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The New Normal - 3-5
🕑 Added 2023-05-08 14:21:33 +0000 UTCThe New Normal – 3-5 – Catching up
As I was flying back on Port, I suddenly remembered that I had promised Smough his berries for his victory against Drake’s Gyarados and almost forgot to fulfil my end of the deal. Obviously not wanting to go back on my promise, I took a quick detour away from home and landed at Celadon City so that I could hopefully bulk buy some berries at the Celadon Department Store.
Over the years, I’ve learnt that while Smough was certainly a big eater, he wasn’t really a picky eater and would value quantity over quality. So, for his ‘berry feast’, I simply decided to cheap out and just bulk buy a variety of cheap berries for him to scoff down.
Besides, Smough eats like 10-20 berries per mouthful, so I wasn’t exactly certain that he could actually distinguish between high quality and lower quality berries anyways. So, there was no need for me to waste money buying higher quality berries when he couldn’t even taste the difference.
I landed in the middle of the busy Celadon City and immediately regretted it as Port, as a Mantine, was unique enough of a Pokémon that it drew the attention of the crowds, meaning that it took a few seconds before the several surrounding onlookers saw that I was at Celadon City. Which meant that my presence at Celadon would be quickly reported to all the relevant news stations who would then send their hordes of reporters over to ask me more mundane questions to generate more headlines.
I groaned silently at the thought of being surrounded by reporters yet again, but I hoped that I could get my shopping done before getting disturbed. Thus, I quickly dashed into the Celadon Department Store and tried to purchase everything I needed before the reporters could arrive.
Of course, it was the moment that I left the Department Store with Smough’s heavy haul of berries that I found myself expectedly encircled by a crowd of overeager reporters. I visibly sighed out as I braced myself for yet another interview. I was starting to see why Drake was so irate with the media at this point.
“Elite John! Do you have any comments about Champion Pryce’s recent scandal regarding his appointment of his niece as the newest Gym Leader of Mahogany City?” One reporter asked as they rudely tried to shove their microphone into my face.
“…I have no comments on the situation because I do not know enough about the situation to properly comment on it.” I answered evasively, not wanting to give away the fact that I was going to be supporting Lance, but also making sure that I didn’t accidentally say anything that would discredit Lance’s position as well.
“Do you think that Lorelei is suitable for the position of Gym Leader?” Another asked, and I gave the same non-committal response. The next few questions went similarly, and I managed to find a bit of joy at irritating the reporters by not responding to their questions.
“Did you learn anything new during your trip to Hoenn? Was there anything interesting that you observed?” I was going to answer with the same non-response, but then I suddenly had a thought that I could actually use this impromptu interview to forward a few of my own positions as well.
“Yes, actually.” And I could see many reporters’ faces brighten at the fact that I actually was going to answer a question for once. “If there was one thing that inspired me throughout my trip to Hoenn, it is that my brief time in Hoenn has allowed me many opportunities to both make connections and experience new different types of Pokémon that normally could not be found in Indigo.”
“In fact, I thought that it would be amazing if trainers would be allowed the freedom to travel between Hoenn, Johto, and Kanto more freely without requiring 4 badges like it does now. I currently feel like the 4-badge requirement is too stifling and prevents many trainers who would like to explore newer regions from doing so just because they lack the necessary 4 badges.” I explained passionately.
This was something that I have always wanted to encourage more of for the trainers around the world. I truly believe that by allowing trainers to freely travel the regions and capture Pokémon would improve international cooperation, team diversity, as well as the average levels of trainers internationally. It would also be good for Kanto as it would bring in more foreign investment and tourism as more people visit.
Also, the fact that I had just announced my proposal to several news stations means that my idea was now out there in the open, free to be discussed by the public, and most importantly, impossible to silence. If I had brought up this topic privately with either Lance or Pryce, it ran the risk of them disagreeing with my idea and requesting concessions if I did push for it.
