…She had gotten wind of the situation through the grapevine, prematurely and chock-full of shock factor, and immediately phoned about it.
Some picked up. Most went to voicemail.
And then, he picked up.
"Stop by, May." In the kindliest of tone and the gentlest of manner, Wallace beseeched her. "Stop by, and we'll talk."
"We shall talk now." She pressed him with the sort of vehemence that had him clamming up in adamant refusal to do as told.
Silence strained between the reproachful pair over PokeNav, punctuated by frustrated breathing and background bustle, as one contested the other in a showdown of wills.
"Please, May." Wallace's deeply imploring voice was first to reach out, with May's clearly hesitant one piping up next in evasive reply. "…I'm far away, Wallace, and quite occupied."
She was not wrong.
In the dank, craggy bowels of treacherous Meteor Falls, the chaos of ongoing Pokemon-battling richly resounded, with her and her Pokemon at the heart of it.
"I'll wait." The urgency with which he mustered the following gave her no heart for rejection of his offer. "You'll find me at Sootopolis Gym."
"…And I'll find you there."
In hindsight, she ought to have given him something better and clearer than just that to consider.
However, keeping it vague allowed her exactly what she needed in order to fully digest the repercussions of 'stopping by'.
…Time.
Heaving a sigh of familiar heaviness, May sank onto the dirt below in a tired, dirt-streaked heap, appearing and feeling no different from how she had been throughout the entirety of her conversation with Wallace.
Defeated. And now, utterly so.
She deflated, with her accompanying Pokemon team of five gathering around her limply sitting figure in a circle of comfort and warmth. Etched in each of their apprehensively watching faces were uncannily similar expressions of concern.
Gardevoir's stood out in particular.
"You should go, May." The Embrace Pokemon said nothing but communicated everything to its stressful Trainer over their telepathic link. "I can sense your desire to."
"What if it doesn't change anything?" May whispered.
Understanding yet unrelenting, Gardevoir persisted in its persuasion, albeit tenderly, "…Not going will change nothing, May. At least, be there to hear him out, and give him an opportunity to hear you out."
Nearby, Altaria puffed out its chest in self-importance.
"…I hope that you aren't too tired to travel." Managing a wan smile in its direction, May meant it for herself and her Pokemon both.
After all, located at sea in the heart of a waterlogged crater, Sootopolis City was not the most accessible place in vast Hoenn. As a matter of fact, scaling the rugged terrain of Meteor Falls and the Victory Road alike had come far easier to her as compared to navigating the watery depths of Route 126.
Flying was an option she had been quick to explore, shortening a typically hour-long journey to a mere quarter or less. Surfing the volatile tides of Hoenn Sea frequently crossed her path with those of wild Pokemon or Pokemon Trainers eager for a bout of battling, naturally impeding swift travel.
As her thoughts cleared, so did the clouds, revealing the softly glimmering snowiness telltale of Sootopolis cityscape.
"…Wallace…!" May yelled at the top of her voice, as if she could be heard over the deafening roar of fiercely blowing wind.
Meanwhile, egged on by its increasingly agitated Trainer, a tiring Altaria picked up its pace in steep descent against better judgment, unwittingly sending itself crashing and May tumbling right off its back in haphazard, undignified landing.
Pain, as well as the shock of it, did little to deter May, however.
"…Why, if it isn't May Maple!" Seated outdoors at a quaint set of coffee table and chairs, Wallace waved an elegant hand in enthused greeting. "Lovely afternoon, isn't it? Will you join me for tea?" Smiling generously, he gestured at the heavily laden tabletop as the girl sprinted headlong towards him from afar.
"…You're the League Champion." May panted, breathless and flushing scarlet. Windblown hair fell out of its ponytail in a tousled mess to frame her rapidly blinking face as it confronted Wallace's evenly smiling one.
Quivering all over, however, she looked close to tears.
"Oh, May…" The picture of emotional turmoil painted across her crumpled face had him deeply sighing. "…I regret that you feel this badly about it. And I regret that there is nothing more that I can do about it."
Shaking her head hard in a wild sort of confusion, May stammered, "N-No, that's not- that's not it-"
Exhaling heavily, Wallace nodded his, contrasting her fluster with peaceful acceptance and clear words. "It's the League's decision, May, finalized and received with blessing. In fact, it's been long in the making since our Champion's-" He briefly interrupted himself to correct, "-now Ex-Champion's departure years ago. Implementation was but a matter of time."
