The New Normal - 16-8

The New Normal – 16-8 – Consequences

(Several minutes earlier…) (Looker POV)

Zinzolin had tried to be subtle about what he had planned to do. He had not told anyone about his decision to drug their own Pokémon in order to give themselves an unfair advantage in the upcoming fight, but Looker wasn’t a veteran member of the International Police for nothing.

People always tended to forget that Pokémon were equally as capable of reporting information as any human could be, and therefore tend to be overlooked. Which is why when Zinzolin had sneaked off and drugged the Pokémon’s food with whatever nefarious concoction he had brought along with him, Croagunk had caught him in the act and reported back accordingly.

Zinzolin probably didn’t even realise that Croagunk was there.

It truly was an act that reeked of both cruelty and hypocrisy. For an organisation that purportedly wanted to bring Pokémon back to their ‘natural state’ so that they could be ‘truly happy’, stuffing them full of artificial stimulants was probably as antithetical to that goal as it could get.

Especially since these weren’t your standard stimulants either. He was hardly a scientist, and though he didn’t know what exactly it was that Zinzolin had just given to their Pokémon, it could not be anything good. But he was willing to bet anything that these were stronger, and more dangerous, than your standard X stimulants.

X stimulants were already pretty unhealthy for Pokémon, though they at least had some medicinal and scientific usage. But most X stimulants that were used to cheat with were produced illegally, which meant that their ingredients couldn’t be confirmed. So if X stimulants were already medically harmful, then whatever concoction Zinzolin had just given their Pokémon could only be much, much worse.

It physically hurt that he had to keep silent about this in order to not break his own cover. He tapped in to his years of training in order to prevent a disgusted reaction from showing up on his face.

This was one of the worst cases of Pokémon abuse he had ever seen, and he was really struggling to hold himself back from arresting Zinzolin on the spot.

But he couldn’t. He needed to maintain his cover. He had to trust the League to do so in his place.

Meanwhile, while all this happening, the other PLASMA members seemed completely unaware of what was going on. Even when the drugged Pokémon took the field and started showcasing a level of firepower that really shouldn’t be possible with no training, they didn’t seem to be suspicious about it at all.

In fact, many of them were cheering for Zinzolin and was praying for his victory; completely oblivious to Zinzolin’s hypocritical actions. It was sad to see just how blinded and indoctrinated they were.

…But he couldn’t deny the slight schadenfreude that he felt when they realised that Zinzolin was beginning to lose.

This was the problem of making use of artificial stimulants to unnaturally boost up your Pokémon’s own power. Though he was no expert, he had worked in a few cases relating to Pokémon stimulants, so he was at least somewhat knowledgeable on the topic.

Therefore, he was able to recognise that the concoction that Zinzolin gave their Pokémon came in two parts. The first part was the massive boost in power that their Pokémon got. Most drugs did so by burning through a Pokémon’s own life force in order to power up their attacks. Normally, such drugs would cause a Pokémon to tire out from exhaustion within a few attacks.

However, that was where the second part came in. It served as not only an extremely potent painkiller, but it also contained a type of chemical that forcefully keeps a Pokémon active and fighting. He didn’t know the science behind it, but it basically delayed the effects of any buildup of exhaustion for a significant period of time.

This was what allowed Zinzolin’s Pokémon to take hit after hit without even flinching, while firing off attacks that would make any Champion proud. Even with all his experience, this was the first time he had seen a chemical concoction this potent to be able to achieve that level of power and endurance.

And yet, even with all that power, they were still unable to bring down their opponents. It was almost ironic, seeing these Pokémon that could fire off attacks as powerful as a Champion’s ace be completely outskilled like they were a newbie trainer.

He immediately understood what John and Drake’s plan was. The two of them likely realised that they weren’t going to be able to overpower Zinzolin’s Pokémon due to the stimulants they were on, but they didn’t need to.

This was a battle that was meant to show to the world the ‘prowess’ of PLASMA’s ‘free’ Pokémon. It was a battle that was going to be broadcasted to the world. For Zinzolin, this was meant to be a battle that would earn back some of PLASMA’s lost reputation by proving the validity of their message and humiliate the League all in one stroke.

But that was definitely not going to happen anymore. Not as time continued to tick by, and it become increasingly obvious that there was something not right with Zinzolin’s Pokémon.

John and Drake were going to make it clear that Zinzolin had cheated. And even without a confession from the man himself, it was impossible to hide the telltale sign of a drugged Pokémon – the occasional jittering, the twitching eye movements, and the complete drop in accuracy – all of these would make it obvious, even to a casual spectator, that his Pokémon had been drugged up.

However, as much as he wanted to stay behind and watch the fallout for himself, he knew that he couldn’t do so. He still had a role to play.

His time infiltrating PLASMA wasn’t over yet.

