Vermillion City turned out to be farther away than it had first appeared to Roy, Antonia, and Jackie. The initial excitement that the three pokémon trainers had felt at the sight of the ocean carried them far, but when the sun had started setting and the three of them had still been only in the outermost suburbs of the city proper after hours of walking, a reluctant decision had been made to camp in one of the parks which dotted the neighborhood through which they were passing.

Jackie's grumblings had been the most vocal but in truth Roy and Antonia had felt disappointment at falling short of their goal as well. Still, Roy had put on a brave face and had tried to lift the girls' spirits. Roy's job had been made easier by the food that Jackie had brought, as, once again, he and Antonia had failed to adequately prepare for their travels. Jackie had made a few comments about this, but since she had been willing to share what she had, it was clear that her teasing was just that.

The next morning, Antonia had been the first one up and had roused Roy and Jackie so that they could be on their way. "What's the hurry?" Jackie had grumbled as she made her way to the park's facilities to change her clothes and wash her face.

"When Toni's got her mind set on something, she doesn't stop for anything," Roy had answered with a mixture of bemusement and his own grogginess.

Still, Antonia's forceful start to the day did pay off. The three pokémon trainers arrived at a pokémon center in Vermillion City proper halfway through the morning. After dropping off her injured pokémon with the nurse, Jackie treated Roy and Antonia to an exaggerated yawn and said, "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a nap, grab a shower, and then maybe we can meet up for lunch and some training."

"Sounds good to me!" said Roy as he tried to hold back a yawn of his own. "I have to wait for my pokémon to get fixed up, too. What do you think, Toni?"

"My pokémon are fine," Antonia answered without thinking. Then she blinked behind her glasses and said, "Oh, you mean about the rest of the morning? I don't need to sleep and my pokémon are fine, so I'm going to start training with them now. If you two want to have lunch here, I guess I'll come back around noon."

Roy and Jackie watched as Antonia walked down the hallway to put her things in the room the pokémon center was providing her, and then she was back in the lobby not five minutes later and headed out the door without saying a word to either of her traveling companions.

"Do you think she's all right?" Jackie asked Roy once the pokémon center's sliding glass doors hissed to a close behind Antonia.

Roy's first response was, "Yeah, I think so," but then he thought again and amended his answer by saying, "Antonia's still pretty messed up from losing to the last gym leader she challenged. Maybe this is her way of working through things?"

"I don't know, Roy," Jackie said, "those were some pretty heavy bags under her eyes. Someone," Jackie stopped talking to let out another yawn, "someone should talk to her. But not me. I really do have to get a nap in before we hit up the gym."

"You think we're going to challenge the gym leader today? Oh man," Roy groaned. He leaned over the pokémon center's front desk to try and catch a glimpse of his pokémon before being reprimanded by the nurse on duty there. Jackie had already headed to her room, so Roy had no one to consult before he chose to stay and wait for his pokémon instead of going after Antonia. That also meant that he had no one who could tell him whether or not it was the right decision to make.

Antonia had left the pokémon center without knowing where she was going or even quite what she was looking for. "I'll know it when I see it," she said to herself, and then shook her head. "That sounded like something Roy would say." Antonia pushed the thought away and tried to take in the city around her. Vermillion City was busy, though not nearly as busy as Saffron City, Antonia thought. The activity around Vermillion City was of a different character as well. While the people hurtling around Saffron City had been mostly professional types and those who catered to them, the inhabitants of Vermillion City had a rougher quality. When Antonia was nearly barreled over by a muscular sailor and his machoke pushing a tram loaded with cargo, she got a few rude words whereas in Saffron City she would have simply been ignored altogether. Antonia wasn't sure which attitude was less pleasant.

While reflecting on that question, Antonia found what she hadn't known she had been looking for. It was a schoolyard with a blacktop upon which were etched a few arenas for pokémon battles. Since school was out for the summer, there was not an overly large number of children congregating for the matches. Antonia felt like they were all watching her as she approached.

The pokémon that they were using didn't look like they were particularly well-trained and the most of the trainers weren't yet old enough to be going on their pokémon journeys or, from the look of some of their clothes, able to afford a summer off to travel around the region. Still, they didn't shy away from Antonia as she stepped around the aged chain-link fence which marked the boundary of schoolyard, but instead took her in with as critical an eye as she had examined them.

