Chapter 4

A single raised and a quick once-over were the response to my admittedly rather ham-fisted declaration.

"That's great Mr. Swift, fresh blood is always welcome, and you seem to be no stranger to exercise." Master Kiyo began with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and betrayed his lack of enthusiasm. "That said, may I ask for your credentials? I'm sorry for being direct here, but you are almost a grown man and yet I see only one Pokeball. Furthermore, I don't think I ever saw you do my Gym-challenge."

"I'll be honest, Sir, I have no credentials besides my time spent at the Kanto Pidgey Express. The reason why I'm here is that I need an official partner for my league challenge in the coming month." I continued with the truth and refrained from putting some kind of spin on my situation.

"I sense a story there." He pointed out the obvious and bid me to explain. "Let's start from the beginning."

"To put it in a nutshell, I managed to raise my Pidgey into a Pidgeot and now I have to collect three badges by the end of the month, otherwise the League is going to confiscate my partner." I explained, not mincing any words, and all the talk about my task had the unfortunate side-effect of me suddenly feeling an invisible clock ticking in the back of my mind.

"And why come to my Fighting Dojo?" He asked, this time with more intent.

No embarrassed head-scratching or wincing on my part, because I genuinely stood by my decision, I went ahead and elaborated my current situation.

"I told my brother, the boss of Pidgey Express here, quite forcefully that I quit and my girlfriend, an aspiring nurse at the Pokemon Center, thought that your gym's straightforward manner and my hands-on approach to training would mix well."

"I see," He eyed me for a second before he seemingly came to a decision of some sort. "Can I trust your discretion?" He suddenly asked, which made me pause for a second before I nodded, perhaps sensing no other choice than to go along with whatever he had in mind.

"Good, then let's make this quick. 6000 Poke-Dollars and the membership is yours."

For a hot second, I thought I misheard the guy in front of me before my brain finally caught up with what he just said so casually.

I sputtered, caught flat-footed, those were my fucking savings.

Rent for this and the next month was already paid, but what then?

"Is such a price the norm?" I asked carefully because Christy didn't mention any of this shit.

"Oh no, you are a special case so there's going to be a special price for our services." He revealed totally unbothered by my initial reaction.

"I wasn't joking when I said that fresh blood was always welcome. Preferably, however, are obviously young kids that already did their apprenticeship with us. Young trainers we can guide from a young age, trainers that we know are loyal to us and the cause. It's those kinds of members we and by extension the League want to see. Those that come back to us after their journey and guide the next generation or become highly competent Poke-rangers, that keep our city and the routes safe. Maybe even both." He finished his lengthy explanation before he crossed his arms, and his gaze became noticeably steely.

"For you, we are the means to an end, we cannot expect you to be of any value to us after you did your little task…or failed at it. So…" Here he gave a little shrug. I could see where he was coming from, but that didn't stop me from getting slightly pissed. "I want money, that can help finance the development of real trainers with potential."

"Fine." I ground out, swallowing whatever just crossed my mind. "I don't care about lodging, but I want proper help when I ask for it like any regular member."

"Certainly, you will get all the help, we don't want you to embarrass us after all."

I couldn't help but sigh, trying to focus on the task ahead of me, priorities, and so on.

"Heads up, sonny, you are a fighter now. Learn to live with tough love, because we don't give up, we power through obstacles and problems." He gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up, which somehow failed to put a smile on my face.

"Let's get inside and deal with the paperwork, after that I want to see the bird that got you in so much trouble in the first place."

"Got to admit, it's a fine bird." My new Gym-leader admitted with a small dose of genuine respect while we stood side by side and watched Tweety doing his rounds above the running track, that surrounded the training field still filled with half-a-dozen trainers and their Pokemon.

It was a curious sight to see the effect my partner had on other Pokemon. Machops and Mankeys kept a very close eye on my bird, their gazes filled with a healthy dose of apprehension, which apparently made concentrating on their trainers almost impossible, given the growing annoyance I was noticing.

