53-57

The New Normal – 4-1 – Interlude – Pryce & Lance

Pryce sat alone in his office, staring blankly as the news droned on about Lance's upcoming challenge against him, of all things. He didn't understand where Lance had received all of his ill-found confidence to dare to challenge him for the position of Champion, the position that has, and will always, belong to HIM.

What did this Dragon trainer think he was anyways? To go against a master of Ice? Pryce didn't understand why his supporters all looked so nervous when they warned him about Lance and his prowess, do they truly think that Lance had a chance of winning?

He sighed at the incompetence of his fellows; as always, it was so hard to find good help before they betray you. Unconsciously, an image of John floated to the top of his mind, causing Pryce to snarl.

HE was the one who elevated John into the Elite Four, as he was able to spot out the talent that was John and how best to cultivate it. HE was the one who magnanimously allowed John to train up and develop his reputation in Hoenn. HE was the one who welcomed John back into Indigo with warm and welcoming hands, and this is how John repays his favour?!!

Both him and Lance were wilful traitors to Indigo, allowing themselves to be emboldened and corrupted by their unending and insatiable greed and ambition. Never once pausing to look at the damage and harm that they would cause in their pursuit of more power.

If John had accepted his hand of friendship, Pryce could hardly imagine what greatness that he would be able to achieve together with John. But no, John, like all ambitious men, sought to bite the hand that fed him in order to gain more power. In order to enrich themselves on the suffering of others.

Pryce would see them both ended. If they dared to step out of line to take what was rightfully his, then he would forcefully show them the errors of their ways and crush them so thoroughly that they could never dare rise up against him ever again.

The Blackthorns especially must be punished. They were too powerful, too grasping, and must be put in check. Pryce tolerated them over the years, but now that they have chosen to show their traitorous hands, he vowed to deal with them soon enough.

Blackthorn City needed to be renamed anyways.

Before he could properly decide on how best to punish the Blackthorns for their overreach, he felt one of his Pokéballs shaking on his belt. He sighed and released the offending Glalie.

"What is it?" He asked his Glalie sharply.

"Glalie…Glalie…" His Glalie replied hesitatingly, and Pryce frowned. Even his Pokémon felt like he had to train up against a pretender like Lance?

"Do you not have faith in your trainer?" He glared at his Glalie, who seemed to falter slightly at his glare, but maintained his insistence.

"Glalie. Glalie!" His Glalie said more forcefully, eliciting a sigh from Pryce.

"Fine. I suppose there's no harm." He replied reluctantly, before he pulled himself out of his seat and, accompanied by his Glalie, made his way to the underground training grounds of the League.

As soon as he arrived, he released the rest of his team onto the field.

"Right then, let's get this over with."

============

"Are you sure you're ready, cousin?" Clair's voice broke through Lance's thoughts as he continued studying and making notes of Pryce's previous battles.

"You know that I have been preparing for this moment for a long time." Lance simply replied, still continuing to finish writing his notes. "And I have studied Pryce's tactics extensively. I have pride in my Pokémon to deliver me the victory."

He finished writing the last sentence and looked up to Clair, "Besides, Pryce is far past his prime. He is no longer the prodigy he used to be. He has hardly had to fight a real challenge ever since he became Champion, and that was a long time ago."

"Neither have you." Clair pointed out, and Lance conceded the point.

"Neither have I, but we both know that I have been training more than Pryce. Do you think that grump even visits the training fields while he's not busy doing nothing?" Lance scoffed, sarcasm leaking from his tone. "You know that I've spent every moment since the elders decided on this course of action preparing for the battle, so relax, Clair, I'll be fine. Besides, my pride won't allow me to fail."

Clair gave him a scrutinizing look before she sighed, "…If you're sure. But at least you won't be lacking on popular support."

Lance frowned, "That's true, though I hate that lives were nearly lost before the public were finally able to see the true extent of Pryce's incompetence and misrule. I certainly would have never allowed such an incident to occur."

"Yes, thank Arceus that John got there in time." Clair agreed before she tilted her head curiously, "…Don't you think that we've seen John a little too much on the news recently?"

"Frankly, I'm not surprised." Lance remarked, "Don't you remember what he was like during our meeting? He was practically frothing at the bit to defeat Team Rocket. And all his recent actions only backed up what he told us in that meeting."

"True. He has really lived up to his words." Clair nodded, then suddenly adopted a look of concern. "Aren't you worried that he might challenge you for the title of Champion?"

Lance paused. It was not something that he had previously considered happening, but with John's recent success…

"…Well, I cannot deny that John's popularity is likely going to be very high for a while. Undoubtedly, his heroic actions were truly able to mitigate much of the disaster at Olivine. He doesn't strike me as particularly ambitious for the role of Champion though…" Lance thought aloud.

"At least he still lacks much of our political connections." Clair said, but they both knew that was cold comfort. Any competent Elite Four member would be able to garner political connections given sufficient time. And John was no mere competent one, he was proving to be exceptional!

"…I guess we have to keep an eye on him then." Lance said, "Though I truly don't think he's looking to become Champion any time soon. He lacks my charisma."

"For now." Clair pointed out, and Lance nodded.

"For now. But we'll deal with that when it happens." Lance stated, "Admittedly, I respect John. And he managed to pull himself to the top of the region from less than nothing and reverse his fortunes. I admire it. And he may be the closest member of the Elite Four to match my strength." Though John would not win against him; his Dragons were a very different foe from Drake's despite their type similarities.

"Maybe you can make friends with him then?" Clair suggested, "He's not a bad friend to have politically. Plus, you can possibly persuade him to not challenge you for the role of Champion. Also, I'm fairly sure that he is friendly with you."

"…Perhaps." Lance allowed, "But now is not the time to think of such things. John is not some power-hungry monster, so let's not treat him as one." Clair nodded, "Now, would you like to accompany me to the training yard? I have something to test out."

Clair agreed and the two of them proceeded to the Blackthorn training field. And as soon as Lance arrived, he released his Pokémon.

A Gyarados, Charizard, Salamence, and three Dragonites, one which was significantly bigger than the others, were released on to the field. He had other Pokémon too, but this was the team he was going to bring. A team that encompassed his power as a trainer. Lance smiled as he allowed himself to bask momentarily in the sheer strength of his team, before finally addressing them.

"Come, let us practice!" He announced to his Pokémon, and the ground shook as his Pokémon roared out in agreement.

The New Normal – 4-2 – Progress

I flew home after that conversation with Agatha. I did ask Karen if she wanted to accompany me so that we could get started on training immediately, but Karen had something to discuss with Agatha and wasn't available. I accepted that and made my way out by myself.

It was already past nightfall as I got home shortly later, and I found Euphie, Pixel, and Whismur all playing together. I had left my newer Pokémon behind so that they could play around with Whismur, and I was very happy to see all three of them getting along. The three of them might not be in the same team but learning to make friends and interact with other Pokémon is never going to be a bad thing.

I watched as the three of them continue their playfighting, and I was proud to see that Pixel was dominating their fights. Sure, it was a very low-level fight, but Pixel had gotten very good at using Thundershock and was able to use the occasional Thunderbolt. That gave it a huge advantage over its more melee focused companions.

Euphie on the other hand seemed to be prioritising her physical attacks as newer Pokémon were often to do, which wasn't ideal for a future Sylveon, but I was okay with allowing her to train this way for the time being. Besides, I realized that she seemed more content to just goof and play around, so I suppose I shouldn't get too greedy and just be satisfied that she was improving at all.

Eventually, I would have to knuckle down and actually train Euphie in preparation for her evolution into a Sylveon, even if she didn't take to training all that easily, like Smough did originally. I would just have to be patient when training her. And besides, it was still early days yet, and she had plenty of time to get stronger.

For the time being, I remained content to let her spend some time playing around and integrating herself into my team. But as I watched Euphie snuggle tightly into Klee's arms after her 'defeat', tailed wrapped around her neck while being patted on the head, I felt comfortable that I didn't need to interfere there.

Speaking of children, I needed to make my way back to my room to check on the egg. I've been checking up on the egg very frequently recently as I was certain now that the egg was close to hatching and that it was going to successfully hatch into a D-Zigzagoon. I couldn't wait! With all the research reports and notes already completed, all that was left to do was to see the final results of our experiment.

