Hard Enough

A trainer surge was the term used in the event of a sudden spike where the trainers that you would normally see over an extended period of time —say a month or even three months—descended on a gym all at once.

When I looked at my schedule, which was quickly filling up, and at the still-waiting trainers, I knew something was off.

There was a feature on the webpage that linked into our booking sheet that allowed people to use the pokenet but most people either came to the gym and made their booking in person, or they called. The only people I could think that actually called for setting up Gym meetings however was the local pokemon academy. People still hadn’t grasped Rachel's work with the pokenet page and stuck with what they knew worked.

This meant that an already booked month of matches with what I was already looking at was raising red flags. I stared out at the sea of people that were still waiting to book in, let alone challenge me today. I only had another five matches for the day. It was only the start of the second week. This was abnormal, and part of me wondered how many people were actually coming.

Just how popular would my gym be? Rachel had suggested more people but how was I to anticipate them? I chewed my lip. There… there was a way

My eyes paused on a number of the pokemon that were idling around at their trainer's feet or shoulders. Their cries merely added to the cacophony of noise.

I tapped Alexa on the shoulder. “Open the schedule book up for an extra two hours a day from Monday to Friday and run a session on Saturday from eight till twelve.”

She nodded, fingers flying on the keyboard accompanied by a furry of clicking from the mouse as she got to work. As the computer slowed down a small digital duck face appeared in the corner. I tapped on the screen. “Need you to keep the system from crashing Cyber, think you can sit on this computer for now?”

The small cyberduck spun its body around in a nod before backflipping off the screen.

“What the?” said Alexa in surprise. She turned to look at me. “What was that?”

“That was part of our cyber security team. I own a few Porygon’s that sit in the system and defend it from malware or viruses. They can also make sure things are running smoothly.” I pointedly didn’t tell her that they also stop people from copying large segments of information about the gym or my own findings.

People can read and take notes but that takes a lot longer and puts them at greater risk of discovery. Someone coming in to steal information was more likely to try copy-pasting it onto an external before bugging out.

“I’m going to make some calls, how long before the next fight?”

“Twenty minutes?” Alexa said as she checked my schedule.

I gave a short nod before jogging up the ramp to a doorway. I swiped my keycard over it before repeating the gesture at my own office. I shut the door before pouncing on the computer.

‘Local port office’ I thought to myself as I looked up the phone number. I had an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone and I was hoping I would be wrong.

I’d seen the normal Hoot-hoot, Pidgey, Rattata, Oddish, and Bellsprout. I thought I’d even seen a girl with a Bulbasaur timidly holding onto her spot at the back of the line. A cyndaquil had also been present. All of that was considered normal and wouldn’t have me worried.

Those trainers from my brief sweep of the gym only made up a third of the current host. And that caused red flags in my mind.

I’d very much noticed the Shroomish growling at another pokemon, the Vigoroth bouncing on its toes and looking around in anticipation. The Ninjask buzzing back and forth, the Aron barking, the Plusle and Minum playing underfoot. I would have had to have been deaf to not hear the Loudred shouting.

And those were only the pokemon that I could see. All of these Pokemon were very much not found in this region.

“Port office, how may I help you?” came a crisp response a few rings into the call. I noted that there was no video for the call so they must have been operating under an older system.

“Hi! It’s Brock from Pewter City. I was hoping to talk to the records department?” I said.

“G-gym Leader Brock? Of course! If you want I can get the Harbour master to help you! He iss a big fan of yours!” said the voice.

I chuckled. “I don’t think I need to disturb him. I need to talk to someone in records as soon as possible.”

“Very well, I’ll transfer you now!” the phone dialled in my ear and I clicked my tongue after waiting a minute. I started typing away at my computer as I investigated the other vectors that people could enter Kanto from.

