John's Team
Tyrant - Slaking
Vordt - Ursaluna
Smough - Snorlax
Klee - Blissey
Port - Mantine
Zephyr - Pidgeot
Klaus - Wyrdeer
Luna - Clefable
Pixel - Porygon
The New Normal – 3-9 – A New Horizon
I sat down curiously with the rest of my family as we all silently watched the news. Apparently, Sinnoh was currently in the process of being brought into the fold and the Indigo League is looking to see if they will be opening their borders for Indigo trainers and citizens.
Though the report said that the opening of Sinnoh's borders was not going to happen anytime soon, both for trainers and Pokémon. However, the Indigo League proudly announced that they have already compiled much of the data of Sinnoh's Pokémon and have already released them to the public on their website. Furthermore, some Pokémon would naturally be sent over for research purposes.
That was a huge, but pleasant, surprise. I didn't think that they would have entered into diplomatic talks with Sinnoh this early, but they must have been doing that behind-the-scenes. I grabbed my phone and browsed through the Indigo site until I found the one specifically for the new Sinnoh Pokémon entries.
Since I already knew what the Sinnoh Pokédex was going to look like, I was more concerned about seeing whether anything differed from my meta-knowledge. Comparing the released information with my meta-knowledge, I found that they were mostly the same. However, there were some notable missing Pokémon like the lack of Porygon-Z, all of the fossils and their evolutions, and obviously all of the Mythical and Legendaries.
I did note with some surprise that apparently all of the Generation 4 evolutions were there, even the ones that 'we' didn't know about like Roserade and Togekiss. Apparently, the scientists over at Sinnoh had managed to discover Roselia and Togetic evolve into Roserade and Togekiss respectively using a Shiny Stone. They also discovered Gallade and Froslass and how to evolve them. I imagined that this would be a mind-blowing discovery for most others; the Pokénet was already going wild over it.
Though it seems like they still didn't really know how to evolve Rhydon into a Rhyperior, or Dusclops into Dusknoir, since they still didn't manage to figure out the specific item that was required for those types of evolutions. At least they knew about them, rare as they were.
Thinking over what I knew about Sinnoh, I was willing to bet that they were able to make this discovery when the Indigo and Hoenn League couldn't was because of the relative abundance of Shiny and Dawn Stones present in Sinnoh as compared to Indigo and Hoenn. This meant that the scientists were able to experiment with it more over the many long years of Sinnoh's history.
As I was browsing through the webpage, an errant suspicion appeared in my head. Why did the Indigo League choose NOW to release their 'discovery' of Sinnoh?
After some thinking, I realized that Pryce had probably asked one of his supporters to reveal this information to buy him good headlines and grant him another huge achievement to distract the public and recover his reputation. After all, the public do have short memories. Perhaps Pryce's administration had already been in talks with the Sinnoh League for a while, and only recently accelerated their discussion so that Pryce could release the good news at such a critical moment.
I felt my phone ring and saw that it was Giovanni. I picked up and we quickly discussed how the discovery of Sinnoh would affect our plans. We both concluded that it didn't really have that big of an effect on our future course of action. Sure, this would probably be seen as a huge win for Pryce's foreign policy ability and that we didn't really have any way of throwing mud on him for this, but we could easily just continue our strategy of attacking him on his many other failings until the public realizes that he's unsuitable to be Champion again.
When we finished speaking, I returned to my family where Whitney eagerly bounded up to me.
"John! John! Did you see all those new Pokémon?!" She asked excitedly and I barely had time to nod before she continued. "There're so many cool new Normal types in Sinnoh! Oh, did you see that new 'Bidoof' and 'Lopunny' and 'Staraptor'! Oh, and that 'Purugly'! It's all so cool bro!" Whitney gushed.
"Now now, dear, try not to get too excited or else you won't be able to eat your dinner. The news report did say that they wouldn't be opening up their borders to trainers for a while." My mom remarked gently, hoping to temper Whitney's enthusiasm. "Besides, didn't you say that you didn't want John to catch any new Pokémon for you?"