Of course, before I got into the house I was waylaid by Zephyr, who flew around me while chirping to catch my attention.

"What's up, Zephyr?" I asked him. "Did you want to show me something?"

"Pidgeot! Pid…" Zephyr nodded eagerly and then took off to the skies. I watched as he swooped around in the air before he fell into a blistering fast nosedive that looked like he showed no regard to the fact that he was about to crash straight into the ground. Of course, Zephyr then managed to pull up just before he hit the ground.

He went and did this over and over again for several minutes, sometimes he would be surrounded by a tell-tale silvery glow of his Brave Bird before he surged forwards in the sky, smashing almost recklessly through branches and fallen logs. It was not just a matter of strength, but I marvelled at the way that Zephyr intentionally angled itself when colliding into object to give it as much striking power as possible. It was a combination of these very minor, yet overall important details that demonstrated his near-perfect mastery to maximize the impact of his recoil attacks using Brave Bird.

It took me a while to figure out what he was trying to demonstrate to me, but I finally got it.

"Zephyr!" I called out to him. "Did you manage to train your new ability like I told you to?!" Zephyr squawked affirmatively in the sky before he finally settled down again next to me, preening with pride and happiness.

I smiled at his preening and rubbed and scratched his chin. "Well done! I can't believe you mastered the Reckless ability so quickly! That's incredible, Zephyr!" I gushed excitedly, and Zephyr responded with a happy chirp of his own.

As I mentioned before, mastering a new 'ability' was really just your Pokémon pushing themselves to the very limit of their training in one area or another so that it can mimic the effects of an ability. By being able to drive himself into the opponent so deeply, Zephyr was able to re-create the power boost to recoil attacks from Reckless. In a way, because Brave Bird was the only recoil move that Zephyr knew, mastering Reckless could also be seen as just mastering Brave Bird to its extreme.

I supposed part of the reason why he was able to master Reckless so quickly was that he was both a well-trained Pidgeot that was already extremely proficient at using Brave Bird, on top of his sheer determination to grow stronger and catch up with the stronger members of my team. Thus, it was mostly a natural progression for Zephyr to have mastered Brave Bird to such an extent that it was as if Zephyr had the Reckless ability in the first place.

I knew that Tyrant was having far more trouble with trying to re-create the effects of Guts.

Still, he really deserved all of the praise considering just how quick he was able to learn the ability. He was one of my most enthusiastic Pokémon when it came to training.

But first, I wanted to double check to see just how much of a difference there was.

"Zephyr, Vordt, get over here!" A distant grunt sounded out as Vordt slowly lumbered his way here from where he was busy destroying the ground as he practiced his new combination move. Vordt was making good progress with Seismic Eruption, but the follow-up eruption of rocks was a bit too delayed for my liking, so I had him continue practicing.

As my two Pokémon arrived, I pointed to Zephyr. "Zephyr, I want you to hit as hard as you can with Brave Bird on Vordt. I want to see just how much power you can put into it. You both okay with that?"

My Pokémon squawked and grunted respectively, before Zephyr took off into the sky while Vordt began to brace himself and dug his claws into the ground. I watched as Zephyr somersaulted in the air, before he began his meteoric decent into Vordt, glowing silver all the while.

Then, the two collided as Zephyr struck the center of Vordt's chest. Vordt let out a growl of pain as he was physically pushed back by the supposedly much weaker and lighter bird, highlighting the sheer power of Zephyr's Brave Bird.

Zephyr in the meanwhile looked almost like he had taken a hit from Vordt from the recoil damage alone. One of its eyes was bruised, and its wings were flapping unevenly.

Despite this, I was more than satisfied with that performance. For Zephyr to be able to deal some serious damage to Vordt with his Brave Bird was a testament to the dedication that he put into his training, being able to immerse itself in a state of deep focus to remove all hesitation from within himself when attacking with Brave Bird so that it carried just a bit more power.

As I mentioned before, Zephyr's issue that caused it to be the weakest member of my team was that Pidgeots were just not known as powerhouses at the Elite level, since they were comparatively weaker than the other Pokémon you'd see at this level. However, now that Zephyr had learned Reckless, I hoped that it could improve on his niche as a pseudo-duellist against other Flying type Pokémon like him.

"Come down, Zephyr! You did great!" I proudly exclaimed, receiving a proud squawk in return before Zephyr landed next to me.

I patted him on the head. "Well, it seems like you had a much easier time learning a new ability than Tyrant, Zephyr." I joked, while gesturing to Tyrant in the distance, who had set himself on fire once again trying to practice resisting the effects of Burn. "He's having a little trouble getting fired up." Zephyr squawked indignantly at my terrible pun, and I let out a chuckle.

I continued scratching at Zephyr for a while before a grunt from Vordt reminded me of his presence, and I sheepishly sent both him and Zephyr to Klee to be healed up.

Despite his injuries, Zephyr gave another excited chirp before he took off into the air, eagerly showing off to the world. I chuckled to myself as I saw it before I made my way back to my room, though I made a mental note to give Zephyr a new training target soon enough. This time, I felt that he had mastered Brave Bird enough that it was probably unnecessary to train it further for the time being.

Instead, I wanted to bolster my team's effectiveness against Ghost types. Thus, I made a mental note to begin training soon with Zephyr about training him to learn Foresight. It was normally an egg move, but with enough instruction from myself, Zephyr should be able to learn it anyways. I figured that, since Zephyr was effectively the only member on my team who could directly match the commonly speedy Ghost types, he could help me fulfil another needed niche on my team.

Sure, Smough already knew Odor Sleuth from when he was a Munchlax, but more counters against Ghost types were never a bad thing.

As soon as I went into my room, I quickly checked on the egg. I could see that it was wobbling slightly in its incubator, a sure-fire indicator that it was getting very close to hatching. That made me excited once again, and I was finding it increasingly difficult to remain patient.

Still, I somehow dragged myself to bed and, despite my impatience and excitement, forced myself asleep.

====================

​"Thank you for coming in once again, John." Shelly told me with a smile. It was the next day, and Shelly had called for me in the afternoon to come visit her branch once again. She also told me to bring along Pixel, which probably meant that she had some news regarding Porygon.

"No worries, Shelly, I'm happy to be here." I answered pleasantly, "So, what's going on?"

"Well, apparently your scientists from Giovanni had done a lot of previous research on Porygon, which I guess isn't that surprising considering they were the ones to create Porygon in the first place." She explained. "However, my colleagues at Petalburg were able to make a lucky breakthrough of sorts regarding a possible Porygon evolution."

"Oh? That's very interesting. Could you elaborate?" I asked curiously.

Shelly nodded. "So, remember how I told you that Porygon was probably going to need a particular item to evolve?" I nodded. "Well, our researchers there have confirmed it that Porygon is able to evolve with an item. But not only that, according to what they told me, they've managed to narrow down the factors needed to evolve a Porygon." She explained to me.

She then went on to describe with her scientific terminology how the scientists were able to compile the data that they collected from Pixel and combine it with data that they've gathered from other Porygon to determine what kind of item is needed to trigger an evolution. They said something about specific data packs and digitalized genomes, but I didn't understand any of it. I just knew that they were doing something exciting, and that Pixel might be able to evolve into a Porygon2 soon enough.

"I apologize if I'm oversimplifying what you're trying to tell me, but from what I understand, you and your colleagues are getting very close to creating an item that can be used to evolve my Pixel into its later evolution." I interrupted her after a while.

"Ah, yes, that does cut through to the heart of the matter." She chuckled embarrassedly as she realized that she had lost me with her explanation. "But you're correct. We are getting close and hence why I have invited you here today. I assume you've been training your Pixel here even more since we last met." I nodded affirmatively. "Well, we just want to collect more data on it to see if that can help with finalizing our creation of the evolution item."

"Oh sure, no problem, right Pixel?" I turned to Pixel and saw it buzz happily. "Yeah, we're both fine with this. Lead the way."

She led me down to the room where she had previously run some tests on Pixel. As I watched Shelly carefully strap Pixel into the machine, I suddenly remembered the disaster that was Porygon-Z and needed to make sure that they weren't accidentally going to drive Pixel insane.

"Ah, I do have a question regarding the evolution of Porygon." She turned to me curiously. "Remember when I mentioned last time that I wanted to ensure that the evolution of Porygon was going to be safe? Have you followed up on that?"