The ships were the safest method, but some people did come via plane. I knew there wasn’t currently a land route to Hoenn because there had to be at least two regions between us… also Hoenn was mostly surrounded by water from what I understood. Any region between us wouldn’t be passable as yet. They’d be regions that were considered wild by the Rangers. I opened a tab for the Ranger home office just in case.

I had just started to find the numbers for the people I would need to call when the call I was on was picked up. “Port record department, Gladys speaking?”

“Hi Gladys, it’s Brock from Pewter City gym. I had a question I needed answered.” I already had a suspicion but I wanted confirmation.

“Hmmm yes? What was your question?” said Gladys in a dry tone that all but informed me she wasn’t a fan and was only asking as it was expected of her.

“Could I see a record of the new arrivals for the Kanto circuit? I think what I’m looking for is the average arrivals for the last… let's say, three months.” That would be long enough to be just after my exhibition match. “Actually could I get the average for the last few years as well, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask for?”

“... that’s quite a bit of information to work through you realise?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Gladys clicked her tongue. “I will check if I can with my superior. Who did you say you were?” she said in the tone of ‘I don’t have to do this but I don’t want to cause trouble by saying that’. She’d probably shoot it off to the Harbour master in her own time. I made a note to call the front desk and prompt her to make sure it got done in a somewhat feasible time frame.

I then jotted down the phone numbers of the other port offices. I’d have to deal with Fuchsia and … Neon City next? Then also call the airport for who to talk with about arrivals from them. Surely someone would be tracking that sort of information? Who though?

A buzzer went off and I grimaced, I’d barely started on an email. I got up though, and when I passed the off-duty lounge I stuck my head in to find Stephen in his hiking gear blearily drinking some coffee. Missy was also there, lazying about on the couch with what looked like a fashion magazine. I couldn’t see Daniel who I knew should be about somewhere. Then again, he might be dealing with medical appointments with his wife.

“Missy, I need you up front to help Alexa, we’ve got…” I actually wasn’t sure what it was officially called. “A flood of trainers coming in and I need everyone sorting them out. If Alexa doesn’t need help I need you to supervise the trainers on the courts.”

“I can help!” shouted a voice from behind the couch. Crystal popped up, a few sheets of paper flying up as she stood abruptly. I glanced down.

“What were you doing just now?”

“Just some homework the school gave me!” She kicked it into a pile before grinning at me. “I can work through it whenever I want now! Perks of straight A’s at school and impressing the teacher! I get half days!”

I raised a finger, unsure what to say. Should I congratulate her or call her school to check that she wasn’t skiving and actually lying to me? Missy coughed a laugh into a raised hand. Stephen glanced up from his coffee. “Can I help?”

I stared at him. “You’re not one of my trainers. I can’t ask that of you.”

“Ah, but I can use this for Professor Oak. He always wants me to observe trainers and pokemon interacting. The growing bond, such as it is! He’s always looking for more data points or potential outliers!”

A more insistent buzz on my wrist made me nod. “Sure! Talk with Rocko to see where we can use you. I need to get to a gym match.” I looked from him to Crystal who was bouncing in place.

“And thanks.” I started to walk off only to pause as I remembered something. “Crystal do you have a pokemon?”

Crystal slumped. “Not yet, no?”

I plucked a pokeball off my belt and tossed it to her without looking at it. “Take Selene, she’s smart enough to understand what you’ll need help with and can back you up in a pinch.” I gave the room another look over. “Anyone seen Jan—”

I reached behind me more out of cliche than any actual instinct and found myself palming Janine in the face.

We stared at each other in surprise before I removed my hand from her face. “You need to be less predictable,” I said as she nodded tightly. I then tapped my transceiver. “Can you call your father about Fuchsia port and if he’s heard anything about how many pokemon trainers have arrived in Kanto?”

She nodded and hurried away. I decided not to point out how red with embarrassment she was. I was too busy to stop and tease her. Instead, I got out of there, my mind already on the jobs I would need to get done in the next break. Behind me, Crystal released Selene while squealing with joy.

