PARAGON

  Unknown Enemy Arc [11]

  Chapter 97 : Infiltration

  Alola Region - Heahea City

  “I’m terribly sorry, we only have one room available, and it only has one bed!”

  Ash and Sabrina glanced at each other.

  Ash had wanted to scope out the Hano Grand Resort where Cynthia had been meeting Zelda Leora, and though Sabrina eventually talked him out of immediate action, they’d come to Akala Island anyway and were currently trying to procure lodging in a quiet district of town.

  “You don’t have a single other room? Or at least another bed?” Ash asked, trying not to raise his voice and make a scene. Sabrina was cloaking them in a psychic field that made them difficult to recognize and he had his cap pulled low over his face, but they weren’t entirely imperceptible.

  “My apologies, sir! We’re nearly fully booked because of the Akala Golf Tour this weekend!”

  For what it was worth, the guy at the front desk did seem apologetic. He was bowing so low his head was almost touching the desk.

  Ash sighed. If we were still working with Interpol, Cynthia could’ve hooked us up with one of their safehouses.

  The receptionist looked between the two nervously. “I’m sorry if I’m putting you in a compromising situation, sir. I understand the HR guidelines on male and female coworkers. If you’d give me the name of the company you work for, I’d be happy to give them a call and explain—“

  “That won’t be necessary,” Ash growled.

  Sabrina bumped Ash’s shoulder. “It’s fine.”

  So she said, but she was looking at the floor and her cheeks were tinged pink.

  Ash took a deep breath. “Alright, we’ll take it. Thank you.”

  The bellhop was apologizing to them the entire way to their room but Ash was too tired to offer reassurances. The flight from Johto to Alola atop Noivern’s back had been exhausting enough, but they’d ridden Lapras from Poni Island to Akala Island, and even though Ash could tell Lapras had tried to make the trip as smooth as possible, his bumpy shell wasn’t exactly conducive to longer voyages.

  Especially sharing the limited space with Sabrina.

  He knew she could use her Minior (and Mew too, he supposed) to get around, but for some reason, she’d elected to stick with him on Noivern and Lapras.

  Their room was relatively small and had no couch or pullout that Ash could separate himself on. The room was only slightly bigger than their bedrooms back on Paragon Island, but at least it had a balcony that overlooked the quiet streets outside, though they were no more than a couple stories off the ground. And despite the size of this particular motel, everything looked clean and well-kept. Alolan hospitality, perhaps.

  Immediately after the bellhop left, Ash strode over and threw the curtains to the balcony closed. Afternoon was starting to bleed into evening, so Sabrina flicked on the lights in lieu of natural sunlight.

  “Sorry about this,” Ash said, releasing Pikachu from his pokéball. The mouse shuddered and scowled, but Ash couldn’t exactly have him out as usual.

  “It’s not a big deal. We spent a lot of time together in Hisui.”

  Yeah, but we never slept in the same bed.

  Ash decided not to say that aloud, and luckily, judging by her neutral facial expression, Sabrina hadn’t read his mind either.

  “I’ll order us dinner,” he said nonchalantly, passing her a menu on the bedside table.

  The silence was agonizing. After a while, Ash swore he could hear the blood running through his veins as he sat on the bed, waiting for Sabrina to pick her meal. The only sound to break the humming drone of the phone or air conditioning or whatever it was that made that sound in hotels was Sabrina flipping the menu over again and again and again.

  It wasn’t until Ash’s stomach gurgled that Sabrina snapped from her reverie.

  “Oh! Sorry! Here, you can pick first…” She handed him the menu gingerly.

  “Didn’t see anything you like?” he asked, accepting it cautiously.

  After a quick peruse, it seemed they just had the usual motel fare—sandwiches, burgers, soup, salads—though most had an Alolan twist. Sabrina never really seemed like a particularly picky eater so he was a bit surprised.

  “Sorry…quick question.”

  Ash looked up, already having decided on his meal. Pikachu was peeking over his shoulder and seemed entranced by a ketchup bottle included in the picture of the burger.

  “Does this count as our date?”

  Ash’s chest jolted. Oh, right. Truth be told, with everything that’d happened recently, he hadn’t even considered that they were alone and about to enjoy a meal together, which technically fit every parameter of the date he’d proposed.

