The fuzzy sensation ended abruptly. Before Elliot had a chance to embrace a return to his physical body, gravity took over. He fell a couple feet and landed heavily on the floor.
"Oof," he managed, and tried to breathe slowly as he got to his feet. It felt for a moment as though his stomach had been left behind. Two other loud thumps confirmed that Brooke and Sam had arrived nearby, and upon noticing them Elliot rushed over to Brooke.
"You alright?" he asked. She grinned back.
"Yeah, I think so. That was kinda fun!" she said. Elliot was about to retort with how it had been anything but, and then realised that it had been... exhilarating. He then noticed his Marill jumping about at his feet; it seemed to have also enjoyed the experience.
"Man, never been Teleported before," Sam said, brushing some dust off his clothes. "But where are we?"
They looked around. "Inside some building... lots of computers about," Elliot muttered. "This isn't a Pokémon Centre."
"Reckon this might be the mansion Game Freak live in?" Brooke asked.
The appearance of a couple of people, one the very person that had addressed them and the crowd earlier the day, confirmed this hypothesis. They stopped in their tracks upon noticing the group and immediately tensed.
"It's okay!" Sam shouted quickly, motioning with his hands that they didn't mean harm. "We were just, uh, teleported here by a Gardevoir... gosh, this sounds odd, and really we're not quite sure what's going on."
"Ah," said one of the men, relaxing. "It's okay, I think I can guess. You got caught up in the fighting outside so that Gardevoir must have decided to send you to safety. Although you really should have sent them to the Pokémon Centre instead, but your call."
"Ah... that Gardevoir? Sent them?" Brooke asked, confused by the latter half of the response. She then turned around and jumped, noticing the Pokémon standing right behind them. "Ah!"
Hello, it said to them telepathically. It sounded slightly amused about the reaction. Brooke waved back uncertainly.
"H...hello." She then quickly forgot her surprise, stepping forward slowly and examining their saviour. "Man, you must be a Psychic type then, right?"
"Psychic and Fairy, now," the second of the Game Freak staff corrected. "Gardevoir is one of the species to gain the new typing from this Update."
"This Update..." Elliot echoed. "So that means there have been others, although they haven't actually... happened in the end. Right?"
The man nodded slowly. "Yes, you would be correct..." He looked at Elliot, as if he wanted to ask how he had heard of the idea. "There have been other Updates, but we had quickly removed them before. This one however... it snuck up on us, and now we've decided to let the Update stay, basically, for a few reasons. For starters-"
Suddenly a high-pitched squeal was emitted from around the corner, interrupting the explanation. A moment later the source revealed itself, happily clutching a pink, four-legged creature.
It was Whitney.
"Oh, there you are," Brooke said. "What Pokémon is that?" she asked, peering at the ribboned Pokémon.
"Oh, hi there!" Whitney beamed at the three, not in the least bit fussed about how they had gotten here themselves. She held up the creature she was holding. "This is a Sylveon and it is the cutest thing ever I mean look at it it is so darn CUTE and I'm going to give it a bow tie and..." Here Whitney got distracted, deciding to hug the Pokémon instead of explaining how she got the Pokémon or where it came from. Her speech was promptly reduced to squeals of happiness.
"Uh... okay then," Sam said at length. At that point, a loud bang emitted from downstairs. One of the Game Freak staff ran off to investigate, while the one who had spoken to the crowd earlier sighed and pointed at the Gym Leader.
"I suppose she told you about Updates then, so that answers that. But anyway. Whitney came earlier to get an Eevee from the man who lives upstairs, even if he's not actually giving them out normally to Trainers, or even the Protagonist. That Role currently belongs to another who lives in Goldenrod," he added, rolling his eyes at Whitney. He then continued his explanation, as if he was reading from a textbook. "But since the Update, one had evolved into a new Eeveelution, that Sylveon. I stress that this is a brand new Pokémon, and it also happens to be a Fairy type."
"So... you're okay with that?" Elliot asked her slowly. Whitney stared.
"What a stupid question – of course I'm fine with the Fairy type now! I mean... just look at it!" She held up the Pokémon, and it gave a small, soft cry on cue. "Sure, I'll need to change some things at the Gym, but how can something this cute be bad?"
"It is pretty cute," Brooke admitted, finding herself fawning over the Pokémon as well.
"I'm going to call him Biscuit," Whitney declared.
