"Ethan, in all my 7 years as a Pokemon champion I had never once imagined I'd ever be doing this."

It had been 10 uneasy days since Marnie Hills had been infamously attacked at a shop in Petalburg city, with only 5 days since the public had caught wind of Hoenn's new intentions regarding allowing Pokemon indoors. Now it's been only 1 muddled day since Unova celebrity Alder Johnson had announced his own successor as champion, Hilbert Macks, would make a live public statement confirming his own opinions on the subject matter. It was also taken into account each of his judgements would perfectly fall in line with all other Pokemon champions living in Kalos at the time. The announcement was made yesterday and asserted the statement would be made nearly 24 hours after it had been published.

Hilbert wasn't initially interested in the possibility of doing this at all. In fact, we thought it was a terrible idea and had at first shrugged the idea off immediately. It wasn't until Alder started pressuring the boy into it did Hilbert reluctantly take the job. Alder had recently been facing some major backlash from his own people and was probably too frightened to even approach doing it himself. The older man had been ecstatic when Hilbert agreed to do it. Hilbert looked up to the guy. A lot in fact, so it was the least he could do for one of his inspirations.

It was going to be fine, he told himself. Out of all of his friends, Hilbert prided himself on being the most involved in the public from day uno. He's attended countless parties and even dragged his team to nearly half of them. Getting Red to go to fancy events at all was a tedious task on its own. He'd participated in fundraisers, started some government projects, and hell, even made public statements. Interacting with the public was not at all a hard thing for Hilbert to do in almost any circumstance.

But this. This was a whole other ballpark altogether.

Hilbert was a generally uncontroversial guy. He was the self-named head of his own household, and was the only thing keeping the group of teenagers' image completely clean. For one, he's banned cigarettes from the apartment much to Brendan's opposition and Lucas' approval. He'd made sure Nate refrained from doing anything illegal, and ceased Ethan's tendency to talk to strange adults online.

Unfortunately today, he was going to make so many people angry no matter what he stated. And he wasn't even sure what the right thing to say was. That was strange; he always knew the right thing to say. People could warp his words into literally any meaning, and it only took one person claiming to find evidence of him lying to utterly destroy his words.

He'd been following the situation over the past 10 days perhaps more closely than anyone he knew of. When Blue and Red called him from Johto telling him about some political rally at Johto's traditional festivals, he was baffled to say the least. Even more so when the story quickly got to Unova and started to spark even more similar events. Some people were scarily beginning to riot, with claims that once this law passed the government was going to keep restraining more and more. Even protests from the other political side were starting.

Hilbert was beginning to realise it wasn't just the measly law of keeping Pokemon outdoors that people were afraid of, but the prospect the government would start setting even more laws in place after this one passed. Their fears weren't exactly unwarranted either, but going downtown and burning street signs or knocking over public property was kinda insane.

"Yeah, well I don't really blame you. Why'd you agree to this in the first place?"

Ethan's response quickly brought Hilbert straight out of his head, now completely conscious to the real world as his friend was tinkering with some audio equipment. Hilbert had recently asked him to come to Unova since Ethan seemed to be the least busy back in Kalos. You would've thought Ethan would be in Johto with Red and Blue enjoying festivals inside his home region. And he was actually going to, until Hilbert asked for his presence in Unova.

Hilbert was still formulating a response in his head as Ethan gave him a weird look. The former was standing beside the curtains which on the other side he would make his statement, fiddling with his notecards to the point of wrinkling them. Ethan was making sure the cords leading to the outside microphone were all properly plugged into the mainframe, twisting them in and out of his long fingers. Nobody else was with them backstage, since the statement had been announced so suddenly it was all rather rushed.

"Well, I didn't really want to-" Hilbert started while going over his cards.

"That obvious," Ethan interrupted, smirking at Hilbert's retreating figure.

Hilbert looked up from his cards, looking at nothing in particular. "I mean, I just didn't know there'd be-" he stopped talking and nervously poked his head into the curtains to look out at the crowd he'd soon present to. There were what seemed like hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder under the stage eagerly awaiting his presence, with news cameras and clipboards and notepads. Very important people, it looked like.

"...so many people," he finished in a choked whisper, seemingly horrified.

Ethan sighed and dropped the cables he was playing with.

"Look dude, to be honest, I'm a bit freaked out for you myself," he muttered and stepped next to Hilbert, "But if anyone we live with is good for this, it's definitely you. You usually love public statements."

Hilbert groaned, indicating his friend's pep talk wasn't helping in the slightest. But what was said had brought back memories of eagerly going over his perfectly pristine notecards backstage as he awaited strolling out in front of reporters and cheekily announcing a new medical cure.

It was so weird, because right now he didn't have a faintest clue of what his usual self-confidence even felt like. No, right now he felt more like hurling or passing out, maybe both. That would be an ideal option for him though, anything would be better than what he was about to do. As he ran more things through his dizzy head, things that might happen if he slipped up just a tad bit, he was beginning to panic.

