Floaroma Town sold extremely high-quality Sweet Honey. This ingredient was shipped to cities all over, and even exported overseas. It was affordable too, because Sweet Honey was an important ingredient in many local specialty dishes.
In even more distant regions, Sweet Honey was also used to make certain medicines.
If the Sweet Honey supply chain were cut off, it would affect restaurants in many places. The very best honey only came from the flower fields here. Supposedly, there was an even higher-grade "fearsome Sweet Honey" somewhere in Eterna Forest, guarded by a powerful Vespiquen, though no one had ever found it.
"If you smear that honey on certain trees, it attracts a ton of Pokémon that come to lick it up. Sometimes really rare ones show up too, like Heracross."
"So from the standpoint of Team Galactic using it to seize even more Pokémon... sure, the plan makes some sense. But..."
Of course, even Team Galactic's own commanders found the idea of stealing Sweet Honey a little odd.
Which was why, inside the Valley Windworks, after finishing the kidnapping, Jupiter was looking at Mars in total confusion.
"Why steal something like Sweet Honey when we could just buy it? It's only a hundred Poké Dollars a bottle, and even the high-quality stuff isn't expensive. Team Galactic has plenty of money. We're a major publicly traded corporation. We can get as much cheap food-grade material as we want. It's not like we're stealing some rare Pokémon. Even if we take it, we're just going to smear it on trees ourselves. How is that any different from buying it?"
"And if we're just going to snatch Pokémon in the flower fields, how is that any different from catching wild Pokémon directly? Why make it so complicated?"
Mars, who was also in the power plant, tilted her head toward her older colleague, thought for a moment, then gave a helpless shrug.
"Take everything. Seize it all. Throw away what we don't need. Isn't that Team Galactic's whole creed?"
"Besides, this plan was put together by Charon and Saturn, so if you've got a problem with it, go complain to them. That annoying little old man is right here, after all."
"You seem nervous. Why? Don't tell me one Trainer scared you that badly. Hahaha~"
Faced with Mars's mockery, Jupiter said nothing. She only wore that sweaty, strained look again.
Maybe it was instinct between strong opponents. Maybe it was just the same unease that had never really gone away. Either way, Jupiter truly felt that some kind of danger was approaching. It was only intuition. She had no concrete proof.
"In Floaroma Town... these past few days, I kept feeling like someone incredible had shown up in town. Not that Trainer. Someone else. But whatever this feeling is, that person can't be any less dangerous than him..."
"No way." Mars rested her chin on one hand, kneeling on her swivel chair with her toes hooked up as she spun around lazily. "There aren't many people in Sinnoh who can fight us. Even the Gym Leaders aren't our match."
"Floaroma Town is just a small-to-mid-sized town. Sure, the festival brought in some Trainers, but how strong could they be? Even if one of the Elite Four came, so what?"
"There are two of us. And this time we brought the heavy gear and support equipment too. The helicopter is ready to move at any time, the wave device is in place, and we pulled in plenty of lower-ranking personnel. Once we drain the power plant dry, half of Sinnoh will be left without electricity."
"And if anyone tries to stop us, we'll plant bombs here...!"
"Once the power goes out, the police and the Sinnoh League won't be able to track us nearly as effectively, right? All this energy is going to be used in the proper place. Just thinking about it gets me excited!"
Looking at Mars's upbeat, confident expression, Jupiter couldn't laugh.
She stepped into the corridor and looked out the window. The vast valley stretched on endlessly. Floaroma Town was still far from the Valley Windworks, separated by a great river.
"I just hope the people of Floaroma enjoy the next two days of festivities and nothing unexpected happens."
While Jupiter and Mars were talking, in a room deeper inside the power plant, a Team Galactic grunt with a bowl cut made his way toward the area where the hostages were being held. Behind him, the other Galactic grunts had all been poisoned unconscious, while a Croagunk croaked softly to itself.
"Just as Hikaru-sama said! If I wipe everyone out, then naturally no one will notice I snuck in!"