"Well, I did make a note of it. But I'm not sure there's anything to worry about?" She gave me a questioning look. "All evolutions are safe. It's been repeatedly documented that Pokémon only evolve if it's safe for them to evolve into their new forms. There has never been an incident where a Pokémon accidentally mutilates themselves by evolving."

I shook my head. "That's not what I mean. I understand that that may be the case for MOST Pokémon, but you understand that Porygon aren't biological Pokémon like the rest of them are. It's literally created out of data." She still looked confused, so I tried to clarify myself. "You told me that your colleagues intended to evolve Porygon using an item that would essentially feed specific data into it to artificially trigger the evolution. And since Porygon are literally created from data, what's to say that you don't accidentally harm the Porygon or drive it insane if you created an unstable evolution by feeding it the wrong sort of data." I explained to her, hoping to justify and prevent the tragedy that was Porygon-Z.

Shelly's eyes widened as she adopted a look of understanding. "Oh! Yes! That's a great point to make. Wow, I would have never thought of that." She took out her notepad and scribbled something down. "I need to tell my colleagues about this. We never once considered that we might accidentally create an evolution that may be harmful to the Pokémon themselves. We always assumed that, so long as we could actually trigger an evolution, that the resulting Pokémon would be fine afterwards. But yes, considering Porygon is made out of data, we may have additional considerations to think of. Thank you for this." She rambled excitedly.

I just nodded easily and said that I was just looking out for my own Porygon. I really didn't want to give Pixel an Up-Grade or a Dubious Disk that may cause Pixel to become insane afterwards. Even if Porygon-Z was a powerful Pokémon, I would rather have a sane, but weaker, Porygon2 instead.

After Shelly had written down my concerns, she went back to her tests with Pixel. I waited patiently once again for her to finish, and about half an hour later she was done and returned Pixel to me. As we made our way back to her office for her to type everything up, Shelly made some comments and praised me for how much stronger Pixel was compared to the last time we were here, and I just told her that Pixel was just a hard worker and deserved all the credit. Pixel buzzed and whirled happily at our words.

"Oh, speaking of which..." Shelly suddenly turned to me away from her computer. "I wanted to ask if you would like to be the honoured as the first person to own an evolved Porygon. If so, we would simply create the item first, but allow your Porygon to be the first one we tested it on."

"Uh, thank you for that offer, but I definitely don't need to be honoured that way." I said immediately. "Firstly, I didn't really do anything to deserve that honour, and I feel like your research team should get the credit and honour for the discovery and the evolution. Also, and please don't take this the wrong way, I would much rather make sure that the evolution goes well before subjecting my own Porygon to it. I don't want to accidentally drive Pixel to insanity." I half-joked.

Luckily, Shelly took no offense to my words and just chuckled. "I understand. I'll let my other colleagues know that. Of course, I'll leave that last part out." We shared a small laugh together.

We then chatted a bit about the timeline about getting Pixel evolved, and she said that you never knew for sure with this kind of thing but to expect it hopefully within the next month or so. She told me she would call me as soon as they had done a few successful tests with their item, and I thanked her for that.

"Oh, and just one more thing." Shelly called out to me. "Mr. Stone wanted to give this to you." She rummaged briefly through her cupboard before she fished out a pouch. Inside that pouch was a couple of TMs. One was pink, another purple, and the last one was green. My eyes gleamed with interest as I saw them.

"As you probably recognized by now, these are the TMs for Psychic, Shadow Ball, and Solar Beam respectively. Apparently, he had read from the reports that you were helping out greatly with their research project back in Hoenn, so he wanted to gift these to you as thanks." She explained as she handed the TMs to me.

"Oh…wow!" I was pleasantly taken aback as I carefully received the TMs. "I'm not sure I did anything worthy enough to deserve this gift, but please pass on my thanks to Mr. Stone for me. I'll be sure to put them to good use."

"You're welcome. And of course, I will pass on your thanks to Mr. Stone. We would prefer it if you could use those TMs to continue training up your Pixel. We picked them specifically for your Porygon, you see, because we thought that the stronger that Pixel gets, the better data we can get out of it to improve our abilities at researching its evolutions as well as potentially demonstrating how we can more efficiently mass produce Porygon." She explained to me.

I nodded to signify that I understood, and I pocketed the TMs safely back into the pouch. As I was doing so, Pixel recognized the TMs and buzzed happily.

"Pory! Pory! Pory!" Pixel whirled, and I gave a genuine bark of laughter at his excitement. My eager Porygon wanted to learn all three of the TMs as soon as possible and get to training right away! I made sure the TMs were safely stored away before I crouched down and spoke to Pixel.

"You can't learn all three of them at once, you silly little thing." I said, and Pixel buzzed in annoyance. "Calm down, Pixel. I know and am happy that you're so eager to learn, but sometimes you have to take things one at a time. You'll get overwhelmed if you try to learn all three of these TMs at once."

Pixel didn't seem satisfied and continued buzzing about, so I decided to put my foot down. "Pixel. Enough of that." I said sternly, which seems to have at least caught its attention. Seeing that it was now in a listening mood, I relaxed my tone of voice, "You need to learn to be patient. I will always work hard to make sure you're going to be as strong as you can, and I'm as excited as you are about learning these new TMs, but you won't be able to learn all of them at once."

Pixel whirred sadly at that, but I wasn't finished yet. "Don't worry, Pixel, we can learn them one at a time. It won't take too long, and I assure you if we do it this way, you'll end up stronger than if you had just rushed through the training. Can you please trust me? I've done something like this many times before."

Pixel looked up and stared at me, probably trying to see if I was telling it the truth. I met its gaze. After a while it looked away, buzzing happily, and hopping up and down. I smiled at its' antics.

"No wonder you made it into the Elite Four at such a young age." Shelly spoke up, reminding me that she was still there. I scratched my head embarrassedly.

"Heh, well, I have had a lot of practice with training my other Pokémon." I told her, "I never really liked using TMs that much unless I had to. Both because they were, at the beginning, prohibitively expensive for me to use, and also because I found that relying too heavily on TMs to train your Pokémon in certain attacks often makes their attacks very stiff and inflexible. I prefer using the TMs as a template to get started, then building on it naturally until my Pokémon can develop their own method of using that attack."

"That's an interesting way of thinking about it." Shelly replied. "I never really was that great of a trainer, as you can see by the fact that I became a scientist." I nodded as she chuckled, "So I never really thought about the consequences of being too dependent on TMs. Now that I think of it, my colleagues and I often use TMs for testing purposes, so we may have accidentally made our testing Pokémon a bit too dependent on TMs…and I don't even think my colleagues have thought of it like that." She admitted ruefully.

"Well, it's something to consider." I remarked, before Pixel started buzzing about impatiently once again as it saw that we weren't leaving. I shook my head bemusedly.

"Ok, sorry about this, but dear old Pixel over here is being very impatient. If I don't head back now, I'm not sure if it'll try running off on its own." I joked and Pixel narrowed its eyes indignantly at my comment. Shelly laughed at that and told me that it was fine. She thanked me for my help once again and let me be on my way.

Before I was about to leave though, she did ask about if I had any possible names for the Porygon evolution. I instinctively just said "Porygon2", and she criticised me for my terrible naming sense. I shrugged; I was getting blamed for using the official name!

Shaking my head at that, I just left the building and was about to fly back home. Just as I was about to fly off though, I received a call from Giovanni.

"Hello, John speaking."

"John, it's Giovanni." He greeted. "I have a small proposal for you."

"Oh? What is it?" I asked curiously.

"You know how the next circuit is about to begin, right?" I answered affirmatively. "Well, you have sold me on the idea of playing nice with the public. So, I had an idea. Why don't we host a charity show match to help donate to those who were injured at Olivine City?"

The New Normal – 4-2 – Interlude – Mrs Smith

With John out again dealing with who knows what, and Whitney in the fields preparing for her journey, Angela was alone in the living room with her husband, Jack, discussing business.

They had scoured through the numbers, and they were both very pleased with what they saw. The posters, for how little they cost, were a huge success and greatly boosted the sales of their Moomoo milk.

Who knew that her son and his Pokémon would be so popular and in such high demand that many people would want to collect posters of them? But she understood, her son looked very handsome in them. She was proud of him for being a role model for others to look up to.

