Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen Q: Challenges
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Celadon City. The gigantic buildings sprawled around me, as if tossed there by some gigantic titan in gleaming, orderly rows. Sunlight glared shamelessly off of a glass building and into my eyes, forcing me to pull my hat's brim down to ward the glare off.
There was a Gym here, and I knew it. It was the entire reason I was here, really, and I didn't want to waste any time finding it. I looked down to my Poke Balls as if for directions. My five loyal team members looked up at me blankly.
I smiled just the same. Unclipping each ball and looking at the Pokemon inside with a warm feeling buttering my heart. Charmeleon, its emerald eyes blazing with the fire of a hundred battles. Beedril, its needles sharp and ready to take out foes. Electabuzz, electricity zapping around the spherical home with ample ferocity. Mankey, bouncing on the balls of its feet and delivering punches to the unyielding air. Gloom, acid dripping out of its open mouth glumly. I laughed at the last, and clipped my Pokemon back onto the belt where they belonged.
I looked around the city again hopelessly. Where, in this maze of tall buildings, was one to find a Gym?
After a trip to the Department Store at the center of town, my bag was laden down with powerful Potions, strange and wonderful stones, dolls for warding off quarrelsome wild Pokemon, and soft drinks of every kind they had. I had asked the kind attendant inside where I could find the Gym, and she had given me a complex map that led me to it. She had also advised me to use the Charmeleon she'd noticed on my belt.
Finally, I found the Gym—past one of those irritating brambly plants, no less—tucked into a corner of the city. It had a green, vine-covered façade and was adorned by a tittering old man staring into a window on the side.
Avoiding the elder as best I could, I pulled open a glass door and stepped inside, before almost being blown back out again by the vicious aroma.
It smelled like a perfume shop, except multiplied by a hundred. Dozens of heady scents bombarded me from every direction. I wasn't looking forward to how I would smell after stepping out.
"Hey!" said a girl near the front. I noticed that, behind her, the old man was leering through the window. I pointed feebly and tried to make a comment, before I was overrun.
"You're a boy," she stated. Somehow she managed to make it sound like a nasty curse, being of my gender.
"Er… yeah," I said, feeling put off. "What about it?"
"You're here to get a badge, I assume?" the girl huffed. "All you boys—all you care about is battling and gung-ho and hoo-rah and beating up other people's Pokemon, isn't that right?"
I opened my mouth a smidge, though I wasn't sure what to say exactly. "Right!" said the girl, as if this finalized her opinion. She turned on her heel with a haughty "This way!"
I followed meekly, trying to avoid looking at any of the girls lining the walls of the Gym, since they were all looking at me like I was a plague. I hoped that being a guy wasn't contagious, because I felt these people would rip out my throat if it were.
"The lady of the Gym," announced my guide suddenly, "Erika."
Erika was a pretty woman of Asian descent with dark hair held back by a band. She held a flower-adorned paper fan in one hand and three Poke Balls in the other. "Hello," she said serenely.
"Erm… hi," I responded awkwardly. This woman's tone and temperament were so different from that of the others in the Gym that I wasn't entirely sure how to act.
"You're here for a battle?" she asked, fanning herself gently. I nodded, making a spore go up my nose. I looked like an idiot for a few seconds as I huffed, trying to get the thing out as female voices tittered and laughed mockingly behind hands.
Irritably, my face flushed with red, I managed to extract the spore. Erika gazed at me just as calmly as before as the tittering died away. "Yeah," I said boldly, "I am."
"Then prepare your Poke Ball," Erika instructed. I did as she said, and then we both sent out our Pokemon.
"Charmeleon!"
"Tangela!"
Out of my Poke Ball popped my fierce red-orange salamander, hunched in a battle stance. Out of hers popped an odd tangle of vines almost covering round white eyes, staring out into the world.
The four of us stood stock-still for a second. Then, finally, Erika broke the silence. "Tangela, use PoisonPowder!"
Charmeleon snarled, trying to dart out of the way of the Grass-type's purple spores. Unfortunately, one landed on the salamander's right arm. It immediately burned bright red and the Fire-type shrieked.
"Charmeleon!" I cried, "Use Ember!"
My Pokemon complied, leaping at the Tangela and hissing fire. The Grass-type tumbled backwards, its vines leaping with flame. Erika stood complacently, Poke Balls in hand. "Come back, Tangela!" she called, retrieving her Grass-type.
Charmeleon stood at the ready, wincing all the while at the throbbing of its arm. I was worried, but Charmeleon didn't seem to be weary at all.
Erika stood tall, gazing at my Pokemon. She looked for two beats, then said, "Heal it, Trainer. Now."