The staff member coughed. "Well, anyway... a previous Update would have brought new Pokémon as well, and back then we didn't feel comfortable about preventing such Updates from being implemented into the Game. This one caught us by surprise however, and some of these new Pokémon had already arrived by the time we realised it had affected the whole world with that tremor, including that Sylveon. So if we reversed the Update..."
"...Then you'd be removing Pokémon which already exist?" Brooke gulped. Elliot stared at the Sylveon. Being currently stuck in a different city, even for the very first time in one's life, did pale in comparison to whether you would exist or not.
"So you can begin to see why we're keeping it, at least in part."
"And nobody's going to make you go away, are they, Mr. Biscuit?" Whitney continued to the Pokémon.
"Why not tell that to everyone earlier today?" Sam asked. "I mean, that certainly would have put a lot of things into perspective."
"Well, we only found out about that after our talk, so great are the number of changes to the code. And there's a lot of other reasons we held off initially as well that we couldn't so easily explain, or would be accepted so readily. To start with, without Updates, the world has just stagnated. Nothing's really changed. You have to do the same thing in keeping to your Roles, despite the lack of any action from the Protagonist for years." Brooke vigorously nodded her agreement with this. "Updates, however, will bring new things for the world. Not all of them will be necessarily good, but it certainly will be... well, different. And that could provide new meaning to many Roles. The good Professor Oak for example, he'd have new things to discover suddenly. Basically, just like how Pokémon can evolve, it may be time to let the world evolve as well."
And if you'll allow me to interject, said the Gardevoir to the group, the new Fairy typing in particular is... amazing. Perhaps I have some bias, but it's like a new power has awoken in me. And I believe that is a common feeling among us all.
"Hmm, so maybe that's why my Marill seemed happier and eager to battle that much larger Dragonite then… is that right, Marill?" he asked. His Pokémon nodded eagerly, while Gardevoir slowly frowned.
And I'm not going to let some arrogant trainers take this away because they don't like the idea of a new type.
"Ah yes, the present problem," said the Game Freak member. "Basically, it seems a group of Dragon trainers have not been so easily calmed by our compensation of a Lemonade and dislike that there's now something that is completely immune to Dragon type attacks. So naturally they voiced their concerns by laying siege to this place... I'm afraid they want the Update reversed, or else. Luckily we had requested a number of Fairy types to come here earlier so we could try and understand their type better. Some of these belonged to local trainers while others just lived nearby in the wild, and Whitney did allow some of her Pokémon to assist us too, while she herself got, uh... distracted." He again looked at the oblivious Gym Leader.
"They are members of the Dragon's Den," Sam said quietly. "I was trying to get into that group, and I remember seeing the guy we encountered earlier." He scratched his head. "I didn't think they were into stuff like that... but I didn't see that many of them, so maybe it's only some of them?"
"I thought it was them," he answered. "Well, to be honest I don't think their actions are too surprising. Everyone got used to the same thing, so something like this would naturally unsettle them – that's why so many people turned up this afternoon."
As if on cue, the large window on the far side of the room shattered. A large Flygon landed and a trainer jumped off from it while she yelled instructions at her Pokémon. It obliged, and fired a beam at one of the computers. The Game Freak member howled and ran to it.
"Oh god, was that holding important data?" Brooke yelled. The man paused and then shook his head.
"Oh, no, that's all right it's just... my ROM hack was there!" he wailed. Brooke looked at Elliot, asking if he knew what he was screaming about, but Elliot shrugged as he shakily distanced himself from the Flygon. The Gardevoir was not so defensive however, and flew into battle. The air rippled around her arms as she punched out Psychic attacks at the arrival, battering the Pokémon back towards the window in a matter of seconds. But as it seemed that she would be successful in forcing the intruder out, a Dragonair soared through the broken window and introduced itself by whipping its tail into Gardevoir, before landing nearby and slithering towards its target. She bent over before standing up again gingerly. Elliot swore that he could hear the Pokémon mentally hiss at the Dragonair as she sent pulses of energy at her new attacker.
By then the Flygon had recovered, and suddenly the Gardevoir was fighting two Pokémon at once. Her actions grew more desperate upon the introduction of a third Dragon type – another Dragonite along with a different trainer – and this left her open to a flying punch from the Flygon. As she slumped to the ground the Flygon's trainer smirked, before instructing it to land a finishing blow. The Ground type walked forward and raised one of its fists, only to reel back as another Pokémon leapt onto its head and scratched viciously with its claws.
"Back. Off."
