Two days after sending off his request, Alex called a meeting to check on everyone's progress.

“Sorry, Alex,” Rhea said first, bags under her eyes. “I’m not an astrophysicist, so I can’t make a flight plan for you out of nowhere. I don’t even know the limits of the gravity engine when it creates a relativistic gravitational adjustment on an object. The most I found out is that it works exactly as expected on the planet. I don’t know how it would behave once it’s in deep space, where there are no nearby objects to pull towards or push off from. I need more time to figure this out, as well as plenty of testing that will require permission from the League.”

Alex turned to Celise, who could get Rhea the permission she needed.

“I dug around and found the paperwork needed to launch past the atmosphere,” Celise said, looking similarly exhausted. “At minimum, I’ll need a perfectly calculated flight plan before I can begin the filing process, which includes exact specifications of the mode of transport and the repercussions of failure. I’ll also need to justify our objectives to a council, with or without a letter of recommendation from the Champion. It’ll be a tedious back-and-forth process that will take months at the very least. I have my best legal team on it, though, so we’ll know once they know.”

Finally, Alex turned to Nyx, hoping for any good news.

“Four,” Nyx said simply.

“Okay! We’re getting somewhere,” Alex said, encouraged by the small piece of good news, until Nyx continued.

“Four satellites in high orbit should allow us to text each other and send commands to and from anywhere on the planet. If we want video calls, gaming, and smooth internet access, we’ll have to launch thousands of low orbit satellites for better latency.”

“Four is a pretty good start,” Alex said, ignoring the glaring issue. “Once we get used to this space venture, we’ll be able to more easily launch satellites as necessary.”

Feeling the awkwardness settling over the command center, Alex sighed before standing and placing both hands on the table as he leaned forward.

“Alright, I won’t deny that I need this done rather urgently,” Alex said seriously. “Your deadline is before Guzzlord throws a tantrum that forces me to put it down. Given that it just had an all-you-can-eat buffet at Team Dominion’s base, it should take a few years before we have to consider simply breaking the law. It’s that serious of an issue.”

“I’ll do my best to find some shortcuts for you, so know that you aren’t working alone, but please make sure to maintain a healthy work-life balance,” Alex continued, his expression softening. “Rhea, go hire an astrophysicist or a dozen to help you with the calculations. That way, you can focus on getting Nyx the satellites she needs in the meantime. Also, I’ll poke around some contacts to see if I can find a workaround for your and Celise’s concerns. I’ve done enough favors for enough powerful people to have a decent list of people to ask.”

“This meeting is dismissed,” Alex finished. “Now go get some damn sleep.”

As the girls left, Alex sat back down and looked over his list of contacts. There were plenty, including quite a few Champions and Gym Leaders. Given his history of rampaging across the regions while hunting high-profile criminals, he had earned the right to communicate with them directly. Combined with the Silver Network having already spread across three regions, Alex was far from just another nobody.

Then his eyes landed on Steven Stone, whom he had met face-to-face before. Their relationship wasn’t exactly the kind where he could simply issue a one-sided request, but it was worth trying to see if they could strike a deal.

“Alex Wattson, to what do I owe this call?” Steven asked when Alex tried calling.

“Long story short, I have a Guzzlord to feed, so I was thinking of heading to an asteroid belt to feed it,” Alex answered, straight to the point. “I have an airship from Team Dominion that’s been upgraded to handle the journey, but I’m having trouble with the bureaucracy.”

“A Guzzlord, huh. You know, there’s a very easy way to feed it if you were at Master rank. It wouldn’t even be considered a problem at all.”

“Unfortunately…”

“Yes, you’re still Champion rank… your idea of feeding it from the asteroid belt would certainly do the job. It’s far enough away that it wouldn’t disturb anyone,” Steven said, taking on a thoughtful look. “Alright, I’ll cut you a deal. I’ll give you high-level access to Mossdeep Space Center to get all the help you’ll need in exchange for everything you have on Team Dominion.”

