....
The lack of cream-colored whiskers along both sides of his cheeks made his identity obvious right away.
The first one to emerge was Patch.
Compared to an average Rattata, which stood around a foot tall and weighed only a few pounds, the Raticate in front of them looked enormous.
A full-grown Raticate could easily stand around two feet tall and weigh over forty pounds.
Of course, standing in front of an Audino, he still did not quite dominate the comparison in either height or bulk.
"How does it feel?" Julian asked with a smile as he walked up to him.
From one angle, Pokemon evolution was a kind of life upgrade.
Most of the time, it was a good thing.
But not always.
There were rare cases where evolving did not automatically mean everything got better.
A natural physical defect was one of those cases.
Patch's answer proved that Julian's concern had been justified.
Because after evolving, things had actually become more difficult for him.
"I can feel the overall boost in my body. It is incredible, like I am overflowing with strength. But this body is a lot harder for me to control." Patch said, lowering his head. The disappointment in his eyes was impossible to miss.
Whether they were Rattata or Raticate, their whiskers played a major role in balance.
For Patch, who had been born without them, adapting to life as a Rattata had already taken a tremendous amount of effort.
Now he had evolved into a Raticate, and the difference in size compared to before was massive.
That meant all the work he had done to adapt was suddenly outdated.
He had to start over from scratch.
Before the evolution, Scar and the other older Rattata had all supported the idea of Patch taking over as the new leader and carrying on the late chief's legacy.
The Pokemon world was not as tangled and political as the human world.
Out here, strength meant everything.
And Patch had been one of the strongest fighters in the colony, so naturally, he had not tried to dodge the role.
He had already stepped into the spotlight.
But now his confidence had been shaken.
If he was struggling just to move properly, how could he possibly lead the colony toward a better future?
The answer felt obvious, and not in a good way.
"Do not rush it. Take it one step at a time." Julian said.
He wanted to help.
Unfortunately, this was one of the few problems he really could not solve for someone else.
He had gone through the process of adjusting to a new body himself, and because he had lived it, he knew the truth.
That road had to be walked alone.
No one else could map out those tiny adjustments for you.
No one else could share the exact progress except the one living inside that body.
It was a lonely kind of challenge.
Still, if Patch could overcome the problem again and master his evolved body, then his combat power would rise quickly. Returning to the top tier of the colony would not be a problem.
That said, in his current condition, he was clearly no longer in shape to take on the burden of being the colony's new leader.
Which meant that the Rattata colony, having only just survived its predator crisis, had immediately fallen into a brand new problem.
Who would become the new chief?
Night came again before the rest of the evolved Raticate finally emerged from their burrows.
The number was higher than Julian had expected.
There were six in total.
Including Patch, four of them came from the elite trainees Julian had personally coached.
The other two were Scar and one of Scar's followers.
The four elite trainees made perfect sense.
Julian had never held anything back from them. The same skills he taught Patch, he taught to the others as well. And every major battle Patch had fought, they had fought too.
With Patch's evolution wave acting like a trigger, it was only natural that they would break through as well.
Scar's evolution had also been within Julian's expectations.
He had quietly guessed that it might happen soon.
The real surprise was Scar's subordinate.
That one had not been on Julian's radar at all.
Even so, after evolving, he gave off the weakest presence among the six.
That said a lot.
His talent simply was not on the same level as the other five.
Where the others felt like a smooth and natural progression, his evolution felt more forced, more like he had barely managed to squeeze through the door.
The sight of six Raticate appearing in the colony sent the Rattata into another round of celebration.
But once the excitement settled, a new problem started taking shape in everyone's mind.
...
In the past, a colony would only produce one Raticate at a time.
That meant choosing a leader was simple.
No debate. No confusion.
Now there were six.
So what happened now?
Choose one, and what about the other five?
Yes, the Pokemon world ran on strength.
But even with that as the rule, evolving only to find yourself stuck in an awkward spot, stronger than most but not the strongest of all, was not exactly comfortable.
By now, the Rattata had gotten used to throwing every difficult question at Julian and waiting for his answer.
So before long, that problem landed in his lap too.
After a long stretch of serious thought, Julian gave them an answer that felt as fair as possible.
First came the issue of the chief.
Patch was out.
Until he solved the control issues caused by his defect, strength remained a hard limit he could not ignore.
Scar's subordinate was also out, for the same basic reason.
That left four candidates.
Three from the elite trainees Julian had personally raised.
And one respected veteran with strong support inside the colony.
At that point, the shape of the solution became clear.
"Scar will take the position of chief," Julian said.
"But the position will not be permanent."
He laid out the rules clearly.
There would be two ways the chief could lose the seat.
First.
At fixed intervals, the colony would hold a formal meeting where the chief could be challenged politically. If more than half the colony supported removing him, then Scar would no longer remain chief.
There was one condition attached.
To keep it fair, no one was allowed to use threats or force before the meeting to pressure others into supporting them. If anyone was caught doing that, both the participants and whoever ordered it would be permanently barred from competing for leadership. In serious cases, they would be exiled from the colony.
Second.
Even though leadership involved many uncertain factors, raw strength still mattered. As long as it did not conflict with the first rule, anyone had the right to challenge the chief directly. If they won, they became the new chief.
That rule also came with a condition.
No dirty tricks. No cheap shots. No underhanded tactics. If anyone broke that rule, the punishment would be the same.
The first rule was clearly meant to preserve internal stability.
The second was, just as clearly, something Julian had built with Patch in mind.
After all, Patch was one of the fighters he had personally trained, and Julian still had high hopes that he would one day reclaim his place.
Then, for the sake of the other Raticate who had not been chosen as chief, Julian created a new position between the Rattata and the chief.
Raticate Guardians.
As the name suggested, only those who had already evolved were eligible.
The position would draw from two sources.
One was Raticate, who had once been in the running for chief but had not succeeded.
The other was former chiefs who had been replaced.
There was one important restriction.
Anyone who broke the conditions tied to Julian's leadership rules would never be allowed to become an Guardian, no matter how powerful they were.
Without rules, the whole thing would fall apart.
Very clearly, Julian was drawing on the experience of his old human life and applying it to managing the Rattata colony.
After the adjustments were made, both the evolved Raticate and the unevolved Rattata now had clearly defined roles.
Everyone had a place.
Everyone had a purpose.
Even Patch, who had been shaken by his evolution, could not help throwing Julian a grateful look after hearing the condition that left the door open for him.
At the same time, the fire in his heart began to burn again.
And for Julian, it was only at this moment that he truly began to see the possibility.
The possibility that this colony could rise up from the forest and become something far greater.
With how quickly Rattata reproduced, a system like this could let the colony flourish in no time.
For the first time, the future no longer felt like wishful thinking.
It felt real.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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