The two Dragon trainers looked at Sam who glared back in turn, empty Poké Ball in hand. His Gabite jumped off the Flygon and landed in front of the Gardevoir, before growling at the Flygon. It gurgled back, putting a paw over a deep scratch it had received on its neck and limping back a step. The Gardevoir sat up and nodded her thanks to Sam before glowing with Psychic power and teleporting away.
"The heck is wrong with you!?" yelled Flygon's trainer. "You have a Dragon type, why aren't you helping us?"
"Yeah!" shouted the other. "They're, like, bad and stuff!"
"Bad?" Brooke yelled back, calling out her own Pikachu. "I would have thought you were, trying to break everything like that because you can't handle a new Type!"
The Flygon trainer spluttered. "Just a new Type? Ha, you say that as if it's a new... hat!" She took a breath and tried again. "It won't just unsettle the balance we've had, the whole typing system will be affected! And if our Dragon Pokémon, the true mythical beings many legendaries hail from, are to suddenly have this weakness-"
"Then maybe it'd be a challenge, something to further improve from!" Sam snapped. "I didn't like the idea myself, that's true. But that doesn't make the Pokémon that are now Fairy type bad. They're the same as before, just able to do new things."
"That's right," Elliot said at length. He glanced at his Marill who nodded and jumped forward next to the Gabite, assuming a battle-ready stance. He then faced the opponents, whom were now growing in number as more Dragon Pokémon entered the room by exploiting the hole in the building.
"Things were, in my opinion, quite nice before. This Update brings change, yes, and not all of that is good..." he paused, thinking back to only minutes ago when he was unwilling to step out somewhere different by himself, and before when Whitney had dragged them into a whole new region without even asking. "But I think one can learn from it, no matter who you are. And it's not fair to anyone else to try and keep everything the way you want them to. So we're going to stop you." He grinned, unsure quite where this unwarranted confidence was coming from. Maybe it just sheer adrenaline, or the fact he was for the first time deciding on something important, by himself, outside his Role. Suddenly he no longer felt afraid, particularly with Brooke and Sam by his side.
"You're all stupid!" Whitney yelled, suddenly realising what was going on and tearing her attention away from the Sylveon, who had been trying to alert her to the trouble for the last minute. "You're not going to make this Update go away, I can tell you that!" She tossed out her own Poké Ball, releasing a Miltank. Straightaway it curled up into a ball and rolled rapidly into the Flygon, prompting the battle to resume. Elliot shook his head at her blunt actions and then joined in, shouting instructions to his Marill. It cried and charged forward, latching onto one of the Dragonair and punching it as hard as it could. At first the tide was on his side, but soon the level difference between the three trainers and the Dragon trainers began to tell, with Miltank being the sole Pokémon being able to hold her ground.
A splitting crash announced the arrival of yet another large Dragonite in the middle of the battlefield, and a woman with striking blue hair jumped off and yelled. So loud was the entrance of the two that the fighting stopped again almost as quickly as it had started, albeit with each Pokémon and trainer on edge and ready to resume it.
"Right," began the woman. "I've been watching from nearby the last few minutes, and-"
"Aha, it's Clair!" one of the Dragon type trainers yelled from behind her, pumping a fist. "The strongest Gym Leader in Johto! She's going to crush all of you now, just you watch, and then we can get your stupid Fairy types out- oof!" he finished, as Clair turned around and delivered a punch straight to his gut. As he staggered back and the other trainers stepped away from him, Clair looked at him coldly.
"I don't like to be interrupted," she said, before addressing the other Dragon Den members. "As I was saying. I'm astounded that you would go to such an extent to express yourselves like this. To actively destroy part of our world like this because something changes is sheer idiocy." She paused, as if daring someone to protest this statement. "A new type is nothing to fuss over, and your Dragon Pokémon will manage just fine. Now, get back to the Den, and if any of you dare to act like this again, you'll answer to me and my Pokémon directly." She watched the group slowly move out from the building and fly back towards Johto.
Brooke grinned at Elliot. "She sure stopped them!" she whispered.
"Yeah, but we didn't get to faint anything. Could have used those experience points..." Sam muttered, seeming to ignore the fact their Pokémon save for the Miltank were struggling to catch their breath. Elliot knelt down to pick up his Marill, as did Brooke with her Pikachu. Clair meanwhile was now facing the Game Freak member and addressed him.
"Sorry about that. I came here as soon as I got your phone call. I hope they didn't do too much damage?"
The man looked around the room and then shook his head, although he did cast another forlorn glance at his broken computer. "No, I think I can repair it easily enough by replacing the map tiles..." Nobody else seemed to understand his terminology but he didn't appear to notice. Whitney meanwhile clearly didn't care about the details and interrupted the two by hugging Clair.