"You're not from around here," one of the older boys said by way of a greeting. He was big, with thick arms and a thicker neck, and Antonia wondered to herself if he wasn't related to the sailor who had chastised her earlier.

"No, I'm not," admitted Antonia, "but I'd like to have a battle. Would you accept my challenge?"

Antonia's polite question made the boy's mouth curl into a smirk. "Yeah, I'll take you on. Right over there," he said with a gesture to one of the battlefields chalked onto the asphalt. The younger children who had been standing on it to watch the other battles hurried to make room for Antonia and her opponent. "One pokémon each sound good to you?"

With a nod of her head, Antonia replied, "That'll be fine. I'm Antonia."

"I didn't ask," the boy shot back with a low chuckle, before he relented and gave, "Conrad," as his own name.

The two trainers squared off against each other. As the one who challenged Conrad, Antonia decided to pick her pokémon first. Her hand found Bulbasaur at once, but she let his poké ball fall back into her bag like it had scalded her. Instead, after brushing past the ball containing her magikarp, Antonia settled on her beedrill's poké ball. With a flash of light, Beedrill took shape buzzing in the air in front of its trainer. Its yellow and black striped body looked as striking as ever, as did the large stingers on its abdomen and two foremost appendages.

"A bug pokémon? I'm insulted," Conrad said mockingly, but it was hard for Antonia to be too offended by her comment when she found the pokémon he sent out unimpressive herself. "Krabby, you're up!" Conrad's chosen pokémon was a red and beige-shelled crustacean which sat low to the ground on spindly legs and scurried from side to side while waving its claws above its head. The display was likely intended to be intimidating by the diminutive pokémon, as were the burbling noises and bubbles foaming from its mouth, but when compared to the perfected deadliness of Antonia's beedrill, it seemed more embarrassing than anything.

Still, Conrad didn't seem fazed by the seeming disparity between their pokémon and, besides, a battle was a battle. Antonia gave her first order, "Give it a poison sting, Beedrill!" and was pleased to see her pokémon still had the impressive speed it used in her battle against Misty in Cerulean City. It zipped towards Conrad's krabby like a missile with the matching stingers on its forelimbs leading the way.

Before Beedrill's attack landed, however, Conrad blurted out a quick command, "Harden, Krabby!" His pokémon closed its eyes and stiffened its body just in time for Beedrill's stingers to scrape across the small red pokémon's hard shell with a grating sound like two nails on a chalkboard. Antonia looked eagerly for signs of how effective her opening attack had been and was disappointed to find that Conrad's pokémon didn't seem to be injured in the slightest. "Is that the best you've got?" asked Conrad with a boastful air that the other children in the schoolyard picked up on. They clapped and cheered for their friend, the hometown champion facing off with the stranger.

One figure was not joining in the others' celebration, a boy Antonia and Roy's age who looked familiar. But Antonia chose to refocus her attention on the battle at hand. "One good defense doesn't mean you've won," she scolded Conrad.

"Maybe," responded Conrad with a grin, "but that's just 'cause you haven't seen us go on the attack yet! Krabby! Make some bubbles!"

With an ugly croaking noise, Conrad's skittering pokémon concentrated on producing more and more bubbling foam in its mouth. This time, instead of dribbling onto the ground below, the bubbles were crafted so that they were light enough to drift lazily over the battlefield and create a floating obstacle course through which Beedrill would have to navigate.

"Not bad," conceded Antonia, "but we saw Misty try the same thing, and with a lot more bubbles than your little krabby can make! Ramming attack, Beedrill! Knock that krabby off its feet!"

Antonia's words were no idle boast. Her beedrill swiftly flew through the layer of traps Conrad's krabby had produced with a slight shift in the tenor of its buzzing wings signifying each burst of acceleration or change of direction. Without waiting for its trainer's command, Krabby tried to steel itself for Beedrill's attack again, but this time its foe was not aiming for merely a glancing blow but instead delivered a full-bodied tackle which had enough speed and force behind it to lift Conrad's pokémon off the ground. A trail of frothing spit followed the panicked krabby as it soared through the air and landed on its side. It scrambled to get back onto its feet, but without success.

"Do you give up?" Antonia asked Conrad while his pokémon continued to struggle with righting itself from its tipped over position.

"Never," spat Conrad. "Come on, Krabby, on your feet! Everyone's watching us!"

