The crowd's verdict on Lenny Koizumi was swift and merciless.
"Empty handed thief."
"Johto really sent this guy to represent them?"
"He's embarrassing the whole region."
In the Johto League conference room, Emadi watched the live feed with the expression of a man who had stepped on something unpleasant and couldn't locate it.
"This is the Rowan family pulling us into the mud with them," Kenji Aoyama said, arms folded. "Koizumi is their man. They saw yesterday's press conference and decided if they're going down, we go with them."
"It's working," someone else said grimly, gesturing at the screen. "The optics are terrible."
"The Johto region's reputation took years to build," Emadi said. "One idiot with a microphone and a grudge can undo it in ten minutes." He rubbed his temple. "If Ash wins this and Koizumi's stunt becomes the defining image of this conference..."
"It will be," Kenji said flatly. "Unless the match itself overshadows it."
They watched the screen and hoped.
...
At the Rowan family station, Silver Rowan watched the broadcast from his room with something approaching satisfaction.
His grandfather's voice reached him through the wall, louder than usual.
"Has Silver completely lost his mind?"
Gerald Rowan's composure, the thing Silver Rowan had always counted on as the family's bedrock, was gone. Ash's counter-demand had not been part of anyone's plan. The wager was never supposed to reach that point. Koizumi was supposed to provoke Ash into an emotional response, something impulsive, something the Johto League could use.
Instead Ash had responded with a demand for documentation of Team Rocket connections.
The kind of documentation that, if it existed and was produced publicly, ended families permanently.
Gerald Rowan understood immediately what Silver Rowan's impulsive revenge stunt had actually cost them. The money reserves, the exit plan, the years of patient recovery strategy, all of it had been contingent on the Johto League not having a reason to seal their assets and block their movement.
Ash's counter-demand had just handed the League exactly that reason, regardless of whether Koizumi accepted or refused.
"We can't transfer funds now," Gerald Rowan said through the wall. "They'll have people watching every account by morning."
Victor Rowan's voice, quieter. "Can we leave the region?"
"And go where? With what?" A long silence. "The Aoyama and Mori families won't let us walk out of Johto with anything significant. The moment we try to move, they'll freeze everything and call it a security measure."
Silver Rowan set down his drink.
His grandfather had built a plan that required patience and invisibility. Silver Rowan had blown both in one broadcast.
He didn't feel as satisfied as he had five minutes ago.
...
Back in the arena, Lenny Koizumi wiped sweat from his forehead and made his decision.
The crowd had been at him for three solid minutes. The jeering had moved past hostile into something more like contempt, the kind of crowd noise that stuck to a person's reputation permanently.
His hole card was still in play. He'd fed his Pokémon something before the match, an enhancement that wasn't listed in standard drug screening protocols, not technically illegal under current conference rules, just deeply frowned upon. He hadn't planned to need it. He'd planned to take Ash's techniques through a legitimate match win, then disappear for a few years and resurface under a different identity.
But the alternative right now was walking away with nothing and the entire Silver Conference watching him do it.
"Fine," Lenny said, jaw tight. "I accept your terms."
The crowd went briefly quiet, processing. Then the noise came back louder than before.
"He actually agreed."
"Is he insane or confident?"
"Either way this just got interesting."
Ash looked at him without particular expression. "Good. Let's begin."