Shocked at the ferocity in her voice, I called Charmeleon to me. The salamander stumped over, holding out its arm for me to inspect. It was much worse than the Fire-type had let on—it was bright red, and a few boils had sprouted up. I hissed in sympathy, then hurriedly swung my pack off my back and reached in, grabbing a smooth bottle of Antidote.
"This may sting," I intoned bracingly to my Pokemon. It nodded, and then I sprayed. Charmeleon winced a bit, but in all seemed okay. The boils faded, and the Fire-type's arm looked a bit more like the red-orange I was used to.
Erika was staring at me. Finally, she said softly, "You seem to care for your Pokemon. Why, then, did you not notice its pain?"
I was taken aback. I looked at her a while, and she simply stood there. "I—" My throat was dry. All of a sudden, it seemed I wasn't sure how to form words. "I did," I said finally. My voice grew louder as I continued. "But Charmeleon has pride, and lots of it. If it does not show me it needs help, then I will allow it to continue to battle. I trust that Charmeleon knows its limits."
Erika gazed still more at me in silence. I waited, breath held. In the same soft tone she'd held when she posed her question, she said, "Would you like my badge, young man?"
A smattering of low comments and questions broke out among the girls along the walls. I couldn't decipher it, and so didn't know if this was a common thing. I decided to hazard a guess that it didn't.
"You mean, you'll just give it to me?" I asked, staring the Gym Leader straight in the eyes. Her gaze never wavered, but held mine solidly.
"Yes."
I stood, Charmeleon standing a bit dumbly at my side; its claws were limp against its red-orange legs. "But why?" I asked. I had a sneaking suspicion as to why she was offering up the badge so easily, but I wasn't going to tell her that.
"If you need me to tell you why, then you don't know how much it is admired that you care so much for and know your Pokemon so well."
That confirmed my guess. I nodded, but then said, "I don't want to be given a badge just for my 'virtues,' or whatever. I want to earn it."
Erika nodded in an understanding way. "Then I believe our battle shall recommence."
A small part of me had wanted to accept the offer; I had to admit it to myself. The Grass-type Leader exuded an aura of confidence and power that didn't really befit her soft frame.
"Go! Vileplume!" Erika called, tossing out a different Poke Ball.
Out popped a dark Pokemon with a huge flower dominating its head. Its floppy limbs met floor as the Pokemon readied itself for battle. Erika nodded satisfactorily at her Pokemon's willingness to fight. "Vileplume, let's start with Sweet Scent!"
Charmeleon readied itself for a deadly attack that never came. Instead, a new scent was added to the myriad of aromas already in the building. This one, however, seemed particularly attractive to my Fire-type. Charmeleon sniffed about, distracted.
Erika smiled. "Vileplume and I await your attack," she said tauntingly. She was, was she? Quickly, my eyes scanned the room about the battlefield. Not much, though, would be of any help. A few hedges lined the walls near the enraptured girls, but I didn't exactly want Charmeleon to leap into one and hide. My eyes turned back to Erika, still waiting patiently.
"Charmeleon, let's hit it with an Ember!" I cried, and the salamander leapt into action, bounding forward across the battlefield on all fours. A harsh fire seared the Vileplume, and it cried out.
Erika looked calmly on. "Vileplume, PoisonPowder!"
I shouted to Charmeleon, "Not this time! Get out of the way!"
Charmeleon scrambled away, claws scrabbling on the smooth marble of the floor. The purple spores puffed out, but barely missed the Fire-type.
The Vileplume sucked in the surrounding air. Its flower puffed up, replenished, I realized, with spores.
A sudden thought, a dangerous, reckless thought, struck me. "Charmeleon!" I called. "Ember!"
But I wasn't looking at the opposing Pokemon. I was gazing at the bushes, and like a telepathic signal Charmeleon knew just what I wanted. A bolt of fire rushed out of its gaping jaw, setting the hedge along the wall ablaze.
Girls screamed, the old man looking in the window cried out in shock and sped off. Erika, however, simply looked a mixture of impressed and miffed.
"How easily you noticed that my Vileplume needed the spores in the air to recharge its attacks!" she called, staring at me as I started to sweat in the heat.
"And," I retorted, "that the smoke would overpower and kill any aromas and spores in the air!" A self-satisfied smirk slid onto my face, reminding me unpleasantly of Blue. I shook the thought out of my mind and turned back to the battle, where a dehydrated-looking Vileplume stood miserably in the center of the field.
"Well, seeing as most of Vileplume's attacks are now useless, I retrieve it," Erika said, tossing out Vileplume's Poke Ball. As the Grass-type was sucked into its spherical home, it seemed to give a sigh of relief.
"And now," Erika said grandly, "for my last Pokemon!" As she threw out her final Poke Ball, vines shot out of it and wrapped tightly around Charmeleon, constricting its breath. The Fire-type cried out in pain, anger, and shock as it was hoisted into the air by the vines and Erika's last Pokemon thudded to the floor.