However, by doing it this way, it meant that they couldn’t deny my proposal if they wanted to gain or keep my support. And by now I recognized just how valuable of a position I hold between Lance and Pryce, as I was the only remaining Elite Four member that could be swayed to either side, so I knew that they wouldn’t fight me over this and instead would try to show their support to gain my favour.
“Does that mean you’re in favour of abolishing the 4-badge rule?” A reporter questioned.
“That depends on what would be best for the future of Indigo.” I replied. “The 4-badge rule was implemented during a time when Indigo was still in its infancy, and cooperation between Kanto and Johto was timid and distrustful. The 4-badge rule was created as a means of lowering competition between trainers and to protect a region’s Pokémon from being captured by ‘foreign’ trainers.” I explained informatively.
“However, the situation has changed greatly now to the point where tensions between Kanto and Johto are almost non-existent.” I continued my lecturing. “This means that the 4-badge rule may be an outdated rule that is currently more harmful than it is helpful. Thus, while I am not requesting that the 4-badge rule be removed entirely, I am asking that the Indigo League should carefully examine whether the 4-badge rule should remain as it has been so far? Or should the number of badges required be reduced to allow more trainers that want to travel to new regions to be able to do so.” I finished.
“Elite John, you’ve clearly thought about this proposal a lot. So, what do you personally think should be the requirement?” Another reporter inquired, and I immediately went back to becoming evasive again.
“I don’t want to influence the opinion of others, so I really shouldn’t say.” I replied carefully. “I will say that I believe that 4 badges are simply too much and definitely should be lowered, but without more information I couldn’t say what the new requirement should look like.”
Personally, I feel that needing 2 badges is a sufficient requirement to allow trainers to capture Pokémon from other regions, but I was going to keep that to myself for the time being because I really didn’t know enough about the statistics or the relevant information to give an informed opinion at this time. And I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by giving an opinion without the relevant facts to back it up.
Many more reporters clamoured after me to ask more questions, but I decided that I had said what I had wanted to say and now was time for my exit. I told the reporters that I had to get home to return my shopping, then promptly ignored their cries and questions as I flew off on Port back home.
============
It was nearly dinner time when I got back, so as soon as I landed, I quickly got to work preparing Smough’s feast of berries as well as dinner for my other Pokémon. I even invited both of Whitney’s Pokémon to join in too as I felt that I had plenty of food to go around. They could share some of Smough’s berries too.
At first, I was concerned that Whismur might still be too scared of my Pokémon to join in, but apparently spending some time around Miltank gave her the confidence to at least remain and join in the feast. I was glad to see that progress was being made.
I then happily watched Smough eagerly devoured his feast of berries, his spoils of victory. The enormous pile of berries disappearing into his gullet almost in seconds. He seemed to be in a sharing mood though, or perhaps he was just satisfied with his food, since he allowed my other Pokémon to share his berries instead of hoarding it to himself like he usually does.
I was content to leave my Pokémon to their own devices as I went back inside and had dinner with my family. They asked why I had to leave so urgently, and I explained to them that Lance had called and that he wanted to speak to me.
Whitney didn’t seem to realize the implications, but my parents grilled me about my involvement with Lance and why he wanted to see me. I summarized our meeting to them, and while they were concerned at the high-level politics that I was now playing around with, they told me that I had done well for my age and that they would support my plan of action no matter what it may be.
I also let them know that I had secured, showing my written agreement from Lance, to allow our family to sell Moomoo milk in Blackthorn. My parents were surprised, but ecstatic since the markets of Blackthorn City are notoriously difficult to break into, and they said that they’ll begin setting that up tomorrow.
We then turned on the news, and sure enough, my most recent interview was being broadcasted. My parents praised how handsome I looked and gushed over how their son was now ‘becoming an adult and how mature I looked. I blushed bright red in embarrassment as Whitney joined in on the teasing. I told them to enjoy my time in the limelight while it lasted, as I was sure that my ideas would be buried as soon as the news had something else to report on.
