“I’ve heard the Dragon Clan in Blackthorn City is determined to take the Champion’s seat in Johto,” Blaine said.

His instincts weren’t bad. He had simply never had to think on that level before. As a Gym Leader, he had never needed to concern himself with the League’s broader strategy. Those decisions had always been made far above his head.

But now that Agatha believed Amber had that kind of potential, and with the two of them backing her, then once she grew up, reaching the Champion threshold was no longer impossible.

“You heard right. Lance will take over as Kanto’s Champion,” Agatha said with a sigh.

She was one of the Elite Four herself, and she thought highly of that boy. The problem was that he was still too young.

Even if he could claim the Champion’s seat, he would still need years to build the strength needed to truly hold it. Agatha had once stepped into that realm herself. She knew exactly how vast the gap between Champion and Elite Four really was.

That child in Hoenn had been shoved into place too early as well. Those old men over there were in too much of a hurry. Kids like that still needed time to build themselves up. For them, the Champion seat came too soon.

Still, the little girl in Sinnoh had done much better than the ones here and in Hoenn. At the very least, that proved Sinnoh’s rotating League chairman was an old fox with real vision.

“Then why Kanto Champion instead of Johto Champion?” Blaine asked. “If they can push him all the way up there, why make him Champion of another region instead of their own?”

“Because Kanto Champion is the League’s bottom line,” Agatha said with a cold snort. “We’re still a League, not some clan’s private kingdom.”

And if the Dragon Clan tried to push too far, then those old-timers like her still had enough fight left in them to remind the family where the line was.

Blaine gave a dry cough and wisely stopped asking questions. This was probably brushing right up against power struggles at the top of the League, and as the Gym Leader of little Cinnabar Island, he had already asked more than enough.

“Well?” Agatha said when he fell silent.

She tapped her cane hard against the floor and pressed him for an answer.

Back in the day, old Blaine had gotten so sick of all this intrigue and factional scheming that he’d run off to the middle of nowhere and buried himself on Cinnabar Island, playing at research and living as a Gym Leader.

He had stepped away from the League’s endless noise and lived his own small life. For him, that had been freedom.

A lifetime spent fighting was still just a lifetime.

A lifetime spent living another way was also still just a lifetime.

After all these years, Agatha had learned that much too.

This proposal was hers. Whether it happened or not still depended on the stubborn old fool sitting across from her. It would be a waste to leave Amber’s talent undeveloped.

“What do you want me to say?” Blaine finally replied with a smile. “I’m just a small-time Gym Leader. There’s only so much I can do. Handle it however you think best.”

That was as good as agreement.

He was willing to help, but only in support. The real push would have to come from Agatha.

“Heh. After all these years, you’re still exactly the same,” Agatha said, shaking her head.

Blaine was still the same man who hated standing in front and preferred living tucked off in a corner somewhere.

Even so, the smile stretching toward her mouth looked more eerie than warm. It was the kind of smile only someone who had spent far too long around Ghost-types could wear naturally.

“Come on, it’s not like that,” Blaine said with an awkward laugh, trying to slide past the topic.

Back then, he really had stayed neutral and refused to join in their fights. That had been a bit cold, maybe, but all of that was ancient history now.

“Old Blaine, to show my sincerity, I’ll go to Blackthorn City myself,” Agatha said. “I’ll march into that old bastard’s den and wring a dragon out of him.”

Blaine was startled. “You think he’ll actually hand one over? That old man’s temper was vicious even back then.”

“Not hand one over?” Agatha gave one of those dark smiles again. “Relax. We’re starting at pseudo-legendary level. If he refuses, I’ll tear the Dragon’s Den down around his ears.”

“Fine. You handle it. I’m staying out of that part,” Blaine said at once.

If Agatha already had a plan, then he had no intention of getting between her and it.

The old dragon man was famous for his temper, yes. But Agatha’s temper was just as notorious. The two of them had clashed countless times when they were young.

He and Oak were the only soft-hearted fools in that old circle.

In fact, Oak probably still didn’t dare meet Agatha’s eyes even now.

After all, he had been the one who refused her in the end. If he had no intention of being with her, then he shouldn’t have spent their younger years stirring up her heart in the first place. That had been one hell of a scandal back then.

“Also, if she’s going to be our disciple, then she’ll need our signature Pokémon too,” Agatha continued briskly. “My Gengar. Your Magmar. Those need to be arranged as well.”

That was how she operated—fast, direct, already planning three steps ahead.

And she had the vision to do it.

“Don’t worry. She’ll get the very best,” Blaine said with a nod. He had no intention of treating Amber poorly.

“The very best?” Agatha gave him a look, then took out two glass-like stones.

Inside them were leaf-like patterns in red, black, and gray. The colors were strangely captivating.

She set them down where he could see and said, “Then take a look at these.”

Blaine’s eyes widened the instant he saw them. “Mega Stones? Where did you get those?”

He knew about Mega Evolution. He knew there were certain stones that could trigger it. For years, some closed-off environments had shown strange cases that people once mistook for atavism—Pokémon reverting to ancient forms.

