The New Normal - 17-9

The New Normal – 17-9 – Intermission

Despite my new engagement to Cynthia, nothing really changed in the wider scope of things. Of course, every time I saw her newly adorned ring, a brand new smile would always grow on my face. Waking up every morning together was also another incredible source of joy.

It truly felt like we had finally begun living our lives together, as it was always meant to be.

We decided that there was no need for a marriage ceremony for the time being. We were both satisfied with just being engaged with each other now, and we didn’t really feel like we needed to host a proper wedding ceremony so soon – not when I’ve just moved to Sinnoh.

We spoke about it, and we both decided that our wedding should only take place after we’ve achieved most of our political ambitions. Therefore, the wedding ceremony would serve as a symbol that our political careers were winding down, and that it was time to focus more on building a family together. We didn’t exactly have an exact date for when this would be, but there was no rush.

After all, we still had our whole lives ahead of us.

Besides, the news were already reporting on the ring that Cynthia now sported on her left hand after she was spotted wearing it on one of our public dates together (she wasn’t exactly trying to hide it). Everyone knew where it had come from and what it symbolised, so for some time my phone was spammed with congratulatory messages from everyone that I knew. Not only that, but the fact that Cynthia was now engaged made our relationship all the more real for the rest of the public – it was proof that I wasn’t just dating her, I was serious about her.

And that the first high profile foreign couple was really about to happen.

Despite all the attention that we now got, our lives continued as normal, and time continued to fly by. Months had passed, and the two of us quickly settled into the new dynamic that we found ourselves in.

Most importantly, we came to an agreement about how we would interact professionally. While she was technically my superior through her position as Champion, she did not want to treat me as a subordinate. As we had promised all that time ago, we would be equals, and we worked hard to make sure that everyone else understood that too.

Therefore, while there was still a large disparity in our voting powers – as Champion, she was entitled with a far larger portion of the vote than I was, as my voting power was the same as any other Elite Four member – she made it clear that my opinion would be heavily considered when it came time to a vote.

Of course, we didn’t forget to include the Sinnoh Elite Four in the decision making process as well. I came to learn that Cynthia, much like Lance did, frequently hosted meetings with her Elite Four so that they could freely discuss any of the latest proposals that were being heard by the Committee. And generally, she would want for all of us to be completely united when it came to making decisions, as to demonstrate the unity between the upper leadership of the Sinnoh League.

And with that, my new life in Sinnoh proceeded smoothly. So my daily schedule in Sinnoh would generally be something like this:

Wake up early in the morning and head straight to the Temple of the Titan to deal with any administrative tasks that needed my attention. This usually took up most, if not all, of the morning. Then I’d participate in the training sessions with the Keepers to ensure that they maintained a good level of strength. Alternatively, if I had been requested to attend any meetings, I would attend those instead. After that was all done, I would deal with any miscellaneous tasks that needed to be handled on a case-by-case basis, and then the rest of the day was mine.

Overall, it wasn’t really any busier than what I was used to back when I was in Indigo. Truthfully, my new duties still allowed me to have a healthy amount of free time for myself, which I deeply appreciated. That gave me time to continue training up my Pokémon, or just spending time with Cynthia or my other friends.

It was a nice routine to have fallen into.

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(Candice POV)

At first, when she had heard from Cynthia that John would be moving into the Temple of the Titan as the newest Protector-Guardian of Sinnoh, she couldn’t deny being a bit nervous about it.

She didn’t have any ill feelings about John, of course. She knew him to be a trustworthy and thoroughly competent trainer, who would certainly uphold his new duties with the competence and conviction that she would expect from someone like him.

But that was the issue. A part of her, the more insecure side of her, worried that John might have been too competent for the role. And because of this, her duties and authority as Gym Leader of Snowpoint would be unavoidably challenged because of his newfound position. She knew that it wouldn’t even be intentional on John’s part – it was just from his sheer presence.

And that wasn’t even including his newfound engagement with their Champion either. Of course, she was very happy that her friend finally found the love that she deserved – Cynthia had made that very clear how happy she was when she had called her the day after John had proposed to her. Personally, she hadn’t been all that surprised by his proposal, knowing what she did of their relationship, as she felt like it was only a matter of time before one of them decided to propose to the other.

But fortunately, as she worked more with John, she was very relieved to find out that John was very careful about not trampling over her authority.

Ever since he had ascended to his new position, John had made frequent visits to the Snowpoint Gym, where he deliberately and publicly displayed his support for her leadership and authority. He had never told her explicitly, but she knew that he was doing this because he wanted the rest of Sinnoh to know that authority over Snowpoint City would be split between himself, her, and the local council, and that he had no intention of dominating it alone.

