CHAPTER 154

"Argh… Fuck it, I'm staying," Luca said, his face full of anxiety.

"Are you— are you sure?" Denzel stammered.

"Yeah. I got spooked… hell, I'm still spooked, but this is too big to ignore. I'm sticking around," Luca said with a resolute tone.

Denzel nodded and hurriedly texted the group chat to update them on the situation.

"So we have confirmation of the teleportation theory and that Harry's connected to the Hunters. With how isolationist they were described by everyone in this Arceus damned town, we can assume that he's getting help from them and that he's important somehow," I said. "There's no way they'd let him on the second floor otherwise."

"Maybe he really is dating one of 'em," Luca said.

"Maybe. We can't be sure yet," I shook my head.

"Can't we report him to someone?" Denzel asked.

"He hasn't really done anything wrong yet. None of them have," Cecilia said. "Just being teleported around and invited into a home isn't wrong. The Elder captured your Cutiefly because we were explicitly breaking the rules, and no harm was done to us. They're clean."

"Damn it, you're right."

"They appear clean on the outside, but we know the truth," Luca said with a smug smile. "I want to bring them down. I want my fuckin' name in the history books."

Ignoring his questionable motives, I interjected. "We need to relax for the time being. No more attempts to sneak in with Cutiefly, or the Hunters will know we're up to something. Hell, they probably already suspect you," I nodded toward Luca. "You need to lay low. We still need to figure out what the hell that thing with BattleZone was, so we can take a little break and pivot toward them. If we can make the whole thing fit, I'll be a lot less anxious."

"It's possible that it doesn't fit, Grace," Denzel said. "There are… a lot of actors involved. Can we really expect them to have the same agenda?"

"Fair point," Luca said.

"Isaac told us the Hunters were like a cult. Reggie and Lane bowed when the Elder showed up," I retorted.

"But it's still possible," Cece said. "We can't base all of our assumptions on a single interaction. We barely saw any other members of the family, we don't know if there's a faction that's against whatever is going on. The same applies for BattleZone. It's like Josephine told us, right? With large groups and conspiracies like this, it's always factions within factions."

"You're right. Let's just… get back for now. We can have another group meeting tonight when everyone's battles are done. I'm just going to wait around until Harry's fight to see what he's about. His next opponent's a four-badger, so hopefully the battle can last longer so I can I learn more about him."

"Don't let Pauline hear you say that," Denzel teased.

"Don't snitch," I said. "I think I'll go meet her soon, actually. Luca, I guess you're leaving back to your job?"

By his job, I was obviously referring to his information brokering.

"Wait, are we just going to ignore whatever the hell that Shiftry was?" Luca scoffed. "That wasn't… that wasn't a move, right? I'm not that good of a battler."

"No, it wasn't," Denzel frowned. "That Elder's a lot better than he looks at first glance. I don't know how strong that Shiftry is, but it's definitely better than anything we have."

"Which is why battling is off the table," I said. "We figure out evidence that could sink them and tip off the media if it's just cheating in a tournament. If it's worse like I'm beginning to suspect… then we call the League."

Grim grunts of affirmation rang out throughout the group. Luca left soon afterward. He told us that he was changing his usual spot since it used to be next to the Hunters' property. Needless to say, he was too scared to stick around any longer. We arrived back to the Center around the time Lauren would be battling, and Maeve would be next. Louis and Justin had apparently won their battles, although I didn't know much about what had gone on. Denzel had checked it out via video on the way there, and Louis had won by the skin of his teeth. His Gible carried him and he managed to beat a person with four badges. If he wanted to get better, he'd have to start relying on his other Pokemon a lot more.

"Did you see what Justin said?" Denzel asked as we stepped into the elevator.

"No. You told me he won, is he okay?"

"He says that he's fucked next round— I'm obviously paraphrasing," he laughed. "He's got to make it through another guy with five badges to win his next battle. That's unlucky as hell, with how few of them there are."

"Yeah… it sucks," I sighed. "Not much he can do about it but prepare as best he can. If he loses, then it'll be a learning opportunity."