Pokemon such as Machoke and Primapes had similar problems. It wasn't fear, however, they were simply looking at him for a challenge or a straight-up brawl. Curiously, the Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan were completely unbothered by the flying predator in their vicinity.

Noticing my gaze and guessing my thoughts correctly Kiyo gave a quick explanation.

"Discipline," He began with pride in his voice. "It's in their nature."

Shifting my gaze until it settled back on my Pokemon, I was relieved to note, that Tweety was thankfully unfaced by the attention and kept to himself and his current task.

Said task was a sandbag on his back and two ten kilo dumbbells in his claws.

The undignified squawk when he had initially failed to lift off and him perhaps having sensed my humor had ruffled some feathers and pride alike. The little episode had luckily only motivated him and had spared me unnecessary drama.

I stood straight-backed and spoke with a clear voice, which seemed to be the norm here. No pulling punches or something like that. "Do you have any advice, go and grab a Mankey and get started?"

Barely finishing my sentence, I saw Master Kiyo already shake his head in negative.

"You only have a month, so I advise against it. Mankeys are very versatile, but they are like hyperactive little children in the sense that they need a lot of attention and need to be raised accordingly." He began and I got the impression, that he had this argument before.

"Primeapes, following the same analogy, are like unruly teenagers, that can make an issue out of everything."

"My advice," He said and pointed to a grey humanoid little Pokemon. "take the time and look for a Machop."

"They also need a lot of attention, but in the sense, that they constantly have to be pushed to new limits." His voice gained an unmistakable excitement, talking about fighting-types really seemed to get him into his grove.

"Their single-mindedness to gaining strength and your hands-on approach could sync pretty well."

I nodded along, taking his advice for face value, because frankly it sounded good, and I didn't know any better.

"You should look northeast in the mountains, those that live there tend to be quite strong given the rough terrain and the environment giving them ample opportunity for rudimentary strength training."

"I will think about it."

"Hello Mrs. Joy."

"Ah, Corey, it's good to see you," The pink-haired woman gave me a quick affectionate hug and welcomed me inside. "Come right in, Christy is in her room."

"Thank you." Slipping out of my shoes when I stepped into the entryway, I felt somewhat grateful, that Christy apparently hadn't revealed my current predicament to her parents yet. I had the uncomfortable, potentially unreasonable, feeling, that things could get awkward between us, because, honestly, who wants their daughter to hang with a problem guy?

Giving the retreating figure of Christy's mother a small wave as she headed down the hallway to the living room, I knocked gently on the first door to my left.

"It's me." I simply said and only had to wait for a handful of seconds before the door was ripped open.

"Hey," A quick glance down the hallway by my girlfriend and a hand shot out to grab mine, quickly followed by a pull into her room.

"Oh my, quite eager, aren't we?" I chuckled and gently closed the door behind me.

"You wish." A small impish smile accompanied her answer, and I felt the need to keep playing.

"I do." Not having let go of her hand I gently pulled her back and gave my best 99 cent-casanova impression, which earned me a peck on the cheek.

"How did it go?" She asked, still comfortably close but being always the voice of reason, finally getting to the task at hand and my reason for visiting in the first place.

"Pretty good. I'm a full-fledged gym-member and got some decent advice. Tweety even made some solid progress." I told her and made it sound honest. I really, really didn't want to reveal the price and the potential money issues. Those were future-me's problems, my problems now were badges and keeping my bird.

Apparently, I sounded honest enough, because I got a heartfelt hug out of it, which told me quite clearly how relieved she felt for my sake.

"That's great news." She beamed up and pulled me towards her desk, which had two chairs prepared.

"Let's get started." She said as we took our seats while my gaze was inevitably drawn to her diary and what appeared to be a basic map of Kanto. "I want to work on the different types first and then we see what that means for the various gyms."