He's coming back.

May sat at her mahogany desk, wringing her fingers through her hair and staring at the piece of paper lying in front of her. She hadn't expected the letter her assistant brought her to contain the contents that it did. Every word lay on the starch white paper, hand-written in elegant script that could only belong to one person she knew. She bit at her lip, reading the last line over and over again.

Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

-Steven Stone

She sighed, her head falling with her hands being the only thing keeping it up anymore. Her elbows were pressed into the desk and her hair was now disheveled from how much she'd been running her fingers through it. He was coming back to Hoenn. After two whole years he was finally coming back home. May could hardly believe it.

The dread sitting in her stomach was truly sickening.

May stood up from her desk, taking the letter in her hand and folding it as carefully as possible, matching the creases that had formed from it sitting in the envelope. She then placed it back into the envelope and closed it, opening one of her drawers and placing it right on top of another letter inside. She hung her head as she closed it, her entire body feeling like it was being weighed down by mass amounts of lead.

"God," she breathed, standing up straight with an exhale of breath. "I need a fricking drink."

It had been a long time since May had last heard from Steven. Since he left the region a few years ago it was unheard of for anyone to hear anything about him, or from him for that matter. Even Wallace, Sootopolis' gym leader and one of Steven's best friends in the world, was left in the dark when it came to his absence. He'd told her that he'd known Steven was planning to leave for a while, but as to what he was up to, Wallace was completely clueless. He never answered any calls or messages and sending letters was impossible considering that no one knew where he was living at any given time. For a few years Steven Stone had been a complete mystery, and frankly May had grown rather bitter about his absence. The letter announcing his return was completely unexpected, and May didn't much care for it. She'd long since reached the point where she was sated with Steven being out of her life forever.

She paced around her office, keeping her eyes glued to the floor and her arms folded and pressed to her back. The room felt claustrophobic to her, despite the fact that it was actually rather large. She'd obtained it long ago when she took Steven's place as champion, as well as the Champion's Hall where challengers battled her, and a suite she could use as a bedroom should she choose to. She didn't much care for the latter as she had her own home she commuted to in Mossdeep, but it was useful whenever she was forced to spend a long day at the Pokemon League and she was too tired to endure a flight back home. Even so, everything felt like it was caving in on her and she had trouble keeping her mind calm. She felt like she was going to throw up.

"I guess I should have been prepared for this." she spoke to herself. Her voice was laced with bitterness. "He was going to come home eventually. You can only spend so much damn time looking at rocks before you get homesick, I guess." She sighed and glanced back over at her desk, eyeing the six pokeballs laying neatly on top of it. One of them caught her attention especially, the one of which she had long ago purposely placed the gem sticker on top of. Inside laid a likely sleeping Metagross, the grown version of the Beldum she'd received from Steven's leaving long ago. Absentmindedly she walked over and picked up the pokeball, holding it tenderly in her hands and stroking the line across the middle of it with her thumb. "I wonder if your old trainer would be proud to see how well you've grown up."

Just then a knock rapped on the other side of her office door and grabbed her attention. She quickly put the pokeball back down and subconsciously ran her fingers through her messy hair to make it look more presentable, all before shouting "Come in!" to whomever waited on the other side.

"Hello there!" yelled a somewhat feminine voice as they opened the door. May sighed, it was Wallace. Not the biggest of surprises considering he'd been visiting her a lot lately, or really a lot since Steven had left. The two of them had been becoming good friends in spite of the absence of their mutual one. Any visit of his was welcome, but he liked to gossip a lot, whether it be about other gym leaders or trainers that had challenged him, and that got on May's nerves at time. She may have been a girl, but she wasn't one to enjoy the stereotypical girly things that Wallace sometimes enjoyed delving into. May had more important things to worry about than what Wattson decides to do with his Saturday evenings. Regardless, she was still happy to see him. He'd get her mind off of the damned letter.

"So you will never guess who just called me a little while ago." he said cheerily.

Okay, so maybe she wouldn't be getting it off her mind.

May sighed and eyed him expectantly, "I'm just shaking in my boots to find out."

Wallace laughed and took his place on one of the black leather couches surrounding her glass coffee table in the center of the office. He leaned back and put his feet up on the table, crossing one leg over the other. She'd used to scold him for doing that since the coffee table was relatively new and she'd worked hard to have it made, but after some time it was evident that the soot-made glass was more durable to scratches than she'd have ever hoped. May stood on the opposite side, choosing to stand behind the other couch and placing her hands on the back of it for support. She waited with bated breath as Wallace adjusted himself to get comfortable.

"So, just a bit before I came here, I got a call from Steven. Steven Stone! Can you believe it? I almost thought I'd never hear from him again."

May swallowed, "Is that so?" She almost felt offended to hear that he'd gotten a call while all she got was a letter. She knew Steven had the number to her PokeNav. Sure the letter was long, but she'd have liked to actually hear his voice. Then again, she didn't know how she would have reacted, and for his sake it may have been best that she just received a letter. One that she couldn't reply to.

Wallace closed his eyes and nodded. "It is so. He said he's on his way home. He went on about how he finally felt he'd gotten his fill of traveling and wanted to come home, so he should actually be on his way back now." That wasn't surprising to May, he'd said about the same thing in his letter. "How exciting, huh? I've missed my friend for quite some time now."

May nodded slightly, "Yeah, really exciting." she replied. She knew she probably didn't sound very convincing. It was hard to sound excited about something that filled her with so much dread.

Wallace opened one eye and looked up at her, an eyebrow raised. "You feeling alright, May? You seem a little… I dunno, off? I thought you'd be really excited to hear about this."

