Though his morning routine and training had helped him to settle his mind after his nightmare, Jason once again found himself sitting stone-faced as he spectated Pokémon battles among a crowd of thousands. Ren simply couldn't sit still when she got excited, so while he did his best to keep her from moving around by holding her waist or arms, her persistent fidgeting and excited bouncing inevitably triggered a reaction from his body.
'This must be some kind of divine punishment...' Jason thought, a wave of relief washing over him when it was announced that Maeve would be next to battle. Seeing her saunter confidently onto the field in her form-fitting, dark-purple-and-hot-pink battle attire didn't help his situation, but it gave him something else to focus on.
"It's Maeve! Goooooooo Maeve! Fight hard...!" Ren exclaimed, drawing gazes from those in her and Jason's surroundings as she stood up from his lap, cupped her hands around the sides of her elongated snout, and shouted as loudly as she could. Unfortunately, with tens of thousands of people cheering or smacking thundersticks together, her cheering failed to catch Maeve's attention.
'Come on, Maeve. You've got this...' Jason asserted internally, scooting forward to the edge of his seat to ideally promote blood flow to his legs and away from other places. This placed him in the path of Ren's tail, but he was getting used to wrangling it without injury. He just had to avoid its strike zone and place his hand in its path closer to her body. The moment he did, she got it under control and returned to his lap, positioning herself atop his left knee.
'Oh? This is surprisingly comfortable...' Jason noted. He had thought that having Ren's weight concentrated on a single leg would be too much. But with his shin straight, his foot firmly planted on the ground, and her mass concentrated above his knee, he felt like he could actually bounce her—if he dared.
'Who's this? She's even smaller than Iris...' Jason registered, his thoughts reorienting to the battlefield and Maeve's practically pint-sized opponent, a female trainer with medium-length white hair sporting strands of water-blue. He wouldn't exactly describe her as child-like, but she couldn't have been more than 150cm tall. Her slender and compact frame was garbed in a white, blue-striped jersey. And in place of the shorts most WCS Trainers wore, she had on form-fitting white slacks, laceless white shoes with blue soles, and a water-blue jacket she wore like a removable cape.
Demonstrating that was her intention, the white-haired Trainer, who had been introduced as Shiraume Samegaki, grabbed her jacket with her right hand, pulled it across her body, and flung it off to the side with a flourish. Then, striking what was likely intended to be a heroic pose, she pointed at Maeve and boldly declared that she would wash away the latter's poison with her Water-types...
'There's no way...'
Seeing Shiraume field a Blastoise she had named Big Man, Jason couldn't help but think that she was another transmigrator. But with how little time had passed since his arrival, he couldn't imagine how she would have had time to integrate into the world, complete a Gym Challenge, and prepare a team powerful enough to participate in the WCS. And with his connection to influential figures like Lusamine, he wanted to believe she would inform him if there were others in his situation...
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Following Maeve's battle with Shiraume, which resulted in a hard-fought victory, Jason returned Ren to her Poké Ball and departed the stadium to wait near an emergency exit for departing Trainers.
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After cracking the door open, which only opened from the inside, Maeve gestured for Jason to enter, urging him to "Hurry up...!" as the door wasn't meant to be used to let people inside.
Reacting quickly, Jason attempted to slip through the partially opened door, only for Maeve to grab and pull him inside forcibly. Half a second later, he found himself pinned with his back to a wall with Maeve's face right in front of his, her distinctive pink eyes boring into him as she asked, "Why did you come to watch my battles instead of Nana's? I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest due to how nervous I was..."
"I missed you too..." Jason responded, recovering from his brief shock and adopting a wry smile. He could tell that Maeve wasn't truly angry with him. But while he was tempted to grab her waist and kiss her, he resisted the urge and held her gaze.
Feeling a fluttery sensation rising from the pit of her stomach, Maeve released her hold on Jason's collar, turned away from him with slightly reddened cheeks, and sighed, "You're supposed to be smart. Now things are going to be super awkward when we meet up with Nana later..."
"In my defense, I did intend to watch her matches. But when I messaged her to tell her I would be there to cheer her on, she very pointedly told me to stay away..." Jason revealed, fixing his collar.
"Did you tell her you would be coming here instead...?" Maeve asked, her tone lowered and her pink eyes flashing opportunistically as she glanced back at Jason over her left shoulder.
"I did..." Jason confessed, prompting Maeve to visibly deflate and exhale the most exasperated sigh he had seen from her. It had crossed his mind that he should have gone to watch Nanahoshi's matches, irrespective of her telling him to stay away. But as they weren't officially a couple, he felt that doing so would be overstepping his bounds...
Catching Jason off guard, Maeve cupped her forehead and exhaled, "Que el cielo tenga piedad de este muchacho..." in what sounded like Spanish but was, within the Pokémon world, Paldean. The latter region was based on the Iberian Peninsula—which comprised Spain and Portugal—so many of its locals spoke what those from his world would have recognized as a Castilian dialect.
