John's Team

Tyrant - Slaking

Vordt - Ursaluna

Smough - Snorlax

Klee - Blissey

Port - Mantine

Zephyr - Pidgeot

Klaus - Wyrdeer

Luna - Clefable

Pixel - Porygon2

Euphie - Eevee

Ornstein - D-Zigzagoon

The New Normal – 7-1 – Resettling In

The rest of the trip back to Indigo was pleasantly uneventful. I managed to get some sleep, and time quickly passed as we eventually arrived back at Olivine. As the ship began to dock, a small welcoming party had gathered around us at the pier, with Lance's signature bright red cape being distinct enough to make out even at a distance.

With the ship safely docked, Sidney and I made our way down to greet Lance. The cameras began to flash rapidly as the surrounding cameramen and reporters eagerly swarmed us, hoping to get photos for their next headline.

"Elite Sidney, it's a pleasure to meet you." He greeted him as the two shook hands. "I do hope that the mess back there is being properly sorted out."

"It will be." Sidney assured, "And we hope that the information you gather from these criminals are going to be helpful too." He turned around to look at the prisoners being offloaded from the ship, "Speaking of which, I should go help them out. Is it alright if I speak with you soon, Champion Lance?"

"Absolutely." Lance replied, "Please, take your time. And I do hope you enjoy your stay here in Indigo. Feel free to look me up in my office anytime." Sidney nodded, before moving to help out with the prisoners.

With Sidney walking away, Lance turned to me and patted me on the shoulder with a smile, "Glad to see the conquering hero returning. Good work out there, John. Welcome back home."

I smiled, "Thanks, Lance. I just couldn't sit still when I heard about. Thanks for being so accommodating."

He waved me off, "It's not a problem. Even ignoring all the political benefits of your assistance, standing up against criminals is not something I will condemn." He then looked around and a frown appeared as he saw that many reporters were trying to inch closer nearby to eavesdrop on us.

He leaned in closer, "Actually, let's move this conversation to my office. I need to fill you on what's been going on here." He whispered, "Just give me a moment to check on Sidney and I'll be right back."

He came back a few moments later, and the two of us were quickly teleported to his office. The first thing I noticed was a huge pile of paperwork in his out tray, and just looking at the tall tower made me feel a pang of sympathy for him.

Lance took a swig of water before he began, "Firstly, I wanted to get you up to speed with what the other Elite Four have been doing during the week that you were there in Hoenn. With Lorelei and Agatha, I'm sure you know already, but they're just continuing on their assigned tasks with the International Police and the Gym respectively. As for Will, he's been hard at work speaking to his group of businessmen and other shakers and movers about potentially implementing a new policy that could help support the economic growth of Indigo."

I nodded, they were about what I expected, but I was still pleased nonetheless. Will was the most familiar out of all of us with economic and businesses, so having him discuss these matters was just the logical thing to do. While I wasn't the most familiar with economic policy, even I knew that any plan to continue bolstering the growing economy could only be a good thing.

Lance gave me a moment to process everything before moving on, "Other than that, I want you to tell me what you thought of Team Rocket and their actions. I want to know everything I can so that we'll be ready if they ever try to re-establish a foothold here in Indigo."

Pleased that he was taking the threat of these evil teams so seriously, I straightened up as I started my explanation, "The good news is that I'm confident that they've mostly retreated out of Hoenn. The bad news is that I'm fairly certain they've moved on to Sinnoh instead, but I suppose the psychic interrogations will confirm that."

He nodded, gesturing for me to continue, "As for their training, it's a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, their level of training has significantly improved since their time in Indigo. But they've lost huge amounts of their numbers, though I'd wager quite a few still managed to retreat with them that we failed to catch."

Lance pondered my words for a moment before speaking, "Any chance they could easily recruit back up to their old numbers?"