"I didn't expect them to move this fast... but now it's time for the International Police to show what we can do!"
"Getting ahead of the enemy like this... it feels great! I need to send Hikaru-sama a message right away..."
"Croagunk, use Brick Break. Uh, a little gentler!"
Floaroma Meadow.
There were unexpectedly many Team Galactic members in the flower fields, and they had already kidnapped the owner. At the same time, they were searching all over for Pokémon while smearing Sweet Honey onto the yellow honey trees. Both their numbers and their efficiency were far higher than in the original version.
In the games, you did not actually encounter Pokémon here at all, but in terms of the setting, quite a few species should appear here. For example...
"There are plenty of Grass- and Bug-type Pokémon around. If a Heracross shows up in a minute swinging that giant horn around and showing off how strong it is, then you'll know you were wrong."
Hikaru muttered the complaint dryly, while Dawn's battle had already begun.
Dawn's Piplup had not evolved yet, but its combat power was surprisingly high. A Team Galactic grunt's fighting strength was basically equal to free experience for somebody else. Of course, Hikaru also noticed that some of them were not actually weak.
But Dawn did not only have Piplup.
"Picking on the weak is pathetic! Kidnapping children is absolutely outrageous! I'm going to teach all of you a lesson!"
"W-Who the heck are you?!"
The grunt that Piplup had knocked down let out a terrified yell, then scrambled toward the flower field to call even more people over.
"After this battle, your Pokémon should evolve. Though your other Pokémon are pretty impressive too."
Hikaru looked at Dawn with some surprise, while this super-Sinnohian girl wore an expression that practically said, Good thing I was one step ahead.
But the way you were fighting, were you not just one-shotting everything?
Besides the Prince of the Sea, who could not battle yet, and the Togepi that would soon be entrusted to her, Dawn already had three Pokémon on hand.
But clearly, those were not the only ones she had caught. She had sent even more back to Professor Rowan's lab. The ones she kept with her were the ones she liked, or the ones she had some bond with, or little stories attached to.
And Hikaru keenly noticed something else.
"Your team still isn't fully formed, but... Piplup, Buizel, and Kabuto?"
Buizel was a Water-type Pokémon found all over Sinnoh. In the games, one of the earliest places you could encounter it was in the waters and grass around the Valley Windworks. And hey, this was one of Ash's major aces.
"And with the prince included... that makes four Water-types already!"
"It would be a waste not to play rain!"
Touko specialized in Fire.
Rosa specialized in Grass.
And Dawn here specialized in Water?!
So this is the protagonist-starter version, huh.
"Buizel? I met it near Sandgem Town."
Dawn answered naturally, not feeling that anything about this was strange.
"There's a beach near Sandgem Town. Sometimes some hard-to-find Water-type Pokémon show up there. After I got Piplup, I kept training, and later I happened to be wandering around the beach near Sandgem when I ran into this little guy."
"Piplup, pip!" Piplup waved its flippers too, indicating that catching Buizel back then had not been easy at all. It had been way stronger than Piplup was.
But Pokémon battles were not only about Pokémon.
Piplup wore a strange, smug smile, the kind that somehow looked both confident and obnoxious at the same time.
Cynthia said, "That Piplup seems awfully proud of whatever it's saying."
Hikaru replied, "It's saying Dawn caught that Buizel by hand. Piplup lost to it, and then Dawn hit it with a Poké Ball..."
Both Champions immediately wore deeply meaningful looks.
"I see. So just throwing Poké Balls at something really can..."
"No, that's not it! Buizel got mad at the time and used Aqua Jet on me. I thought I'd definitely be fine and would be able to beat it, but I ended up running really far! It kept chasing me, and I got a little annoyed, so I just hit it once with my backpack! Then it fainted!"
Hikaru said, "...The descendant of a hero should not be underestimated."
That instantly made Dawn very embarrassed, leaving her with no choice but to give an awkward but polite smile. Looking at Buizel's speechless stare beside her, Dawn could only sigh helplessly.