"You saved the day!" she squealed. Clair looked down at her fellow Gym Leader and raised her arms away from her. Elliot suppressed a giggle at her reaction as she tried to gently move Whitney away. "Of course, my Pokémon would have defeated them anyway!"
"Yes... of course," Clair managed, before spying the Sylveon. "Ah. Is that... from the Update then?"
Whitney nodded eagerly and to Clair's relief bounded back to the fairy type. "Isn't he just the cutest?" Clair studied the Pokémon and then smiled slightly.
"Yeah, I suppose he is. For a Fairy type, anyway," she teased. She then strode to Sam and nodded slightly. "I also heard what you yelled at those dimwits," she said. "At least someone had sense. What is your name again?"
"I'm Sam. Well, I was kinda angry about it initially myself," he admitted, sheepishly scratching his head.
"I can attest to that," Elliot added with a grin. "But he was certainly more accepting about the Update news than those guys... more welcoming of the change." He then fell silent, musing quietly as he gazed at his contently gurgling Pokémon.
"Well, sure, I'm sure we all were up in arms to, uh, some degree about it," Whitney said innocently.
"Yes," Clair said. "But well, change is probably something we need to embrace ourselves. And on that note, Sam, I'll be glad for you to join the Dragon Den group whenever you'd like. You've shown to have a sounder mind than that bunch, after all."
Sam grinned and eagerly shook her hand. "I'll accept that invite then, thank you!"
"Good to hear, Sam," Clair said. She then regarded the rest of the group and looked at Whitney. "So, did they come with you, Whitney?"
The Normal-type user gasped and nodded. "Yes, they did. I can take you back to Goldenrod if you wish via the Magnet Train again..."
Sam shook his head. "Nah, I think I'll travel around here and make my own way to Blackthorn, do some more training first. Gabite's not far from evolving, after all. I mean, joining the Dragon's Den was always a goal of mine," he said, glancing at Clair, "but I've learnt so much from travelling too."
"Alright, then I'll take you two," Whitney said, turning to Elliot and Brooke.
"Actually," Elliot interrupted, as he looked at the Game Freak person. "I know that we have Roles in the game, but..." He paused to swallow some saliva and continued. "With this Update remaining and all, would it be alright to go and... do something different?"
He nodded. "Yes, if anything I would encourage it. Part of the problem before was that nearly everyone – including us, I suppose - insisted on doing the same thing as before, despite nothing else ever happening in our Game."
Elliot then looked at Brooke. "Alright then, I know how much you want to, so... would you like to go travelling? Together, I mean, through Kanto. I mean, I like our spot in Route 35, but you are right, there is a lot to see out there that I'll-" Before he could finish Brooke had jumped on him and embraced him in a gleeful hug.
"Well, okay then, that just means more time for with this little cutey!" Whitney said to her Sylveon. Clair rolled her eyes at her fellow Gym Leader.
"Just, uh, let's take it slow," Elliot said to Brooke. "In case more angry trainers with Dragonite chase us or anything. And maybe just some rest in the Pokémon Centre for tonight too." Brooke laughed as Sam agreed to the latter idea.
"Sure, as long as we see new sights and experience new things tomorrow," she remarked. "I suppose this was quite an overload as it was... C'mon, let's go to the Centre," she declared, and the three walked to the stairs and departed.
Clair smiled slightly at the three, while Whitney returned to the Sylveon. "Well, that's cute of them." Glancing at the Game Freak employee, she continued, "So, you mentioned that there would be new Pokémon like that Fairy type... but will there any other new Pokémon that will hail from the Dragon type?"
"Yes, there is, in fact." He smiled. "I have to say, all these new Pokémon are certainly the more interesting parts of the Update."
"Excellent, I can use that information to get those idiots more favourable of the Update then. They wouldn't have cared much about a Fairy Type disappearing, but a new Dragon-" Then she paused. "Hang on – one of the more interesting parts? Plural?"
The man hesitated before he nodded again, albeit more slowly this time. "Well, yes, but... well, I'll show you." He walked to a computer and brought up a screen for Clair to see. She squinted at it.
"Mega stones?"
"Yes. Although I was surprised at how well giving out free Lemonade made nearly everyone accept my explanation yesterday, I don't think it's going to work as well again..."
And that concludes it! Yaaaaaay. I hope you enjoyed it; do let me know if so (or otherwise).
Thanks again to Jess for beta reading this!
