The New Normal - 19-3

The New Normal – 19-3 – Mega Reveal

The reveal went as smoothly, or as chaotically, as I had expected. Standing on the stage, we had barely shown off our new Pokémon’s forms for over a second before the shouting and questions came firing our way. The reporters were literally frothing at the bit to get their questions out, and many of them were even trying to push forwards onto the stage to try and ensure that their questions were heard – those were only held back by the Jennys.

Even with a microphone, Steven struggled to speak over all the noise, and eventually we just had to put the demonstration on pause as we all answered a few of the questions first. Because it wasn’t practical otherwise.

Their curiosity needed to be sated.

Although I was glad to see that the Professors also got time in the spotlight as well – the questions weren’t just directed towards us. I felt that it was only fair as we were merely the test subjects; the Professors were the ones that did all the work.

Cynthia and Steven also spoke a bit more about their thoughts about this new Mega Evolution, and how much stronger it made their Pokémon compared to before.

Fortunately, after the reporters’ curiosity were at least partially satisfied, we were allowed to get on with our planned demonstration.

As planned, Cynthia and I ‘faced off’ against Lance and Alder, though it wasn’t at all a serious fight since the stage and location of the press conference could not handle a sustained battle like that. But we did our best to have a proper battle despite these conditions, and the public definitely lapped it up.

Obviously, since Lance and Alder were using Pokémon that they weren’t actually used to, it really wasn’t much of a fight. Zephyr and Garchomp were easily able to overpower and outmanoeuvre both of our opponents, and it was clear that we had a lot more practice done with our Mega Evolutions compared to them.

Zephyr simply out-sped our enemies, serving as a very effective and annoying distraction for them as he whittled them down from the safety of the skies. Altaria, for all of its efforts, could do nothing to catch up to him with his sheer speed. Meanwhile, Garchomp completely overpowered Manetric – it wasn’t even close, especially thanks to Garchomp’s favourable type matchup.

So, in the end, it was a very clean victory for us. Though again, this was only supposed to be a showcase. I don’t think any of us were trying particularly hard.

However, after the demonstration was completed, that was when things took a turn for the controversial. As the questions continued, the reporters found out that the Mega Stones that were used for Mega Evolution were in extremely limited supply. Steven had explained that they had currently only found around a dozen Mega Stones, and as of right now, they weren’t replicable.

Things got worse when the Professors chimed in and explained that the Key Stone, which was the tool used to activate the Mega Stone, was also in limited supply as it made use of a very special energy that was also impossible to reproduce.

They were pressed about what kind of energy was needed, but the Professors refused to explain, stating that it was a classified secret. That inflamed the reporters, though I felt like it was a wise decision.

It was probably best not to reveal that the Key Stones were made by using Legendary energy. There really was no need to add any kind of fuel that might encourage people to hunt down Legendaries.

But the thing that the public were most enraged about was the fact that the Mega Stones wouldn’t be available to 99.9% of the public because of how rare it was. Since Mega Stones were likely a one in a million find, if you weren’t that extremely lucky person, then you won’t have access to the Mega Evolution.

This was a very different case to when the Fairy type was revealed. That was controversial because not many people had believed that there was this whole new type that they had somehow overlooked. Yet this time, people were mad because this was seen as something only accessible to the ‘elites’.

As one reporter pointed out, “Are you not concerned that this Mega Evolution will only be accessible and used by already established high-tier trainers? What hope does the regular trainer have for getting access to Mega Evolution? Would this not just widen the gap between the elites and regular trainers?”

Steven did his best to respond, “We are aware of this, and we acknowledge the unfortunate consequences of this reveal in increasing the disparity between trainers with access to more resources and those with access to less. As of right now, our Professors are still hard at work with identifying if there are ways of creating new Mega Stones so that more of the public will gain access to them.”

“However, in the meanwhile, the other Champions and I have agreed that we will be putting temporary policies in place across our regions to prevent the use of Mega Stones in official battles and challenges.” He continued, “This policy will not last forever, but it is a mere stopgap to ensure that those who were fortunate to have gotten a Mega Stone would not gain an unfair and unreasonable advantage over their opponents in the short term. And when the Mega Stones and their Mega Evolutions are going to be a bit more widespread, then we will readjust these measure as necessary.”

Initially, we didn’t plan to ban the use of Mega Evolutions. But after doing some further discussions, we realised that the pushback to this reveal was going to be insane, so a full-out ban for the time being was necessary to at least placate the masses.

In truth, this measure probably wouldn’t affect more than a few dozen people, since Mega Stones were so rare anyways. But this measure needed to be introduced anyways to show the public that the Leagues were aware of the disparity, and were working to mitigate it as much as possible.

