It was a good thing Josh was in between races when the doorbell rang, letting him leave the game on a screen with the next track's preview and a hard rock tune that played on a loop of a little over a minute. He had learned that given how quickly information spreads in Hoenn, telling the Rangers as a whole about his dream of befriending Raikou was the biggest mistake he had ever made. Only two months had passed, and already Josh had an attempt on his life. It was a brutal lesson learned, which is why he was being so tight-lipped. He sent Lars a follow-up email asking if that was him at the door.

Assuming he got a response, Josh unlocked and opened the door to greet the Head Ranger. "Thank you, Head Ranger, for taking the time to meet up with me at such an awkward hour of the night," Janus mentally conveyed friendly emotions to the guest, but did not float a single word into Lars' mind. "Have a seat. Any chair's good."

Once the two were settled, Josh squinting in pain as he sat on the sofa after signaling for Janus to make room for him, he took a deep breath. "Now what I'm about to share with you doesn't leave this room, okay? Some of this information is public, and some of it isn't. I'll start with what's public, then if I can get your word that this conversation won't leave this room, I'll keep going."

Regardless of whether Lars agreed, Josh would start with the public account. It wasn't well-known outside the sports world, but it would only be a matter of time before the mainstream media picked up on it. "So you might be aware that I became this city's Gym Leader not long ago. I just got out of the hospital today after an attempt on my life about a week and a half ago, when I was closing my Gym down for the day. I hae a lot of details I want only the higher-ups to know. You and Head Ranger Henderson, and any Captains you would trust with your life. This is serious stuff." He was shaking just thinking about the next time someone uncouth wanted to ensure a vacancy in the Leader's office, and not in a clean way.

"Oh, thank you!" Josh complimented, though his expectations may have been a bit low. The Head Ranger knew how to throw a party, after all. "No, it's okay! Make yourself comfortable. I can pick this game back up at any time." He looked inside to see what Lars had brought. "Alto Maren! Wow, you didn't have to do that. It's a good thing I usually eat supper late!" As Lars expected, Josh immediately locked the new door, and a heavier one at that; thankfully, the League subsidized much of the cost. Anything to protect their Gym Leaders. "I'll still call you Head Ranger Anderson at meetings, but outside that, Lars is great. Thank you. Must come with rising up the ranks, huh? Now that I've got my eyes on a blue uniform a few months out."

"Welcome to Hoenn?" Josh asked semi-rhetorically, dumbfounded as he dug into the pasta covered in white sauce. Lars was way too calm about this. Less than a month into a new Gym Leader's tenure, and someone already had a bounty on his head. "What's that supposed to mean? Are you saying the reason Hoenn's Gym Leaders shift so rapidly is because..." He trailed off; the words "of a high crime problem" would not come out of his mouth. "The League must be that desperate if they're promoting people like me out of the Minor League. Not like I can turn back now, anyway."

Josh was scared stiff. Lars was inferring that high League positions were the targets of assassination attempts and other high crimes on a routine basis. Had he knew the new position come with so much danger, he would never have agreed to the promotion. Hell, he never would have come back to Hoenn. But it was too late now. Even when the barrier was gone, it was too late. He was committed. "Ironic that for the costume contest this year, I dressed up as Raikou's 'Avatar' and called myself 'The Committed.' Because that's what I feel like now. That I have to see this through to the end, no matter what."

"Good to know my secrets are safe with you. So the investigators are keeping me in the loop with their findings, and they have reason to suspect either a member of the DRK Triad or someone working them is responsible for this." Josh let out a deep sigh before taking another bite of his pasta.

"As you know, they are Avatar hunters, and also of potential Avatars. The reason I shared my dream to befriend Raikou back at Lilycove was every single person in that room was a Ranger and therefore count be trusted. Other than that, only a select few people know, the vast majority of which are other Gym Leaders, Elite Four members, and Council members. People more than familiar with how NDA works." To Josh, his logic was sound. "It could also just be a Team Rocket thing, but the case is going cold fast. It may never be solved. However, I think this isn't a coincidence. Have you considered we might have a mole among our high-ranking Rangers, working undercover for the DRK Triad?"

Josh had not been exposed to his fair share of supernatural occurrences in Hoenn. He had met multiple high-ranking League officials with legendary Pokémon. He had been to the Cloud and back, and that was quite the supernatural place. Though the racer knew Lars swore like a sailor when not in public (and sometimes even in public, as was evident at the Lilycove meeting), he sounded especially serious now.

"You t-too...?" Josh stuttered. So it wasn't just Gym Leaders that were targeted, after all. It seemed to be all kinds of officials with high connections to the League. This was the third high-level assassination attempt Josh had heard of in the past year. And that one almost succeeded, from the Head Ranger's accounts. Janus' forehead crystal glowed red, trying to convey emotions of worry to both their minds. He wished he could communicate with his trainer's mind more directly, but his psychic powers were still too young.

