Day 40 of the journey to Kanto. Clear.
Reiji woke up in a hotel in Cerulean City, lying on a soft white bed. He scratched Eevee's belly, waking the little sleepyhead, then took her with him to the bathroom to wash up.
Once Eevee got used to him, she took over Slowpoke's old job as his bed warmer. Her mood had improved a lot lately too. She no longer had that gloomy look from her days in Stone Town, and that alone was good enough.
"Vee." Eevee hopped onto the sink and rubbed against Reiji's arm while he brushed his teeth. Following her new Trainer really had freed her from all those unpleasant worries. Now her only concerns were what she would eat today and where she could sleep most comfortably tonight.
After Reiji finished brushing his teeth, he took out a new toothbrush, added a little toothpaste, and held it to Eevee's mouth. Eevee bit down on it at once.
"Vee, mm, vee, mm." Eevee shook her head as she brushed her teeth, then even turned on the tap herself to rinse her mouth.
"Come eat breakfast, Eevee." Reiji smiled and patted her small head, calling her over to eat with everyone else.
"Vee." Eevee jumped straight onto Reiji's shoulder and rubbed against his cheek.
Eevee reminded Reiji a lot of the cats he had raised in his previous life. Same attachment, same love of being spoiled.
He brought Eevee back to the bedroom and released all his Pokémon. Luckily, the hotel room was big enough for everyone to eat together. Some ate on the floor, some ate on the bed, while Pokémon like Gengar and Weezing had to eat in the bathroom.
There was no helping it. Weezing's smell was too strong. It could eat with everyone else once it learned how to control that stench.
[Eevee]
[Type: Normal]
[Gender: Female]
[Potential: 54%]
[Level: 26.63%]
[Ability: Adaptability/12.23%][Hidden Ability: Anticipation/16.13%]
[Moves]
Normal-type: [(Protect/13.34%) (Tackle/22.53%) (Helping Hand/12.34%) (Growl/23.23%) (Roar/14.67%) (Tail Whip/12.33%) (Quick Attack/12.62%) (Swift/13.71%)]
Dark-type: [(Bite/23.14%) (Dark Pulse/30.82%)]
Psychic-type: [(Rest/21.27%) (Future Sight/13.21%)]
A week had passed, and Eevee's panel hadn't changed much. That was fine. Her mood was better, and everyone liked the little Eevee. She had basically become the team's mascot, and the others all gave way to her.
Reiji closed Eevee's panel. He had a feeling she was only one full moon and a little more friendship away from evolving.
Because of that, he planned to keep Eevee outside her Poké Ball as much as possible during the next part of the journey. That was the easiest way to build friendship naturally.
After breakfast, he recalled the rest of the team, leaving only Poliwhirl by his side. Eevee stood on his shoulder, while Darkrai and Gengar stayed in his shadow.
He checked out of the hotel and headed to Cerulean Gym. There weren't many people there today, and his timing wasn't great. There was no water ballet performance scheduled.
Fortunately, the Gym doors weren't locked. Reiji walked straight in and saw three young women rehearsing a dance in the pool. They had to be the Cerulean sisters.
Daisy, the eldest, had long orange-blonde hair and the gentlest personality of the three, though she apparently became terrifying behind the wheel.
The second sister was Violet. She had long blue hair and a mild personality, though she always acted cold toward Misty while quietly caring about her.
The youngest was Lily. She had long red hair and cared a lot about her looks. She often teased Misty by calling her an ugly little girl, which annoyed Misty every single time.
The three sisters had one thing in common: legs. Long, pale legs. No further explanation needed. Anyone who had seen them understood.
Reiji didn't disturb the three sisters as they rehearsed. After entering the Gym, he sat in the audience seats and watched. Those long pale legs rose and dipped through the bright pool water.
Someone as considerate as Reiji simply couldn't bring himself to interrupt their rehearsal. It wasn't that different from watching the water ballet, and this version didn't even cost a ticket. Free entertainment was his favorite kind.
Only when Lily, the youngest of the three, noticed this suspicious spectator did the sisters finally stop rehearsing. All three stared straight at him, and Lily called out loudly.
"Who are you? What are you doing in Cerulean Gym? Sneaking in to watch us rehearse is wrong, you creep!"
"Cough. Sorry. I'm a Trainer here to challenge Cerulean Gym. Can I challenge the Gym now?" Reiji immediately changed the subject. He was not a creep. He had simply been appreciating beauty.
