(3rd Person POV)
Arthur put it as plainly as he could. "It means this ball genuinely holds a spatial element inside it — enough to seal a living magical beast away."
Lucy's eyes fixed on it. She owned a spatial ring herself, handy for hauling around all manner of goods, but it only ever took dead things, inert things. She had never once come across a spatial artifact that could hold something alive.
"Where did you even get this?" A note of alarm crept into her voice. "...Don't tell me your company made it."
"Right on the money." Arthur chuckled. "Hellfire built it, yes."
A vein ticked at Lucy's temple. "It's not fair. How do you keep churning out one impossible thing after another? Do you never run dry? It's like you've got a bottomless well of ideas up there."
Arthur only laughed under his breath. Then, with a flash of white, something spilled out of the ball — and it was Pikachu.
The instant it appeared, Lucy's mouth fell open. "Y-you—" Her voice climbed toward panic. "You built an artificial beast that looks exactly like the one from the anime?!"
Arthur shook his head. "It's not artificial. This Pikachu is the real thing — a true beast, made by a goddess's own hand."
"A— a goddess's hand? I don't follow."
He let that one lie. "Short version: I'm putting Poké Balls on the market. The Hellboy is really just an information game — it tells the player where to find the magical beasts, the Pokémon, so they can go out and try to catch them for themselves." He turned the sphere in his fingers. "And these balls do the catching. For real. I want you distributing them here in Morningstar."
Lucy was still trying to gather the pieces of herself off the floor. None of it fit inside anything she understood. "You're telling me... Pokémon are going to actually exist. Out in the world. Matching the game."
"That's right." Arthur nodded.
"How can you possibly be sure? Did you find some place where beasts that happen to look just like Pikachu are already living — right where the game says they'll be?"
"I'm sure," Arthur said, "because I'm the one who put them there."
Lucy stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "Are you insane? Why go to all this trouble? A spatial ball to trap a beast, and then breeding beasts to look like Pokémon just to match a game?" She threw up a hand. "And how in the world do you even 'breed' something like that Pikachu?"
"It's complicated," Arthur admitted. "Just take it that I'm doing all this to make good on an old dream. Something I've wanted since I was a boy."
"A dream."
"Mm." He nodded. "The dream that Pokémon were real — that I could go out and catch them myself. I have the power to make it true now. So why not?"
He wasn't joking, either. In his first life he'd loved the franchise more than almost anything, and some small, stubborn part of him had always wished the creatures in it were real.
Though the far larger reason went unspoken: Mephista. The more the world took to her beasts, the more faith flowed to her — and the stronger she'd stand when Solarus and his army finally came.
But Lucy knew none of that. "What? That anime wasn't even around when you were a child."
"It existed for me," Arthur said, a faraway look softening his eyes. "It was always there. In here."
Lucy found she couldn't get a proper handle on this younger brother of hers. She realized, with a small pang, that she'd never truly known him — not what he was like, not a single thing he'd loved, growing up right there beside her.
And maybe that was exactly why this felt like fate setting a hand on her shoulder. She'd wanted to patch things up between them for the longest time. Here, at last, was the opening.
"...Fine. I'll partner with you." Lucy let out a long, tired sigh. "I still don't have the faintest idea what you're actually trying to pull off. But whatever it is — I'll help."
"Thanks, sister."
"Right, then. Let's go over the release schedule, and I'll get my people to make sure everything's compliant with—"
"No need for any of that," Arthur cut in.
Lucy blinked.
"Let's just say there's no one left in this world who can keep me out of the back rooms. We skip the red tape entirely. Products on shelves inside a week — sooner, if I feel like it."
"What?!" Lucy was thrown all over again. "Do you think this is a film? Rolling out country by country at your leisure?" Irritation sharpened her tone. "Did you learn nothing about actual business outside of movies? And what's this 'no one can stop me' nonsense? Has winning so much gone straight to your head?"
Arthur just smiled. "You'll see soon enough."
And then he was gone.
Lucy didn't even catch the moment of it. One blink he sat across from her; the next, the seat was empty. "...Seriously. What is he?" She shook her head slowly.
One thing she was dead certain of now: this was not the Arthur she'd grown up with. Not even close. Spouting ridiculous lines about no one in the whole world being able to stop him.
---
A few days on, Lucy signed the contract with Hellfire. She'd assumed, going in, that her legal team would spend weeks grinding through the approvals needed to put the product on the market.
Instead, to her genuine shock, Hellfire and her own company sailed clean past all of it. The whole thing was cleared and ready to ship. All that was left was supply and marketing.
'Just who has my little brother become?' The thought wouldn't leave her alone. 'Is he really powerful enough to bend our own kingdom's court to his will? The world's trade laws themselves?' It made no sense. It sat outside logic entirely.
Not even the President of USE — the mightiest human nation on the map — held that kind of reach. Even the Pope of the Solarus Faith stood powerless before the letter of the law: the international trade accords, the customs compacts, the regulatory boards that every last conglomerate on earth was forced to answer to.
By everything she knew, Arthur — however rich, however powerful — simply could not do this.
Unless that little brother of hers had the whole world in his pocket. Which was, of course, an absurd thing to even think.
And yet — how else did any of it add up? Word had reached her that it wasn't only Morningstar; the great majority of nations were falling into line with Hellfire, waving the usual procedures straight through, and it had thrown the business world into an uproar. Even billionaires were out protesting.
"Whatever the reason, I need to get the Hellboy and Poké Ball moving, and fast." Still, the doubt gnawed at her. "I can't say it'll fly the way Hellfire's launches always do. My company's the one distributing it this time — nothing riding on Hellfire's name." Years of losing to Arthur across the negotiating table had worn her confidence thin. For once, she truly didn't know.
So she did the only thing she could. She threw everything at it: television spots, billboards, posters plastered across every district — and word-of-mouth on top, letting it spread hand to hand.
The first day and the second, sales came in about where any Hellfire product landed. Respectable. Expected.
Across the first five days, the numbers climbed, higher each day than the last.
Then, a week in, the eighth day's figures hit her like a hammer.
The Hellboy had sold one point two million units. In a single day.
The whole country had lost its mind over it. No — the whole world had.
And the reason came pouring in from every direction: players who'd bought a Poké Ball, followed the trail laid out in the handheld game, walked to the exact spots it marked — and found real Pokémon waiting there. Caught them. For real.
The footage tore across the internet, Hellbook most of all, and the frenzy caught like dry grass in summer. People were stripping the shelves bare of Hellboys and Poké Balls, every one of them chasing the same impossible prize: a Pokémon to call their own.
Children the world over. Grown adults. White-haired elders, even. All of them suddenly, helplessly obsessed.
"...It's madness." Lucy pressed a hand to her mouth, caught somewhere between horror and awe. "Is that why he had those beasts bred to match the Pokémon down to the last detail? So the whole thing would go off like this inside a single week?" She couldn't help it — the sheer nerve of the strategy left her staggered.