"…How…?" Despite Wallace drawing up the only other chair in silent invitation for her to join him at his table, May remained obstinately where she stood.
Reluctance to move on rendered her incapable of doing more beyond continually shaking her head.
"…We abide by Pokemon League protocols, May, internally and regionwide. As Hoenn's then-Champion, Steven Stone had invoked it, following an extended sabbatical from his Championship, to the Elite Four's unanimous approval." A grim-faced Wallace disclosed in tactful, carefully worded explanation. "I was Champion before him and therefore, am obligated to take up the title once more after he relinquished it." Catching May's dismaying eye, he continued gently, "He's been away for far too long, May. It had to be done."
Those very words, spoken to the face with an air of finality, drove the final nail into the coffin lid.
Suddenly weak all over, May Maple collapsed to the grass below.
"…May!"
Alarmed, Wallace sprang to his feet but Altaria beat him to it. Unfurling its wings, it abandoned its roost atop Sootopolis Gym to warmly wrap its fleecy body around its Trainer. "…Arya. Wallace…"
"May… Come now, my dear. Let's get up." Wallace spoke over Altaria's cooing. With careful, comforting words and hands, he helped her back onto her feet to walk her in the direction of his coffee area. She let him lead her, stumbling in slight misstep to his unhurried pace to it.
She let him sit her down in a chair.
She let him pour her a cup of steaming hot tea, black and savory in spite of its deceptively unappealing appearance.
She let him ease the teacup into her trembling hands, warming her clammy palms against smooth porcelain.
Not a word was spoken while he fussed over her, the silence and dedication of it fondly reminding May of…
"…He'd taken care of me then exactly how you do now." She murmured, voice small and tired.
"Who do you think he learnt it from?" Teasing sobered almost instantly at her lack of reaction. "There are lots more that Steven needs to take care of, May." Wallace retook his seat opposite her, clasping his hands and crossing his legs at the knees. "…Ensuring the flawless operation of the Pokemon League takes precedence above all else, even in his absence. It is something that you will have to take into serious consideration as would-be Champion had you bested him in Pokemon battle years ago, my dear." Peering into her downcast face and smiling, he reminded, "And judging by what I had seen for myself, you had come really close to it. Hair's breadth, if I may say so."
Lifting her face, May met his encouraging smile with a small, embarrassed one.
"So…" She prompted shyly, awe etched in slightly disbelieving facial features. "You're really Champion now?"
"Well," He pondered briefly, teal eyes laughing. "Yes." Leaning in, he cocked his head at her. "I'll be the one seeing you in the Champion's Chamber should you pop by." His grinning widened. "Will I be seeing you there?"
"…I-"
"My loss to Steven doesn't make me a bad, or weak, Champion, my dear girl." Wallace pouted. "But I suppose I will just have to prove myself to you!"
"Was… Was Steven a challenge?"
"Well, you tell me." He cued in vain, with May falling awkwardly silent in response. Seeing her struggle and deciding against prolonging it, he opted for a change of topic. "Want to see the Mantle, May? The Champion's Mantle."
By the time she nodded her reply, he was already setting its chest on the tabletop. Like most chests, it was compact and square. Unlike most chests, it was richly ornamented.
Everything about it appeared too ostentatious for Steven's comparatively modest tastes, and true to expectations, the Mantle itself turned out looking exactly like that.
Ostentatious. Extravagant. Flowing.
Something Steven Stone would never be caught alive, or by the paparazzi, wearing.
Something May could never picture herself in.
Something Wallace would feel completely at home in.
"Well?"
"…Velvet…?" May grimaced, dropping her pretense at tact and snatching her outstretched hand out of the slinky, silvery mass.
"Yes!"
Her jaw slackened in revulsed gaping to see it shamelessly shimmer. "Steven wouldn't have worn this. He couldn't have."
"Ah," Her denial had Wallace grinning wider. "But he did. All the Champions do. Past, present," He wiggled his eyebrow at her face. "And future."
"You did then?"
"And will have to too, moving forward." He affirmed. "But I'm feeling generous today, and so I'll show you now!"
…At the spectacle of Wallace strutting his stuff in his trademark jumpsuit and silver glitter, May wanted to look and cover her eyes at the same time.
Gods.
How she missed Steven and his ensembles…!