“Will there be any other measures in place?” Someone else asked, “What kind of restrictions will be placed on Mega Evolutions in the long-term?”

Steven then went onto explain how Mega Evolutions would be restricted so that you had to use it the moment you sent out your Mega-evolvable Pokémon into the fight – it wasn’t something you couldn’t do midway during a battle. He then went on to describing the new Mega Stone Foundation that he was planning on setting up, and how Hoenn would be the new headquarters for all things Mega Stone related.

That last part was received very well by much of the local audience, as they recognized how much of a big win it was for Hoenn to be able to be the centre point for all these new Mega Evolutions.

But as the press conference was wrapped up, it was time to see how the rest of the world would react to this new paradigm shift.

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

Well, turns out that the public reaction was just as explosive as we expected it to be.

There was a lot of excitement of course, but that was all mostly covered up by the endless flood of comments who were enraged about how ‘elitist’ the whole Mega Evolution process was. I saw many comments on the Pokénet describing it as a ‘Ace for the Elite’, implying that it wasn’t something that the majority of the public could get their hands on.

I didn’t escape the line of fire either. When the public found out that Steven had gifted a few Mega Stones to all of the Champions and myself as a ‘show of friendship’ (or in less charitable terms, a political bribe), it only reinforced the narrative that Mega Stones were going to be out of the public’s hands.

Fortunately, the outrage wasn’t personally directed at anyone. The public was rational enough to understand that we didn’t design the Mega Stones this way; it was just a fact of reality. Therefore, their outrage was less directed and more just general frustration at the fact that there were potentially really cool forms for so many different Pokémon out there that they potentially would never be able to have for themselves due to how rare the Mega Stones were.

Things didn’t end there, as more concerningly than all this outrage, was the fact that people were now, as we expected, going absolutely crazy in their hunt for Mega Stones. We had posted pictures about what these Mega Stones looked like on the Pokénet alongside their official reveal, so the public knew what to look for.

And it was like everyone had suddenly turned into amateur geologists with how they were picking up and inspecting every odd-looking stone they found – thinking that it would be another Mega Stone. The more annoying of them would then go run to their nearest research lab and start bombarding them with requests for an ‘official inspection’ to see if what they had found was a Mega Stone or not.

Obviously, that caused all of the scientists and researchers to get severely annoyed at these frequent and useless interruptions, hence why Steven decided to make an announcement that all identification procedures could be done at the newly constructed headquarters (actually just a repurposed office building for the time being) of the Mega Stone Foundation.

Each person was allowed one inspection per week, and there was a small fee to do it each time. But this was a pretty clever move from Steven, as it not only gave the public a place where they could submit their rocks for identification – meaning that they wouldn’t be bothering your average research lab any longer, but it also helped to entrench the idea of the Mega Stone Foundation into people’s minds and how it would be the go-to place for anything Mega Stone related.

The new policies seemed to have worked out, and the complaints from the researchers and scientists seemed to have stopped. Though that didn’t stop the public from continuing to tear up everything they came across as they eagerly searched for any Mega Stones.

None had been found yet, but I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before someone got lucky, which would just fuel more people to look for it.

It was almost like the Pokémon equivalent of the gold rush. If anything, a Mega Stone was many times more valuable than gold.

On a more personal note, there were also a lot of reporters trying to get an interview with myself or Cynthia as they wanted to ask us questions about our new Mega Evolutions and how we were adapting to it. We gave them a simple answer, basically saying a whole lot of nothing, but they were eager for more and were now badgering us more than ever.

Which meant that we now had cameras pointing at our training fields as they hoped to catch a glimpse of our training with the Mega evolutions. Fortunately, the Jennys assigned to maintaining our privacy sent them packing, but I knew they’d be back. Just more subtle.

But it was not all bad news. This whole project was seen as a massive success from the Professors, and many people were hoping for more inter-regional cooperation between all of the Regions to see if further developments could be made regarding Mega Evolutions. Not only that, but this served as a perfect foundation for Alder’s public visit to the Regional Union headquarters, as people seemed more interested than ever in seeing Unova joining the Regional Union.

Furthermore, I also heard that Colress was finally given the recognition that he deserved. He was credited as being an instrumental and main factor behind the discovery of Mega Evolutions, and was instantly elevated as someone to watch in the scientific community.

He became a source of regional pride for Unovans, as they rejoiced in the fact that the main contributor to such a monumental discovery was a person born from their region. As a result, I heard from Blaine that he immediately got swarmed with offers from all types of companies who were looking to hire him onto their research team – with a lot of money offered up. He would no longer be starved for grants.

However, in typical Colress fashion, he declined all of them. He cared not one whit for the money, as he was solely interested in the pursuit of science. Therefore, he remained with Birch, continuing to serve as the Professor’s ‘assistant’, since he believed that working with all the other Professors was the best way forwards for scientific progress.

