The battle had been a joy to watch—especially Poliwhirl. Even Luana had to admit it: the Pokémon had been raised brilliantly. It could even pick out Alakazam's instant reappearance by reading the moisture in the air.
After watching the exchange a few more times, Luana finally caught the trick. Earlier, Poliwhirl had used Water Gun to boost the humidity whenever it dropped.
That meant it wasn't "sensing" Alakazam directly. It was tracking the tiny disturbance Alakazam caused in the air's moisture when it blinked into place—then locking onto that point.
It was a clever workaround. No psychic perception at all, yet it had carved out its own method.
Luana only noticed because she understood psychic sensing so well. That let her see exactly how Poliwhirl was pinning Alakazam down.
Most people wouldn't have spotted it—and even if they did, it wouldn't help. There was no time to react. Just like her, they'd still lose.
Alakazam's psychic sensing had blanketed the whole field. That was the only reason it kept slipping Poliwhirl's and Scyther's strikes, and still had the space to use Teleport at the last moment.
If it had been almost any other Pokémon, it probably wouldn't have lasted a turn before Poliwhirl knocked it out. Her Marowak went down the same way—one step slow, and it was out.
Alakazam fell for a different reason. It simply ran out. Confusion drained it too hard, and Poliwhirl finished the job.
If Alakazam had only been using Teleport, it wouldn't have collapsed so quickly. Spreading its psychic sensing across the entire arena cost far too much.
And Scyther mattered, too. That Pokémon struck fast—barely slower than Poliwhirl's first step. In a breath, it could be on Alakazam again, forcing Teleport after Teleport.
Under that nonstop pressure, Alakazam never got to breathe, let alone counterattack. It spent the whole fight getting chased.
"Luana, what other tests are there?" Reiji didn't care about the praise. Poliwhirl's strength was obvious—he knew better than anyone what it had taken to get it there, and compliments didn't change anything.
"I have a question," Luana said. "One track has a Pokémon tied to it. The other has a person. You're at the controls. What do you choose?"
Reiji almost laughed. The trolley problem?
Either answer was a trap. Save the person, and you'd be condemned for valuing humans over Pokémon. Save the Pokémon, and you'd be branded cold-blooded toward your own kind.
Sure, there was a third option.
Step off the train. Let it run on its own. Save nobody.
"Pointless," Reiji said, and turned away.
That was his answer, too: refuse the premise.
The question didn't matter. The subtext did. She wanted to reject him, but saying it outright would be ugly, so she'd made him "choose" first—then she could reject him with a reason.
People never needed the truth. They just needed a justification.
Luana watched him leave, her eyes narrowing slightly. He'd read her correctly. She didn't intend to take him in.
First, he was too good. Trainers like that already had their own ideas, their own plans. You couldn't mold them into a Gym apprentice. Put plainly: he had his own agenda, and she couldn't count on loyalty.
Second, he was an orphan. She needed time to verify who he really was. If his background checked out, she could always invite him later.
After Reiji left, Luana called the hotel manager over and told him to make a trip to the police station—and the Pokémon Center.
She wanted Reiji's registration and household record. Gyms could request it, but only with a proper reason. Otherwise, it wasn't easy to get. Everyone lived under the League, and privacy still mattered.
…
Once Reiji left the hotel, he had Darkrai keep watch on Luana to see what she did next.
If Alakazam hadn't been knocked out, he wouldn't have risked it. But with Alakazam down, the chance of Darkrai being noticed dropped sharply.
As long as it stayed hidden and didn't reveal itself, no one could spot Darkrai inside a shadow—not even if Luana had other Psychic-types.
Only a huge gap in power would give someone the slightest chance to sense it. An Alakazam like the one from that battle wasn't detecting Darkrai.
If Travis's grandpa had been at the Gym, Reiji wouldn't have dared. Old monsters like that were almost all Elite Four tier trainers.
Age didn't dull them—it sharpened them. Darkrai wouldn't fool their Pokémon, and the risk of exposure would spike.
He could've avoided the risk by not sending Darkrai at all, but he wanted an answer. His performance had been flawless, so why use a question like that to corner him?
Because there was no right answer.
Pick the human, and you violate the League's values.
Pick the Pokémon, and you're the trainer who doesn't care about people.
Refuse to pick, and you're "indecisive," "irresponsible," "afraid to face hard choices," and useless when someone needs a scapegoat.
No matter what you choose, someone can always reject you for it.
That was life here. The other side always got the final say. You either accepted it—or you walked away. There wasn't a third door for him. Not unless he had the strength to kick the table over.
Even then, what would he do? Trade one life for one? One for two? That was the only kind of "justice" he could actually deliver, and plenty of ordinary people could manage the same.
After leaving Kumquat Gym, he grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant. It was cheap enough—two dishes for 1,000 Pokédollars.