Therefore, once he made sure that no one was looking at him, he quietly headed back into the waiting room and stripped himself of his PLASMA uniform before changing into a spare outfit that he had Croagunk hide away in advance.

He sent a quick message to the League detailing his plan, before he rushed out of the arena and sprinted all the way back to the makeshift base of operations that PLASMA had been using in Sinnoh.

The reason why? Because he recognised that this was going to be an incredible opportunity for himself to elevate his own position within PLASMA, therefore putting him closer to their leadership. And he knew that in order to do so, he needed achievements – he needed to make a strong impression and be known for something more than just being an over-enthusiastic, but naïve new recruit.

He arrived just outside the PLASMA base after a few minutes of running, but still far enough away that he couldn’t be seen. Making sure he looked properly drenched in sweat, he changed back into his PLASMA uniform and waited for the moment in the livestream where the Jenny called out PLASMA for cheating.

The moment she did so, he ran the final stretch and threw open the door to their base.

“GUYS! WE’RE IN HUGE TROUBLE!” He shouted, putting as much desperation and panic into his voice as possible, “THE SINNOH LEAGUE’S JUST ACCUSED US OF CHEATING! CHECK THE LIVESTREAM!”

That got everyone into a frenzy, “WHAT? WHERE’S ZINZOLIN?!”

“HE’S STILL AT THE ARENA!” He replied, making sure he sounded appropriately panicked and confused, “BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING. I JUST SAW A SMALL SQUAD OF JENNYS ARRESTING EVERYONE AND I RAN ALL THE WAY BACK HERE BEFORE THEY CAUGHT ME. I THINK THEY’RE COMING AFTER US TOO, SO WE HAVE TO MOVE NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GET ARRESTED! QUICK!”

Terrified and frightened, all of the remaining PLAMSA members didn’t even bother questioning his words as they scrambled to pack everything up and leave. But knowing that they were out of time, most just decided to just leave as soon as possible and book it for the nearest port to get back to Unova before they were caught by the authorities.

Of course, while all this was happening, none of them saw Looker send another text message on his phone – reporting the entire situation to International Police and what his plans were.

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

(John POV)

Zinzolin feigned a look of shocked outrage as the Jenny made her accusation, “How dare you slander us like that! On what basis are you making such claims?! Has the League sunk so far that they’ve resorted to discrediting those that they disagree with?!” His head whirled to mine, “ANSWER ME!”

I had to give the man credit, he put as much indignation into his voice as possible. If I didn’t know that they weren’t at all innocent, I might have been fooled by the seemingly genuine vitriol in his voice.

Unfortunately for Zinzolin, the Jenny was just as outraged as he was, “YOU DARE LIE?! WHEN IT’S BLATANTLY OBVIOUS THAT YOUR POKÉMON ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ARTIFICIAL STIMULANTS?!”

Although many had likely already suspected the same, that statement sent out a wave of shocked cries from the crowd, which quickly turned into a cacophony of jeering.

“BOO!!! LOSERS!!”

“THEY TRIED TO CHEAT TO WIN!!”

“DID YOU REALLY TRY TO DRUG YOUR OWN POKÉMON!?”

I held back a smile as the crowd continued to pour on their outrage at what PLASMA had done. Though Zinzolin didn’t seem like he was going to give up yet, and he stepped forwards towards the Jenny with his face twisted into an enraged snarl.

“YOU CONNIVING EKANS!” He growled at her, “YOU DARE ACCUSE US OF SOMETHING AS GRAVE AS THIS WITHOUT EVIDENCE?! TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE WE CHEATED WHEN OUR POKÉMON’S STRENGTHS WERE SOLELY BORN OUT OF THEIR DESIRE FOR FREEDOM?! YOU DARE TRAMPLE ON YOUR OWN LAWS LIKE THAT?!”

“THEN LET US TEST YOUR POKÉMON!” The Jenny shouted back, “If you are as innocent as you claim to be, then let’s bring your fallen Pokémon to a Pokémon Center and have them examined for any foreign substances.”

Zinzolin nodded, “That’s fine by me—”

“No.” Drake interrupted him, “We do the test here and now. Who knows if the chemicals could be flushed out of the Pokémon by the time we bring them to a Pokémon Center.” He pointed to one of the nearby Nurse Joys that were always stationed at a battle just in case of emergencies, “You. Do a test on the Hydreigon now. Then bring the other to the Pokémon Center. We can compare the results.”

“And let you further tamper with the evidence?” Zinzolin snorted, “How would we know that you and the League hadn’t colluded with the Nurse Joy here to falsify the results.”

He was trying to waste our time and get us wrapped up in a pointless debate with him, so instead of responding I just spoke to the Jenny and the Nurse Joy, “Ignore him. Let’s proceed with the test now. Don’t waste any more time.”

