Pryce watched the kid leave the room. It wasn't every day that so many of his Pokémon were swept like that, but after experiencing as many battles as he had, there were hardly any surprises left.

  There was always some newcomer who knew how to order their Pokémon in just the right way. Always someone who knew when to call out the necessary commands and how to chain together the correct knock-outs to secure a victory. Not every outcome was as “clean” as that no-knock-out match, but sometimes, knowing when to trade one faint for another was all that was needed to eke out a win.

  But a new Typhlosion, hm?

  It was another new discovery by another new trainer. One more species in the ongoing flood of new ones coming from, well, everywhere. Things were so different from how they used to be. Clans no longer had the influence to hoard their knowledge. Johto and Kanto were no longer at one another’s throats. There was no cold war going on that pushed its combatants to be as strong as they could be.

  No, information was being shared. Trainers no longer started with nothing. They didn’t have to scrape together every scrap of knowledge just to maybe be considered competent. They stood on the shoulders of every Pokémon and trainer that came before them. They could strive for new developments instead of struggling to figure out what others had already learned.

  The world was growing larger and larger by the day, yet—

  “Bah.”

  Everything Pryce needed was already in this Gym.

  He turned from the door, scowling. Trainers might have been flush with opportunity nowadays, but they didn’t have the same determination or the necessary drive. Pryce was yet to see someone with the desperation that came from fighting tooth and nail to bring even the slightest of wins their way.

  “P-Pryce. That was your second ch-challenger for today. You still have your afternoon free, so if you’re willing—”

  “Keep my schedule clear,” he grunted, shutting down the Gym Trainer’s request before she could even finish.

  In return, the assigned member of Pryce’s Gym bowed her head as he marched out of the room. He strode through the Gym’s air-conditioned hallways and back to his office. The cold temperature helped keep his senses sharp along the way.

  His office itself was a bit warmer once he reached it on the second floor. Out of everywhere in the building, this was the one place he was willing to put in effort to claim as his.

  He walked past the trophies that lined the walls. The medals and ribbons that marked him as the victor of tournaments across Johto. Next to them were pictures of people and Pokémon he’d met along the way, and in each and every one, Pryce wore the same scowl he wore on his face right now.

  Any photo that might have shown something different wasn’t on the wall. He didn’t need a reminder of how he used to be. He didn’t need to remember just how foolish he was back then.

  Once he reached his desk, Pryce let himself fall into his high-backed chair, its thick cushions and padded armrests giving his aching body a rest. Unfortunately, he couldn’t exactly rest right now. He had reports to get through and messages to write. He also had plenty of letters passed to him by the League that each “politely” discussed why he should have never begun that Route 43 operation in the first place.

  None of them get it. They never do. They don’t see how humans and Pokémon can’t be friends.

  As he fell into the repetitive cycle of drivel that was his work, Pryce grew distracted. His focus slipped, and in an instant, he was right back to that night.

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  The memory was all too clear in his head. He sat in his home, a small log cabin located on a mountain with a freezing blizzard blowing outside. Next to him, something he thought had been his friend tried to rest. Tournaments didn’t have the same regulations back then, and the two of them had been burned by a Magmar’s attack that had been launched a little too wide.

  He had promised the thing next to him that they’d get through it, and he had spoken of finding healing herbs for them once the blizzard died down.

  But when he woke the next morning, the snow had disappeared, and with it, his Pokémon had vanished, too.

  Pryce knew why it had left him; it had left him because it was disappointed. After all, it was a Pokémon. Pokémon thrived in battle. Why would a Pokémon ever want to stay with a trainer that had lost and let it get hurt?

  “Bah.”

  Pryce pushed away the document he’d been working on. It was some kind of request for approval, something about wanting to support a perceptive kid from the forest march. However, Pryce couldn’t care less about who his Gym Trainers chose to support. They were allowed to do what they wanted. It was only through a false sense of duty demanded onto them by the League that they bothered to stick around.

