Cp: Chapter 2 A Not So Champion's Return Home (Patreon)

*News out of Sinnoh today, as the International Police continue to uncover more on the terrorist group known as Team Galactic. Kelly Caudry, the head of the public relations department for Sinnoh's International Police branch, had this to say: “We are still in the process of uncovering and raiding hideouts linked to the terrorist group known as Team Galactic. Though most sights uncovered have been deemed abandoned. However, we continue to stress that people remain vigilant of the fractured group and that any and all suspicious activity be reported to the closet authorities."

Most of the terrorist organization’s leaders and most of its grunts were apprehended a month ago during the Mt. Coronet incident that shook the Sinnoh region to its core, but many still remain on the run. If you have any information on any Team Galactic activity in your area, don't hesitate to contact your nearest police station. And do not try to apprehend the criminals as they are considered armed and dangerous.

If you wish to learn more about the Team Galactic/ Mt. Coronet incident, click the link below. *

Sarah Silver tapped the link at the bottom of the article and watched as her phone loaded up the related report.

*Team Galactic, a secret organization out of Sinnoh, was officially ruled a terrorist organization a week ago by Sinnoh's authorities for trying to use legendary Pokémon to commit mass genocide.

It was reported that the fanatic group sought to use the mythical Pokémon Dialga and Palkia to create their own world, which they would rule over. As crazy as it sounds, the criminal organization came close to achieving their goals if not for an unnamed International Police agent and a group of trainers who intervened at a crucial moment in the group’s plans.

Multiple news agencies, as well as our own, have enquired about the name of the agent or the heroic trainers involved in the incident, but the International Police have continued to refuse to name the parties involved, quote saying, “We will not disclose the name of our agents nor the trainers that asked to remain anonymous. The International Police will respect the wishes of those who put their lives on the line to save Sinnoh.”

Many speculate Sinnoh's champion Cynthia was the trainer responsible for assisting the International Police, having reportedly been seen in the area shortly before the incident occurred. Still, the champion has refused to comment on anything that may or may not have happened on that day.

This is the second time in as many years that an organization has tried to control a pair of mythical Pokémon. Experts continue to stress the danger of trying to control such strong Pokémon, and we would have to agree.

One would think that after the Team Aqua/Team Magma incident in Hoenn last year, people would see the folly of trying to control Pokémon believed to have shaped this world. People need to realize that they shouldn't be greedy and crave power they have no right wielding. *

Sarah glanced through the rest of the article until it became apparent that the rest was just a bunch of ramblings about the ethicacy of trying to catch legendary Pokémon and that it didn’t have any new information for her.

Letting out a tired sigh, Sarah taps the button on the side of her phone, closing the screen. There was no news regarding the possibility of shutting down or postponing the Sinnoh league, so that was a good sign. But who knew if that would hold for the next season.

“They probably don’t want to appear weak,” Sarah mumbles to herself as she glances out the window. There was an endless sea below, but you could see the first signs of land in the distance. The trip back to Johto from Hoenn was longer and more boring than expected.

All Sarah could do was stare at her reflection in the window. Sarah’s eyes, a beautiful silver color she inherited from her mother’s side of the family and where they got their name from, studied her somewhat ragged appearance. Her brown hair was all over the place after being cramped in the airship for the last two days. She’d need to see a stylist after she settled in back home. Sarah preferred to keep her hair down, but it'd grown longer than she liked over the last four months.

Her journey didn't just take a toll on her hair; Sarah’s clothes weren’t in much better shape. The black leggings she was wearing were sun-bleached from her travels and sported more than a few rips and tears. Her modest green top was likewise faded but in slightly better condition than her leggings. Sarah had a light tan when she left for Hoenn, which had only grown darker thanks to her time outdoors. Maybe I should bring a sun hat with me on my next journey? Sarah thought to herself.

The quicker the airship made it back to Joto, the quicker she could get home where a shower with her name on it was waiting. If only this flying tub would move faster!

It would’ve been nice if Sarah could’ve taken a plane rather than a blimp, but her Jr. league license only offered the basics of amenities when it came to travel. For example, trainers could use their licenses to travel to other regions for free, only so long as they participated in that region's Pokémon League. But even with the travel accommodations being free, it didn’t mean that they were good.

