John's Team
Tyrant - Slaking
Vordt - Ursaluna
Smough - Snorlax
Klee - Blissey
Port - Mantine
Zephyr - Pidgeot
Klaus - Wyrdeer
Luna - Clefable
Pixel - Porygon2
Euphie - Sylveon
Ornstein - D-Linoone
Wraith - H-Zoroark
The New Normal – 9-7 – To the Indigo Conference
Time flew quickly after that. And in what felt like a blink of an eye, the Indigo Conference was starting up once again. It actually made me feel quite nostalgic – seeing the news talk about the many hopefuls and their predictions about who would win it all. This time last year, I was one of those hopefuls. And now, I was already an accomplished member of the Elite Four, with an unshakeable foundation that I leveraged into widespread popularity.
It was incredible just how much could change in a year.
In under a year, between my contributions to replacing Pryce with Lance, my proposals to push for and support a more unified Indigo, as well as my general support for Internationalism and for fostering good foreign relations, I had done much. More than I had expected.
But outside all those political achievements, the thing I valued the most was the myriad of connections and friends that I had made. Even ignoring the political benefits of such friendships, they were all still excellent and vibrant personalities that were all unique, fun to be around, and who I wished to spend time with.
Drake, Giovanni, Lance, Cynthia, Agatha…all these people were those that I was honoured to call my friends.
And one of them was more than just a 'friend'.
Cynthia and I tried to make as much of the moments that we had with each other. We both longed to physically be with each other, but with our current commitments, that was just unfortunately not feasible for the time being.
That didn't mean to we didn't train together or share tips with each other, which Karen also joined in on. Having Cynthia and Karen spending time together wasn't nearly as awkward or as uncomfortable as I feared, though there was still a distinct tension between them.
The two of them had spent some time talking together privately upon their first meeting, but I wasn't privy to their conversation nor would they tell me about it. Whatever the case, they seemed to have reached some kind of understanding or accord with each other.
The tension and slight wariness was still there, but at least they were cordial and weren't sniping at each other. There was no overt hostility, which was good enough for me.
Nevertheless, training together was a productive time. Karen helped a lot with training up Wraith to better master his Ghost type moves, and she even gave off some pointers to help Cyntha with her own Spiritomb. In the meanwhile, Cynthia helped Karen improve Tyranitar's speed, using her own experiences with training up her Garchomp as a guide.
On my end, I also assisted Cynthia with her Togekiss, since I had a better understanding of Fairy type moves than she did.
"I can't help but feel your Zoroark is quicker to listen to you than my Kleavor." Cynthia had muttered to me during one of our training sessions, "Yours is way more obedient than mine."
"Maybe you're not friendly enough? Or you lack authority?" I jested.
"Hmph. I don't hear you complaining about my friendliness when you were still here. If anything, it seemed like you really appreciated my friendliness." She shot back, "And I'll make you eat your words next time we meet. My Kleavor will overpower your Zoroark."
"Try saying that AFTER you've got your Kleavor to listen to you." I smirked, "But sure – I welcome the challenge."
"You're too smug for your own good. Watch out that your head doesn't become too big." She sniped, but there was no heat in it.
"I'm perfectly humble." I replied, "I'm just being competitive. Not my fault that you bring out the competitiveness from within me."
"Well…it's the same for me." She admitted, "It's nice to have someone to measure yourself against. Especially when that someone is so successful."
"Aw. Thanks." I chuckled, "But you aren't doing so badly yourself. You've been on the news more than I've been!"
The revelations of our discovery of the new Kleavor and Zoroark, coupled with her continued winning streak by knocking out Bertha and claiming victory over the second Elite Four, skyrocketed her reputation. Her clean victory against yet another member of the Elite Four solidified her reputation as a formidable trainer and valid candidate to become the next Champion, and now the public were waiting with baited breath to see if Flint or Lucian would put an end to her impressive run.
"That's only because of the excitement of my first victory over Aaron and Bertha, and due to the 'discovery' of Kleavor and the Zoroark." She dismissed, "Also, John, sorry if your contributions to that were partially overlooked in Sinnoh. I did try to emphasize it in my interview, but it seemed like that part was mostly left out of all the newspapers."
