The setting was the bustling docks of Coumarine City, situated a comfortable distance from Lumiose City.
The captain of the smuggling freighter was a rough-looking man in his late forties, sporting a dark leather eye-patch over his right eye. His name was Kairyu Shiranui.
"The oceanic territory surrounding the Alola region is treacherous beyond belief," Captain Shiranui warned, his lone eye narrowed as he eyed Feng Che. "And when I say dangerous, I'm not talking about basic underwater reefs, structural shipwrecks, or thermal ocean vortexes."
"I am talking about absolute spatial instability. The dimensional boundaries fluidly fracture out there, and massive, hyper-aggressive Ultra Beasts routinely tear through the rifts directly into our world."
"Those dimensional anomalies command a terrifying combat index. Standard Pokémon stand absolutely zero mathematical chance against their mechanics."
"On a previous run, I witnessed a massive Ultra Beast that looked like a hyper-muscled, bipedal mosquito. It closed the distance instantly and flattened my Snorlax with a single, casual straight punch."
"The eye-patch I wear over my right socket is the direct result of its serrated proboscis tearing through my facial bone during the evacuation."
"On another run, I logged a floating creature that meticulously resembled a delicate paper kite. It executed a silent, micro-angle drift through the high air, and within a split-second, a fully matured Nidoqueen was cleanly bisected into thousands of asymmetric flesh blocks, her blood saturating the entire deck container."
"The Ultra Beasts are thoroughly bloodthirsty and predatory. There is zero room for diplomatic formatting with their kind."
"Had Clemont not personally guaranteed to my office that your station commands a high-tier military pedigree, my crew would never have authorized your passport onto this vessel." The seasoned smuggler made no effort to mask his lingering dread.
"You may permanently scrub the security parameters from your calculations, Captain Shiranui. My vanguard will assume total dominion over any operational threat that breaches our trajectory," Feng Che replied smoothly.
As the words cleared his lips, he deliberately released an exceptionally dense, suffocating wave of Elite-tier Pressure from his core.
The sudden atmospheric compression hit the smuggler like a physical concrete slab pressing directly against his ribcage, completely freezing his respiratory system. Cold sweat instantly drenched Shiranui's spine, his limbs trembling under the sheer weight of the aura.
That absolute, crushing psychological weight was a signature frequency he had only ever logged when standing before active members of the Elite Four.
The captain frantically shifted his gaze toward Clemont, his eye wide with an unvoiced, panicked query, silently asking for immediate verification of Feng Che's actual League rank.
"Captain Shiranui, it appears my previous brief failed to articulate the full baseline parameters," Clemont intervened, his tone turning dead serious as he adjusted his glasses. "Leader Feng Che is a newly coronated, high-order Elite Select."
"His administrative assignment to the Unova Elite Four finalizes at the end of this fiscal cycle."
"His material combat tier is more than adequate to comfortably shield your vessel from any localized dimensional breach. However, his itinerary requires an extended operational stay within the Alolan interior; your freighter must coordinate its own return logistics track." Clemont supplemented firmly.
"The return routing is a non-issue. My scouts can easily anchor our trajectory behind one of the massive corporate trade liners returning from Alola to Kalos."
"Elite Feng Che, please step into my command suite."
The exact millisecond Shiranui verified that Feng Che commanded a sovereign Elite-tier seat, his rough demeanor inverted into absolute, professional deference.
He guided the teenager into his private office block. The interior was meticulously organized and clean, with a female Meowstic actively utilizing a low-frequency telekinetic pulse to seamlessly dust the mahogany consoles.
A gargantuan, hand-drawn navigational chart dominated the primary structural wall. The manual draft was exceptionally precise, detailed with hand-painted iconography marking every known deep-sea reef, thermal current shift, and ghost-type settlement.
"This chart represents the accumulated, life-long maritime tracking data of my house," Captain Shiranui explained, gesturing toward the ink lines.
"Elite Feng Che, please audit these two distinct routing matrices."
"The primary path completely bypasses the core spatial fracture zones; the reef density is minimal and the ocean currents are standard. However, the aerodynamic detours are extensive, requiring a full five days and five nights of continuous transit to breach the Alolan border."
"The secondary vector cuts a direct linear trajectory through a high-frequency vortex sector historically revered across the black-market tracks as the Graveyard of Empires. It is the maritime equivalent of the Cape of Good Hope."
"Thousands of unregistered smuggling vessels have suffered structural failure within those coordinates, their hulls subsequently colonized by high-order Ghost-type legions. More importantly, it stands as the primary hot-spot where Ultra Beast energy signatures spike on our sensors."
"If your station commands absolute confidence in neutralizing any entity that exits those rifts, we can authorize this line."