Despite PLASMA having already been crushed and scattered to the wind, I was now fully certain that we would never see Colress joining an ‘evil team’ again. Not because he ‘saw the light’, so to speak, but because I knew he was a pragmatic person and would see that staying on the side of the authorities would give him an easier path to continue to develop the realm of science.

Good for him.

Honestly, I was more than happy to put all the chaos kicked up by the reveal of the Mega Evolution behind me, and I was just content to wait it out in the comfort of my home. Of course, Cynthia had no such luxury, but things weren’t so bad in Sinnoh since the majority of the hype revolved around Hoenn and Indigo.

The public did not fail to realise that all of the currently discovered Mega Evolutions were mostly for Pokémon that could be found in either Indigo or Hoenn – so the hunt for Mega Stones was far more intense there.

However, that was when an unexpected, but familiar, visitor came knocking on our door.

“Oi!” Even before opening the door, I already knew who it was. There was only one person that would greet me like that, “Anyone home?!”

So I was smiling as I opened the door, “Drake. I thought you were busy in Kitakami.”

“Bah, had to take a break from training those locals. So I told them to do some ‘independent training’ while I fucked off back to Sinnoh.” He explained, “But while I was here, thought I might as well pay you a visit too. Though I seem to have picked a good time; since when did you have the time to make a discovery as fucking crazy as Mega Evolutions? And why didn’t you give me a Mega Stone?”

I raised my hands in surrender, “Hey, if I had found one, I would have definitely offered it to you. And second, I might have been ‘on the team’ working on the Mega Stones, but I literally didn’t do anything. That was all done by the Professors.”

That wasn’t precisely true, as I was the one that gave them the ‘authorisation’ to collect samples of Legendary energy, but Drake didn’t need to know that.

“Hmm… for some reason, I don’t quite believe you.” He murmured, before immediately shrugging it off, “Eh, whatever. Good on you anyways.” He then plopped himself on our couch, “Got anything to drink? I literally just landed back in Sinnoh half an hour ago, so I’m fucking parched. And I got something I wanted to talk to you about.”

I shot him a curious look at that, but kept my silence as I went to fetch a drink. Once he was fully hydrated, he began.

“So, while I was over at Kitakami training up those locals, one of them asked me if I had ever taken on an apprentice or a successor or sorts.” He explained, “I told them I didn’t have one, and they all gave me curious looks and asked me why. I just told them that I never was interested in getting one, though I was happy to help train people who asked.”

I nodded, following along, “But then that night, I was thinking over it a bit and then I had a small bit of a realisation.” He looked me dead in the eye, “John – you need a successor.”

I blinked, “Me?” I pointed to myself, “Why me? And weren’t you literally just talking about yourself?”

“Yes. You.” He pointed to me, “You see. I’m just an old ass man who’s way past my prime. If I got a successor, it’ll just be someone that I spend some time with and train up. But they would have no position to inherit; no responsibilities that they would need to take up. But it’s very different for you.”

“Like it or not, John, you know full well that I’m being honest when I say that you are in a very unique political position.” He continued, “I might not be one for politics, but even I can see that your position as the link with Regigigas is probably the single most important position in the known world right now. If it weren’t for Regigigas, the whole world might have already been fucking destroyed by Cyrus’ insanity, or Unova might have been turned into an electrified wasteland by Zekrom. So don’t try and be humble right now – you need to acknowledge the power you hold in your hands.”

I nodded, “I do, but—”

“Let me finish.” He cut me off as he held up a hand, his tone more serious than usual, “Right now, the entire world trusts you with this power because you’ve proven yourself many times over. Arceus, I don’t think that there could be anyone more suited to holding the position than you. But that’s the fucking problem – what happens when you become an old man like me and retire? I know you’re young now, but you aren’t going to be young forever. Time will eventually catch up with you, and you’ll get fucked over like I did. What happens when you can no longer hold on to your position due to your stagnating strength? Who do you pass on your very important role to?”

“And that’s you need a successor – one that has been raised and trained by you – to take on your position when it’s time for you to step down.” He finished, “Not because you want to ‘build a legacy’ or some nonsense, but because I know you are the type of person that wants the best for the world, and I know you won’t rest easy unless you have someone who you can trust to properly handle your responsibilities when the time comes. So it’s best to start now, while you still have plenty of time on your hands.”

I had realised it midway through his explanation, but… Fuck. Drake was right.

“You’re right.” I replied, “I really need to get on that.”

“Of course I’m fucking right.” He smirked, but he quickly returned to his serious demeanour, “Anyways, sorry for dropping this on you like this. I know it’s really not my place to tell you about how you handle your personal business, but I felt that it was important that you hear this from someone. Besides, if you want help with that, feel free to ask me. I’ll help out however I can.”