"A Trainer here for a Gym challenge?" Daisy heard that he was a challenger and brought her two sisters out of the pool. She didn't expose what he had really been doing. Instead, she sighed helplessly. "Trainer, we're rehearsing right now, so we don't have time to accept your challenge. If you want the Cascade Badge, could you act as Cerulean Gym's substitute Leader for one day?"
"Wait. You can do that?" Reiji looked at the three women and complained silently. Was this how they had been getting by ever since Misty left home? If they were too lazy to accept a challenge, they either handed out a Badge or found someone else to fight in their place.
With the three sisters slacking off this badly, it was a miracle the League hadn't revoked the Gym's license. How strong did their connections have to be for Cerulean Gym to survive like this?
"You're the first Trainer to challenge the Gym today, so we'll leave the substitute Leader job to you, okay?"
"Gulp." Reiji swallowed. That voice was way too soft and tempting. Add in the swimsuits from their rehearsal, and this was an unfair test. He was not strong enough to resist this kind of pressure.
"Fine. I'll cover the Gym battles for you today." Reiji didn't dare keep looking at them. Each one was more dangerously charming than the last, and his gaze instantly started drifting anywhere except toward those three troublemakers.
Since he had agreed to stand in for Cerulean Gym, he returned to the audience seats. He tried not to watch their rehearsal, but his eyes kept sliding toward the pool anyway.
"My training still needs work," Reiji warned himself. Then again, he still kept looking, because this was exactly how a normal transmigrator should react.
He wasn't a saint. He was just a normal man. Liking pretty things was only natural. A free view was still a free view.
Time slowly passed. Reiji watched until he started yawning, and still no challenger came to Cerulean Gym.
Cough. He couldn't really be blamed for yawning. The pool was full of long pale legs moving back and forth, and even good legs could get boring if that was all he watched.
Just as Reiji was bored enough to start studying the Gym's decorations, Cerulean Gym finally got another challenger.
The challenger, however, reacted much the same way Reiji had. Seeing the Cerulean sisters rehearsing, he didn't rush into the Gym challenge. He simply sat down in the audience seats and quietly watched.
More and more freeloading spectators slipped into the audience. By noon, when the three sisters climbed out of the pool and saw a whole crowd sitting there for a free show, they snapped at them in anger.
"What are all of you doing here? Who let you in?"
"Uh…"
The men in the audience looked horribly awkward. Then they exchanged glances and shouted in perfect unison.
"We're all Trainers here to challenge Cerulean Gym!"
"…" Reiji stared speechlessly at the shameless crowd. He didn't even bother exposing them. They were all here for the same reason anyway.
"You. Didn't we ask you to stand in for us? Why haven't you accepted their challenges?" Violet raised one slender, fair finger and pointed at Reiji in the audience. He had clearly agreed, so why wasn't he doing the job?
"The field wasn't even set up," Reiji said. He wasn't taking the blame for this. Cerulean Gym used the same pool for performances, rehearsals, and battles. If the sisters were still rehearsing in it, how was he supposed to run a match?
"All right, Violet. It's lunchtime anyway. Let them challenge the Gym while we go eat." Daisy came over and lightly patted Violet, calming her down. Then she took out a remote control and transformed the pool into a battlefield. Before leaving, she even gave Reiji a playful wink. "Do your best for us, substitute Leader."
"Uh?" Reiji suddenly felt every hostile gaze swing toward him. All because of Daisy's wink, the crowd's attention had locked onto him. Their eyes burned with a very simple emotion: jealousy.
"Who wants to challenge Cerulean Gym?" Reiji quickly escaped the audience seats, stepped onto the battlefield, and waited for the challengers to come down.
After that, everyone rushed to challenge him, eager to teach him a lesson. Out of all the Trainers here, he was the only one the three sisters had singled out. Of course that would make the herd angry.
"One at a time. One battle per Trainer." Reiji threw out a Poké Ball and released Kingler. Since he was standing in for Cerulean Gym, he naturally had to use Water-type Pokémon.
The challengers lined up one by one. Reiji sent out Kingler, Pelipper, and Gyarados and cleaned out the whole pack of gawkers who had wandered in for the "view" and called it a Gym challenge.
Poliwhirl stayed in reserve. This level of opposition wasn't worth bringing it out for.