"It's fine, I was only there to be along for the ride anyways." I said easily, "Just make sure you're able to keep up your winning streak, or your rising reputation could quickly crumble."
"You sound like you have no faith in me." She pouted, but she couldn't hold that expression for long before she broke out into a giggle, "But don't worry, I have things well in hand. All you need to do is cheer me on, as always."
"It's a shame I can't cheer for you in person." I lamented.
"There'll be an opportunity for us to meet up again." She replied, "We just have to count down the days until then, don't we?"
I smiled at her optimism.
Aside from my own personal developments, the past few weeks also saw plenty of other developments from other areas too.
Our family business got recently placed in the spotlight once again as our Johto branch continued to expand, to the point where my parents were now really thinking about a possibility of an expansion to Hoenn, following my previous suggestion to expand to Mauville City.
We still needed to check through with our accountants to see if such a plan would be viable, but if we were going to go ahead with it, then I was going to ask Joseph to honour his promise and lend us a hand in Hoenn to smoothen things out for us.
Not to sound arrogant, but it helped that with my ever-increasing popularity, there was really no need for us to spend much money on advertisements. Just being tied and recognized to be THE brand of Elite John was enough. That was part of the reason that we could expand so much over the past year.
Aside from all this, there were still the occasional committee meetings that I had to attend. But there was a feeling of unease that was spreading around the committee members. With this year's circuit ending, that meant election season was coming.
Some of the committee members knew that they were on the chopping block, and were now desperately trying to land a big win in order to reverse their fates.
That unease had spread to a few members of the Elite Four as well, since it also meant that more challengers were likely going to be coming. Obviously I was unaffected – I didn't think I was being arrogant to think that my position was more than secure. Barring any extraordinary trainers like Bruno, I was pretty secure in my position.
But Will was a different story. He had yet to be formally challenged for his position and he knew that his turn was coming up any moment now. His strength wasn't secured, and the voices and whispers of doubt were slowly growing.
There were still no challengers yet, but Will was not sitting easily.
In comparison, Lorelei seemed to be charging full speed ahead – fully utilising her latest victory to her advantage. She had shed off her earlier hesitation; a far cry from how she was when she came in.
Compared to when she had first joined, her reputation had improved greatly. She had mostly shrugged off the stigma of nepotism, especially from what I've heard of the work and connections that she's built through her efforts as the new leader of her new organisation, which she aptly called the Indigo Revenue Service (shortened to IRS), and she had regained her confidence as a trainer both in herself and in the public eye.
I wasn't sure how much stronger she had gotten, but I assumed she was putting equal amounts of effort into her training like she was with her political ambitions.
Putting all that aside, the Committee meetings themselves didn't really cover any topics that I found particularly interesting or made me want to step in. I still didn't think that my proposal to allow foreign Gym Leaders to take up local postings would be well-received at the moment, and so I was mostly content with hanging back and playing the neutral mediator.
I was just happy to let any grievances that people had towards my old policies settle down and slowly be forgotten. After all, there was no need to get too involved and butt in on their discussions – that would only lead to me making unnecessary enemies.
But that was where my new team of assistants came into play. Andrew and Emily, my two new hired assistants, did great in stepping in for me and helping me collect information that I would normally have to waste time and find. Most importantly, they got along well with Daisy, and they didn't seem to treat her any differently ever since she revealed her full name to them. She was learning much from their experience, and she was quite the fast learner.
That was all I hoped for.
Admittedly, I drew some amusement from the confused and strange looks that I got whenever Daisy ran up to me before a meeting to hand me a stack of documents. The fact that they all now knew that this little girl was actually Champion Oak's granddaughter had thrown them for a loop, especially because of how out of place a little girl was at a 'serious' and 'formal' committee meetings.
The Elite Four all shared my amusement. Agatha was probably still cackling about it.
Despite all the fun and games, Daisy was under strict orders to come to me if anyone dared to be rude or dismissive to her. She might be very mature for her age, but I had no intention of allowing her to deal with those kinds of people by herself.
If that happened, then I promised her that I would step in and 'deal' with the problem on her behalf.
