The New Normal - 19-9

The New Normal – 19-9 – Ogerpon

I hung back and remained silent as I watched as our Pokémon attempted to communicate with Ogerpon, but it was hard to remain completely calm.

Ogerpon, while nowhere near as powerful as other Legendaries, was still considered to be one. I had no idea how much more powerful it was compared to a regular trained Pokémon, but I was extremely curious to find out if it was stronger than our Pokémon.

And more importantly, I was curious to find out why it had awakened. What had caused it to wake up? I didn’t remember the details of its original awakening all that clearly, but this seems far ahead of schedule.

Was it the marathon that woke it up? Did we disturb it by accident?

Fortunately, Ogerpon didn’t seem hostile towards us, despite being fully surrounded by trainers and Pokémon that were one sudden move away from attacking. With the benefit of having meta-knowledge, that might have been a poor course of action for the Jennys and Rangers, since there was a very real possibility that Ogerpon might be strong enough to defeat everyone here, but they were just following protocol.

So after a few moments more of back-and-forth between our Pokémon and Ogerpon, it eventually agreed to be escorted away to a less crowded area where we could continue our conversation. Obviously, we followed after it, though not before I asked one of the nearby Jennys to contact the Kitakami locals to come over as soon as possible.

I knew that Ogerpon was a big part of their culture, and they needed to be here for this.

“…The mask looks familiar.” Cynthia muttered as we walked, “Does it ring any bells for you? I think you mentioned this before.”

“I think this is what the Festival is based on.” I said, “This must be the ‘Ogre’ that the locals always refer to.”

She nodded, “I suspected the same when I saw it too. You know that means that this is probably one of the most culturally significant Pokémon in Kitakami, right?”

“I know. So what now?” I asked, “Got any plans?”

“I’ve not a clue.” She shrugged, “We’ll see how this plays out. Worst case, we get a fight. Best case, we get a new protector like Regigigas. Did you get the Pokémon’s name? It was Ogre… something.”

“Ogerpon.” I replied.

She snapped her fingers, “That’s it. Hopefully Ogerpon will be receptive to us. And I hope the same applies to the locals… I remember Ogerpon not being the most kindly regarded in their legends.”

That was true. I really didn’t know how the locals would react to Ogerpon. Would they react kindly to it, understanding that the legends were merely just that – legends? Or would they react with hostility, thinking that Ogerpon was the one to ‘slay’ the Loyal Three? The trio of Pokémon that they currently worshipped.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long to find out our answer, as the appearance of a small flock of Staraptor informed us that the locals had arrived. And accompanying them was, surprisingly, Drake himself.

“Why am I not surprised that you had something to do with this John?” Was the first thing Drake said to me.

I raised my hands up in surrender, “Don’t blame me, I had nothing to do with this. The Jennys were the ones to inform us that there was something wrong. Cynthia and I were just dying in the marathon.”

He chuckled, “I saw that. You looked like you were really struggling there. Haven’t seen you so petered out in a while.”

“I may have… overestimated my physical stamina.” I said, “Anyways, let’s get back to the topic at hand.” I turned to the locals, “Thanks for coming. I’m sure you understand what we’re looking at here.”

“We do.” One of them said gravely, “We always knew that our legends were based on truth, but to see it with our very own eyes…”

“Has it acted in any way hostile?” Another asked.

“No.” I replied, “Our Pokémon were able to begin and hold a conversation with it. It seems relatively friendly, or at least non-harmful.”

“Perhaps time has tempered its anger.” Another local suggested, though due to how wrong he was, I felt like I had to interrupt.

“It’s not displayed any sign of anger or hostility so far. I trust my Pokémon to not mislead me on this.” I said, “So I do not think we should approach it with any sort of hostile or unfriendly intentions – we should treat it just like we would with any usual wild Pokémon.”

“But it’s history­­—”

“I know.” I cut him off, “But that was a long time ago, and those were only legends. You should all know how oral retellings can fade and alter with time, distorting the truth into something unrecognisable. I know you’re predisposed of thinking of Ogerpon in a certain way, but let’s try to put that aside for the moment.”

“Listen to John.” Drake barked out, “I know you’re all worried about the ‘consequences’ and the ‘dangers’, but we survived fighting against two big FUCKING Legendaries because we followed John’s instincts and orders. So if he tells you to play nice, then you fucking play nice. Got it!?”

There was some grumbling from the locals, but they seemed to respect Drake’s authority enough as they quieted down. I even heard one of them go, “Yes, master!”, which caused Drake to cringe.