Denzel's words made me pull out my phone and look at the bracket once more. Specifically, Harry Rodriguez's position. After easily making it through that first battle thanks to probable rigging… none of his opponents would ever have more than four badges until he got a lot further in. His path to the top sixteen had been cleared, and I had no doubt that they expected him to roll through me, so they expected him to go further still.

Yeah, BattleZone was in on this. I was sure of it.

"I'm gonna go see Pauline, then I'm going to snoop around BattleZone," I said. "You guys coming?"

"Sure, why not," Denzel shrugged.

"Sorry, I need to spend some more time with Golett. He needs to get more used to acting like a living being."

"Hey, he's technically not alive," Denzel snorted.

We both playfully hit him in the back, causing him to yelp.

"Did you need to do that?"

"Well, we need to keep the mood up, don't we?" I laughed. I turned to Cecilia. "See you later?"

"Mhm."

I stood on my tip-toes to kiss her and I felt her hands rest on my hips. "I love you."

"Me too. Call me if anything happens."

—

Pauline's room was a mess. There were empty packs of snacks all over the floor, something had spilled on the carpet, and even though it was still the afternoon, the blinds were closed shut, only allowing thin beams of light through. Pauline herself looked fine. She stared at us from her bed and grunted.

"What happened here?" I asked. "Are you okay—"

The culprit soon revealed himself. Vigoroth jumped from under her bed and I flinched, expecting him to claw at me. Instead, he simply ravaged through the room, clawing at the carpet, the walls and jumping everywhere.

"Just when I finally got him to calm down, you woke him up," she sighed. "Denzel, I thought I told you to knock. You use that key double way too much."

"You're the one that told me you didn't care if I had one. Actually wait, you're gaslighting me. You wanted me to have one."

"That's… yeah you're right, I'm just pissed."

"Why are we just having a conversation when there's a crazy Vigoroth going around?!" I yelled. "You're lucky I didn't have my Togetic out! Recall him!"

"Oh boy, Princess would have freaked out," Denzel chuckled. "Probably would have choked him out or something."

"I shouldn't have to accommodate your bloodthirsty Togetic in my room. Anyway, I looked it up online! I need to get him used to staying in rooms and stuff. Eventually he'll stop being like this—" she stopped, ducking to avoid a soda can. "My terrible eating habits are catching up to me. Anyway, I need to get Vigoroth used to rooms."

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"The Pokedex said that it never stops being excited," I groaned.

"There's a difference between this and how he'll be when I train him properly. Hey, Vigoroth!"

The normal type stopped for a single second, grunted at Pauline, and then continued on his rampage. The redhead sighed and recalled him.

"I feel bad for the people that are going to have to clean this up," I sighed. "How are you feeling?"

"Shitty."

"Fair enough. Did you see what happened at the Hunters' mansion?" I asked. "We sent it on the group chat, but you didn't reply."

"I did… I wish I'd been there. You guys, Cece and Louis have been moving on your own for a few days and we've been feeling left out," Pauline said. "Except Maeve. She's a bit of a wet blanket, so she just wants to keep her head down."

"That's fair," Denzel admitted. "But to be honest, it's a lot easier to work in smaller groups."

"So work with us," she said. "We can organize. I'm out of the tournament, so I have a lot of free time. I feel useless out here."

"Sorry. You know what, why don't you come with us? We were going to gather some info after this, but we can go right now if you want," I said.

She beamed. "Fuck yes! Let's let them know what we're made of!"

"I was thinking more of a lowkey operation…"

—

If someone had told me that Pauline could be extremely polite when she wanted to, I would have called them a liar. In fact, I would have laughed in their face and maybe even called them an idiot.

"So BattleZone's been around for fifty years? Wow, that's impressive," she smiled at a supervisor. "Where'd you guys get your start? You know, we don't hear a lot about how these tournaments are actually organized. I feel like we should appreciate the work that goes into them more."

Denzel and I looked on, trying to hide our stupefaction. Apparently, even he hadn't expected this. We were currently in the building the Hunters has built for the tournament and the same place we'd signed up at. It was rather empty these days. Trainers mostly came here to announce their lineup to a supervisor or lodge complaints about the tournament, but employees still milled about.