They both nodded and proceeded to do just that. Zinzolin, naturally, began to protest loudly about this ‘illegal treatment’ and how this was all a conspiracy to intentionally tarnish PLASMA’s reputation because we wanted to silence the ‘uncomfortable truth’, but we just ignored him.

And when he began to step forwards, I had Ornstein physically restrain him so that he couldn’t move or run away.

Meanwhile, the Nurse Joy had sent out a Chansey and also wheeled over some kind of specialised equipment that she had lying around. Or, more accurately, we had anticipated we might need something like this and had one brought over before the battle even began.

And as we waited for the scans to complete, I finally decided to finally respond to Zinzolin’s ranting.

“You know your showing was utterly pathetic, right?” I taunted him, “You tried to win by cheating and powering up your own Pokémon with stimulants, and even then you weren’t able to bring us down. Alas, all that power, but wielded in the hands of a fool.”

Drake also barked out a laugh, “Couldn’t have said it any fucking better myself. In all my years as a trainer, not only have I never fought against a trainer that tried to cheat against me, but I have also never fought against a trainer as fucking incompetent as you were. Your Hydreigon was practically bursting with power, and yet you failed to do anything with it. No wonder you PLASMA shits like to preach so much about the ‘natural power’ of Pokémon and how they don’t need a trainer – you must be trying to compensate for the fact that you’re such a shitty one! HAH!”

I could practically hear Zinzolin gnashing his teeth in his barely-restrained rage, but I wasn’t done yet, “You can try and act all indignant as you like. But everyone here knows that all you are is a slimy, cheating, son-of-a-bitch trying to brainwash more people to your so-called cause. So you can drop the act – you got caught red-handed. You’re not fooling anyone.”

However, it was at that moment that my phone pinged as I received a message. It was from Looker.

‘Have run back to PLASMA base to evacuate with other PLASMA members back to Unova.’ He wrote to the group that was in-the-know about his infiltration, ‘Request Sinnoh to not arrest and allow our return in order to maintain cover. Will try to use opportunity to entrench myself in PLASMA and climb its ranks.’

So that was what his plan was. I couldn’t deny that it was a risk returning like that, especially on the back of what would certainly be a colossal failure for PLASMA, but I understood Looker’s logic. He must have felt confident that he would be able to avoid whatever reprisals that might come his way as a result of what happened today.

That was certainly very brave of him, though if it worked out then it would place us in an incredibly good position to learn almost everything about PLASMA’s plans so that we could dismantle them completely.

‘How many PLASMA members are you leaving with?’ Lucian had responded back, ‘And how are you planning on returning to Unova?’

‘Less than two dozen.’ Looker replied back, ‘We’re trying to leave via ships from Canalave. We will be leaving by the late afternoon.’

‘Authorised.’ This time it was Cynthia’s turn to reply, ‘We will make do with those we arrest at the stadium.’

And right on cue, the results from the scan had come back – and it was just as I hoped. Significant traces of substances that were commonly found in Pokémon enhancers were found within Hydreigon, which caused its unnatural spike in power. Furthermore, just liked I predicted, whatever chemical compound that they used was already disappearing rapidly, and if we had waited longer, then all traces would have gone completely.

That was not to say that there wouldn’t be other obvious signs of doping. For one, the Nurse Joy explained that Hydreigon’s muscles were rapidly atrophying as a result of whatever had been given to it. Furthermore, its vitality and stamina were also dropping to extremely dangerous levels, so much so that it was at risk of some serious health problems unless it received immediate treatment.

When the Nurse Joy announced this, which had all been captured by the microphone, the crowd once again loudly roared out in pure outrage at the clear signs of Pokémon abuse that was happening. This proved that not only were PLASMA definitely cheating, but it also demonstrated that they were complete and utter hypocrites.

The public now saw that for all of PLASMA’s preaching about wanting to achieve true happiness for Pokémon and save them from exploitation – it had all been a lie as they were perfectly willing to subject and exploit their own Pokémon to the very same thing in secret.

With all of this being shown to the rest of the world, I sincerely wished that this would serve as a death knell to PLASMA’s reputation and their recruiting efforts. I also hoped that this would also cause several existing members of PLASMA to realise the evil of the organisation that they had joined, and turn their coats before it was too late.

Though I didn’t expect this to be the end of PLASMA itself. Most were probably too brainwashed to leave, and I expected Ghetsis to try something to hold the organisation together. But at the very least this would certainly be a huge setback for them.

Nevertheless, with the evidence of PLASMA’s cheating now undeniable, the Jennys finally took Zinzolin into custody. He didn’t make it easy though, and he lashed out and struggled whenever someone got close. But Drake did what I wanted to do and punched him square in the mouth, knocking him right out.

I gave Drake a thumbs up. That was a good punch.