May silently inhaled a deep breath and flashed her winning Champion smile, "Of course I'm excited. It's been a long time since we last saw him."

Wallace's expression didn't change. May was sure she'd tried to play the fake Champion smile on him before, and at this point he probably didn't fall for it nearly as easily as he used to. But rather than confront her about it, he just shook his head and let it slide. "I think it'll be great to see him again. I'm sure he's got a ton of stories to tell us about all his adventures in the other regions. He told me he's really looking forward to seeing you too. He asked a lot about how you were doing actually."

Looking forward to seeing you again soon. The words bit at her. She smiled as best as she could and nodded her head. "Yeah, I actually had gotten a letter from him. Just a bit before you got here actually. It was.. pretty shocking news, I guess."

He smiled, "A letter, huh? That's cool. Steven used to write a lot before they started making the PokeNavs call accessible. We used to make fun of him and call him old-fashioned; it was way easier to just send emails or text messages on those things. But he was kind of stuck in his old ways, I guess he found it to be a bit more personal. He probably had sent you that a while ago. How coincidental that it came in today."

Coincidental and inconvenient, May thought bitterly. She honestly wished she had known about his apparent return much sooner. She would have been able to build up a facade of excitement about it. She didn't want to ruin everyone else's happiness about Steven's return. It wasn't fair for everyone else to be miserable just because she was. No one had to experience quite the same amount of disappointment and betrayal that she felt when he had left.

Wallace sat up and leaned forward on the couch. "So I think we oughta celebrate. Maybe get a few of the gym leaders and League members to help us throw together a little return party. Your friends could come too of course. We can easily get it done tomorrow before he gets back, and I'm sure he'd be really happy to see every-"

"I really don't think I'd be super interested in doing that." May interrupted. Upon seeing the change in Wallace's expression and immediately realizing what she implied, she quickly followed up with, "I have a lot of things to do tomorrow. There's already appointments stacked up to challenge the League tomorrow. And I mean, I know they probably won't make it to me, but it'd be pretty rude if they got to the end and I wasn't there to fight them."

Wallace frowned, "You could always move them over to another day. I'm sure the trainers wouldn't mind that much."

May shook her head, "I'll tell you now, if Steven had called me and told me he cancelled my appointment when I came here because he wanted to go to a damn party, I'd have been pissed the hell off. I'm not going to do that."

"Well if we have the party here, you five could always come in and chat between your appointments. I know you don't put them back to back, you can't tell me you don't have any down time between them." May knew she was screwed at that point. He was right, between every challenger there was at least an hour or two for the League's members to relax after the often excruciating battles, and more importantly for their pokemon to be able to relax and heal up. Those gaps would be optimal time for all of them to be able to attend a small celebration going on inside the building, which surely they'd all love to attend because they love Steven. Wallace had placed her in a corner she couldn't back out of.

May bit at her bottom lip before sighing and putting on her best smile again. "In that case I suppose I can't refuse. I'm sure it'll be fun."

Wallace stood up and clapped his hands, a smile filling his features with exuberance. "That's what I wanted to hear. Be positive, this is going to be a great time. I already can't wait."

May's smile lingered but she could feel her face droop, "Neither can I."

He started walking to the door then, "I'll start making calls and letting everyone know. And you should also let me know what times your appointments are so I can decide on a good time to start the party. Don't worry about food or anything, I'll be sure to take care of all of that. I know you're busy."

"I appreciate that, thank you." she replied genuinely. Not having to deal with anything involving Steven definitely made her much happier considering the situation.

Before leaving, Wallace took a moment to look back at her as he opened the door. "May, look. I know you're still not super happy with him. It's not like I forgot about how sad you were when he left, or how angry you were for that matter." Her mouth hung slightly open as he spoke, and then she hung her head in shame. Of course he could see right through her. He continued, "But I know that he's excited to see everybody, especially you. He did what he did for his own reasons, and we should respect that. But now he's coming home and we should welcome him back with open arms. It'll be alright, okay?"

She looked up at him and nodded once, "Okay."

He smiled "Atta girl. I'll talk to you again later tonight. There'll be a little decorating needing to be done in the ballroom, so I assure you I'll stop by if you're not in a match." With that he closed the door behind him and made his trek away from the office. May took the opportunity to allow her body to plunge face forward into the couch she was holding onto.

He's coming back. I should be happy. But I'm not happy at all.

The wind was cold and fierce high up in the air, but it was hardly phasing that of Latios as he continued his flight, Steven Stone in tow. They'd only just left that morning, and Steven knew he probably wouldn't be arriving in Hoenn until the late afternoon of tomorrow. Luckily he knew that around the time evening would set in that day they'd be close to or over the Sinnoh region, so a rest from the excruciating flight was certainly possible. Steven was endlessly thankful that Latios was so open to flying him the whole way, even when he offered to transport them some other way like by boat or to get him and Skarmory to take turns. Latios was utterly persistent in wanting to go the whole way, knowing Steven wanted to make it back to Hoenn as soon as possible. His pokemon were more kind to him than he felt he deserved.

"How are you doing, Latios? Do you need anything?" Steven shouted against the wind. Latios replied by shaking his head, then plunging forward at a faster speed to show his determination. Steven laughed and held tighter to his neck, "I understand. I know you're able to and all but please don't go much faster than you have been. I'd rather not go plunging straight into the ocean."

Latios squawed in confirmation and slowed his flight speed, allowing Steven to relax on his back once more. He smiled and patted his dear friend on the back of his neck. It was going to be a long flight, but he knew if anyone was going to be able to make it happen it would be Latios. He couldn't wait to be back home.

He couldn't wait to tell her about everything he'd done.