Grey's POV
I was chilling in the Pokémon Center after the match, finally getting some time to relax after what had been a pretty intense Gym battle. Overall, I felt the battle had gone very well. It had been tough, definitely one of the tougher Gym battles I had fought so far, probably up there with my battle against Surge, but at the same time, I felt like I had managed the situation fairly well. Most of my battles until now had somehow ended up going down to the last Pokémon, so it was actually a little refreshing to have one Pokémon still in reserve by the time the battle was over. Depending on how things had gone, I could have even alternated between Fraxure and Exeggutor for the final slot, which gave me a couple of options if the battle had gone differently.
That said, it wasn't like the Gym battle itself had been easy. Flint had put up a really tough fight, and I had to make several adjustments throughout the battle. The main reason it had felt somewhat simpler was because I had too many Pokémon that had a natural type advantage against Rock-types. Persian, Cloyster, Heracross, even Fraxure to an extent, all had ways of threatening Flint's team. When I thought about it, that probably made the battle seem easier than it actually was. If I had been using a team without those advantages, I probably would have been in a much bigger mess.
I was sitting in the open area of the Pokémon Center with a cup of coffee in my hand when I decided to check the PokéNet. I had expected to see the usual stuff, maybe some battle results or random news, but instead I noticed something that immediately caught my attention.
My follower count had shot up.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds.
"What the hell?"
Apparently, the Pewter Gym's official channel had uploaded the entire Gym battle. Considering it had been a challenge round and most of the city had apparently been interested in watching Flint's battle, the match had gotten a lot of attention. Suddenly, a lot more people knew who I was.
And apparently, some of them were in this very Pokémon Center.
I had barely finished checking the PokéNet when a couple of people approached me. They congratulated me on beating Flint, wished me luck for the Indigo Circuit, and asked a few questions about my team. At first it was manageable, but within a short period of time, more people started recognizing me.
I wasn't exactly used to this.
I had never really thought of myself as some kind of celebrity. I was just a trainer trying to get stronger and collect badges.
But I guess beating a Gym Leader in front of practically an entire city did give someone a little bit of temporary star status.
Honestly, it wasn't bad.
People were being pretty nice, and I couldn't complain about the attention.
The only problem was that I wouldn't be here long enough to actually enjoy it.
I still had a sixth Gym Badge to obtain.
After spending some time looking through the PokéNet, I eventually pulled out the map I had been carrying around and started checking the nearby locations.
After looking around the surrounding routes and settlements, one particular name caught my attention.
Heart Village.
I stared at the name for a moment.
"What kind of name is that?"
It was a strange name, but apparently that was what the village was called.
From what I could check about it , there were some ruins located near the village, which was probably the main reason the place had gained some recognition in the first place. Otherwise, I doubted many people would have bothered establishing a Gym there.
The village itself wasn't particularly famous among the normal population of Kanto. It seemed like most of the people who visited the area were researchers, historians, archaeologists, or other people interested in ancient Pokémon history.
And from what I could tell, most of the research surrounding the ruins had reached a dead end anyway.
Apparently, there were references to something called Pokélantis.
There were also mentions of some lost ruins belonging to an ancient empire of sorts, along with an old legend involving Ho-Oh.
According to the story, Ho-Oh had supposedly trapped the soul of an ancient king because of how evil he had been.
I stared at the information for a few seconds.
Well...
That was certainly interesting.
But it wasn't really my concern.
Whether the ruins contained some forgotten empire, an ancient king, or a legendary Pokémon-related mystery didn't really matter to me right now.
I wasn't going there to become an archaeologist.
I was going there for one reason.
The Gym.
I just needed to reach Heart Village, challenge the Gym Leader, get my sixth badge, and continue on my journey.
Whatever ancient ruins happened to be sitting nearby could wait.
I closed the map and took another sip of my coffee.
After spending some more time relaxing, I decided to head over to the Pokémon call booth inside the Center. Seeing Flint with his kids after he had given me the badge had gotten me thinking. I had been so caught up with everything that had happened after the S.S. Anne that I had barely taken the time to call my parents properly.
Maybe I should call them from time to time.
I entered the booth and dialed their number. It didn't take long before they picked up, and they were both quite happy to hear from me. We ended up talking for a while, mostly about how my journey was going and the things I had been doing.
I did tell them a few small glimpses of what I had experienced after the S.S. Anne, but I didn't go into too much depth. There were some things I still didn't really want to talk about, and explaining everything that had happened would have turned what was supposed to be a simple call into something far more serious. So I kept it short and simple, telling them enough to let them know I was doing fine without worrying them too much.