"We're making a very healthy profit." Her husband spoke up, making her refocus on the documents in front of her. "I think it's best if we were to reinvest some of this and expand our business even further."

"I agree completely, and I've already thought about how to reinvest this." She said, and Jack gave her a questioning look.

"I think that now that we have an exclusive deal with the Blackthorns, we really need to increase our supply of Moomoo milk." She started, and she continued after Jack nodded in agreement, "But we can't just keep buying more Miltank and leaving them here in the family home; we're almost at capacity."

Her husband nodded again, so she kept going.

"Therefore, I propose that we should start a new branch of the business in Johto. We certainly have the popularity and brand recognition to do well there. Plus, it'll make it easier to continue supplying our Moomoo milk to Blackthorn since we'd be much closer. Also, if we ever expand to Hoenn like John previously mentioned, then a branch in Johto would also make it easier to supply stuff there as well through Olivine."

Her husband thought about it for a moment while he flipped through a few documents before saying, "That makes sense…but wouldn't we have to compete with the Moomoo farm near Olivine?"

"We're already competing with them NOW." She stated, "Setting up a new branch in Johto isn't really going to change all that much. Our distributors already work in Kanto and Johto, we're just making it easier for our product to reach them and expanding our supply."

"Besides, I think you're really underestimating our son's popularity at this point. After what our son did in Olivine, and the posters that we have, I'm sure his fans would flock to buy our family's Moomoo milk over the others." She said confidently.

"...It's weird to think of our son as a celebrity, but he truly is one, isn't he?" Her husband asked rhetorically, but she could tell that he shared her pride in him. "But you're right. I don't foresee any huge risks with setting up a new branch in Johto, so I think we should go for it. Do you have any ideas on location?"

She checked through her notes until she found the one she wanted and showed it to Jack. "Here, it's a nice place to the side of Route 34, near Goldenrod. It's nice and out of the way, with plenty of space for rearing Miltank. And it's quite cheap too."

Her husband inspected her notes for a moment, "Huh…that's interesting. I like the price, but is it exposed to wild Pokémon?"

She frowned for a moment as she tried to remember what she had researched, "…I don't think so, but there's no harm in checking it out and making inquiries before we buy it. I'm fairly certain that the wild Pokémon in the area are likely to be fairly weak and docile, so there shouldn't be much to worry about."

"Fair enough." Jack stated with a shrug, "You know that we're going to need to hire assistants at this point to help out with all the extra Miltank that we're going to be buying. There's no way we can just handle it ourselves like we had done. We're going to also need a manager to handle the new farm." He pointed out.

Angela sighed, "Yes, I agree. And it's going to be a hassle trying to find and hire suitable candidates for the farm. We could get my brother Milton to help manage it perhaps?"

Her husband took one of her hands in his, "Let's not worry about that for the moment." He reassured her, "First, we should go to the location first and scout it out and see if it's suitable and affordable. If so, THEN we can worry about hiring people to help manage it. I'm sure they can't be that hard to find."

"In fact, we could probably hire some farmhands to work here as well and have the both of us move entirely to administration and managerial positions." He suggested thoughtfully. "It'll be a much better use of our time anyways…and to be honest is something we should have done quite a while ago."

She thought about it for a moment before nodding, "Fine. It does make sense. But would the extra farmhands live here?"

"No." Her husband instantly denied, "They'll just come work in shifts and then head home. We can pay for their travel expenses, if necessary, but they won't be living here. Not when our son is an Elite Four member. That just sends a bad image."

Oh, she hadn't even considered that, but she let out a breath of relief. "That's good, I wouldn't really want them to live here anyways." She then looked over her papers once more to see if she's missed anything, but she was pretty sure she hadn't. Then she noticed the time.

"Is there anything else we needed to discuss, Jack? If not, I'm going to get started on dinner." She asked, and Jack also checked through the papers once again before shaking his head.

"Nah, think that's it." He stated, and then the two of them began tidying up the table for dinner. "Oh, what are we having for dinner?"

"Steamed Karp with rice." She replied.

"Again?! We just had that two days ago!" He mock-complained.

"Yes. And we're going to keep having it until you lose some weight, my dear." She smirked as she poked her husband's stomach, which wasn't actually as fat as she made it out to be, before she made her way to the kitchen.

She ignored her husband's grumblings as she started to prepare dinner.

The New Normal – 4-3 – Training and Preparations

"A show match? Between the two of us?" I repeated curiously to Giovanni.

"Yes, what do you think? I believe that it would be a great way to generate some more goodwill from the public, both towards us and towards Kanto." Giovanni said.

"Well, yeah, sure, I'm on board." I replied. "But why are YOU doing this for Olivine? I thought you were against helping the Johtonians."

"Ah, I can understand your confusion, and normally I would agree with you. But you're thinking too narrowly." Giovanni admonished, "My first reason for helping is that there were people from Kanto injured at Olivine as well, and I'm not about to let their sacrifice be unawarded. I will make sure that they will receive the compensation they deserve and then some." Okay, that made sense, and I nodded despite Giovanni being unable to see it.

"Secondly, the ports of Olivine are very important for facilitating trade between Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn. The unfortunate reality is that Olivine City is, and will remain as, the main port between Hoenn and Indigo, and between Kanto and Johto. If I could change it so that Vermillion City was the main port, then I would have." Giovanni admitted with some bitterness.

"But the geography of the world dictates that Olivine City is the best place for trade, and thus, we need to both rebuild it to its former glory and also re-establish the public's trust that the ports will be safe from future attacks. If the public either refuses or is unable to make use of the ports, then the trade industry of Kanto will suffer as well. This is why I planned to use this event to both donate money towards rebuilding the ports and also make it clear to the public that such an attack will not happen again." Giovanni explained slightly begrudgingly. I guess he really disliked the fact that he NEEDED to support Johto.

"Oh…I never thought of it that way. That's very smart." I admitted with some genuine praise in my voice. "You've clearly thought through this more than I did. But yes, I like the idea and I'm certainly willing to do it. Do you have everything planned yet? When and where is it going to take place?" I questioned.

"Of course, it will take place in Viridian City. It will be in a week's time so that we can get the advertisements out to the public, and the match should just be a 3v3 match with 1 switch. Just like your typical 8-badge Gym challenge match." Giovanni instantly replied in a tone that made me look foolish for asking. "That way, I, I mean we, can have complete control over the event and we don't need to ask permission for hosting the event from the League. Not that they'll be in any position to refuse a charity event like this at the moment. I'm sure they would even welcome having this kind of distraction in the headlines!" Giovanni said amusedly.

I quickly realized that Giovanni also wanted the event to take place in Viridian so that he could further boost the economy of his own city, but I didn't need to point that out to him. I understood that Giovanni was always looking out for his own interests, even when he was being 'charitable'. Besides, it wasn't like his points weren't valid, so I just agreed with everything and told him that I'd be there.

"Oh, and John." Giovanni spoke up again. "Petrel did have this idea when I brought up this whole event to him. He said that to remind you that you shouldn't take this event too seriously. It isn't like with your match against Drake where your prestige is on the line. Your prestige has already been solidified, and this match is for fun. So, Petrel suggested to try to play to the crowd a little during the fight, showboat a little. It might be a good boost to your popularity if you seem personable."

"Oh, uh…yeah sure. I understand." I said after a moment of hesitation. "I'll try to think of something."

"Good. Well, if there's nothing else…" A part of me wanted to speak up about my new agreement with Agatha, but I reminded myself that I needed to be independent from Giovanni and keep a few things to myself, so I kept silent. Besides, I didn't think letting him know would change anything anyways.

Seeing that I had nothing else to add, he finished. "I'm going to leave and get this event properly organized. I'll let you know if anything happens." I thanked Giovanni and he hung up on me.

I stared down at my phone with a weird expression on my face. I didn't think that Giovanni had any malicious intent with telling me to play it up for the crowd during our battle, and his reasoning did make sense. I recognized that it would look bad if the show match ended too quickly because we went all out. This was supposed to be a feel-good event anyways.

Oh well, I guess I'd just have to think about how I could ham it up. I guess I had a couple of ideas. As I thought about it, an image of Tyrant trying to flex his muscles with a goofy grin to the audience appeared in my head, and it was so out of character for his normal battlelust that I ended up laughing out loud.

