Later on, I left the hotel and walked to the Pokemon Center on the north part of the city, near where the main entrance to the city was. It wasn’t that far from where I was staying, so I was able to get there in fifteen minutes. I stopped briefly at a pokemon bakery on the way there.
I walked inside the Pokemon Center with a brown bag and talked with the Nurse Joy in charge, and she directed a Chansey to lead me to the second floor.
I thanked the normal type pokemon and knocked on the door.
“Hera,” Cape said from inside the room, over the faint sound of a battle.
I entered and saw him laid down on the bed, watching a Jasmine battle against a trainer challenging for his eighth badge. A brief look showed her Lucario shaking the battlefield as he struck down a Gyarados. I turned to him, searching for the injuries he sustained from the Hyper Beam. There weren't any, just faint lines across his exoskeleton from where the advanced move broke it down.
“How are you, Cape. I brought your favorite treats.” I gave him the bag and he took it candidly. I sat down on the chair beside him, and nodded at the television. “So who’s winning?”
Cape grinned.
---
After spending an hour with Cape, letting the rest of the team talk to him, even Clefairy–and wasn’t he happy to learn she was going to travel with us–I followed the signs towards the canteen, which in this Pokemon Center was on the left wing of the building.
I approached the double doors and noticed something unique about this canteen; the silence.
Noise wasn't something I noticed normally. Growing up in an orphanage tends to teach you to ignore most of it, but it’s impossible to ignore the noise that comes out of a Pokemon Center canteen.
Thinking for a second that the place was empty, I pulled open the door and looked inside the room. I immediately understood the reason for the silence from the outside.
I’ve been in all the large cities and towns in the main peninsula, Azalea, Goldenrod, Violet, Ecruteak, and all of them had canteens where the largest demographic using it were fourteen years old and below trainers, a very excited group in which most spoke loudly, joked loudly, eat loudly, and sometimes, even moved loudly.
In Olivine, the dozens of tables of the canteen were occupied by older teenagers, fifteen years old and above, eating in silence or otherwise talking quietly among themselves. The pokemon belts I could see all had more than six pokeballs clipped to them, and the trainers themselves wore expensive clothes–not the usual and flashy kind of expensive–the kind that looked solid and reliable, like good boots, jackets, or hats that lasted for years and years with no tear.
It shouldn’t be a surprise now that I think about it.
Olivine City was the HQ for both the army and the navy, and also housed the biggest division of Pokemon Rangers, among a whole host of other organizations that recruited from the veteran’s pool. It was logical that most of the people here would be the ones who had to look at their options for later in life.
Stopping by the entrance for a second, I saw the only table with the three smallest people here. I walked towards them and felt glances in my direction. With a quick glance around, I caught someone looking away just after looking at my belt. He wasn’t the only one.
They were, I realized, sneakily assessing and then quickly dismissing me once they saw I only had six pokeball on me. It sure stung a little to be written off so fast despite being the same age as them, but fair enough. I was a rookie, and like Gary said, age matters little in the pokemon world.
I focused on the people I came here to see. Jess and Aiden were sitting with their backs turned to the entrance, Dendra wasn’t, and her face lit up when she saw me approaching.
“Scott.” Dendra said, holding back a shout while still raising an arm high in the air and waving me over. I guess the mood of the place got to her.
“Dendra.” I nodded at her, and then at my other two traveling companions as I sat down on her side of the table. “Aiden, Jess, how are you guys doing?”
“We’re good, spent the last few days training,” Jess said on behalf of the group, and then she stared at my arm. “How’s your arm and back?”
“Sometimes it hurts out of nowhere, but it's just a spike and then it’s gone.” I moved my arm around a bit. “It’ll probably be as good as new in a few days. The benefits of being young, the doctor said, and modern medicine.”
“That’s good,” Jess said, letting out a sigh.
“That’s great.” Dendra corrected her and pushed her chair back. “Now that you’re here we can finally go get food, c'mon."
The four of us got up from the table and reached the line to get our food. After paying the token amount, each of us got a plate to fill. Jess filled hers mostly with salad, Aiden with meat, and Dendra with snacky foods like cheese fries and bacon wrapped pieces of other meat. I put my usual–a little bit of everything–and we went back to the table.
“Okay,” I said after we all sat down again. “I have something big to tell you guys, but it’s a secret for now, so don’t go around shouting about it, understand?”
“Sure,” Jess agreed easily, Aiden shrugged, more interested in his food, and Dendra just mimicked zipping her mouth shut with her fingers.