"Do you think she would forgive me if I prostrated myself before her or performed a dogeza...?" Jason questioned tentatively, prompting Maeve to lower her hand and adopt a thoughtful frown that suggested she was seriously contemplating his words. Nanahoshi did give the impression that she would enjoy stepping on the back of another person's head. But while he didn't consider himself a particularly prideful person, Jason was still a man...
"What are you doing way over here...?"
Having noticed Jason and Maeve near the exit, Shiraume, who had been looking for the latter, approached them without hesitation, her sharp blue eyes scanning the former. Up close, she appeared even shorter than how she was presented on the stadium's displays. But there was a confidence to her actions that made her feel larger-than-life.
"Shiraume..." Maeve muttered, her brows creasing before she shook her head, regained her characteristically confident smile, and asserted, "That was a great match. You constantly swapping your Swampert in to counter my Toxtricity really backed me into a corner..."
Seeing Maeve extend her hand for a handshake, Shiraume adopted a frown of her own before accepting it with a notably sharp-toothed smile and proclaiming, "You may have won this time, but this was my first time participating in the WCS. Once my Pokémon and I get our hands on the power of Dyna- and Gigantamaxing, nothing will be able to stop our rise to the top."
"Sure. So long as you keep giving it your all, you'll definitely climb higher than you are now," Maeve affirmed, her apparent nonchalance causing the smile to fade from Shiraume's face. The reality was that there were plenty of young Trainers with grand ambitions. Maeve herself had once been like Shiraume, so she understood that the latter was in for an uphill battle as a Type-Trainer.
Shifting her sharp-eyed gaze to Jason, Shiraume's frown deepened as she pointedly inquired, "Hey, wind-breaker. Are you Maeve's manager or something? There's no way you're her boyfriend, right?"
"Wind-breaker...?" Jason repeated, less out of confusion than the fact that Shiraume had addressed him in such a manner. She was obviously making a jab at his height. And as it didn't make sense for her to contemn or insult someone for being slightly above average in height, it was more likely that she had a complex about her comparably diminutive stature.
"Which is it...?" Shiraume asked, directing the question to Maeve. Notably, while her expression remained fierce, the briefest hint of red began to tint her cheeks.
"He's my boyfriend, obviously..." Maeve asserted confidently, reinforcing her declaration by linking her hands around Jason's left arm while holding Shiraume's gaze with a similarly fierce, increasingly flushed expression. It was her first time behaving so possessively, but she didn't want Jason to think she was ashamed of their relationship—even if doing so caused her to feel embarrassed to the point she wished there was a hole nearby that she could disappear into.
"You're telling me that I lost to someone who has the time to go on dates and play house...?" Shiraume asked coldly, balling her hands into fists and gnashing her sharp teeth. She had thought Maeve was someone who was just as serious as she was about reaching the top. Hearing that one of her idols was fooling around was bad enough, but losing to such a person? It was humiliating...
"You...what do you even do...?" Shiraume asked, glaring at Jason as if he were her personal nemesis.
"Mostly marketing and consulting..." Jason responded, electing to offset Shiraume's apparent hatred for him with unflinching professionalism. To that end, he simultaneously produced one of his business cards, causing her to sneer before she noticed the very familiar symbol embossed on its surface.
As if her resentment from before had been an illusion, Shiraume's animus was replaced by curiosity, her brows rising as she accepted the card and asked, "You work for the Aether Foundation?"
'I thought as much...this girl is like Iono...' Jason concluded, his business-like smile solidifying as he confirmed, "That's mostly correct. Things are in a tentative phase at the moment, but I'm slated to be one of the Leads for their Trainer Management Department. We're presently recruiting capable and ambitious Trainers to assist with or participate in the impending Alola League Conference. Whoever wins is bound to have their name recorded in history as the region's very first Champion."
"Very first Champion..." Shiraume repeated, her blue eyes losing most of their sharpness. Instead, she stared into the distance with a starry-eyed look, likely imagining herself hoisting the ALC trophy and lording over the Alola Region as its Champion.
Leaving Jason and Maeve at a loss for words, Shiraume abruptly spread her feet apart, hunched over, and pumped her fists, groaning, "Uuuoogh!" before raising them high and shouting, "I've decided! I'm going to be the Champion of the Alola Conference...!"
Pulling out a smartphone with a Sharpedo cover and a Spheal keychain, Shiraume hurriedly bypassed its security before staring at Jason with an impish grin and demanding, "Give me your Caster ID. If this Alola League of yours turns out to be a load of crap, then expect me to hunt you down like a pack of Carvanha and give you a piece of my mind."
"If you insist..." Jason responded, producing a phone-like device capable of projecting a hologram of him to similar devices. Dex was outfitted with the same functionality, but he regarded the spiritied Rotom as more of a planner and personal assistant than a communication device. As such, he had acquired a HoloCaster and a smartphone when he and Ren explored Shalour in search of a clothing store.
Though it wasn't really that big of a deal, Shiraume appeared inordinately pleased to have received Jason's Caster ID. The diminutive Trainer had an almost goofy smile on her face, and when she noticed that he and Maeve were staring at her, she became flustered and abruptly departed with the excuse of needing to prepare for her next match...
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