I shook my head, "Unlikely, though obviously I can't be certain on that. I will say that it appears that the majority of their grunts are true fanatics, utterly devoted to their cause of 'remaking the world'." I said in air quotes, "Those fanatics are hard to come by, and I'm sure their series of losses will make recruiting hard among the more 'rational' criminal population. And even if they do manage to swell up their numbers again, I'd wager it still be a while before they can be trained up back to level I just fought against."

"But what I'm a little more concerned about is the fact that they managed to acquire the Porygon Research." I continued, "It might just give them the edge they need to begin a campaign of hacking and disruption against us."

Lance waved me off, "I've been briefed on that already. I was reassured by the many experts that this situation is being dealt with. They have a team already looking into bolstering our cybersecurity, and I've been told multiple times that their Porygon won't be a threat to us anytime soon. And these 'experts' all know the consequences of being wrong."

Lance's fingers continued tapping idly on his desk, "And I want your honest opinion on these criminals. Are you certain that they're as crazy as you make them out to be? With no exaggeration?"

"I am." I responded immediately; out of everything I had done – stopping the evil teams had to be my highest priority. It didn't matter how much success I managed to achieve politically if these idiots ended up destroying the world. They HAD to be stopped, no matter the cost. And I would be sure to remind everyone who would listen about the threat they posed.

Lance stared me down for a moment, but he eventually withdrew as soon as he saw the honesty shining through my eyes.

"Good." He stated, "Well, in better news, I'll be glad to inform you that your actions in Hoenn have practically revived Indigo-Hoenn relations. Looks like you've wiped out the stain of Pryce's actions with your heroism. You have my sincere thanks for that, you've saved us quite the headache."

"Again, I wasn't going to allow the criminals to run around unchecked. I was just doing what I had to." I said to him.

"Yes, well, your intentions aside, Indigo has benefited greatly from that. We can expect closer cooperation with Hoenn on a multitude of things moving forwards thanks to all the goodwill and good PR you helped build up." He continued, "You've certainly made my life, and Lorelei's, much easier. As I said, I owe you one for this."

I gave him a firm nod, happy that he was honouring his word.

"Anyways, I'm sure you have many other things to get on with now that you're back, so I won't hold up any more of your time. Thanks again, John. And good job." He stood up and patted me on the shoulder.

And with that I shot him a quick thanks before leaving his office. As I left, I could have sworn I could hear a groan coming out of Lance; he must have realized he still had more paperwork to tackle. Putting aside my pity, I went to check my phone for any unread messages, and indeed, saw that there were many.

I put Karen's messages aside for the moment, as they weren't urgent. What WAS urgent was the message that I got from Oak, telling me to 'come to his laboratory immediately'. My mind snapped to the ONLY reason he could have sent me such an urgent message. So with hurried excitement, I quickly fired off a text informing him that I was coming before I scrambled on top of Port to fly over to Pallet Town.

It was a restless flight. And I spent the entire flight over hoping that my prediction was correct.

One anxious flight later, I practically leapt off of Port as we arrived in Pallet Town and made a dash for Oak's office. After a brief knock on his door, I opened it and immediately fell over as something knocked me over in a very enthusiastic tackle.

"Oof." I grunted as I fell to the ground.

"Syl! Syl! Veon!" A melodic voice chimed excitedly as something rubbed themselves against me. I pulled my head up and was met with an image of pink and white. It was Euphie, in her newly evolved form as a Sylveon, hugging me tightly with her new feelers.

As she rubbed herself against me, I couldn't help but break out into a wide smile of my own as I hugged her back. I missed her!

"HAHA! Someone's excited to see their trainer!" A familiar voice, but not Oak's, barked out from my right. I looked up to see Blaine looking at me with a grin on his face. Embarrassed, and probably blushing, I disentangled myself from Sylveon before awkwardly patting her on the head like I hadn't just wrapped her in a big hug.

"Sorry, got too excited there." I replied with a slight blush on my cheeks.

Blaine chuckled, "Don't worry about it sonny, it's to be expected. It's a good thing for a trainer to be so attached to their Pokémon; shows off the bond that they have with their Pokémon. I'd expect nothing less from ANY competent trainer."