This might be more fun than I expected.

===========​Apparently, both my mom and I had surprises for each other. She started off with telling me that she would be looking to hire a few farmhands to help manage the Miltank's at home and asked to make sure that I was okay with it.

I replied that I was fine with it, and truthfully expected it to happen much sooner. Though I reminded her that I would like it if they didn't take photos of me or my Pokémon around the house, and to make both this and a mandatory background check to be a stipulation into their employment contract. She easily agreed and would extend such protections to the entire family.

She also let me know that they were looking to set up a branch near Goldenrod, though that would be handled by a hired manager, possibly by my uncle Milton. I just nodded and wished them luck on that one.

Then it was my turn to tell her that I was going to invite Karen over the next day to our house. I explained that I had been wanting to train with her. Though I was also doing this to honour my promise with Agatha and see how much she had improved ever since she had cleared out all of the Hoenn Gyms; I knew from her text messages that she had struggled with a few of them, but still managed to clear everything from the first try.

Of course, I forgot about the unsurprising consequences that comes about telling your parents that you're inviting a girl over to your place. Thus, the next day I found myself standing outside our house with my mom waiting for Karen to arrive.

"Karen said she'd be here any moment, right John? Oh, I can't wait to properly meet her!" My mother asked with a mischievous smile. And I prayed to Arceus that she wouldn't embarrass me too badly with Karen. I let out a sigh that my mom chuckled at before I responded.

"Yes, she said she'll be here in a few minutes." I answered exasperatedly. "You know we don't have to be standing in the doorway like this, we could just wait inside and let her in once she knocks on the door."

"Nonsense! This is the first time I'm meeting her properly. Of course, I have to make a good impression! Now stop slouching or you'll crease your shirt." My mom then began to fuss over me as she tidied up my clothes, even though I knew they were inevitably going to get dirtied as we started to train. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

Luckily, Karen's Honchkrow appeared on the horizon, signalling the beginning of my end for this display of public torture.

"She's coming." I told my mom as I pointed towards Karen's Honchkrow.

My mom immediately stopped fussing me and stood ramrod straight, which I struggled to not laugh at. I didn't understand why she was so nervous, but I supposed that it was just a mom thing.

Karen landed moments later and got off her Honchkrow before she withdrew it into a Premier Ball. She turned to the two of us and gave a wide smile as she saw my mom standing there with me, approaching the two of us with a hand extended towards my mom.

"Mrs. Smith, it's a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for allowing the two of us train to train today." They shook hands, and I noticed that my mom was very carefully observing Karen.

"It's very nice to meet you too, Karen, and please call me Angela. I remember you from John's swearing-in ceremony. You looked great in that dress of yours!" My mom complimented, and the two of them began trading compliments. I just had to stand there silently and patiently wait for this to be over.

"…Ok, I think John's going to get annoyed at us if we keep talking so I'll leave you two to it. If you want, I can bring out some lunch for you, Karen, if you haven't eaten already." Karen said that it wasn't necessary, and my mom tried to insist before eventually made her way back into the house while Karen and I went to the training yard.

As soon as the two of us were finally left alone, Karen spoke up amusedly. "I didn't think I'd be ambushed like that by your mom."

"Me neither, I didn't think she'd make such a big deal of you coming here." I responded ruefully, "Sorry if that made you uncomfortable."

"No, of course not, it was nice to meet her too. And I should've expected it anyways." She shook her head. "Oh, and thanks for having me over. I know you and Agatha had that agreement to train me, but I know that you would have trained with me anyways, so thanks for that." She said genuinely, without a trace of her usual teasing. Instead, her gaze was one of focus and determination, which I couldn't help but find all the more attractive.

"No worries, I'm happy to help." I replied easily, and the two of us continued walking to an empty spot in the field where Whitney and I usually trained. She wasn't here at the moment since I think she was out shopping or something.

As we walked to the field, I explained to Karen about my earlier conversation with Giovanni and about the show match that we would be having in a week's time at Viridian City.

"And how are you planning on 'showing off'?" She asked with a chuckle, "Using your Tyrant to beat up Giovanni's Pokémon does not count as showing off, you know. That's just a beatdown."

"I'll think of something." I shrugged. "I doubt I'll be using my stronger Pokémon against Giovanni though; it would be very unfair."

"I hope you do come up with something…" She put her arms behind her head, "I'll be looking forward to seeing you hold back. Still, I hope you have fun. And raise a lot of money for charity. Those people at Olivine deserve it." I nodded seriously to her remarks.

We continued our banter until we arrived at the training fields, where I then cut off all the banter and turned serious.

"Ok, in order for me to properly help you, I need to know how much stronger your Pokémon have become ever since I left Hoenn. Maybe we can arrange a few spars with my Pokémon as demonstrations." I suggested.

Karen agreed, and we both released our Pokémon into the field. We split our Pokémon into their usual pairings, and we had them trade attacks one by one so that we could see where they were at.

As I watched our Pokémon start duelling or practicing against each other, Karen started going over her own observations and notes about her own Pokémon. She informed me that her Pokémon had all grown stronger across the board, and I observed them to verify her words.

From what I could see, the more notable standouts were her Pupitar and her Sneasel, though her Houndoom and Corphish deserved an honourable mention as well. Houndoom was just continuing to prove herself as Karen's Ace as she quite rapidly overwhelmed Klaus, and Corphish and was definitely becoming a strong Pokémon in its own right as well, just like Pixel was in my team.

On the other hand, Pupitar's improved strength was definitely recognisable, and I could see that it was almost ready to evolve into a Tyranitar. I watched as Vordt and Pupitar fired off rocks at each other, and Pupitar was putting up a decent fight against my much stronger Vordt, though Vordt was still holding back. Regardless, Pupitar was much better with his Ground and Rock type attacks than he previously was, which I heard proved helpful in Karen's battle at the Lavaridge Gym. That was good to see; Karen definitely needed some more type diversity in her Pokémon's attacks.

In the meanwhile, as I watched her Sneasel land a flurry of rapid slashes against Smough, all while continuously dodging under Smough's much slower swipes, I thought that he had reached, or nearly reached, the pinnacle of what he could achieve as a Sneasel. He was only held back by his relative lack of power, but that could be resolved if he evolved into a Weavile. Thus, I turned to talk to Karen about my theories.

"Hey, Karen, are you planning on evolving your Sneasel into a Weavile?" I asked her, and she turned to stare at me curiously.

"Of course, why do you ask?" She shot back. "In fact, it was something that I planned to do as soon as I got back to Indigo."

"Well, did you ever figure out how Sneasel evolves into a Weavile?" I queried, and she tilted her head in thought.

"Hmmm…I've heard that the common theory is that a Sneasel evolves into a Weavile by defeating other Sneasel in the wild, until eventually they've defeated enough to trigger their evolution. That was why I planned to make a trip to Mt. Silver so that I could get my Sneasel to battle some wild ones and hopefully trigger his evolution." Karen described to me, but then frowned. "But I heard that this is a rather unreliable theory as it never seemed to be successfully replicated under test conditions."

I nodded my head in agreement, "Yes, I've heard of this theory too. However, I have my own theory that I had previously thought up when I was doing research into Pokémon evolutions while trying to figure how to evolve my Ursaring into a Ursaluna. You see, I thought that the current prevailing theory was missing something. Why would a Sneasel just evolve into a Weavile after defeating enough of its brethren? If it was just a matter of needing sufficient strength, then it would evolve after it got strong enough just like every other Pokémon." I explained carefully so that Karen could follow my train of thought. I waited for her to nod in understanding before I continued.

"So, I thought that it was more likely that defeating other Sneasel specifically was causing the evolution. However, as you know, the scientists were never able to replicate this under test conditions. Thus, I figured that there was likely something that differentiated defeating a Wild Sneasel with defeating a captured Sneasel. This had led me to believe that there was likely some kind of trophy or item that a Sneasel collects from defeating other wild Sneasel, and THAT triggers its evolution into a Weavile." I finished, using backwards-logic from my meta-knowledge to try to theorize how a Sneasel evolves via a Razor Claw.

Karen blinked at me blankly for a couple of moments before she replied, "Huh, that does make a lot of sense. I never really thought about it that way…but I can see why you'd think so." She crossed her arms and tapped a finger on her elbow, "I see no harm in testing out your theory when I head out to Mt. Silver in the future, and I could probably bring a camera or something to document everything. This is another research paper in the making!"