"Taking this vector reduces our transit timeline to a mere twenty-four hours," the captain finalized, his finger tracing a sharp, dead-straight coordinate vector across the map.
"My console is the only tracking unit across the Kalosian underbelly that knows how to safely calculate the spatial drag of this route. If your house harbors any structural doubt regarding my navigation, you are free to seek alternative hulls—though I guarantee you won't find another captain bold enough to calibrate a straight line through that abyss." Shiranui smiled with fierce professional pride.
"Captain Shiranui historically functioned as a premier Master Navigator for the global tracking circuits," Clemont added, acting as a technical reference. "He has successfully guided high-speed hulls through multiple forbidden marine sanctuaries that are officially logged as Absolute Exclusion Zones."
"Furthermore, due to the severe spatial instability currently fracturing the Alolan airspace, the World League has enforced a total, unrestricted grounding of all commercial flight routes into the archipelago."
"As a direct result of the logistical blockade, the internal commodity market across Alola has completely inverted. Basic everyday goods and advanced tech modules are siphoning premium prices; a common cargo lot can be liquidated for astronomical profit margins out there right now."
The Smuggler's Calculation
If my house can systematically assimilate Captain Shiranui into the Yuan Clan's private logistics wing, subsequently deploying a high-tier Elite vanguard from our private Pokémon Legion to permanently anchor his trade runs... Feng Che calculated smoothly, his analytical faculties running the profit margins.
The exact millisecond our house secures a permanent, unmonitored maritime commercial monopoly with the Alolan interior, the Yuan Clan's capital reserves will multiply like a cascading landslide.
High-tier trade remains the ultimate catalyst for absolute corporate violence.
It makes complete sense now why the Alolan Archipelago was so profoundly delayed in establishing a formal League framework—their entire regional infrastructure has been continuously choked and destabilized by the Ultra Beast incursions.
Should I consider formatting the entire Alolan wild track into my private training and cultivation sanctuary?
If my vanguard can quietly seize absolute dominion over the Alolan underbelly while my primary forces systematically lock down the sovereign seats of Unova and Hoenn... more than half of the recognized Pokémon world will sit comfortably within the palm of my hand.
Feng Che was well aware that the absolute, definitive key to unlocking total structural control over the Alolan Sector rested in the hands of the ultimate corporate billionaire—Lusamine.
The President of the Aether Foundation was the undisputed wealthiest entity dominating the archipelago; the moment his psychic forces planted a permanent Hypnotic Overdrive Crest deep within her cognitive framework, the total submission of Alola would clear without a single administrative challenge.
"Captain Shiranui, here is the initial resource allocation for your station. The ledger houses a flat one million League credits," Feng Che stated, passing a premium bearer card through his cloak. "Finalize your preparations immediately. My timeline requires us to breach the Alolan border without a single millisecond of artificial delay."
The executive board at World Headquarters had granted his office a strict thirty-day window to finalize his handovers across the Viridian Gym blocks before his Unova coronation locked in. Under these tight parameters, his transition through Alola had to be executed with absolute velocity.
"Rest assured, Elite Feng Che. My crew will compress their schedules to the absolute limit. The freighter will clear its departure blocks within twelve hours," Captain Shiranui answered, carefully accepting the card with a deeply respectful nod.
He needed to immediately coordinate with his shadow-brokers to purchase a massive block of high-demand consumer goods to liquidate in Alola, while his engineering teams executed high-pressure maintenance checks on the freighter's propulsion systems, replaced worn diagnostic components, and topped off the freshwater reserves.
The entire deck crew of the smuggling freighter suddenly exploded into a flurry of frantic activity. Under standard operational protocols, their scheduled departure was locked for ten days out; compressing that entire timeline into a twelve-hour window imposed a punishing mechanical workload on the staff.
Fortunately, Shiranui's crew consisted entirely of elite, battle-hardened veterans sourced from the maritime underbelly. Under intense structural pressure, they executed their assignments with military precision, clearing the checklists without a single computational error.
Feng Che utilized this brief twelve-hour window to casually browse the primary metropolitan districts of Lumiose City alongside Clemont.
He quietly supplemented his private traveling inventory with premium survival assets and high-grade consumables. While auditing a low-profile unrefined mineral booth tucked away in a corner alley, his custom diagnostic visor suddenly triggered a sharp, high-purity alert, identifying a misclassified Tyranitarite sitting amidst common stone debris. He purchased the mega catalyst for a handful of credits, securing another massive multiplier for his new blue predator.
With his inventory fully topped off, Feng Che offered Clemont a professional farewell before charting a direct transit vector back to the Coumarine City docks.
The freighter stood fully loaded, its heavy engines humming with low-frequency power as Captain Shiranui paced the primary boarding platform, his eye scanning the horizon in anxious expectation of his sovereign passenger's arrival.
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