The New Normal - 14-6

The New Normal – 14-6 – Changes

I could almost hear the collective sigh of relief being released from the spectating crowd as Tyrant finally went down. He had been an unstoppable monster, knocking down opponent after opponent as if he was able to just shrug off his exhaustion. And worse for them, he always seemed to have just enough energy to take down one more opponent.

I couldn’t count the number of times that the commentators thought Tyrant was about to go down, only for him to get ANOTHER second wind; surprising the opponent with a burst of strength that almost always led to their downfall. This repeated itself so many times that even I had stopped trying to give him commands, knowing that my starter was fully operating on his own determination and sheer willpower.

Eventually, and ironically, Tyrant ultimately succumbed when a Gengar took him down with a Destiny Bond. Normally, he would never actually fall for such an obvious bait, since the Gengar wasn’t especially proficient with the move anyways, but even with my command his reaction speed had slowed to the point that he couldn’t hold back his Sucker Punch in time.

It was a shame that he had to fall like this – but I was honestly starting to believe that Tyrant was never going to go down otherwise. It had been an extremely dominant demonstration of the sheer difference in strength between my starter and your standard Ace Trainer’s.

But with Tyrant going down, it meant that my turn was finally over – and I had lasted far longer than I believed most would have anticipated. My final score was a whopping 164 takedowns, with Tyrant, Vordt, and Pixel managing to secure the most takedowns between my six Pokémon.

I made sure to wave at the crowd before returning to the seating area, where Lance immediately clapped me on the back.

“Nice showing there.” He grinned at me, “I think you’ve set the bar quite high.”

“Yeah, you really didn’t hold back there.” Karen muttered, “I think I could see the Ace Trainers getting visibly demotivated after your 50th knockout or so.”

“Think you can beat it?” I sent a challenging smirk to my colleagues.

Lorelei snorted, “Of course. Don’t look down on us just because you got a high score. My Ice Types will absolutely prove up to the task.”

“And it’ll be embarrassing if the Champion gets outclassed here.” Lance added, “You have undoubtedly trained up your Normal types well, John, but they’ll falter against the raw power of my Dragons.”

“We’ll see about that.” I replied, and so we did.

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

I don’t think the organisers had expected the event to go on for so long, because it was already well into the night by the time the ‘Gauntlet’ event finally concluded. Had we not been the owners of the stadium, we would have ran into some serious trouble for how much we overran on our initial estimations.

Though I doubted that anyone minded; the crowd was equally as excited as they were even after all the battles – as their screams of encouragement clearly demonstrated. I bet many would return home with their voices completely gone from all the shouting that they were doing.

But eventually, the event came to a close. And sadly, I was not the victor of our small competition.

Instead, I ranked second, with Lance taking first place. His full team of Dragons had managed to maintain a more consistent rate of knockouts than my own. despite my best efforts. In total, he managed to surpass my own score with a final score of 181 knockouts.

His Emperor was equally as hard to take down as my Tyrant. I’d thought he would have burned through his stamina more quickly when he made use of Outrage, but he circumvented that by just not using Outrage – he didn’t need the strength anyways when he was already so overwhelmingly strong against his foes. And overall, his team was just naturally more suited for these kinds of tests of endurance than mine were.

Besides that, Lorelei took third place, Karen took fourth, and Koga took last. It was as I expected.

No offense meant to either Karen or Koga, but neither of their Pokémon were suited to taking on so many Pokémon in a row. Koga had it the worst, since his usual poison strategies weren’t ideal when you were looking to secure consecutive knockouts; which was further compounded by the fact that he couldn’t really heal up any damage that he did take.

He made up for the fact that his Pokémon were generally really agile and were able to secure quick and instant knockouts, but those techniques wore down his Pokémon just as quickly.

Karen did slightly better thanks to the fact that both her Houndoom and Tyranitar managing to overpower many an opponent, though she still wasn’t able to reach Lorelei’s score that secured the Ice specialist a convincing third place. Lorelei’s especially made a really good showing with her Avalugg, mainly because quite a few opponents didn’t realise that physical attacks were extremely ineffective against it.

However, even once they transitioned to using Special Attacks, Lorelei surprised me a little bit as her Avalugg managed to tank through many attacks too, while not being as slow as I expected. Furthermore, Avalugg hit really hard if it managed to get in range, and many of her opponents soon learned to fear her Strong Jaw bites. Moreover, the rest of her Pokémon proved to be just as formidable as their Snow-boosted Blizzards completely annihilated any opponent that was unfortunate enough to be caught within them.

In that respect, I think her showing today proved to me that she had surpassed Pryce. Her Pokémon had gotten strong.