Whitney pouted at my mom before she whined, "Yeah…but they're still so cool though!" Then she turned those pleading eyes onto me. "John, you have to promise me that you'll bring me to Sinnoh one day! I want to see what cool things are in Sinnoh and catch a few of those Pokémon!"
I pretended to think about it for a moment, "Hmm…only good girls get new Pokémon. Have you been a good girl, Whitney?"
Her head bobbed up and down rapidly, and I had to fight down a smirk as I pretended to say seriously. "Well, good girls finish their dinner before they ask their brother for things. Have you finished your dinner yet, sis?"
Whitney realized what I was doing and mock-glared at me before she settled down and visibly tempered her excitement. My mom gave me a pat on the shoulders for the assist as my dad finally finished serving all of the food.
Despite this, it seems that my parents were excitable as my sister and we spent most of the dinner discussing all of the new discoveries we thought would be found in Sinnoh, and I had to carefully watch my words while doing in case I accidentally gave something away. I was more than content to just listen to Whitney's excited babblings.
Over dinner, I thought that it would be nice to add a Lopunny to my team. Not only did I need another agile physical fighter, but it's potential to Mega-Evolve would be a huge boon for my team as well. That is, assuming that I could find its Mega Stone.
Whitney perked up at that and demanded again for me to catch her one, or to at least bring her to Sinnoh. I couldn't promise anything, but I told her that I would try my best. She nodded, seemingly satisfied with my promise.
Before I left the dinner table, my dad tapped me on the shoulder and hesitatingly asked if I could look into whether Sinnoh would be suitable to expand the family business, and to make use of my influence if so. My dad looked uncomfortable having to rely on his son for stuff like this, but I gave him a hug to ease his worries and told him that I would be happy to help.
After dinner I quickly went to my room and texted Karen to ask if there was any progress with the egg. She said that she was working on it, but that no progress could be seen yet. I told her to relax and that I had a really good feeling about this. It probably just needed a few more days, and hopefully we'll be seeing some notable progress soon.
We then switched to a more casual conversation, where we discussed what we had been doing. Obviously, most of our conversation was focused on the new discovery of Sinnoh and the potential new Pokémon that were there. I was happy to sit patiently and listen as Karen spoke animatedly about the new Dark types, although she was bitter that there were only two new ones in 'Drapion' and 'Skuntank' since the others were already discovered in Indigo and Hoenn.
Like my sister, she then asked if, one day, we could explore Sinnoh together. I thought about it and cautiously agreed, though I warned that our ability to do so was highly dependent on our future schedules and whether it would conflict with our duties. She accepted my promise regardless.
Still, I was looking forward to exploring the many ruins of Sinnoh with her; we could even perhaps make another discovery to work together on!
Beyond our discussions about Sinnoh, Karen told me how she had recently won the Heat Badge from Lavaridge, and this time I stayed silent as she ranted and complained about how the ash filled areas around Lavaridge and Mt. Chimney completely ruined her hair and complexion. I mean, I WAS sympathetic, but I just didn't know what to say to her.
Our conversation proceeded among similar lines for the rest of the night, and I happily spoke to Karen about a whole host of different topics like we often did. Most memorably for me, she said that she was proud of me for my growth as a pillar of Kanto.
Overall, I felt that, despite the distance between us, we were still able to connect with each other and I very much enjoyed our conversations together. I also noticed that, over time, our conversations became more casual, and we were more at ease with each other. Likewise, a hint of my inner sarcasm often unconsciously leaked out when I spoke with her.
Of course, I was excited to see her in person again, and she told me that she'd be back soon enough after she cleared out the final remaining gym, probably in a few days' time. I told her to let me know when she'd be back, and that I would pick her up at Olivine for a meal together. She agreed. Seeing that it was late, we both decided to end the conversation here and head to bed.