"Victreebel," Erika finished, a satisfied smile on her face. It was rather ugly, a bell-shaped, yellowish Pokemon with droopy eyes, teeth ringing its top, and waving vines that were in the process of injuring my Pokemon.
"Charmeleon!" I cried out, but it was too late—Victreebel dropped the unconscious Pokemon to the ground. Charmeleon gave a feeble groan as the fire on its tail sputtered.
Desperately, I returned the Fire-type to its Poke Ball. I was thinking hard. What Pokemon would I be able to take down Victreebel with? It was obviously Grass-type—but what else could it be?
I whipped out my Pokedex, and glancing down at it saw the words VICTREEBEL: Grass/Poison. I wasted no time looking at a description; the types were all I had needed to know. Quickly, I deliberated on the Poke Balls at my belt. I had Electabuzz, but Electric-type attacks wouldn't do much to a Grass Pokemon… There was Beedril, but Poison on Poison wouldn't fare much better… Mankey? Fighting versus Poison was no better a bet… Gloom I didn't even consider.
It would have to be Beedril. It had the best chance. I unclipped the Ball from my belt, and the Bug-type inside buzzed with an eagerness to battle. I smiled a bit at that before I tossed my second Pokemon into the arena.
Immediately, however, its flight was staggered by the intense heat. With a start, I realized that the hedge was still on fire. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it, but I'd gotten used to the heat quickly and the girls weren't screaming anymore—which I realized the next second was because they'd all run out the door.
Victreebel and Erika, however, didn't seem to even know there was such a thing as fire. They stared solidly ahead, Victreebel's vines waving eerily. Beedrill stood staunchly but I had a fear that the Bug-type wouldn't last long.
"Beedrill," I said slowly, "Rage." Beedrill nodded, albeit shakily. Victreebel stood numbly as Beedrill darted up to it with surprising speed and jabbed it in its… gut(?) with a sharp needle. If the Grass-type felt pain, it didn't let on.
As Victreebel and my Pokemon battled, vines slapping at Beedrill in a vain attempt to strangle it, Beedril's Rage built. Finally, my Pokemon went berserk, stabbing hard in between Victreebel's flailing vines. It helped, too, that the old man had dashed in with stunning agility along with a brigade of firefighters, and the blaze had been put out.
With this final attack, Victreebel was felled. At this point, Beedril's rage was unbeatable and it swept Erika's remaining Pokemon away.
As Erika returned Tangela to its Poke Ball once more, she let on a soft smile. "I don't think I've ever simply been beaten by Rage before," she said.
"Me neither," I admitted. "Just seemed like the best tactic."
"Seems that it was, no?" Erika replied, her brow quirked at me. Her eyes glimmered with amusement, and I cracked a grin. She beckoned me to her and she bestowed me with the Rainbow Badge. I had expected something along the lines of a leaf, grass, or meadow badge, but I went along with it, accepting the multicolored badge without question.
Erika bid me goodbye after handing me a couple Poke to refill my recently vacated money pocket. I stepped out of the stifling Gym into the cool winds of the city and noted that the old man had not returned to his window station with a smile.
I had beaten another Gym Leader. I had earned my fourth badge. Yet there were still more challenges to face. More battles to be fought and won. More Pokemon to catch.
And I was ready for it.
AUTHOR'S(-o-)NOTE
So that's Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen Q: Challenges chapter zero! A reviewer pointed out to me that I hadn't actually done anything about Celadon City or Erika, and I'd actually just jumped ahead to Saffron City. Well, there was the chapter to fix that error.
If you're here and you haven't already read through Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen Quest, what are you doing here? This is part two of the overarching story, so if you want a better understanding of what all you just read, I suggest going there first. In my dumb opinion, it's a decent read and it's thirty kinda-short chapters if I'm being honest, so hopefully it won't take too much time out of your day.
As a very very side-note, I apologize if this chapter seemed a little formulaic and bland. I have a reason for that if you found it to be so: seeing as this chapter is something of a retcon and is forcing itself in between chapters in the original story that weren't exactly supposed to be having anything forced between them, I had to stay safe in the hope that I'm not destroying my own continuity too hard; and because I want to hit a sort of creative flow with later chapters and things that are more fun to write about: the Safari Zone, Giovanni in the last Gym, and of course the Pokemon League (though I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle that).
Oh, and another side note. Sorry I didn't do the Rocket Base—I kind of ended up incorporating that whole thing into Silph Co. anyway. And I screwed it all up by doing something funky with the Silph Scope that I don't remember.
Anyway. That wall of text over, see you guys whenever I end up putting up a proper chapter one for this thing.
I don't own Pokemon, by the way. If that wasn't obvious.
-Obelisk out