  Briskly standing up, Pryce left his comfortable chair and walked over to his office’s window. Its tilted blinds let him peer outside, unseen, to where many trainers practiced out back.

  There, almost every member of his Gym was actively training their Pokémon. They behaved far too fondly with one another, unaware of how quickly loyalties could turn the second something went wrong.

  ...Also, they kept making mistakes. Some Ice Type moves went too undirected, and other Ice Type moves weren’t undirected enough. The whole point of the Type was that its freezing conditions made dealing with Ice Type Pokémon nearly impossible. These fools were treating their Pokémon like any other Pokémon, but Ice Types carried so many weaknesses that they only ever truly shined if their trainer leaned into their bone-chilling frost.

  “I’ll slip in a few words of advice tomorrow,” Pryce mumbled to himself. “Make them pick out tips from between everything else I say.”

  All it would take is a few short grumbles. A few sharp insults. The foolish among them would back away. The smart among them would recognize his advice for what it was.

  If these trainers planned to pry away his knowledge, Pryce planned to make them earn every iota of wisdom. They wouldn’t become strong merely by reading books. No, trainers needed to constantly fight if they were to ever gain power.

  Such was a fact that had held true for Pryce’s entire life, and he had no plans to change his mindset now.

  Yet, the more he watched the field, the more he felt the edges of his lips tug down on his face. Beneath him, there was too much laughter. And far too much praise.

  Still scowling, Pryce slammed the shutters closed and stormed away, falling back into his chair at his desk.

  “I know what’s going on. It’s that Typhlosion! Its appearance is making me think.”

  Surprises were rare to him nowadays, but seeing a species otherwise thought to be extinct was almost making him hope.

  He’d heard rumors of long-lost Pokémon being discovered. Not rumors involving Typhlosion, but rumors involving a certain, ancient evolution. Apparently, a Pokémon from ancient times had been thawed out from impossibly thick ice, and it was somehow still alive. Through the power of a specific Rock Type move, it had managed to evolve and survive.

  Some said that any Ice Type Pokémon could enter a form of stasis when encased in ice. The rumors of that evolution seemed to support the claim, but Pryce had never given those theories any thought.

  Until now, at least.

  Seeing a previously thought-to-be-extinct Hisuian Typhlosion with his own eyes was making him reconsider. He could honestly believe that those rumors might have been true.

  “But what would that even mean?” he grumbled to himself. “Mamoswine exist. So what? He still left, Pryce. There’s no need to get emotional in your old age.”

  He sat there, rotating a pen in a hand, a practice that kept him fit for throwing Pokéballs without his arthritis acting up.

  But the more he sat, the more he thought.

  Maybe...

  Maybe his friend hadn’t left him.

  Maybe the snow had been too strong that night. Maybe they had gotten stuck somewhere and had been frozen over. And then, only then, maybe that meant they hadn’t actually—

  “Bah!” Pryce threw his pen onto his desk. It bounced onto the surface with a clatter. “But why would they leave in the first place? They abandoned you. They left you. But it’s not their fault. It’s on you for trusting a Pokémon in the first place.”

  Pryce was comfortable where he was. He was the Gym Leader of Mahogany Town. A master Ice Type specialist. One of the foremost experts on the Type. He would never see any of that change, but...

  He did, at least, chuckle.

  If the mere sight of a Hisuian Typhlosion was making him think this much, then he couldn’t even imagine the reaction from the rest of Johto once that variant was revealed. There were always new species and evolutions, but each one tended to have been recorded or hinted at in the past. Hisuian Typhlosion were so extinct that few even knew they existed. To have a brand new Pokémon, a variant of one of Johto’s Starters, suddenly show up out of nowhere?

  He chuckled once again.

  “Well,” Pryce said to himself. “The reactions will certainly be worth keeping an eye on.”

  He didn’t think about the topic again until a few months later, when Johto’s Silver Conference finally began.

  Pokémon (and people) included in this chapter:

  Magmar

  Pryce

  huge thank you to everyone reading! Your support keeps this story going.