Nevertheless, Lance was very smug for having won the competition, and he definitely wasn’t above letting us know. After he boasted one too many times, we all decided to let him behind instead of indulging in his ego. I went straight home; having been completely exhausted after all that fighting that I had done today.

Over the next few days, all the news networks were talking about was about the Gauntlet and our respective performances. Commentors and experts from all over Indigo had been discussing how we managed to overpower our opponents and what our performance yesterday revealed about our Pokémon’s growing strength.

So while they acknowledged that in a real, official battle, our fights wouldn’t just consist of an endless stream of 1v1s, and that in a real 3v3 there would be far more strategies involved – it did reveal to everyone just how far ahead our Pokémon’s strengths were individually when compared to your average trainer.

It also reinforced the prestige and status of being in the Elite Four. From what I saw on the Pokénet, being in the Elite Four meant that you were considered to be ‘one step below a Champion’ rather than ‘being stronger than a Gym Leader’. It seemed like an nonsensical distinction, but it mattered.

Additionally, neither Koga nor Karen were mocked for being last place, as the public knew that their strengths remained elsewhere. In a normal 6v6 battle, they would be as difficult to defeat as any one of us. Of course, that didn’t stop the public from using our performance in the Gauntlet as an ‘official’ ranking of our respective strengths. Even if it was wholly inaccurate and unrepresentative of our true strengths, I didn’t mind it because it only reinforced the fact that I was ranked first amongst my peers.

Though I heard Karen was pretty miffed that she was ranked lower than Lorelei was, by a considerable margin at that. She had grumbled to me about wanting to reclaim that so-called ‘lost prestige’.

However, there was one bit of important news that deviated from all this battle analysis, and that was the growing desire to expand the Gym system to have more than your standard 8 badges per region. When I saw the news, I wasn’t too surprised to hear about it, because I felt that this was something that had been simmering beneath the surface for a while now.

Due to all the expansion that all of the regions were doing with their cities, there soon looked to be several cities that wouldn’t have a Gym in it, even though they deserved to have one. Having a Gym was a major reason why people would visit a town or city, and the argument for having more Gyms was that it was a foolish and a wasted opportunity if we denied a city to host a Gym simply because we wanted to stick to the arbitrary 8-per-region limit.

Technically, there was no legitimate reason why a region should only be restricted to having 8 Gyms, and it was only be purely ‘lucky coincidence’ that all the regions shared this rule. Yet Oak only added more fuel onto the fire when he gave his opinion on the matter:

“The original 8 Gyms were adopted because they were what we had when the Indigo League had been formed. But even though this has been something ingrained into all of our minds by now, I personally see no reason why we cannot change this number to adapt to the changing times and requirements of the League. Having more Gym Leaders that the public could trust would be beneficial as it would not only allow Indigo to have more leaders, but it would also allow for more talented trainers to also get their recognition that they deserve.”

“Of course, this is not a change that we can dive into haphazardly. Making changes to one of the core pillars of the League will have to be done carefully, and only after much careful consideration. A detailed proposal of how the new Circuit would look like would have to be provided before I would personally be comfortable with such a change. On that note, I welcome all discussion on the topic, and I look forward to seeing what comes out of this.”

In other words, he was tentatively supportive of the idea, but only if a new kind of Circuit could be designed to accommodate these new Gyms that the public would be happy with.

Therefore, because of the importance of the topic and how it would massively affect the entire region, Lance called us all up for another meeting to discuss the topic in person.

“…I’m surprised that we’re even talking about expanding the number of Gym Leaders, to be honest.” Lorelei said, “Ever since I was born, I always thought that there could only be eight Gym Leaders. It’s just what’s natural, you know?”

“It feels pretty weird for me too.” Karen agreed, “Had I even considered that we could have had more than 8 Gyms, than the old hag and I wouldn’t have had to stress so much about moving the Gym from Cinnabar to Lavender.”

“But Oak is right.” Koga said, “It might be traditional for us to have 8 Gyms, but I recognise that this tradition is not rooted in anything other than inertia. So long as the additional Gyms are held to the same high standards as the existing Gyms, then I am not against increasing the number of Gyms.”

“Can I assume that we’re all supportive of such a change then?” I asked, getting a round of nods from everyone.

Lance tapped a finger on the table, “It’s good to see that we’re all in agreement on this, but the point is moot until we bring in the Gym Leaders and discuss this with them as well. With something like this, their input would be required.”

“Do we have any already proposed suggestions about how these new Gyms would be included into the existing circuit?” Lorelei asked.

“…I think the currently most popular suggestion is one that involves setting up the new Gyms as ‘minor Gyms’.” Lance tried to recall, “I don’t remember all the specifics off the top of my head, but I recall that it was one of the more popular options because it didn’t dilute the prestige of the existing 8 Gyms, and the new ‘minor Gyms’ would serve as optional extras for trainers to challenge after they had completed the regular 8 Gym challenge. That way, it’s the best of both worlds. New cities would have the opportunity to host Gyms and gain all the benefits from that, while also not completely altering the Indigo Circuit to be completely different to the Circuit in Hoenn and Sinnoh.”