  He instinctively scratched the back of his head. “Well…I…I wanted to take you somewhere nicer than this… And with everything going on, I don’t know how enjoyable this will be…

  For some reason, Sabrina seemed to deflate a bit at that answer.

  Ash felt his face heat up as his heart started pounding. Wrong answer… How to salvage this…

  “I mean…I guess we can call this our first date… But I promise…I’ll line something else up, once we’re no longer on the run.”

  Sabrina held up her pinky. Despite her muted, though reddened, expression, her gauntlet raced around her wrist, and her jaw was locked tight, probably in an effort to ignore it.

  Ash entwined his pinky with hers and squeezed.

  Then she leaned forward.

  He thought she was going in to kiss him, but she leaned past his face, next to his ear.

  “That means you have to be there when this is all over,” Sabrina whispered. “You can’t do anything reckless against Zelda.”

  She squeezed his pinky one more time then released him before he could protest.

  Turning away, she picked up the menu again. “I’ll get the mango salad.”

  Ash took a bit too long to respond. “O-Oh, right! I’ll put in the order!”

  That meant a call to the lobby downstairs. While they waited, Sabrina took the opportunity to shower, leaving Ash stewing alone in his thoughts. It was impossible to ignore the situation he currently found himself in, or the joy it brought him, but there was a nagging guilt that came with it, tempering his indulgence. He and Sabrina were on a date while the others in Paragon were hard at work tracking down Cynthia’s murderer? It was difficult to take pleasure in that reality.

  Sabrina emerged from the bathroom dressed in an oversized t-shirt and floral sweats she’d pilfered (teleported) from a tourist shop as they’d passed by. Her hair was damp and her cheeks were rosy, and Ash had to bite his lip to keep his jaw from dropping.

  She was adorable.

  Luckily, Pikachu pounced on her before she had a chance to realize he was staring, and he quickly looked away. It wasn’t like he’d never seen her like this…well, actually he hadn’t. She always teleported from the bathroom to her bedroom back on Paragon Island. The closest he’d gotten was the few times they’d bathed back in Hisui after finding a river or lake. Obviously, he’d seen her with wet hair then, but it was back into the Survey Corps uniform for all of them after washing up, so it didn’t stand out as much.

  His nose twitched as the scent of her coconut shampoo wafted past him.

  He closed his eyes and knocked his forehead. Get it together…

  Luckily, the food arrived a couple minutes later, and they waited for the bellhop to leave before pulling their dishes inside.

  Both of them were starving, so after pulling their respective domes off their meals, dinner commenced in silence.

  Pikachu and Sabrina’s Alakazam ate their pokémon food from bowls at the other end of the room. Pikachu seemed to be trying to make conversation, but Alakazam sounded like he was only offering one-word answers, or whatever the pokémon equivalent of that was.

  “Does Mew eat pokémon food too?” Ash eventually asked, breaking the silence.

  Sabrina swallowed a forkful of salad. “She doesn’t need to. But I feed her anyway because she wants it sometimes.”

  Ash was eyeing Sabrina’s food as she ate. It looked good. Smelled good. There was some sort of sweet-looking vinaigrette drizzled over it and he was confident the mangos were locally sourced. But roasted chickpeas, avocado, edamame… Where was the protein? The meat? The carbs?

  Ash had gotten two burgers. Certainly not a good look, especially for a date, but Sabrina had already seen far too much of his eating habits over the years for him to try and pretend to be anything but a total glutton now. And at the pace he was eating, he’d be done with both, and his sweet potato fries before she finished her salad.

  He made a conscious decision to slow down.

  Difficult, since the teriyaki in the burger made every bite heavenly.

  Then he had an idea.

  “Wanna try a bite?”

  Sabrina looked at him like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I mean…yeah. But…”

  Sabrina studied him, and Ash raised the burger toward her as if to prove he was serious.

  Still looking unconvinced, Sabrina leaned forward and took a small bite from the other side. Immediately, her eyes lit up.

  “That’s really good!”

  “Right? I could probably eat a third one to be honest.”

  Sabrina looked appalled, but it morphed into a laugh.

  “What?” He took a slightly insecure bite of his burger. “By the way, have you heard from Decidueye yet? Or any of the others?”

  Sabrina shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Let’s hope no news is good news. At the very least, I hope N has found Sylvester.”

  Sabrina’s expression darkened. “Someone should have gone with him.”

  Ash swallowed his bite and hesitated to take another. “I’m sure he can handle it by himself.”

