Ash's name carried even across thousands of miles. To people in the know, it rang in the ears like rolling thunder. After all, nearly everything Ash had done was the kind of thing that made history.
For the average Trainer, though, Ash often slipped from notice not long after his fame peaked. Whatever incredible things he pulled off, at the end of the day he was a Trainer without an official title, not an undefeated Champion.
Even when he defeated an undefeated Champion, the public memory of it faded quickly. The people who could actually see what Ash was doing and remember it were the Trainers who held high positions and serious strength in their own right. Their own power gave them the lens to understand the weight of what Ash had accomplished.
For Norman, Ash had long been considered a Trainer at his own level.
For Norman, Ash had long been considered a Trainer at his own level. Even back in Hoenn, Norman had wanted to find a chance to meet him. The distance between regions wasn't the real obstacle. Crossing over wouldn't have taken much time. The problem was that Ash never stayed in one place, with no fixed address, and on top of that he was buried in activity because the Silver Conference had just begun. So Norman's inquiries about him hadn't gone anywhere.
He hadn't expected Ash to come to him. That surprised him, though it also made sense once he thought about it. All Trainers entering the Silver Conference had to register in New Bark Town. After registration, they could start collecting Badges. Violet City was the closest city to New Bark, so if you wanted to collect Badges nearby, Violet City was the natural first stop. Ash's arrival was perfectly reasonable, unless he was going to deliberately take a detour.
What surprised Norman was that his son and daughter had come along with Ash. That kind of coincidence really was something.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Norman. I'm Ash, from Pallet Town. Are you free for a Gym battle right now?" Even though May had already introduced him, Ash introduced himself again. Basic courtesy. After the introduction, he laid out his request plainly. A Gym battle.
Norman was in the middle of a lecture. If he didn't have time, Ash was going to head over to Sprout Tower. Beyond improving himself and fighting strong opponents, the other point of the trip was the sightseeing, and Sprout Tower was Violet City's landmark.
After thinking it over for a beat, Norman gave Ash a serious nod.
"Of course, that works. We can have the Gym battle now. I do have one request, though. I'd like these students to watch. There's no better way for students to absorb classroom knowledge than seeing it in practice. A chance like this is once in a lifetime."
"If I'm not mistaken, Ash, you carry a power that can contain the surrounding area during a battle, don't you? Would it be too much trouble to use it during this match?" Norman put the question out plainly.
Even as a temporary professor at the academy, only teaching once or twice a week, Norman took the role seriously and fulfilled the responsibilities of a teacher. Ash had a means of preventing battle aftershocks from spreading to the equipment or the spectators outside the arena.
With that in place, even an Elite Four duel wouldn't disturb the audience nearby. A chance to watch a Gym battle of this caliber at close range was an opportunity these students might never get again, and Norman wasn't about to let it slip past.
Ash nodded without hesitation. "No problem, Mr. Norman. I guarantee the battle's aftershocks won't touch any of the students."
"All right!"
"We get to watch Pokémon battles up close from this kind of distance!"
"Long live Mr. Norman!"
"This is incredible!"
"Finally, we get to see Mr. Norman fight! I heard he's incredibly strong."
"Yeah. Mr. Norman teaches way better than the other teachers. A teacher who can teach powerful people like us must have powerful Pokémon too."
Maybe the prospect of watching a Pokémon battle up close had cranked the students' excitement up to a fever pitch. Even before Norman had taken his teaching post, the principal and their previous teacher, Ms. Lily, had told them that Norman was an extremely powerful Trainer, top-tier even at a world level. Norman's actual teaching since then had only confirmed it.
His knowledge and the way he explained things weren't things a Trainer could just rattle off from theory alone. So not long after he took the role, plenty of the elementary-aged students had already been won over, every one of them a little fan.
They'd never actually seen Norman fight, though. Plenty of students had asked to watch a Gym battle of his before, but Norman had always refused, citing how dangerous a real Gym battle was.
There had been one time when Norman had dueled a challenging Trainer and let them watch from a great distance, but the whole match was over inside a minute. So fast they hadn't even had time to sit down before it ended. Now that they could watch up close, the kids were practically vibrating.
It was also the first time they'd ever heard their teacher praise someone else this highly. The name Ash was basically unknown among the students. Forget Ash. Even if the Elite Four or the regional Champion walked in, they probably wouldn't recognize them. Kids couldn't realistically know that many famous figures.
Being able to identify even a handful of Pokémon was already a mark of being unusually sharp at this age. So hearing the praise their teacher had just laid on Ash, all of them were now full of anticipation.
At the same time, there was a thread of skepticism in their eyes. At first glance, this big brother didn't look all that much stronger than them. Whether he was actually as strong as Mr. Norman said, they'd see for themselves once the battle started.
Under their school teacher Ms. Lily's guidance, the whole class headed to one of the school's training fields. This wasn't a university, but the academy still had two or three regularly used battle arenas. What kind of school wouldn't have at least one?
The arena wasn't small either, at least on par with the size of a normal Gym training ground. The students filed in along the edge of the field, watching the two Trainers facing off in the middle with sharp curiosity. For them, this was the first time they were going to observe a Pokémon battle from this close, and it wasn't some casual side-of-the-road match.
