[ Indigo Plateau ]

"Lance?"

The Champion of Kanto and Johto looked up from his chair, a little… irritated at finding Steven standing at the door. "Yes?"

"I just… wanted to debrief you about something."

"What's there to debrief anymore?" Lance scoffed. "With that Legendary in league with Team Rocket, it is a surprise that Indigo Plateau is still standing."

Steven winced. Lance had a point. If not for the information he had gained from an extremely precocious ten-year-old, the severity of the situation might have gotten to him as well. "I… might have something to persuade you to think otherwise."

Lance looked up squarely at the former Champion's face. "Come in."

"Actually," Steven interrupted, "I was hoping this… information to be discussed with the Kanto Elite being present here as well."

Lance frowned. "Bruno is unavailable at the moment. He has been… called in at the Tanoby Ruins for some… secret excavation process. They won't even tell the league what it is about."

"Something that Silph Co. and Devon Corp. are working together in. They want to keep it away from the general public at the moment."

"And you know that because?"

"My uncle heads the team."

Right. Of course. Lance stood up from his chair, his eyes flickering at the tetrahedral stone in the ring he had been wearing ever since he had become Champion. A ring… that he would never use again in his life.

"Fine. Give me a minute. I will check in with Agatha and Lorelei."

"And Sabrina," Steven stressed. "She… might be important in this."

"Very well, give me a minute. I'll give them a call."

"Actually," Steven interrupted once again, "I already did that in advance."

Lance simply raised an eyebrow. "Call them in."

[ After almost an hour later ]

"So let me get this straight," Lance tried to put things into perspective. "Our best bet to understanding a legendary's-"

'Not a legendary." Sabrina, the fifteen-year-old psychic mistress, and one of the youngest ace trainers spoke out in her usual blank tone. "The psychic is… too young to be even considered a legendary infant."

"And you know that how?" Lorelei asked.

The raven-haired psychic shrugged.

Lance felt his left eye twitch. Once again, the little girl who had managed to bag the ace trainer position was commenting without care for justification.

This… was exactly why he didn't like having the psychic mistress Sabrina in close quarters, especially not during an Elite four meeting. Usually, he had Lorelei, and recently, Steven to dispatch messages to her should the need arise.

"Alright." Lance controlled his growing irritation. For some reason, his emotional control went flying through the window when he faced the psychic girl. The fact that his Charizard had been…

Lance cleared his mind. This was no time for nostalgia. "Alright," he repeated, "not a legendary. So our best bet against this… Mewtwo, is the word of a ten-year-old kid with less experience than an average trainer?"

"I… would disagree with that, Lance." Steven put in. "Even if we were to discount all of his... interactions with the Legendaries over the last one month of his training, it must not to ignored that this… kid, with less experience than an average trainer, as you mentioned, was able to reach the Top-4 of the Clubsplosion event-"

"That does not-" Lance began.

"-and had every chance of winning the tournament should Harrison, his final opponent and a close friend, use revenge tactics to turn the tide of the battle. Besides, it is documented, both from Harrison, who for the record, is the runner-up of the event, and a trainer with over a year of experience from Hoenn- that Ash Ketchum fought against an Executive and almost defeated him. Also…" he paused, "there are reasons why I say that Ash Ketchum was the one to summon that unholy power of a Dragonite.

"He summoned him, didn't he?" Sabrina repeated. "I had been wondering." She looked up. "And how do you know this?"

Steven looked a little… troubled. "I really couldn't say."

Lance stared at the Deputy Champion for a while, squarely in the face. "Noted."

Steven nodded sharply. "Also, the psychic, as I stated earlier, know that Ash Ketchum was the one to do it, and well, has demonstrated an interest in him."

"Which you talked about in great detail." Lance summarized. "Anything else?"

Steven was taken aback. "What else do you want to know?"

Lance gave him an objective look. "I'm talking about this boy. Who is he? His parentage, and family history. What makes him so special for this Mewtwo to gain interest in him?"

Steven arched an eyebrow.

"For reasons as you stated, Ash Ketchum has been receiving special interest from the Legendaries and mythical pokémon as of late. I understand that not many of us have had the luck to encounter a legendary, and yet this kid keeps running across them like they are a dime a dozen."

Sabrina giggled at that.

"You want him tracked." Lorelei summarized.

Lance stood up from the chair. "Let me make this clear. I do not consider Ash Ketchum a threat. However, something about him does make… shifts in the legendary community, and I need to know what that is. I don't care if Ash Ketchum stands staring at a whitewashed wall all day. I am interested in who built the damn wall and who whitewashed it."

"That's some serious paranoia coming from you," Steven noted.

Lance slammed his hands on the table. "I had my entire squad hung in the air by their neck by a pokémon I never saw or heard in my life, and then had to see their necks snapped. I was the one who had to watch my Charizard… my Charizard was snapped and thrown over like yesterday's trash by a legendary pokémon who seems to get off by killing people alongside a terrorist organization. And now, you and the Kanto Elite Four want me to believe that our best bet is a ten-year-old with no apparent specialty in him except being the center of attraction for Legendaries. So, yes, Steven Stone, I am fucking paranoid and you should be as well."

Steven suppressed a sigh. "What do you want?"

"Information. Anything that you feel is relevant on this Ash Ketchum, I need it on my table. If you say he is skilled, then I need to know just where his skill stands. What is he playing for? What are his ambitions? And why does he think about the entire legendary stuff? I want it all."

"I could ask the gym leaders to give track of his battles," Steven suggested.

"Not enough. You say he trusts you right? Make use of it. Make sure he keeps in contact with you."

"He… has been offered a position as a freelance researcher in direct communication with Bill Montgomery."

Lance opened his mouth and then closed it. "Yes, information like that as well."

"And?" It was Lorelei that asked.

"And how the fuck does a no-name kid from Pallet town get into private communication with the two behemoths of the pokémon world? Devon Corp. and Silph Co., both of them?"

"Where is he now?" Sabrina asked, out of random.

"Birth Island, Recovering, he did lose his Raticate in the SS Anne."

Lance froze as he heard Steven's words who had deliberately chosen them.

"Hmmm." Lance sympathetically muttered as out of everyone in this room, he knew personally what it was like to lose your partner and then the pain that followed it. Checking out the trainer profile. "I see that you made some personal decorations to his profile."

"He saved my ass on the Anne. No offense, Lance, the kid did our jobs without asking, and without a demand. The least I could do was make things a little easier."

"His mother… is a chief that runs a restaurant" Lance arched an eyebrow as he saw the blank space where Ash's father's name should be.