After chewing her bottom lip for a moment, Antonia decided to give her pokémon another order, "Beedrill, get ready to deliver a poison sting at extremely close range." Her loyal pokémon seemed to understand its trainer perfectly and it buzzed over to where Krabby was still struggling and pinned the flailing crustacean down with the large stinger on its abdomen. While Conrad continued to hold out hope for a few seconds longer, his pokémon had frozen in place and watched the bug pokémon looming over it with wide, fearful eyes.

"Bah, fine," grumbled Conrad just before his refusal to admit defeat could make him look like too much of a sore loser to his peers. "You're not bad, but wait until Surge gets a hold of you. He'll squash your overgrown pest without breaking a sweat!" That was all the ceremony that Antonia got from her defeated opponent as Conrad returned his krabby to his poké ball and walked away with excuses for everyone and anyone in earshot for why he had lost to Antonia, and so quickly, too.

"Not bad," said a voice off to the side of the battlefield after Antonia had returned her beedrill to its poké ball. "You're certainly having a good time being a pokémon trainer, Antonia."

The speaker was Zach, one of Roy and Antonia's classmates from Pallet Town, who they had last seen in Pewter City. "Oh, hello, Zach," Antonia said politely, "I didn't expect to see you here."

The boy tried to relax his pinched features, but the narrowness of his face could only allow so much, so Zach had to demonstrate his casual attitude by shrugging his shoulders with his whole body. "Yeah, well, lots of things changed since we last saw each other. Jesse took on the gym leader here and as soon as the rest of us started struggling a little bit, he ditched us. Said that he didn't want us to hold him back, can you believe that?"

After seeing firsthand how Jesse had treated Roy, his own twin brother, Antonia didn't have a hard time believing Zach's story, but his sharp eyes were searching her round face for sympathy, so she said, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Is the gym leader here really so tough? I heard some other trainers had trouble with him."

"Yeah, he's the real deal," Zach said. "I've challenged him three times and lost every time so far. That's why I'm here, I was looking for to train the new pokémon I caught to beat him." The boy's frown turned into a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes when he said, "But then I saw you, Antonia, and I thought that it might be nice to catch up, maybe compare notes."

"I don't know how helpful, I'll be," said Antonia slowly. "It sounds like I should be the one asking you for help with battling Surge."

"Yeah, but you've still got valuable information to trade for my help," Zach said as soon as Antonia had finished talking. "After all, you went on a different route than me and Jesse, right? You've probably got the dirt on gym leaders I haven't met yet. I think that's a fair exchange, don't you think?"

Something about Zach's excitement made Antonia wary, but, in the end, he was a classmate and that was close enough a cousin to friendship that she nodded and said, "All right, I can tell you what I know. Besides Brock I've battled two other gym leaders, and I was only able to beat one."

Zach's thin eyebrows raised when he heard the hitch in her voice at the mention of her loss, but he chose to smile and say, "Hey, so even the perfect Antonia has trouble sometimes, that makes me feel a little better about losing myself."

"Thanks, I think," said Antonia. "Are you staying at the pokémon center?"

"Yeah, though I think I'm starting to wear out my welcome with the nurses. They've helped my banged up pokémon more times than I can count."

"Well, I was thinking I should go back and get lunch," Antonia ventured, but before she could mention Roy and Jackie, Zach interjected, "That's a great idea!" and Antonia found herself walking back to the pokémon center with Zach.

"I'll tell you, Antonia," said Zach as they walked languidly through the busy streets of Vermillion City, "it's good to run into you, but now that I've thought about it some more, Jesse had the right idea. I mean, it wasn't great that he forced his decision on his friends like that, but I think that the whole traveling together idea we had back when we started was kind of stupid. It's putting your eggs in the same basket as other people, and hoping that you'll all qualify for the tournament at the end of the summer instead of trying to do what's best for yourself. I mean, I don't have to tell you that, Antonia," Zach said with a snicker, "you had Roy trailing after you. When did you finally ditch him? I'm dying to know when things got hard enough that he threw a big tantrum and called it quits!"

Antonia's smile was a small and queasy thing as she said, "Well, actually," and then was saved from having to correct Zach's misconception by Roy and Jackie emerging from the pokémon center's front door to greet her.

