Chaser and the Sea Spirit's Den

Afterword

 Once again, I am Purim, and thank you for reading so far.

This book has it's origins as a story I had planned to write back in 2014/2015, right around the time Ash and friends were reaching Coumarine City in the anime. It would have been a story featuring a similar plot, only with Serena taking charge, leading Clemont and Bonnie into battle against a mysterious organization that would have been revealed (in the stinger) to be Team Flare.

It would have shared perspectives a bit more evenly than this book ended up doing, but that core series of events (coming to a small town and exploring the Sea Spirit's Den in Kalos) was always an idea I had cracking around in my mind, and as I planned out the early books in 'One Who Chases', I thought that I had an opportunity to dust off an older idea and make it new again. So this story was planned out and written, changing out a bit of the framing to exclude the Lemon Siblings and to feature Goh as the central protagonist. It was a good opportunity to have a mature and wise Serena come and help Goh wrestle with his feelings, to make use of older ideas, and to finally write out a story I had in mind for a long time!

And then JN115 aired and Serena's appearance in the episode caught me scrambling to see what I could still keep from this one.

In the end, I didn't have to make a lot of changes. Serena's outfit was swapped out to her newer one and Braixen was replaced with Delphox, but the core of the story remained the same, and other than direct references to her clothing, I didn't have to change any dialogue the characters said in the story, either. I'm not sure if this is all thanks to how well I know these characters or blind luck, but I'm not opposed to good fortune.

In this story, Goh had to affirm his ability to believe in others, to hold onto faith, and to believe that he would come out the other side better than he went in. Faith, both in people and in things outside of people, was something I kept in mind when writing. Tying back, there was a lot of faith in the Pokémon who are treated like gods, and Pokémon who are thought of as gods will be a continuing theme as the story continues. Please keep what it means to have faith in mind as we continue. You may just find your faith being rewarded.

If you normally skip the side story chapters that I put up between main One Who Chases books, I encourage you not to do so this time; the side stories I prepared for Book 5 are closely tied to the events in the book, featuring scenes from the perspectives other than Goh's, showing what happened to others while they were away from the main character's sight. I hope you enjoy what the 'Flower' and the 'Heritor' have to offer!

The next book will begin on October 1st, 2022, and will be the final book for this leg of the story, the final book to be released before the release of Scarlet and Violet versions, and (most likely though not confirmed) the last book to be released during the run of Pokémon Journeys in Japan. While One Who Chases will continue into 2023, this is a rather large milestone, so I hope you join me then in 'Chaser and the Greatest Smith's Ball'!