Chaos reigned in the Pokémon Championship Tournament Rules Room at this very moment. People were screaming left, right, and center over what just happened. The newest Pokémon tournament champion cheated. Did he?

Cheating is a strong word. It’s a word of passion. A word of fervor. Cheating invoked the idea of rage and fury and heat. It’s a word of strong emotion. And in here the emotion was anger.

How dare the newest champion cheat! He should be stripped of his title and banned from all formal competition!

Judge Rhine sat there unmoved. All this yelling and hollering in his room and he sat there as calm as a monk in meditation. Only the occasional blink and light breathing would anything see that he was alive. He was a rock in the middle of a hurricane.

Before him and his panel of judges was the newest champion. A young man named Fawkus McDerbus. A little unusual his name was, maybe kinda funny. Must have gotten a lot of ribbing and hazing when he was younger. But the results of his team and training led him here to the Official Pokémon League and his victory over all the other competitors for this tournament. He was the best of the best.

And a cheater.

Well, cheating was not the correct word. The man legally did not cheat. But the way he played the tournament was more or less cheating to nearly every other competitor and most of the fans that came to watch. The email servers were getting overloaded with complaints against Fawkus. Pidgey, the social media application with a brown tweeter bird, was likewise being swamped by angry users.

But according to Judge Rhine, mister Fawkus did not cheat.

Was it unfair? Subjectively, it was very unfair.

But not against the rules of the tournament and not against the rules of all the other official tournaments.

The rules were: bring a team of six, one on one battle, and no one is allowed to know your opponents’ Pokémon until the trainer sends it out. No one was allowed to try telling them of their opponents. A special seal powered by a multitude of psychic Pokémon enforced this ruling. The only caveat to the rules was that the Pokémon recorded in the server had to officially exist. No breeding hybrids or experimental third-party Pokémon allowed. This was the baseline for every official tournament. Other tournaments might tack on additional minor rules to limit team formats but this one did not do such thing.

All participating teams came with a mixed bag of medium to high level Pokémon and competitive experience. Most trainers had at least one tournament under their belt. Some had several and placed high in them. Some of the participants were also Elite Four veterans, placing high against various Elite Four regions.

It was a tournament of highly experienced trainers competing to best all participating teams.

Fawkus obeyed every rule.

He then won under those conditions and against those teams.

It was just how he won that made people upset.

Normally, people would show up with an assortment of Pokémon. These are their friends, their allies, their buddies. Sometimes you might see under-evolved Pokémon. Like that one kid from Pallet Town that showed up with a Pokeball-less Pikachu. Every so often you’d have a professional trainer with fully evolved but mundane Pokémon. Gyarados, Electivire, Gigalith come to mind.

Not him.

Not Fawkus.

The reason people were upset with Fawkus is that he came with a full set of legendary Pokémon and all of them at very high levels that blew away every trainer with ease. The man didn’t rely on any single of his Pokémon, so everyone got to deal with a slow agonizing crawl during each game as Fawkus basically toyed with his opponents before OHKOing them.

He was like a building-sized Persian playing with a hundred normal-sized Rattatas.

Fawkus brought a team of Solgaleo, Lunala, Xerneas, Yveltal, Koraidon, and Miraidon. Adding insult to injury, the Xerneas was also shiny.

Fawkus steamrolled through the tournament, crushing trainers left, right, and center. The man’s team wasn’t invincible. He ended up with a fainted Pokémon here or there from particularly powerful trainers. One trainer with a team made up of Pidgeot, Alakazam, Rhydon, Gyarados, Exeggutor, and Arcanine managed to drop three of Fawkus’ Pokémon before going down.

But for the most part the majority of participating trainers didn’t get one. Rhine counted of all ninety-nine opposing trainers, only one trainer took four with her, one more trainer got three down, two dropped two of them, and a three managed to faint one. Seven of ninety-nine opponents. Rhine mused that these were some of the best trainers on the planet. And they didn’t manage to get more than four faints. An average of two faints per trainer. Those were bad results.