After finishing the call with my parents, I decided to call Bill as well and inform him about my progress.
The funny thing was that he already seemed to know most of it.
"You're already at five badges?" Bill asked.
"Yeah."
"Nice. I figured you'd be making progress, but I didn't expect you to move this quickly."
Apparently, he had been keeping track of some of my progress through the pokemon related data I had been sending and the information available through the mobile . The mobile had a tracking feature as well so he had an idea of where all I am going from time to time.
We ended up talking about his Pokémon as well. His Eevee had apparently evolved into a Vaporeon, while his Dratini was still progressing nicely. From what Bill told me, though, it would probably take quite a long time before Dratini evolved.
He had also apparently caught another Pokémon.
A Porygon.
I paused when he mentioned it.
"Porygon?"
"Yeah. Pretty interesting Pokémon, actually."
I immediately became a little more serious.
"Keep an eye on that one."
Bill sounded confused.
"Why?"
"I've heard there might be some Team Rocket involvement with the creation of Porygon."
He went silent for a moment.
"Wait, what? How do you know that?"
I scratched my head.
"I heard it from a scientist of sorts."
Internally I wanted to crack a joke of I am something of a scientist myself but I let it be.
That answer seemed to satisfy him enough.
Apparently, the Porygon Bill had obtained had actually been created by Silph Co., not Team Rocket, so there wasn't really anything suspicious about his particular Pokémon.
That was good.
Besides, Bill had apparently been looking for an assistant of sorts, and Porygon was actually a pretty intelligent Pokémon. Considering how much time Bill spent working with computers and technology, having a Pokémon capable of assisting him with that kind of work made a lot of sense.
Eventually, Bill asked me what my plans were for the next few days.
"I've been looking at a place called Heart Village. Apparently there's a Gym there."
"Heart Village?"
"Yeah."
Bill immediately seemed interested.
"Then you should know there's a Battle Facility there as well."
I raised an eyebrow.
"A Battle Facility?"
"Yeah. The Battle Pyramid."
I paused.
"The Battle Pyramid is in Kanto?"
For a moment, I was confused. How exactly had the Battle Frontier ended up being here in Kanto?
Then I remembered the anime.
Apparently, most of the Battle Frontier facilities were located in Kanto in that version of events.
I really needed to stop getting surprised by things that were technically supposed to be obvious from the world I had been dropped into.
Bill continued explaining.
"The Battle Pyramid is home to the Pyramid King, Brandon."
I already knew about Brandon, at least to some extent, but I was honestly a little surprised that Bill knew about all of this.
"How do you even know about the Battle Frontier?"
Bill laughed.
"I do research, you know and the owner Scott is my friend of sorts."
Fair enough.
I asked him why he was telling me about it in the first place.
"You're looking for tougher challenges, right?" he asked. "Why not challenge Brandon while you're there? If he's willing to have a casual match with you, it could be good experience."
I thought about it for a moment.
A Battle Frontier Brain was no joke. From what I knew, they were generally around the level of Elite Four trainers, at least in terms of skill.
Brandon in particular was probably going to be far stronger than the Gym Leaders I had faced so far.
Bill seemed to read my thoughts.
"Though don't expect an easy fight. You might lose pretty badly."
I laughed.
"That's reassuring."
"I'm serious," Bill replied. "But losing is still useful experience. You don't get stronger by only fighting people you know you can beat."
He had a point.
I had already been thinking about finding stronger opponents anyway.
If I really wanted to improve, eventually I was going to have to fight trainers who were simply better than me.
A casual battle against a Frontier Brain could be exactly the kind of experience I needed.
"Alright. If I get the chance, I'll challenge him."
"Good luck, then."
We continued talking for a little longer before Bill wished me luck for my sixth Gym battle and the rest of my journey.
Eventually, we ended the call.
After everything that had happened today, I was honestly exhausted.
I returned to my room in the Pokémon Center, collapsed onto the bed, and decided to call it a day.
Tomorrow would be another day of travelling.
Author's Note : For people wondering how the battle frontier is in kanto it was that way in the anime , and I am taking that approach only by luck the battle pyramid is suppose to be near pewter and the pokelantis thing also exists giving me some story to write for the sixth gym badge arc.There is a lot of self written stuff so consider this that part of original introduction of new villages and all just to write the story as not much info is there on minor gym badges in kanto.
Also because of work and hectic schedule uploads might be less this and next week but will try something at least this week.