And the worst part of it, was the fact there was nobody to talk to about it.

Well, there was Ethan. But Ethan wasn't great with emotions; basically because he really just made fun of these situations 24/7. He had a hard time taking things seriously, thus, people had a hard time taking him seriously. Hilbert enjoyed Ethan, don't get him wrong. But usually people such as Red were easier to talk to about this sort of thing. Ethan though, was at the least clearly trying.

"Hilbert, look, you'll do fine! Stop worrying, jeez" he assured. It didn't seem genuine enough, and Hilbert certainly wasn't a moron. Seeing right through Ethan was not at all hard.

"How do you know that?" Hilbert retorted, rather uncharacteristically at that, "This is crazy! I can't do this, Ethan!"

At Hilbert's astounding lack of confidence, Ethan's mouth clamped shut as his jaw jut out of his chin slightly. He stuttered something a few times, likely a comeback, but he was just as lost as he usually appeared to be. Finding his voice, Ethan finally looked Hilbert directly in the eye with a faint look of uncertainty.

"Well you're gonna have to, man! Just remem-"

He was cut off by an announcer, who was now on stage and voicing a few words of introduction.

Hilbert officially wanted do die, beads of sweat dotting his forehead and formal white suit slightly wrinkled to his past dismay. The suit was making him around 5 times more uncomfortable. He was starting to notice how tight it was around his torso, causing his breathing to become ragged. Certain parts of it were padded with sweat. He probably looked like a complete mess.

The audience began to quiet down as he could hear the announcer trot off the stage. Hilbert was becoming delirious, avidly envying the stranger for the fact he wasn't in Hilbert's very specific position right now. Envying Ethan for getting to stand here comfortably in the back, things he used to never envy people for in the slightest while giving speeches.

He flinched as Ethan patted his back and looked at Hilbert with raised eyebrows as if to say "Good luck, you're gonna need it".

He bit his lip and let out a deep breath of air, finding enough strength to stiffly prod onto the stage. Upon entrance, he could practically feel every eyeball in the audience boring into his head. His skull became light as he lost some consciousness to how he was moving or what face he was making. And only one desperate thought continually repeated itself inside his mind.

"Get this over with."

The room was rather plain, air stuffy due to all the bodies tightly packed into it. There were a significant amount of metal chairs stood on the ground, but nobody was using them. Everybody just stood there, dead silent. Just there to get their information and leave, going straight to their executives or bosses to get paid for their story.

Practically on autopilot, Hilbert found his way up to the podium sat in the middle of the stage. Putting down his admittedly unprofessional notecards onto the desk, he adjusted the microphone up to his mouth and flicked his view down onto his cards.

"Just… read the cards."

Inhaling the hot air with a shaky breath, he began his statement.

At first it was just some filler he decided to put in there, the purpose being dragging this speech out long enough to be considered official material. Nobody said anything as he spoke, listening intently. His eyes would occasionally leave the cards to look at the crowd. He noticed how some would briefly nod at him as they jotted the speech down onto their pads. At this point Hilbert didn't even know what he was saying at this point. He didn't care either, just bracing himself for the ending sentence. The only one that really mattered to these people.

"Myself and each of my affiliates," he announced, taking one last look up at the audience, "are and were never in favor of laws recently discussed by Hoenn's regional government. Thank you."

Hilbert stopped immediately. That was it, he was done. It felt like ecstasy to be honest. But the thing he was worried about in the first place was the aftermath.

For a few long seconds, nobody said anything. As he scanned the room, he could tell everyone had 100% expected that response. You'd have to be stupid not to after all.

But alas, that didn't stop the audience to suddenly erupt into questions and opinions and such and such. Hilbert swiveled his neck to look around at each person holding their microphone up to him, mostly asking him to elaborate.

How could he? He just wanted to be away from all this.

The announcer quickly found his way through the thick crowd and onto the stage, beckoning Hilbert backstage as he informed the reporters they'd take no further questions. He hustled right back to where he started while the man dealt with the crowd. Ethan was still standing there, having been watching the speech himself.

"Alright, you're done," he breathed as Hilbert clamored next to him, "How's it feel?"

"Good," Hilbert bluntly choked as he nodded his head profoundly. He looked back at Ethan and scowled, "You weren't any help by the way. And that's the only reason I even asked you to come here."

Ethan just snorted and rolled his eyes, "Wasn't prepared for you to start acting like a pussy, alright?"

"What- YOU TRY DOING THAT, ASSHOLE!"

"Heh," Ethan chuckled, shrugging to himself with an easy smile, "You invited me. Next time get Red or something."

"Hmph… I definitely will," Hilbert sighed, starting to calm down. At the very least Ethan's apathetic nature was distracting him from what was actually freaking him out.

Ethan looked back at the crowd uneasily. "The press ain't gonna be too happy about this, y'know."

Hilbert nodded in response and proceeded to throw his cards into the nearby wastebasket. "Well I don't really care at the moment, I'm going back to my hotel room and taking a nap."