Maybe she should not have explained that.
In Hikaru-san's mind, she had now become some kind of violent girl.
Buizel also shook its head and spread its little paws in utter resignation.
It had never imagined it could be knocked out by a human swinging a backpack. It had never seen a battle style like that in its life. If you asked what move Backpack Attack was, the answer was simple: Backpack Attack was not a move. It was just a human girl smashing a backpack into its head.
As for Hikaru, he actually did not know Dawn's full team all that well, because game-Dawn was basically the player themself. And for the player, naturally, you could do whatever you wanted and catch whatever you wanted.
Still, when Dawn appeared as the professor's assistant, then in the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes, her likely team could include Empoleon, Froslass, Milotic, Clefable, Arcanine, Blastoise, Infernape, perhaps even Mamoswine as a nod to anime Dawn, along with Togekiss, Lopunny, and Ambipom. Sadly, no Pachirisu.
Hikaru thought it over for a moment.
"So then, Kabuto should be something you got from the Oreburgh Mine, right? Somebody gave you the fossil, and you went to have it revived?"
Dawn nodded. "Yep! Exactly! The fossil revival machine is amazing. It can bring a Pokémon from the distant ancient past back to life in an instant! How does that even work?"
In Generation Four, the fossil Pokémon were Cranidos and Shieldon. But those two had some issues with their typing and movepools, and their bulk and Speed were not especially outstanding either. Among fossil Pokémon, they were definitely not top-tier.
But Kabuto? Kabuto was great.
Once it evolved into Kabutops, and with Swift Swim doubling its Speed in rain, it could reach blistering speed and became one of the earliest true rain sweepers. There was even that old line: Let me see which slowpoke thinks it can run around in front of my Kabutops?
The so-called four great Swift Swim bros: Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, and Mega Swampert.
Then Rillaboom came along and ruined the whole career path. But in an environment without that stupid gorilla, and without absurd power creep, like battles in Sinnoh, Kabutops still hit extremely hard.
Honestly, not just Kabutops. Even Mega Swampert, one of the greatest rain juggernauts of all time, was terrified of that gorilla too. All you could say was that its existence had done incalculable damage to the battling environment.
Then again, thinking about how Generation Eight was full of nonsense like that, Hikaru could only force his frown to relax.
But right now... for Kabutops, restoring the glory of the original 151 was a duty it could not refuse.
"Mhm. I've revived Kabuto too. I'm actually raising a whole bunch of them in the Distortion World."
Hikaru nodded. "It was a Pokémon that flourished three hundred million years ago. People think it lived on beaches. In some places, it's said that living Kabuto can still occasionally be seen even now. Right... it never actually went extinct."
"Its appearance hasn't changed at all in three hundred million years. When it hides on the seafloor, it seems to use the eyes on its back to observe its surroundings, all while protecting itself with its hard shell. It sheds once every three days, making that shell harder and harder."
Kabuto was based on a horseshoe crab, or maybe a trilobite. Honestly, if you looked at it long enough, it was kind of cute. Its evolution, on the other hand, was vicious.
Dawn was full of interest too.
"Since I got Kabuto in the Oreburgh Mine, and there are lots of Rock-type Pokémon there that are good for battling and training, I stayed in Oreburgh City a little longer."
"But if you add the prince and Togepi, plus the Old Chateau Rotom, and then you can also get a Riolu Egg on Iron Island... that's actually a really strong lineup. It really is a rain team."
"That's already more than six. If you fight using seven Pokémon... mm-hmm, honestly that's fine. Volo and Akari did things like that too. And when you're dealing with villains, who cares about battle etiquette anyway? Everybody charge together."
There was no rain core like Pelipper or Politoed, but these Water-types could all set rain manually themselves, so in actual battle it was not too big a problem.
Still, Hikaru gave Dawn this advice.
"If you might end up catching seven, then why not just go straight to eight? The next thing you should catch is a Flying-type Pokémon. I strongly recommend Wingull. On the road to Canalave City, you'll have a chance to see those little seabirds. Catch one when you do. It'll be extremely useful for you."