When trainers request travel to another region, they get no say in how they got there. Boats were the most common type of transportation offered to trainers, but sometimes you could get lucky and snag a spot on an airship as Sarah did.

Sarah heard stories of trainers that got free airline tickets, but those were all from a friend of a friend, never themselves. No, the only way to travel by plane was to fork over the money yourself, and Sarah had a hard enough time convincing her parents to let her travel to Hoenn; she sure as hell wasn't going to ask for travel expenses on top of that.

But then again, it was probably because she was traveling from Hoenn right now that she was given a seat on an airship in the first place. At the end of the month, the Advance League closed, and it would've taken a miracle to secure a ticket on a blimp. Something that Sarah will have to look forward to next year.

You see, Sarah was turning sixteen next month, meaning she would no longer qualify for the Jr. Leagues and would be bumped up to the Advance conferences.

Nineteen years ago, before Sarah was born, the various region’s champions got together and held a discussion regarding the standardization of the league system. For generations, the decision was left up to parents, with the only restriction being that the child had to be at least ten years old before they qualified for a trainer’s license.

This cultural phenomenon stemmed from decades of fighting between the various regions Fifty some odd years ago, where all children were expected to interact with Pokémon for safety reasons.

Of course, with the regions united now and less antagonistic to one another, it became less and less of a necessity for children to train their own Pokémon. At that point, the trainers' age limit was bumped up to a more understandable thirteen.

The age bump ended up making a huge difference. Fewer children and Pokémon were reported injured, and more importantly, the mortality rate for trainers plummeted by over 60%. Pretty much everyone agreed that the change was for the better, but the champion’s gathering almost twenty years ago sought to improve those odds further.

After six months of deliberation, headed by the then Kanto champion Samuel Oak, the current league system was born. Rather than raise the age limit even further and risk opposition from the Traditionalists who believe children should be exposed to Pokémon as early as possible, the champions decided to separate the leagues into age groups.

If you were between thirteen and fifteen, you were placed in the Jr. League, which ran from March to June. Then from sixteen to eighteen, you were in the Advance League, or "league" for short, their season went from February to July. After that was the Champions League for those over 18, and it ran from February to September. Splitting the leagues like this made tournaments a lot fairer for all involved.

Before the split, it was common for every tournament to be dominated solely by the oldest trainers. Pokémon grow stronger the longer they battle, meaning even the most talented of first years couldn’t hope to stand up to a veteran trainer who had more than a few years of experience under their belt.

She may not be entering the Hero League yet, but Sarah was still excited to move out of the Jr. brackets. The Jr. League was too stifling for someone like Sarah who wanted to travel off the beaten path. Sarah had learned in school about all the limitations placed on Jr. trainers, but it wasn’t until she experienced it firsthand that she truly learned just how strict they were. She was happy that this was her first and last year of being a Jr. trainer.

Sarah could’ve started her journey when she was thirteen, but her parents thought she was still too young to leave Johto. And if she couldn’t leave Johto, Sarah saw little reason to start her journey.

Only after jumping through numerous hoops and pointing out to her parents that it could be dangerous if she didn't have any real-world experience did her parents reluctantly agree to Sarah’s trip to Hoenn this year. And what a trip it was, and not in a good way.

Three main obstacles severely cut down on Sarah’s traveling time. The first problem Sarah ran into was that she wasn’t allowed to leave the routes set by the Hoenn league for the Jr. trainers. For some reason, Sarah had it in her head that the area considered in-bounds would be a lot bigger than it turned out to be, but oh boy, was she wrong.

If you were traveling through the forest, you had to follow the signs. Hiking through the mountains, you better believe there was a designated trail. No matter where Sarah traveled, she was never allowed more than a few hundred feet from the designated path. This severely cut down on the Pokémon Sarah could encounter and honestly took a lot of the fun out of her traveling.

Multiple Pokémon Rangers patrolled each route and would immediately escort trainers back to the trail should they stray too far. It was difficult for Sarah’s considering her number one goal for leaving Johto was because she wanted to explore more of the world. She might have tried to push the boundaries more if she wouldn't be sighted for trying to leave the designated routes. A trainer only got three warnings before their license was revoked for the year.