Fortunately, nothing of the sort had happened yet, but I had really taken a shine to Daisy and her earnestness and diligent nature. Her budding interest in the Fairy type was also nice; I enjoyed teaching her more about the type and how she could improve her team.
She always insisted that she wasn't much of a trainer, but seeing how she acted around her Pokémon, I inwardly begged to differ. She really could be an excellent trainer if she tried, and I couldn't help but try to push her to reach that potential.
Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be seeing her taking on the Indigo Conference as a prospective challenger.
That thought brought a smile to my face.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome one and all to the grand opening of this year's Indigo Conference!" The voice of the announcer boomed out from the speakers that surrounded the stadium from all angles, "For those of you who have signed up to participate in the Open Qualifiers, please remember that the first battles begin two hours after the Champion's speech is over! So you may want to make your way there as soon as soon as possible!"
I stood there in the middle of the stadium with my other Elite Four members, all of us standing stock still just a couple paces behind Lance. It wasn't just us though – just a few paces behind us, and all standing in two lines, were the 16 Gym Leaders of Indigo.
Unfortunately, Walker wasn't in attendance. He must have still allowed his brother to keep the title of Gym Leader.
Just as Lance had announced to us, he intended to use the time after the ceremony to host an 'informal' summit of the Gym Leaders and Elite Fours. Unfortunately, none of us had any speaking roles for the actual ceremony itself, so we all had to just stand around and wait for this to be done.
And already, some of us looked far more enthusiastic about being here than others.
Comparing Will and Agatha were like a study in opposites. Agatha looked like she wanted to glare at the audience for forcing her participation, while Will was practically preening at being a part of such a historical event. Lorelei was doing her best to NOT look at her uncle, but he was too busy being distracted glaring at Clair and Lance to really bother her.
But more importantly, young Brock was here too instead of his regent, which was a good sign for his future prospects. Admittedly, he looked very out of place, considering how much younger he was than everyone else, but he was doing a good job holding a stiff upper lip and not looking too overwhelmed by everything.
Naturally, as Champion, Lance was going to be the main speaker, which was why he went up to the podium as soon as the initial announcement was over. "Last year, our very own Elite John ended up sweeping through the many participants of the Indigo Conference and came out on top. From his victory, he has since joined with the Elite Four, and I'm sure there's no need to reiterate the many achievements that he has accomplished during his single year here."
The crowd exploded into cheers, and Lance waited patiently for them to settle down slightly before continuing, "But – John's situation is not unique. After this year's Conference, that could be YOU! Every single one of you has the opportunity to achieve widespread fame and success! There is nothing stopping you from claiming the final victory, and allowing your name to be remembered in the annals of time!"
"The Indigo Conference is YOUR opportunity to demonstrate your training, your ability, and your Pokémon to the wider world!" He raised his arms dramatically, "But it won't be an easy task. Look around you! Look at just how many aspiring trainers there are – all of them sharing the same dream as you do!"
"AND YET! There can only be one winner. Only one person that can rise above the rest and be honoured with the opportunity to challenge and make their way into the Elite Four! So SHOW US your potential! SHOW US your strength! SHOW US that you have what it takes to sweep through the competition!"
Lance took a dramatic step forwards, his voice coming out loud and clear and filled with genuine emotion, "SO WELCOME ONCE AGAIN TO THIS YEAR'S INDIGO CONFERENCE! AND MAY THE BEST TRAINER WIN! WE WILL BE WAITING!"
The crowd roared out – their applause rising to deafening heights. Even us Elite Four members joined in on the clapping; Lance's speech was miles better than the almost monotone one that we got from Pryce – I could still remember his droning voice even to this today. In comparison, even I found Lance's speech to be emotive and moving – and I wasn't even participating!
With Lance's speech done, we returned to the less dramatic ritual explanation of the rules and regulations of this year's Indigo Conference, as well as a rundown of the schedule of the Open Qualifiers. Of course, everyone who had signed to the Open Qualifiers should have already been aware of their schedule, but this was mostly for the benefit of the people watching at home.