I nodded at that, and we started to discuss how we would split the research. Karen was definitely more excited than I was; I never really expected to turn this into yet another scientific paper, but Karen was right that there was no harm in doing so. After all, more popularity and recognition were never a bad thing and would just add to my credentials.

After that, we returned to focusing on our Pokémon's training. After our Pokémon completed their spars, which were just warm-ups, we decided to move to a round of Gravity training. Karen unfortunately lacked a Pokémon that could use Gravity on her team, like my Klee and Luna, so she had slacked on that aspect of her training when she was alone in Hoenn.

However, it seemed like her Pokémon were determined to make up for that lost time as they pushed and exerted themselves to their limit as we began the Gravity training. Seeing Karen's Pokémon training so hard encouraged my own to match their determination, which I found greatly inspiring.

Karen was almost concerned with how hard her Pokémon were pushing themselves, but since I was more familiar with Gravity training, and with Klee at hand to prevent any serious injuries, I comforted her and insisted that things were fine.

We then spent a few hours just training with our Pokémon. During that time, I pointed out that Karen needed to rely less on her tricks to win fights, and she agreed with me. She told me her plans of getting bulkier Dark types that are able to withstand attacks and actually be able to brawl against her opponents, gesturing to Pupitar as an example.

I accepted that explanation but warned her that just having one brawler wasn't enough. She nodded and said that she was planning to catch more in the future. Suddenly, I had a thought and gestured to her Spiritomb.

"Hey, what about your Spiritomb? Couldn't you use it as a brawler as well?" I asked her, and she raised an eyebrow at me as if to tell me to clarify what I had just said.

"You're already having Spiritomb practice its regeneration moves like your Umbreon, and I can guarantee that your Spiritomb will hit a lot harder than your Umbreon, so why not train it to be able to take hits as well?" I suggested, causing her to frown thoughtfully at my words while observing her Spiritomb carefully.

"…I never really thought of Spiritomb that way. Now that I think of it, I have been slightly neglecting its training ever since I received it from Agatha because it came pre-trained and seemed strong enough. I didn't even realize that it could be used like that." She admitted to me. "That's something I've definitely overlooked. Thanks so much for bringing this to my attention, or else I would have completely missed and underutilized my Spiritomb for Arceus knows how long."

I nodded easily enough before I spoke up again, "Have you looked through the Sinnoh Pokédex yet and check out their list of Pokémon?" I questioned, and she shook her head.

"I gave it a quick look, mainly for the Dark types, but I didn't really look into them with much detail. Why?" She replied.

"Well, you should check out that new Pokémon called a Skorupi and its evolution into a Drapion; you brought it up before. It's a Dark/Poison type, which is crucially not weak to Fighting, and it's also got some very good bulk for a Dark type. I think it would be a great addition to your team if you ever acquired one from Sinnoh." I explained to her.

Karen's eyes widened with interest, and she agreed with my explanation, promising to check it out in the future. She then moved to check out her Spiritomb and actually get to know it better. I was pleased to have caught onto the fact that Spiritomb was being somewhat neglected by Karen, as it is a great Pokémon in its own right with a fantastic typing and good potential. It would have been a huge waste if it never was able to reach its full potential as a Pokémon.

Besides that, the most interesting thing that happened was that Pixel was finally winning spars against her Corphish, which never really happened before. I suppose that it was because of the fact that Electric attacks, which Pixel was getting very proficient at, was supereffective against Corphish, giving Pixel the advantage. And hopefully, as Pixel began to master the newest Psychic TM that I gave to it, it should be able to continue achieving victories against Corphish.

More amusingly, Euphie and her new Carvanha were also sparring against each other, and Euphie was trouncing Carvanha with her Tackles. That was probably because we were fighting on land, where Carvanha was really unsuited for. Perhaps I should arrange some sparring matches for the Carvanha against my Port in the water for the future? Port wasn't really a fighter, nor did he want to be, so they should be rather evenly matched in the future when Carvanha got stronger.

As we neared the end of our training session, I did contemplate whether to talk to her about training her Pokémon with new custom moves. It was a rather common sight within the higher levels of battling, and I figured that it would a great boost to Karen's overall strength. Custom moves would allow her Pokémon to have more versatility in their moves as well as hit harder, both areas that Karen needed to work on.

However, this took time, and I wasn't sure if it was something that Karen should worry about at the moment.

Ultimately, I decided to wait to tell her about this. I felt like we had made good progress with today's session, and I thought that she had enough on her plate to focus on at the moment. Prioritising getting her Sneasel to evolve into a Weavile and properly training up her Spiritomb was definitely a better use of her time at the moment.

With that in mind, I returned to Karen and wrapped up our training session, and just in time for my mom to invite Karen for dinner. Karen said that it really wasn't necessary, but this time my mom's insistence won out and Karen conceded and hesitantly joined us for dinner.

It was a relatively peaceful dinner, since my dad and Whitney were away at the moment, but of course we were still subjected to my mom's 'interrogation'.

"You know, Karen, John never told us what you got up to in Hoenn." She began in a teasing tone, and I could feel the headache slowly starting to rise. "All I know is that you both spent a lot of time together."

Karen was seemingly unaffected by my mom's teasing, "That's true. We were together for a lot of that time, and I could say that I very much enjoyed our time together. Didn't you, John?"

Fuck, they had allied together! "…Of course. I felt that our training together was very fruitful."

"Oh, don't be so shy, John. You can just say how you feel!" My mom said with a smirk, then she turned to Karen, "Speaking of which, Karen, you're welcome any time in our house. I'm sure my husband and my daughter would love to spend more time with you. Not as much as John though…"

She chuckled, but gave my mom a nice smile, "I'll take you up on that, Mrs. Smith, and thank you very much for your offer."

The rest of the dinner progressed on similar lines, though they only kept it to a light level of teasing. I joined in sometimes, but overall, it was a very happy atmosphere. I was glad to see that my mom approved of Karen; it would have made things more difficult to train together if Karen rubbed my mom the wrong way.

Things almost went awry for a moment when my mom asked about Karen's family, and she responded that she didn't have one. I had never directly asked Karen about her family, but I figured that she was probably an orphan based on the fact that she had never mentioned them.

My mom looked horrified at that, but Karen explained that Agatha was taking care of her and that the worst has passed. I could see that that triggered my mom's motherly instincts, but she let it go for the moment, though she insisted for Karen to at least finish the food. Karen grumbled good-naturedly but obediently followed through. I had to hold back a chuckle at Karen's expression.

Overall, it was a peaceful meal, and I was happy to see that my mom was approving of Karen and vice versa.

Before dinner was over, I brought up to my mom that I was going to having a charity match against Giovanni in a few days' time.

"Oh, well I wish you all the best, dear." My mom remarked, though her expression turned weird after a moment. "Do you think you're going to win?"

"I wouldn't be worried about that." Karen spoke up, "He's won against Elite Drake from Hoenn. I'm sure your son wouldn't have any issues with a Gym Leader."

"I know, I know." My mom said, "Well, anyways, I'm glad that you're thinking of doing something for those poor souls at Olivine. I guess you're really living up to your title as the Hero of Olivine, huh."

My mom and Karen broke out into huge grins, and I groaned as I was subjected to their torture.

The New Normal – 4-4 – A New Member

If there was anything good that I could say came out of Lance's challenge towards Pryce for the position of Champion, it is that us Elite Four members were basically on vacation until the whole thing blows over. Pryce didn't even try to give orders towards the Elite Four, probably since he must have realized that he currently didn't have the authority or the backing to order us to do anything, and we could easily just ignore his commands without consequence. This meant that we were effectively on holiday for the next week or so until Lance wins.

Sure, as soon as Lance takes up the mantle of Champion, or if Pryce somehow keeps his position, then the next few weeks after that are going to be extraordinarily busy once the status quo is overturned, but I was content to just enjoy the 'vacation' time that I had.

And it was great to see just how fruitful our training sessions were now that Karen and I didn't need to worry about travelling to a different location or training specifically for a battle. The lack of a time limit meant that we could focus on more long-term training goals rather than less impactful short-term ones. We were able to get in some very productive training sessions for a few days, including some intense Gravity training sessions, and I finally managed to get a start on training Euphie with Fairy type moves, as I felt that it was better to start early, and she had acclimatised well to my team.