"Indeed." Oak greeted from where he was sitting at the desk, "And welcome back, John. I heard you've been doing a lot of good in Indigo."

"Thank you. I'm very happy to be back. Especially with this nice surprise here." I ruffled Euphie's head, who was snuggling against me, "I saw that you brought Professor Elm to help out. How did the two of you manage it?"

He shrugged, "Elm really did a lot of the heavy lifting here; I can't take much of the credit. It was mostly between his expertise, and Euphie's own hard work." He explained, "I mostly followed his advice on how best to raise and train Euphie, following his recommendations to the letter. His expertise was crucial and really saved us a lot of trial-and-error. It's a shame that he isn't here right now – or else he could explain the full process to you. He's more familiar with it than I am."

"You're being far too humble." I said smoothly, "I'm sure that helping with Euphie's evolution was a team effort, so thank you for your hard work on that. But yes, please pass on my thanks to Elm as well, if you see him first."

Oak shot me a smile, deciding not to challenge me any further. He got up from his seat and idly rubbed Sylveon's head, "She's got some real potential in her. I didn't have much time to run a full battery of tests, not that I would on a Pokémon that wasn't mine, but she's definitely on the level of a regular eevelution. If not more so because of all your training."

"That's true enough." Blaine added, staring intently at Sylveon, "I was going to ask if you'd like to spar against my own Flareon, just to test your new Sylveon's strength, but I'll save that for later when you've properly grabbled a handle of her new power."

"Sure, maybe next time." I replied easily. Though I suspected Blaine's Flareon was likely too strong for Euphie to deal with at the moment, it was still a good opportunity to test herself and explore her newfound strengths.

Oak suddenly chuckled, drawing our attention to him, "You know, after spending quite some time around both your Euphie and the other Clefairy, I've actually decided to start training up my own Clefable too. Thought that it might be nice to have something to show off when the Fairy type gets revealed."

Blaine shot Oak a curious expression, "I thought you were meant to be retired? What kind of retired trainer just randomly trains up a Pokémon from scratch? Plus, aren't you strong enough already?"

Oak waved him off, "Nonsense. I've been getting rusty."

"Rusty enough to kick my ass." Blaine countered, disbelief colouring his voice, "Don't try to act humble. Your standards for 'rusty' are ridiculous! Your Dragonite out there is a walking statement to your strength!"

Oak shot him a smile, before turning serious, "Anyways, to bring the topic back for a moment." The two of us nodded, "As happy as I am with this evolution, which pretty convincingly proves the existence of a new type, now we have to consider the problems that come with revealing it."

"Mhm. Not going to be easy, that." Blaine agreed, "Remember when you published your PIT technique, John? That was fucking chaos afterwards." He grimaced, "So many fools trying to replicate your method with reckless abandon. Even now, with all the new policies, we still have a few incidents of overeager trainers, last I heard. We really don't need a repeat of that."

"And what did we get out of all those failures?" Blaine asked rhetorically, "Absolutely fucking nothing. Just a whole lot of heartbreak with nothing to show for it. We REALLY can't afford to have something similar happen again." I nodded.

"Indeed." Oak commented, "To that end, I've been hard at work with the help of the others to update the Pokédex regarding the new Fairy types." He moved back to his desk and shuffled through a few documents before passing one of them to me. "Blaine's already seen this, but here are the other Pokémon that I've found so far that also share the Fairy type."

I inspected the document, careful to maintain a blank expression as I did so. Looking through the list, it was very comprehensive. It covered all of the known Fairy types – matching the Pokédex we had in the games. Oak had already identified all of the other Pokémon from the first 3 regions that were supposed to be Fairy types. But more importantly, there weren't any Pokémon on the list that were WRONGLY labelled as a Fairy type, which was a relief.

I wasn't sure how I would explain a mislabelling if it did occur.

But damn, Oak worked fast. I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering who I was talking about, and that he had help from competent scientists as well.