I quite liked that idea, and it seems like my colleagues were also tentatively in favour as well – Lorelei even suggested that if we were going to go for this minor Gym idea, then this would be an excellent opportunity for the Sevii Islands to host a few of its own minor Gyms as well. It made sense, as it would give trainers and tourists more reason to visit the Islands.

Though we were getting ahead of ourselves; the Gym Leaders were still discussing the topic, and we would have to wait to hear back from them before we could even proceed.

Overall, I hoped that they would be willing to be open-minded about this topic, even if this was a really radical change – even for me. But I felt like this was the way to go to help facilitate the region’s growth and make Indigo even more prosperous. Therefore, considering the scope of this discussion, I believed that this was going to be the topic that dominated the news for at least the next few weeks.

However, I could not have been any more wrong about that.

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

(???’s POV)

“…And that’s what the reading show, sir.” The man reported to his boss, “There was a sharp spike of energy that took place far away – readings that we’ve frankly never seen before. Not from any Pokémon that we’ve ever seen or studied. These energy readings far surpass even the readings given off by the strongest of Hydreigon. It’s something else entirely.”

“Should we worried then?” His boss frowned, “Do you have any theories about what this could be? And do I need to report this to the Champion?”

He hesitated, knowing that his answer wasn’t going to go over well with his boss. But it still had to be said anyways.

“Well… the boys and I had combed over pretty much every available possibility for what could have generated such a large spike of energy, and we’ve pretty much narrowed it down to two of the most likely scenarios.” He said, “One, there is another civilisation out there that has managed to utilise a new kind of device that has somehow managed to output such incredible levels of power. Or two, this was caused by an unknown Legendary that was flaring out their power for whatever reason.”

His boss frowned and looked like he was about to dismiss him, so he spoke up before he could, “I know it sounds crazy. But everyone here in the lab have spent weeks going through our findings. To the best of our knowledge, these two options are the most likely explanations.”

The frown on his boss’ face only deepened, until he eventually let out a sigh, “…So we either have an unknown civilisation out there, with technology likely more advanced than anything we could ever produced, or we’re dealing with an unknown Legendary that is so powerful that we could feel it from all the way here. I don’t know what’s worse.”

He didn’t know the answer to that either, so he stayed silent until his boss finally rose up from his seat, “I’m going to have to report your findings to the Champion. He’ll have to make a decision on this – this is much too high for my paygrade.”

He held back a wince; knowing what their Champion was like, he didn’t expect a response any time soon. Alder’s wanderlust and poor work ethic would likely lead to significant delays, as was usual. The usual squabbling from their Committee only exacerbated this issue.

And just like he had expected, the response from the Champion and the Committee came back much, much later. But at least the concerns of his team had been appropriately expressed to the League, as they had ordered for an exploration team to head out there and uncover the mystery behind this phenomenon.

He really hoped that they would find something. And when they did find something, it didn’t end up being a horrendous disaster for Unova.

Secretly, he hoped that they would find a new civilisation out there. For the longest time, Unova had always been the only region in the world, and even though many suspected that they were far from alone in the world, there had never been any concrete proof that other regions existed. Therefore, he hoped that this would finally be the very evidence that they were looking for.

He was excited just thinking about it. He wondered what these new people would be like?

Oh how he regretted not being able to join up with the exploration team this time around. He was usually not one for such journeys, but the possibility of seeing a new civilisation with his very own eyes more than made up for it. Sadly, he had chosen to be a researcher over an explorer.

Still, he wished them every success. And he would be eagerly awaiting to hear back from them.

A.N. So the Gauntlet concludes, with John coming in second place! I was really torn about whether John or Lance would come in first, but after examining their Pokémon more closely, I felt that it only made sense that in the format of the Gauntlet of 1v1s, Lance would come out on top because his Pokémon are all embodiments of pure, brute strength. Furthermore, as for the number of knockouts achieved, I tried to imagine just what a realistic number of takedowns their Pokémon could achieve (after factoring in things like tiredness, exhaustion, type matchup etc.), and I felt 164 takedowns for John was a realistic number to have. Hope you agree.

Furthermore, let me know what you think about the discussion on the idea of minor gyms. It’s been an idea I’ve wanted to implement for some time, and while I haven’t gone into detail about just exactly what that would look like in this chapter, just know that it will be elaborated upon in the future.

Likewise, UNOVA IS COMING! After all this time, a new region is finally going to be introduced once again. Hope you enjoyed!