As this was just the Open Qualifiers, there was not going to be a proper opening ceremony. That was reserved for the Preliminary Rounds, which everyone considered to be the 'true' beginning of the Indigo Conference. The Open Qualifiers were generally seen to be an uninteresting necessity to the Indigo Conference, which was an opinion that I agreed with.
Ultimately, the lack of restrictions to join the Open Qualifiers, aside from getting all 8 badges, meant that the quality of trainers heavily varied. And it was not uncommon to see very one-sided matches during their fights. The Preliminary Rounds were generally where you saw the more exciting and evenly balanced fights. I really hope Whitney and her friends were able to at least get to this stage, which was be a huge achievement for someone as young as they were, even if I knew it was going to be tough for them to do so.
…I was supposed to meet her after the ceremony. I wondered what she was doing now?
(Whitney POV)
To her immense happiness and relief, Sabrina and Janine also managed to make it past Giovanni and collected their 8th and final Gym badge alongside her.
She didn't know what she'd do if any of them were left behind and became ineligible to compete in the Indigo Conference. They had to do this together!
Admittedly, their victory over Giovanni was as nail-bitingly close as hers was. Of the three of them – Sabrina pulled off the most convincing victory. Her agile and Special-Attack focused Psychic types were more suitable at avoiding Giovanni's attacks and were able to break through his defenses more effectively with their barrage of super-effective moves.
It also helped that her Kadabra took that moment to evolve into an Alakazam.
But it was more surprising, and relieving, that Janine also managed to scrape a win against Giovanni. Out of the three of them, she had the hardest battle, especially with her Type disadvantage against Giovanni.
However, her Toxic stall strategies worked as well as ever, and she focused on pure evasion to keep her Pokémon long enough in the fight that Giovanni's Pokémon eventually succumbed to the Toxic. It didn't really matter how hard Giovanni's moves COULD hit if he wasn't able to land them. Or worse for Giovanni, even when he DID land the hit it led to a Destiny Bond double KO that stole all of his momentum away from him.
Overall, Janine had utterly refused to play Giovanni's game of matching bruiser against bruiser.
It was still a very tough battle for Janine, and Whitney did suspect that her tactics wouldn't work nearly as well if Giovanni was actually using his proper team. She explained that to her friends, and they all let out a sigh as they saw, once again, just how much further they still needed to go.
After all, their Pokémon were still not all fully evolved!
Nevertheless, a win was a win. And after a jolly night or two of celebration they had now all gathered at the Indigo Plateau.
Whitney had told her friends that she wanted to listen to Lance's speech and say hi to her brother and deliver the good news to him personally, so her friends accompanied her. They had already signed up to join the Open Qualifiers, and luckily their matches were all on the same day, in two days' time, and fortunately not against each other.
She didn't dare to even entertain such a thought.
That was why they were all in the audience stands, idly listening as Champion Lance wrapped up his speech.
"I think Father approves of Lance's speech." Janine said, barely being able to be heard over the roars of the crowd.
"How could you tell?!" Whitney shouted back, fighting to be heard.
"He's not frowning as hard as he usually does." Janine replied as if such a thing was obvious. Whitney just shot her an unamused look.
"Actually, it's not just him." Sabrina added, "Looks like the rest of the Gym Leaders and Elite Four seem pretty taken with his speech. Even your brother."
A quick glance towards her brother had Whitney nodding in agreement.
With the speech over, they decided to head out and grab some food from one of the many food stalls that had been set up around the large stadium. They had all agreed to get in some last minute training done before the gauntlet of fights that was about to occur.
The three of them all split up to grab a bit to eat. But just as Whitney walked up to a store to buy some food, a young man suddenly stepped in front of her. His slightly greying hair was quite distinct.
"Excuse me, but are you Whitney? The Normal specialist who just beat Giovanni?" He approached, a polite but hesitant expression on his face.
Whitney was surprised, but that didn't stop her from responding, "Yes, I am! How can I help you?"
The man smiled, "Oh, wow! This is quite the honour! I've actually been quite the fan of yours for some time." He seemed a little nervous, but Whitney didn't care. Did she actually have a fan?!
"Really!?" She exclaimed excitedly. She ACTUALLY had a fan! "How did you become a fan?! I'm so curious!"