That made him a lot of fast friends from the councillors especially, who were very happy to see that they weren’t about to be sidelined.

Furthermore, through their new and frequent meetings, they had come to develop a fast friendship with each other. Even though they both had their own individual duties, whenever they had time to spare they would often get together to train and spar against each other. Occasionally, they would turn their training sessions into a larger thing as they roped in her Gym Trainers and John’s Keepers so that they could participate together as well.

Those training sessions became pseudo-community events for Snowpoint City, and eventually they allowed members of the public to join in and spectate their sessions every once in a while. That made Snowpoint City, even as freezing cold as it was, develop a much warmer dynamic with its citizens.

Not only that, but those sparring sessions were incredibly useful for her own Pokémon, as they got to fight against one of the strongest trainers in the world on a near daily basis. After training like that for several months, and with the guidance that John gave her based on his experience with other Ice type specialists, her Pokémon’s raw strength and firepower had improved by leaps and bounds.

For example, her Abomasnow was now capable of withstanding against several Fire Punches while under the Snow without going down. That was how much its defense had improved.

That was big progress.

Moreover, her Pokémon were not the only ones to benefit. Thanks to her newfound close association with John and Cynthia, she was occasionally able to learn about certain topics that were being discussed by the Sinnoh leadership that she normally wouldn’t be able to. Because of this, the Snowpoint Council had been treating her more respectfully, as they now recognised her growing political influence.

And she had done her best to make use of that growing influence. Inspired by John’s efforts in building up his vision for what he wanted for the Temple of the Titan, she was now far more active than she ever used to be in improving and reforming Snowpoint City. She now saw it clearly – Snowpoint City could be far more than just some sleepy city amidst the freezing cold. It had the potential to become much, much more than that.

That was where she really allowed her creativity and nascent ambition to shine, and she had spent many late nights thinking up how she could build up Snowpoint City and make her mark on the world. After much brainstorming, she had realised that one of the major roadblocks preventing Snowpoint City from becoming far more popular was the never-ending rain of thick and freezing snow that blanketed the entire city, no matter the season.

Understandably, the freezing weather conditions made the city a rather hostile place to live, since why would you choose to live up here when you could just as easily live in the other, more comfortable, cities and towns that Sinnoh had to offer.

Therefore, due to the cold, she realised that Snowpoint could never compete with the other cities in terms of the living conditions that it offered. So instead, they had to focus on something else that would encourage people to move into their city.

And then one night, after studying through many brochures about what the other cities had to offer, she had come to an epiphany about how they could develop Snowpoint in an unique direction – trainers schools.

Trainers schools were obviously quite abundant in Sinnoh, as it is the case for any region, but among them, only the trainer school located in Jubilife had any kind of prestige attached to it. The others were… functional, but nothing exceptional. When she was younger, she had attended the Snowpoint Trainer School as well, and so she had first-hand experience about how mediocre it was. If not for her own talents and a few lucky breaks, she would not have been able to reach the heights that she had from the training provided by the school alone.

However, this general sense of mediocrity amongst the trainers schools presented an opportunity for Snowpoint. If they could develop and have the best trainer school in all of Sinnoh, then she didn’t doubt that trainers would flock to their city to be able to join and learn from them, and they would even ignore the freezing weather conditions to do so.

What was even better was the presence of John, as his popularity and reputation as one of the strongest trainers in the world would definitely be a large boost in prestige for any trainers schools that were set up – if he was willing to teach there from time to time.

So she brought the idea to him and explained the rationale behind wanting to construct a prestigious trainer school in Snowpoint. Fortunately, John not only immediately agreed with her vision, but also offered to hunt down prominent trainers that would want to teach there.

To her utter surprise, he had even called up the newly retired Drake and asked if he was up to doing a brief stint as a teacher once the newly renovated trainer school was finished. Obviously, Drake’s participation would be a huge boon for them, and he even said that he would consider it.

Hearing that had floored her. She had never thought that a man like Drake would be willing to do something as mundane as teaching. But when she said that to John, he just smirked at her.

“Everyone thinks that Drake is nothing more than a blunt and rude man that only cares about battling.” He said, “But that’s not exactly true. Oh sure, he’s definitely that kind of person, but he’s also more than that. I know the man to be a surprisingly patient and attentive teacher for young trainers, so I’d figured something like this could be right up his alley now that he’s got all this free time. He probably wouldn’t do it for very long, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to give a few lessons from time to time.”

He chuckled, “Despite his gruff exterior, he’s quite the soft man on the inside. Though if he asks, you didn’t hear it from me.”

