Instead, she took out her PokéGear and pressed a single button. A message she and Silver had prepared, linked to every trainer she'd ever traded with—from Sinnoh, Hoenn, Kalos, Alola. She had beaten the Champion. She had captured Lugia. She had walked through the distortion of the Sinjoh Ruins. She had friends everywhere.
Someone had spray-painted a crude, snarling face over the carved image of Celebi. Beneath it, in clumsy letters: NO FALSE GODS. ONLY JOHTO POKÉMON. Lyra stood before the desecration, her Typhlosion's flame flaring on her back in sympathetic rage. The forest was silent. No wild Paras skittered. No Weedle dangled from branches. Even the Pokémon were afraid.
In the Johto region, years after the defeat of Team Rocket, a quiet unease had begun to fester. It started in the small, traditionalist hamlet of Kanoko Town, nestled in the shadow of the Ilex Forest. The people there had always prided themselves on their deep, spiritual connection to the land and its native Pokémon. They raised Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Totodile; they told stories of the legendary beasts, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune, as if they were beloved grandparents. pokemon heartgold xenophobia
Not all of them, of course. But enough. Trainers from the far-off Unova region, with their oddly geometric Pokémon—the stoic, dark-furred Zorua, the strange, multi-eyed Elgyem—began to appear on Routes 33 and 34. They were polite, for the most part. They sought to challenge the Goldenrod Gym, to see the famed Bell Tower. But to the elders of Kanoko, their Pokémon were… wrong. They didn't feel like real Pokémon. They had no history in Johto. They had no place in the old stories.
Lyra reached for a Poké Ball. But she didn't throw it. She looked at the young faces behind Granny Aya—kids not much younger than herself, with earnest, frightened eyes. They weren't evil. They were just lost. And no amount of battle would un-lose them. Instead, she took out her PokéGear and pressed
Lyra encountered the girl sobbing by the roadside. The Petilil, terrified, was trying to hide under a wild Bellsprout. Lyra helped her catch it again, but a cold knot tightened in her stomach.
It would be something far better. It would be whole. She had captured Lugia
"They're starting with the common ones," Silver said, his voice low. "The ones that could pass for Johtoan if you squint. And when no one stops them, they'll move to the ones that can't hide. Zoroark. Haxorus. Then what? The trainers who own them?"