"That thing is one of the true cores of a rain team."
Given the local conditions in Sinnoh, the Wingull and Pelipper that appeared here would probably be hard to find with Drizzle as their Ability. But for Hikaru, that was not really a problem.
Seeing Dawn's confused expression, Cynthia picked up the explanation with a smile.
"A rain team is a team built around the weather effect of rain. In other words, it uses weather as the core of its battle strategy."
"Honestly, weather teams came together somewhat by accident. Long ago, trainers in different regions already used local weather conditions as part of their tactics, so the history behind it is actually very old. But most of those strategies were based on regional climate and terrain."
"Two years ago, Hoenn suffered a massive natural disaster. Thunderstorms and drought split the entire region in half, and there were even violent fluctuations where it would turn sunny and then rainy in an instant. The battle between the super-ancient Pokémon caused terrible destruction, but for Pokémon Trainers, it was the first time they had truly witnessed the overwhelming power of weather."
"If you have a Pokémon that can automatically change the weather, then that gives you an advantage in battle. You can also use weather moves manually, of course, but in terms of range, influence, and sheer speed of activation, those are much slower than an Ability triggering on entry."
Seeing Dawn still a little lost, Cynthia laughed softly.
"You'll understand once you've fought with it in practice. Rain teams are extremely powerful. One of Hoenn's two Champions, former Sootopolis Gym Leader Wallace, is a master of rain teams. He's famous for specializing in Water-types."
"Of course, I haven't met him personally, but supposedly he intends to come to Sinnoh to hold a special Contest. As a Trainer, a Champion, a top Coordinator, a Gym Leader, and even an artist, that man is truly exceptional."
Hikaru added, "That includes the Rotom I want you to catch, and also Manaphy, the Prince of the Sea. They're both key members of a rain team. Under the power of rain, they can unleash combat strength that's hard to even measure."
Against most ordinary Trainers, and even against experts at the level of the three commanders, a single weather team could crush them completely. It was the same as Gold. So what if he only played sun teams? In the end, he still beat Pryce, right? Tell me sunshine had nothing to do with that.
Master one thing and master it completely. Once the sun goes up, it does not matter whether you are facing some "eternal ice wall" or even Arceus. You fight anyway.
"Flying, Electric, Water, Steel, and Grass. Those five types are the core of rain strategy."
As Hikaru spoke, he looked at the Team Galactic grunts gathering ahead.
"Dawn, your Pokémon are about to evolve. Wipe out all these people and that should do it."
"Piplup will evolve into Prinplup. Buizel will evolve into Floatzel. Kabuto, though, still won't be able to evolve just yet."
"Once they evolve, they'll gain even more power. And by the way... I've also got a new bracelet here that can let them learn unique powerful moves. Remember those moves, and grow even stronger."
"Though Piplup's Torrent Ability isn't all that useful."
Dawn looked very confused. "Torrent? Xiao Hui and Professor Rowan told me that it's an Ability that boosts Water-type power when its HP gets low. That sounds really strong. How could it not be useful?"
Cynthia, meanwhile, seemed to realize something.
"...Do you mean Piplup has a unique hidden Ability?"
"Professor Rowan only returned to Sinnoh not long ago, so the initial partner Pokémon here were only selected fairly recently. In other words..."
Hikaru nodded. "Of course I know."
Four years ago, Professor Rowan had still been in Kanto, working with Professor Oak on the classification and evolutionary research of the original 151. Even earlier than that, Cynthia had once received a Pokédex from Rowan and traveled through Sinnoh and beyond.
But that was already quite a while ago. Cynthia was now Champion, and the world's climate had changed in subtle ways. Before Egg Groups were fully understood, the League had no easy way to breed these Pokémon. Just like the Ranger Union, they were basically helpless when it came to Pokémon Eggs.
But once Egg Groups were figured out, not only did the League begin controlled breeding programs, but independent Day Cares also started popping up everywhere to handle hatching work. The whole process advanced very quickly.
