Chapter 17: Shalour City Scramble

(A/N: Thank you Guigo 2000 for the Mega evolution knowledge drop in the comments, I'm keeping it as a helpful reference point. I'm excited to show more of the pokemon world and the girl's personalities in the coming chapters so I hope y'all enjoy it. Also, I'm very grateful that the recent chapter of this story has broken 100 reviews! I didn't think we'd get this far when I started writing this. I couldn't have done this without the support and feedback from my readers, I hope y'all continue to share your thoughts as you've always done.)

The Girls

Date? Did I mishear that?

Collectively shared thoughts seemed to be in style as of late on the team. This could attest to how in sync Red's team was becoming through their adventures, or it could attest to how Red's actions could be so baffling that any normal girl would react similarly.

So then, let's go over the facts, Red wanted to go on a date…

Could it be that he didn't know what the implications behind the term date was?

But he explicitly stated that he wanted to get to know everyone better on a personal level though… so there's no way even Red could be that oblivious.

Still, that meant that he invited not just one of them on a date… but all of them? At the same time?

General

Before anyone could react visibly though, Blue rounded up everyone else besides Red, and told Red "we'll be right back, just give us a moment to discuss." She had an exhausted looking smile plastered on her face, and it definitely was not just the result of the battles they had just undergone.

Red on the other hand, thought to himself "well that's odd, I don't think telling them about individual dates should be enough to warrant a meeting but alright…"

Meanwhile Blue had gathered her friends/rivals for an impromptu strategy meeting.

"Alright everyone, I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is an opportunity to uh… get to know Red better. If you know what I'm saying. He wants to get to know all of us better on a personal level because it will help the team's dynamics." Blue tried to lay it out on the table in her own way without explicitly admitting that she liked Red. Her pride didn't let her just admit it outright but it would probably be clear to most onlookers that she was clearly harboring special feelings.

Her fatal misinterpretation was that she believed that Red was actually aware of the current love… polygon building around him and was using this initiative as a way to clear up what the relationship dynamics should be in the team.

Oh how wrong she was.

Most of the girls understood the subtleties of Blue's talk, the exceptions being Sapphire and Crys.

Sapphire took Blue's words at face value and thought, "Oh that makes sense, getting to know our leader better during the mission should help our teamwork and synergy so I totally get what Red was saying now. Haha, I almost thought he wanted to be a 7-timer or something crazy. I still have Ruby, even if he's an idiot and we just had a big fight I think we can make up. Probably."

With that, Sapphire settled her own inner turmoil, which was a luxury that the other girls definitely could not say they had completely overcome.

Crys on the other hand, was much more torn. "Get to know him better? I'm not sure if I can do that right now, I still want to give Gold a chance but honestly that idiot has no tact and doesn't understand me. Even in this brief time, I feel like Red has gotten me a lot better than Gold has ever tried to. Sigh, I guess I shouldn't think about my feelings too much, Blue is right, he probably just means this as a way to get to know him better so we can improve our teamwork in future missions."

Crys' thoughts were clearly a little off from what Blue meant, but her straightforward earnestness was one of her strong points.

Under Blue's direction, the girls came back to Red and in classic female fashion, Red got no inkling of the content of the meeting that just transpired.

In fact, even if Red was a fly on the wall and could hear everything they had talked about, he probably would not have gotten the hidden meaning of Blue's words. So there wasn't really much for him to read into there.

With the stakes set, the team set out for the airplane that Professor Oak had arranged for them.

Red set forward with ideas of isolating the traitor out and potentially saving them.

The girls set forward with mostly unified ideas on this being their fair chance to win Red's heart.

The flight from Slateport City to Shalour City was a lot less eventful than the Mossdeep to Slateport City one.

The girls had agreed to let Red have his own space and the rest of the girls sat closer together under the guise of wanting to rest on each other. This arrangement was made by Blue and Platina so that no one could have an unfair head start in the upcoming dating competition, but not everyone was made aware of that fact. So some of them definitely entered the situation buying the same story that Red was buying.

This arrangement made sense to Red who was aware enough to respect their desire for space and physical boundaries.

It made for a cute scene to see Mei and Yellow nap on Blue's shoulders while White + Crys, and Sapphire + Platina leaned against each other to rest for the remainder of the flight.

When they arrived in Shalour City's airport the team exited to find a quaint city with a large castle-like gym and a looming tower dwarfing the rest of the city in the distance.

"Okay… even if we didn't know about the Tower of Mastery beforehand, I would have to assume that the most obvious place for us to meet Professor Oak's mega evolution contact would have to be there. That should be the Tower of Mastery right?" Red mused aloud to the team in general.

Sapphire nodded excitedly as she admired the tower in the distance. "Yup that tower is one of the key places in Kalos for mega evolution."

Platina looked around and after a moment of thought, declared "Alright, since we are definitely going to go to the Tower of Mastery, let's first search around the city to see if there are any other places we're missing. It would probably be a good opportunity for us to find out how we gain permission to enter the tower as well."

Everyone seemed to be in agreement with the plan and they started walking around the city to see if there was anything/anyone that stood out in particular.

The Battle Festival venue was currently closed so they decided to avoid looking around that area for too long. After walking through the residential area and briefly checking inside the pokemon center, the group narrowed down their prime point of interest to be the city's Pokemon Gym.

Gym leaders tended to be the de facto leaders of the cities they were in and if anyone would have an idea on how to gain permission to the tower, it would be the gym leader.

Red and co. entered the Shalour City gym and Red had a slight wave of nostalgia hit him.

Although this was the first time he had ever entered Shalour City's gym, he felt a sense of familiarity with the gym atmosphere that he hadn't tasted in a long time.

