You mean you have a perpetual case of resting bitch face, he thought in the back of his mind. Kind of like a friend of his, too, only the RBF wasn’t as bad as this.

Or maybe you paid your way to everyone’s favor? You have that aura… he continued, but keeping quiet on that matter as well. There was no way he was going to dig himself into a hole and get buried if he said the wrong thing.

So, it was wise to keep quiet.

“I’ll take your word for it, then.”

Ah, that anecdote with Miss Cait reminded him of how he had to struggle with the people of Fortree. Same potato, to be honest.

He decided to observe what would happen next.

He had never been so guarded his entire life.

But could anyone blame him—with a dysfunctional set of parents his own perception of the world had been pretty much skewed and fucked up until he’d made up his mind to venture out into the world on his own.

Shit, why was he so slow to trust?

Thing is, if you trust too quickly you can get manipulated… he thought to himself, keeping his face as impassive as possible.

“Of course you know about how trust is given and taken,” he said after breaking the silence. “It comes with so many other things altogether. The thing is,” he dropped off, in order to allow himself time to think, “…with some people it takes a while to earn—which I’m fine with. As long as it’s a two-way street then I’m fine with it.”

Did he have to explain himself? Maybe a bit.

“Parents… skewed my perception of most people when I was younger. Apologies about that.”

The door of cooperation wasn’t fully closed—it was ajar, although it would take a while before it would fully open.

It was a good thing he’d led with that statement, and the other man shared a similar viewpoint regarding trust in general.

To be fair, he preferred to keep his regional achievements private; to see if people outside of Fortree would catch on to him being a Gym Leader for the region. Of course, within the City in the Trees he was just as influential as the Councilman is in Lilycove.

Achievements aren’t everything, honestly. I prefer to keep things simple, he thought as he continued to observe the situation.

Truth is, they were at a roadblock; admittedly it was going to be a give and take scenario like he said.

“Of course,” he agreed quietly, unknowingly reverting back to his original Unovan accent in the process. “So what do you want to know?”

A loaded question, but he wondered what the other would ask.

Something simple, he appreciated that.

Only thing is, there was something about the statement that didn’t sit too well with him. Was it the way the other man had phrased it?

Or was it because—

Holy fucking shit.

Alexei blinked for a few moments as he came to an abrupt realization how the other man was projecting—

What the fuck!

No wonder I’m getting so set off when I’m around you! He thought as he realized what the prickly feeling was all along. Your general aura reminds me of my shithead father!

Even if it had been close to a decade since he’d left Mistralton, fuck, some scars really did run deep. But anyway. Back to the statement at hand.

“Small things. Even if they may seem inconsequential to you since you have a higher position than me, doing small things for people on a frequent basis is how I handle things around Fortree. Going all out for one big act isn’t always the best. It’s the little things that matter. That’s the impression I get with Stormy, whenever I visit Lavaridge. The local people always have nothing but good things to share about her, even now that she’s part of the Elite Four.”

After a few moments of silence, he then returned the question.

“What about you?”

All throughout the exchange, or at least the elaboration, he listens.

It doesn’t take too long for the question to circle back in his direction again, and this time he’s prepared for it.

Even if he knew that what he was going to disclose was something that was borderline… unbelievable(?) to the other man, Alexei couldn’t deny the fact that he’d heard all of this straight from the councilwoman herself.

“You—you do know about her family’s connection to the lore surrounding Sootopolis, I believe?” he prefaced, before allowing the other to answer.

“I actually went to her to ask about something. Something related to the Pokémon I showed you earlier, which you said you knew nothing of. There was a… a look in her eye when she saw it, and it unnerved me.”

Several alarm bells had gone off in his head as he tried to remember the exact words she had said in the Phione’s presence.

“Forgive me, I’m trying to remember what exactly she said at the time. It came off as some sort of a hymn, or something. I don’t know, but the way she treated it with respect borderlining on reverence to a deity is—well, lacking a better term, really off-putting.”

Surely, since he knew the man in front of him had a lot of connections stretching to who knew where maybe he would have heard of it at least?

Reaching for a pen and paper, he then scribbled down what he could remember about it before showing it to the other.

‘I sing of Phione,
The pure maiden—
Who delights in safeguarding the righteous.

—child of the sea,
Of you I sing and with you I begin,
—end this song.’

“That’s as much as I remember of her chant. She had this—greedy look in her eye, though, and I was concerned about that. Like she wanted to take the Phione away to do something. After that, she asked me what an ‘avatar’ was. And then she mentioned something about solidifying a decision she’d been waffling on for quite some time.”

Maybe the last statement would catch his attention?

He had no idea.

Ah, now it was time for him to ‘drop the bomb’ so to speak.

Well, for Alexei it was a bomb of information at least.

“She brought up something called… AQUA? Do you know anything about that? And she also told me to be careful of avatars afterward. When I asked her about it, she refused to answer further. Left it like some kind of a warning?”

The thing is, though, Alexei had witnessed several fantastic events surrounding these legendaries—the earlier Slateport Night Market incident being one.

“I don’t understand why she would warn against avatars. I mean, I’m aware of what you’ve done during the Night Market incident.”