had no particular interest in unknown offerings from strangers.
Then it ate the cube anyway, on the principle that declining was a different kind of indignity.
The flavor hit, and the posture changed. Not dramatically. Just slightly, in the way that fire-types shifted when something landed exactly where their palate expected it to. The Charizard's neck turned a few degrees toward Sieg with an expression that communicated it was reserving judgment but had revised its initial assessment.
Sieg rubbed the back of its neck scales in the spot behind the flame sac that fire-types generally found agreeable.
The Charizard exhaled a satisfied plume and stopped complaining.
"You spoiled my Charizard," the investigator said, with the tone of someone making a professional note.
"I gave it one cube."
"One cube of whatever that was." She examined him for a moment. "Breeder?"
"Junior level."
She accepted this and gave the takeoff command.
The Charizard launched from the Pokémon Center roof, and the city opened up below them, the buildings falling into the compact geometry of Slateport from above, the harbor visible to the south, the police activity from the previous day still visible as distant vehicle clusters along the waterfront.
Sieg noticed they were moving at altitude through the city center, which was a no-fly zone.
"City ordinance prohibits."
"I know," the investigator said.
"It says on the signs."
"I know what the signs say." She looked at him with the patient expression of someone who had been asked this question many times. "Investigator division has clearance for all restricted airspace. Urban zones, government buildings, restricted military perimeters. All of it."
Sieg processed this. "That's a substantial exception."
"That's the division." She seemed mildly pleased to explain it. "We answer to our direct superior and to no one else in the League structure. We can investigate anyone, internal officials, Gym Leaders, regional administrators, without requesting authorization from the people we're investigating. Any League official below the Champion level can be compelled to produce records." She paused. "And we can fly wherever operational necessity requires. Even if a city has put up signs saying not to."
Below them, a few people on the streets looked up at the sound of Charizard's wings.
Sieg had a reference point for institutions that operated outside normal authority structures and answered primarily to their own hierarchy. He filed the investigator division in that category and considered what it implied about the League's internal architecture, which was more complicated than its public presentation suggested, and which had apparently built itself a mechanism for investigating its own corruption that sat entirely outside its normal chain of command.
Functional, if you trusted the mechanism. Concerning if you didn't.
Twenty minutes at altitude brought them to the building on the western side of the city, a structure with the deliberate, efficient design of something built to host governance rather than commerce. There was a landing platform on the roof that had clearly been built for exactly this kind of arrival.
"This is where I leave you," the investigator said, once they touched down. "Inside, someone will take you to the meeting room."
She gave the takeoff command before he'd fully stepped clear. The Charizard that had eaten his spice cube looked back once as it lifted, with an expression that was not quite longing but was in the approximate neighborhood.
"Don't let your head get too big," the investigator told it, without looking up.
The Charizard snorted and climbed.
The building's interior had the deliberate neutrality of institutional design: quality without personality, durability over aesthetics. Sieg passed several League administrative staff in the corridors, and then the deputy mayor of Slateport, who told him something about the seniority of whoever had called this meeting.
The conference room door was closed when he reached it. He pushed it open.
The table inside was large enough to seat twelve, and most of the seats were occupied. He ran the room in one sweep.
The Mayor of Slateport. The League Vice Chairman. Wattson. Winona. Serena. Chili.
And standing by the far wall, having apparently arrived just ahead of him, was Cynthia.
Their eyes met across the table for a moment.
Neither of them said anything. They had both been in enough rooms recently to know when one required them to simply walk in and see what it wanted.