We then moved onto more serious topics, and my parents asked when I could arrange for the photos of my Pokémon to be taken for the planned posters. They told me that they already had a photographer selected, and now they were just waiting on the photos themselves. I thought about it and told them that tomorrow should be fine, barring any emergencies, so my mom briefly left to contact the photographer and to get them to come tomorrow.
Whitney then piped up and asked if she could be in a poster, but my parents and I all said no in unison. She was disappointed and tried to persuade us with a pout, but we explained to her that appearing in a poster as a newbie trainer would place unreasonable expectations on her future performance, and we didn’t want to add that level of stress onto her. She gave us a sad nod of acceptance and went back to her room as it was about time for her to go to bed anyways.
My parents and I remained in the living room and continued our discussions on the family business. Apparently, the newfound confidence in my ability to remain as an Elite Four member in the long-term has boosted the reputation of our family’s business and led to an increase in sales around the board.
Shops were becoming increasingly eager to stock our products, as there was a sizeable demand of trainers purchasing our Moomoo milk in bulk in the belief that it makes their Pokémon stronger. No wonder my parents were so eager to get our new poster strategy in play; it was the perfect time to capitalize on the recent boom in demand for our Moomoo milk.
I did ask about whether our supply could meet the new demand, and they answered that their new supply of Miltank is currently able to match the heightened demand, and they saw no problems for the foreseeable future. However, with the sudden entrance into Blackthorn City, my parents said that they would probably like to have more supply just in case. It was also why they were hesitant to invest into my proposal to set up a shop at Mauville City, since that might be stretching our business too far.
To that end, they also delicately asked if my Pokémon were happy to breed with the Miltank soon so they could start raising a ‘higher-quality’ line of Moomoo milk to sell. I chuckled at the question and told them I would talk to my relevant Pokémon soon to see if they were still amicable.
With that, we wrapped up our conversation and we all headed to bed. I didn’t sleep just yet though, as I scoured through the Pokénet to see if there was any new information either regarding Team Rocket or my latest interview.
Sadly, there was no new information regarding Team Rocket, but my interview seemed to have been well-received by the public. There were numerous comments praising how well I articulated myself and that I seemed genuinely passionate about the subject – which I thought helped with showing off my more mature and responsible side to the public.
It was then that I realized that I had a few unread texts from Karen.
‘How was ur return to Indigo? Saw ur interview. U spoke nicely.’ she texted me.
’Enjoyed seeing my family, but there was a lot more politics to deal with than expected.’ I replied.
‘?? What do u mean?’ She quickly responded. ‘Pryce giving u shit?’
‘Not exactly…’ then I summed up to her what I had been dealing with ever since my return to Indigo.
‘Wow. Seems painful. Would hate to be in ur position.’ She said sympathetically. ‘Is being in the Elite4 that busy? R u going to be ok?’
‘Yeah, I’m doing fine for now. Better than expected actually.’ I told her and then I moved away from the talk of politics to discussing about the egg.
Karen told me that the egg was doing well, but there was no progress being made in terms of the Dark infusions. She said that the Nurse Joys were all very accommodating and that they were eager to see if the experiment would succeed, but Karen told me that she was getting anxious about the lack of progress.
I frowned slightly when she said that there was still no progress being made yet, but I convinced myself that it was just because it was still very early and that perhaps progress would be visible later. I repeated my thoughts to Karen, and even over text I could tell that she wasn’t reassured by my words, but there was nothing either of us could do about it at the moment.
I thought that perhaps we were doing something wrong, or that we were missing a crucial element of the puzzle that we had yet to realize, but I came up blank. But my gut was telling me that I was missing something – I just didn’t know what it was.
Eventually I gave up on thinking about it and went to bed.
===============
The next morning was hectic for me. I had to wake up early and tidy myself and my Pokémon up for the poster’s photoshoot. Luckily, my parents had hired a professional who was very efficient with his work, so the whole event didn’t take as long as I was expecting. They even said that I came out better than expected, which I chose to accept as a compliment.
