Headcanons About A Timeline When Leon Doesn't Become The Champion

Headcanons about a timeline when Leon doesn't become the champion

Due to a traumatic, scary incident, Leon is scared of big, powerful Pokemon, or even of Pokemon in general. Sonia's Yamper is okay. He looks after a Pokemon egg and gets a Charmander, and Charmander is okay. He does actually go on the journey, and he can force himself to battle, but he's a nervous wreck by the end of any battle, which of course means all his Pokemon are worried for him and don't focus on battling anywhere near as much as they should.

In this timeline, because Leon isn't the victorious never-lost-a-battle champion, instead it's Sonia. And since Sonia not only could beat Leon, and then beat the previous champion, she doesn't get the same confusion about what to do with her life as she does in the original timeline. She isn't mega passionate about battling, but she's good enough at it to be the champion, and it's kind of fun being famous and popular, so she sticks with it.

Leon, on the other hand, happily goes back to Postwick where all he has to worry about are cute fuzzy Wooloo. One of the neighbours has a jerk of a Boltund that can be seen chasing Leon down the dirt roads sometimes while Leon runs, terrified and damn near tears as a kid. Leon becomes a bit of the town joke, not just for his fear of Pokemon but also getting lost all the time.

Leon rolls with it, but on the inside he hates how he's so scared of Pokemon, and how everyone makes fun of him. And to make matters worse, since Sonia became the champion and Nessa became a gym leader, he never gets to spend time with them, and when they do it's often Pokemon-related activities because Sonia can't afford to not spend every spare moment battling or training. Leon slowly pulls away from his friends, and anyone else who's lives revolve around Pokemon.

As Hop grows up, Leon is constantly there to look after him. Despite his own fear, he doesn't discourage Hop from being obsessed with Pokemon, and even helps teach him how to battle, catch Pokemon, or care for them, while being nervous and jittery the whole time. Hop knows Leon is scared of most Pokemon, but doesn't really grasp the depths of that fear and thinks it's just a minor thing.

Eventually, Sonia loses the champion title to Raihan. She was famous enough that she can still base her whole career around being a former champion, which she does for a while, and goes to tournaments and events around the world thanks to her battling prowess. Though, she's not particularly happy with it. Battling is fun, but it doesn't fulfill her like it once did. She starts turning down more and more events and tournaments and sticks around in her Gran's lab, where she discovers that this is what she wants to do.

When Hop is a young teen or preteen, he's ready for his journey. The professor goes to his house, where he, Gloria, and Victor are to pick out their starters. Leon catches sight of Hop interacting with Scorbunny, and the energetic bunny Pokemon is on the verge of being an outright violent little maniac, which of course freaks Leon out and he goes around the back of the house to hide.

There, he finds Sobble. The water Pokemon was so terrified of Scorbunny and Grooky's actions that it ran and hid, just like Leon. Leon, despite his fear of most Pokemon, still can't resist when he sees one sad and in need of some comfort, so he manages to get Sobble in his arms where he sits there hugging it.

Out front, Professor Magnolia seemed to know that this was somehow going to happen, and she brought a backup water starter- a Squirtle. So Hop has Scorbunny, Victor gets Grooky, and Gloria gets Squirtle. The kids are ecstatic and immediately rush off to go battle and catch Pokemon, while Magnolia goes around back and finds Leon and Sobble holding each other for comfort and tells him she thinks that he'll be good for Sobble, so he can keep it, because she knows that Leon will avoid the scary situations that Sobble also fears.

For a while, Leon raises Sobble, who can be seen clinging to his shoulder, arm, leg, back, or head as he tends to the Wooloo in the field or fixes fences or does any of his other farm-related chores. Hop comes back partway into his journey to excitedly show off his Pokemon, and Leon gets scared by Hop's Corviknight snapping it's beak near him. This causes Hop to be a bit exasperated and also offended, and he snaps at Leon about how Hop's Pokemon are NEVER going to be a danger to anyone. Leon apologizes, but feels pretty crappy, and later on that night he goes to see Magnolia to try and give the Sobble back, saying that with a scaredy-Skitty like him, Sobble is never going to get any stronger. Leon's in a bad place in his head, thinking of himself as a failure of an older brother and in other regards. Before Magnolia can refute his claims, Leon runs off.

On his way home, alone, that jerkass Boltund comes for him, happily ready to chase him and scare the crap out of him. But before it can do that, Sobble suddenly hits it with a Water Gun so powerful it sends the Boltund running yelping. Sobble storms up to Leon, soaks him too, and then grumpily climbs up onto him and won't let go.

Leon has a bit of an awakening and realizes he wants to overcome his fear of Pokemon. So he takes Sobble and Charizard and he goes on like a second journey as an adult to try and overcome his fears.