This was a duel between top-tier Trainers from different regions. For kids hoping to become Trainers one day, watching a match like this up close was an enormous opportunity.
"Dad, we have to win!" Max shouted to his father.
This match mattered. It wasn't just a normal Gym battle. It was a showdown between top Trainers from two different regions, and calling it a matter of regional honor was only slight exaggeration. The principal had already started recording, and the footage would be uploaded online once the match wrapped.
For Max, this was essentially a fight to defend his father's reputation. If his dad lost to Ash, that would be a complete loss of face. Hoenn itself would lose face, given that its top Trainer had been beaten by a rookie out of Kanto. Even though Ash wasn't an ordinary rookie, that didn't make it an acceptable excuse for losing. So no matter what, Max felt his father had to win.
"All right. We'll use Gym rules. Three-on-three."
"No problem!"
"Per Gym rules, the Gym Leader's first Pokémon enters first, and no Pokémon swaps during the battle. My opener is him."
Since there was no referee, Norman doubled as one and laid out the rules first. Ash had challenged plenty of Gyms by now and didn't strictly need the briefing, but in his role as Gym Leader, Norman went through it anyway.
Norman tossed his Poké Ball, and a flash of light brought a huge Pokémon onto the field. It looked like a kangaroo with a faintly dragon-like cast, body a grayish brown, ears and belly yellowish gray. Bony protrusions sat on its shoulders and legs, and a thick pouch stretched across its front. Inside that pouch was a smaller, miniature version of the same Pokémon, only slightly differently colored. The small one hovered quietly over the rim of the pouch, curiously looking around.
Kangaskhan. Norman's first Pokémon, and a relatively rare one. This species was particular in that, although it was billed as a single Pokémon, in reality it was two. Inside the large pouch on the parent Kangaskhan sat a smaller Kangaskhan. The small one had no combat ability on its own, but if it got injured during battle, the parent Kangaskhan would unleash a frenzy of power, capable of flattening anyone, Pokémon or human, who'd hurt the baby.
Worth mentioning was that this species only had one form of Mega Evolution, and the Mega didn't transform the parent itself. It transformed the baby.
After Mega Evolution, the baby Kangaskhan grew larger and gained the same combat power as the parent. Whatever moves the parent used, the baby could use too. The baby's hits did only one-quarter of the parent's damage, but they inflicted secondary effects with double weight.
So any buffs or debuffs from those moves doubled too, meaning double buffs and double debuffs. In short, an absurdly strong Mega Evolution.
That kind of Mega Evolution hadn't been publicly discovered yet. Ash only knew about it because of the Chat Group.
Norman's Kangaskhan wasn't holding a Mega Stone. It was holding a Life Orb. Life Orb boosted all move damage by thirty percent, but the side effect was that every attack cost extra stamina. Getting pulled into a long fight while holding one was suicidal.
For a burst-style Pokémon, though, it suited perfectly. On top of that, this Kangaskhan's ability was Scrappy, and combined with its A-rank attack, it was almost certainly built as a pure brute-force striker.
"Against that, then I'll send him. You're up, Lucario!" Ash threw his first Poké Ball, and a striking figure took the field. The Aura Pokémon.
Lucario.
The blue-and-black canine landed on the field, and an instant ripple of excitement ran through the elementary-aged students at the edge of the arena. A Pokémon this cool was just about every kid's dream Pokémon. No exaggeration. Even an adult would want one.
"Lucario. Very rare Pokémon. It's mostly found in the Sinnoh region, with a few here and there in Kanto, but it basically never appears in the wild in Kanto. You're lucky, Ash." Norman's voice carried admiration.
Given how much Norman knew about Ash, of course he was aware Ash had a Lucario. He was saying this for the students' benefit, slipping a little Pokémon education into the lead-up. Knowledge delivered this way stuck in their heads more easily than a lecture would.
"Your Kangaskhan is just as rare, Mr. Norman. Even in Kanto you almost never see one. I didn't expect Hoenn's top Gym Leader to carry one on his main team." Ash assessed the matchup as he spoke.
A Fighting-type Lucario was at a disadvantage against Kangaskhan in raw matchup terms. In efficiency and total value, Lucario was still ahead, but in terms of straight level, Lucario was significantly behind. He was a hair short of Elite Four, but that hair-thin gap had been holding for a while.
The level gap between them was enormous. Aura fusion could close it easily.
But sending Lucario in with Aura fusion would be pointless. Ash never fought stomp matches. The whole way along, he'd been either fighting above his level or working toward fighting above his level. Even with Aura fusion in play, he rarely matched his opponents.
Most of the time, he was a tier below, sometimes several tiers below. It was precisely because he was always climbing against tougher opponents that he and his Pokémon had grown so fast. A favorable matchup was fun, sure, but a tough matchup was where the real skill development happened.
So for this match, Ash didn't intend to use Aura fusion. He wanted Lucario to win this with his own strength. Pulling off the win meant Lucario's current power wasn't enough. He'd have to break his own ceiling and push through to Elite Four mid-match.
This duel was a gamble between Ash and Lucario both.