As we walked towards the imposing gym, the clouds began to grow darker. The wind picked up too, and I shivered. Why the hell didn't I pack a jacket? At least it wasn't—

It started raining.

Raichu, who had started shaking, was obviously not a fan of the rain. So, with some struggling, I opened up the Pokéball and let him back in. After I put the ball back in my bag, Catherine raised an eyebrow at me. I ignored it and kept walking.

However, Catherine stopped in the building's threshold, just under the awning that covered the door. I was still cold, but at least it kept the rain off.

I had already gone an extra two steps before I realized that she had stopped. I looked back at her. "Are you coming?"

She looked down at the ground, and mumbled something I couldn't quite understand. Whatever it was, I didn't care. I reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Oh no," I told her, as I pulled her into the gym. "You are not just gonna wait around out here while I do all the hard work."

Her big, brown eyes just stared back, and then she nodded. "Yeah," Catherine acquiesced. "Besides, there's no way you could defeat the gym leader without me."

Now that was too much. "Excuse me?" I demanded, as we walked into the gym. The change in temperature was enough to make me smile, even though Catherine had just insulted me. It was so warm! Thinking about it, it made sense that a gym filled with grass Pokémon would be all warm and delicious feeling.

For the moment, I let the insult go and took a look around. I had never seen the inside of a real gym. Occasionally, they would be used as sets in movies, but everyone who saw the films always commented about how the movie interpretations were so inaccurate.

And they were right. The large room was divided up into multiple areas, with plants seeming to grow out of the floor. Towards the entrance was a smoothie bar boosting smoothies made with imported pollen, where a few girls sat at the bar, sipping their drinks and giggling. Across from the smoothie bar was a gift shop, selling everything from Celadon Gym hats and shirts, to the more obscure Celadon Gym bra and panty set. As I was staring at the exorbitant prices of all the merchandise, I noticed the speakers were calmly spouting out some pop song I didn't know.

But as soon as I saw the two thugs at the other end of the gym floor frantically mumbling into a phone, a cold chill ran through me.

Either Catherine was unmoved, or so freaked out that she couldn't freak out any more. My bet was on the latter.

"You got lucky with your Raichu against that Oddish," Catherine whispered. A few girls at the bar pointed at us and giggled. "And because you pulled that one out, I assume it's your only Pokémon. If you even want to stand a chance against Sarah, you'll need a fire Pokémon."

I didn't want to let her know that everything she had just said went over my head. Fire Pokémon? Half taking off my backpack, I dug through it and found the folder Aiden had put together for me. I flipped through and was looking for the type chart he said was in here when Catherine spoke up.

"What are you doing with that?" She asked, looking down on the papers in my hand. "You know you can just find all of that on your Pokédex, right?"

I bit my lip. Now didn't seem like the time to tell her I technically didn't have a Pokédex because I technically wasn't a trainer. "Mine's broken," I said quickly, before she could get too suspicious. "I left it in my jacket and then put it in the washing machine." Luckily, she seemed convinced. I actually had no idea if that would ruin a Pokédex or not, but it had definitely ruined a lot of other electronics I used to own.

She sighed. "Then you'll need to borrow my Pokédex as well. You got away with not having one earlier because that trainer was dumb as a sack of berries. But here, against Sarah, you'll need a Pokédex."

I then made the mistake of asking, "Why?"

Catherine glared at me. For a moment, I thought she was about to ring my neck with her scrawny hands. She opened her mouth to explain, when we were interrupted by a nicely dressed woman. She seemed to be just a few years older than me, but the hostess outfit and proper makeup made her look infinitely more refined. She stood there, in a tight blue dress with a white apron and a matching white hat, with her light blue hair falling just past her shoulder blades.

"Excuse me," the woman said, bowing slightly and smiling so much that it looked like it hurt. "But the gym leader will see you now."

Unsure of what to do, I looked at Catherine. She nodded for me to go, and so I followed the happy hostess, pulling Catherine along behind me.

She lead us to an open area in the middle of the gym, with the stereotypical gym floor logo emblazoned on the ground with grass and flowers. Then the hostess bowed again, and said, "She will be here any minute."

I was still staring at the floor and wondering how exactly they got the plants to grow like that, when Catherine shoved a Pokéball and a Pokédex into my hands. My eyes grew wide. They were both beautiful—the Pokéball was made of something shinier than usual, and the Pokédex was the lastest release, all touch screen and chrome. Thinking of the price tag on either of the items, I felt a little sick touching them. "What Pokémon is this?" I asked, staring at the ball as if I could see through it.

Catherine's eyes flicked up, and then back to me. "Just trust me," she whispered in a hush voice. "Now, turn on the Pokédex, choose four moves, and release the Pokémon. That's all you need to do."