The second major roadblock Sarah encountered only further complicated things; she had to report to a Pokémon center every three days. Only Jr. trainers were required to follow this rule but combined with sticking to the well-traveled paths; it was tough searching for the Pokémon she wanted to catch.

Trainers were expected to select their Pokémon carefully, seeing how once they were caught and acclimated to humans, it was virtually impossible to release a Pokémon back into the wild. Suppose you caught a Pokémon that was too timid for battle, well then too bad because it was expected for the trainer to find a suitable home for it rather than releasing it outright. Meaning trainers had to be extra selective of the Pokémon they try to capture, lest they risk a drain on their resources.

Now Sarah might've been able to deal with the small hunting area and need to check in every three days, but what she couldn't stand were the training camps Jr. trainers were required to attend. The camps were there to teach new trainers the skills they would need when they turn sixteen and enter the Advance league. Most of the camps were centered around survival classes, such as identifying and avoiding an aggressive Pokémon and distinguishing the various barriers one could find in the wild. All valuable skills, but one's Sarah had already learned from her family.

Both of Sarah’s older brother and sister had already completed their journeys, and over the last two years, the two of them had taught Sarah everything she needed to know about roughing it outdoors. Combined with her time helping her parents raise Pokémon on the ranch, Sarah was vastly overqualified for the Jr. leagues.

Sarah understood why there were so many limitations and why the camps existed. For many kids, this was their first time interacting with wild Pokémon, and no one wanted a teenager mishandling a dangerous animal. However, that didn't mean she had to like it.

But the data released from the leagues each year credited these programs to the lower trainer mortality rate, which was almost nonexistent these days. Of course, every year, you hear horror stories of a new trainer running into a swarm of Beedrill or falling off a cliff. But seeing how there were hundreds of thousands of trainers throughout the various regions and only a handful of deaths each year, being a Pokémon trainer was relatively safe. You were more likely to die in a car accident in the city than die on a Pokémon journey. That is as long as you didn’t do something stupid.

And Sarah’s wasn’t stupid; she and her two older siblings had been helping their parents take care of unruly Pokémon ever since they could walk.

That might be a slight exaggeration, but the point was Sarah knew what she was doing. She could tell when a Pokémon was angry, how to customize its diet, proper grooming, everything. If she wasn’t forced to participate in all those training camps, Sarah was sure she would’ve caught more than two Pokémon and earned more than three badges before the Jr. League season came to a close.

“Well, it wasn’t all bad,” Sarah affectionately patted her handbag that contained her three Pokémon. She couldn’t wait to show her family the two cuties she caught on her short journey.

But Sarah would still have to wait a bit longer for that; it was only recently you could see the towering buildings of Goldenrod City off in the distance after all. Again, Sarah wished she had asked her parents to buy her a plane ticket.

Feeling bored again and not wanting to think about her uneventful first journey, Sarah picked up her phone and switched it back on. Besides, next year would be better. The Advance League ran for two months longer than the Jr. season, giving her a lot longer to explore. Plus, Sarah wouldn't be required to stop by any of those annoying training camps. If she played her cards right and tried really hard, Sarah was sure she could make it into the Sinnoh League Conference.

That is if her parents let her go. They tried to talk Sarah out of going to Hoenn after the whole Team Aqua/Team Maga incident last year, and they'll probably do the same again after what happened in Sinnoh with Team Galactic.

Sarah couldn't understand why her parents would be worried; with all the international Police running around Sinnoh, it was probably the safest region at the moment. Safer than Johto anyway. Word had it that Team Rocket has been a lot more active lately. Between the problems in Sinnoh and keeping an eye on Hoenn, the International Police don't have the human resources to focus on Team Rocket, and it showed.

People don’t like to talk about it, but Team Rocket was growing. A few years ago, you might hear about them causing trouble now and again, but recently everything's been quiet and not because they were gone. Team Rocket evolved from a snatch and grab gang to a criminal empire in a relatively short time. Five years ago, they were virtually unheard of. Now, it was estimated Team Rocket owned a quarter of the business in Goldenrod City, but nothing could be proven. It's a very much don't ask don't tell sort of thing.