That aside, even if Drake didn’t end up joining in, between the two of them they should be able to attract enough prominent trainers to ensure that their newly renovated trainer school would be prestigious enough to attract all sorts of young and aspiring trainers to attend.

So with that settled, it wasn’t hard for them to convince the local council to approve of these developments.

And if that wasn’t enough, all of her recent actions did not go unnoticed by her peers or the wider public either. A few newspapers had caught on to her plans for Snowpoint, and it had definitely caught the interest of her peers.

Combined with their recognition of her growing strength, since some of her spars with John and the others were made public, and she could tell that her colleagues attributed a little more weight to her opinions during their discussions. Obviously, she wasn’t anywhere close from dominating their discussions, but it meant that they no longer looked at her as a ‘new’ Gym Leader. She felt like she was beginning to be treated as someone with more experience.

She had gushed to Cynthia all night when she noticed it, as she was all too happy to finally be ‘moving up’ in the world of politics.

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(Whitney POV)

Even though she probably should have been thinking more about her brother after he left for Sinnoh, her new duties as the Head Gym Trainer of the Goldenrod Gym had totally dominated her mind. With how busy she was handling all of her new responsibilities, she didn’t really have time to think about anything else.

Normally, her duties as Head Gym Trainer shouldn’t have been all that busy. But with Will suddenly leaving on such a short notice, there needed to be a lot of reshuffling around in the Gym – far more than even Hayden, their new Gym Leader, expected too.

It also didn’t help that as a young newcomer, she didn’t have the respect of her other Gym Trainers when she was appointed. Sure, she might have worked at other Gyms before and was commended for her efforts there, but her Gym Trainers didn’t care about that at all. All they saw was that someone younger than them had just slid in and took the position of Head Gym Trainer away from them.

It didn’t help that Hayden was nowhere near as respected or as well-liked as Will was. Sure, Will made it clear before he left for the Elite Four that Hayden was to be his successor, AND he did explain the reasons why he had chosen to appoint Whitney as the Head Gym Trainer. Yet now that he was gone, his reasonings mattered far less to those that remained.

As a result, if the extra administrative duties that she had to deal with wasn’t enough, she was also scrambling to try and reinforce her newfound authority over her the other Gym Trainers.

Therefore, the only time she had even thought about her brother’s departure was when he texted the family group chat saying that he had proposed to Cynthia. That had been a nice distraction, and she was very happy for the both of them, but within the hour she was back to the grind.

However, as time passed, her duties became more and more manageable for her to handle as things gradually settled down. She had forced her Gym Trainers to respect her by challenging all of them to a fight – using Psychic Pokémon only – and still managing to dominate them regardless. During those battles, besides the use of her Farigiraf, she had only made use of Gym Pokémon to defeat all of the other Gym Trainers.

They respected her more after that, because she had demonstrated that she had the strength – even while handicapping herself – to stand as their superior as a Psychic specialist.

Her training and time at the Saffron Gym had really paid off here.

And now that the Gym Trainers had fallen in line, they were also helping out with her workload from time to time as well, making things much easier for her.

Which allowed her to focus on her own goals – namely, becoming Gym Leader.

During her time at the Goldenrod Gym, she had spoken many times with Hayden privately about her ambitions to become Gym Leader, as she saw no reason to be secretive with it when he already knew about it.

The thing was, Hayden wasn’t actually against her replacing him as the Gym Leader. After taking on the duties for himself, he found that he wasn’t all that suited to the public-facing aspect of it. Hayden was a competent administrator, but he was no politician or public speaker. He had admitted to her that he found that part of being a Gym Leader to be highly stressful, and because of that, he realised that he didn’t really want to be Gym Leader in the long-term.

However, that didn’t mean that he was willing to step down and just hand the position over just like that.

She had come to learn, and seen first-hand, that Hayden’s first priority was always going to be the prosperity of Goldenrod City, and despite not being the most suited for the position of Gym Leader, he worked very hard to try and maintain the same level of prestige and respect that Will had managed to achieve during his time as Gym Leader.

Therefore, he very reasonably worried that if Goldenrod were to suddenly transition through another change in Gym Leaders so soon, it would send a bad message to the rest of the world. It might seem like Goldenrod was weak and/or incompetent, which was not something any of them wanted to happen.

Furthermore, Whitney had not yet reached her majority, so it would be difficult for the public to accept her appointment.

It would be different had she been some kind of genius talent like the psychic twins or Iris, but sadly, she wasn’t. Her achievements were extensive, and would have impressed many, but it still wasn’t enough for her to automatically become a Gym Leader.

