"I just looked into the background of this project and found myself quite intrigued. Herta, you continue with your tests; I need to synthesize these thoughts."
"Oh? A mere game has captured the attention of the Great Screwllum? Why not share the data?" Herta's puppet-body tilted its head. Beyond mere curiosity, she knew that for the members of the Genius Society, a collision of perspectives was the fastest way to ignite a breakthrough.
Screwllum shook his head, the gears in his monocle whirring softly. "The hypothesis is still immature. Let us leave it at that for now." Herta shrugged, not one to press when a peer sought solitude in their research.
At the Xianzhou Stadium, Silver Wolf breathed a sigh of relief after confirming with Elio that her brief digital skirmish with the Space Station had no impact on the script. Yet, the mystery of the "Fruit Shop Part-Timer" remained a splinter in her mind.
"Julian," Silver Wolf said, her holographic projection flickering into existence directly beside him.
"Good grief! Could you stop appearing like a jump-scare? It's bad for the heart," Julian Reed muttered, giving the hacker a weary look.
"Hand over the registration data for that Part-Timer."
Julian's lips twitched. He knew Silver Wolf wasn't the type for idle requests. "What for? Planning an offline confrontation? That seems a bit excessive, even for you."
"I tried tracking him," Silver Wolf admitted, her tone uncharacteristically serious. "Something unexpected happened. I need to verify his credentials."
Julian sighed but opened the backend. He knew if he didn't provide it, she'd just brute-force her way in anyway. This was her way of showing professional courtesy. "So, what was the 'unexpected event' that left the legendary Silver Wolf at a loss?"
Silver Wolf scanned the data—obvious fakes. She recounted her trace ending at the Space Station and the formidable logic-gate firewall she encountered. "That guy isn't just a worker. He's shielded by Screwllum's personal encryption."
Julian froze. Fruit shop? Part-Timer? Space Station?
"Damn. It's Stephen Lloyd," he whispered.
He had once asked Silver Wolf to help locate the reclusive 84th member of the Genius Society. He never expected the boy to simply walk into his tournament. It made sense; Stephen's love for games was his only known hobby outside of fruit-tending.
"That... thing is a Genius Society member?" Silver Wolf stared at the comical anime avatar on the monitor. "He looks like a rejected mascot."
"He's a genius, but he's also painfully socially anxious," Julian explained. "That explains why your messages went unanswered. He was probably too terrified to hit 'reply'."
Julian stood up, his eyes bright with a new ambition. Inviting a member of the Genius Society to help expand the Pokémon ecosystem was worth more than a dozen championships. He began walking toward the player area, pondering how to approach a man who feared the very air of a conversation.
The Psychic Wall
On the main stage, the semifinal between Fu Xuan and Welt Yang was reaching its brutal conclusion.
Fu Xuan had dismantled Welt's strategy with surgical precision. While she had lost two Pokémon, Welt was down to his final partner, and his expression was one of profound distress. He had never faced a playstyle so utterly... suffocating.
The Psychic-type in this first generation was a balance nightmare. With almost no natural counters—Bug-types were statistically inferior and the only Ghost-type, Gengar, carried a Poison-type that made it weak to Psychic—it was an apex predator.
But it wasn't just the type advantage. Fu Xuan utilized Teleport to dodge physical lunges and timed her Psychic bursts with millisecond precision. She was calculating the recovery frames of Welt's moves and striking in the tiny windows where he was vulnerable.
"You can't hit her," Welt groaned inwardly as his final Pokémon fell. "Even if Silver Wolf stood here, she'd be picked apart. The version is completely unbalanced!"
The audience was in a frenzy. "Is Psychic really that broken?" "It's not just the type. Did you see her? She's playing a different game!" "Version Answer: Psychic-type! Time to go catch an Abra if you want to climb the ladder!"
Silver Wolf watched the replay with a frown. "Julian, your design for the Psychic-type is a disaster. It has no flaws."
"Psychic is strong because its counters are sparse," Julian admitted, rubbing his temples, "but the real issue is the user. I actually programmed recovery frames and cast-animations specifically to nerf Psychic moves during development."
He looked at Fu Xuan, who was calmly adjusting her hair on stage. "But Fu Xuan... she's found the 'frame-perfect' window. Her calculation ability is so high that she's bypassing the mechanical nerfs I put in place. To her, those delays literally don't exist."