  “But still…” Sabrina nibbled at her salad. “Thank you, by the way.”

  Ash glanced up. “Hm? For what?”

  “Before…” Sabrina blushed and looked away. “About the psychic needles… You said you’d go with me to cover for me, right?”

  Ash pursed his lips. “Sabrina…”

  “I know it’s not right, and I’m sorry. I don’t even remember what I was thinking when I did it… It doesn’t feel like something I’d even consider now. But… And it’s just…inhuman.”

  Ash narrowed his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

  “Well, it is,” Sabrina protested, her eyes shimmering. “You saw how Zinnia looked at me… Even Anabel… It was…betrayal. I might as well have told them I don’t trust them enough to take care of themselves. I…I’ve been looking down on them, I realized… It’s the dollhouse all over again.”

  The dollhouse.

  When Ash had challenged Gym Leader Sabrina all those years ago, she’d turned his friends into dolls with her psychic powers, or hypnotized them into thinking they’d been, and made them into her playthings. That was after her mind had split into two conflicting egos, that of an innocent girl and a sadistic sociopath. The “dollhouse” was the twisted result of those egos conjoining.

  “It’s nothing like that,” Ash said firmly. “The reason behind it is completely different.”

  “I need to apologize…” Sabrina murmured, unconvinced.

  Ash bit his lip. He had a card to play. But it was something he’d been hiding from Sabrina. Hiding from everyone. Even Pikachu.

  “Can I confess something?”

  Sabrina’s head jolted toward him and she sat up straight. “Y-Yeah.”

  A fragile smile settled on his lips. “Sorry. Nothing romantic this time. It’s just…what you said about looking down on the others reminded me of something.”

  The anxious blush faded from Sabrina’s face, but she remained attentive.

  “Obviously, I have five Plates now. You may have noticed I haven’t used them much since I got them. In Hisui, I was training with them all the time, but not anymore. It’s not because it’s too much for me or anything, I promise. It’s…the opposite.”

  Ash met Sabrina’s gaze. “I can barely hold myself back. All the time, it feels like power is about to burst out of my skin. I may look calm, but it’s because I’ve been making a conscious effort to look that way.” He rubbed the back of his head, messing up this thick mane of hair. “I feel like…I’m losing my humanity. Every problem we’ve faced since returning…I feel like I could snap my fingers and solve it with violence.”

  Fear colored the corners of Ash’s eyes. “It’s changing the way I look at the others. Where once I saw friends, now I see…” His eyes clenched closed with shame. “…weakness.” Then, his voice barely above a whisper. “It feels like I could kill them if I’m not careful.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  Sabrina’s gaze was resolute. She did not look away.

  “How can you be sure? How can I?”

  “I’ll stop you.”

  Ash leaned back and sighed. “Even you… If I lost control…”

  Sabrina’s eye twitched. “You look down on me too?”

  “Sabrina, I… It’s not me, it’s the Plates. Even with your power, even you’d—“

  “Do you think you’re stronger than me?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The question sliced through Ash’s misgivings. He was forced to stop and consider it. Reconsider it. But after a few moments, he shrugged. “I mean…yeah. These are Arceus’ Plates. I just have this feeling, this instinct, that—“

  “You can’t defeat me.”

  Ash frowned. But Sabrina’s face showed no signs of bravado. No pride, even.

  “Whenever you start thinking we’re so weak you’d stomp over us like ants, I’ll remind you that we’re not. Every time. Until you stop thinking it. I’ll remind you…that you’re human just like…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Ash laid hand over hers, where it rested on the table. Gently, tenderly. Warmly.

  “Like you,” he said. “And if you start thinking some nonsense about us, I’ll remind you too.”

  “Nonsense…” Sabrina smiled. “Yeah, it’s nonsense.” Her thumb brushed the back of his hand, still hesitant. “When we get back together, I’ll remove the needles. I want to walk forward as true friends… As equals.”

  Ash’s hand clapped the back of his head. “Not mine.”

  Sabrina faltered. “What?”

  “Not mine,” Ash repeated. “I wanna keep mine. And honestly, you should ask the others about it first too. You might be surprised.”

  Sabrina flushed with embarrassment and nodded timidly, burying herself in her salad again to avoid eye contact.

  “Though I am kinda curious what it looks like.”