I wanted to tease him so bad, and he knew it too. He could see it in my barely concealed smirk. The very idea that someone would call Drake their ‘master’ was just too funny, especially because I knew how much he hated titles like that.

Alas, this wasn’t the time to indulge in my humour, so I swallowed the laugh that threatened to leak out and I refocused myself on the task at hand. Even though I said Ogerpon was mostly harmless, it was a bad idea to underestimate a Pokémon that could potentially go toe-to-toe with a Champion’s Pokémon.

Meanwhile, Cynthia was the first to step forwards to Ogerpon, and she kneeled down so that she was eye-level with it.

“Are you able to understand me?” She asked it, with her Pokémon serving as a translator, “We just wanted to let you know that we mean you no harm.”

Ogerpon looked at her warily, but eventually nodded to her words.

Cynthia smiled gently, “That’s good. And are you the same Pokémon that once attacked the land of Kitakami all that time ago? Don’t worry if you are – we just wanted to learn more about our history. No matter your answer, it won’t change how we treat you.”

To the surprise of everyone but me, Ogerpon shook its head at that question, and even replied back, “Ogre…pon…Ogre…”

Lucario translated that back to Cynthia, who nodded, “Ogerpon says that it’s not the Pokémon that attacked the village. In fact, she says that there’s been a misunderstanding. She was the one to protect the village of Kitakami, NOT the Loyal Three.”

“Impossible.” One of the locals immediately declared, “It lies.”

“My Pokémon disagree with that.” Cynthia shook her head, “Lucario would see through any such lies. Ogerpon did not lie. At least not about this.”

“Pixel did not detect any falsehoods either.” I agreed.

“But it could have deceived you anyways—”

“Enough bickering.” Drake cut them off, and he took a step forwards so that he was in front of the Kitakami locals, “Do you trust me and my judgment? Do you trust that I have your best interests in mind?”

There was a short pause, but eventually one of them responded, “…We do.”

“Good. In that case, just let this play out for a moment.” He ‘ordered’, “I know you guys are wary, but you’re also too fucking biased right now. Let’s calm down for a moment and listen to what Ogerpon has to say.”

Once again, Drake’s words caused the locals to grow quiet, and this time I inwardly marvelled at the level of trust that Drake had earned from them. I knew he had recently interacted with the locals a lot, but I was very surprised to see how much they trusted him and his judgment.

Either way, their obedience was a good thing for us, and it allowed Cynthia to continue chatting with Ogerpon. Eventually, after a couple more back-and-forth, Ogerpon had managed to give us the full picture of what had happened to her and why she chose to isolate herself, with Cynthia helping to translate and relay everything to the locals.

Essentially, it was just as I remembered from my meta knowledge. Ogerpon used to have a human friend, and they travelled together throughout the wilderness until they eventually stumbled across Kitakami. There, they arrived at Mossui Town, but were driven off because the locals at the time were unused to having Pokémon living and working side-by-side with humans, and were fearful of her power.

So they reluctantly left, but they were fortunate enough to be met with a mask maker that took pity on their situation. The mask maker proceeded to craft masks for them in order for them to hide their appearance, as well as a large costume for the latter, so that Ogerpon would be disguised as a ‘normal’ human, which worked and they were allowed into the town. But these masks were no ordinary masks, and Ogerpon described them as being very luxurious and made of rare materials.

The locals all nodded along to that, as that followed what they knew from their own tales and legends. However, it was the next part that shocked them, as Ogerpon then revealed that the masks were stolen from them by a group of four Pokémon, who mortally wounded her friend in the process.

In a fit of rage, Ogerpon chased after them back to Mossui Town where she overpowered them and defeated them all, with the final member of the four having managed to escape. But the humans at the time thought that she was the one attacking them, and incorrectly coming to the assumption that they had been deceived by the mask-wearing Ogerpon (as they recognised her and thought she was a human), the humans forcefully and violently drove her out – pelting her with stones as they did.

As a result of this eviction, Ogerpon became incredibly depressed and self-loathing, as she had not only lost the trust of the villagers, but she had also lost her friend and long-time travelling companion.

Her partner.

All in an extremely short period of time.

Because of this, she decided that the outside world was just too cruel and decided to isolate herself from the rest of the world, hoping that time would cause the pain to fade away.

And only by pure coincidence that our recent marathon cause it to reawaken.