There were some posts on message boards that Team Rocket grunts appeared in Sinnoh along with Team Galactic, but many quickly brushed it off as a coincidence or hoax and nothing more. Sarah was actually a little suspicious about how little the news gained traction. It was almost as if someone was actively trying to silence any word about Team Rocket’s activity. No matter how far back she scrolled through the message boards, to this day, Sarah couldn’t find the original post, almost like it never existed in the first place.

Some people say that the world was entering another era of conflict, and if you only looked at everything that’s happened recently, you might have to agree with them.

However, Sarah wasn't convinced. Sure, there were evil people in the world, but the number of good people far outnumbered them. Just take the incident at Mt. Coronet as a perfect example. Team Galactic had secretly grown for years behind the business persona of its leader Cyrus. Still, they were stopped by a group of concerned trainers and a single International Police agent when it came down to it. It just goes to show you what a few good people could accomplish.

Though Sarah would appreciate it if evil organizations stopped springing up in the regions she planned to visit. But then again, it didn't matter much because Sarah refused to cancel her trip to Sinnoh no matter what.

Brushing a strand of her brown hair out of her face, Sarah pulls up her favorite message board, Pokémon Now, on her phone. Her favorite thread was pinned to the top of the webpage, titled Legendries Spotted.

It was one of the most popular threads on the site, dedicated solely to peoples first had accounts of spotting legendary Pokémon in the wild. Most of the stories were nothing but tall tales fabricated by attention-seeking people, but if you knew where to look and which user names were legit, the thread was a wealth of information.

Legendary Pokémon were a hotly debated subject globally, and news agencies were rightfully hesitant to report on their locations unless it happened to pertain to a disaster of some kind.

If a news agency did say where a legendary was sighted, they could be sued for numerous reasons. Idiots flocked to such places, and it wasn't unheard of them to be attacked by the angry legendary.

While many people believe legendary Pokémon should be left alone, a growing number of people have started voicing their beliefs that legendary Pokémon should be caught and tamed like any other species of Pokémon. Now that sounds good on paper, that is until you remember that you were talking about legendary Pokémon, Pokémon born with a level of power unmatched by your average trainer raised Pokémon. Only elite-level trainers have Pokémon capable of standing up to a legendry’s might, and even fewer can hope to catch one. However, those who manage to snag one of the legendary creatures will find that their lives will never be the same.

Sarah didn’t hold any hope of ever catching a legendary Pokémon, being a new trainer and all, and despite the risk, it was still her dream to at least see one in the flesh. And it just so happened that one of her three favorite legendary Pokémon was recently spotted in Sinnoh, Entei.

The volcano Pokémon was a subject of many Johto legends. Sarah had grown up listening to her parents tell her stories about the three legendary beasts, and ever since then, she'd dreamed of meeting the trio. And now, one of the elusive Pokémon was spotted around Stark Mountain near Sinnoh's Pokémon league, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Sarah.

Usually, Sarah would try not to get her hopes up, but the post came from Legend_Hunter6969. And despite their online handle, Legend_Hunter6969 was a highly respectable Pokémon photographer specializing in taking pictures of legendary Pokémon. He and a select group of other legendary photographers have grown quite popular over the last few years, along with the growth of the internet.

Rather than working for researchers or other third parties, Legend_Hunter6969 and his fellow hunters make their living off donations. For $60 a year, people could see their exclusive videos and photos of legendary Pokémon in the wild.

Sarah had been following him for the past year, and in that time, Legend_Hunter6969 had captured amazing photos of multiple legendary Pokémon. He snagged pictures of Tapu Lele on Akala Island in the Alolan islands, a Zapdos in its nest high in the mountains, and his most recent post was a group photo of four phione in the waters outside Sinnoh’s Chocovine Town. Each post was more astounding than the last.

Legend_Hunter6969 regularly posts updates on Pokémon Now, and just as Sarah had set out for her Hoenn adventure four months ago, he posted a single image of an Entai majestically standing on a cliff near Stark Mountain’s summit. Legend_Hunter6969 had been there looking for pictures of a Heatran who was known to live in the volcano, but instead, he caught sight of Entei.

Sarah wished she could’ve dropped everything and headed to Sinnoh as soon as she saw the picture; however, she'd already registered for the Hoenn League. As a new trainer, she couldn't afford the penalties associated with not participating in a league she'd already registered for.