After a moment to study the document, I returned it to Oak, "That's quite a lot on here." I said to him.

"Yes, and that's a good and bad thing." Oak explained as he took back the document, "It's a good thing, because having more of this Fairy type adds more variety to Pokémon, and personally I think many people are going to enjoy having more Fairy type options to use in battle." Blaine and I nodded in agreement, "However, that does mean that there are going to be a lot of overeager trainers trying to hunt down these Fairy types when it does get revealed."

I frowned, he made a good point. "In that case, what do you expect the fallout of this to be?" I asked.

"Well, Blaine and I discussed this before you got here, but we expect that there'll be plenty of trainers who'd want to get their hands on this new Type to test out its batting capabilities, ESPECIALLY since it has an immunity to Dragon types and hits Fighting types hard." Oak explained, "Honestly speaking, from a battling standpoint, Fairy types are very valuable to have, so I expect there'll be a huge demand for them once this information becomes public. It's only one of two types that resist Dragon, and it's even completely immune to it too!"

"Which means we should expect Fairy Pokémon to be very sought out by trainers." Blaine continued, "Pokémon like Clefairy and Togetic and their evolutions should prove to be especially popular, considering they were already considered 'good' battling Pokémon before. Now, with a full awareness of their true abilities, I'm certain that trainers will be looking out to acquire them."

The realisation hit me like a truck. If Clefairy were going to become super popular, then I needed to make sure that Mt. Moon was sufficiently secured, since it was famous for having an abundance of Clefairy living there. Like Oak said, if the Fairy type got revealed, a huge wave of trainers might try to make their way into Mt. Moon and capture all the Clefairy there, decimating the local population. I couldn't allow that to happen. I needed to speak with mayor Henry as soon as possible to discuss the security measures. This was a potential disaster in the making.

"We might see a lot more instances of poaching as well." Oak warned, "After all, high demand means high prices."

"Should we speak to Lance about that?" I asked, "I feel like he would appreciate being kept well-informed ahead of time, so we don't surprise him with something as momentous as this."

Blaine frowned, looking like he was disgusted with the idea. But Oak remained thoughtful, calmly thinking over my words.

"Hmm…that is a good point." Oak eventually stated, causing Blaine's frown to grow, "If the public is going to react how we think they are, then having the Indigo police ready to respond should be good."

"Bah. Let him suffer for all I care. His pride could do with a few good knocks." Blaine grumbled.

"Now, now, Blaine, no need to make things personal. Informing the Champion is the right thing to do, even if you dislike who it is right now." Oak placated calmly, but with a degree of forcefulness that made it hard to fight back against.

It seemed to have worked, as Blaine quickly deflated and let out a sigh, "Fine. Fine! We'll inform the young Dragon. Better to have him informed so the reveal doesn't accidentally make a mess of things." He said reluctantly, "At least he's too much of a brute to even think about trying to plagiarize our work. So, we don't have to worry about that."

"We'll give him a few days advanced notice." Oak stated, "That way we can protect our own work by not giving others enough time to copy and verify their own results in time. Not that I'd believe anyone would try. I'll let you know when to let him know, John."

Blaine grumbled something I couldn't hear, but probably wasn't very pleasant. Though Oak clearly heard it, he pretended that didn't and turned to me, "And John, I hope you don't mind if I publish these findings under my name first." He said apologetically, "You and the others will be given credit as appropriate, obviously, but publishing it under my name would give it the most reach and credibility."

"I already said I'm fine with it, if you're wondering." Blaine added a little unnecessarily. I already made my decision.

"That's fine, I don't mind." I replied, "It's probably best if you did so anyways."

"Thanks, John. Please rest assured that you'll be given full credit for being the first to bring up your observations." Oak responded seriously, "I might have to attach my name to this for publicity and credibility reasons, but I will do my utmost to have the public recognize your contributions to this project."

I nodded, not feeling the need to say anything more. Truthfully speaking, I didn't care TOO much about getting all of the scientific credit for this. If I did, I wouldn't have shared my 'findings' in the first place.