The photographer then told us that the photos should be ready to turn into posters shortly, and that they’ll visit us with the final product when it’s done. The shops had already agreed to trade the posters for the bottle caps when they are released, for a small fee of course.
With the photoshoot over, I quickly rung up Giovanni to see if I could reach him, but Petrel once again picked up the phone and apologized to me for Giovanni’s absence. I was frustrated, and demanded to know when he would be available, and Petrel finally coughed out that Giovanni should return tomorrow so I could probably meet up with him then. I told him that I would before I hung up on him.
With nothing better to do for the rest of the day, I decided that it was about time that I honoured my promise to Whitney and oversee her training regime once again. Of course, I used the opportunity while Whitney was distracted to discretely go up to where my Pokémon were training and ask Tyrant, Vordt, and Klaus if they were still happy to breed with a few of our Miltank.
Amusingly, they were all more than eager to and I let them go about on their business. There were things I didn’t want to know about – and this was one of them.
Shaking myself free from those disturbing thoughts, I quickly found Whitney training with her Miltank while her Whismur simply watched for the time being. I was hit with a mixture of shock and pride as I saw that her Miltank was repeatedly practicing her Rollout, and now was easily able to transition from the Rollout into a Body Slam or another offensive move. Likewise, it could also quickly Rollout for a short burst of speed to quickly dodge away from attacks.
I had to actually hold in my laughter as I witnessed her Miltank’s proficiency and skill. She really was an unreasonable monster of a Pokémon for a trainer with no badges yet. Even with my meta-knowledge, my Slakoth wasn’t nearly as strong when I first started my journey, though Whitney had plenty more time to train with her Miltank compared to me.
Whitney eventually noticed that I was looking, and quickly ran up to me.
“John! How was the photoshoot? Mom and Dad didn’t want me to be there because they were scared that I would mess things up for them…” She pouted, before she shook her head and pointed towards her Miltank. “Also, John! Did you see my Miltank and her Rollouts? I told you that I listened to you – and look! She’s so good at it now! I totally understand what you mean now about Rollout being a useful move; it’s now one of my favourite moves to use!” She rambled happily and I listened to her with a smile.
“You’ve done really well by your Miltank, Whitney. Good job.” I praised her honestly, eliciting a wide smile from her. “If you train up your other Pokémon as enthusiastically, I’m sure that you’ll be able to catch up with me very quickly.”
She looked shocked to hear that, but that shock quickly transformed into an eager nod as she started to ramble about how she planned to train her Whismur. She told me how she realized that Whismur was still shy, so she intended to instil Whismur with some confidence before she got into the serious training that she did with Miltank.
It was a remarkable and well thought out plan for a 11-year-old, and I nodded in agreement while patting her on the head. I also suggested that perhaps she could focus on having Miltank master the elemental punches soon to give her more Type coverage, which she eagerly nodded at and made a note.
As I watched Whitney remain concentrated on her notes and planning for Miltank’s future training, I could see how she could become the Gym Leader of Goldenrod at such a comparatively young age. Speaking of which…
“Say, Whitney, what are your plans for becoming a trainer in the future?” She looked confused at my question, so I clarified myself. “What do you want to be in the future? What are your goals? You can just say you don’t know if you’re not sure.”
Whitney’s face scrunched up cutely as she pondered my question. I made sure that I wasn’t staring at her while I let her think, since I didn’t want to seem like I was pressuring her into giving an answer.
After almost a minute of silence, my sister spoke up hesitatingly.
“I know I want to be a great trainer like you are, John.” She said uncertainly. “I’m not sure what I would want to be after that though…” She seemed upset that she didn’t know, but I was quick to reassure her. Besides, I didn’t need to know immediately if Whitney wanted to be a Gym Leader or not.
