{Back in Mauville Gym}
Wattson walked back into the Gym after a long day of helping to clean up that mess. It really was getting to him. He took a breath and rubbed his cheeks, but finally he got to have some time to rest for himself. He walked in and told Watt that he wouldn't be taking challenges today, he wanted to work on some new robots he wanted to try out.
Watt understood. After all, Wattson's hobby was well known. He liked building things and repairing them. Frankly, he used to be an engineer at Mauville Holdings, you know, before the incident that caused it to fall.
Wattson shook his head. He didn't want to think about the failures that sent that place down, but knowing that New Mauville was just underground and incomplete made a part of his brain itch.
But he didn't have the money himself to spare to try to repair Mauville Holdings. He was one of the last people with shares in Mauville Holdings left. Most other people sold their shares off, and Wattson bought most of them when they were cheap, but he only had around 10%.
Technically, he could fund it, but it would be a risk. There would be no guarantee that it could even be brought back up without going bankrupt within a year. And even if he could get it going, it would take a miracle to do it without Devon Corporation doing something about it.
He sighed and went into his workshop to take his mind off this. He grabbed a wrench, went to one of his prototypes, and started working.
But when his back was turned, someone walked in, someone who got past Watt. It was almost like they teleported in.
"Wow, so this is your workshop. It's pretty nice."
Wattson tensed and quickly turned around, preparing for an intruder, but instead, there was Ash, with his Pikachu and Eevee on each shoulder.
Ash walked in and smiled at Wattson. He had just come from the Pokémon Center, where he'd spent some time talking with Green, and that was, of course, after Ash got the Feebas he liked and caught her.
As for Green, she said she was going to take care of some business, so she might meet Ash in Hoenn later. The news about Courtney had made her stop her teasing, but that was something for later.
Wattson lowered his shoulders and relaxed, "Ash? What are you doing here? I thought you left town already."
Ash shrugged, "I had some business to do before we left, and since I'm here, I did say I wanted to talk to you about something. Call it a business opportunity," Ash said casually as he went over and sat on a nearby chair, sitting a little too relaxed.
Wattson blinked, surprise giving way to curiosity. He glanced briefly toward the door Ash must've used… then back at the boy himself.
"…You kids these days really don't believe in knocking, do you?" Wattson muttered, though there was no real heat in it.
Ash grinned, "Hey, I did knock. On the electrical grid."
Pikachu lifted one paw proudly, "Pika."
Wattson snorted despite himself, "Figures." He set the wrench down and wiped his hands on a rag, "Alright then, Ash Ketchum. You've got my attention. What kind of 'business opportunity' brings a Gym Challenger back into my workshop?"
"Straight to the point," Ash said, "I heard about Mauville Holdings."
Wattson stiffened, "…That's not exactly public reading material."
"Doesn't have to be," Ash replied lightly, "Besides, New Mauville being unfinished is kinda hard to miss if you know what you're looking at."
Wattson studied him for a long moment, then sighed, "You're sharper than you let on, aren't you?"
Ash smiled, "People underestimate you if you're always smiling. Makes them think you're harmless." He tilted his head, "Isn't that why you laugh so much?"
Wattson huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head, "Guess I don't have much room to talk, huh?" He leaned against the workbench, "So… how much do you actually know?"
Ash pulled a folder from his bag and set it on the desk.
"Mauville Holdings used to rival Devon Corporation and Silph Co.," Ash said, "Energy production, infrastructure, experimental power systems, the whole enchilada."
Wattson nodded slowly, "That's the part everyone remembers."
"But it goes deeper," Ash continued, "The first big blow was Sea Mauville. Offshore energy platform. Flagship operation."
Wattson's expression darkened, "…Yeah."
"Devon rolled out their ∞ Energy tech shortly after," Ash said, "Inspired by the Ultimate Weapon legends from Kalos. Converts Pokémon life energy into power."
Wattson grimaced, "That's putting it generously."
"Granted, they changed it later," Ash said, "Cut out the worst of it, no direct Pokémon sacrifice. Still unethical in my book, and it made it less effective than they thought, but that just meant they got billions instead of trillions."
He shrugged, "Either way, it made Sea Mauville obsolete overnight."
Wattson exhaled slowly, "Years of work… gone."
"And then there was Neo Mauville," Ash said, glancing up at him, "Your project."