  As if on cue, Gengar popped out of Ash’s head in a dramatic burst of shadow and saliva, tongue flopping around as he laughed. Between his fingers, he held the psychic needle like a cigarette, a tenuous amethyst spike that glinted as it caught the soft light of the hotel room. After taking a long and dramatic drag on the “cigarette,” Gengar threw it back into his master’s skull like a dart, bid adieu to a nonexistent audience, then plunged back into Ash’s body, disappearing.

  Sabrina offered a slow clap.

  “Pretty cool looking,” Ash said through a bite of burger.

  He ended up giving the rest to Sabrina. Their extended talk had given the first burger time to digest, and after hearing Sabrina’s stomach growl even after cleaning her plate, Ash parted with the rest of his second (“My mom always told me to wait and let my food digest to see if I was actually still hungry… Not that I ever listened to her on that, but maybe she was onto something…”).

  Sabrina wolfed it down, and after realizing she’d already showered for the night, seemed to regret dirtying her face again with teriyaki sauce. Ash let her use the bathroom first before dipping inside to clean up.

  Tomorrow, they’d enter the Hano Grand Resort.

  It was bold enough sleeping in the same city as one of Zelda Leora’s hangouts, especially one she’d been spending more time than usual at. But this was their only concrete lead. Ditto’s trail had gone cold instantly, and unless they got more info from one of their friends, this was quite literally all they had to go on.

  In truth, Ash hadn’t gone with Sabrina just because he wanted to cover for her, or even just to spend more time with her. The thinking was that if Zelda was here, and they ended up in a fight, and she was too much to handle, Ash and Sabrina would have enough firepower between the two of them to at least get away.

  Ash cursed himself for looking down on the others’ strength, but after witnessing her performance first-hand in Hisui, Sabrina was a difficult partner to turn down.

  After she emerged from the bathroom, Ash entered, trying not to look awkward, but his heart pounded with anticipation. The last thing he wanted to do was make her uncomfortable, but he couldn’t pretend like he was completely opposed to this situation.

  The lights were still on when he got out and Sabrina was standing in front of the bed doing nothing. She jumped at the sound of the door, and her gauntlet flashed.

  “Sorry,” Ash mumbled. He walked over to the light switch and flicked it off, plunging the room into darkness. “You can pick a side.”

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw Sabrina move robotically over to the side furthest from him. She flipped the sheets over, slipped underneath, then pulled them up to her neck in three mechanical motions.

  Ash strode over and slowly got inside, being careful not to touch her or move the bed too much. The blankets covered her gauntlet but Ash could hear a muffled whir as he shifted himself within the sheets.

  And then there was silence.

  Silence and darkness.

  They were close enough now that the smell of her shampoo was omnipresent.

  “You're stressed out, Ash.”

  Sabrina’s voice cut through the silence.

  “Yeah.”

  No point in trying to hide his emotions from her. It probably felt like she was sleeping next to a firecracker with how hard his heart was palpitating.

  “I thought you’d be used to this sort of thing by now. Didn’t you use to sleep together with your friends all the time when you were on your journey?”

  “I guess. But that was different. It was a lot of camping outside, and there were always at least three of us. Like in Hisui.”

  “Hm.”

  Sabrina rustled beneath the sheets, turning toward him, and Ash’s heart took a plunge into his stomach.

  “Sorry if I’m acting stiff,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know what I should be doing in this sort of situation.”

  “O-Oh, don’t worry about it. I told you before but I’ve never done anything like this either so I don’t know what I’m doing either.”

  “‘Anything like this…’ What do you mean by that?”

  Sabrina’s bold side came out at the strangest times. It always seemed to coincide with when Ash was at his most vulnerable.

  He didn’t want to let her keep catching him off guard.

  “Sharing a bed with a girl,” he said as flatly as possible. “Of course.”

  “H-Hm.”

  As he was wondering if that was the right move, to go and say it out loud, Sabrina spoke up again.

  “Ash, I’m sure you know already, but I’m a very strange person. I’m not saying that to be self-deprecating. It’s just true. Even though I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about myself lately, there is still a lot I’m unsure about. I still don’t know if I possess certain feelings that I assume everyone else has.”

  “I’m sure everyone thinks like that to some extent. I know I do. You might be overestimating ‘everyone else.’ Not that I’m speaking from experience, but understanding feelings like this takes time. I hope you know it’s not something you have to rush into. I can be patient. As long as it takes, I’ll be here until you understand what you’re feeling.”