Despite this, she wasn’t impatient – she could wait a few more years. One of the main reasons why she wanted to become Gym Leader was because she didn’t want to be left behind compared to her friends, who were all slated to become Gym Leader themselves. Yet, right now, only Janine was a Gym Leader. Sabrina was still working under Samson, and according to her, she wouldn’t be replacing him anytime soon.

But while she couldn’t be a Gym Leader yet, there was no reason why she couldn’t start making preparations for it.

To that end, she had found an unexpected ally in her quest to become a Gym Leader. After finding out about her intentions, the man had reached out to her and offered her not only advice, but the necessary connections to make her transition into a Gym Leader all the more smoother.

And that person was none other than Gym Leader Giovanni.

“Why wouldn’t I help one of Silver’s first friends?” He had asked her rhetorically, “Feel free to come to me for anything, I’ll do all that I can to help out.”

She knew that he was being sincere and wouldn’t accept any refusal, so she just bowed to him, “Thank you, Giovanni. I promise to repay you for all this help one day.”

He smirked, “Well… perhaps you could make Silver into a Gym Trainer one day – if he wants to go down that path. It’d be better for him to work at a Gym that isn’t run by his father, since there’ll be less accusations of nepotism that way. And knowing how close you two are, both Ariana and I trust you to look after him and assist with his training when he’s there.”

She nodded easily; that would be an easy request for her to accommodate.

And with Giovanni’s advice and introductions, she was able to reach out and introduce herself properly with several other Gym Leaders that she felt like she would get along well with in order for her to start building up a political bloc for herself.

The two Gym Leaders she chose to reach out to first were the Waterflower sisters and Brock. They were of similar age to her, and they already had an established connection with both John and Karen respectively. So it was pretty easy to get along with them since they were basically almost friends already.

Combined with her existing friendship with Sabrina and Janine, she hoped that they could all ally with each other so that their group of five Gym Leaders would become an influential part of the local political ecosystem.

Additionally, Giovanni’s introductions also allowed her to speak briefly with other Gym Leaders like Erika, Bugsy, and Jasmine. They weren’t as immediately welcoming as the others were, but she hoped that, with time, she would be able to befriend and ally herself with them too.

It would be a massive boon to her influence if she could do so.

Of course, she didn’t forget to continue training up and strengthening her team in-between all of this politicking. To that end, she had even caught herself a new Aipom to join her team. And now she was training both it and her new Herdier (which had now evolved into a Stoutland) as the latest additions to her team.

While Aipom was still very much a work-in-progress, Stoutland had proven himself to be one of her best physical attackers on her team – only beaten out by Miltank. He was also extremely well-rounded, boasting high defenses, decent speed, and a solid attack, which meant that there were very few situations where Stoutland wouldn’t be a decent choice.

She just hoped that she would have an opportunity to show off that strength soon.

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(Lorelei POV)

“John is gone now. Your biggest competitor has decided to abandon his post and followed after his ‘love’. So it’s time for you to take his place.”

Those were the words that her uncle told her right after John’s departure for Sinnoh, and she couldn’t deny that he was right.

Now that John was gone, there was a small power vacuum in the Indigo Elite Four as the position to be Lance’s right-hand man (or woman) was now open. Of course, since they were all friends, it wasn’t like the competition was all that serious, but they all had their own ambitions they wanted to accomplish.

Therefore, as advised by Pryce, she had done her best to take the lead in becoming John’s replacement. And thanks to the fact that she was head of the International Police, which had only been growing in influence throughout the past few years, she had the distinct advantage over her peers.

Which was why she was now angling to have the International Police be thrown into the forefront of people’s mind once again – by establishing their influence over Unova as well. Besides, there was a good cause for this, as there was a very real need to take down PLASMA before they could grow any more dangerous.

Fortunately, her task was made easier by the fact that Lance was fully aligned with her in this respect.

Eventually, after far too many discussions with Unova, they got the approval that they wanted to START having the International Police cooperate with the Unova police for certain matters – mostly financial crime. It wasn’t full authorisation for now, though it was a good start.

But even then, they still had their sights on PLASMA, and now they were just waiting for the sufficient evidence to justify a full-on investigation.

And from the reports they were receiving from Looker, that might come soon.

A.N. A catchup and mostly politics-focused chapter with what’s been happening during a timeskip. I wanted to make sure that sufficient focus was placed on what was happening back in Indigo, since I didn’t want to seem like I had abandoned it now that John was no longer there.

So yes, I wanted to show that with this chapter that the world is still turning and moving, and all three characters here are developing their influence in different ways. Candice is starting to take the lead in local politics, Whitney is paving the way for her future success, and Lorelei is doing her best to earn her place as Lance’s second. Hope you enjoyed!