He rubbed his head sheepishly, "Haha, well I was just browsing the Pokénet one day and I stumbled across your battle against Koga by accident." He explained, "But then I was shocked by what I saw. I think that was the first time I've seen a Miltank do that. THAT really caught my interest."
"After that, I also caught your performance against Blaine – which was incredible by the way – and then I recently saw your battle against Giovanni. They were all really impressive, and I don't think I've seen someone utilise Normal types so effectively before." He said.
"I immediately knew then that you would go far in life." He concluded with a smile, "So I knew when I spotted you in the crowd just now, I couldn't stop myself from saying hi."
"Hehehe…thank you so much." Whitney chuckled, failing to keep the happiness from blossoming on her face.
"Actually….if you don't mind, would you like to battle?" He asked a little awkwardly, his head turning to the ground as if he was ashamed. "I've always wanted to see how I would fare up against you. Oh, and don't worry. This would just be a friendly match, so feel free to use your less trained Pokémon. I'm not as strong as you are."
"Sure!" she immediately responded, eager to show off to a fan of hers. AND it would be another opportunity to train up! "Actually, let's go about this right now!"
"Excellent!" The young man grinned widely. "Come this way, I know just the spot for our battle. Thank you so much for agreeing to this. You don't know how happy you've made me. I really was hoping you'd say yes."
"Hehe, it's okay. I'm just happy to have a fan!" She giggled excitedly, "Come on, I'll race you there!"
And then she zoomed off, following after her first fan to their new training spot. Despite her excitement, she didn't forget to send a quick text to the girls to let them know what was happening. Hopefully they could come over and watch!
This was going to be so cool!
(John POV)
With Lance's speech done, we were all finally allowed to retire and exit the stage. We all gathered around in one of the available meeting rooms provided by the stadium to host the meeting.
But having over twenty people stuffed into one meeting room was…very cramped. Especially when you consider people like Chuck and Surge needed more space than usual.
Lance began without any fanfare, explaining the need for all of us to remain alert for any future infiltrations by these criminals. No one, not even Pryce, disagreed on that point, and we all collectively promised to stay alert and ready to respond to outside threats – which practically meant making sure their branches of the Indigo Police were all well-funded and trained, and that the public could actually see us working together.
With that done, Lance moved on to addressing the more personal concerns of each respective Gyms. The rest of us just decided to use the time to mingle around, just chatting and building up connections with everyone here. I did my best to talk to Gym Leaders that I hadn't really interacted with yet, but I wasn't really sure how successful I was.
Agatha and Pryce almost instantly got into a verbal spar, spewing insults at each other. I don't think anyone expected anything different.
At least Jasmine seemed to be happy to talk to me. Though I suspected that was because of the hero-worship at play after what I did at Olivine.
It was then that I felt my phone ring, and I opened it happily as I saw that it was my sister calling.
"Hey, sis. What's up? Kinda in a meeting right now." I picked up.
But the person that responded was decidedly NOT my sister. "John, it's Sabrina. Can you get over here now?"
"Why? What's wrong?" I suddenly asked, recognizing the anger in her voice.
"It's Whitney. She...fought against someone she shouldn't have. And lost. But that's not the problem. He tricked her, and hurt two of her Pokémon badly. Intentionally so. She thought it was going to be a friendly match…but we're now at the Pokémon Center to recover. She's not taken this well." She explained curtly, but I could hear the distress in her voice.
"I'm coming over now." I replied, quickly hanging up the phone and immediately heading over there now.
I walked up to Lance, uncaring that I had just interrupted his conversation, "I need to leave. It's personal."
He looked surprised at the steel in my voice, and just nodded, "…Right, okay. If it's urgent, then I wish you all the best with whatever you're dealing with." I nodded, giving him a brief word of thanks before heading out.
My sudden departure drew some curious looks from a few people, but no one really tried to stop me, likely seeing the look I had on my face.
Except one.
"I know that look on your face." Giovanni whispered as he followed after me, "Do you need any help?"
"I'm not sure." I replied, not even stopping to look at him as my fists clenched in anger.
"But I intend to find out."
A.N. Something's happening! Find out more soon! But someone's about to have a bad time.
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