The anticipation was off the charts. This was going to be Josh's first truly fast run on the Johtonian god of speed. He expected the Beast to accelerate so quickly that he might just ragdoll in the thundercloud saddle. That was one nice benefit of the shape of Raikou's thundercloud, and why he thought of the legendary Pokémon in the way he did.

"Alright, Swift! Let's go!" Josh cried, about to slap his legs into the Beast's sides when he heard a familiar voice. With the young man pulling back on the outer two tufts of thundercloud, the monochrome Raikou reared and about-faced.

The source of the voice was none other than the Fortree Leader, Alexei Ivanov .

"Hi, Alex!" he greeted the Birdfather. "If you're still at Fortree, then that must have meant freya morningstar and Navy didn't write you up, huh? How you been?"

Reflecting the hostility Josh sensed, Swift reared a second time, this time higher and nearly causing his rider to tumble off. It was only the tall rear of the Raikou thundercloud that kept Josh seated. "Easy, Swift! He doesn't mean any harm. Alex and I are good friends!" His eyes shifted back to Alex. "And yes, I named my Raikou the same I would have named him when I was a kid, imagining myself owning one." As cute as it was, this impromptu meeting was far too serious for small talk.

A meeting that could shape the duo's relationship going forward.

"I get where you came from at Lilycove," Josh tried to console the Birdfather, to convince him that he understood his friend's perspective. "I know that you want to keep him a secret from Rocket. I do, too. Having a hidden weapon is such a huge tactical advantage."

The constant side-eyeing put the Master of Faster more visibly on edge. "From the public, yes. From the League, no. All the higher-ups know. You as Fortree's Gym Leader, you should know. You didn't get that email I sent you? I sent it as soon as possible after Kyle made me a Champion. And now, he's... gone. Rocket will think that Swift died with him. Will they ever be in for a shock when they found out -- at war!"

Josh at first flinched when he heard Alex swear at him. Swift growled to mirror the steam starting to build up within the Champion's subconsciousness. "Is something else wrong, Swift?" the rider asked as he tried to get a read on his legendary partner. Just sitting on the purring cat's back made his thighs twitch.

"You don't have to swear at me," Josh replied, trying to calm Alex down. "We're both adults and can talk it over as adults. Don't get me wrong, I think leaks are a danger. You know well as I do that security gets updated every time there's a new Gym Leader or higher-up. Every time there's such a staffing change, we're asked to change our passwords. This is precisely to prevent such leaks from happening." Sure, Tempest Quinn could have leaked outdated documents, but by now, many of them would have been declassified. Still, the point stood.

"The Elite Four, Council, and AQUA have more information than we do, and are in better positions to enforce security. That's why I did what I did. They deserve to work with every piece of the puzzle. It's why I notified them as soon as I could after the Great One blessed me with Swift."

A beat of silence followed.

"But yes, my job was part of the motivation. And not just for myself, either. I have a hundred and twenty Pokémon to take care of at Mauville Racing Grounds. Were I to be demoted to the Minor League, I would have to let go of... two-thirds of them. To lose my job would be to lose them, too."

"So you get it, too," Josh replied, his volume slowly starting to rise. "Plus, all the people to take care of those Pokémon, keep the Gym running, take challenges when I'm gone... I'm sure you know how many people it takes to run a Gym. Most of those people would lose their jobs if I had to scale back."

If freya morningstar had taught one thing to Josh at Lilycove, it was the importance of transparency.

"I'm getting up there, too," the Master of Faster retorted. "You're not the only tenured Gym Leader. I'll be what, two years in the fall? That's way more than most people last. People like alec foster , Johanna Joy ... they clearly couldn't handle it. But I can. And I've shown that."

Mauville Racing Grounds had been busy for the longest time, only at last calming down in the last few months. And he expected volume to return in the warm, summer months.

"If you recall, I was suspended. And how long did it take Rocket to attack my Gym while I was gone? Less than a month. But did they take over? No. And that's because my team is strong. Were it not for SHAWN RICHARDS being so brave, Mauville Gym would have fallen. But it didn't."

Some of the higher-ups he didn't agree with, but they were mostly good at what they did. "Like I've said, they also have more information than we do. We can give our feedback, but it might not make sense with what they know that we don't. That's why I'm so quick to trust them. As a whole. I'm glad MATIAS SILPH is taking some time off, though. A megalomaniac like him should not be anywhere close to the reins of power." Little did he know the truth of what had happened to the Volatile, leaving him even more in shock when he did find out...