  “T-Thank you. That’s comforting to hear… But actually, I think my worry is that I may not be as patient as you. For as much as I still don’t understand myself, there are certain feelings I am sure about.”

  Ash flinched as Sabrina grasped his hand beneath the covers.

  “I just wanted to say all that so you don’t become disillusioned with the way I am later on.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible at this point,” he breathed out.

  I love you far too much for that.

  “Either way…I’ll try and be as patient as possible. I know we have a job to do right now. But…I just wanted you to know that…at least in this way…I’m just as human as anyone else…I think.”

  Her fingers fell between his.

  “So since you can’t sense my emotions exactly like I can for you, I'll be honest and tell you I’m even more nervous than you. But I don’t want to ruin anything, so I decided I’m just going to tell you exactly how I feel.”

  Ash closed his fingers around hers and brushed the back of her hand. “I’ll do the same, then. Honestly, I don’t want to disgrace Cynthia or any of our friends by doing things out of order. But it’s getting harder and harder for me to pretend like I don’t want to.”

  “Like with the Plates?”

  Ash chuckled. “Harder than the Plates. But even more than disrespecting them, I don’t want what we have to be tainted by what we’re about to do. What we’re about to face. So…I think as long as we’re walking side by side, we’ll be able to protect what we have until it has the time and space to grow into…whatever comes next.”

  “Whatever comes next…” Sabrina repeated. “And how long will that ‘whatever comes next’ last?”

  Even in the darkness, Sabrina’s eyes glinted, and Ash didn’t look away from them. Couldn’t look away from them.

  “Forever.”

  Alola Region - Aether Paradise

  Ezra squinted as he stepped off the boat, shielding his eyes. He was Alolan, so was used to the sun, but he was also a recluse, so he sported no tan like most others. He also, somehow, didn’t own a pair of sunglasses.

  Raichu surfed up beside him, giggling at his discomfort.

  Even with his gaze cast down, Ezra couldn’t escape the blinding sun. It reflected off the glittering waves and the stark white of the ground beneath him, allowing no reprieve for even a moment. Resigning himself to his fate, he faced forward again and followed the rest of the tour group.

  Aether Paradise was the manmade island at the center of Alola that housed the operations of the Aether Foundation. It was the largest organization in the region, and probably what Alola was most well known for, aside from its sun and sand. The Aether Foundation had a number of programs, but their main focus seemed to be on pokémon health care.

  That was not why Ezra was here.

  Needless to say, as the most influential figure in Alola, Zelda Leora had her hands all over the Aether Foundation, but she didn’t make it obvious. She’d been one of the Foundation’s angel investors prior to its inception, and had been a consistent funder of their operations ever since. Initially, Ezra hadn’t considered the Aether Foundation an area of interest, since Zelda’s contributions had seemed comparably small to some of her other investments. But after Ash Ketchum’s visit, he’d decided to take another look just for due diligence.

  It’d been a headache to chart everything out, but Ezra discovered an entire network of tiny charities and funds quietly funneling money into the Aether Foundation’s coffers annually, all with a connection to Zelda Leora. She was on the board for some, the primary benefactor for the chairmen of others, and the primary stakeholder of investment funds that comprised nearly the entire balance sheets of others still. In other words, her contributions were far higher than Ezra had initially thought.

  Instead of investigating this charity or that charity, he’d decided to take a field trip straight to the final destination for all that money.

  And the best part was, all he had to do was walk through the front door. No sneaking around required.

  Once inside, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief as he was hit with a blast of air conditioning. The air stank of sea and silicon, and Ezra ignored the droning of their tour guide to study his surroundings instead.

  The lobby was a vast concrete plane of various work stations, all enclosed by clear plastic walling. Scientists and their assistants huddled around desks and instruments, everyone working on something different. One group was doing something with some sort of plant, another seemed to be treating a wild Passimian, while another wielded pipettes and vials and didn’t even bother to glance up at the approaching tour group.

  Ezra wasn’t impressed.

  It wasn’t like these were all actors, but they were clearly set up here just for the tours. Aether Paradise had entire floors dedicated to the pursuit of single projects; that any of their real work was being performed on this level was almost laughable. Not to mention everything they worked on that couldn’t be seen by the public. They had proprietary medicine and technology housed here. Trial findings and research material that many, including overseas institutions, would be fiending for. Just behind their benevolent fa?ade, Ezra knew the Aether Foundation maintained a cold and ruthless security force to protect its many secrets. His friends on the internet called it a private army, and it basically was.