"I thought I emailed that to you!" Josh replied in a defensive, almost snapping tone that reciprocated the one Lars had spoken to him before taking a couple of deep breaths and calming down. "In that email, I mentioned the DRK Triad alongside the name Maldacena while talking about my journey through the Cloud. It should be dated the day after the Lilycove meeting."

Josh logged into RangerNet to try to load the files he had found before with regards to the DRK Triad. Still restricted, most likely due to his probation status. "It was in the Cloud that I found out about the DRK Triad. Then after I qualified for my red uniform but before you suspended me, I went hunting on RangerNet and found a file on them. Unfortunately, it's restricted, probably due to the probation. Can you pull that file for me, please?"

Lars shared with Josh a lot of familiar information, then some unfamiliar. "That checks with some of the others I've been in touch with," he sighed. "Now I know why you told me I should have kept my dream a little closer to my heart." It went directly against what Elinor Anderson had told him... about sharing his dream. "I just felt everyone in that room... well, they're Rangers. I must have been naive to believe they could all be trusted. And yet only two months later--ow!" Josh rubbed his lower back against his seat the wrong way, agitating his wounds. He hissed and shook his head.

"We've been in touch both in and out of the Gym," Josh replied, pointing to his Hoenn Gym Badge case containing four Badges: noah faber 's Knockout Badge, Alexei Ivanov 's Skyrider Badge, and his own two Gym Badges: one from his stint in the Minor League, and his current one. "Might have to make another appointment with the guy. He seems to know a lot more legends and just... the oddities of Hoenn's past. He knows about my bid for Raikou, too. I told him before I told you."

As terrifying as it was, Lars' account checked out, as well. "That's consistent with the doppelgangers in the Cloud, too. I don't remember any specifics, but I did report several people got attacked by their own shadow doppelgangers in there. And no matter how fast Raikou is, sitting on his thundercloud won't let us outrun our own shadows." It was almost like how Sableye attacked. That was a Pokémon he would prefer never to run into.

"And yet..." Josh trailed off. He knew that it was the exact opposite of Lars' advice that put him where he was today. "And yet, I would never have been in the position I'm in now if I had not shared that dream with a single person." That, of course, was Elinor, the Councilwoman who was the catalyst for setting everything in motion. "I know about them in passing. The titans of the earth, sea, and sky, the latter of which may be the fastest Pokémon in the world, legendary or no." Being born in Hoenn made a ton of sense as to why he knew so much about them. "Pureblood Johtonian here. It's part of the reason Raikou means so much to me."

The name Star Soiree came up, sounding unfamiliar to him. "Star Soiree? Was that a festival of some kind?" Josh asked with a shrug. "So much has happened in Hoenn in the last three years. You weren't kidding." He listened to the tale of Stormy's grisly demise, which made him visibly shiver. "I knew taking this path would put me in danger, Lars, but nothing like that. It's terrifying to think about. And yet..." the Mauville Leader went silent again. "And protecting Hoenn from them is enough of a reason to continue down this path. I said it at Lilycove, and I'll say it again: there ain't no getting off this train I'm on."

"...Unown?" Josh's jaw dropped just a little as he took a break to take a bite or two of his pasta covered in white sauce. "Just how many Ruins of Alph do we need to seal away before people get a clue that those things are nothing but bad news?" He was, of course, referring to their Mother Temple in Johto, where the species was first discovered. "Eldritch little buggers... do I even want to know what happened? The damage just a few of them can cause... let alone when there are a hundred or more..."

The smell of carbonara wafted through Josh's nostrils. "Whatever place you got that from is damn good. Gonna have to add them to my list." Lars cautioned Josh that there truly was no going back once he was involved in the supernatural. "I'm aware. And in order to change the future... the future that refuses to be changed... OUR future... there's no changing that without help. But I'm certain..." Tears started to form in the young man's eyes, reaching toward an end table for a medium-sized plush replica of the legendary Pokémon Raikou and clutching it closely. It was the same one he had kept at his desk at the Gym during long Friday nights submitting reports to the League.

"He's looking for me and I'm looking for him. I'm certain of it. He wants to rewrite the future just as much as I do. It's just going out there and finding him." Josh started breathing more heavily, his face turning red. "And despite the danger... this is my path. I know it sounds absurd, but I've had this faith in Raikou since I was young. I know it's going to put me a greater risk than even just being a Gym Leader. But it's something I just feel I have to do. It's not about me anymore. It's about Hoenn. About Johto. At this point, it's about the whole Arceus-damned WORLD!"