Along the way, he runs into Raihan while he's training, where Raihan's Pokemon scare the life out of Leon. Raihan ends up journeying with Leon, though never EVER helps him when he's lost or has to battle, basically like he's pretending he doesn't even have Pokemon and follows Leon around during the day. Whenever Leon makes camp, Raihan then releases his Pokemon and forces Leon to get used to them being around, and Raihan will talk about all the various ways dragon Pokemon protect their young, their mates, their trainers, or themselves, and how they court each other or look after sick or injured ones.

When Leon and Raihan encounter angry wild Pokemon, Raihan helps Leon stay calm, and points out that the Pokemon is in a rage only because it's scared or it's protecting something, and it's not doing this to specifically try and hurt Leon (which is the thing that Leon's always afraid of). Leon slowly overcomes his fears of Pokemon.

Sobble doesn't want to evolve, so Leon gives it an Everstone to hold in it's curled-up tail. Despite not evolving, Leon is really good at bringing out the strength of his Pokemon, and Sobble is a force to be reckoned with. Raihan feels like he's taught Leon all he can, and all that's left is Leon needs to take more time to overcome his fears, so he leaves Leon to it.

Leon meets other people and makes a lot of progress, and learns new things. But he also has some bad times, such as where someone being an absolute piece of shit realizes that Leon is working on overcoming his fears, and uses their Pokemon in a scheme to scare and terrorize Leon over the course of a couple of days. It backfires, though, when the person's Pokemon realize Leon is truly scared and it's cruel what their trainer wants them to do to Leon, so they turn on their trainer to get them to stop, and then help Leon out of the sticky situation they put him in. And one of those Pokemon is a Doublade that the trainer ends up abandoning for not following their orders, and the Doublade becomes Leon's Pokemon and soon evolves into Aegislash.

He happens across a very nervous and anxious Drakloak that's lost it's Dreepy friend and ends up absconding with Sobble to put on his head, which results in Leon and his other Pokemon chasing Drakloak around. The Drakloak joins his team, and eventually evolves into Dragapult (who is still a little shit).

Leon's team fills out with other Pokemon as he journeys, and suddenly he has a full team and he's pretty well overcome his fear of Pokemon. It still happens- he still gets scared, either of new Pokemon he's never seen or when Pokemon directly attack him. But he's much better at managing his fear, and he's not such a nervous wreck at the end of battles. In fact, he has so much fun with battles that he's filled with a passion for battling he's never felt before. He's still kind of jittery and anxious before battles, though, and afterwards he's relieved that it's done and it's a bit draining on him, but he kind of enjoys those feelings now.

Since anyone who's previously done the gym challenge and made it to the finals can re-enter and skip the badge-collecting process, Leon enters on the very last day that he can. He's worried he'd have to battle Hop- he and Hop didn't exactly part on the greatest of terms, and it occurs to him that Hop might not even realize that Leon's gone and done a second journey.

But Leon doesn't fight Hop, who gets taken out by Victor or Gloria or Marnie earlier on. Leon does go all the way to the top, though, and battles Raihan.

And Leon, who has avoided most anything to do with Pokemon, including social media and League-related news, is legit SHOCKED that the weirdo dragon trainer who journeyed with him for a while and literally held his hand when he got lost sometimes is the champion. Leon and Raihan battle, and since right before the battle Sobble ditched the everstone in favour of a different item, Sobble evolves twice in the same battle, going all the way to Inteleon right at the end to take out one of Raihan's Pokemon.

The battle still goes down to Charizard and Duraludon. And then Leon wins.

It's a huge deal, because no one has any idea who the fuck Leon is, and Raihan was the reigning champ for a few years solid and miles ahead of all his other challengers ever.

Rose is a dick and he's not happy to have Leon, who's kind of nervous all the time, as the champion. But Raihan basically appoints himself as Leon's personal assistant, to go with him whenever the Galar champion is invited to tournaments (where he knows Leon will encounter new Pokemon that'll initially freak him out, and also get lost a lot). Truthfully, Raihan is kind of happy to be dethroned, because as much as he loves the spotlight, it was getting to be a bit much. He had a lot more fun following Leon around than doing his own champion things.

Since Leon wasn't the unbeatable champion for ten years before Hop entered the challenge, it's far less stressful on him when he loses, and he's happy to go and join Sonia at the lab, both of them working as assistants under Magnolia for a while. Leon and Hop apologize to each other and go back to being insufferably supportive and adorkable brothers. Leon and Raihan then go on journeys together to other regions or just around Galar, and since Leon only became champion when he was a full-grown adult, it's nowhere near as damaging to his self-esteem and such as it was in the original timeline.

And, as Leon and Raihan go places together, they fall in love, to literally no one's surprise, and eventually live happily ever after.