Kenji and Ryota both straightened.
"We're with you, sir."
Archer nodded once, then turned his attention to the wooden crate his men had carried up from below deck. He lifted the lid himself.
Inside, resting on a bed of black velvet, was the Sea Crown, the ceremonial scepter passed down through generations of the Whirl Islands' Maya priesthood.
It looked like an ornament. Decorative, old, the kind of thing that ended up in a museum display case. Nobody who handled it regularly would have guessed what it actually was.
Archer picked it up and turned it over in his hands.
"The evil trainer who nearly destroyed Alto Mare four hundred years ago didn't have some unique personal power," he said, not looking at either of his captains. "He had this. The Sea Crown is what made him capable of standing against a Legendary Pokémon." He paused. "And then Latios sealed it. His soul became the Soul Dew, and the Soul Dew's power has been suppressing the Sea Crown's energy ever since."
Kenji stared at the scepter. "So the legends about the ancient trainer..."
"Were about whoever held this," Archer said. "The power belongs to the Crown, not the man." He set it down carefully. "To reactivate it fully, the Soul Dew's seal needs to be removed. Which means we need the Soul Dew."
Ryota was quiet for a moment. "And the fake we brought..."
"Gets placed in the Secret Garden before anyone notices the original is gone." Archer closed the crate. "The Maya priestess on the Whirl Islands has been carrying this for generations thinking it was a divine relic left behind by Lugia. She had no idea what it actually was. Neither did Lugia, for that matter, the scepter drifted into those waters after the battle and the Maya ancestors simply found it."
He looked at his two captains steadily.
"Send teams into the canals. Find the Soul Dew. Quietly."
...
Fantasy Island, same morning
"He was HERE?"
Shirō's voice bounced off the walls of the main hall. Serion, who had delivered the news with his usual composure, waited patiently for the volume to return to normal.
"Master Ash and Lady Sabrina attended your final match and departed for Johto the following afternoon," Serion confirmed.
Shirō stood with the Indigo Conference champion trophy under one arm and looked genuinely devastated. He'd wanted to present it in person. He'd had a whole thing planned.
He was still processing this when his phone buzzed. Email notification. Sender: Ash.
He opened it.
The attachment was a complete written breakdown of Tekkai, formatted as a training document, with notes on muscle conditioning sequences, chakra distribution methods, and a progression timeline. At the bottom, in Ash's handwriting, was a single line:
Watched the final. You barely qualified. Train harder.
Shirō stared at it for a long moment.
Then he laughed, loud and genuine, in a way that made Serion raise an eyebrow.
"He watched," Shirō said. "He actually watched." He tucked the phone away and looked at the trophy in his other hand. "And he still thinks I need to work harder."
"Do you?" Serion asked.
Shirō set the trophy down on the nearest table and cracked his knuckles.
"Yeah, probably."
...
Serion watched him head toward the training grounds at a near-run and turned back toward the castle.
Across the island, the barrier array surrounding Mewtwo's castle lit up, its psychic detection grid pulsing once with sharp recognition. The array was keyed exclusively to Ash's Pokémon, a layered defense that no external psychic technique could replicate or bypass.
Something, or rather several somethings, had just arrived.
Mewtwo was already at the entrance by the time the first figures came through.
"...It seems," he said, looking at what had assembled itself on his doorstep, "that I am hosting guests again."