"Friends of challengers shall stand at least two yards away from the challenger at all times." The calm yet authoritative voice rang out all over the gym. Everyone stopped talking, and even the music turned off.

I looked up to see who had just spoke, and my mouth fell open. The woman wearing the green kimono was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She seemed to float as she walked, and her long, black hair bounced in perfect rhythm with her steps. With all that makeup on her face, she looked like a walking china doll. I suddenly felt extremely underdressed in my slightly damp sneakers, jeans, and black tank top.

She smiled at me. "So, you're the trainer that I've been told about. It's nice to meet you, trainer." Even with her beautiful voice, the speech still sounded rehearsed. "My name is Sarah, and I am the gym leader of the Celadon City Gym." She paused for a moment. "You'll have to excuse me, trainer. I was not expecting you today, and so I only have one Pokémon in battle ready condition at the moment. Is that alright?"

I turned around to look at Catherine, who was nodding so vigorously I thought her head was going to fall off. "Yeah," I told Sarah, still somewhat unsure. "Sounds good."

She nodded. "Then let us lock in our moves." I was about to ask what she was talking about, when she produced a Pokédex from somewhere in her Kimono and began doing something on it.

Putting the still small Pokéball in my poket, I turned on Catherine's Pokédex. It took a moment to boot up, and then it joined some network. Somehow, it then knew I was in the Celadon gym and about to battle Sarah. Next thing I knew, I was at some page and it was asking me to select moves. I had no idea what any of them were, but picked a few that I thought looked good. Most of them had fire something in the name, which made me a little more confident. At least she had given me a good Pokémon.

When I looked up, I noticed a small crowd had gathered around the area. I took a deep breath, and looked at Sarah.

She smiled. "Well then, if you've selected your moves, let us begin." Sarah then produced a Pokéball from her kimono (where was she keeping this stuff?) and threw it into the arena. "Vileplume, I choose you!"

"Shit," I cursed. I knew about Vileplume. Granted, it was only because I went through a green phase in middle school and had a Vileplume lunchbox, but still! It was the scariest thing I had ever seen with a flower on its head. It popped out of the Pokéball with a graceful ease, and puffed a small burst of pollen out of it's flower.

Show off.

I straightened my posture. "Let's do this," I said, more for show than anything else. I didn't want to do this—I wanted to leave! I silently sent up prayers to whatever legendary Pokémon might be listening, and threw the Pokéball.

My brows furrowed. "What the—"

The Pokédex interrupted me. "Magby, it said, "The live coal Pokémon."

"That's all I need," I said, feeling infinitely more confident now. The screen on the Pokédex went back to the four moves I had already chosen.

The Pokémon, the Magby, looked back at me with a quizzical look. It was only once it received a thumbs up from Catherine that it seemed okay with what was going on. However, in that lull, Sarah had made the first move.

"Vileplume," she commanded, her sickly sweet voice now grating on my nerves, "Use sunny day!"

With an intense amount of concentration, the Vileplume somehow began generating sunshine inside the gym! Its petals began to glow, and I felt screwed.

Frantically, I looked down at the move list. "Err, Magby, smog now!"

Opening its mouth, the red Pokémon began blowing the most foul, black smoke I have ever seen, or smelled. I covered my mouth with my hand as best I could. The upside to the foul smoke was that, while it did not totally block out the artificial sun, it made the visibility go way down.

Through the smog, I heard Sarah yell, "Get it with a razor leaf!"

Suddenly, hundreds of tiny leaves began to fill the arena. I panicked, too focused on the leaves to look at the Pokédex. "Burn 'em!" I yelled, before realizing that 'destroy all the leaves with fire' was not a move I had selected.

But Magby did it anyway.

And in that moment, I figured out the rules of the game. The four moves were what you could officially use. But no one was going to stop you from getting creative.

I felt triumphant until I heard, "Solar beam!"

A blast of yellow light struck Magby out of the smoke cloud. It didn't look good. I glanced down at the moves, knowing I had to act fast. He wouldn't survive another blast of that beam.

"Okay, Magby, faint attack!" From somewhere in the smoke cloud, Magby attacked. I saw a blast of yellow again, followed by a cry. However, it didn't sound like Magby's. Assuming Catherine's Pokémon was still okay, I looked down at the Pokédex and chose something at random. There were three moves I hadn't tried, and as I was about to chose some fire move, I noticed that the smog was disappearing. So much for my plan. I needed to stall.

"Confuse ray!" I yelled, and watched as Magby prepared to throw a strange light onto Vileplume.

Just as he was about to, Sarah countered with, "Poison powder!"

