Ryan awoke to the sounds of distant music and cheering. He got up, stumbled out of his tent, furiously blinking his blurry eyes into clarity. Peering out of his tent flap, Ryan noticed the beach partying was still going on into the early morning. The sun was barely rising across the cool water, and still there was party music blaring out across the otherwise serene beach. Squinting, Ryan could see the far-off shapes of people dancing about and a flaming Rapidash galloping through the sand.
Ryan stole a look over to the tent next to his. There was no movement coming from within it. Maybe Kelly was sleeping. That would be good. The last thing he wanted was to have to deal with her in all her orange-juice-deprived glory. So Ryan slipped on a pair of sandals, grabbed his Pokeballs, and decided to visit Cinnabar Island's town just for the heck of it. He soon found the town deserted, save for a drowsy-looking Drowzee who was stumbling about with a tin can of long-expired beans in its hand. Ryan passed the Pokemon and made his way to the town's Poke Mart. Once inside, he let out all four of his super cool 'mon and let them run around to their hearts' content. They went screaming around the aisles, grabbing for candy bars and shiny objects and other cool gadgets. Ryan left them and strode up to the counter, where a burly, somnolent man manned the register.
Reaching the counter, Ryan noticed a poster hanging on the nearest wall. It had a picture of a boy slightly younger than him riding a Porygon. Below it was a bounty for two million woolongs. Ryan walked over to the paper and eyed it carefully.
"Who's this?" he asked the cashier.
"Some kid. He's been terrorizing the mainland with his fearsome team of Pokemon. If ya ever find him during your travels, defeat him in battle and then hand him over to any Officer Jenny for a big reward."
"I'll remember to do that when I return to Kanto. I'm a great trainer, so it shouldn't be a problem," Ryan replied. A few extra Pokedollars would be great for his pocket. He just wondered what the conversion rate from woolongs was.
"You wanna be the very best?" the cashier asked inquisitively.
The boy's eyes sparkled like a shooting star. "Like no one ever was!"
The man's own eyes narrowed, unconvinced. "To catch them is your real test, huh?"
"Well," Ryan shrugged modestly,"to train them is my cause. Anyway, I need some new Pokefood for my buddies," Ryan continued. "I caught a Charmeleon yesterday, so I need whatever he eats."
The man grunted and pulled up some bags of food from behind the counter. One for Abra, one for Matata, one for Charmeleon. Ryan never bought Clawey any food because he liked to catch Magikarp in the ocean. As Ryan went to pay for the food, his Pokemon came running up to him, each with several items in their hands.
"Brah… abra ra! Abra!" Abra squeaked, brandishing two candy bars like swords in front of his master. Ryan chuckled and plucked them from Abra's claws and added them to his purchases. Abra was wearing a pair of black, pointed sunglasses that he evidently wanted as well, and after thirteen minutes of pleading, Ryan finally agreed to buy them.
"Shieieieieieilaahahahahaha!" Matata had her mouth full of candy, and Ryan quickly ripped the precious sweets from her teeth before she could tear through the wrappers.
"Duck duck duuuuck!" Clawey was dancing around with a pair of maracas, which made Ryan wonder if the blue animal had taken a sip from the orange juice as well. Still, he put them on the counter for Ryan did not want to upset his most valuable Golduck.
"Meleon, char!" Get Over Here barked as he came sidling up wearing a top hat and sporting a fine antique monocle. Ryan was left in awe by the fact that the Poke Mart even carried such arcane merchandise. Begrudgingly, he added them to the pile. The noble trainer also grabbed a small bottle of advil for Kelly when she woke up. She'd owe him big for that. Real big.
"That'll be 1300 Pokedollars," the cashier said in his dreary voice after counting up all the things on the counter.
Ryan sighed and pulled out his wallet. Inside, he found exactly 1300 Pokedollars. "Oh come on!" he yelled to no one in particular. The cashier thrust out his hand, his fingers working the open space like he was tickling a Tauros' tummy. "Okay, okay. Chill out man," Ryan growled in annoyance. He handed the crisp Pokedollars to the cashier, gathered up his purchases, and then high-tailed it out of there. He was a penniless trainer. He was quite literally without pennies. Even one penny would be a great uptick in his wealth at this point.
Ryan returned to his camp and found Kelly sitting just outside her tent. He threw her the bottle of advil and a candy bar.
"Hey," she said hoarsely. "Where were you?"
"At the Poke Mart."
"Found anything good?" she asked, looking at Abra's sunglasses, Get Over Here's top hat, and Clawey's maracas. She suddenly burst out laughing but then groaned and felt her head. She probably had a massive migraine after her escapades last night.
"Some stuff, I guess. And Kelly, you should take that advil right now. It'll help with the hangover."
Kelly went red. "I don't have a hangover!"
Ryan shrugged. "Whatever. Advil and water's what my dad used to take when he got hungover. Trust me, I know how to deal with this stuff."
