Pokemon Heartgold Xenophobia -

She turned her back on the old woman and walked away. She didn't need to fight. She needed to bear witness. And when the sun rose over the Ilex Forest the next morning, it illuminated not a battle, but a gathering. Trainers from a dozen regions stood quietly among the ancient trees, holding hands with their "foreign" Pokémon. A Zoroark stood beside a Typhlosion. A Petilil bloomed at the roots of a sacred shrine. A little girl from Unova cried and hugged her newly returned Sewaddle.

The first incident was a rock thrown through the window of the Unovan Pokémon Breeder's shop in Olivine City. The second was worse: a group of masked men calling themselves the "Pure Heart Guild" cornered a young girl and her newly acquired Petilil on the Cycling Road. "That weed doesn't belong here," they snarled. "Go back where you came from." They didn't steal her Pokémon, but they forced her to release it into the wild, claiming the Ilex Forest would "correct the mistake." 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. She turned her back on the old woman and walked away