Then he found a spot for the Pokémon to eat, too. He bought three cold drinks for 1,500 Pokédollars—one for himself, one for Butterfree, and one for Poliwhirl.
Drink in hand, he wandered the beach with Butterfree and Poliwhirl, killing time in the sun while he weighed his next move and waited for Darkrai to return.
If Kumquat Gym couldn't take him because of his background, there was no point trying the other three Gyms. Navel Gym's leader was a handsome red-haired guy—Reiji doubted he'd want him either.
As for Natsukan Gym and Trovita Gym, both leaders were teenagers. They probably couldn't decide on their own. Asking their families wouldn't change the outcome. Ask or don't ask—it'd still be a no.
There were three paths to joining a Gym.
First: meet the six conditions.
Second: be observed somewhere for three years.
Third: get accepted and become a Gym apprentice.
The first path was dead on arrival. If he still couldn't join a Gym, there was no reason to go to Kanto at all.
That left the second path as his last resort. He'd settle on Pummelo Island—the Orange League's headquarters.
He'd raise and train his Pokémon there, keep his head down for three years, then make his name in one shot.
He chose Pummelo Island for another reason, too: it was close to Drake and sat at the heart of the Orange League. If Team Rocket came sniffing around, he'd have someone he could call on.
He could even try to pick up work at Pummelo Stadium. If Drake noticed him, becoming a League-certified Trainer would be far easier.
Why Drake, and not Lance?
Because Drake was the Orange League's chief trainer. He wasn't a regional Champion, and he wasn't an Elite Four member.
Fewer eyes watched him. "Strongest trainer in the Orange Archipelago" sounded big, but most people treated it as League propaganda—a public face posted here to keep the islands steady and deal with headaches like the Winner's Cup.
Local powers didn't care about Drake. Neither did groups like the Black Ship. One Black Ship faction alone had two Elite Four tier trainers—who was going to lose sleep over Drake?
He was "the strongest" in a way that didn't threaten anyone, and that made him convenient. A tool the League could point at the world.
Drake also had no roots in the Orange Archipelago. That was why he fit the role. If a local faction pushed one of their own, the League wouldn't trust them. If the League parachuted someone in, the locals would resent it.
A trainer like Drake—no backing, built up from nothing—kept both sides satisfied.
Lance wouldn't work. You couldn't pull him in, and you couldn't do backroom deals with him. If Lance needed something, he'd take it from his family and move on.
With Drake, there was room to maneuver. If he ever became a problem, the League could replace him and slot in another "acceptable" figure to keep the balance.
The position was both shield and burden. There was money in it, but it also left fingerprints behind.
If Drake stayed upright and did his job cleanly—taking only his salary—people couldn't say much. At worst, they'd call him stubborn and hard to sway.
Truthfully, Reiji hoped Drake did understand how the world worked. If Drake was willing to bend a little, Reiji could pay for a guarantee and become a League-certified Trainer.
But that carried its own risk. If Drake ever fell, anyone he'd guaranteed would be investigated, too—Reiji included.
So the plan was simple. Step one: move to Pummelo Island. Step two: watch Drake carefully. Step three: decide whether to approach him as a guarantor. If Drake's personal conduct looked dirty, Reiji would do the boring thing and wait three years. He had no interest in getting dragged down with someone else.
If Drake was truly clean, that had an upside too. A boss like that didn't sabotage his own people. And if the guarantor had no stains, the guaranteed trainers wouldn't be pulled into investigations later.
With the road mapped out, Reiji lay back on a beach chair and stared at the sky, waiting for Darkrai to return before he committed to it.
By evening, Darkrai came back from the distance. Hearing it, Reiji recalled Butterfree into its Poké Ball, took Poliwhirl with him, and left the beach to find dinner.
This time he bought a boxed meal for 500 Pokédollars and ate with Darkrai on an empty stretch of shore.
"Darkrai. What did you hear?"
"Someone's tailing you," Darkrai said. "You didn't notice?"
"I did," Reiji said. "As long as they can't hear us talk, it doesn't matter."
"After you left, that woman sent someone to the Pokémon Center to check you. They pulled your registration from the police station and the Pokémon Center."
"And then?"
"She didn't say anything. She sighed once, and let it go."
Reiji understood. He ate in silence for a moment, then let out his own quiet sigh.
So it was his background after all.
If an orphan was enough to reject him here, Navel Gym would do the same. And even without that, his training philosophy didn't match Navel Gym's style. Kumquat Gym at least judged battles. Navel Gym tested the bond and coordination between trainer and Pokémon.
The kind of battles Reiji wanted had no place there. He crossed it off completely.
That left Pummelo Island.
If it worked, good. If not, he'd keep his head down for three years.