I clapped my hands and pressed them together. I stared at the point at which they connected intently, my focus solely on them as everything else was pushed to the side. I felt muscles in my arms and neck clench up with how much pressure I was exerting. I held them for a moment longer before releasing them, looking up and inhaling a huge breath of air.

I felt the giddy rush of new air in my lungs surge to the needed parts of my body. My mind blanked for a moment and then I returned to the moment. The weight of my thoughts vanished as I stood just out of sight. I was a moment from entering the arena where the crowd could spot me.

Dennis shifted next to me. He’d seen this method of dealing with stress more than enough times to recognise it. He’d at first been sceptical of my claims but had tried it, and nowadays he even used it himself when he thought I couldn’t see him.

“...” He opened his mouth and I shook my head.

“Can’t talk about it right now. Got a gym match.” I clicked the radio twice to signify I was ready.

This was only a first gym badge but that shouldn’t make it any less special. I wanted trainers to enjoy the moment, and not feel like my dealing with them was a chore I didn’t want to do. This was the start of their journey in so many ways and the first obstacle so many worked towards.

I stalked forward and barged through the gym doors, eyes lighting up on the trainer that stood tall against me. I immediately noted how he held a full six pokemon team on his belt. He also had richly decorated clothing along with being a bit older than normal for people starting out. I glanced at the screen subtly and noted that he had specifically asked for the single gym badge challenge and nothing else.

I approached silently. When I stood across the arena floor from him I raised an eyebrow. This kid was obviously better off than the normal trainer. He hadn’t revealed any of his pokemon. A sign he was used to pulling them back in cities. In the wild, you always kept one pokemon out for safety. But in the city the main threat was from trainers. So having one member of your team already out before the match risked revealing your hand early.

“You’ve come for the first gym challenge?” I said, testing his response.

He nodded and smirked. “I’m here for the badge Brock! I’m not leaving here empty-handed!”

I nodded at him before looking to Yolanda who was acting as the referee today. She had argued with me a few years back about wanting to help out more and I’d tried the argument of ‘keeping her grades up’. She’d turned up at the next school term with a drive that saw her acing her exams and gaining the right to take part in the family business and some days off a week from school.

Damn, I wished I’d had that sort of option in my past life. Then again Pokemon alone would have been pretty awesome.

I caught the kid across from me shooting her a wink that she flatly ignored as she raised her flags. I breathed in, channeling my rock energy. Don’t let him get to you. Don’t send out Titan just to make him piss himself. Be the bigger man.

“Go Onix!”

“Heh! This’ll be easy!” the kid said, taking way longer than he should have to eye off my selection. “Go Tentcruel!”

I stared at the trainer and his pokemon. It was obviously a strong pokemon with how its skin glistened in the Gym lights and the tentacles were nice and wide. Way stronger than a first-level gym badge entailed. He shot another wink at Yolanda as she raised the flags. “Doing anything in five minutes?”

Yolanda dropped her flags, ignoring his antics. “Begin!”

“Onix use Bide!”

“Use Ice Beam!” shouted the trainer. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Oh kid,” I murmured to myself as the attack slammed into Onix. My pokemon reeled back with a cry before landing on her side. I held myself still, rubbing at the bridge of my nose. He’d used a move that I was damn near certain Tentacruel didn’t learn on their own without a TM. He’d used an ice-type move against a rock Gym, sure he had the Ice bonus for using it against Onix’s partial Ground typing but… He had so many better options available to him, and finally, he was already celebrating.

Kids like this made me fear for the future. The kid pumped his fist and did a stupid dance where he grabbed his heel and pumped his knee. I was happy to watch him as Onix slowly rose back into a fighting position.

“Yeah! Take that! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!” He stopped mid-leg pump as he realised his move hadn’t one shot my Onix. “Hey, what gives?! That should have knocked your pokemon out!”