“Thank you.” I gave him a short bow, both for the advice and the offer, “I’ll take you up on that.”

Drake patted me on the shoulder for the moment before leaning back on the couch, falling back to his usual laid-back expression, “You could even train them together with Cynthia. Honestly, I think any trainer that gets properly trained up by the two of you will become an absolute fucking monster after a few years’ time. It’ll probably be a nice activity you can do together.”

“I’ll bring it up with her.” I chuckled, “But that’s a good suggestion.”

“You got anyone you training up now?” He asked, “Wait no. I think you mentioned it to me before – I fucking can’t remember their name though. What was their name?”

“Daisy.” I said, “Daisy Oak. Granddaughter of Professor Oak.”

He snapped his fingers, “Right. That’s the one you mentioned. You speak to her recently?”

“…Not recently.” I admitted, “I think I was too busy with handling everything with Unova, and then the Mega reveal right after that. But that’s just excuses – I probably should have reached out to her more.”

“Got anyone else you’re training besides her?” He asked, “Or anyone you have in mind that could possibly take up your position when you’re gone?”

“…Not really.” I said, “I mean, the two people I’m spending most of my time ‘training’ is Daisy and Whitney. But honestly I don’t even do much – they’re already doing their own thing. They don’t really need me hovering over their shoulders anymore. Nor do I think they’re all that interested in taking up the mantle of Protector-Guardian of Sinnoh; I’m pretty sure they’re both angling to become Gym Leaders.”

Drake nodded, “Don’t worry about it too much. Like I said, you’ve got plenty of time. I just wanted to talk to you about it today since I was already here. You don’t have to decide on a successor now, though I do hope you will continue to think about it in the coming future.”

“Yeah, I will. Don’t worry.” I nodded, “I always appreciate the reminder.”

Drake and I chatted a bit longer, on topics both serious and not so, and then we ended up sparring against each other since Drake wanted to test himself against my new Mega-Pidgeot.

He had wanted to see how well his Salamence would do against my new Mega Evolution, and I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. Thanks to his now much improved speed and offensive power, Zephyr was both agile enough and powerful enough to deal considerable and respectable damage against Salamence, and it couldn’t just shrug off his attacks like it could before he Mega Evolved.

However, Salamence was also a beast of endurance, and Zephyr still wasn’t fully comfortable with his new Mega evolved form. So as he tired out, Salamence capitalised on this and sniped Zephyr out of the air with a Stone Edge, before trapping Zephyr underneath his razor-sharp Dragon Claws.

The fight was basically over after that, as Zephyr was no more defensive than he was previously.

But that was still an optimistic result from Zephyr – it was far more than he could have accomplished before. In the past, without his Mega Evolution, he wouldn’t have even been able to put up a fight against Salamence, let alone harass and injure it like he did just now. Maybe with some more training, Zephyr might actually be strong enough to seriously injure Salamence – or even take it out entirely with a bit of luck (though personally, I doubted that. Salamence was a bad matchup for Zephyr).

Regardless, as the evening sun began to fall and Cynthia returned home, we invited Drake to stay over for dinner and spend the night here since he hadn’t remembered to book a hotel room – as was typical of the man.

Yet, as I went to sleep for the night, my mind was still rolling with thoughts as I thought about Drake’s question.

Who could I train up to be a potential successor? I didn’t need them to necessarily take on my current position, but like Drake said, it was always a good idea to have a selection of people I could trust to follow in my footsteps.

And it wasn’t just strength that I valued. If I were to have a successor, I wanted them to have the strength of character necessary to not be corrupted by their strength. I wanted someone who was genuinely good. A person that was incorruptible.

Just who could that person be?

…And then it hit me. I almost laughed out loud by how obvious the answer was. Knowing who they were, I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.

I nearly facepalmed – Yes, there was only one person that it could have been. Who else but the original protagonist of this entire world?

Ash.

A.N. And the story gets all tied together. I have been planning this for quite some time, as I felt it would be completely disingenuous to write a Pokémon story and have Ash only show up as a cameo appearance. I always intended for John to train someone up as a successor, and who better person for that to be than Ash himself.

There’s literally no one better. Ash, outside his childishness, is easily the original saviour of the world. He wouldn’t abuse his responsibilities and position, and he is sufficiently heroic and also ambitious enough to want such a position. And so I felt it was only natural for John to take him under his wing, and train him up to be strong and worthy enough to help hold up the world that John has created. You’ll see more about this in the future!

As for the Mega reveal, there will be a Pokenet Chapter coming in the future to show more of how the public reacted to this! So hope you enjoyed!