Part 75: Steven

Pokemon Adventures - Steven Stone



At the pokemon league tournament previous to RS starting up, Steven Stone battles Wallace in the finals to determine the champion, and Steven lost, Wallace, not wanting to be separated from Winona, the woman he loved, gave up the title, leaving Steven crowned champion and the 4 runner-ups the "Elite 4" of Hoenn. Despite his unearned position as Hoenn's champion, Steven acts as something of the 'Big Good' of the region, well aware the Aqua and Magma are run by insane people, he from the start using Devon Corp attempts to craft several counter-measures to Operation: Wake up these two sleeping behemoth's and who knows maybe they'll make more water/land. Submarine-1 was his first attempt, as he figured if they could seal the Seafloor Cavern then there wasn't all that much that Magma or Aqua could do but stick a thumb in it. Failing that, he had a blind boy learn braille and gave him a fractured stone carving to track down the Regi's, if, after all, Magma and Aqua did succeed, they'd need something with firepower to put a stop to them... and seeing how the Salamance Incident cost them any chance of controlling Rayquaza they had to make do with what they could find. His next action was tracking down powerful trainers who could help stand against Magma and Aqua.


Sapphire was tasked to find him by Mr. Stone, but Ruby is actually the one who encounters him, with Steven helping evolve his Skitty and considering recruiting Ruby to help him fight Aqua and Magma, he decides against it because, and you'll find this hard to believe because it's Pokemon... but Steven recognizes that Ruby is 10 years old and is a little too young to be getting involved in saving the world. simultaneously making him the smartest and most reasonable human being in the Pokemon world and also completely thick.

So you know that letter in the games you deliver to Steven and then nothing comes of it again? Well, as I said, Sapphire was supposed to deliver it to him, but he doesn't actually meet her until everything has gone to hell in a handbasket, With Kyogre and Groudon raging about, Sootopolis warped by the energy of two titans colliding, Sapphire is finally able to pass the letter on to Steven... which contains the missing contents of the stone tablet he tasked the boy to translate, the method of freeing the Regi's.

Unlocking Regirock, Regice, and Registeel, he and the Elite 4 command the Trio in an effort to at the very least contain Groudon and Kyogre's battle while Norman fetches Rayquaza. However, as RS has frequently stated, trying to control legendary pokemon without capturing them is horrifically strainful on the body, and Steven is trying to control three at once for almost a full day. Eventually, it takes its toll and Steven collapses and dies.



He gets better. And I'll go over eventually how I feel regarding the RS ending when I do my final wrap up, so please hold out until then.

In Platinum he shows up selling his Villa to Platinum so she can conduct her investigation of the island in Sinnoh, meanwhile he's gotten all the stones he wanted from Sinnoh and in the end, Steven is nothing more than a gigantic rock nerd. Which makes it funny of course that ORAS would happen and now he has to stop a giant rock from smashing into Hoenn.

Steven represents the "Science" faction here, the group consisting mainly of Devon, who believe they can use technology, Hoopa's warping abilities, and the energy absorption technology to teleport the Meteor to another universe and make it "Someone Elses Problem" he's of course, in conflict with Zinnia, who represents the Draconids and kinda hates Devon because they maybe sorta killed Aster, see... we keep going back to Rayquaza in the end, 5 years before RS Devon was trying to control it so they could put a stop to any future Kyogre/Groudon fuckery, but creating a 'Jade Orb' doesn't come without sacrifice and in their battle to capture Rayquaza they kinda... killed her, and took several of the Keystones she had.

The third faction is 'Nature' for the sake of being complete, that appears to be the Planet itself bringing back Archie and Maxie to revive Groudon and Kyogre and use them to destroy the meteor. Basically it's an excuse to bring back two Deader than Dead guys with their new designs (Before killing them again. Pokemon Adventures really hates Maxie and Archie)

Steven, overall, is a pretty chill guy, he takes responsibility and he's trying his damndest to keep his stupid, stupid continent from being blown the hell up. To be clear he wasn't responsible for what happened with Zinnia, so much as Devon Corp as a whole was, but them's the breaks of previously-unintroduced plot tribes. They make things complex. I might devote a post to ORAS, all depends on if Crosspiece intends to cover Episode Delta in any way.