Kelly just gave him the stink eye. She was well-practiced in that maneuver.
"So I need to challenge Blaine now," Ryan spoke. "After that last trip to the store, I'm dead broke."
"But we aren't done training Golduck and Wartortle!" Kelly objected.
"So? They're water Pokemon. They should win. Besides, they've already been through a lot of training together. I'm sure they're way stronger than before."
"We only have one water Pokemon apiece, Ryan. Blaine uses three fire Pokemon in his Gym Battles."
Ryan scratched the back of his head. "Well, how badly did you lose when you fought him last time?"
"I took out his Ninetails and Rapidash, but his Arcanine defeated me."
"Well, then use your other Pokemon too."
"He had already taken out 'Aichu and Fluffy," Kelly admitted. "Tortilla was the only one who managed to do some serious damage."
"Who are those ones again?" Ryan asked, puzzled. How could he possibly be bothered to know what Kelly's nicknames for her Pokemon were?
"Raichu and Arcanine, of course. My Wartortle is my only chance, Ryan. If he's not strong enough…" Kelly trailed off, looking out over the cool ocean. "Maybe I could catch another one."
"Yeah, you go do that. That'll be great! I believe in you!" Ryan shouted, punching his fist into the air. Once he finished, he supposed that he had overreacted a bit. Who knows, though.
"You aren't going to listen to me, are you? You're going to challenge Blaine no matter what I say?"
Ryan screwed up his face. He had to look like a hero. He was born to be a hero, not to mention a winner. He had to act like it. "Yeah! Just after this candy bar!" His face softened. "Look, Kelly. I need the badge of course, but the money's even more important right now. Unless you want to fish Tentacool out of the ocean, we'll need money to buy more food. These candy bars won't last forever. "
Kelly couldn't argue with Ryan's statement because Ryan was a master debater and she was just Kelly. So Ryan, happy with his verbal victory, took a fierce victory bite out of the nearest candy bar (getting his daily dose of sweet, sweet chocolate) as he looked off into the distance. He saw the partyers still going at it, but he didn't see the Rapidash anymore. Rapidash. He wondered if that beast belonged to Blaine. If that was the case, then who was that pretty girl riding it?
Ryan found a long list of trainers outside of the Cinnabar Island gym. Most of them were looking pretty depressed, as if they had just eaten a ghost pepper for the third time in their lives. A good deal of them were missing their eyebrows, and their faces were lined with light burn and soot marks. Ryan was sure that was from either the pepper or the gym, but he wasn't sure which one.
Just outside the door was a familiar face - Doctor Rahul Kanalanapia. The bronze-skinned dude was basking in the sunlight and eating a plate of barbecue ribs. The sauce was all over his mouth and cheeks and neck and hot grease was running down his finely-combed beard. Even as his stomach growled in protest, Ryan smiled. Rahul was so cool. What a guy.
"Hey Rahul," Ryan said, waving towards the behemoth of a trainer with one of Clawey's maracas' in each hand. Assuredly, Ryan was sporting the attire all of his Pokemon had picked out earlier, so the regal top hat, monocle, and sharp black sunglasses, supported by the maracas and his regular clothes was clearly a queer sight indeed. Ryan thought it looked great, though; just great. He hadn't had a sip of the orange juice, no sir. He was going to impress Blaine with his swag. He would get that old man to holla holla.
"Oh hey… Ryan, right?" Rahul croaked, barely looking up at the boy or noticing his pristine appearance.
"You remembered! Great job!" Ryan said, giving Rahul two thumbs up. "Did you beat Blaine yet?"
"Blaine? No no no. I beat Olivia," Rahul corrected Ryan with a barbeque-plagued finger. "She really wasn't that hard, y'know?"
Ryan was as confused as a Ponyta on a treadmill. "Oh, I thought Blaine was the Fire Pokemon master…"
"Well, you thought wrong," Rahul said before taking a deep bite out of one of his ribs. He grunted softly to himself in deep pleasure after tasting the sweet meat. Ryan couldn't stop his mouth from watering. Curse living on candy bars!
"Okay, well I'll be back out in a little bit. I need to defeat this Gym Leader first. I hafta get the Volcano Badge!" Ryan shook the maracas violently over his head to get his point across. He desperately needed the badge to get into the Indigo League Tournament like his father before him. He had to make his family proud. That way his mother wouldn't see him as a disappointment, a high school dropout with no future, and his father wouldn't see him as tarnishing his own legacy. Ryan would win the tournament for them. He had to.
"Sure," Rahul said, waving a half-chewed rib in Ryan's general vicinity. "I'll be here when you get back."
"Save me a rib!" Ryan pleaded earnestly.
"No promises," replied Rahul.
