A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, A55 – write a drabble between 300-500 words.
New Arrival, New Champ
His father seemed to think May could handle herself fine, and maybe she could. She was the daughter of a gym leader after all. And she was no slouch when they'd battled. But she'd just moved to Hoenn the day before. Who knew if she'd even been to Hoenn before that. She probably didn't have a clue where the next city was, or where any of the cities were, or their pokemon centres…
And, since she had a pokemon, the pokemon centres were pretty important.
And she probably didn't know that you couldn't challenge the Petalburg gym until you had at least three badges, or that you couldn't cross the desert without Go-Go goggles or that you needed a bike to get some places inaccessible by foot or that there was a kind old man with a boat who road people from Petalburg to Dewford or that there was even a such thing as a Contest Hall…
He wasn't going to ask to accompany her. He didn't want to smother her, or anything like that. But he had to keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn't get horribly lost. Make sure she had the tools she needed. Make sure he wasn't worrying his mind off and worrying everyone around him in turn.
And she didn't seem to mind. Sometimes she wore a frustrated expression when he happened upon her. Especially when he'd given her Go-Go goggles. It turned out she'd tried to walk through the sandstorm without them. And sand in one's clothes was not a pleasant feeling in the least. Neither was feeling lost.
But by some stage, May knew the Hoenn region better than he did. She'd explored all the water routes and had even found the abandoned shipwreck. She'd made it through Victory Road, a road only someone with eight badges could explore – and he'd never tried to get any. He was always too busy trying to catch new types of pokemon for his father than training them to that extent. In one year she'd come from being the new kid next door with loads of potential but lacking some background knowledge of the region she lived in to the champion of said region.
No wonder his father had thought May could handle herself fine.