  Raichu growled beside him and Ezra smiled. The mouse was always itching for a fight, but they weren’t here for that either. Not if they could help it.

  Eventually, the tour guide invited them to split up and take a look around on their own. As he moved toward the back of the room, he could hear the others on the tour asking questions and exclaiming their excitement in echoing voices.

  “Nice Raichu, kid! Wanna see our exhibit on Aether Paradise’s solar array?” a Foundation employee called to him as he passed.

  “Oh, thanks! Uh, no thanks, maybe another time!” He waved politely but didn’t slow down.

  His destination was a quiet help desk at the edge of the room. The employee looked up as he got close and he swallowed. He could do a lot, but interfacing with others wasn’t his strong suit, especially when he had to lie. Plus, this employee was a pretty woman. Though Ezra tended to think that about most women he saw.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked quietly.

  “Hi…I have to write a paper for school about how the Aether Foundation decides which projects to pursue… Do you have an exhibit for that…or someone I can talk to who’d know about that?”

  The employee frowned, and for a moment Ezra was scared she didn’t believe him.

  “Hmmm, I’m not sure. Give me one moment.”

  As she started flipping through what was surely a directory of everything they had on this floor, her coworker beside her slid over and started whispering in her ear. Another woman. Pretty as well.

  Before long, the one helping him swatted her coworker away and faced Ezra again. “I’m sorry, sir. It doesn’t look like we have an exhibit quite like that. I’m going to try and see if I can call someone from another department who might be able to answer your questions.”

  “Thank you!” Ezra chirped.

  As the phone rang, her coworker whapped her on the shoulder. “C’mon, just do it! It’s for you too.”

  “Enough. I’m not doing that.”

  “C’mooon!”

  But after seeing her coworker wouldn’t budge, the mischievous one turned on Ezra with a grin, and he felt himself blush.

  “Hey, boy! How would you like to speak to our head of research and development? I’m sure he’d be able to answer all your questions!”

  Are you kidding?

  “Y-Yes! That’d be amazing! That’s perfect!”

  “See?” The woman slapped her friend’s arm again. “Just call him. If anyone can get it, it’s that baldy!”

  The first employee deadpanned, then clicked the hang up button before redialing a different number. “One moment please, sir.”

  Her friend giggled and winked. Ezra smiled nervously.

  “Hello, sir. Thank you. Yes, I have a student here who has questions about the Foundation’s fund allocation. Yes. Yes. No. Yes, I’m sure. Thank you, sir.”

  She hung up and sighed. “He’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Thank you so much!”

  “No problem, kid!” The mischievous one flashed a thumbs up, then pushed herself back in front of her own desk.

  This was almost too good to be true. Ezra had planned on getting ahold of a grant officer at best and grilling them about the Foundation’s projects. His goal was to find out which one was the most expensive, as that was probably what all of Zelda’s investment was for. Financial statements and reports could be easily massaged to present a particular impression of the Foundation’s activities, but someone inside would actually know where they spent most of their attention. Even if they couldn’t say a word about it, it’d come across in their body language what they spent most of their work day agonizing over. Even if all he got was a codename—actually, that was all he expected—he could continue his research alone from there. He just needed a tip off.

  “I must say I expected someone older!” came a baritone voice.

  A man in a pristine white lab coat and neon green sunglasses strode toward the help desk. As advertised, he was balding, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Afternoon, ladies,” he said once he arrived at the desk. “I hope the sun hasn’t been too harsh on you.”

  The first employee grunted.

  “Oh, no, we’re totally fine, sir!” said the second. “But…just to make sure we don’t get dehydrated…maybe we could use a juice machine back here…” She batted puppy dog eyes up at the man.

  That would’ve worked on Ezra.

  “Ah, of course, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir! Mango passionfruit is my favorite by the way!”

  The man nodded. “Now, then. I am Faba, head of R&D here at the Aether Foundation! Always glad to see the youth take an interest in our work.” He offered a hand.

  “I’m Ezra, sir. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day for me.” He shook Faba’s hand.

  “Of course not. I have knowledge, and that knowledge should be spread.” He motioned away from the desk. “Let’s walk as we talk. I want you to get your money’s worth.”

