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There was one major, unspoken rule between the Gym Leaders and Elite Four after they’d been informed of the incoming meteor: Don’t look at what Devon is doing.
Devon Corp, generally viewed as a conglomerate supplying the majority of Hoenn’s everyday technology – smartwatches, fridges, toasters – was using the additional funding from the Trainer Circuit, pocket money from the Champion – working with scientists on deep-sea exploration, on cave excavations, on space shuttles. Which was incredible work for the science scene within the region, no doubt pushed by Steven’s vested interest in geology (and him being the heir of the company).
As of late, though, the very thought of Devon makes Wallace sick.
It’s late at night. The wind whistles through Wallace’s thin scarf that really didn’t do anything for the cold. His sheer shirt rustles, light and ticklish, over his stomach.
Steven is already waiting, standing at a railing on a grassy outcropping that juts over the sea, not far from the gorgeous old house he’d bought just after becoming Champion. His back is turned, jacket flapping in the night breeze, rings clenched on the rusted bar. He doesn’t notice Wallace.
Wallace, momentarily, thinks about simply walking away. His stomach is cold steel as he, instead, stands next to his old friend, not saying anything to acknowledge his own appearance.
“Hi,” Steven says, surprised. He sounds slightly hurt. “Where’s Win…”
“Hello, Steven,” Wallace says stiffly. He winds his scarf around his neck tighter, for the sake of having something to do with his hands. “She’s not coming.”
“This is important,” Steven protests. “I told her beforehand.”
Wallace looks over at the reigning Champion, flares his eyebrows. “She does not want to talk to Devon at the moment,” he says sharply.
Stephen looks back, indignant, tired. “I wanted to clear things up,” he says. “I can’t have bad blood within the Gym Leaders.”
“Go to her yourself,” Wallace says. The last time he’d seen Winona she’d been slowly going mad within Fortree City, stir-crazy with the knowledge that the Gym Leaders had been given and no go-ahead to inform any residents to evacuate lest the masses panicked. She’d started small rumours about dangerous Pokemon being found in the deeper forests, aiming to send people to disperse into smaller towns further away from the estimated trajectory of the meteor hit.
The rumours were working, too, with the help of Devon. With the drained, near-lifeless wild Pokemon that were becoming more and more difficult to hide from a city that was so closely intertwined with the wilderness. A type of hurt so visceral it couldn’t be healed by Pokemon Centers. To feed the energy of a wormhole-ripping Dimensional Shifter.
But Steven would be familiar with that, wouldn’t he, his Metagross was the first on the chopping block. It had been months since he’d let Devon drain its life force, and despite tens of hours of cryo chambers afterwards, it was only about half as stable at flying as it used to be.
The cause was noble, but he wanted Winona to hit Steven, at least.
The fact that Devon could even do this raised a million questions philosophers and moralists would likely spend years over. If you could power remarkable, world-changing things using something’s life force, what life sources could you deem as batteries?
“I didn’t ask for the move to Fortree City,” Steven says. “Using slaughterhouses wasn't enough.”
“Fishing farms next,” Wallace says, knowing it wouldn’t work long-term, but wanting for alternatives. And wanting to turn Steven down, honestly.
Steven frowns, but nods anyway. How amenable. “Tell me where, and I'll arrange for it.”
“The far side of Mossdeep,” Wallace murmurs, trying to recall them off the top of his head. His role as a Water-type Specialist meant conservation work throughout the region, with only some emphasis on livestock. “Pacifidlog, obviously.”
“That requires informance,” Steven says. “Pacifidlog is too small of a town to do this under cover.”
“Unlike Fortree?” Wallace says, feeling the urge to play Winona’s part in her absence.
“Fortree is a forest,” Steven says, a sharp tone in his voice, over the roar of the ocean. “Pacifidlog survives as a fishing industry.”
“You can risk people finding out in Fortree this violently.” Wallace raises his eyebrows. “But you can't tell Pacifidlog you need their farms?”
“I would move them out if I could,” he protests. “We don't have the go-ahead to inform the public. You know this.”