He looked over to where the typical gym guide was standing and asked him "Hello, may I speak to the gym leader? My team and I have some questions for them."

The gym guide looked slightly disdainfully at Red and co. He seemed to give the look of "y'all don't look particularly tough to me."

It was possible that the gym guide was over indexing on Red's Pika as a judge of the team's relative strength. The thought process was likely, "well if their leader is still stuck on a Pikachu, this group is probably not that experienced."

As a result the gym guide said in a haughty voice "If you would like to speak to Lady Korinna, you're going to need to prove yourself here against our gym's trainers. Don't think that our gym is such a pushover that a mere pikachu could think to challenge it. We of the Shalour gym pride ourselves in being some of the original caretakers of the secrets of Mega Evolution."

"A mere pikachu?" Red asked in a steady voice.

While his demeanor barely betrayed any change in emotion, Blue and Yellow knew from experience to look for the small twitching of his right eye. That was how you would know that Red was trying to be polite while holding back his anger.

"I see, okay then I will take the gym challenge…"

"Great." Cut in the gym guide

"… with just Pika here." Red finished with a smug smile.

"Right this wa… wait what?" The gym guide froze and looked over at Red.

It looked like this gym challenger was definitely looking down on Shalour City's gym. The gym guide inwardly swore that he would teach this overconfident youngster a lesson.

"Okay then, you will only be registering your pikachu for this challenge? The gym guide confirmed while stealthily sending the message "6B" to the rest of the gym trainers. "Don't go easy on this next challenger just because they're only using a pikachu."

With a barely perceivable smirk, the gym guide said "alright right this way Challenger Red."

Red didn't notice the gym guide's slightly malicious facial expression and was just excited to finally get to flex his muscles in a gym challenge.

Meanwhile, the girls on his team didn't miss this little display of emotion from the gym guide and could only inwardly shake their heads. "This poor gym…" was the unanimous thought amongst them.

[Some things that would be important to clear up before Red's gym challenge.]

Gyms would typically check on a trainer's general strength and then adjust the number and difficulty of pokemon that would be used to challenge the trainer. This way, gyms could be cleared in any order but not necessarily be too easy or difficult depending on which step in a trainer's gym challenge they were on.

This was why even though earlier gyms might be fairly easy, very few trainers could handle the later four gyms on their journeys.

Shalour City Gym was especially notorious for being a gym you had to face early on if you wanted to efficiently handle your gym challenge, or else you could have the misfortune of facing Korrina or her grandpa Gurkinn back in the day with their insanely powerful mega Lucarios.

In Red's case, the gym guide had assessed him as a fairly beginner trainer as pikachu, while being a second evolutionary form pokemon, was not particularly regarded as strong in the Kalos region, so at most Red should have three or four badges.

The guide thought Red was probably at his fourth badge or else there was no way he would have the gall to ask for Lady Korrina's time that easily. He decided to secretly set Red's difficulty level to sixth badge difficulty as a result. This was the only reason he didn't do the customary checking of Red's badges, he wanted to teach the young challenger a lesson in humility before letting him do the actual level he should be participating in.

Definitely a lesson in tough love was the gym guide's final thoughts before Red began his descent into what the guide assumed would be a brutal hell.

Red and Pika confidently walked into the gym challenge area and…

What followed would become a historic event in Shalour City.

Many firsts were achieved that day.

First trainer to defeat all the gym trainers in under 20 minutes together.

First trainer to one hit KO every pokemon they faced.

First trainer to have the gym challenge difficulty upped from six to eight badges (the max) mid challenge.

First trainer to do any of these achievements with one pokemon.

First trainer to do any of these achievements with a NFE (Not Fully Evolved) pokemon.

The list of firsts went on, but needless to say, it was one of the most one-sided slaughters in gym challenge history.

It had been a little less than thirty minutes since the gym guide had met Red, and in that short period of time, he had gone through all the stages of depression.

How could he have known that a monster of this level was still running a pikachu for some god forsaken reason.

The pikachu in question was insanely powerful, it wasn't just one shotting Shalour City's famed fighting pokemon with thunderbolts, it would go into close quarters combat and take them out just as easily with a physical quick attack or iron tail.

The gym guide could have sworn that pikachu must have ingested a light ball at birth or something.

"Lady Korrina" had heard the commotion halfway through the challenge and had come down from her room to spectate.

She then witnessed her trainers go from underestimate, to correctly judging the situation as a DEFCON 8 situation, but even 8 badge difficulty was trivial for Red and his pikachu.

On the side of Red's team, the non battle junkies (aka everyone but Sapphire and Platina) were shaking their head slightly in embarrassment.

While it was necessary to get a word in with the gym leader, they hoped that this complete sweep wouldn't get them on Korrina's bad side.

Red looked happy to get into some classic gym battling like the good old days in Kanto and that's when he noticed that there were no more gym trainers to challenge.

The gym had even called for and sent out the reserve trainers they had on hand in the city just so someone could give him a challenge.

That was when the doors opened one last time and Korrina skated in her white and red form fitting skater dress with black spats underneath.

She looked at Red and said "Finally, a good successor challenger has appeared before me, let's do this Lucario. We're going all out from the start."

(A/N: Funny enough, I was writing this when I saw Dialga55 ask when the next chapter would come out. Normally it would have come out a bit earlier but I wanted to make the chapter a bit longer so the readers would have a bit more to chew on before the next one. I'm going to be even busier as there were big layoffs at my workplace, I'm taking a new role there so no worries on that end but lots of changes are happening in my life as a result. I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter and leave a review with your thoughts and feedback as always.)