"What do you mean, aggressive? This is the standard operational pace for a studio portfolio, alright? Come on, let's take a five-minute break. Remaining locked in that exact pose for so long must have siphoned your stamina."
"Hehe, I am not experiencing a single drop of fatigue, Mr. Reed. As long as these precious little ones are crowding the set, I could maintain this schedule until the server refreshes!"
Hearing the continuous, rhythmic voices vibrating through the frosted partition, Sunday's protective boundaries snapped entirely. He threw his hand against the brass handle, angrily forcing the heavy oak door open as he strode into the room.
The words of paternal reprimand died in his throat. His elegant baritone locked up, his golden eyes dropping into an uncharacteristic, completely blank stare as his analytical modules processed the actual layout of the studio.
Julian was sitting comfortably behind a tripod, his fingers methodically clicking a high-spec optical lens. Robin was draped across a velvet studio couch, wearing a beautifully tailored, oversized pastel jacket modeled after the smooth curves of a Jigglypuff. Clutched securely in her arms was a massive, soft-pelted Wigglytuff, which she was happily cuddling against her cheek.
The immediate carpet was a playground of miniature digital assets. A high-fidelity Pikachu was lightly tugging at her lace hem, a curious Eevee was curled near her boots, a gentle Chansey stood near the backdrop props, and a couple of Skiplooms were drifting lazily near the studio rafters to scatter ambient floral particles across the frame.
Looking at the specialized lighting grids and the scattered garment racks, the reality of the situation became glaringly obvious: the two creators were running an ordinary commercial photoshoot. Sunday's memory files sluggishly replayed the promotional contract they had bantered about at the port; they were merely executing the high-fashion endorsement portfolio they had legally agreed upon. They hadn't engaged in a single unvouched personal indiscretion.
The realization left the premier director standing near the doorframe in an intensely awkward state of administrative paralysis.
"Brother?" Robin blinked, her large eyes widening in surprise as she adjusted the heavy Wigglytuff in her arms. "What has brought you down to the studio lines? Has the Great Sept logged an emergency ledger that requires my signature?"
Under normal circumstances, her brother remained locked within his central office tower, his consciousness consumed by planetary governance; he rarely crossed into her creative sector unless an administrative crisis demanded her Halovian validation.
Sunday's tongue felt like lead. He could hardly inform his sister that he had pushed a flying starskiff past the speed limits for the sole purpose of arresting an out-world developer. Tracking the soft, round ears of the Wigglytuff resting against her chest, he forced his years of diplomatic training to override his confusion, a subtle, practiced smile smoothing his features before the creators could register his panic.
"Not at all, my dear," Sunday lied smoothly, his tone descending into a warm, paternal baritone. "Did I not promise that once the quarterly financial accounts cleared my queue, I would manually carve out an evening to explore the virtual expansions alongside you? I finalized the primary ledgers this morning, so I immediately routed my vector to your studio."
"Huh? Is that true?!"
Robin's wings fluttered with an unadulterated, childish joy. Spending the afternoon interacting with the high-spec Pokémon models had already elevated her mood to peak parameters; hearing that her notoriously workaholic brother had actively cleared his schedule to join her in the sandbox felt like a double injection of happiness.
No wonder Sunday had appeared so hesitant when she volunteered to help with the family ledgers a few days ago; he hadn't been trying to exclude her, he had been engineering a surprise holiday.
"Mr. Reed..."
Robin turned a slightly apologetic look toward Julian. She had originally contracted her entire evening to finalize the marketing portfolio with him, but faced with a rare window to share a casual moment with her brother, she was incredibly reluctant to surrender the opportunity.
"Do not disrupt your alignment for the ledger, Miss Robin," Julian laughed, checking his camera battery. "The production lines aren't running on a strict timer. Go enjoy the cycle with your brother. Besides, my technical presence will remain pinned to the Daydream Hotel for the next month; we can easily finalize the remaining exposures before I clear the port."
Having spent the last few days mapping her behavioral traits, Julian held zero rigid insistence regarding the timeline. Furthermore, if Sunday could be successfully dragged into the player database through his sister's affinity, the strategic marketing value across the interstellar networks would outscale any standard fashion portfolio.
"Thank you so much, Julian! Since you've extended such a graceful margin, I shall manually erase my appearance fee from this asset sheet. You cannot refuse the adjustment, otherwise I shall calculate that you do not view me as a genuine companion."
Julian shrugged his shoulders in a helpless, amused surrender, inputting the credit correction on his ledger.
Satisfied with the terms, Robin happily linked her arm through Sunday's tailored sleeve, guiding the rigid director out the glass doors. Julian stood alone beside his tripod, watching the two Halovian silhouettes melt into the garden corridor.
"That brother-in-law's emotional data is an absolute labyrinth..." Julian murmured, shaking his head.
As a Pathstrider of Elation, his sensory perception of incoming human energy was flawless. He had clearly registered Sunday's erratic fluctuations—the transition from an initial, suffocating wave of protective wrath to an absolute blank void, sliding finally into a profound sense of administrative relief. The cognitive shifts had been absurdly rapid and entirely devoid of logical foundation.
Through his continuous interaction with Robin, he had already verified that the planetary aura of the Harmony couldn't subvert his internal emotional radar. In other words, the bizarre, protective currents radiating from the director were genuine, unshielded reality.
The Paparazzi in Silver Armor
"So... you didn't receive a physical reprimand?"
A silver-clad head suddenly popped out from behind a heavy velvet drape, a Jade Message held tightly between a pair of youthful fingers.