"Hey, Toni!" Roy said. "We were just about to come looking for you!" He saw Zach and the boy's good cheer evaporated. "Oh, look who you found."

"Hey yourself, Roy," Zach said even more sourly. "Antonia didn't tell me that you were still tagging along after her." He aimed a sidelong glance at Antonia, causing the bespectacled girl to shrink away from him.

"Well, looks like everyone knows you but me," Jackie said loudly. She didn't just interpose herself verbally into their conversation, but physically as well by striding forward and offering a hand to Zach. "I'm Jackie, and you are?"

Zach took the tall girl's hand glumly and said, "Zach. I know these two from Pallet Town. Last I saw them was battling the gym leader in Pewter City."

Jackie said in return, "Well, I just met these two on their way from Saffron City here. Since we were all going the same way, and with the same goal in mind, I figured I'd join them." She laughed, "But enough jawing out here, let's go inside and get some food."

"I hope you like seafood," Zach said with a wry smile and then, after an unsubtle glance each for Roy and Antonia, he followed Jackie inside.

"Where did you find that guy, Toni?" Roy muttered to Antonia. "I thought he was with Jesse's group."

Antonia whispered back, "He was, I mean, until Jesse decided he didn't want to be in a group anymore. He said that he's been trying to beat the gym leader here this whole time."

"Is he that tough?" wondered Roy aloud. Since he hadn't expected an answer and didn't get one from Antonia, the two of them followed Jackie and Zach back inside the pokémon center.

Lunch was, unsurprisingly for the coastal environs, seafood. There was a variety of choices, but nearly all of the main courses available had some aquatic element to them. Jackie didn't seem to mind, but Roy and Antonia noticed that Zach took only what he had to eat in order to keep going. "After I get that badge, I'm going to swear off fish for a year," he grumbled, "and that still might not be long enough."

There were hardly any other trainers in the pokémon center's cafeteria, so the four of them felt comfortable letting their pokémon out of their poké balls to eat on the floor next to their table. The food that the staff had set out for the pokémon was generous, but Zach was quick to point out the smell of seafood which lingered over everything might make the pokémon center's offerings less appealing for some of their pokémon.

Still, no one could say that Roy's Charmander would ever turn down a plate of food freely available, and the other pokémon soon followed his lead. Zach examined Roy and Antonia's teams intently, and, to a lesser extent, Jackie's pokémon as well. In return they all commented on his pokémon, a jittery pikachu and a heavy-set pokémon standing on two legs that had a drooping snout hanging down over its mouth.

"Do you like my drowzee?" Zach asked. "He's going to be my secret weapon against Surge. Put his pokémon to sleep and then knock 'em around until we've won."

"Not a bad idea," Jackie said appreciatively, "and from the look of your drowzee's thick gut it looks like he can take a few hits, too." She swung an expansive arm to indicate her eevee and meowth and announced, "As for me, I'm going to try a few tricks but mostly try to use our speed to hit him before he knows what's coming."

Zach snorted and said dismissively, "Good luck trying to beat Surge in a contest of speed. Pikachu and I tried that a few times, and I doubt you're going to have better luck than we did."

Seeing that Jackie was about to tear into Zach for daring to criticize her strategy, Roy piped up, "What about you, Toni? What are you going to try for this gym leader?"

Instead of the ready answer that he thought he was going to get, Antonia initially responded to Roy's question by squirming uncomfortably in her seat. She felt the eyes of the other three trainers on her, so she looked to where her pokémon were eating their food. Her magikarp was alternating between gulping down food and flopping uselessly in the bowl of water which a nurse had provided it, while Beedrill's attention was solely on the challenge of spearing chunks of food on its forelimbs before bringing them to its mouth. Out of her three pokémon, Antonia's bulbasaur was the one looking at her and there was eagerness in his eyes that radiated out to make his stubby tail wag under the shadow of his bulb.

But Antonia didn't acknowledge her pokémon's hopeful gaze. Instead, she chose to look back at the equally expectant faces of Roy, Jackie, and Zach only to lie and say, "Well, I have a few ideas for what we can do. I think I need to work on them with my pokémon before we challenge him." Then, out of a desire to direct the group's attention away from her, accompanied by some subconscious spite at his doing the same to her, Antonia asked, "What about you, Roy?"

"Yeah, Roy," Zach said at once, "what's your big master plan?" The other boy didn't even bother to keep the scorn out of his voice.