"I saw Gulzar and the other one," Darkrai said. "They're at the Gym. Do you want to meet them?"
"No," Reiji said at once, then froze mid-bite. He looked down at the rice, stirred it quickly with his chopsticks, and forced himself to keep eating. "Not yet."
Darkrai paused. "Those two… they're being watched, aren't they?"
"They have to be," Reiji said, a bitter smile tugging at his mouth. "That kid's the Gym's prized possession. They'd protect him before they let him wander."
"That Gym is crawling with psychic aura," Darkrai said. "I almost got caught more than once."
"Forget it," Reiji said, finishing the meal. He tossed the empty box into a trash can, then headed for the harbor with Poliwhirl. "We're leaving Kumquat Island."
Rejected was fine. As long as his identity was clean—and as long as his connection to those two kids hadn't been exposed—he could find another way.
Besides, there were countless trainers called Rai. Seeing one didn't mean you'd jump straight to "Rai from Rind Island." That kind of suspicion was its own sickness.
At the harbor, he bought a ticket to Pummelo Island and left that night, planning to see what kind of trainer Drake really was.
…
Back at Kumquat Gym, two boys were battling while a crowd watched.
One was Gulzar, using Treecko. The other was Travis, using Pikachu.
Travis's mom sat in the stands, eyes on the field but mind somewhere else. She kept thinking about Reiji while she listened to a report from her people.
"Boss, I was a step late," the young man said. "That trainer already left."
He should've returned earlier, but something happened on the way. Team Rocket attacked him—the same ones from Rind Island.
They hadn't truly left. After the young man departed, they went back to Quincy. When they didn't get anything useful, they nearly killed the old man.
In the end, they backed off. Quincy was just an old guy. He'd stared death in the face and still said nothing—either he was stubborn beyond reason, or he genuinely didn't know anything about Reiji.
After that, Team Rocket tailed the young man. When they saw he was heading back to Kumquat Island and clearly didn't know where Rai was, they stopped playing patient. They ambushed him, and that delay cost him.
"It's fine," Luana said. "Don't worry about him. I have someone else—new, talented, and also an orphan. Too many question marks. I can't decide what to do."
"An orphan?" the young man repeated, then skimmed the file. "Poliwhirl? Scyther? He beat you?"
His scalp went cold.
Luana had used second-string Pokémon, sure—most of them weren't even Elite Four tier—but she hadn't thrown the match. Beating her cleanly with common Pokémon, especially a Poliwhirl, meant this Reiji was no ordinary trainer.
"He raises his Pokémon well," Luana said. "That Poliwhirl especially. Taking a normal Poliwhirl to that level… an 'orphan' doesn't explain it."
The young man watched the battle recording and sucked in a breath. Poliwhirl's timing was vicious, and that humidity sensing was unreal. "That idea… how did he even pull it off?"
"That's exactly why I don't believe it's that simple," Luana said. "Even our Gym doesn't have a method like that. So how does an orphan?"
If she took Reiji in and his motives weren't clean, whatever benefit he brought wouldn't be worth the risk. Even if he had a training method worth stealing, it wouldn't be easy to get it out of him.
"Boss," the young man said, setting the papers down, "do you want me to investigate Rind Island?"
"Go ahead and check," Luana said. "If you find nothing, drop it."
He nodded and started to leave, but someone rushed in from outside and whispered in Luana's ear.
Luana waved a hand. "Cancel it. The boy's already gone."
She dismissed the people tailing Reiji and called off the task. "He bought a ticket to Pummelo Island. No need to dig further."
Other than being an orphan, his records were clean—both in the police database and at the Pokémon Center. No crimes on paper, at least.
And since they weren't taking him anyway, investigating him further would be ugly. If his identity was fine, there was no reason to pry. If it wasn't, that was the League's problem.
Team Rocket had been unusually active in the Orange Archipelago lately—insane enough to kidnap Travis. Then a trainer like Reiji showed up, trying to join Kumquat Gym.
Maybe she was paranoid. Or maybe the timing was simply too neat.
The League was losing ground here, and part of that was on the Gyms. They hadn't exactly been eager to help. None of them wanted to get dragged into a war between the League and Team Rocket.
They preferred to wait, keep their heads down, and do the bare minimum until someone won.
If that idiot on Rind Island hadn't brought Lance down here—and handed him so much dirt in the process—they wouldn't be so cornered now.
Even if they kept dragging their feet, they'd have to show something eventually. And that was another reason she didn't dare take Reiji. If he turned around and stabbed them in the back at the wrong moment, the blame would land on Kumquat Gym—and she couldn't bear the League's wrath. She might even lose her position as Gym Leader.
Trouble was piling up, and a boy like this appearing now only made it worse. After weighing it, she chose caution.
Better to do nothing than to make the wrong move.
[End of chapter]
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