No, I was happy enough with getting some of the credit. Firstly, I had no real desire to push my scientific credentials that much further; they were solid enough as it is. Secondly, the whole reason I had shared this project with Oak and the others in the first place was because I knew I needed to add further validation to my 'observations', so us sharing the credit was perfectly in line with what I was hoping for.

And so with the serious topics out of the way, I stayed for a bit longer and engaged in some friendly small talk with the two of them. Surprisingly, over the course of our cooperation, I found Blaine to be increasingly pleasant to be around. He was blunt and could be a bit abrasive, but he gave off the same feeling as Agatha, but in a good way. There was a certain depth to him that I found enjoyable.

However, after some time, Oak told us that he had to leave for another appointment. Not wanting to hold him up any longer, I withdrew Euphie into her Premier Ball for the first time in a while before I made my way out of Oak's lab.

But just before I was about to saddle up on Port, Blaine interrupted me.

"John, sorry to disturb you before you head back for dinner, but I just wanted to know what your schedule looked like now that you're back in Indigo." He asked me just as I left the lab.

I tilted my head, "I'm not quite sure, actually." I responded truthfully, "I know I have a few commitments, but otherwise I don't have anything strictly planned. Why?"

"Well, with this project nearly finished, I really got inspired to try and make some new discoveries of my own. I've had some success as of late, but I want a second opinion on how to proceed." He explained, "So, I was planning on asking you, Shelly, and maybe Carolina if you'd be free to cooperate together again. I thought this time was very productive, and wanted to see if we could replicate our success."

"Why not Oak?" I asked curiously. "He's the most competent out of all of us."

"Sam's busy." He said, "I already asked, unfortunately. But what about you? You happy with this?"

"Sure, if I have the time." I replied with a nod, "Though what are we working on?"

He shot me an excited grin, full of teeth, "You'll see at the lab. I have some data I want to show you all if you accept. I'll go and ask Shelly and Carolina if they want to hop on board as well. But then next time you're all free, come visit me at Cinnabar. I think you'll like it."

I nodded, and he thanked me once again before we split off. As soon as I arrived home, I quickly made myself a quick dinner since I was alone tonight, before checking my phone as I ate.

Before I forgot, I sent a quick text to mayor Henry saying that I wanted to meet with him tomorrow. I also made sure to send another round of texts to all my family members informing them that I was back home. Then, seeing that I had a few unread messages from Karen, I finally took the time to respond.

'Sorry for not replying, but I'm back home in Indigo now.' I texted her.

'That's fine. Everyone knows just how busy u are. The news can't stop singing your praises.' I could feel her rolling her eyes as she typed that last bit out.

'Not like I did it for the attention.' I texted back.

'Of course not. You're not nearly as vain as your detractors paint u out to be.' She wrote, 'But since you're back, u free now?'

'I should be. Why?' I asked.

'Come visit the Gym if u have some free time. You've never had time to visit before. And, I don't mean to brag, but I'm quite excited to show u everything that's changed with the Gym.' She explained.

'Sure.' I texted, 'Did Agatha help you with any of it?'

'Hah! The old hag just dumped all of the paperwork on me in the name of 'leadership' and 'effective delegation'. What a load of excuses to just lay about.' She complained, though I suspected she didn't mean it.

'Did you expect anything else?' I shot back.

She just sent an angry expression back in response. Grinning to myself, I sent her a text saying that I would come over soon before I went to finish up my dinner and headed to bed after a quick shower. It had been a long day, but I was finally glad to be back in Indigo.

And back at home.

A.N. And this marks the start of the Progress Arc! With the evil teams slinking back into the shadows, the focus returns back to Indigo! Hope you enjoyed!

And yes, the Fairy reveal is coming very soon! This time with all the competent and experienced scientists working on it, they have the wisdom to begin acting to minimize the consequences of this reveal unlike with the PIT Technique.

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!