“Remember that Clefairy that was leading the fairy group. The one that helped us?” I whispered to them.
They nodded, now more interested. It seems that Clefairy made a big impression on them.
“She wanted to visit me in the hospital, and she did. The… problem is that she came alone since she had to run away from the Joy clan compound to do it.”
There was a second of silence, and then Dendra squeaked, Jess’ mouth fell open, and Aiden stopped eating and lowered his arms.
“Wow,” Dendra whispered.
“I think we’re gonna need more details than that Scott,” Jess said.
Aiden nodded at that.
“Alright,” I said. “I was in my room, just taking a nap, when I woke up hearing voices outside the room. I opened the door a bit to see what was happening and saw two groups talking from across the corridor, three Joy clan members and three Blackthorn clan members. They were almost shouting at each other, and right in the middle of them was Clefairy.”
“Ooooh,” Dendra whispered with wide eyes as she chewed her food.
“Things started to get heated, the Joys wanted to return Clefairy to a pokeball and leave, and the Blackthorns are questioning them about her on the grounds that she clearly didn’t want to leave with them.” I threw a nod at Aiden, who nodded proudly back with a smile. “They were just shy of shouting at each other, when someone appeared at the end of the corridor and shut them down… Guess who?”
“Nurse Joy?!”
“Professor Oak?”
“Akashi?”
“Good guesses, but no. It was Gary Oak, also known as Trainer Blue.”
Dendra leaned away and down from me further into her seat, mouth open as if she were struck down by Arceus himself. Jess' face emptied. Aiden just stared, but I could feel the disbelief in an almost formed sneer. The three were stunned, but Aiden recovered faster.
“Taurosshit,” he said, surprising everyone. I’d never heard him swear before, ever, and I could tell that even he was surprised.
“It’s true,” I said evenly, recognizing that he was only surprised, not really in disbelief. “He entered into the corridor with his Arcanine behind him, and sent them away.”
“And then what?” Dendra asked.
“Then they saw me, and both Clefairy and him entered my room,” I shrugged. “Clefairy, as I said before, was apparently looking for me anyway and it turns out that Blue wanted to talk to me, since I’m also a trainer sponsored by Professor Oak.”
“Why Clefairy wanted to see you?” Jess asked with an raised eyebrow, probably already suspecting of something.
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I scratched my neck as I pulled out the sixth and shiningly new pokemon clipped to my belt and held it just a little over the table for them to see. Their eyes locked on the pokeball and widened. Before they could say—or shout anything—I put a finger on my mouth and shushed them.
Jess and Aiden stopped, frozen even. Dendra, meanwhile, became extremely agitated, but stayed in silence even as her face reddened.
“I’ll explain more later, but I don't think she likes the Joys that much, and from what she saw on the road, she took a liking to my team. She still isn’t certain if she wants to stay as part of the team, so we made an agreement of just testing things, something similar to what Dendra and Mawile did. So for now, she’s a traveling companion we’re getting to know.”
The more I spoke, the more they relaxed, until they just seemed to accept the fact that I had a very, very rare pokemon on my hands. Dendra, as usual, was the first to move on. “So Scott, how was Blue?”
“Yeah, and what did you guys talk about?” Jess asked.
I took a good bite of my food as I thought about what to say. “He’s nicer than you might think. I think he mellowed down a bit, or grew up, whichever you prefer, from what he was when he was journeying. And he said he wanted to meet me to form an opinion about his grandfather’s newest trainer.”
“I see, I see,” Dendra said smiling, while tapping her chin. “Blue probably wanted to know if you were worthy enough to be a new rival to him, like Red.”
“Let’s not get that far.” I frowned.
“He also wanted to talk about the attack, I imagine,” Aiden said, and I reluctantly nodded. “Blue helped take down Team Rocket two years ago, so maybe he wants another round with them? What did you get from him?”
“He touched it briefly, but mostly not anything you guys wouldn’t know from the news.” I would need to be careful here. No way I’m telling them everything Gary explained since there was a lot of classified stuff, but I also couldn’t let them travel around without being on the lookout. “He also said that it’s possible, though not probable, that there’ll be retaliation, so it would be better if you guys stayed in the common routes and in the big towns and cities.”
“We?” Dendra asked.
“We’ll have to talk about our travel plans later, after our Gym matches,” I deflected. “I know that Dendra’s is going to be later on, which is good with Chopper being out, but when are you two fighting?”
Jess and Aiden looked at each other, and Jess turned back to me, “Next week.”