"You were overseeing it before becoming Gym Leader," Ash continued, "You discovered it would destabilize the surrounding ecosystem, Pokémon habitats, migration patterns, everything."
"So you shut it down," Ash said, "And that decision tanked the company."
"…Yeah," Wattson said quietly, "That's the version people like."
Ash leaned back slightly, "There's also the rumor."
Wattson stiffened.
"The internal investigation files," Ash said calmly, "Claims that Devon bribed you to sabotage Neo Mauville. That you betrayed Mauville Holdings from the inside."
Silence stretched between them.
Wattson scoffed, "Never proven."
"And never made sense," Ash said, "You could've walked away richer than anyone in Hoenn if that were true."
Wattson tapped the bench once and sighed, "In practice? The magnetic output would've disrupted migration patterns, driven Electric-types into overload, messed with Ground-types' habitats… probably killed more Pokémon than it helped people."
"I couldn't sign off on that," Wattson said quietly, "Didn't matter how much money was riding on it."
Ash met his eyes, "So you pulled the plug."
"And everything collapsed," Wattson finished, "Shareholders bailed. Investors panicked. Devon swooped in with their shiny new tech, and Mauville Holdings folded like a bad circuit."
He chuckled bitterly, "And suddenly, I'm either a fool… or a traitor."
Ash tilted his head, "Let me guess. Devon didn't exactly rush to clear your name."
Wattson barked a laugh, "Oh, they were very polite about it. Lots of condolences. Lots of 'unfortunate timing.' Never denied the rumors, though. Why would they?"
"Yeah, business can get messy sometimes," Ash shrugged, "But that," he said, "is where the opportunity comes in."
"What are you suggesting?" Wattson asked, crossing his arms, "I can't exactly fund a revival without risking more than I'm willing to give."
"And what if you don't need to?" Ash said, "You already said the reason Neo Mauville failed was because it would cause far more harm to Pokémon than it could ever justify. So let's change that, shall we?"
Ash pushed the folder toward Wattson.
Now, here was the thing: Porygon-Z may have hacked into the old systems. It wasn't hard to find one that was still connected, after all, New Mauville was right under them, wasn't it?
From there, Ash handed the data off to Porygon and Rotom, who, when combined, were effectively a supercomputer. He also had Porygon hack into the Aether Foundation.
No matter how shady it was underneath, on the outside the Foundation was still the world's leading Pokémon conservation organization. So Ash simply borrowed their research and exclusive findings and fed it all to Porygon and Rotom so they could design an updated New Mauville.
He'd make it up to Lusamine later. He'd start by healing Lillie's condition when he got to Alola, and then saving her from the Ultra Beasts afterward. Of course, no one needed to know about that part. After all, a lot of people already thought Ash was some kind of super genius.
And for anyone who might ask how Porygon got into the Aether Foundation's systems, and why no one noticed, you had to remember this: Ash's Porygon was the only Porygon-Z in the world. Thanks to Professor Akihabara and Ash taking down Aster, Porygon had been reliced, but Ash's Porygon-Z was a thousand times superior. And once he created a temporary merge with Rotom, that made him even smarter.
So, really, it was a small matter.
Wattson looked at the folder, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head as he read. Ash let the weight of what could have been settle in.
"Neo Mauville failed because it tried to brute-force energy," Ash said, "Big output, big footprint, big consequences. It was built like an old-world power plant in a region that lives on Pokémon ecosystems."
Wattson frowned, "That was the whole problem. You scale up, something breaks."
"Only if you scale the wrong thing," Ash clarified, pointing to the new system on the paper.
"Everyone chased raw output," Ash continued, "Devon. Mauville Holdings. Sea Mauville. Bigger batteries, stronger fields, more juice. It's not a wrong idea, just… outdated. After all, Pokémon don't work like that. They never have."
Wattson gulped as he read further. These weren't blueprints for massive generators or towering coils.
They were… modular.
Layered systems. Smaller nodes. Distributed networks.
Wattson's brow furrowed, "…These aren't centralized."
"Nope," Ash said simply, "They're adaptive."
Wattson flipped another page. Then another.
"…These readjust based on local Pokémon populations," he muttered, "Flux dampeners tied to migration cycles. Output throttles linked to seasonal behavior…"
He looked up sharply, "This wasn't possible ten years ago."
Ash smiled calmly, "It is now."
Wattson went back to reading, faster this time. His fingers trembled just a little.