Yes, Wallace knew it all too well. He fumed with it.
With the collective resources of Devon and Steven's position as Champion, the Stones’ power within Hoenn dwarfed the Gym Leaders in ways incomparable to other regions’ Circuits. In times like this they almost operated like a second government within the region.
He feels talked down to. He is being talked down to. Over the potential deaths of no doubt millions of people. By, arguably, the strongest person in the region (who shouldn't be, not to this extent). By his once-best friend.
Wallace is being levelheaded about this disaster in motion. But he could throttle the man.
“I could do a lot more if the government allowed for it,” Steven continues, a confession into the black night, “but this is where we are.”
“The Shifter.” Wallace thinks back to the accursed battery. All this damage, for something so small a child could hold it in their fist. “How much charge–”
Steven's mouth forms a thin line. “I can't say.”
“You can't say,” Wallace repeats incredulously. “Sea Mauvile is a graveyard and you are still thinking about NDAs.”
Steven turns, looks directly at Wallace. Stray blue strands of his hair dance in the wind. “We need to save Hoenn. How many times can I tell you this?”
“I know,” Wallace says, staring out into black water, choosing not to look at the younger man, “I know. And I know what needs to be done, Steven, I'm an adult. But just consider what this is.”
“None of them are dead!” His voice is higher-pitched than normal, and it makes Wallace jump.
“Predators cannot hunt, prey cannot run, and every piscivore will starve to death if you don't start catching and using fish as well,” Wallace snaps. Almost as if on cue, a large wave rolls in, breaking with so much force drops of saltwater land on his lip. After a moment, he licks it, and tastes the salt bright on his tongue.
Steven wipes seawater spray off his face with his sleeve, searching for words. It's silent, with nothing but the crashing waves, as he tries to come up with a rebuttal. “So we've started sourcing from other regions,” he eventually says.
Wallace pauses. He looks over, a subtle sign to continue.
“The Johtonian authorities are sending us some of their Tauros herds,” Steven says. “And we've gotten permission for most Kalosian migrating species that pass through Hoenn.”
Wallace was never as entrenched into conservation as other Gym Leaders he knew, but a white hand dances its way up his spine. “Then why use Hoenn's Pokemon so much?”
“Because it's not enough,” Steven says, his voice frayed. “Other regions don't know what we need it for. They aren't sending us enough.”
“Why –” Wallace’s heart drops as he realises. “They don't know about the Dimensional Shifter.”
Steven shakes his head. Wallace actually might start pummeling him, if he wasn't frozen in shock and disgust.
“Hoenn is going to die,” Wallace says, his voice stuck in his throat, horror strangling his vocal chords. “Devon wants the tech all to itself? There won't be a Devon left in two weeks.”
Steven's face is pained. “I didn't want this,” he says, his voice wavering. “The company isn't mine.”
Wallace bites back a few choice words, empathy for his old flame rising to the surface. No, Steven wouldn't do this. He was always so insistent about the sharing of knowledge, revelling in learning and teaching others. The tabloids would kill for the information that Wallace held close to his heart, that the multimillionare bachelor champion Steven Stone once had simpler dreams of being a professor in the University of Kalos.
It was President Stone, Wallace knows, he'd always had a bad taste in his mouth around the man, but he was Steven's father; you couldn't just say those things.
“Do you think I don’t understand what this is doing to the ecosystem?” Steven holds his head in his hands, sweeps his thumbs over his cheekbones. “This is Hoenn. Our biodiversity is this land. I think about it every hour, Wallace, I’m in charge of the region, don’t think I don’t know.”
Wallace feels horrible for pushing all at once. Steven was stubborn, hardheaded (ha), frustratingly goal-oriented, and fussy – he hadn’t changed a bit since they were teenagers. But he’d never become spoiled by his father’s riches, or let the power of becoming Champion in addition to the heir of Devon go to his head. He’d ascended to power with humility and he’d somehow managed not to let that go after years of holding Hoenn in his hands.