“A seven day break, at least,” Aiden said.
“Really?” I asked, really surprised about this.
They were outside a lot of days, so I guessed they had already scheduled their matches, and since they hadn’t spoken about it on the hospital visits or the pokenet chat, I guessed it was a few days from now, but to wait a whole week for a match when having sponsored privilege...
“Yeah, we wanted to give our teams a rest after what happened. It was kind of a big thing for us, you know,” Jess said.
Dendra’s eyes narrowed at me. “You… you already scheduled a match, didn’t you!? You just left the hospital yesterday, when did you have the time?!”
“Ahm… the hospital is right next to the Gym, so I just walked a street over and scheduled a match after I was discharged. It’s going to be tomorrow.”
Nobody said anything for a while, so I just started to eat again. They followed my lead, and we ate for a few minutes in silence.
“That’s a little crazy.” Aiden briefly cut the silence.
I shrugged.
I think that they’re surprised, or put off, that I bounced back so fast? I just couldn’t understand why though. I had four pokemon ready, the doctor had cleared me out, and the Gym was close by, so I just went and did it.
“You guys are going to watch though?”
“I am.” Jess rolled her eyes. Aiden nodded while eating.
“Huh… I’m going to watch it here, with Chopper and Cape!” Dendra said, “Do you want to do some last minute training though?”
I smiled.
---
“That’s amazing” I said, watching from just outside the beach the Altaria plunge towards the Hippowdon.
The blue bird pokemon–which was actually a dragon somehow–with white fluffy clouds for wings unleashed a great purple flood of Dragon Breath towards the ground type.
Quake answered with sand, and with a nudge from his now enormous nose a dome of rotating sand rose from the beach and above him, deflecting the purple flames around the pokemon, leaving a circle of burned sand on the ground. It would’ve been bad for the beach goers if we didn’t have Quake himself and Mesa to fix it up later.
Aiden’s Altaria huffed, already flying high, before vanishing with Aerial Ace, repositioning for a new attack while Quake stared up at the skies.
The previously Hippopotas and Swablu evolved during the fight with the Rockets, and they’re looking dangerous, especially Quake.
Now a Hippowdon, he’s gone from a small and cute brightly yellow runt to an earthly colored towering beast bulkier than Jungle and almost as tall as Jess. With a huge snout that occasionally opened into a hair-raising maw ready to grab and crush his opponents. His back now had a new hard shell adorned with six holes–in addition to the two on his snot–where he can blast out stored sand. And his previous round small eyes sharpened into red slits that made him seem always ready for violence.
He was still as laidback as before his evolution though, which made me think it's more a feature for intimidation than a sign of anger.
Those red eyes snapped back in time to see a pink shining Altaria slapping her grey glowing wings together into his back like she was hitting a gong, but unlike a gong Quake didn’t move at all. He rolled into his back with a snort towards the Take Down, and pushed up with a sand blast just enough to grab one of the bird’s wings with his mouth and bring her down.
They engaged in a friendly brawl that would’ve ended sooner if the Hippowdon wasn’t playing around. And when it did come to an end, it was, predictably, with him laying on top of the Altaria.
Jess grinned up at Aiden as her pokemon walked towards them with his small prey on his mouth, and small she was in fact.
Quake was already a mature and strong pokemon when he evolved, while Swablu had been underdeveloped, and only evolved at the heat of the battle, and it showed.
For comparison, Akashi’s Altaria was five times her size, which was a lot even for a powerful pokemon. It wasn’t a surprise that the Hippodow was undefeated in the five spars they had so far, and it seems that Quake was tired of winning.
“Good job, Quake,” Jess said before returning the pokemon, who gave a tired smile as he vanished.
I looked around at the rest of the pokemon who were spread out over the beach, training in groups. Mesa with Cross and Ress, Jungle with Gyarados, and Mountain with Velocity and Blade.
I frowned as I watched them.
All of them were training hard despite the match tomorrow, which means that I have to put a stop to this soon, before they get too tired or worse, hurt.
The only one with me right now was Valley, who was sitting on a towel while staring at the pokemon sparing. She’d been one of Quake’s sparring partners before his evolution, and even had managed to win some fights just before the Rocket’s attack.
Now she wouldn’t learn anything new by sparing against that tank of a pokemon, and she was sulking over it.
Jess and Aiden went ahead into the sand to help Dendra, who was teaching her Tyrogue, Teddiursa, and Mawile some moves, and I glanced down at Valley.