The next day was mostly spent helping out with running and learning about the family business with my parents. They told me that our posters were now in the shops, and that there has been a noticeable increase in the sales of our Moomoo milk ever since. I groaned when they began to tease me about the fact that I seemed to have fangirls that eagerly chased after the posters of me posing with my Pokémon.
Seeing the success of the posters, my parents asked if I could spend some time hanging around specific Pokémarts to help advertise the posters. I hesitantly agreed; I had bad memories of my Hoenn photoshoot and didn't look forward to effectively being a statue for photographs.
However, I did tell them that I wouldn't be doing any advertising for the time being, because any kind of situation where you were exposed to the public ran the risk of affecting your public reputation, and the political situation in Indigo was so volatile at the moment that I needed my reputation to be as pristine as possible for the near future. My parents accepted that and said that they could delay it until later. Though they also brought up expanding the posters to include other prominent trainers like I mentioned before and asked me if I could be one to bring it up to them. I accepted.
A quick customer survey discovered that many buyers were especially interested in getting a poster with my trio of bruisers, especially Vordt since he had skyrocketed in popularity after his victory over Drake's Salamence, which were apparently the most popular Pokémon on my team.
I did feel bad for my other Pokémon that were lower down on the popularity, like Klaus, who I felt deserved equal share of the limelight. However, there wasn't really anything I could do about it. I hoped he would get his time to shine in due course.
In the meanwhile, our 'Elite' line of Miltank were underway as the Miltank eggs had already been laid and were currently being incubated. Our Miltank were very eager and willing to 'spend time' with my trio of males, and vice versa, so it seems that we didn't have any problems on that front.
My parents and I agreed that we would do some testing to ensure that the new Moomoo milk produced by these 'Elite' Miltank were actually noticeably different from our standard stock. We didn't want to actually advertise them as being different unless they actually were, after all. But we had high hopes that this idea would turn out to be successful.
I spent some time running through the numbers with my parents, and they taught me a few tricks about negotiating with suppliers and other business partners, such as the difference between being respectful and being weak during business and political discussions. More importantly, they spent some time discussing with me about the structure of our family business in case I had to take it over for some reason, though that was less difficult than it sounded.
They said that, assuming that the family business continued to grow at its current rate and if it didn't conflict with my duties in the Elite Four, they would appoint me to be the head of some branch office to gain some valuable experience about running the company in the future. They would do the same with Whitney as well when she grew older.
While I didn't foresee myself ever retiring from the Elite Four, I wanted to be able to be in a position to handle the family business if it ever fell into my lap. I was somewhat confident that I could balance both my responsibilities as an Elite Four, and as a businessman. But that was something to worry about in the future.
Once that was done, I was about to head out and have another idle training session with my Pokémon when my phone started to ring. Curious, I picked up the phone and saw that it was Karen.
"Hello? What's up?" I answered, only to wince as Karen shouted into her phone.
"JOHN! ITS WORKING! THE EGG!" She exclaimed with so much excitement that she failed to form full sentences. "LOOK LOOK LOOK THE EGG HAS CHANGED COLOURS!" My phone pinged as she made a request to switch to video. I quickly accepted.
"DO YOU SEE IT JOHN?!" She pointed to the egg on my screen, and although the video quality wasn't great, I could still make out the fact that the egg had turned from a mixture of white and brown to white and black. My mouth broke out into a wide smile, it was working!
"Holy shit! I see it!" I said in excitement. "How many times did you infuse it with your emotions? Did you write all of this down?"
"I only channelled my emotions thrice!" She told me, having calmed down slightly. "I did it once last night after you told me, and then twice again this morning and afternoon since I had some free time. But the moment I did it for the third time I noticed that the spots on the egg turned from brown to black!" She gestured to the black spots. "That means it's working right?!"