Thus, since Euphie seemed to really enjoy practicing with Tackle, I decided that the first Fairy type move that I would train towards was Play Rough, which was effectively just a slightly stronger Tackle than was infused with Fairy energy. To make things easier, I had Luna help out in providing the Fairy type energy for the time being, since Euphie was unable to make use of it at the moment.

One day, Karen had asked me about why Tyrant was constantly setting himself on fire, so I had to explain to her that I was trying to get Tyrant to be able to mimic the Guts ability. That led to us having a conversation about getting her Pokémon to train to mimic their own unique abilities, but I warned her about how difficult the process could be. Nonetheless, she once again thanked me for these suggestions.

"You know, it's hard to not get jealous of that brain of yours." She jokingly said to me one day.

"Well, what can you do? I suppose I just have a unique insight into things." I returned with a smirk.

"Bah, don't be smug. I guess I should be glad Agatha got you to use that brain to help me." She shot back.

"I would have helped you even if she didn't ask, you know?"

"I know."

She was currently at Mt. Silver trying to evolve her Sneasel, but I wasn't able to accompany her as I had to watch over Whitney, since both my parents were heading out to handle a couple of business matters over at Hoenn and to scout out the possibility of my proposal to set up a new shop at Mauville City. I never really understood why Whitney needed a babysitter considering she was about to head out on her journey on her own, but I guess that was just the culture of this world and I gave up trying to wrap my head around it.

Karen didn't mind though, and she promised that she would update me about Sneasel's evolution progress as she was there. I guess I was going to find out more about it tonight or tomorrow, depending on if she decides to camp there for the night or not.

In the meantime, I spent today helping out with Whitney and training her Miltank in the Elemental Punches, which she was now somewhat proficient at. She was about to set out on her journey, so I felt that I should get as much training done with her in the time we had remaining. All the while I was carefully cradling the D-Zigzagoon egg in my arms, glancing at it every once in a while, in anticipation for its hatching.

Her Miltank was definitely at the level where I would say that she could solo most 4 badge Pokémon, and probably a few 6 badge ones too if she got lucky. Her current proficiency with the Elemental Punches were certainly sufficient for those kinds of fights, and coupled with all the other powerful Physical attacks that she knew, I was pretty confident in her chances at steamrolling through at least the earlier badges.

"It would be much easier for you to train your Rock type attacks like Rock Tomb and Rock Throw by yourself, Whitney, since those don't really need much outside assistance." I lectured. "However, the Elemental Punches are different and are often considered very hard to master. So I think that the best of use of your time until you set out on your journey is to get as much progress as you can in these moves while I'm able to help you."

Whitney accepted my explanation and was now sitting next to me with a juice box watching her Miltank train the punches with Smough and Vordt. Smough was also getting good at the elemental punches and was just slightly edging ahead of Miltank.

Miltank kept giving calculating glances towards Smough as they practiced together, and I think Miltank saw it as a competition against Smough. But I was pretty confident that Smough didn't really care. He was probably, as usual, just thinking about whether he would be getting a second lunch. Spoiler, he wasn't.

Overall, it was another well-deserved break from all the turmoil and annoyance of the past few weeks, and I can't say that it wasn't appreciated. The only thing that I really had to be concerned about was the show match against Giovanni in a few days, but since that was just supposed to be a nice chill and entertaining event with extremely low stakes, I didn't feel the need to set a specific training session for it.

Amusingly, I knew for certain that I wasn't going to be able to make use of Tyrant during that fight. I loved Tyrant, but he had no chill. He goes from 0 to 100 in intensity as soon as the match starts, and I wasn't confident that he was capable of holding back enough. With all due respect to Giovanni, I did my research on his team a while ago before I had met him formally as a member of the Elite Four, and I had refreshed that research as soon as I realized that I would be fighting against him in this show match, and he just wasn't at the same level as me. Tyrant would be completely overkill, and so would most all my stronger brawlers.

Sure, Giovanni probably had a few secret tricks under his sleeve that he would definitely deploy against me in a proper fight, but this was just a casual spar for the masses. I highly doubt that he would be employing any trump cards here. It would be the height of stupidity.

Likewise, I figured that I should probably try to make things fair and avoid using my strongest Pokémon. After thinking it through for a bit, I ultimately decided to use Klee, Luna, and Klaus, despite the fact that two of them were very poor matchups against what I suspected would be Giovanni's duo of Nidoqueen and Nidoking. However, it would also be good training for Klee and Luna, who were both traditionally on the weaker side of my team, to go against Pokémon that they were disadvantaged against.

It might be a tactically bad decision to do this, but since this was just supposed to be a casual show match meant to raise money for charity, I felt that deliberately handicapping myself was fine. Plus, even with a weaker showing, I was pretty confident that my reputation for being a strong and capable trainer was fairly entrenched at this point, especially with my victory over Drake, and my participation in stopping the attack at Olivine only boosted that even further.

I even asked Giovanni if we were able to just fight with much lower-level Pokémon like with Pixel, but he shut that down and said that that might be going a bit too far. After all, the crowd did still want excitement, and it was an undeniable fact that it was far more entertaining to watch higher level Pokémon duke it out than a lower-level one.

"Hey, John…John…BRO!!" Whitney broke me out of my thoughts about the show match as she tugged increasingly frantically on my sleeve. I turned to her with a silently questioning expression, and she kept pointing at the egg in my arms.

"JOHN, THE EGG!" My head snapped downwards towards the egg, and I could see that egg was shaking and wobbling more than it usually did. A small crack could be seen at the tip of the shell. It was hatching.

As soon as I realized it was hatching, I yelled out to my Pokémon. "EVERYONE, STOP!" All of our Pokémon froze on the spot before they all turned to me to see what the commotion was.

"Blissey!! BLISSEY!" Klee made a beeline towards me with eyes sparkling with excitement the moment she realized that the egg was hatching. I carefully placed the egg on the ground so that my clothes wouldn't be ruined by the inner liquids that were in the eggs when they hatched.

A small crowd slowly formed around it as our Pokémon slowly gathered around to witness the hatching.

The crack became larger. I heard a gasp from Whitney.

And larger. I was now holding my breath.

And suddenly the egg snapped open, breaking into two halves. Before I could even shuffle forwards to get a better look at the new hatchling, a black and white figure leapt out of the egg and immediately attacked Klee. Klee was momentarily surprised, but then tried to hug the new D-Zigzagoon.

"Zigzag! Ziggggg!" Seeing that it was doing no damage to Klee, it jumped out of her hands and decided to change targets. This time charging at Smough. That proved to be a foolish decision, because Smough was not only a much stronger target, but his belly was also naturally bouncy due to his physique.

Thus, when the D-Zigzagoon leapt towards Smough, it struck Smough's belly and was promptly and unceremoniously bounced off and landed headfirst into the dirt. I burst out laughing at that ridiculous sight, and Whitney quickly joined in on my laughter.

The D-Zigzagoon gave out what it probably thought it was an intimidating snarl, but to my ears, and probably the other Pokémon's ears too, only managed to sound cute. Regardless, it was undeterred by its previous failure and charged at Smough once again, only to be met with similar results as it bounced off Smough's belly once again and was knocked back into the dirt.

Klee was clearly more caring than I was, as she immediately ran up to where the D-Zigzagoon had fallen to check up on it, but it was stubbornly shrugged off her offers of assistance and went back on the offense again. Though this time, Smough had likely run out of patience and decided to just pick up the ornery Pokémon by the scruff of its neck and carried it in the air, leaving it dangling fruitlessly and unable to move or break free despite its incessant struggling.

Smough patiently waited for it to calm down before he carried the new hatchling over to me, and carefully dropped the new Pokémon in my arms. As soon as it was free from Smough's grasp, it tried to break free from my arms and almost scratched my face in the process, eliciting a gasp of concern from Whitney which I waved off. It really didn't want to be restrained!

I told Whitney to carry Euphie and to step backwards for a moment as I didn't want either of them to accidentally be harmed by the D-Zigzagoon, and she silently obeyed.

