A clatter of nervous steps can be heard from inside of the large building that is placed into the wall, spanning several kilometers of sheer cliff-face, a woman dressed in office clothes with a clipboard and a quite scared look on her face exits the building with deep breaths.

  She is greeted by a scene out of a paradise, the picturesque landscape with a healthy dotting of large trees, a healthy crystal clear river runs through the little slice of heaven.

  sprinkled with various flowers and plants, it looks like a perfect piece of nature, though she pays it all no mind, she is here to meet someone, someone important and for an important reason, but he might not see it that way.

  With shuddering deep breaths the woman steps onwards in a hurry, crossing a hundred meters in a matter of moments before she notices a mound in the distance, as she approaches at a fast pace, she views it more clearly, a mound, perhaps a hill, of red and brown rocks.

  But she finally spots the man she is here to see, a young man, seemingly in his early twenties, shirtless, and in only a pair of green cargo pants, his dark green hair weaved into a ponytail behind him, seated in the lotus position, he opens his eyes and the woman feels an unmistakable intensity within them, a danger that assaults her senses, like prey before a predator.

  She stops when she is but a few meters from the hill, more than fifty from the green haired man, as she begins to open her mouth to speak, he interrupts her, “Movements from Johto?” he asks in a surprisingly light voice, but still laced with the threat of strength.

  She responds quickly “no sir, th-”, the man interrupts “Then I don’t want to hear it, you have interrupted my training, but I am in a good mood today, i shall let you off this once, now go.” he says in a tone of total finality laced with barely-hidden anger.

  She wishes that she could just leave, but there is no one else willing to inform him of what has happened, and she is the only one with a modicum of his respect, she, against all of her instincts that are blaring like emergency sirens within her mind, begins to speak again “There has been a string of mass kidnappings, sir, but the reason we have deigned to inform you is because of a certain person that perished when trying to defend against the assailan-” the man interrupts once again “If you dare to come here, then it must be important to me, I will allow you to leave, but only if this is truly of import, otherwise-,”.

  She feels the ground around her begin to shake and notices that the hill is…moving, squirming like a compacted pile of skeletal limbs, suddenly it stops moving and the ground stops rumbling, she notices that the man had raised his hand in an open palmed motion, he speaks again,”continue.” he said with a terrifyingly leveled and emotionless voice.

  The woman shakes but begins speaking again, “the person of interest that perished was the matron of the largest orphanage in Celadon city, Amelia Appleton-” she feels a catastrophic burst of energy, like she had just been engulfed within the blast radius of an explosion.

  “Leave, NOW!” the man shouts and whispers at the same time, tears falling from his eyes, the woman doesn’t wait for him to lose his patience and begins running to the building, she makes, but just barely as she hears explosions of force from where she just came from.

  The champion is much too volatile, perhaps this incident can force him to act for once instead of just training those titanic bugs of his, she thinks as she goes back to work, dealing with the aftermath of the largest kidnapping of affinitied individuals in recorded history.

  -Some time later-

  *beep* *beep *beep* “What the-”*beep*”oh, fuck you, you shitty transmitt-*beep* “Shut up will you!, stupid piece of expensive scr-”*beep*”where did I-”*beep*”Finally! there it is-”*bee- *click* a voice speaks on the other end the instant the button is pressed, "Elite Four Garrett” the transmitter manages to escape being smashed to bits as the brute of a man that was holding it shows a confused look on his face, the male voice from the transmitter continues “your presence is requested for an emergency meeting in the main conference room”, it resounds, with a gravely, robotic after-tone.

  The strong man replies “Why am I needed? I haven’t been to a meeting in years.”, there is a beat of silence from the other side of the transmitter before the other man speaks again “This is a request from champion Gideon.”, before the brutish man can express his shock at the declaration, the transmitter beeps again and the call is cut from the other side.

  “What the hell!? Gideon hasn’t exited his seclusion training in three years, what could have possibly gotten him up and about?” the man questions to himself.