"I think so." I stated carefully. "Of course, we need to check with a Chansey and a Nurse Joy to make sure that everything's still okay inside the egg, but I'm confident that our experiment was a success!" I cheered.
"Okay, okay. Yes, you're right. I'm going to go downstairs and check up with the Nurse Joy to make sure everything's okay, and then I'm going to document everything down." Karen said as I watched her pace around the room. "Okay, yes, I'm going to do that now. I'll call you back later." And then she hung up the phone before I could say anything else.
I smirked amusedly at seeing Karen so worked up, but I could understand. This was a huge discovery that I foresaw would open up many different possibilities for discovering new evolutions for existing Pokémon. Of course, that was much easier said than done, but I was certain that with the publication of our discovery, there would be a whole host of scientists looking to copy our methods in hopes of finding out new evolutions and forms as well.
Likewise, I wasn't worried about the egg accidentally 'imprinting' on Karen or whatever. It was more than common in this world to have eggs be raised and born by one person, only to be given and trained by another. Otherwise, Pokémon breeders would be out of a job.
"I recognize that girl, John. I think I saw her at your Elite Four swearing in ceremony." I was jolted out of my thoughts as I heard my mom's voice speak up from behind me. I turned around and saw her looking at me with a pleased smile. "You seem to be very excited to speak to her about something. What were the two of you talking about? You seem very close." She noted with a knowing grin.
"Uh…It's an experiment that the two of us had been working on." I muttered embarrassingly. "I just got excited because it finally worked out."
"Uh huh. Sure, John. I'm sure that's all that was." She commented with a hint of something in her tone. "It looks like you had something to do, so I'll leave you to it." She patted me on the head and walked away, leaving me at a loss.
I shook my head from that conversation and went back to my room and checked up on all of my current notes that I had typed up for the Zigzagoon egg experiment. I carefully went over all of my notes just to make sure that everything was orderly and properly written so that they could be shown to a scientific board for review. I trusted that Karen had appropriate documentation as well since I constantly reminded her to take notes.
Luckily, I still had my old notes and reports regarding the evolution of Ursaluna and Wyrdeer, so I used those as references to ensure that my documentation would be up to standard.
I had just finished going over everything when Karen called me again.
"I've checked everything over with the Nurse Joys, and they said that there's no problems!" She said excitedly, "They even said that there was no damage to the Pokémon inside, but they were certain that the Pokémon had undergone a transformation of some sort. This is amazing, John! We did it!"
"That's amazing! Oh man, that's incredible!" I repeated myself in my excitement, "Well done Karen, can't believe we actually did it. This is going to be big!"
Then I forcefully calmed myself as I focused on the more serious issues, "Have you made sure you got everything written down? If we want to publish this soon, we can't afford to have sloppy notes." I warned.
"I do, I do." She assured me, "I know how big of a project this is, so relax. I'm a big girl too y'know. You can trust me."
I sighed in relief, but Karen continued, "Anyways, what are we going to call this new type of Zigzagoon? We obviously need a new name for it."
That actually brought me up short, because I realized we couldn't just call it Galarian Zigzagoon considering that the way we discovered it had absolutely nothing to do with Galar.
"Hmmm…how about something like D-Zigzagoon?" I said, and I heard Karen sigh over the phone, "What? No good?"
"John…for all your smarts, your naming sense sucks." She muttered.
I frowned, "Do you have a better name, then?"
"Well, no…but…" Then the two of us went back and forth, until ultimately, we decided on D-Zigzagoon out of a lack of better alternatives.
It was utterly uninspiring, but I hoped that it would at least make it easy for others to recognize what it was just by looking at the name. Admittedly, it was going to be slightly odd for me to call it a 'D-Zigzagoon' in my own head, but I'm sure I would get used to it soon enough.
"I've got the Knuckle Badge booked in for tomorrow morning, then I'm taking the next ship back to Indigo as soon as possible." She told me after we had decided on the name.