He’d become surer of himself, more polished in large-scale events, in governmental galas and Trainer Circuit interviews, yes. Wallace had watched him grow and flourish out of the corner of his eye, back when he was involved with Winona. Steven tied his own tie, but Wallace was the only person who could tighten it perfectly, to add the final details to the Paldean suits that looked so dashing on him.
But in this moment, this night on the Mossdeep harbourfront, Steven’s pale skin is translucent in the low light, ghostly and fragile.
“None of them are dead,” Wallace repeats, fully aware of the fact he’s playing good cop now. He came here to make sure Steven was aware of what he was doing. Considering the extent that he was, Wallace wasn’t intending on piling additional guilt on him.
“What else is left?” Steven’s tungsten rings are cold against the inside of his fingers, pressed flush against skin in tight fists. “Why not just tear Hoenn apart ourselves?”
“You’re an ecoterrorist, now?” Wallace’s voice is weary and painfully thin in the early hour.
Steven rubs his palm hard over his eyes. When he looks back up at Wallace, he looks, simultaneously, like he’d aged twenty years, and like the stumbling Deerling of a teenager Wallace hadn’t seen since his father had risen to the highest echelon of Devon.
“If I’m considering siding with them,” Steven says, “you can see how bad it’s gotten.”
The Devon traitors – some of the most accomplished scientists in the region – had left the company and gone underground, citing the immorality of siphoning life out of the Hoenn region to save it, each with enough confidential information about the inner workings of the company to destroy it irreparably the public eye. Joseph Stone was midway through a manhunt for them, although Wallace doesn't know what he will do with them if and when they are caught. The most recent whispers in the region, though, are of a distinct organisation that have taken up the same name as the ecoterrorists from four years ago: Team Aqua and Team Magma.
That was the girl Dexholder, Sapphire's, assignment with Devon at the moment: to be President Stone's guard dog, as well as his bloodhound.
The sea air is aggressively humid. “And what about your place at Devon?” Wallace says, more exhausted than genuinely curious. The weight of the region presses down upon their shoulders, manifesting physically as a deep ache within his bones.
Steven turns his striking eyes on the older man. “I've been talking to Norman about it.”
Ah. The news falls upon Wallace like a crashing wave. He's serious.
Wallace bites his lip. “You're not leaving the company.”
“No.”
Wallace manages to breathe a bit easier. “Good you made that clear.” The idea of the Champion publically rebelling against his father in this state, with the absolute nightmare happening within the rest of the region; the idea of another thing on Wallace’s plate feels like it'd be enough to kill him from the stress alone.
A tiny part of him honestly regrets not taking his mantle as Champion; Devon would not have such a vice grip on the region now if he had, and the actions of the company hypothetically being leaked would not shake the foundations of their society.
Once, Wallace would not mind the public souring their opinions to this company, would have encouraged it, even, considering the more morally bankrupt things of late; but he was a Gym Leader now, whose first priority was protecting the people.
Protect the people. From the conglomerate eating it whole. From the new breed of ecoterrorists with region-shattering information. From whatever Dragon people who were wreaking havoc on the people who'd wronged them decades ago.
From the region-wiping mega asteroid which would kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, in one tiny scrape.
What a joke.
All he could do was critique the moral costs incurred watching others try to save the region. All he could do is make Steven equally as disgusted as him about those costs, to break his back further under the strain of the world.
He – once-champion, Gym Leader, highest-ranked Hoennian performer – has never felt more abjectly useless.
There is a flicker of orange on the horizon. A new day. Another step closer to what might be the end of Hoenn.
“I have to be going,” Steven says, pushing off the railing. “I'll talk to Winona.”
“Steven.” Wallace doesn't look at him.
He pauses, turns. “Yes?”
“I'm sorry.”
Steven doesn't say anything. When Wallace turns to check on him, the younger man's mouth is twisted, trembling. His eyes, piercing, are hollowed out, filled with a profound sadness.
“You let me stay the Champion of this region, Wallace,” Steven says, his voice raw. “With this responsibility, I'll protect it. No matter the cost.”