I stared at him. “Unleash Bide Onix.” My pokemon called up a white ball of power before firing it straight at Tentacruel. The kid merely gaped as it slammed into his pokemon and threw it to the ground.

“Hey no! That’s cheating! You’re… you’re cheating!”

“And you’re using a pokemon vastly stronger than this level challenge requires. You have a type advantage with your water type but chose an ice type move instead. Something rock types have a strong defence against. Or were you targeting Onix’s ground typing?” I said only to get a blank look. I shook my head. “Well, regardless, you could have probably knocked my pokemon out with a one-two hit but you were too busy celebrating.”

I stared at the kid as he shrunk in on himself. “Also, you’ve failed to realise your pokemon is still able to battle.”

The kid snapped his head to see that his Tentacruel was doing as I said, emerging from the wall of the gym with tentacles raised. “Oh. I mean! Oh! Yeah! We’re bad!”

I facepalmed as he regained his swagger. “Use Ice beam again and take him out this time!”

“Onix Endure,” I said, deciding I wanted to shake this kid’s cage a little more. The attack landed, but once more my Onix rose up causing the kid’s face to whiten.

“Oh… not weak to it…” he said to himself as he recalled what I’d said.

I looked from him to my Onix that was barely holding on. I ground my teeth and raised my pokeball.

“Onix return.”

“Eh?” I ignored the kid as I patted the pokeball. I didn’t need to hurt one of my pokemon to teach a kid a lesson. Not with this Onix. It was too weak. Yolanda dutifully raised a flag.

“Gym Leader Brock has withdrawn his Onix. The first battle goes to the Challenger!”

The kid seemed a bit stumped at the anticlimax. “Does that mean I won?”

“It means you won the fight yes,” I said from my side while drawing out another pokeball. I held it up in front of me and stared across the field at him. “I’m going to be honest kid. You’ve done nothing to impress me or demonstrate you deserve my badge, even as your first badge.”

“Hey! That’s not right, I just have to beat you!”

I shook my head. This wasn’t the games where you could sit in the grass for a couple of hours and work on rattata or another pokemon only to then approach the Gym. This was real life. Then again from what I was seeing from this kid, I doubted he had trained his pokemon. They obviously listened to him so I was starting to think there were family-reared pokemon that had been gifted to him.

“That’s only at the higher levels where strategy and skill have to be present to have a chance of winning. At this level, as you’re demonstrating, you can walk in with a much stronger team. You are failing at the smallest hurdle however. Think about what I said previously, and you’ll understand!” I wasn’t going to spoon-feed the kid anymore. He had the type advantage; he just needed to use it.

Instead, he was trying for flashy moves and gaudy stunts.

I tossed out my next pokemon. “Go Izumi!”

Yolanda twitched at the name before eyeing off the pokemon I had selected. The kid rubbed his chin. I could almost hear the gears in his mind creaking as he tried to think back.

“I had the advantage with my pokemon?”

I nodded slowly before gesturing to Yolanda. I’d given the kid long enough now.

“Begin!”

“Rock Throw! Hit em hard Izumi!” I called out. Izumi heard the hidden command to not hold back and unleashed a blistering rock right into Tentacruel’s head. It screeched once again and flopped back.

“Eh? Oh sharpedos! Use Poison Jab!”

My face met my rising hand. “Rollout to evade,” I said around my palm. I really couldn’t watch any more of this.

I wasn’t surprised when I was able to snipe his Tentacruel down. When he threw out a Cacnea I felt my hopes lift.

“Pin Missle!”

I resisted the urge to face-palm again. I was suddenly just so done with this entire challenge. I could see Yolanda watching me while biting her lips. At least one of us was enjoying the moment.

“Rock Throw again!” Once again Izumi took a moment and sniped a headshot that sent the Cacnea reeling as it was knocked out.

“Cacnea!” screamed the kid.