“Don’t worry,” I said, grabbing her attention. “You will catch up to him.”
She looked up at me with ears flat against her head.
“We've been growing exponentially until now, and from what I’m seeing we aren’t stopping for a long time. Be a little more patient, and you’ll be a powerful Cinccino who’s able to put down this ground type. How would you like that?” She tried to hide a smile but her facade soon fell away. Valley pumped up her small fists and straightened up her posture. “Great, we’ll need you to be motivated where we are going after Cianwood.”
Valley stared up at me. The Minccino jumped on my leg and scurried up around my body until she stood right up on my right shoulder, her tail lightly sneaking around my neck to help hold her there. Adorably, she put her little paws around the base of one long ear and slowly approached, eyes as wide as she could make them, eager to hear a secret. The little normal type knew how adorable she was, and was weaponizing it. And it was working a little.
I chuckled, and thought seriously about it. There’s a possibility that knowing the location would light up a bigger fire under her for now, and when we get there maybe she’ll be ready for her evolution, and there’s no immediate downside to sharing that now.
I turned my head towards her ear, and whispered to Valley, “We’re going to spend a couple months training on the Frontier.”
The Minccino leaned back from me, frozen in shock, and then fell down into the sand. Dendra asked what happened, and I told her that Valley just lost her footing.
---
“Trainer Scott Wood?” the young employee called to the almost empty room. I stood up, and he nodded. “Please follow me if you will.”
I did, and we left the room and walked through the long corridor that led to the Gym arena. Today, the five badge time slot was the last one of the afternoon for Jasmine, and I would be the third trainer to the last to challenge for my fifth badge, and wasn’t that a shock to think about.
Sometimes it felt like I was going too slow on my journey, but that was crazy, of course, we have four badges in less than three months. The only way we could be faster is if we had a flying type or a teleporter on the team. We were going fast, and I should remember this more.
The employee opened the doors for me, and urged me in, and I finally saw the Olivine Gym stadium with my own eyes, and it only confirmed what I saw in the videos. From the top to the bottom, this place was a testament to steel and metal.
Thick and sturdy steel panels held powerfully together by magnetic force made up the entire floor. They’d been manifested, forged, and reinforced by the steel pokemon from Jasmine father's main team, who’d been the first steel-type Gym Leader of Indigo. The lofty long roof made of aluminum was held up by eight massive pillars made of dozens of smaller steel beams that twisted into a single one, with powerful lights embedded into them that bathed the entire place in a mixture of white and yellow lights.
I climbed the long and wide stairs up to my platform, and Jasmine slowly came into sight on the other side of the battlefield. She wore a yellow dress today, and sported a ponytail with hair pins to hold her long and thick brown hair away from her face. Her equally brown eyes read a panel to the side of her platform for a moment, and the Gym Leader wore a bright smile, seemingly in a good mood.
The smile flattened when she glanced forward at me. It might’ve been because I was grinning.
After just a few weeks away from a Gym’s battlefield, I was ready for more, one more match, one more badge. I looked at the stands and found among the crowd the only two people I knew. Jess and Aiden were huddled near the front, almost on the first roll. It made me remember the almost disaster that was my Goldenrod match, and I hoped that Jasmine had activated the high level protocol, but well… Cape wasn’t here, so it probably wouldn’t matter much.
Instead, he was in the Pokemon Center with Chopper, Dendra and the rest of her team, watching us win our fifth badge, probably being a pain in the ass about not being here.
My smile widened.
Since the announcer was occupying the crowd with presentations, I took the time to check my belt one last time. There were four pokeball to the right side, near my dominant hand, Mountain, Valley, Jungle, and Mesa.
As the announcer gave way to the arbiter, I picked up the first one and expanded it.
“Gym Leader Jasmine, are you ready?”
“I’m ready!”
“Trainer Scott Wood, are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Then release your pokemon in 3… 2… 1…”
We both clicked out our pokeballs and let out our chosen pokemon.
The first pokemon to appear is usually the smaller one, and in this case it was Gym Leader Jasmine’s. The small gray metal ball with two magnets on each side of the head and three screws around it formed. The electric and steel type opened its sole eyes and it spun around rapidly before locking in on the red light taking shape in front of him.
Ice sheets slotted into place as if forming a shield. Mountain’s mouth opened as his ice chains began to grow from the cardinal points that limited his body.
Cryogonal appeared under the stare from Magnemite.
His blue glowing eyes opened, and he whipped his chains around himself. He was ready to hunt.