But after a great deal of study, they had learned that these Pokémon were not reverting at all. Mega Evolution was simply one of their true forms.

Over time, lacking the right energy, they had fallen away from that form instead.

And once the environment changed, ancient-era Pokémon stopped being built for the modern world. Back then, everything evolved toward greater raw power. Now that path had become harder to sustain.

These days, survival favored adaptability and reproduction.

A species could be as powerful as it liked, but if it reproduced too slowly, it still hovered on the edge of extinction.

Magikarp, in that sense, was almost perfect.

Its survival instincts had been refined to the extreme. It reproduced fast, adapted well, had almost no meat worth eating, and had even evolved survival tricks against humans.

If there were points to hand out for pure survival strategy, Magikarp would score absurdly high.

“They were found by an exploration team in a newly opened region,” Agatha said. “That place also holds a Mega Evolution inheritance. It’s already been folded into a League research institute, and the inheritor is cooperating with the League’s studies.”

Even she couldn’t help being moved when she thought about it. The strange phenomena they had seen in their younger days had turned out to be something this extraordinary.

Pokémon evolving beyond evolution.

“Have you tested them yet?” Blaine asked, clearly excited now. “What Mega Stone is that for?”

If Agatha was willing to bring them out like this, then the research had to be at least somewhat solid already.

“It’s Gengar’s Mega Stone. I’ve tested it myself,” Agatha said, and her fingers trembled slightly. “That feeling… there aren’t words for it.”

The moment she held the Key Stone and resonated with Gengar, it felt as if the two of them had fused into one.

It was like standing on the battlefield shoulder to shoulder—not as trainer and Pokémon, but as something closer.

But Mega Evolution triggered through resonance consumed an enormous amount of mental energy. She had only been able to maintain it for a short while before being forced out.

Maybe she was simply old now.

Once the blood was stirred again, she found herself staring at that Mega Stone over and over, longing to return to that resonant state. Battle made it easiest to trigger.

She had tried many times.

She had failed most of them.

And in the end, she had no choice but to admit it.

She was old.

The future belonged to the young.

These Mega Stones belonged to the young too.

She clenched them so hard her knuckles went white, then let out a low sigh that carried all the unwillingness she never spoke aloud.

“So you mean to…” Blaine began, then stopped.

The moment he heard it was for Gengar, most of his excitement vanished. He couldn’t use it himself anyway, otherwise he would have loved to borrow it and try.

“I was planning to give it to Tania,” Agatha said. “But after seeing the little girl you brought, I changed my mind.”

She smiled, then tossed the Mega Stone and the Key Stone onto the wooden table between them as casually as if she were throwing down trash.

Blaine glanced down at Tania, who was teaching the younger students below. “That girl’s good too. Isn’t this a little unfair to her?”

“She is good,” Agatha said, looking over at her. “Her limit is probably Elite Four at best.”

Tania was family. Agatha had chosen that child herself from among their own line, and even so, she had already seen the ceiling.

“She’ll reach Elite Four if she’s lucky. No higher.”

Blaine let that pass without comment. It was Agatha’s family business, not his.

Instead, he shifted the topic. “What about the boy I brought?”

Agatha followed his gaze to Reiji below the eaves.

“A decent little thing with Water-types,” she said. “But he’s self-taught. He’s already formed his own ideas, which means his future direction is set. He’s lost the value that comes with being molded from scratch.”

“He looks like he wants to build a rain team. It’s a very commoner kind of path, but for someone like him, it’s probably the only one that can lift him onto the stage at all.”

“And you know as well as I do what the upper limit of a rain team looks like.”

Blaine laughed softly. “Underestimating him will cost you.”

At first, he had thought much the same as Agatha.

Then he fought that Gym battle.

That ordinary Poliwhirl had shattered his entire way of looking at things.

A common Pokémon he had never valued—one he would have called worthless in his own institute—had shown a burst of strength that left him stunned.

That kid’s whole team looked ordinary on paper.

Poliwhirl. Pelipper. Kingler. Rhydon. Scyther. Gyarados.

Nothing rare. Nothing glamorous.

And yet in that kid’s hands, none of them felt ordinary at all.

Even if he had never helped train the boy’s Rhydon, Blaine was convinced it would still have been raised through some strange, self-made method like that Poliwhirl had.

“You really think that highly of him?” Agatha asked.

She studied Reiji again from above, but still saw nothing outwardly special. Just a black-haired, black-eyed boy in plain clothes.

To her, even Lance was still just a boy.

Someone like Reiji, who had no name yet, was even less in her eyes.

A wild brat, at best.

“You’ll understand eventually,” Blaine said. There was no point explaining. Agatha wouldn’t believe it unless she saw it for herself.

Agatha gave a low laugh. “If you think so highly of him, then I’ll pay very close attention to tomorrow’s Gym battle. Isn’t he planning to enter the Indigo Plateau Conference? Once that happens, his placing will tell us everything.”

“If he can’t even win a children’s tournament like that, then he has no value worth cultivating.”

“Agatha, leave him alone,” Blaine said with a helpless smile. “He’s not the kind who plays by your rules.”