"These field harmonizers, if tuned correctly, would actually stabilize Electric-types instead of overloading them," he said, "And the Ground-type interference…" He trailed off, eyes widening, "…You're redirecting it downward, not outward."
Ash smiled, "Turns out Pokémon don't mind powering cities if you don't fight their nature."
Wattson let out a low, incredulous laugh, "This would fix the problem Neo Mauville had."
"And then some," Ash said, "It doesn't just avoid harming habitats, it reinforces them. Encourages natural movement instead of disrupting it."
Wattson slowly sank onto a nearby stool.
"…This isn't just a power plant," he said quietly, "This is infrastructure symbiosis."
Ash tilted his head, "Sounds fancy when you say it."
Wattson shot him a look, "Don't play dumb. No kid just comes up with this."
Ash leaned back, folding his arms behind his head, "Guess I read a lot."
Wattson stared at him, "…You're doing that smiling thing again."
"Told you," Ash said, "People underestimate you when you do it."
Wattson huffed despite himself, then looked back down at the plans, "Even if this works, and Arceus help me, it should, you're talking about reopening Mauville Holdings under an entirely new model."
Ash smiled, "Well, so what's the problem? Is it money?" he said, pushing another paper across the table.
Wattson looked at the paper, then opened it, and his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. They were bank statements, statements showing Ash had a few billion in his account that he could invest in this. Along with that was a note stating that Ash now owned 70% of Mauville Holdings.
"I… how?" Wattson tried to process what he was looking at.
"Well, after the business went down, you know as well as I do that most of the old shareholders just held onto the shares out of habit," Ash said, "And it's been nearly ten years. No one keeps hope that long, so I tracked them down and bought the shares off them. Really cheap, too."
Then Ash leaned back, "As for the rest… well, I'm sure you've already heard. The old president of Mauville Holdings unfortunately passed away of natural causes five years ago. It's a shame, but time is unbiased, it comes for everyone eventually. Since Mauville Holdings was basically nothing by then, his family never claimed the shares, so they were just up for grabs. I bought those too."
Wattson just stared at the papers, his mouth opening and closing once like a fish before any sound came out.
"…You bought them," he said finally.
Ash nodded easily, "Most people wrote Mauville Holdings off as a bad memory. Nostalgia doesn't pay bills, and ten years is a long time to keep faith in a dead company."
Wattson dragged his hands down his face before looking back at Ash, "You still haven't answered the biggest problem."
"Devon?" Ash guessed.
Wattson nodded, "Devon Corporation doesn't just let competitors crawl back out of the grave, especially not ones tied to energy infrastructure. If they think this threatens their ∞ Energy market-"
"They won't," Ash said calmly.
That stopped Wattson short, "…Eh?"
Ash leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, "First, this system doesn't compete with ∞ Energy." He tapped the folder, "This is regional infrastructure, sustainable, adaptive, Pokémon-first. Different niche."
Wattson frowned, "That's a bit of a stretch, and you know it, but continue."
"Second," Ash continued, "I know Mr. Stone."
Wattson blinked, "…You mean that Mr. Stone."
"Saved his life, well, I stopped a kidnapping and then stopped someone from stealing from Devon Corporation," Ash said lightly, "Long story. He told me, very explicitly, that if I ever needed help, I could ask."
Then Ash's mischievous smile grew, "So why not turn a rival into a partner?"
Wattson stared, "You think Devon would help revive Mauville Holdings?"
"Not the old version," Ash corrected, "A new one. One that makes Devon look good for supporting clean, Pokémon-friendly infrastructure."
He smiled, "Corporate goodwill is worth more than a monopoly sometimes."
Wattson leaned back against the workbench, stunned, "…You've thought this through."
"Third," Ash added, holding up a finger, "Silph Co."
Wattson squinted, "Silph? What do they have to do with—"
"They already sponsor me," Ash said casually.
"…Come again?" Wattson said.
Ash reached into his bag and slid one more document across the table.
A Silph Co. letterhead, complete with signatures and stamps. Wattson's eyes skimmed it once. Then twice.
"…Two shares," Wattson murmured, "Direct equity."
Ash nodded, pointing to himself with his thumb, "Born-and-raised Kantonian. And I won the Indigo Conference and the Silver Conference." He scratched his cheek, "Apparently that makes me 'excellent brand alignment.'"
Wattson barked out a laugh, half-disbelieving, "They gave a trainer shares in Silph Co."