  He looks around him at the expansive underground training room, weights going from singular kilograms to hundreds of tons with the help of gravity enhancing items and techniques, machines that would tear a normal man apart, left dented in the wake of this large, brutish man.

  The man placed the transmitter back in his bag, though not at the very bottom this time, and began to walk the long journey from his personal training room to the conference room.

  He passed by offices, personnel, pokemon, trainers and many more, his head nearly scraping the tops of the doorways he passes under, even after they heightened the frames when he was inducted as an elite four member, it is still quite a tight fit for his 7 foot 3 inch frame.

  As he was musing on whether to do legs or chest during his next training session, he realized that he had arrived at the conference room already and had just been standing in front of the door for the past minute or so, before anyone catches his embarrassing lapse in attention, he opens the door and walks in, closing it behind him and making his way to his designated seat.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He walked to his seat, a simple wooden chair, expanded for his considerable frame of course, he sat in it and looked over to the other four people that were already seated and had been waiting for his arrival.

  The champion and all four elite four members, he was sure he needed to check his memory a bit more, but he could count on both hands the number of times he had seen more than two of them in the same room together.

  Nevermind the fact that the champion hadn’t been seen by anyone since several years ago when he ascended to the position.

  He inspected the others, feeling a negligible difference in every aura apart from the champions, his was at least five times greater than even his, which he prided himself upon, though there isn’t much he can do to close the gap, Gideon is one of the lucky few within the whole world to have a dual affinity after all.

  Fire and bug, quite the juxtaposition, Garrett thinks, growth and destruction, though that centiskroch of his certainly was quite the ‘mon, fifty meters long last he saw, and that was three whole years ago, who knows how strong the big bugger has gotten since then.

  Gideon himself was the youngest of them all, having been inducted as champion at the ripe old age of seventeen and now he was twenty, the youngest champion in history, he stood at 6 foot 4 inches and had his long dark green hair in a ponytail that reached his waist when he stood.

  Then Garrett looked towards the man sitting to the right of Gideon, the electric type elite four member, Nikolas, his Jolteon could outrun Garrett’s whole team even if he was given an hour headstart, the man himself was an oddball for certain, he had this habit of looking deep into your eyes and smiling like he had just uncovered your greatest secrets, he was quite the average height at 5’10 or so, and he wore his dirty blonde hair sicked back like some kind of creepy mafia boss.

  Looking further along the round table, he saw Brynne, the water type elite four, she is the busiest of the bunch by far, having to patrol and protect nearly half of the region’s territorial waters by her lonesome, no one dared to ask her age…at least not anymore, thank arceus above that my mother taught me well, I'd never want to be attacked like what she did to Nikola after he was first inducted and had asked in no uncertain terms if she was an ‘old lady’ or not.

  She stood taller than average at 5 foot 11 inches to be exact.

  Her gyarados was a monster though, capable of dragging entire large pirate vessels into the deep on its own.

  Finally, Garrett looked towards Vincent, his least favorite member, the man had a penchant for getting himself and others into trouble, he couldn’t truly fault the guy because if he’d never felt a hangover or even felt tired, he guessed he’d be just as irresponsible,he had a deviant affinity which made him as he puts it ‘invulnerable to status conditions’ whatever that truly means, he mostly just uses it to avoid hangovers, he can however choose to not apply his ability, which he uses to get drunk almost every night.

  He is a tall man, standing at 6 foot 2 inches at age twenty two. His drapion packs a mean punch though, it is after all, his kommo-o’s favorite sparring partner, it would be an insult to pick a weak one.

  And finally Garrett thinks, myself, standing at 7 foot 4 inches off of the ground and packed with lean muscle young and spry at age 31, a fighting type trainer, if it wasn’t obvious, though I do have this habit of overanalysing and describing people at random times, can’t hurt to remember the specifics I guess.

  It was at the end of that thought that Gideon finally spoke, shattering the several minute long awkward silence that had persisted since the meeting had been called.

  “I’m not sure if all of you have seen the recent report from across the region, but from a cursory glance, I can tell that we’re in some deep shit, hundreds of the most talented children that would form the bulwark of trainers in the next generation were kidnapped between the hours of 4 PM and 6 PM just yesterday, hundreds of innocents died, many of them strong trainers in their own right.