  Ezra followed.

  “Quite the characters we have working here, huh? But such vibrancy brings a man like me great joy, so I end up spoiling them a bit more than I should.”

  “They were very helpful,” Ezra agreed.

  Faba turned an eye on him. “So, I hear you’re curious about the Foundation’s grant allocation. Your school must have quite the rigorous curriculum. Where are you going?”

  “A-Ah, it’s a local school. I’m from the Seafolk Village. I don’t think you will have heard of it.”

  He did attend a local school back home, albeit sparingly, but its curriculum could barely be called a curriculum at all, let alone rigorous. Most days, they were set loose to simply train or even just play with their pokémon.

  “Ah, I see. I’ve always said Alola’s youth were the brightest. You can keep your Jubi-Techs and Blueberries and Naranjas! I believe in homegrown intelligence!”

  “Thank you, sir…” Ezra slung his backpack around and pulled out a notebook. “I looked on your website but I didn’t see anything specific. Not on individual projects, at least.”

  “Nor would you,” Faba said, a proud glint in his eye. “We have hundreds of ongoing projects. In fact, we just began another this morning. A certain fungus has been eating away at some of the ivy on Melemele Island so we’re working on a vaccine for it. You may think, ‘oh, it’s just a bit of ivy, who cares?’ But the local Bounsweet and Fomantis depend on it for nutrients, and if something happens to them… Well, that’s how entire ecosystems fall into disarray.”

  “I see… So, if possible, could you tell me about the biggest projects you have going at the moment?”

  They were all confidential, but even the ones just under them that weren’t had to have something to do with the ones that were. Ezra could extrapolate on what he learned, and drawing conclusions would be easier after Ash Ketchum had basically confirmed that Zelda Leora commanded a far more nefarious influence on the world than she let on, specifically in regard to her influence over the International Police.

  “Well, I can’t talk about anything I’m not allowed to, but I can certainly give you some background. Of course we have our pharmaceutical practice. As you may already know, we’ve developed a number of pokémon medicines. The latest hyper potion actually uses some of our research. We also have our botanical arm. Alola in particular is home to many species of plants and other flora, and our goal is to preserve as much of it as we can. And both of those previous missions get rolled up into the next: pokémon preservation. We take in injured and endangered pokémon and rehabilitate them directly at our facilities.”

  Ezra bit his lip as Faba rattled on but this was all stuff he already knew. This was the corporate answer. He wanted Faba’s answer.

  “Doesn’t it get boring?” Ezra asked. “Doing the same three things every day?”

  Faba laughed. “It’s far more than three things, Ezra. Since we’ve been working on those three missions for so long, they’ve become streamlined, for the most part. I actually don’t have that much involvement in them these days.”

  “So what do you do then?”

  Faba paused and narrowed his eyes. “You’re a shrewd young man, aren’t you. Well, there is one more large project where I’ve been spending much of my time lately, but it’s one of those I can’t talk about.”

  “Please, sir!” Ezra pleaded. “I really need to make this paper a good one so I don’t fail out!” It sounded stupid, especially since he actually needed the info so he could help a wanted criminal pursue Alola’s top elite, but hopefully Faba believed him.

  Faba held his gaze for several long seconds, but a smile soon flicked onto his face. “Well, I suppose I can give you a hint. This isn’t even technically confidential, it’s just not well-known to the public.”

  Ezra nodded, urging him to continue.

  “We recently developed a special type of pokéball, and we’ve already made sales to a handful of organizations. A special type of pokéball for a very special type of pokémon. I can send you some of the related promotional material, though you’ll have to promise not to post it online. If you did, we’d have to sue you into oblivion!”

  He laughed, but Ezra had to keep himself from smiling too hard.

  “I promise!”

  Faba kept his word and sent over a handful of internal documents. There’d been rumors about this particular project of theirs on the internet for a while, and nothing Faba sent him could be considered ground-breaking. But it revealed that the Aether Foundation was spending far more time and resources into this than Ezra and his friends had assumed. These were not the activities of a company building out a new arm of their business. If anything, they’d been at this even longer than the other three arms Faba had mentioned.

  Several sleepless nights later, Ezra had compiled a dossier of information ready to be sent to Ash Ketchum. And this information would prove useful indeed.

  Lethal, even. To Zelda Leora.

  Next — Chapter 98 : Secret War