"Well, I guess I'm in the same boat as Antonia," Roy said slowly. "My charmander evolved into a charmeleon back in Saffron City, so he's probably going to be my go-to battling pokémon. I've got some things that I might try, depending on what kind of pokémon the gym leader uses." He blinked and looked around at the others to ask, "Hey, what kind of pokémon does this Surge guy use anyways?"

Antonia closed her eyes in exasperation while Zach's widened in gleeful anticipation. Only Jackie actually tried answering Roy's question, "He, um, uses electrical pokémon. You didn't do your research on this guy, did you, Roy?"

Roy grinned the same smile that he gave to his teachers when he got caught out not having his homework completed. "Well, I knew I'd figure it out sooner or later."

"I still have no idea how you got a badge from Brock," Zach sniggered behind his hand.

"What are you talking about?" asked Jackie. "Roy doesn't have any badges."

Zach's laughter stopped for a moment as he repeated back in an incredulous tone, "Roy doesn't have any badges?" Then he started laughing again, much harder this time, "Oh man, Roy doesn't have any badges! You didn't beat Brock after all! We were all so amazed when we thought you beat him! It kept Jesse up some nights just wondering how you pulled it off! Only you didn't!"

Roy's face was quickly turning red, but he kept his temper limited to a noticeable tremor in his voice as he ground out, "Well, this is going to be my first badge. I'm going to beat the stuffing out of Surge and then if you want to try me, Zach, I'll do the same to you." He took a few sharp breaths in and out and then stood up from the table, announcing, "I'm done eating." With a nod to Charmeleon and Nidoran, Roy rushed out of the pokémon center's cafeteria with his pokémon in tow.

"I'm sorry," Jackie said to Antonia since Roy had already gone, "I didn't think it was a secret."

"It shouldn't have been a secret," said Zach. "Serves that moron right for trying to lie about how good of a trainer he is when he's still the same joke that he was back home." When he saw that the girls were glaring at him, Zach had the audacity to act offended. "What? It's the truth, isn't it?" He kept repeating, "What? What?" as Antonia and Jackie took their pokémon and left him without either of them saying a word.

Roy was standing in front of the pokémon center scuffing his tennis shoes by kicking the pavement, but the act was driven more by habit than anger. He had returned his pokémon to their poké balls so that he could be alone, but now he was regretting that decision and was considering letting them back out when he heard the doors hiss open behind him. "Toni?" he asked as he turned around.

"Sorry to disappoint you," said Jackie with an apologetic smile. She took off her baseball cap and ran a finger through her thick black hair before replacing it and saying, "Look, I'm sorry about that, Roy. I don't have any badges yet either, so I didn't think it was a big deal. I was wrong."

"It's okay," Roy said, and he actually meant it. "I think what bugs me the most is what Zach said about Jesse. That's my brother," he quickly explained. "I thought that if Jesse and Zach and the rest of them thought that I had even one badge, it would, I don't know, make them think twice about me. But it didn't. They didn't believe it, and they were right too." Roy grinned at Jackie and added, "Or, at least, they were right! I'm going to beat Surge, and then collect the rest of the badges so that I can face Jesse in the league's tournament and show him that everything he thought he knew about me is wrong!"

Jackie's eyes blazed with the same fire that was in Roy's and she shouted, "Yeah! You said it, Roy! Your brother and my sisters, we're going to show them all!" She clapped Roy on the back so hard that he stumbled and that set the two trainers to laughing. "It starts tonight when we go to the gym and get our first badges. Get your pokémon ready, Roy, and we'll head over at sunset."

"What about Zach?"

"What about him? He can come along if he wants, but that's up to him."

"And what about Toni?"

"Antonia?" Jackie's smile dimmed a little, and she said, "I guess I'll go talk to her and tell her the same thing I told you. You know, except for the mushy apology."

Roy smiled and said, "Yeah, and tell her, um, tell her that if she wants any help with getting ready for the gym leader, I'm happy to help." He realized something and added with a laugh, "Oh, and the same goes for you, Jackie!"

Jackie saluted Roy with a tip of her cap and said, "You've got it, Roy!"

She went back inside the pokémon center to find Antonia. Roy stood outside waiting, but although Jackie came back to join him in training their pokémon, Antonia did not appear until the sun had started to sink into the horizon.