"I like you, kid," the man smiled. "I only started working here three years ago, but it's tough work. You've got to fly out wherever they decide to organize the next tournament, the hours are long, kids scream at you for the brackets being unfair… but at least the pay is good."

"Super interesting," Pauline said. "But where did you get your start?"

"Oh, sorry I forgot to answer that. Erm, it was Solaceon, funnily enough. We don't do tournaments here much, but the higher-ups felt like this would make a lot of money. As long as I get paid," he sighed.

My eyes narrowed at that. Solaceon was BattleZone's birthplace, and now that I knew how much influence the Hunters wielded, that was all I needed to know that the people at the top might be content to listen to whatever the hell that family wanted. We had seen Harry on the second floor of the mansion, so I knew that he was working with the Hunters. The link was there. The two entities working together was basically confirmed. Now all we needed to figure out were these two things:

One, why the hell would they want Harry Rodriguez to win?

Two, why make the rigging so obvious at the start? If they weren't going to keep helping Harry along and only needed to stop him from fighting that one battle, why the hell would they make that girl that had been supposed to fight Pauline resign?

If we solved these two questions, we would get to the bottom of this entire fiasco. That was a lot easier said than done. Denzel discreetly nudged Pauline, and she kept going, stopping her small talk to initiate another one of our predetermined questions.

"What brought this cooperation with the Hunters about?" She asked with a soft voice.

"I don't know about that," the supervisor shrugged. "Well, I do know that our old CEO had some kind of connection with the Hunters. They were old friends or something and the relationship between the two companies is good, but recently there's been—"

"What's his name?!" I exclaimed.

The supervisor turned to frown at me.

"Sorry," I coughed.

"If you wanted to know so bad, you could have just looked it up. Adrian Navarro, but he's kaput now. New boss wanted to do a friendly gesture and run the tournament there— especially since the Hunters could cover some of the costs."

Damn it, not a Hunter. Well, it made sense in a way. I doubted that the Elder would allow anyone in their family to get out and start their own business, no matter how successful it could have been. Now that I knew that the Elder and this Adrian had known each other personally, all of my remaining doubts vanished.

"You're the first kids that have come here with such an interest in how we run things. Why's that?"

I swallowed, but Pauline sprung up. "You might have heard of how I got screwed by two resignations. I just got curious, that's all."

"Yeah… sorry about that," he scratched his head. "People're saying that we rigged it for that Harry fellow, but it's just the luck of the dice. I've been telling people that the proper way to run the tourneys when this happens is to delay the match, but they don't want to."

"That was shitty for sure," Denzel nodded. "And a shitty way to run a tournament."

"They always say that you should read the fine print," he shrugged. "People usually like the fast pace. No delays, no bullshit, usually cheap entry. It was raised here due to the rewards though."

"At least I got half of my ticket paid back," Pauline said.

"Wait, what?" The supervisor frowned.

"I got paid back. I knew it! I should have gotten more than half, shouldn't I? It should have been a full refund—"

"That's not our usual policy. BattleZone might have been using out-of-the-box rules, but they technically weren't in the wrong. We're following the rules we set… so why were you reimbursed? Are you kids playing a prank?"

A woman called out to him. "Phil, can you hand me the battle schedule? I think I lost mine, we've got to make more copies."

"Yes! It was just a prank!" I yelled. "Sorry, it was my idea. I guess it was too obvious."

"Sure thing," he said. "Well, I've got to get back to work. You kids get outta here."

We inconspicuously walked out of the building, and I released Togetic as a guard.

"What the hell was that?" Pauline asked. "I was buttering him up for you guys!"

"No, we needed to leave. Don't you get it? You were paid off to stay quiet, Pauline. The person who refunded you went against company policy… that means that some low-leveled employees know about this!"

So why had this guy not known? I had thought that there was no way for mere supervisors to be in on this, but now, that was no longer the case. Josephine's voice rang out in my mind. Factions. It was possible to turn back and tell this employee everything, but there were other supervisors hanging about. What if one that was in on it was listening in? Even worse, he could bring it up to a higher-up and reveal this to the wrong person. It was better to keep this to ourselves.

Or maybe I was growing too paranoid.

"Holy shit," she muttered. "They obviously don't know me if they think that money's going to get me to quiet down. Especially with how cheap they were. Half reimbursed? Really?"

