Lucy has not one but two badge cases.
Riding off the high of the win at Goldenrod Gym, Maggie is poring over them. She lies on her back in their room in the Goldenrod Pokémon Center and holds each enameled badge up to the light. Her slowpoke lies on his stomach next to her, very slowly waggling his tail back and forth in time with the bobbing Drifloon.
In the Johto case are three badges, three spaces in the top row filled out with the wing-shaped zephyr badge, ledyba hive badge, and new diamond-shaped plain badge. That plain badge... maybe it was luck that Lucy didn't face Whitney again, but having the magmar burn through two pokémon on its own did help. Lucy had worn a red and gold dress, matching the magmar, and maybe she didn't command it but a strategic switch in was good enough.
Maggie didn't try the gym herself this time, but she doesn't mind. She was there for the catching and the training, she saw the battle and gets to see the badges after, so it's not like she was missing anything by the end of it. Those were all the important parts of being a trainer already.
As for the Kanto badges, Lucy has a full set. Maggie doesn't know their names, but she admires the green feather. It looks a bit like Ho-oh's feather in the same way the zephyr badge looks like Lugia's feather, if Ho-oh's feather was green. There's also an many-petaled rainbow flower that's the fanciest looking of the bunch. She's examining the way each of the eight colors shimmer when the badge is snatched out of her hand.
"Hey, give that back," Maggie says. The drifloon floats further out of reach. "You're being as bratty as Pikachu."
The drifloon hovers a little higher, string looping over and over the badge. Maggie fumbles around for its pokéball and when last-ditch grabbing for the badge only has it loon and wiggle away, recalls it. The rainbow badge clatters to the floor, and Maggie inspects it gingerly for scratches before pressing it back into its spot in the case.
The door slams open and Maggie grabs at the case jumping out of her hands as Lucy bursts into the room. "Maggie! You won't believe what they got!"
Maggie puts the case down, wills her heart to stop leaping, and Lucy explains.
When the pokédex had come out a few years ago, some prototype with only a few hundred Kanto pokémon, Maggie had fallen in love with it and all the pokémon in the world, but today Lucy comes to her with stars in her eyes and a report of the latest technology. The pokémon center downstairs has a new computer and a public copy of the newest pokedex, complete with colored pictures and calls.
Of course, downstairs, a mob of trainers has gathered around the red device. There's nine or ten year old with purple hair sitting right in front of it, scrolling through a long list of pokémon names. Maggie spies a colorful mishmash of grainy images, pixelated and unfamiliar, until she's pressed out of the jostling crowd.
A girl is hovering over the purple haired boy's shoulder to get a better view. "Whoa, what's that? It's like a exeggutor, but it has way too long of a neck."
"It's Alolan"–Maggie blinks at the faraway region's name–"They're opening their local challenge, so they're advertising all their weird pokémon to get trainers to go there."
A teenager with a hoothoot on her shoulder shakes her head. "They put Raikou in there? I thought it was supposed to be a scientific pokedex, not some storybook."
"Raikou's not a story."
"There have been sightings of Suicune, why not Raikou? It's not like people leave offerings for them like they're some kind of thing to worship. The only fake part of is that Ho-oh made it."
"Ho-oh did make Raikou, dummy. And Suicune and Entei too.
"If Ho-oh doesn't exist, why do they have a tower?"
"Do you think Ho-oh made the tower with its talons?"
Maggie is about to jump in with a rebuttal herself when Lucy, smiling slightly, turns to her. "Ho-oh, Entei, Raikou, Suicune, they're all so amazing. Maggie, if you were Ho-oh in that story, what type of pokémon would you make?"
"There's no such thing as humans making a pokémon," some snotty kid says.
"I heard in Cinnabar..."
But the conversation around Maggie is fading out of focus. She considers the question. Ho-oh made pokémon for parts of the storm: the fire, the lightning, and the rain. Fire, electric, water... All the important types already. The trio. What else could there be?
"Grass?" suggests a twelve year old with a totodile.
"Ho-Oh couldn't make a grass type. It'd burn right up."
Irritated at everyone else's suggestions, Maggie stops thinking it over and says, "Ice? Like the Kanto birds."
There could have been... ah... hail along with the rain?
She tries thinking about the beasts themselves instead. Raikou had a cape like stormclouds, so an ice type...
"It could have a cape like mist," she says.
"That's basically Suicune already," says the purple haired boy.
"Alright," Maggie says, because that's not totally wrong.
Someone says, "A dark type. It surrounds itself with its shadow. Kuromo, the bringer of night!"
"What would that even look like? A silhouette? Bet you couldn't even see it in the dark."
"An ice type could be white as snow," Lucy says. "It could have... icicles. For claws."
"Like Alolan sandslash?" asks the tall trainer.
"Do you all have to–" Maggie starts.
But Lucy interrupts with a laugh. "Yes, like Alolan sandslash!" She sounds completely genuine, to Maggie's surprise.
Lucy turns to Maggie. "What I would want," she says, eyes sparkling, "is a pokémon that's the conjunction of all their best parts. Claws like icicles and cloak of shadow! What Ho-oh did was take existing nature and made it better. Raikou is the personification of lightning and stormclouds. A pokémon is the conjunction of all the things that are already beautiful, made even more so. It wouldn't be any one that exists. It would be adorable, strong, beautiful... all those things. That's the one I'd want."
The way Lucy says those words, with that passion, Maggie can almost believe it already exists. Like she can see it right in front of her.
(They never did find Raikou that one day... but maybe that's okay.)