Sinnoh was still a bit rural, though, and with its local professor gone for so long, the initial partners had not been firmly established at first. For example, Cynthia's starter had been... Gible.
"Piplup's unique Ability is incredible. Compared to Torrent, its hidden Ability brings out its true battle potential much better. And as far as I know, among powerful Pokémon with that Ability..."
"In the entire Sinnoh region, there's only this one example."
As Hikaru took out a carving knife and a block of wood, he crafted a simple wooden pendant at astonishing speed.
By then, the Team Galactic grunts had gathered around them. Some tried to flee the flower field, but Cynthia smiled faintly and tossed out a Poké Ball.
A strange laugh rang out, and an eerie storm of sinister wind suddenly swept through the flower field. The chilling gale covered the entire area.
A stone blazing with powerful spiritual energy appeared at Cynthia's side. From within the stone emerged a grotesque grinning face, like living fire or gas.
"None of you are leaving," Cynthia said with a smile. "From this point on, nobody gets out without battling."
She was still smiling, but there was something terrifying in that smile. A blade hidden behind velvet. For the Team Galactic grunts, though...
"Daring to oppose Team Galactic?! We'll show you what happens!"
"My, how scary." Cynthia turned to Dawn. "I'll leave this to you, Dawn."
"Yes, Cynthia-san..."
Dawn looked toward her Piplup. Under the effect of Hikaru's pendant, Piplup's pupils suddenly contracted.
The little penguin's expression changed several times in a row, and then it threw back its head and cried out.
"Pip-pip-lup!"
Piplup could feel that special power surging inside its body. Torrent retreated into hiding, and some other force that had long been buried deep within it began to reveal itself.
Most of the opposing team consisted of Poison-type Pokémon. Croagunk, Zubat, Stunky, and...
The little penguin kept swiveling its round head back and forth, seemingly searching for something. Dawn blinked.
"Piplup, what are you doing?"
"Pip, lup!"
Piplup threw a few shadowboxing punches. Its killing intent was rising by the second, but unfortunately it still had not found...
Huh?!
Then Piplup spotted an Ekans in the enemy lineup.
Its disappointed look vanished instantly, replaced by pure excitement and delight.
Its little flippers rubbed together furiously.
"Pip!"
It's Ekans!
Piplup spread its flippers and shouted across the field.
Finally found you!
Then Piplup crooked a flipper toward the opposing Ekans.
You. Come out here and fight me one-on-one.
"Ekans?"
Ekans only found this baffling. The little purple snake decided that the penguin on the other side had clearly lost its mind. Birds were prey. Snakes ate eggs and hunted small bird Pokémon. And yet this tiny penguin was actually provoking it?
Just because you're a penguin doesn't mean you're not on my menu. Today I'll show you what I can do.
Ability: Intimidate.
"Oh! Here it comes!" Hikaru snapped his fingers, and Piplup struck a pose that practically screamed, I've been waiting for this.
Piplup had a very strong sense of pride. It looked childishly cute on the outside, but it was proud and ambitious deep down, very much a prince-type Pokémon. Which meant it would never compromise on style.
Earlier, the fact that its Trainer was stronger than it was had bruised Piplup's pride a little. But because it liked Dawn, it had also decided that was fine. The contradiction in those feelings had left Piplup feeling pretty helpless. But now?
Dawn, just watch my back and give the order.
Hikaru said, "Ability: Competitive."
"When the opponent lowers one of its stats, its Special Attack rises by two stages for each stat lowered."
Watching this scene as a kid had instantly triggered the Ability.
Piplup struck a cool pose and took a shallow breath. Faced with Ekans's Intimidate, it glared right back. For an instant, its stats dropped... and then immediately reversed.
Its Special Attack rose sharply.
"Pip!"
Piplup looked at the now-stunned Ekans and gave it a mocking grin.
Its latent power had awakened.
You've got a lot of nerve trying to Intimidate me!
(End of Chapter)
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