"Yes. Holy shit. Now this is important. Denzel, you went with her with Justin. Did you get the person's name? Or do you just remember their face?"

Pauline shook her head and Denzel groaned, rubbing his chin.

"I'm coming up blank, but he was a shortish guy, I guess. Brown hair is all I remember."

"That doesn't help at all… does Justin remember?"

"Let me shoot him a message."

Two minutes later, Justin answered with a no, and our spirits deflated like a popped balloon. If we knew what he looked like, we could have probably figured out his name and gotten Luca to spy on him, since he wasn't a Hunter.

"Damn it," I hissed.

"Sorry, Grace," Pauline said.

"No, it's not your fault. I can't expect you to remember some random guy's face," I said. "It'd be like asking me to remember a person we passed on the way here. Unless you knew they were important, you weren't going to remember them. It's just frustrating. Every time I feel like we're getting close, it turns out that it goes deeper… whatever, we'll get there," I sighed. "What the hell was that acting, by the way?"

"Impressed?" She smugly said. "I'm good at being a nice girl."

"How…?" Denzel asked.

"What did you think I did when mommy told me to play nice whenever I met her business partners' kids?"

"Ignore her and terrorize the other kids?"

"And sink her business? Please. All it'd take was for little Jimmy to complain that I was mean to him and any deal would fall through. I just don't do it anymore because it's fake. I hate that shit. People hated me for it, but I can be real with you guys."

I paused for a few seconds and smiled. "Thanks for the help. I don't think I would have been able to act like that at all, and Denzel's a terrible liar."

"Right? He's way too sweet to lie," she laughed before turning toward him. "Look at him. He's blushing! Are you embarrassed?"

"Shut up."

—

The entire group sat, waiting for Harry Rodriguez to fight his second battle. Him battling with Pauline immediately had screwed the schedule a little bit, so it had taken a bit more time for the organizers to recalibrate everything. I had almost expected there to be some shenanigans again, but this time, he was actually battling his designated opponent. Harry released his looming Torterra and his Pelipper this time, while his opponent released a Venomoth and a Heatmor, which was a terrible starting lineup for him. Pelipper would screw over that Heatmor with Drizzle, and Venomoth would lose to its flying type attacks.

But I knew that he was just trying his best to deal with Torterra with poison and fire.

Surprisingly, it wasn't as one-sided as I thought, but Harry still won handily. Torterra almost fainted due to the sheer amount of Sludge Bombs and Flamethrowers it had taken, but it still stood strong by the end of it. Harry's opponent had sent out a Corvisquire and a Boldore second, and I understood now why he hadn't started with those. They were simply too weak to hurt Harry's Pokemon and were being held back by their lack of evolution. Boldore was too slow to dodge attacks, but not tough enough to brush them off. Corvisquire was quick, but it couldn't outpace Pelipper for long.

He fell quickly after that.

I had gotten a lot of good information from that battle, even if I'd wanted to learn more about Luxray and Crobat instead. When Harry fought in doubles, he liked to pair his Torterra with a flying type to take full advantage of Earthquake. That meant that Luxray would probably never come out first, since Harry always started with Torterra. His starter was his anchor. It was impossible for him to fight without it.

Pelipper's Drizzle was more powerful than I'd given it credit for in the videos. It was like the Rocky Field had been subject to a storm and completely flooded. Still, it was less powerful than what I'd have to face tomorrow. Vaporeon's Rain Dance would be a test run for this. If I could handle that, then Drizzle wouldn't be an issue.

That night, I stayed up on my phone, waiting to see if Luca was going to send any texts, but he didn't. We were seemingly at an impasse for now. There was no way to look deeper into the Hunters, and the person we needed to find in BattleZone could be any of the employees. Still, we sent a vague description to Luca in hopes that he'd be able to find something. I ended up having to stop when the light kept waking Cecilia up, even if she was pretending to be asleep still. I could feel her shifting, since she was squeezing me like a pillow.

Not that I disliked that.

Oh well. Tomorrow was another day. I would get to the bottom of this come hell or high water.

And it would start with offering a deal to Sunshine after my battle. I had an offer he couldn't refuse.