“Hey, hey, you don’t need to feel bad if you don’t know yet.” I comforted gently, as I crouched down to match her height. “You’re still very young, and you haven’t even started your journey yet! There’s no need to decide now, but I was just asking to see if you have any ideas. But it’s totally okay if you don’t – you have plenty of time to decide later.”
Apparently, I had said the right thing because she brightened and gave me a nod. I gave her a gentle pat on the head once more before I gestured for her to go back to training with her Pokémon.
I watched her train for a few more moments before I returned to where my own Pokémon were training. Although they were training rather autonomously, I had tailored their recent training sessions to fix some of their shortcomings that I noticed from the battle against Drake.
More specifically, Smough was temporarily working with Klee and Luna and even Pixel, since three of my Pokémon were currently ‘unavailable’, to manipulate the elements and learn how to infuse them into his attacks. I hoped that since Smough knew Shock Wave that he would be able to quickly learn Thunder Punch since they shared an element.
To my pleasant surprise, Pixel was mastering its Electric type attacks very quickly. It seems that, by being able to refer to Wattson’s battles as a guide, Pixel was learning even faster than I had expected. I hoped he reached proficiency in that attack soon so I could get him training on higher level battles.
As for Zephyr, I did feel that he was reaching the limits of his ability as a Pokémon. The unfortunate truth was that Pidgeot just wasn’t that strong of a Pokémon to begin with, and it was only because of my relentless training was he able to catch up with my other team members. But, outside of his specialized role as an anti-Flying type attacker, Zephyr was easily the weakest of my Elite team. And we both knew it.
However, Zephyr was never one to give up on training and was always eager to get stronger, and I would strive to honour his determination by doing my best to think of new and improved training regimes that would allow him to catch up with the rest of my team. For now, I felt that his strength still needed to be improved as I noticed that against Drake’s Altaria, Zephyr’s Brave Birds weren’t hitting as hard as I hoped for.
As a result, I had Zephyr work on a balance between Gravity-induced strength training and general speed training with Port so that his Brave Birds were able to hit as hard as possible. It was what he was doing previously anyways, but this was his niche, so I wanted to ensure that he could perform that niche as best as he could.
I also had a few more ideas about trying to train a few of my Pokémon to learn different abilities, namely Zephyr and Tyrant, both of whom had poor abilities in Keen Eye and Truant respectively. In Tyrant’s case, even though he had overcome the weaknesses of Truant, it would be even better if he could actually adopt an ability that was actually helpful. I salivated at the thought. It would make him even stronger than he already was!
For now, I jotted down that I should aim to train Pidgeot to develop the Reckless ability, if possible, and for Tyrant to try to train the Guts ability. I thought those would be excellent abilities for them and would suit their needs the best. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy, but I had the time right now to invest into these long-term training endeavours.
Thus, the rest of my day was spent just watching over my Pokémon’s training as I got in a few rounds of exercise myself, and the remainder of the day passed without any issues.
As I scrolled through the Pokénet while I was in bed, I smiled as I saw that Lance was quick to jump onto my interview and announce his support for my proposal to potentially lower the 4-badge requirement; I was pleased to see him honouring our agreement. It seemed that the public was generally receptive to my idea, and I hoped that there would be sufficient support for the Indigo League, or Pryce, to approve of my ideas.
Seeing that there was nothing else of import going on, I briefly texted Karen to make sure everything was ok before I tossed my phone away and tried to get some sleep. I knew that, with Giovanni’s supposed return, tomorrow was going to be the day where my future relationship with Giovanni will be decided.
A.N A slower chapter, but I felt that it was necessary to wrap up/touch up on a few plot points that I had brought up in the previous arc that remained unaddressed.
Also, my apologies for all that discussion in the feedback from the last chapter. I’m still learning much as an author and with characterisation, so if there’s anything any discrepancies, please let me know! I’m always striving to improve. Huge thanks to everyone that commented though. You guys are great!
Big thanks as well to Allute for BETAing this chapter. Thanks, man!