Thankfully for Sarah, there was still a good chance the Entei was still somewhere around Stark Mountain and would probably stay there in the near future if the legends about the Pokémon were true.

It’s said every time an Entei roars, a volcano somewhere erupts. Sarah wasn’t sure how accurate that was, but scientists have noted that Entei were spotted more frequently around active volcanos. And with volcanologists reporting Stark Mountain entering a more active phase for the foreseeable future, the Entei was more likely to stick around. So as long as Sarah made it to Stark Mountain over the next few years, there was a slight chance that she could finally meet one of the three legendary beasts.

Staring at her phone, Sarah found her hands getting sweaty as her heartbeat slowly picked up, picturing meeting the legendary volcano Pokémon in the flesh.

“But first things first,” Sarah exhaled. She would need to convince her parents that it was safe to go to Sinnoh, then train her Pokémon to the point she could make it to Stark Mountain. The mountain wasn't too far off the league-approved routes, but that area specifically was only accessible to advanced-level trainers. Aka- league trainers who've earned eight Sinnoh badges and were qualified for the Lily of the Valley Conference.

Sarah knew that it was a longshot that she’d get all eight gym badges in one league season, but she would try. After all, it had been done before. This year alone, there were multiple first-year league trainers already qualified for the Lily of the Valley Conference.

Backing out of the Legendries Spotted thread, Sarah scrolled through her phone until she spotted the link she was searching for. Clicking on it, Sarah was taken to a page of names. Each name was someone who’d collected eight of Sinnoh’s gym badges and had already registered for the advance version of the Lily of the Valley Conference.

There were hundreds of names, each linked to the trainer's bio. Like every year, the admins flagged trainers they believe will pass the initial screening process and make it into the conference proper. Two of the flagged trainers were sixteen, meaning they had qualified for the conference during their first Advance League. One was the brother of a former conference champion, while the other was a boy from Kanto, Johto's sister region. Both had earned eight badges in only five months which was extremely impressive.

If only either of them had a chance of winning.

At the top of the list of trainers was a single name that was flashing, demanding everyone who saw it to click on it. The name was Tobias, no last name. The leagues don't require a person's name on your ID, but it's generally known that if you make a big enough splash in any region, your information would eventually get out there.

That said, there was nothing on Tobias. No last name, no hometown, no nothing. Besides his name and age, there was only one piece of information on Tobias, and that was that he had a Darkrai. With that one Pokémon, Tobias swept all eight of his gym challenges in a record time of six weeks. Tobias was an actual Legendary trainer, a title given to someone who commands a legendary Pokémon.

At the bottom of his profile, there was a post by Pokémon Now's admins asking for any information anybody had on the boy. But again, there was nothing. Tobias was eighteen, and yet this was his first recorded year of entering a league of any kind; he essentially came out of nowhere and flipped Sinnoh’s rumor mill on its head. Sarah could guess the only reason the news agencies weren’t clamoring over this new dark Ponyta in the race was because of the issue with Team Galactic was even more significant than a new Legendary Trainer appearing. After all, it had been a month since team galactic was stopped, and only now did authorities have a somewhat proper understanding of the repercussions of Team Galactic’s summoning of Dialga and Palkia.

The energy spikes the two legendries emitted when they were summoned fried thousands of computers and other expensive equipment across the continent, though most of the damage was contained to Sinnoh. Scientists warned that the latent energy released might even affect the weather for months to come. Parts of Mt. Coronet were still sealed off from the public and will likely be that way for a while.

The rulers of time and space, Dialga and Palkia, Sarah thought to herself. I wonder what they were like? Sarah fantasized about what meeting the two would be like as the airship started its descent into Goldenrod city.

To home.

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4,400 words.

What did you think? I looked up how copyright laws apply to fanfiction, and as long as I make most of the story original, there shouldn't be any problems, and I hope this chapter is a good representation of that.

I wanted to establish how this world was different from the games and anime, yet still similar, and I think I switched things up enough.

I’ll eventually reference more people like gym leaders, and to a small degree Ash, but this isn't their story; it's Sarah and Ryan's.

Please give me your thoughts on everything, grammar, the point of view, anything you can think of. I’m trying an entirely different writing style as compared to Magic-Smithing.

I hope you all liked it, and as always, stay safe.