  From the eye-witness descriptions, we know that these people wore cloaks and were covered in black bandages with a large red eye symbol on their chests, they all were at least advanced rank and several veteran ranked trainers that were close to these locations reported trainers with similar strength pokemon to them, does anyone have anything to add before I continue?” he spoke with not a speck of emotion, unless one counted the large bags under his eyes and the clear redness that eluded to his true emotional state.

  Brynne spoke up first “There has been a significant uptick in suspicious vessels in my corner of the seas in the past few days, but nothing concrete.” she added, Vincent went next, slurring every word he spoke “I *hic* heard that there was some kinda group o’ weirdos goin around and lookin for cult members or somethin. Do I get to go back to the bar now lil champ?” he spoke with slurred words and a barely conscious mind if the drooping of his eyes was anything to go by.

  Gideon responded to him by suddenly appearing in front of him, faster that I can move even at my top speed, dual affinities are something else.

  Once Vincent finally realized after a few seconds that there was a very angry champion staring down at him on his comfy sofa, he suddenly sat up straight and gained a serious look in his eyes, activated his ability to neutralize the alcohol no doubt, he looked the champion in the eyes for a few seconds before shocking everyone by speaking in a very depressive tone, “I’m sorry Gideon, didn’t mean to make you mad, just trying to lighten the mood a little.”.

  I was in shock, is-is Vincent admitting that he was wrong? Who is this and what did they do with the alcoholic bastard we all knew and ignored? Gideon simply looked Vincent up and down before appearing instantly back in his heated sofa chair, he looked to me and I shook my head, assuming that it was about if anyone had anything more to comment, he looked to Nikolas and he too shook his head.

  Gideon just sighed and started speaking once again, this time quieter and without the authoritative edge to his voice he usually uses, “I’m going to personally investigate this group of little bitches, targeting the next generation, but you all know I’m not a truly righteous man so I’ll just come out and say it, they killed my adoptive mother.” he said with a slouch of his back and a slow, mournful blink of his eyes.

  Everyone around the table was frozen in shock, me especially so, I’m the dude that’s supposed to know about everything and I didn’t know he even had an adoptive mother! The cover story, I guess I should consider it as now, is that he was abandoned as a child, fending for himself in the forests and mountains until he returned to society as an advanced level trainer at age twelve, I’m assuming that to be truth as there's no reason to lie, but the part about him journeying around the region in search of his parents for years, amassing strength passively must have been a lie!

  But as I thought about this, I remembered how I felt when my mother died, I was in a sad state for months, I couldn’t even manage to get to the gym, I can only wonder how Gideon is feeling after not seeing her for years just to suddenly be delivered the news that she died in a targeted attack whose intended target was a child.

  Gideon sighed yet again and spoke up “I did learn some things in my investigation into that specific incident, she was heading to the hospital with a newborn baby after he had suddenly awakened his affinity somehow, she classified it in the league systems as a ‘deviant growth type’ and the effects were as follows ‘Young Kane Sterling has grown several inches a week since he was born, I have also observed increased strength and mental acuity, more befitting of a ten year old that a newborn babe.

  I also noticed that there is some kind of odd energy barrier within him, quite like what is felt before an affinity manifests, it how we test for them after all, this leads me to the conclusion that young Kane is a dual affinity holder and therefore must be treated with the utmost compassion, lest he end up turning down a darker road due to bad influences.’, end of entry.

  I am henceforth designating Kane Sterling as a national league asset and putting out an urgent search warrant for his location, he was last pictured with the appearance of a five year old, though by the time we find him, he could very well look much older, as one of now five dual affinity holders in the Kanto region, we must do our utmost to secure the future of our great region.

  Understood?”, “Yes Champion Gideon!” we all reply in concert, completely awed by the news of the first dual ability holder to be born in twenty years and at the fact that he is in the hands of a terrorist organization.

  *sigh* I’m not going home on time tonight am I?