Ryan nodded and then ran off to the gym entrance. He had to defeat this Olivia girl fast… if he wanted to get one of those ribs before Rahul devoured them all. Rahul smiled broadly, bobbing his head up and down like an apple in water and gestured for Ryan to enter the door to his right. Ryan saw that it was, unmistakably, the gym entrance. He nodded to Rahul, felt his heart pounding in his chest, took a deep breath, and then stepped inside.
Inside, Ryan found himself hit by a wall of heat. The lights were dimmed, and he had to move by feeling his way, rather than seeing properly. The room was cluttered with chairs and tables and what appeared to be statues of people. As he neared them, however, they moved slightly, but he never got in their lines of sight, so they just stood still. That was quite weird, but Ryan didn't know what to do about it. His immediate thought was to throw a Pokeball at one of them, but his encounter with Rahul the night before had already tackled that joke well enough.
As he walked past one of the statues, Ryan caught a glimpse of its face and saw it to be human. He let out an audible gasp and nearly fell over in surprise. The human - a boy slightly younger than Ryan himself - took this cue as his moment to jump forward and challenge Ryan to a duel.
"Pokemon battle, begin!" the boy screamed, waving a Pokeball over his head like a madchild. "I'm Super Nerd!" he shouted proudly. "If you want to fight Gym Leader Olivia, then you'll have to get past me first!"
Ryan frowned. "Uh, I'm not here to battle you. I just want a Volcano Badge."
Super Nerd started foaming at the mouth and dancing to a song Ryan could not hear, frantically poking the air all around him as if he was in some kind of frenzy. "Fight me! Come on! Fiiiiiight meeee!"
"Um, no thanks," replied Ryan, stepping forward and pushing Super Nerd out of the way with his hand. Maybe he has rabies, Ryan thought.
Super Nerd fell to the ground with the frailty of a piece of paper in the wind. "Bu-but…" he stammered. "No fair! You have to fight me."
But Ryan was already gone. He wasn't in the gym to fight some weird little nerd statue dude. He couldn't afford to have even one of his Pokemon injured in battle before facing Olivia. He wasn't even sure if his existing team was good enough as it was. He felt anxious at that, his heart beating so hard that he could hear it in his ears with every step. So Ryan started shaking the maracas as he walked to drown out the cursed noise.
After some time, Ryan slogged his way into a large cavern, where stalactites and stalagmites grew from the rocky surfaces like gnarled teeth. He supposed that he was in the heart of the town's volcano now. His entire body was slicked with sweat. There ahead of him, situated over a pool of molten lava, was a medium-sized battle platform. It hung from the ceiling with rusty chains and swayed slightly with every earthly volcanic rumble. As he started moving forward, Ryan caught a glimpse of flame, instantly sending him into déjà vu. Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Ryan saw the Rapidash and the girl who rode it so well come flying into view.
"Whoa there!" the girl shouted. She was wearing blue short shorts, a small red crop top which revealed much of her flat stomach, flip-flops, and a light blue bandana around her forehead. She was very pretty, Ryan realized, and he barely heard what she said next because of that. "What do you want?!"
Ryan shook his head to clear his thoughts. "A-are you Olivia?"
She studied Ryan's face and then dismounted. "Sure am. So are you here for a Volcano Badge?" She reached for something in her pocket, then produced a small red button that looked like a flame. She held it between two long fingers as she thrust it into Ryan's face. It glimmered red in the flames of the Rapidash. "One of these?"
"Yes please!"
She let out a sly smile. "You'll have to battle me for it. My father entrusted me to run this Gym properly, and I'll do it! You'll have to earn this badge!"
"Your father's Blaine?"
"Yeah, he's sick right now, so I took over gym battle duties. I'm not as experienced as him, but you shouldn't underestimate me."
"I won't," Ryan promised the girl a promise he knew he could keep.
"Good!" Olivia beamed, flicking her golden hair out of her eyes. "Three-on-three, okay? No gimmicks, no surprises. Whoever has the most Pokemon left standing at the end wins, got it?"
"Yeah."
"Then, let's party!" Olivia shouted. In one fluid motion, she jumped on her Rapidash with grace and then led him across the hanging platform to the other side. Once there, she stayed mounted on her Rapidash even as she readied a Pokeball in her hand. Ryan did likewise. "Ready?!" she shouted his way.
"Ready!" he echoed back.
Ryan took a deep breath, swallowing his fear and anxiety. The time for all of that was done. Now, he just needed to fight, to prove himself. He needed to show everyone that he was a Pokemon master after all. He grabbed a Pokeball off of his belt and held it in his hand. The volcano rumbled then, and splashes of lava flew into the air all around him. Yet Ryan was not scared by the lethal hot liquid shooting up in geysers around where he stood. He felt the anxiety roll off of him with the heat and the sweat. He was ready now. He was ready to win. So the boy took the Pokeball and threw it directly at the hanging platform ahead of him, starting his most important match yet.