Meanwhile, Wallace approached May, Mantle firmly in place over his shoulders. Stopping within a foot of her with unnecessary flourish and without a word, he regarded her with seriousness unlike his frivolous appearance.
"May, this…" He gestured at himself in a single, sweeping hand motion, face creased in confusion. "Wouldn't you have known about this already? From Steven?"
"No."
"Didn't he call about it? Haven't you two been in contact?"
She shook her head dumbly, watching him sink onto the grass. "…How?" He seemed to lack even the motivation for speech. "How can it be that you two haven't been speaking with one another?"
"Well, he's been busy." Taking leave of her chair to join him, she gingerly edged close, with him going from sitting cross-legged to curling up in a dramatic display of despondency. "…I've been busy…"
Staring blankly at her tanned, toned legs stretching to their fullest across the prickliness of freshly mowed grass, she could not help but wonder if she believed what she had just said.
…Wallace clearly didn't.
"Busy?" He shrieked, face contorted and voice distorted with incredulity. "Am I hearing this right? From you? I can believe that of Steven Stone, incorrigible workaholic as he has always been, but you? You have been busy? With what?"
Taken starkly aback by the extent of his reaction, May stammered in defensive reply, "…Pokemon-training…"
She quailed under the intensity of the glare he sent her way in outraged response.
"'Pokemon-training'?" He repeated, near impossibly shrilly. "Do you train day to night, and night to day, twenty-four hours every single day with not a moment to spare for a friendly little phone call?"
"Well, no…"
"Do you, May Maple, not have a moment to spare for the company of a close friend, aside from that of your Pokemon's?" He jabbed his index finger in Altaria's direction accusatorily, recoiling with a loud yelp when it pecked abruptly at him in disgruntled warning. Then, seemingly in reminder, he brought that same hand to May, outstretched palm awaiting. "PokeNav." He demanded.
"What? Why?" Scowling, May challenged, with Wallace glaring back just as heatedly.
"Oh, just give it here!" Patience thinning, he snatched it out of her warily offering hands, activating it to scroll rapidly through a long list of phone contacts until he finally reached the one that read 'Steven Stone'. "Ah! Got it!"
"What?" May blustered, frantically trying to sneak a look in between Wallace assiduously dodging her every attempt at doing so.
"Now, let's see… Hoenn… Kalos…" Looking back and forth between the starkly lit screen and May's deeply questioning face, he exclaimed his astonishment, "Well, well! You do have Steven's contact details. Hoenn's and Kalos's both! I'm going to give him a call right now and tell him that you miss him-"
"-No!" Violet eyes, already wide, bulged nearly out of their sockets. "Don't you dare! Give that here! Give it!" Pure mortification had an irate May leaping at a raucously laughing Wallace in a wild lunge for her PokeNav, stalling in mid-grab to catch it in her desperately flailing hands when he casually lobbed it back at her.
With fast clicking, May wiped both the undialed call as well as Steven Stone's Kalos contact off its screen.
"…No excuses there, girl." Clearly enlivened after their hilarious little episode, Wallace regarded her with a teasing tilt of his head. "So, why haven't you been calling?"
"I did!" Clearly wronged, May protested, face sulking and temper flaring. "…I did call him. Several times over years whenever I got the urge to talk." And similar urge swiftly set in. "A-And I wasn't the only one calling! He called, too! Steven Stone himself! Not as often, certainly, but at least, he wasn't… missing in action!"
…
This girl… was absolute comedy.
So entertaining, agitable, and manipulatable.
…Why, she reminded him of Steven himself, when he was younger, rasher, and far more prone to suffering similarly fevered fits of embarrassment whenever cornered.
"So," Wallace derailed both his train of thought and her babbling on. "Just what happened?"
May's shoulders bounced once in a shrug. "…I don't know." She mumbled her reply, suddenly and visibly forlorn. "The calls lessened over the past year, each one getting shorter than the other. Then, they just… stopped…"
"He stopped calling?"
May rolled her eyes, and head, in a show of indifference, which convinced no one. "He stopped… I stopped… Then, we both stopped." Despite himself, Wallace could not help wincing at her words, uttered with finality and in a demoralizing tone, perking up only when she did shortly after. "Oh, yes! He had given me a call on my birthday."
"Needless to say, that made your night, and that night your year."
Recollection of May Maple's seventeenth birthday unfolded, to varying detail. During then, no one had paid particular attention, or noticed, when she had quietly disappeared from ongoing celebration to take a private phone call.