Anyone young who caught Agatha’s eye usually had a hard time afterward. She was strict with herself, strict with others, and strictest of all with anyone who became associated with her.

Agatha clicked her tongue. “I already have Amber. With talent like hers, you can have that brat. Besides, his typing doesn’t suit me anyway.”

Then she laughed and let Reiji’s matter drop almost at once.

Amber was all that interested her now.

She did not believe that anyone’s natural talent surpassed Amber’s. Under her guidance, the Champion’s seat would be right there for the taking.

In fact, years earlier she had once taken an interest in another little girl—Sabrina, the daughter of Saffron City’s Gym Leader.

That child had talent too.

A pity she had been ruined by that idiot running Saffron Gym. The girl’s mind had ended up damaged, and she could not even leave the Gym anymore.

What a waste.

Reiji, meanwhile, knew none of this. Down below, he was sitting there eating a popsicle and had no idea that an old man and an old woman were quietly plotting around him.

“I owe that boy,” Blaine said at last, clearly stating his position. “As long as he doesn’t tear a hole in the sky, if anything happens to him in Kanto, I’ll protect him.”

He did not explain why.

That reason belonged only to the three of them.

“Do as you like,” Agatha replied carelessly.

Still, if Blaine was willing to risk his life to protect some young trainer, then that trainer had to have something special.

She could hear it in Blaine’s tone. Whatever the two of them officially were, there was already something like a teacher-student bond there. And from the way Blaine looked at him, Agatha could tell he was already thinking of the boy that way.

The amusing part was that the boy himself clearly had no idea.

That sort of nonsense had nothing to do with her, so she had no desire to interfere.

Even so, she had remembered him now.

Very few youngsters managed to do that.

He had only managed it because he was standing in Blaine’s light, but remembered he would be.

To change the subject, Blaine asked, “How far has the Mega Stone research gotten?”

He was afraid Agatha might set her sights on Reiji otherwise. That boy was one of the best young prospects he had seen in years, and he had no intention of letting Agatha pluck that fruit right out from under him.

Though if he was honest, he had wanted to pluck Mikan Gym’s fruit himself.

Unfortunately, their types didn’t match. That was the hardest wall of all.

The only thing he had truly been able to pass on was what his Rhydon taught the boy’s Rhydon.

What happened after that would have to be taken one step at a time.

Even without his guidance, the kid was already strong. His command was sharp. He was a very good young trainer.

Where he had learned all that, Blaine had no idea.

“It hasn’t spread yet,” Agatha said. “Probably not for several more years. I only got these for testing.”

She called it “testing,” but anything that passed into her hands was never really going back.

“Mega Stones are too rare. The only source right now is excavated ruins, and eventually ruins run dry. By the time we reach the point where every Elite Four-level trainer can expect even one Mega Stone, we’ll be lucky. In the end, it’ll still come down to raw strength.”

“I see.” Blaine rubbed his chin and sighed, setting his own hopes aside. “I was thinking of studying it too. Looks like that won’t happen.”

He wondered if Team Rocket had access to Mega Stones.

Too bad they were no longer in contact.

For Amber’s sake, there was no way he could work with Team Rocket again. The only option left was to wait and read whatever papers other people published.

Agatha’s eyes had drifted while she was thinking, and eventually she noticed the gray chick sitting in Reiji’s arms.

“That little one is strange,” she said. “Found anything unusual in it?”

Zapdos was still gray.

Even though feathers had already come in, they were gray too. There was not a trace of gold anywhere. Too much Spearow blood, probably. Whatever had gone into it, that had drowned out the golden plumage completely.

“A shiny Spearow,” Blaine said dismissively. “The brat’s got a shiny Shelmet at his feet too. The kid’s luck is absurd.”

The moment Agatha heard “shiny Spearow,” she lost interest.

Even if it was shiny, Spearow was still Spearow. A common bird was not worth her attention.

Just then Amber woke up.

Whether the girl was willing to become her disciple still depended on Amber’s own wishes. If Amber refused, then Agatha’s plans to teach her, shape her, and build her future would all collapse.

Still, Amber was only a child.

Agatha was confident she could talk her around.

And with Blaine helping, persuading one little girl would not be difficult.

Down below, Reiji sat under the eaves happily chewing on his popsicle, feeling an odd chill run through him from head to toe. Sharp. Refreshing. Almost too refreshing.

If he had known the two old monsters upstairs were plotting around him—and if they had known the little gray chick in his arms was actually the Legendary Pokémon Zapdos—then he probably would have been dragged off and dissected on the spot.

No wonder that chill had gone all the way from his scalp to his feet.

Apparently the popsicle had interfered with his sixth sense.

Still, he had to admit those two old schemers were taking very good care of Amber.

He had only ever pinned his hopes for Amber on Mewtwo.

He hadn’t expected these two to come in and double the stakes.

A pseudo-legendary.

Mega Stones.

And on top of that, the three starter Pokémon Amber already had with top-tier talent.

Amber was about to take off.

What was he supposed to say to that?

Only two words really fit.

Absolutely insane.

[End of chapter]

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