“Cacnea is unable to battle!” Yolanda said.

The kid grunted and returned his pokemon before tossing out an Arbok. I took a deep breath and tried to hold in a glare. The Arbok flinched slightly as it looked up at me.

“Rock Throw, again!” Izumi’s rock shot forth but this time the Arbok dodged making the attack miss. Izumi narrowed her eyes and one-two’d another Rock Throw straight at Arbok, miffed she’d missed. This time it took two headshots to knock out the giant snake but he made us work for it.

“Argh! Arbok!? What!? What’s going on?! That pokemon made it to the quarter-finals last year?!”

I rolled my eyes as I got confirmation of the strength of his pokemon.

“Go Gloom!” His next pokemon made me wish I could believe he’d make the right call. He partially had to call any move but a grass attack with Gloom.

“Sleep powder!” he said with a huge sweep of his arm.

“Dig into rock polish,” I said. Izumi vanished and I watched as my opponent struggled with what he should do with my pokemon effectively out of his reach. He hesitated and mumbled to himself, making it clear he had no idea what he was doing.

Izumi shot out of the ground and smashed into his pokemon sending it flying.

“Rollout,” I said. Izumi rolled up tight and accelerated.

The kid gasped. “Urgh!? Poison powder!”

I eventually had to signal for Izumi to ‘take a dive’ after she took out his Gloom. I doubt Izumi even got poisoned, but she couldn’t be too strong against a pokemon trainer at this level. When I recalled her I stared across at the challenger as he raised his hands. His Squirtle, the last pokemon available to him, looked very confused as to how it had won.

He had one shot for me to let him slide through with a badge. The most basic of basic questions. I wouldn’t ask it straight away but I could easily slip it in. He’d made some not-terrible moves but when you were all but tripping over the right answers I found his performance very lacking.

“Kid, do you think you earned the badge?” I said when we got close.

“Heh? I won didn’t I?” he said proudly.

“What strategy did you use?” I said, undaunted by his reaction.

“Use strong pokemon!” he said.

I held up a finger, “What makes them strong? Why use Tentacruel, Cacnea, or Squirtle against my Gym? What made them the best choices?”

He stared at me for a long minute. Again, I could see his mind ticking over, the cogs of his mind grinding at being called to use.

I made a note to call whoever this kid’s teacher was. They’d apparently let him skip past some glaring basics that I was damn near sure could be learned passively. I had a chart detailing strengths and weaknesses in the kitchen! I knew Tilly understood grass, water, fire interactions in pokemon for Arceus’ sake! There were kids games in school yards about this! I’m pretty sure there was a guy whose entire job was to stand around out the front of my gym and sell advice for Arceus’ sake!

The kid shrugged and I sighed hugely. “Kid, you may have won this match but that is not all it takes to earn a Gym badge. You’ve fallen short of the required understanding of your first gym badge. I will not confer a Boulder Badge on you today.”

He blinked in shock, his lips quivering. “You! You can’t do that!”

I grimaced, “Actually, I have to. Go back to your lodgings and learn about how pokemon typings work before challenging again. You had this in the palm of your hand and you failed that, or any other method of earning the badge.”

“This is taurosshit!”

“No, this is the challenge everyone faces. Strong pokemon do not make a strong trainer. These pokemon respect you enough to listen but you’re doing them a disservice right now.”

That pulled him up as he looked down at his Squirtle. That had me relaxing a bit. He wasn’t a bad kid, just not educated where he should have been. He nodded. “Alright, I’ll come back and challenge you again!”

“Sounds good, but hey you won so you at least get to collect the payout for winning. So just treat this like a lesson and not a defeat okay?”

He nodded and blinked furiously. I could tell the kid was not far off crying. He sniffled piteously, giving a wet sniffle that had as much chance of moving a mountain as it did to make me change my decision. I led him to the door and pushed him through it.