"They wanted a face," Ash said simply, "And they've been eyeing me since I won the Indigo Conference."
He tilted his head, "When they found out I was heading to Hoenn for the Ever Grande Conference, they invested early in me."
Wattson slowly lowered himself onto the stool again.
"…So you've got Devon potentially backing the tech," he said quietly, "Silph supporting logistics and manufacturing… and you holding seventy percent of Mauville Holdings."
Ash smiled, "Which leaves you."
Wattson looked up, "Me."
"I don't want to run this," Ash said plainly, "I don't want a CEO chair, or a boardroom, or my name plastered on power plants. Being famous is such a drag."
He gestured around the workshop, "This was your vision. You shut Neo Mauville down because you cared more about Pokémon than profit."
Wattson swallowed, "…And what do you get out of it?"
Ash shrugged, "Hoenn gets clean power. Pokémon don't get hurt. Cities don't have to choose between growth and nature."
Then Ash smiled and delivered the finishing blow, "And maybe a guy who did the right thing doesn't have to carry the blame forever."
Wattson straightened, his back strengthening as he looked at the paperwork. He gulped, and Ash smiled, knowing he had him exactly where he wanted him.
Ash wasn't lying about anything he'd said, but he also knew how to say the things people wanted to hear.
He wouldn't call himself a master manipulator, but he certainly knew how to make people want to listen.
The Silph thing wasn't a lie. They really did give him two shares in the company. That might not sound like much, but that assumption would be wrong. For a company as massive as Silph, two shares was a lot. And all Ash had to do was… nothing. Every time he beat a Gym, they celebrated. If he ever won a League, they'd pop open Champagne
And then there was Damian, the one with the blue hair. Yeah. Ash had just asked him to invest in this, and Damian sent the money over. Enough that, if this went wrong, Ash could minimize losses while still gaining benefits if it went well. Damian had also told Ash that if this succeeded, it would mean he'd officially take over his dad's company.
And let's just say… Ash had his own plans.
He'd been investing quite a bit to get Damian firmly into his corner. Having a business genius on your side really did help. As they were talking, Ash had already asked Damian to find and buy the last remaining twenty percent of the shares before the revival officially began.
As for the starting money, even without Silph or Devon, Ash had plenty. There was all the money he'd taken from Team Rocket, and the Masked Man had maintained a personal account where he'd embezzled funds. Pryce wouldn't be using it, so it might as well go toward something useful.
And then there was the Aether Foundation. Their research into Pokémon conservation truly earned them the title of number one in the world; their findings were at least ten years ahead of current standards. If Lusamine ever found out that Ash had borrowed their data without planning to give it back, she'd probably be furious. Again, he'd make it up to her later. After all, thanks to all of this, things were going exactly as planned.
There was also quite a bit of other information, including reports on Ultra Beasts. Ash put those into another folder for later. Apparently, Lusamine had noticed that wormholes opened in Johto during the incident and that Ultra Beasts emerged. She was keeping an eye on Blaine, Bugsy, and Jasmine, the ones who had actually captured them.
Ash would look into that later. He had a contingency plan, just in case. He had a lot of those.
But Ash was no saint or martyr. He had reasons for everything.
Right now, he needed Neo Mauville and New Mauville completed within five months, which was very much doable, as long as Wattson agreed. And he also had a backup plan in case Wattson decided to reject his generous offer.
Ash grinned and held his hand out to Wattson, "So, if you will, how about it? Do we have a deal?" Ash said, his eyes glowing slightly.
Wattson barked out a laugh, "WAHAHAHA! Arceus help me, I'm agreeing to a business deal with a teenage Trainer." He took Ash's hand and shook it.
"Then let's keep talking," Ash said, "Neo Mauville is just the first step, and New Mauville is just one project." He smirked.
"What are you gonna rename it to? I dunno, Ketchum Industries has a nice ring to it," Wattson laughed.
"Please don't. I don't want to be more famous than I already am," Ash sighed.
Wattson chuckled, "Then you better be careful. If partners hear about what you can do, we might just have to change the name to Ketchum Industries."
"Right, right," Ash muttered, inhaling as he shook his head. He really didn't want to think about that. Instead, he looked back at Wattson, "Alright then, let's talk more. Starting with what the first step is. I've already got more plans, but first things first, I'll make my calls to set up the meetings."
Wattson smiled, "Then I guess I'd better get everything ready. My hands have been itching for years, now I can finally satisfy that feeling."