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

“Good job out there, you two.” Cynthia said to the both of us as we had reconvened for a discussion after everything that had happened. The Sinnoh Elite Four, as well as both Lance and Steven, were also part of this discussion, “I don’t think we could have asked for a better outcome.”

“Bah. Just doing our jobs.” Drake grumbled, “Honestly, I pity those Pokémon. Zinzolin was a real piece of work. They could not have been happy under him.”

I couldn’t agree more, but I had other things I wanted to focus on, “How’s the public reacting to all this?” I asked.

“Just as we hoped they would.” Lucian replied, “Tons of outrage, especially once it was confirmed that they were also abusing their Pokémon on top of the cheating. Many are outright asking for PLASMA to be declared a criminal organisation on the spot.”

“Could we do that?” I looked to my girlfriend, “It would simplify a lot of things.”

“It might be difficult from just one incident alone, since PLASMA could argue that this was just an isolated incident from a rogue agent, but we’re already going to performing interrogations on the captured PLASMA members.” She said, “Just standard questioning methods this time; this doesn’t warrant the use of psychic interrogation. But if we get anything else from them than maybe we’ll have enough justification to label PLASMA as a criminal organisation and permanently ban them from entering our shores.”

“What’s stopping us from doing it now?” Drake asked.

“It wouldn’t be impossible – just that it wouldn’t set the best of precedents if we did that.” Steven explained, “Labelling an organisation as criminal is only really done in when it is beyond all reasonable doubt that said organisation has been created solely and exclusively for the purpose of undergoing criminal activities. As heinous as their recent actions were, it could easily be argued as something that has been carried out by a small batch of ‘bad apples’ within the group – thus not representative of the group as a whole. I assure you that businesses would not be happy if we were to get too trigger-happy with throwing around such labels.”

In other words, since we didn’t know for sure that the entirety of PLASMA was conducting criminal activities, just Zinzolin, we didn’t have evidence to label them as a criminal organisation yet.

Cynthia tapped me on the shoulder, “Don’t worry about it too much, John. Like I said, we still haven’t interrogated the prisoners yet, nor have we scoured through all of the evidence. If we find enough proof that PLASMA as a whole is tied to criminal activities, then we’ll act on it. You have my word.”

“Besides, we’ve already dropped a few sanctions on PLASMA.” Lucian added, “Anyone from their organisation coming into Sinnoh will have to subject themselves to a full ID and background check.”

“It won’t stop them from entering undercover, of course, but it should deter them from taking any ‘official’ actions in Sinnoh from now on.” Cynthia said.

“Sure. I’m fine with that.” I nodded, “But what happens now?”

“Now we try to capitalise on this big win.” Lance replied, “While we wait for more evidence from Looker, our next big goal is try to pursue PLASMA in Unova like we did for the previous criminal teams that we fought against. Therefore, us Champions are going to speak with Alder to see if we can start working towards that.”

“Even if we have a legitimate reason to do so, I personally doubt it’ll be easy to persuade them.” Steven said, “We’re still very new to the Unovans. They won’t trust us that easily. And they certainly wouldn’t like us telling them what to do.”

“I know.” Lance nodded, “But I’ll have to try anyways. We should be trying to get the International Police jurisdiction within Unova anyways. This’ll just be an extension of that.”

“…Right, all this talk is making my old bones fall asleep.” Drake grumbled, “So I’m going to leave. Just let me know who I can smack around. I’m heading back to start preparing for the Tournament.”

Oh shit. “Yeah, I need to do that too. I’ve already taken enough time away from practicing with my partner.”

“Nah, you should stay and chat some more!” Flint chuckled, “Who needs to train anyways? Trust me, you’ll be fine!”

“Don’t listen to him.” Cynthia smiled, “You’re fine to go. I’ll fill you in if there are any updates.”

Flint pouted, “Is it me or is our Champion rooting for someone not from Sinnoh?”

Bertha whacked him across the head, “Oh do be quiet. You should be used to this by now.”

I made my leave as their banter continued, knowing that I had to get back into the swing of things of the Tournament. The elimination stage of the Tournament was just around the corner, and I needed to focus my attention back onto that.

Meanwhile, I hoped that we’d get some good news about PLASMA. It was best if we could take care of them before they got to grow as a threat.

A.N. I wanted to portray the scandal from the perspective of Looker, as well as provide another glimpse into his further plans in PLASMA. I also wanted to showcase Looker’s sense of opportunism, and how he is capable of capitalising on a situation to his own benefit. It’s a big risk that he’s taking, but it might just pay out.

Meanwhile, PLASMA really got hit bad after this one as their schemes are revealed to the world. Although this doesn’t mean that it’s the end of PLASMA, this has dealt a serious blow that will be very rough for them to recover from. And while the direct consequences from this event hasn’t been fully shown yet, it really isn’t going to be good for them. But now that this is over it’s going to be back to the Tournament! Hope you enjoyed!