Alex’s brow furrowed. “I was already planning on sending everything to the League. I’m sure you’ll gain access to it at the same time they do.”

“Believe it or not, we have our own bureaucracy to deal with,” Steven said, shaking his head. “They’ll take forever sifting through sensitive information before determining access levels. If you hand it off to me first, however, I can make the appropriate moves before officially gaining access. I believe the benefit to me would be roughly the same as my offer to you. We’ll both be able to save time dealing with bureaucracy with this deal.”

“Alright,” Alex said with a shrug. “I’ll have Nyx send you a copy as soon as she’s finished compiling it.”

Team Dominion might have cleaned up their databases and servers prior to Alex getting his hands on them, but that didn’t include the personal files on every employee’s computer. Quite a few of them kept copies of their own work or others’ for personal gain, so it wasn’t like Nyx wouldn’t get anything. There was just so much of the same information in different versions that needed parsing to form a complete picture, which was why it was taking so long.

“Excellent!”

Over the next five days, Alex forwarded the high-level access to Rhea and Celise. Rhea was able to get the math she needed, as well as the Mossdeep Space Center’s research on gravity engines that they had been testing since Alex handed over the blueprint a decade ago. Meanwhile, Celise got in contact with their legal team to get the right paperwork in place. Progress was finally made greatly shortening their departure time by years.

At the same time, the airship finally arrived with the rest of the resources they had harvested from the island crater, as well as the two thousand prisoners who needed to be processed. Alex wasn’t interested in nitpicking, so he simply planned to have his mom, Jenny, deal with it. Whatever bounties he would get from submitting all these prisoners and the video evidence of Alaric’s death, he wouldn’t bother to contest. Sure, it was likely an absurd sum, but it would be a drop in the bucket in the long term.

“Hey, Mom, I have some prisoners I need processed, all belonging to Team Dominion. There are over two thousand of them, so you’ll probably need all the help you can get,” Alex said over the phone once she picked up.

“Um… Alex… it isn’t a good time right now. Would you mind if you handed this off to someone else?”

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Alex asked.

“I… I’m kind of getting married soon, so I won’t have any time to deal with that between the processing and the moving.”

“Oh! Did Joe finally propose?”

“Yeah, he finally reached Champion rank after all these years, so he proposed and we’re planning on getting married at the courthouse.”

“You know… Vera is going to sulk if she finds out you didn’t invite her.”

“I know, but I can’t help it,” Jenny said, genuinely distressed. “Joe and I wanted a small wedding, no more than five people, and if I invited you, your family of over twenty people between the girls and the kids would come as well.”

“Hahaha… I understand, Mom. I’ll break it to Vera gently.”

“You can come over in a week for the housewarming party I’m planning, though. We’ll have moved to Jenny Island by then. Be sure to bring everyone. I want to see my grandchildren.”

“Don’t you mean the International Police Headquarters?”

“It wasn’t called that when it was first built.”

“Alright, well, I’ll be waiting for your invitation then. And congratulations, Mom. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks, Alex. Love you.”

“Love you too, Mom. Bye.”

Alex smiled, genuinely happy for Jenny. Her marriage had been a long time coming, delayed only by Joe’s pride. Then again, it probably had done good for his motivation to reach Champion rank as soon as possible.

As for their move to Jenny Island, Jenny’s Arcanine had already reached Champion rank over the past decade, thanks mainly to their constant visits that usually ended with sneaking Champion and Master ranked treats to her Pokémon despite Jenny insisting she didn’t want handouts from Alex.

This meant she was more than powerful enough to return home to Jenny Island but had been putting it off for Joe’s sake. Now, they could finally go and start a new life as Champions, with likely plenty of children coming their way.

“I’m going to have siblings, huh,” Alex chuckled before focusing back on work.

Specifically, what to do with the two thousand prisoners he had sitting in the airship, now that his mother was busy.