Julian didn't even blink; he had grown thoroughly accustomed to the shadow over the last forty-eight hours. Yanqing had been dogging his footsteps across every single sector like an unhinged, high-spec paparazzi scout. Julian had easily mapped the boy's tactical objective, choosing to let the youth follow him around with a private, knowing smirk.
"What is the strategic foundation for that query, Lieutenant?" Julian asked, packing his lenses into their foam slots. "Why would a premier corporate partner initiate a physical trade with me?"
"When that director crossed the threshold, his footsteps carried an accelerated weight and his respiratory cycles were running on an irregular baseline," Yanqing analyzed sharply, his eyes narrowing with the precision of a swordsman who had studied kinetic alignment for years. "He didn't even register my presence at the flank; his vision was locked entirely onto your coordinates. It was a classic behavioral marker for localized grievance."
The youth stepped out from the curtains, a smug, triumphant look crossing his face. "Did someone finally identify that you were attempting an unauthorized romantic alignment with his younger sister?"
"Hey, keep your vocabulary within legal boundaries, my young friend," Julian chided, a slow laugh escaping him. "That was a pristine, high-value commercial collaboration, not an unvouched flirtation."
"I can easily parse the calculations hidden behind your smile, Mr. Reed. You carry an unyielding trace of mischief," Yanqing countered, raising his phone like a strategic shield. "Unless you manually erase those files of me and Pikachu from your main directory, I shall refuse to grant you a single unmonitored window with the songstress. Furthermore, I can actively coordinate with that director to disrupt your flanking maneuvers. How does that trade sound to your ledger?"
The lieutenant calculated he had finally secured an ironclad piece of political leverage to force an equal exchange and save his honor from reaching General Jing Yuan's terminal.
"Your imagination is running on an optimized fiction loop, Lieutenant," Julian sighed, completely unbothered.
While he occasionally joked about the director's intense protective demeanor by labeling him a "brother-in-law" within his private thoughts, it was merely an ironical creator's jest. Miss Robin was undeniably an exceptional beauty, but Julian's creative processors held zero romantic interest in her profile; his aesthetic appreciation remained strictly professional.
Compared to the complex internal politics of the Halovian nobility, his personal tastes remained anchored to the timeless, comforting archetypes of his past life—preferring the unyielding, radiant warmth of a certain Pink High Elf or the perfect, domestically pristine grace of a Pink-haired Maid who could manage a household with absolute mastery.
His focus on Robin was driven entirely by her massive, unyielding commercial utility to act as the supreme marketing spearhead for the Johto expansion. But navigating a simple business friendship with an out-worlder appeared to be an impossible concept for the local guards to track.
"Tch, who would accept that data at face value?" Yanqing scoffed, crossing his arms. "The songstress is a global icon; even the common soldiers within my division occasionally express their poetic admiration for her melodies. I do not believe your processors are entirely devoid of design."
The boy emphasized his terms with a fierce nod, signaling his absolute determination to maintain a continuous, high-visibility guard on Julian's perimeter, systematically burning any opportunity for the creators to share an unmonitored room.
Julian shook his head, a wave of silent amusement washing over him. Why was it that whenever he spoke the unvarnished, logical truth, the universe chose to recalculate it as a lie?
Wait... if my memory files regarding the local lore profiles are accurate, Julian's fingers froze against his lens case as a massive narrative realization clicked into place, Mr. Sunday's behavioral matrices are notoriously logged under the 'extreme sister-protector' classification.
That explained the entire structural anomaly. The director didn't view him as a creative vision merchant; the man calculated he was dealing with a predatory, blond out-worlder attempting to run an unguided romance loop against his sister.
Should I project a mischievous Will-O-Wisp and command it to orbit his executive tower for an evening to ease his stress? The thought brought a brilliant smile back to Julian's face. Once the mystery dissolved, he archived the small incident into his trivial folders, completely unfazed by the threat of a teenage shadow.
Unpacking his memory drive, he batched the raw, high-fashion captures of Robin wrapped in her Jigglypuff jacket and dispatched the data straight to Cai Xing's terminal back on the Luofu, labeling the folder for future global marketing deployments.
"By the way, Xing," Julian typed into the sub-channel, "has the IPC Strategy Department initialized the campaign loops across the designated border systems?"
Topaz had verbally guaranteed a one-week deployment cycle during their orchard negotiation, yet more than fourteen standard days had cleared the calendar without a single marketing update appearing on the public networks.
However, the corporate director had anticipated the friction; the formal contracts had been hard-coded with a generous one-month execution safety margin, rendering her initial one-week statement a mere verbal courtesy. Julian held zero anxiety regarding the delay; should the IPC breach the structural timeline, the legal penalty clauses would grant Arceus Studio absolute, unhedged ownership of the multi-billion-credit investment funds they had already wired into his accounts for free. The single negative consequence would be a minor lag in the market saturation of the company's internal systems.
"Director Topaz dispatched an encrypted notification to our terminal this morning, sir," Cai Xing's text block bounced back instantly. "She stated that the localized regulatory frictions within the border systems will be completely resolved by tomorrow's cycle. We do not need to adjust our risk margins."
"They are the ones who should be monitoring their risk margins," Julian chuckled, his fingers flying across the keys. "In that case, package a copy of Miss Robin's newly cleared high-fashion portfolio and slide it onto her desk. Instruct her team to align the corporate campaign with this portfolio, and prepare a long-range endorsement contract for the songstress—settled strictly at full galactic market value."
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