Luckily, before it broke free and ran off again, a delicate Psychic from Luna managed to hold it down and prevent it from running off. While the D-Zigzagoon was supposed to be a Dark/Normal type, as a newly hatched Pokémon, it had yet to develop its Dark typing enough to become immune to Psychic attacks, and so it was gently, but forcefully, held down by Luna's Psychic.

"Ok, that's enough out of you, newbie." I said sternly to the new D-Zigzagoon, who was still looking around and trying to break free from Luna's Psychic hold. "Hey! Listen up!" I snapped my fingers at it and gestured towards Smough, who roared out to punctuate my point.

Smough's roar finally managed to pacify the D-Zigzagoon, who had now curled up slightly within itself in fear. I could see that it was trying to shuffle as far away as possible from Smough, but it was still unable to move due to Luna's Psychic. Smough stepped up towards the now fearful D-Zigzagoon and pointed my way, which it hurriedly obeyed as it turned to face me.

"Do I finally have your attention now?" I asked, and I saw the D-Zigzagoon take a quick glance at Smough, who glared back at it, before it nodded his head towards me. "Good. Now, do you know who I am? Or what I am to you?"

"Zig…Zigzag…" It said, and I turned to Smough who translated what it was saying.

"Snorlax. Snor…" Smough translated, and I was satisfied at this answer. At least this D-Zigzagoon recognised me as its 'trainer' of sorts and understood that I was the one who helped take care of it while it was still in its egg. Now that I was able to get a closer look though, I saw that it was a male.

"Well, I'm glad you understand the basics then." I addressed the new hatchling. Recognizing that I couldn't approach this D-Zigzagoon the same way I initially approached Whitney's Whismur and Euphie, since those were both Pokémon that were slightly afraid and required a comfortingly soft approach. No, with this D-Zigzagoon, I needed to show off an image of strength and respect and intimidate him into respecting my authority.

Thus, I crossed my arms and walked closer towards him, looming over him threateningly next to Smough before speaking. "Listen up!" I made sure that our eyes locked on to each other. "I can respect your eagerness and desire for battle. And at times, I will even encourage such behaviour, especially during your training. But, for right now, you will have to learn to obey the rules of this team, and to respect your teammates. I won't have you attacking your teammates like a rabid beast, do I make myself clear?" To punctuate my point once more, I gestured towards Smough, Vordt, and Tyrant, who all let out deafeningly powerful roars that easily cowed the D-Zigzagoon.

It might have been eager to fight, but even the most reckless of fighters were still bound by their survival instinct. And seeing D-Zigzagoon meekly nod at my words, I was confident that it was finally listening to his survival instincts for once.

Seeing that it was now in a listening mood, I swapped from the stick to the carrot. I eased off my serious expression and now crouched down next to him. "Hey, I'm sorry for having to scare you like that, but you wouldn't listen to what I was g oing to say otherwise." I spoke carefully as I focused on observing his expressions. He just stared at me blankly, so I continued.

"Look, do you want to be as strong as Smough? Or Vordt? Or Tyrant?" I pointed at each of them in turn, with the D-Zigzagoon following my finger. He eventually gave off a small nod, and I smiled.

"If you choose to follow me, I promise you that I will one day make you as strong as they are. I promise you that I will give it my all training you to become as strong as you can be. I promise you that you'll be in the best fights of your life." I can see that his eyes gleaming with interest, now it was just time to reel him in. "But in order to do that, I need you to listen to me. I need you to understand that the Pokémon around you right now are going to be your lifelong teammates, and that you shouldn't just fight with them for no reason. If you are willing to listen to me and give me the chance to train you, I guarantee you that you will not regret it."

I took out one of my new Premier Balls and placed it in front of him and glanced at Luna to release the Psychic on him; I wanted him to capture himself on his own accord. The D-Zigzagoon hesitated momentarily, looking around at my team as my Pokémon started to encourage him with a mixture of growls, cheers, and grunts. Eventually, he reached forwards with a paw and tapped on the Premier Ball, before he was engulfed in a red light and sucked into the ball. The ball immediately snapped shut without wobbling.

As soon as my Pokémon and I saw that he had been successfully captured, we all let out roars and cheers of congratulations. Klee immediately glomped me with a hug, and Whitney also ran up to me and joined in on the hug excitedly.

I had just captured my latest Pokémon!

We celebrated for a short moment before I released my new D-Zigzagoon once again onto the field. He looked around for a moment and inspected himself before he turned to me and leapt up into my arms. I was alarmed for a moment, but instead of scratching my face like he tried to do at first, this time all he did was just lick my face.

Disgusting, but it was still better than the alternative.

Whitney giggled at my predicament, and I tried to pull him off of me before eventually managing to set him back down on the ground. Before I could be fully content with my latest capture, I needed to make sure that he was capable of getting along with my team.

"Ok, newbie, thanks for joining the team. I am very happy that you joined, and I hope you are too." The hatchling yipped happily at me, and I smiled at him before continuing. "Ok, since it's getting late and you have just hatched, I'm not going to do anything too intense with you at the moment. However, if you want to, you could play around with Eevee, Porygon, and Whismur. They should be at around your level." I gestured to all three of them who all waved back at him with various levels of enthusiasm.

The hatchling turned warily to Smough, as if seeking his approval. Only after receiving a small nod from Smough did he immediately leap out from my arms towards the trio. I watched with some trepidation at the beginning but relaxed as soon as I saw that they were getting along well, and that the newbie wasn't getting too aggressive with them. Just to play it safe though, I asked Klee to keep an eye out on them for now just to make sure they didn't accidentally hurt each other, but she was already making her way there.

"It's a very lively one, isn't it bro?" Whitney spoke up next to me as we watched our Pokémon play around with each other.

"Yeah, he is. But that's not a bad thing in the long-run, I just need to make sure that he learns enough discipline to temper himself in battle." I replied.

"Hmm…have you ever had to deal with something like this before, bro?" Whitney asked, and I nodded.

"Yes, though I probably haven't told you about it." I remarked wistfully, remembering my experiences during the earlier parts of my adventure. "Fortunately, I didn't need to deal with problematic Pokémon that often, but Smough was an unruly Pokémon when I had newly captured him as a Munchlax."

Whitney looked at me curiously, so I continued. "He was basically the opposite of the D-Zigzagoon, instead of hyperactive and eager to fight, Smough as a Munchlax was lazy and unwilling to do anything besides eating. He was completely unmotivated to fight or train and was initially just a huge drain on my resources as he would vacuum up piles of food at a time. It took some time, but eventually Tyrant, Vordt, and I were able to beat some sense of discipline and fire into him and he actually began to train and slowly transformed into the Elite level Pokémon that he is now." I explained.

"Wow…I never knew that about Smough…" Whitney replied fascinatedly. "Do you think I would have to deal with this kind of thing when I go on my journey too?"

"Probably. It's quite common for newer Pokémon especially to be unruly and disobey you." I told her. "It's a mark of a great trainer that they are able to calm and discipline these unruly Pokémon and persuade them to join your team."

"Do you think you can teach me how to do it?" She asked excitedly, and I thought about it for a moment before shaking my head.

"Hmm…I don't think so." She frowned, and I quickly clarified myself. "It's not that I don't want to teach you, sis, but every trainer should have their own methods of getting their Pokémon to obey. I think it's something that you need to develop yourself, and I think you'll hurt yourself in the long run if you try to just copy my methods. It should be something instinctual." I explained.

Whitney seemed unhappy at my words but nodded acceptingly anyways. Personally, I was confident that she had nothing to worry about and that she had the strength of character and will to get any Pokémon to obey her, but I kept that to myself as I didn't want to accidentally hype her up and make her overconfident.

The two of us then continued watching over the quartet as they were playing around, and I made sure to text Karen to inform her that the egg had hatched. She didn't respond, but that was expected for someone currently hiking around in Mt. Silver.

I also needed to think of a nickname for the D-Zigzagoon, as I didn't want to be calling him 'newbie' forever. I was having trouble coming up with a suitable name as I watched the quartet rush towards Smough together to use him as a training dummy. The D-Zigzagoon in particular seemed to be fixated on Smough and seemed especially determined to surpass him.

And it was then when a nickname hit me. It wasn't a perfect fit, as he was definitely no Dragonslayer, at least not yet, but with the almost immediate fixation and potential rivalry with Smough, I felt that no other nickname would do him justice.

And thus, Ornstein joined the team.