The confuse ray traveled through the poison powder, and reflected it. The spectacle was beautiful, like watching tiny stars. At least it was until I realized that, while I had confused the Vileplume, it had poisoned the Magby.

Smoke came out of its nose now. It didn't look good. I knew I needed to finish this.

So did the Vileplume, who had begun firing out solar beams at random. Luckily they all missed due to the Vileplume's confusion. I panicked, caught between the last two moves I hadn't tried, wondering which one would work better. I decided to go with, "Magby, Lava plume!"

Magby summoned the last of its strength, and suddenly lava began exploding out of nowhere! It started at the floor, burning the pretty flower arrangement, and struck the Vileplume in what looked to be a hailstorm from hell! Confused and battered, the Vileplume spun around once, fired off a final Solar Beam, and collapsed onto the ashy remains of the flower floor. As it did, the artificial sunlight in the gym faded.

"Vileplume is unable to battle," the Pokédexs spoke in unison. "Magby is the winner!"

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Catherine ran up behind me. She grabbed the Pokéball from me, summoned Magby back, and then locked her arms around me in the tightest hug I had ever felt.

"You were wonderful!" She squealed, jumping up and down slightly and taking me with her. "Amazing!"

"You're…crushing…me," I managed to squeak out.

Blushing furiously, she let me go. "Oh, heh, sorry!"

When I turned back to look at Sarah, she had already summoned her Vileplume back. "What a pity," she said. "It will take days to re-grow that floor."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "What about your Pokémon?" It boggled my mind that she did not even care that I had just wrecked her Vileplume.

Sarah simply shrugged. She approached me, gliding over the ashes. "Trainer, in defeating me you have earned the Rainbow Badge." She pulled out a small badge that looked like a flower with rainbow colored leaves, and handed it to me.

I took it, looked it over once, and stuffed it in my jeans pocket. "Thanks."

"Normally I would also give you the technical machine for Solar Beam, but I happen to be out of them." One of the gym trainers came up and handed Sarah a t shirt, which she then handed to me. "But here, have a Celadon Gym shirt instead."

I stuffed the shirt in my backpack. It didn't really seem fair, but I just wanted to get out of there. I repeated my thanks, and turned to leave.

"What about my backpack!" Catherine said, recoiling a little after her outburst. Silently, one of the gym thugs gave it back to her, and she hugged it to her chest as if it were going to run away.

With that done, I hurried out of there as fast as I could, with Catherine at my heels still going on and on about the battle. Outside, the storm had subsided some. It was still cold, but at least the rain had stopped. I handed her back her Pokédex. "Now, I got your stuff back, so here's your Pokédex. See ya later."

"Wait! Where are you going?"

I sighed. "It's none of your business where I'm going."

I only got about two steps away before she called out, "Can I come with you?"
"What?" I turned on my heels. She looked so pathetic, with her small framed dwarfed by that giant back, and that pleading look on her pale face. "Why the hell would you want to come with me?"

She took a step closer to me, and together we began walking away from the gym complex. "I'm all alone here in Kanto. It's… Well it's a long story. Why do you not want me to go with you? Most trainers travel in groups anyway."

I looked away, staring at the trees on the outskirt of the park I had come through. "I'm not most trainers. It's a long story."

"Then we should stick together! After all, you said yourself that your Pokédex is broken, and you can't defeat gym leaders without a working Pokédex."

I wanted to shake this kid. I wanted to tell her that I didn't want to defeat any more gym leaders. All I wanted to do was hang out away from Celadon until the heat died down and no one was looking for an illegal Raichu.

"Besides," she added, her doe eyes fixed on her Pokédex, "Look how much money you earned from that win!"

Unable to help myself, I looked at the screen. My mouth dropped open. That was a whole month's pay! In just one stupid battle!

"You've already got one gym badge."

I took the small thing out of my pocket. "Shouldn't this be yours? I mean, I beat her with your Pokémon."

Catherine shook her head. We were now halfway to the south gate. "No. Magby is mine, but you were the one commanding him. You're a really good trainer, Ali."

That clinched it. I didn't want to go be a trainer and collect gym badges, but I had wanted to. The badge in my hand glinted in the sunlight. This was everything I had wanted as a child, and it paid! I stopped, and looked at Catherine. "How about this? We do one more gym, and then I'll decide?"

Catherine's face lit up. "Sure! But if you want to get to another gym quickly, we're going to have to go east, not south."

Giving up arguing with her, I changed my direction to walk towards the east gate, and not the south gate as I had originally planned. "To Saffron?" I asked.

She shook her head and giggled. "Not if you want to win. No, we need to go east to Lavender first. You need a ghost Pokémon!"

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