Hearing the full story from Ogerpon’s mouth had caused the locals to fall into a state of shock and disbelief. Many of them had their mouths hung open in pure surprise, but I couldn’t blame them. I could tell that they struggled to believe the story, but neither did they reject it either.

I spoke up before their doubts could fully resurface, “I know this goes against what you have said in your legends, so why don’t we maintain an open mind while we have someone keep an eye on Ogerpon.”

One of the locals protested at this, “But it might cause damage if it starts to rampage like it did before…”

“Then we’ll look after it instead.” Cynthia cut them off, “Our Pokémon will be more than strong enough to keep it in check if it does decide to get… ornery. Besides, the situation we are in now is not the same as your ancestors would have had to deal with in the past. We have many more Pokémon on hand now, and I promise you that Ogerpon won’t be able to overpower us all.”

“…We can accept that for now.” One of the locals eventually replied, “But we’re going to have to host a proper discussion on our official stance on this matter.”

Cynthia nodded, “We look forward to hearing that.”

With that, Drake and the locals subsequently left as they headed back to discuss this incident with the rest of the Kitakami council. As they left, I saw many of them whispering to each other as they repeatedly glanced back at Ogerpon. Either with concern, wariness, or confusion in their eyes.

I didn’t know what they were going to decide, but seeing the look on Cynthia’s face, I knew that she wouldn’t allow Ogerpon to be abandoned any longer. She fully believed that Ogerpon was innocent, and more importantly, that she so clearly desired human connections.

So Cynthia was too kind-hearted to leave her alone after knowing that. No matter what the locals decided, she was going to find some way to keep Ogerpon happy.

For the time being, we had moved to the side, a small distance away from Oni Mountain so that we wouldn’t disturb the festivities going on there (the marathon had been allowed to continue after the ‘incident’ was dealt with).

Throughout all of this, Cynthia kept up the small talk with Ogerpon as she tried her best to get to know more about her and vice versa. I joined in from time to time, though I was happy to let Cynthia carry most of the conversation.

I could see it in her eyes that she was very eager to recruit Ogerpon into her team, if that was at all possible.

And I was content with letting her do that. A small part of me did want to see if I could try my hand at recruiting Ogerpon into my own team, but seeing my fiancé chatting away so excitedly and happily like that, I decided that I wasn’t going to try and compete with her for Ogerpon’s favour.

So I was happy to just sit back and let her try and win over Ogerpon with her charm. And she was taking the slow and steady approach; she hadn’t broached the topic at all about having her join her team. She was just being friendly with Ogerpon and making sure that she could feel comfortable around us and our Pokémon.

And that was working very well, because it was so blatantly obvious that Ogerpon was touch and contact-starved. It was honestly pretty depressing to see, because it reminded me so much of the few Pokémon abuse cases that I had heard about from my colleagues.

So even though I wanted to ask Ogerpon about the Loyal Three and how powerful they were, I felt like that conversation could be saved for later. There was no need to drudge up more bad memories for the time being, and there was no rush anyways.

Hopefully she would understand that us humans were no longer as hostile towards her as we once were.

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(Drake POV)

He had no idea why the locals invited him to join in on their discussions regarding Ogerpon. Honestly, he still felt like he was an outsider and did not deserve to be here, listening into these kinds of discussions. But his students insisted that he stayed, because they needed to know the ‘outsider’ perspective.

He let out a tired breath as he stood in the corner of the town hall, with his posture slumped over in boredom. He didn’t want to be here, listening to this inane back and forth about whether Ogerpon was telling the truth or not.

To be frank, he didn’t give a fuck about whether Ogerpon was lying or not. He felt that she wasn’t, but even if she was, so what? If she turns out to be hostile, then a good Draco Beam from his Salamence should do the trick.

“Drake.” He was snapped out of his thoughts as one of the locals called upon him, “What are your thoughts on this matter? Do you think Ogerpon is telling the truth or not?”

“I think that it doesn’t at all matter if she’s telling the truth.” He replied bluntly, uncaring about how his words would be received, “I think all that matters is if you’re willing to piss off the Champion by calling her a liar.”

“What do you mean?” Someone else asked.

He sighed, “Let’s put it another way. Cynthia – the CHAMPION OF SINNOH and the person who technically has authority over your home – has been convinced that Ogerpon is not lying. I saw the way she looked at Ogerpon, she looks at Ogerpon like she’s been a victim of abuse and wants to take care of her. I don’t think you’ll be able to convince her otherwise, and if you try to, I really don’t think she’ll be all that happy with it. So let’s try to be fucking practical about this, yeah? If I were you, I wouldn’t go around trying to piss off one of the most powerful trainers in the world. And that’s not even including her fiancé, the man who has control over Regigigas.”