He blinked in surprise. “Wait, you're not going to reconsider?” he said as I turned to leave.

I glanced back and saw that his tears were all gone. Huh, I hadn’t been sure he’d been using totodile tears. Suddenly, I had way fewer reservations about not giving him the badge. “Nope! Have a nice day!”

I shut the door and walked off. I felt no guilt as I put him out of my mind. I grabbed the hastily scrawled list in my office and began making more calls to port officials. I needed information and soon.

I set my watch for the next challenge to start and raised my transceiver up and began making those calls. Over the course of the rest of the day, I got to talk to a number of record keepers and the Harbourmaster. When I called the airport I got rebuffed after being passed up to the Airport Manager. I’d gotten to talk with the man but he’d been a gruff no-nonsense kind of man.

“Brock I’ll level with you. I don’t think you have any right to that information! I’m not required to do it as it will frankly create more work for my people and I’m paying them to do their jobs not assist you on flights of fantasy!”

I gave the man an incredulous look but had to leave it be. He was right, sadly. I also had other issues to deal with right now. “What was your name again?”

“Levi Layman, Field Commissioner of the Saffron airport!”

“I’ll be sure to remember that when I tell people precisely how… helpful you’ve been.” I let the words linger but the man didn’t seem to notice how one could interpret my words.

“So are you not going to do anything to assist me in my inquiry?”

“No! Now stop wasting my time!” he said before hanging up on me. I grimaced; that had been a dead end for me.

I called the League when I’d sat down and had some time to really think who would have access to that kind of information. The League, perhaps upon reflection, should have been my first call.

And then I’d spent an entire two breaks between challenges stuck on hold. The League did not have good music for getting stuck on hold. Dennis had seen me do my stress release technique three more times in one afternoon.

I’d had to wonder if I needed a personal assistant with how run around I felt. If anyone had asked me that question even this morning, I’d have laughed. Now I was finding myself stretched thin and considering it.

I had a lot of issues that had been little chores that would have been easy to deal with. I walked up to the lounge behind the receptionist's desk. Looking out at the sea of pokemon trainers I had to conclude that things were not improving. If anything they were getting worse as more trainers trickled in.

I was going to have to make a lot of calls and do a lot of changes in a very short space of time. I stepped out to talk with Alexa.

“Alexa I—”

“Gym Leader Brock I challenge you!” I looked up and found a young boy trying to vault the desk to get in my face. I called up my dark and rock energy. The next words out of my lips had enough edge to them to cut a Steel type.

“Get. Off. The. Desk. Now.”

The boy froze, his eyes dilating as his hindbrain kicked in that he was in danger, but he had no idea how or from where. I raised a hand and pointed outside where trainers were waiting. “Go to the back of the line. Now.” He slid back away from me and slunk away. When he got out of sight I exhaled the energy. Around me, the room was silent as people watched me like one would watch a Slaking that just ambled into a children’s play area.

I looked down to find Alexa staring at me with a gobsmacked expression. “Sorry, you probably had that handled. I’ve had a bit of a trying morning.” I flicked my eyes up at the lined-up horde. “As you have as well, I imagine.”

Alexa merely nodded, her throat bobbing up and down. I sighed. “Sorry, shouldn’t have done that.” I sighed, licked my lips and continued. “Schedule a meeting for everyone in the gym after we close up. I need to talk to everyone and make some changes.”

“Right I can do that… also Bethany called and she has another lady set up to watch her grandchildren now and is coming in for the rest of the day.”

Just as she said it I heard a hustling click-clack of a walking stick and a mumbled, “Make way there, old woman coming through! Make way.”

Bethany emerged from the crowd and beelined up to the desk, popped the latch to let herself in and claimed her chair next to Alexa. She then logged onto the computer, cleaned her glasses and laced her fingers. If I hadn’t flexed my energy earlier I probably would have flinched as she pushed her hands forward.

