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Chapter 5: History
Stern didn't tell anyone about what he must have guessed about the true cause of the incident. It probably made Steven look like he had overreacted, and keeping Metagross out beside him didn't help, but it would hardly be the first time he ended considered a maniac or worse. At this point, he refused to take chances.
Fortunately, everyone else in the building had evacuated safely as well, and only a few showed signs of smoke inhalation. Sending them to the nearest clinic and the rest home, Stern gestured for Steven to follow him.
"Come on," he said, "we'll use Keele's office. It's on the other side of the building and he keeps it closed, so it should be fine."
"Captain, are you sure? You were in there the longest," Dock protested, hovering over his boss fretfully. "Maybe you should get checked out too."
"I'll do that later," Stern waved him off. "For now, make sure the shutters and windows are open, so it airs out. We'll have to check all the equipment before we can get back to work, so draw up a list and make sure everyone knows what to do tomorrow."
Shooting him another worried look, Dock nonetheless complied.
It hadn't been a fault in any of the equipment, but they had to keep up appearance — or check for any signs of tampering, for that matter. They couldn't exclude that possibility, now.
Stern led the way around to the back of the building, where he unlocked a side door and slipped into a small, slightly musty office piled high with stacks of folders and rolled up charts. Closing the door behind Steven, he gestured for him to take a seat at the cluttered desk, but before he could join him, Stern broke into a heavy bout of coughing.
"Are you alright? Maybe your assistant is right," Steven said, moving to help the older man into a chair.
"I'll, I'll do that later," Stern repeated, coughing again before finally managing to calm his breathing. His face was pale, but he didn't give Steven a chance to protest further. Turning to him, he asked without preamble, "How much do you know about Mauville? Not the city, the company behind it, the same one that built New Mauville and Sea Mauville?"
"I... Not much, I'm afraid," Steven admitted. "It was shut down, maybe about thirty years ago?"
In other words, before he was even born. It was a subject he had never concerned himself with.
Stern sighed, covering his eyes for a moment, his brow furrowed painfully. "Wattson and I... and Dock too, many of my men... we worked for Mauville, before it collapsed. We weren't close then, we were on different projects, and we haven't exactly kept in touch. So I was surprised, when Wattson suddenly called me up a little while back."
"Wait... Are you saying this has something to do with the old Mauville company?" Steven guessed, trying to follow the thread of the conversation to its obvious conclusion. "Some kind of... old corporate grudge? After all this time?"
It sounded preposterous, but Stern only shook his head tiredly. "I didn't until now," he said. "But that's what Wattson wanted to ask me about — the old company. What I remembered about the upper management and the founder... Not that I could tell him much."
"Why does it matter, if the company was dissolved decades ago?" Steven wondered. "I've never even heard of it, aside from those three places, so it must have fallen apart completely, right?"
"You don't understand," Stern said. "Greater Mauville Holdings, the company behind the projects... it was just a front. No one knew who the real leader was, where the money behind it came from, nothing. We were told to obey our superiors absolutely, and no one dared to ask too many questions. And the highest management, who might have known something... they were fanatically loyal. When the company collapsed, they all disappeared."
"So then maybe Wattson thought that someone from that upper management might have reappeared, and he wanted to see if he could confirm it with you?" Steven suggested.
"This is just my guess. Wattson refused to explain," Stern said. "Maybe someone really has returned and wants to settle their grudge."
"Against you and Wattson? Against my father?"
"Wattson ruined New Mauville. He had good reasons, but he was the one who reported about the wild Pokemon living there, and that's why it was shut down," Stern said, meeting Steven's incredulous look flatly. "Everything else started falling apart after that. And Devon was Mauville's rival. Devon blocked our expansion at every turn. If Devon hadn't interfered, Mauville would have been far stronger, strong enough to withstand Wattson's betrayal."
He must have not even realized that he was doing it — calling it 'our' expansion and Wattson a traitor — but it still made something twist uneasily in Steven's gut. That was how Stern had thought out of it long ago, when he was still part of Mauville. That kind of intensity doubtlessly lay at the heart of these incidents.
"But still, to go this far, just for that? Wattson could have died!" Steven protested.
"People poured their lives into the company," Stern said, looking down at his hands. "It was all that mattered, day in and day out. An enemy of the company was unforgivable. Looking back on it, the lengths we went to were horrible. And we were just the rank and file. The management was worse. They were obsessed. After nursing that kind of grudge, against people you believe ruined your life, for thirty years..."
He shook his head.
"Be careful," he cautioned Steven.
"Me?"
"I'm not so sure I was the target," Stern said pensively. "Having a grudge against Wattson is one thing, but I was just a group leader. I don't know anything, and I never stood out. But you're digging around, asking questions... That might make someone worried."