That got them to reconsider things, and the crowd fell into silent contemplation as they considered his words. After a moment, one of them spoke up again.

“Let’s say we do take the stance that Ogerpon’s words are the truth.” The man said, “Then what would we do about the Loyal Three? Our worship of them is based purely on the fact that they once defended us when Mossui Town was at its weakest. Without them, we believed that Ogerpon would have destroyed us all. It is whole reason why we worship them so. If we tell this to the others, that their belief was all a lie? When they have worshipped and prayed to these Pokémon for not only their entire lives? But for generations before that as well? There would be outrage.”

“Times change. Beliefs need to adapt with them.” Drake cut in, “Once upon a time, we all thought that each region ought to be separate from another. That the regions of Indigo, Hoenn, and Sinnoh would never be more than cordial acquaintances with each other. That all changed in recent years, when one man – the very partner of the Champion – decided that he wouldn’t accept that.”

“Yes, there was outrage. Yes, there were many that protested and bitched about how this change would ‘doom the world’ or whatnot. But in the end, peace was restored, and things were all the more better for it.” He stated, “Or did you that the Sinnoh League would be so free to offer their support to Kitakami if not for their past successes? So trust me when I say it is better to rip the bandage off – assuming you do take Ogerpon’s words as truth.”

In the end, there was a lot more discussion on the topic, and the meeting went on for hours. But it was eventually decided that the best course of action for the Kitakami council to take was to acknowledge Ogerpon’s version of events. Not necessarily as the truth, but they would at least not dismiss it out of hand. Therefore, this would mean revising the story about the Loyal Three, and admitting that their retelling of the story may have errors.

It was a compromise. And one that no one was really happy with, but it was the only practical decision to make.

Unfortunately for everyone, all of that discussion would prove fruitless very soon.

===================

Fortunately, after what was a few hours of discussion, the Kitakami council decided to, reluctantly, accept Ogerpon’s side of the story for now. They weren’t decided on what to do about the Loyal Three, but for the time being, they promised not to treat Ogerpon with any hostility (at least officially).

So in a gesture of friendship, they allowed Ogerpon to wander through the streets of Mossui Town, though she was accompanied by a guard of Pokémon.

Just in case.

Naturally, Cynthia and I both accompanied Ogerpon, and we both tried to cheer it up as she walked through the streets with equal parts disbelief, happiness, and wariness. Her eyes kept darting around as if she was expecting threats or insults to come, but aside from some wary looks, nothing happened.

Cynthia made sure to gently pat her on the head from time to time, reminding her that she was safe with us.

As agreed with the locals, we brought her to the Loyal Three Monument.

Honestly, compared to all of the other Legendary monuments and locations that I’ve been to, the Loyal Three Monument was nothing impressive. It looked like just any other shrine, and there was no sort of extraordinary presence that lingered around the other areas.

However, that all changed when Ogerpon approached the Monument.

At first, nothing happened. And Ogerpon simply stared at the statutes of the Loyal Three with a mixture of betrayal, anger, and yearning.

At that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder what Ogerpon was thinking of.

But then I noticed that the ground was beginning to shake. It was a small rumble at first, but it rapidly grew into an earthquake that shook the earth.

Then the statutes themselves began to crack apart.

I was thrown to the ground from the sudden earthquake, but not before I instinctively threw out several Pokéballs as my team emerged to defend me. Tyrant and Vordt stood over me protectively, and the same happened with Cynthia.

“What… what is happening?!” The local cried out in alarm, before whirling his head towards Ogerpon, “It’s the Ogre’s doing! It’s trying to destroy the town!”

“No! She’s not! She’s—” Whatever Cynthia was about to say was cut off as the ground in front of us was ripped and split apart as three gigantic and recognisable figures emerged out from the ground. Our heads were forced to crane upwards as they towered over all of us; they were practically the same height as Regigigas itself.

And the skies echoed with their dominating roars as they made their presence known to the entire world.

The Loyal Three had awakened once again.

A.N. Naturally, the reveal of Ogerpon is obviously going to lead to the reveal of the Loyal Three. This is the first time that the world is going to be seeing ‘Titan’ Pokémon in all of their glory. Obviously, a fight is coming, and the powers of the Loyal Three will be explored more thoroughly. Hope you enjoyed!