"Oh? Are you that confident that you'll win? After all, you'll be at a type disadvantage going in against a Fighting Gym." I said with a grin.
"Please, who do you think you're talking to?" She boasted, "Anyways, I'm going to do some last-minute prep for the match and then double check my notes before I send them over. I'll talk to you soon."
We exchanged goodbyes and then hung up. Afterwards, I made my way to the fields where my Pokémon were training; I had something to announce to them.
"Everyone! Gather over! I have some news for you all!" I shouted out once I arrived and my Pokémon all paused their training and made their way over. I had to stifle a laugh as I watched Klee and Luna try to put out a slowly burning Tyrant with small pulses of water, since he had been in the middle of training his resistance to Burn.
"What's up bro? Why'd you call for a meeting?" Whitney curiously asked me, pausing her own training as she overheard my announcement.
"Oh, it's nothing special, but I would just like to let my team know that we are going to have a new addition joining us in the future!" I announced excitedly, and I was glad to see that my Pokémon shared my enthusiasm as they all cheered as well. I had already agreed with Karen that I would be one to own the new Zigzagoon, since it was originally a gift from Norman, and it would be disrespectful to just offer it to Karen.
"BUT! Our new addition is still an egg at the moment, so when it does join us, please make sure to be gentle and give them a warm welcome." I reminded my team.
"Bliss? Blissey." Klee asked, and I nodded.
"Yes Klee, it's the Zigzagoon egg that we were experimenting on. It's been successful!" I told her happily. And Klee bounced on the tip of her feet as she congratulated me for my success.
"Wait, bro, what do you mean?" Whitney tilted her head, "What experiment are you talking about?"
I then proceeded to explain to Whitney what Karen and I had been doing with the egg. Whitney's eyes widened like saucers as she listened to me detailing my experiment and our thought process. By the end of it, she looked really excited about the experiment as if she had participated in its discovery.
"Wow! I didn't know you were doing something that cool, John!" Whitney exclaimed, "I wish that I could do something like that in the future! I would love to discover new Normal types on my own!"
"I'm sure you will one day sis." I told her gently, "And if you need any help, I'll be sure to be there for you if you need it."
"Hehe, thanks bro. Maybe I can discover a new evolution for Miltank! She could be even stronger!" Whitney declared excitedly.
"Mil, Miltank!" Miltank cheered in agreement.
Whitney then thanked me sincerely before she went back to training with her Whismur, who waved at me with one of her ears as I looked at her. I waved back before I turned my attention to my Pokémon, who were either curiously discussing who they thought the new Pokémon would be or had already returned to their training.
I spent the rest of my day training with my team and making solid progress while at it. It seems that my Pokémon were all inspired by the fact that they would be gaining a new member and were all training hard so that they could show off to them. Pixel especially seemed especially eager to show off to someone that would be 'weaker' than it, which was an amusing sight.
I hoped that the new D-Zigzagoon would be happy to be a part of my team. As always, every new Pokémon that joined your team would run the risk that they may break the team's cohesion, but I hoped that it wouldn't happen. I was also confident that I could discipline the D-Zigzagoon if needed to behave itself, if necessary.
I couldn't wait for Karen to return and for the D-Zigzagoon to hatch. I foresaw our new discovery just utterly dominating the headlines within the scientific committee once it was announced.
However, I didn't realize at the time just how big of a deal this discovery would turn out to be.
A.N And G-Zigzagoon (or, in story, 'D-Zigzagoon') is here! Soon. I also just wanted to clarify that we won't suddenly be seeing an explosion of new alternate region forms just because of this one success; there were many factors that had to happen in order for a normal Zigzagoon to transform into its Dark variant. Without meta-knowledge, I would say that it would prove VERY difficult for another to make the same discoveries with other species.
This chapter has been BETAed by Allute. Thanks! And to anyone who wants to support me, please check out my p atreon at CartecTNN where you can read 8 advanced chapters! Thanks to those who have supported me already!