Alex arrived at the base in Kanto first thing the next morning. He didn’t get much sleep, as Bea had him throughout the rest of the day and all evening. In the end, he promised an arrangement similar to Marnie’s, where he would meet with her once a year. Specifically, they made a deal to include her in his Battle Royale streams and have some fun along the way.

“Daddy!” the little ones screamed as they saw Alex enter the living room, running up to him and hugging his leg in excitement.

Alex crouched and wrapped all three of them into his arms, pulling them close and holding them firmly against his chest.

“I missed you all, did you miss me?” Alex asked.

“Yeah!” 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

“We missed you so much, Daddy.”

“Are you going to leave again tomorrow?”

“No, I’ll be staying for good this time,” Alex said as he gently set them back down.

“Yey!” all three of them cheered.

“Hey, Dad,” Alvera greeted as she kissed him on the cheek. “Are you finally done with the Galar region?”

“Yeah, I managed to finish the Scroll of Steel and evolve Kubfu. Are you sure you don’t want to learn calligraphy? It’ll be a big boost to your patience and discipline.”

“No…” she said, shaking her head. “I get enough of that with photography. It takes a lot of patience to wait for the right shot to come, you know. Besides, I don’t want to waste any more time on anything else. I only have a few days left on my sentence before I can finally go out and take pictures again. I can’t wait to head to the Johto region next.”

Alex tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“We’re going to Alola as soon as your sentence is done.”

Alvera’s eyes slowly widened as panic struck her. Her plans were being delayed again. As frustration bubbled to the surface of her thoughts, threatening to spill onto her face, she heard the quiet, unmistakable cough of her mother.

“That’s… great… I bet I can take plenty of pretty pictures in Alola,” she said, presenting a happy face.

“It’ll be a nice family vacation while visiting some old friends in the region. You remember Marlo and Leilani, right? As well as their daughters, Malia and Nohea,” Vera added as she approached Alex and kissed him deeply, followed by the other girls in the living room, one after another.

“Right! I do remember them. We kept in touch for a while before growing apart. It seemed they were too busy with school and Pokémon training,” Alvera said, her frustration turning into fear for her mother before settling into resignation. “It’ll be so much fun…”

Alex wasn’t blind to his daughter’s suffering. He could at least recognize when she was in distress.

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Alex said as he patted her shoulder. “You’ll have plenty of pretty pictures to take while we’re there. At the very least, you can show your audience the view of Alola from the airship.”

“We’re taking the airship?” Alvera exclaimed.

“Yup, I bet you’ll get plenty of amazing angles to shoot from. Also, we’ll be heading to all the different islands, so you can take as many photos of all the different Pokémon you want.”

“I guess that isn’t too bad,” Alvera said, warming up to the idea. “I’d better pack for a beach vacation then.”

“Bring some warm clothes as well. They have snow-capped mountains for us to climb.”

“Okay~,” Alvera said as she raced to her room.

“You’re spoiling her,” Vera accused.

“She’s already an adult at 18 years old. She’s too old to spoil anymore. Not to mention, she stuck to your punishment without a problem, right?”

“I don’t know if that was a good thing,” Vera said with a sigh. “She’s been spending too much ammunition and sparring with too many people. They’re calling her a menace. The instructors have a hard time dealing with her since they’re too worried about their jobs to say no when she causes trouble.”

Alvera didn’t have much to do when all technology was taken from her. That meant no TV, no phone, no internet, and no access to her camera either. All she had was her Pokemon, body, and guns, which were allowed as an exception so she could train and avoid getting rusty.

She spent her mornings running the bounty hunter’s obstacle course for over an hour to maintain her fit physique without becoming too muscular. Then she sparred with Elite ranked trainers who were free, exchanging near-deadly injuries each time, often including the instructors. After that, she practiced shooting for over an hour, her accuracy and handling improving visibly. Finally, she spent the rest of her time with her Pokémon, training them personally to grow in power.

“It’s fine,” Alex said. “Anyway, I better go meet with Rhea and ask about the airship.”

“Alright.”

With Metagross’s help, Alex headed for Rhea’s laboratory, where he found her happily tinkering with a new device that was roughly 3 meters tall. It was cylindrical in design, with glowing crystals attached to the frame, all holding a massive diamond-shaped crystal at the center that Alex recognized as the Psychic energy amplifier. It seemed Rhea had finally managed to find enough time to work on this secret project.

“How’s it going?” Alex asked.

“Alex!” Rhea shouted, leaping into his arms, sharing a deep, love-filled kiss that left her flushed and breathless. “Are you finally done with your visit to Galar?”

“Yeah, I’m staying for good this time, and we’ll be heading to Alola for a vacation soon, which is why I stopped by to check out the airship. Is this the Psychic energy amplifier?”

“Yup,” Rhea said as she presented her latest creation. “This was surprisingly easy to work with. All I had to do was shave off the spent outer layer, mount it on this feeder, and charge it with Infinity energy. Now it has the power to send Psychic energy all over the world.”

“Does it need practice or anything?”

“A bit. I think the Pokémon just has to get used to imagining far-off distances beyond their normal reach. There shouldn’t be a learning curve though, so after a few test runs they’ll be able to use it without a problem.”

“I’ll send over Gardevoir and have her conduct some testing.”

“That’s fine,” Rhea said as she moved to the exit. “So, you wanted to check out the airship, right?”

“If it’s ready.”

“Of course it’s ready,” Rhea exclaimed before quietly adding, “There were some complications though.”

“Complications?” Alex asked, his keen sense of hearing allowing him to catch Rhea’s whisper.

“Well… the problem with the initial design of the airship was that it couldn’t move freely and, at best, could only mimic an airplane’s maneuverability. To fix that, I came up with the idea of installing a localized gravity field within the airship, thereby canceling the danger of moving too fast. Unfortunately, I needed the same number of engines to counteract all gravitational forces acting on the contents of the airship, so… I ended up using the second airship for parts.”

The initial plan for both airships was to use one for leisure and the other for military purposes, for the exclusive use of the Silver Network. There weren’t any specific use cases that justified the necessity, but Alex figured it would be nice to have just in case. Now Rhea was saying they only had one airship rather than two, and that it would only be used for their leisure.

“Now, before you get all uppity,” Rhea quickly added, “it was an absolute necessity to move all the gravity engines from one to the other. It fixes the problem of acceleration, allowing it to move like a real airship, and it even allows for space travel so long as the hull receives further upgrades, which I was able to apply using the spare hull that was no longer necessary.”

Once Alex and Rhea reached the backyard where the airships had been parked, he was surprised to see one of them reduced to nothing more than a frame, with piles of scrap metal stacked high beside it, while the other was noticeably thicker with a reinforced outer shell.

“The airship now features a reinforced hull that can tank at least one Giga Impact from a Master ranked Pokémon, omnidirectional maneuverability without limits to acceleration other than what the engines can output, and space travel if you feel like it.”

“Downsides?” Alex asked, unbothered by losing an airship.

He didn’t have any real plans for it, and as far as he was concerned, this was a decent upgrade. It was worth the cost of an airship that didn’t have any actual use.

“The space inside is significantly smaller, so don’t expect anything too outrageous. It also can’t be used for military purposes for obvious reasons, and the gun ports still need upgrading for space use. On top of that, the energy consumption is through the roof. I had to move all the batteries over from the other airship and even purchase more from the market just to ensure it has enough power for a month of travel.”

“That sounds like a lot of space was used up. What does it look like inside?” Alex asked.

“Pretty decent,” Rhea replied. “Let’s go in, and I can show you around.”