However, her subsequent happiness had not gone unnoticed.
"Yes," Spurred by intimate memory of that one lovely night, May met Wallace's gentle gaze with one just as romantic, tenderly remarking, "Yes, it did."
Her shyly smiling away set her facial features aglow in a vision that blew him away.
…Girl's in love…
And apparently clueless as well.
"…So, that was it? You two never…" He mimed not talking with a hand slicing at empty air.
"Not again." Finding her upper torso stiff, she stretched before flopping onto her back with much languidness and a sigh. "What I recall of our last conversation was mention of a significant breakthrough in Mega-Evolution in Kalos."
…However, all I understood was that he was not going to come back… Not anytime soon…
"Mega-Evolution? In Pokemon, yes?" Out of polite rather than actual interest, a barely listening Wallace probed. Preoccupied with making himself comfortable somewhere to her left after opting to lay down on the lawn as well, he made no effort in keeping up with the chatter.
"…Nothing that I haven't already read in his letter…"
"Wait. What?" Waning interest restored, he flipped over onto his side in an instant. "A letter? There was a letter? What letter? Steven wrote it to you?" He hovered over a bemused May eagerly, past listlessness clearly replaced with vigor.
Almost… in excess…
"Yes… A letter…" She repeated with aggravating deliberation, enunciating each syllable with force while eyeing him, bewilderment mingling with wariness on her face. "…I suppose it was meant for me. After all, he had addressed it to, well, me."
"And? And?"
"And… what…?" Overwhelmed, May said little else and Wallace, excited beyond intelligible vocabulary, did not help.
"What more did that letter say?" He literally shrieked in May's face.
"…That's all!" She finally cried out at the peak of her confusion, driven over the edge by his zeal. "What exactly were you expecting? A love confession?"
In his disappointment, Wallace could hardly bear to look at her.
Oh, you have no idea…
Vexed, May grew animated in speech. "That was just a farewell letter, wishing well and arranging dates that would never be kept. Nothing more or less! Plain and simple!"
Her helplessness was evident. As was his.
"'Plain and simple'?" With a roll of disbelieving eyes, Wallace snorted the very words he would never associate with the two most complicated individuals he had ever known. "'Plain and simple', my Milotic's sparkly rainbow butt." Sulking, he muttered darkly, "You and Pebbles are both going to be the death of me some day."
He was jolted out of his grousing by a squeal of laughter.
"'Pebbles'…?" Sitting up, May yelped in between giggling, barely able to stomach the idea of Steven Stone responding to something as uncharacteristically adorable as that, given his propensity for austerity.
That little smirk of Wallace's served only to fuel her imagination.
"Yes, 'Pebbles', one of my many creative, unappreciated nicknames for your ex-mentor, our ex-Champion. Accumulated to unaccountability in our past relationship." He laughed heartily at her suggestive expression. "…Steven and I go way back."
Goaded by his indirect behavior and the naked sentiment to his speech, a knowing May eyed him with playful intent. "…Way back?" She cajoled, boldly jostling him while provoking a reply.
"Way back." He needed no provocation, volleying back in good humor. "He and I used to date." The nonchalance with which he dropped the revelation stoked an already overactive imagination.
"Oh." A fiercely scarlet May gasped. "Oh, wow! Really? You aren't pulling my leg, are you?"
"Why would I? Doesn't benefit me to deny the majority of my dating life."
An already slackened jaw fell.
"…Oh. Oh my gosh…!" Succumbing to a bout of girlish fervor before an amused Wallace, she latched onto his side and started shaking him about vigorously. "You and Steven? The two of you were lovers? Actual, past lovers? How? And when? Tell me!"
"…Get Steven to. He'll tell it better than I can."
"No! No, he won't!" May pouted, jerking him about by his elbow. "You know he won't!"
Wallace spoke over the racket of his brain rattling inside his skull. "And that's your homework for the rest of the year! Get him to tell you all about him and I and I'll reward you with my version of our story!"
"Just tell me!"
Neither her prying nor the occasional cursory glance in their direction deterred them, with Wallace indulging her every little whim.
It was the least he could do for her, now. It kept her happily distracted. It kept her from overthinking.
It helped.
Because, half a year later, May had grown accepting enough of reality to confront not Steven Stone but Wallace in the Champion's Chamber.