After lunch, the Cerulean sisters returned to the audience seats and watched Reiji handle the challengers. One after another, he beat them cleanly, and the sisters soon realized their stand-in was much stronger than they had expected.
He had not handed out a single Badge. Not only had he met the day's target, he had made up for the Badges they had lost the day before.
Once the last challenger went down, Daisy came over with a lunch box in her hand.
"Trainer, lunch is ready."
"Thanks." Reiji had not expected them to prepare anything for him. He had already been planning to grab something quick afterward, so the meal was a nice surprise.
He opened the lunch box and found rice balls, sushi, fried chicken, corn, vegetables, and a few other sides, all arranged neatly inside.
The food looked great, and the presentation was careful. The only problem was the portion size. Every item was barely more than a bite. It looked less like lunch and more like a sample tray.
Reiji tried a piece. The taste was actually good. Daisy kept watching him, though, and having a beautiful woman stare at him while he ate made him a little uncomfortable. He quickly looked for something else to talk about.
"Misty is from this Gym too, right?"
"You know Misty?" Daisy perked up at her little sister's name. "She's our youngest sister. We haven't heard much from her lately, so it's a surprise hearing her name from you."
"I ran into her near Fuchsia City. She was traveling with Ash and Brock." Reiji nodded. With Daisy's attention finally on Misty, he ate faster. By the time she looked back down, the lunch box was already empty.
"Really? They came by Cerulean Gym together before, but I wonder where they are now." Daisy sounded worried. It was Misty's first time traveling away from home, and she kept insisting she would become a Water Pokémon Master. Daisy still thought performing with them would have been safer. Traveling was dangerous.
"They're probably heading for the Indigo League Conference. You should be able to see her there." Reiji did not actually know where the three of them were now. Last he knew, they had been around Grampa Canyon, so by this point they might have reached Cinnabar Island.
"Oh my. You even know Misty. What a small world." Daisy rested her chin on one hand and smiled at him. As she stroked Eevee's fluffy head, she noticed a grain of rice near Reiji's mouth. Before he could react, she reached over and brushed it away.
Reiji immediately leaned back, startled by how casually she had touched him. They had only met that day. Wasn't she being a little too familiar?
"Vee! Vee!" Eevee was startled too. She sprang back onto Reiji's shoulder and watched Daisy with clear suspicion.
"Oh, little Eevee is adorable. And you're shy too, Trainer." Daisy covered her mouth and laughed when she saw both of them retreat. Her teasing quickly drew the other two sisters over.
"Daisy, that's not fair," Violet said, pouting.
"Yeah, Daisy. You scared him," Lily added, though her expression said she was more annoyed that Daisy had made the first move.
Reiji could only cough and look away. He really did not know how to handle these three. Were they always this bold, or had they simply decided to tease him because he was alone?
He had never dealt with women this forward, not in his previous life and not in this one. The old joke was right: a guy traveling alone really did need to protect himself.
Compared with girls like Saya, Cissy, and Tania, the Cerulean sisters were on a completely different level.
"Is anyone here? I want to challenge the Gym!"
A voice came from the entrance, breaking the awkward moment. Reiji turned toward the door and quietly relaxed. Finally. A rescue.
"Challenger, send out your Pokémon. I'm standing in as Cerulean Gym's Leader today, and I'll accept your challenge." Reiji took the chance at once and moved the conversation back to battling.
"Standing in?" The boy looked Reiji over, then laughed. "So Cerulean Gym really hasn't changed. If you can't win your own battles, you just bring in someone else. What's the point of keeping a Gym like that open?"
"Someone came in angry." Reiji studied the newcomer in return. Dark green hair, arrogant expression, and no familiar face to go with it. Just a random Trainer he had never met.
"Enough talk. Send out your Pokémon."
"If you insist. Sandslash, I choose you!" The boy saw Reiji remain calm while the Cerulean sisters glared at him. He smirked and threw his Poké Ball, sending out his starter Pokémon.
"Sandslash against a Water-type Gym? You sure?" Reiji looked at the boy's confident face. From the moment he walked in, he had been carrying himself like he had already won. Reiji couldn't tell whether he was just arrogant or actually had the strength to ignore the type disadvantage.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
[Check out my Patreon to read 20+ chapters ahead]
[[email protected]/BellAshelia]
[Thanks for your support!]