"...I'll be fine," Steven said and gave him Stern a confident smile. "I have my Pokemon. I trust in them — I know they'll protect me."
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But speaking with Stern and learning that he could only speculate about what Wattson and Mr. Stone had become involved in left Steven with a problem — he had run into a dead end. Staring down at his cellphone miserably, he sighed miserably and finally dialed.
It rang twice — she must have been doing something else. The life of a vice president was a busy one, after all. Then, a click on the other end, and Carat's voice demanded, "Well? What did Wattson say?"
"Good afternoon, Vice President," Steven muttered.
"Stop stalling," she shot back. "If it's taken you this long, you must have found something."
"I didn't get a chance to talk to Wattson. He was attacked," he reported. "But it looks like this has something to do with Mauville. Do you know anything about the company behind it — Greater Mauville Holdings?"
There was a short, ominous silence, as if the vice president had to take a moment to figure out what she'd yell at him about first. He could almost imagine her grinding her teeth. But in the end, whether out of pride or a sense of urgency, she didn't press at all.
"No," she replied shortly. "I don't know anything about that, aside from what I read in the papers. I was still just in school back then... I'll look into our records, there must be something. I heard they were a Devon's rival back in the day."
Steven nodded absently, even though she couldn't see him. He wasn't surprised. Thirty years ago. his great-grandfather would have still been president. Which made him wonder what Wattson had thought his father might know — or was it the other way around?
"Who started the meetings, my father or Wattson?" he asked.
"I couldn't say," Carat admitted.
The real question was who had noticed something that made them believe someone from Mauville had reemerged. There must have been something that acted as a catalyst.
If it had been Wattson who contacted Mr. Stone, they would never be able to find what sparked it, but Steven was almost sure it had been the other way around. Based on what Stern said, Wattson had only contacted him later, after the meetings with his father started. And asking Devon for help would have been something of a stretch, in any case.
No, it must have been Mr. Stone who started it.
Steven had briefly considered the possibility of a threatening letter or package, but that didn't make sense either. His father could be frustratingly independent, but he wasn't foolish enough to balk at hiring a bodyguard, if the need arose. But he hadn't, so he must have not considered there to be immediate danger to himself. Rather, he'd suspected something. He had noticed something that made him suspicious, something subtle...
"Do you remember when my father first started acting oddly? Was there anything that happened right before? Some meeting, or maybe something in the news?" Steven asked next.
There was another pause. "I don't think you understand what the president's schedule is like," Carat said. Steven thought he could hear a familiar scornful tone in her voice, but for once he didn't really care. "I can't pin it down to any single day. Both of us too busy to meet daily, so it was some time before I noticed. And he has multiple meetings or events to attend every day. It could be any of a few dozen things."
"Can you try to narrow it down? There must have been something that Dad connected to Mauville, even if it's not obvious," Steven pressed.
And that was the limit. "Steven," the vice president hissed, "what the hell is going? What do you mean, Wattson was attacked? By whom? And what's this about the old Mauville company? What does that have to do with the president disappearing?"
Steven could make an educated guess regarding who had attacked Wattson, but it didn't really matter. Poison and smokescreens — those were the trademark of a certain group. Flannery had a few of their trainees at her gym, and they also lurked around the routes in that area. The adults were harder to find, but they were rumored to sell their services to their highest bidder, even for less than savory tasks.
Not that tracking down whichever ninja had taken the contract on Wattson and Stern would help. They wouldn't reveal their employer anyway. That was a dead end.
As to what all of this had to do with his father disappearing... Steven was trying furiously to figure it out and simultaneously afraid to even think about it. Stern had suggested that it was a grudge. And Wattson being attacked made sense in that interpretation. But then why would his father just vanish?
There had to be something else to it. Steven was sure of that... and only that.
"I don't know yet," he admitted. "I'll let you know once I find out. For now, please try to find what Dad noticed. And I'll keep searching from this end."
"Wait a minute, Steven—"
Not feeling up to a lecture, he hung up.
The problem was that they didn't know what his father and Wattson knew about Mauville. Even Carat had only been a teenager thirty years ago, while Mr. Stone had already been working for Devon under his grandfather, the previous president.
So the best Steven could do was try to find out more about Mauville. There was one more place to check — the last of their old projects.
Sea Mauville.
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Notes: Hrm, the exposition didn't quite go the way I wanted, but what can you do.
Obviously, I'm making up a lot about Greater Mauville Holdings and Devon's past, but some of it is canon. Sea Mauville was supposedly closed down "dozens of years ago," which I rounded to thirty. Wattson being the one who got New Mauville closed down by reporting about wild Pokemon living there is canon. And Stern really was employed at Sea Mauville. And the previous president of Devon really was Steven's great-grandfather. Dunno what happened to his grandpa, the succession skips him for some reason.
As always, please review!
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