Her joints clicked like a typewriter firing at full speed as she stretched out her hands. I could only imagine her skeleton popping and locking as she performed what was apparently her pre-work warm-up ritual. She soon had the sign in front of her desk pulled down and her glasses settled on her nose.

“NEXT!” she said without any care for the spectacle she’d become.

I patted the table and nodded at her and Alexa. “Looks like you’ve got this. Any issues I need to be aware of right now? Otherwise, write them down for the meeting so we can address them.”

Alexa gave me a tight smile. “There’s going to be a lot of those.”

I mirrored her before heading off to the next challenge. By the end of the day, I started to get some information back from Harbourmasters, Record department heads, and a small email notifying me from the League to ‘be on the watch’ for larger than normal trainer numbers for this circuit. That had gotten a snort from me. Oh, larger than average they said. Hahaha, oh I was going to have words with them.

I opened the emails and noted the various files that had been sent through from the other immigration points. A porygon appeared before I could do more than look and jumped into each file to check it for anything dangerous. They glanced around, the various parts of their body breaking apart to bounce around like an old screen saver. They sometimes did that when they fell asleep on a still-active computer. This was done to scan the documents and emails I’d received. It reformed and nodded before shooting off-screen and back into the Gym’s data network.

“Thanks, Cypher,” I said as I looked through the files. It didn’t take me long for a frown to appear. I didn’t like the numbers I was seeing. I started making notes as my heart plummeted. This… Someone had to know about this. I looked at the numbers and found myself wondering who had done this.

Someone had to have been advertising the trips and the challenge of coming to Kanto for this circuit. It struck me as very worrisome that this hadn’t been made available to me before I’d flagged it with the League. There’s no way you could have nearly four times the number of normal trainers arriving while not informing the gym leaders.

I paused at that and quickly typed up an email for Sabrina, Surge, Erika, Manny, Sophia, and even Koga to see if they had been informed prior to the start of the circuit to expect such increased numbers.

I glanced back to the email from the League. They were late with their email and it was missing a lot of details. Was this someone from the League once again coming after me? This felt like a third action after the last two audits. I had someone coming after me and they were very much doing it from the shadows of bureaucracy.

I wanted to dismiss it, but there were far too many coincidences that I happened to be caught right in the crosshairs of.

I needed to get through a meeting with my own staff to address this oncoming flood of trainers. This was certainly not a surge. There was not going to drop-off in numbers for at least a few weeks or months. Lots of trainers hanging around in one city was just asking for issues to crop up.

I rubbed my forehead. So, I had to talk with my people. Talk with the other Gym Leaders. And probably get a late call in with Mayor Jonathan.

“Brock!” Cindy entered my office having just made it back from school. I smiled tiredly. How had this day gone on this long? It felt like it’d been a week rather than a day with Gary’s arrival and then seeing all those trainers, and that snot-nosed brat, alongside all the call ups I’d done.

Cindy, of course, had no idea what I’d been going through in the last eight hours since she’d seen me. She had a huge smile and a large book in her hands. I smiled at her, knowing what she was about to ask.

“Can you read me a story?”

I really didn’t have the time for it, but… her hopeful smile… “Sure, Cindy, let’s get your brothers and sisters. I have enough time for one story,” I said as I crushed the whimpering part of my mind that loved sticking to schedules and preplanning. Damn the trainer flood and all the jobs I still had to handle. I had my family to see to first and that was more important. The meeting could wait. They’d understand.

“So what are we reading tonight?” I said as I fired off a quick message that I was going to be ten minutes late for the meeting.

“Detective Pikachu!” Cindy said as she raised up the book

I laughed to myself, remembering a popular movie from my past life. “Right! Of course! Let’s see how close I can get to Ryan Reynolds’ voice.”

“Who?” said Cindy.

I chuckled and waved the question off. I had a lot on my plate coming up but for now, I pushed back on it for something more important.

Reading Detective Pikachu to my family.