Day 29 of the journey to Kanto. Sunny.

The weather was nice again today, another bright, cloudless day. Yesterday, after lunch, Reiji and Shun found a battle field and fought two friendly matches.

Neither of them used their ace Poliwhirl. Reiji had trained Shun’s Poliwhirl himself, so he knew it too well. As long as he saw Poliwhirl’s burst limit, he could tell exactly what stage it had reached.

After the matches, they went back to the Pokémon Center, rented separate private rooms, and rested until morning. Today was the day they would part ways and leave Fuchsia City.

Shun planned to check out the nearby P-1 Grand Prix and enter the tournament there.

Since most of his team were Fighting-types, and the old drunk had clearly been steering him in that direction, Shun had developed a real interest in fighting tournaments. He had already entered plenty of them back on Kinnow Island.

Now that he was in Kanto, there was no way he would skip a chance to see one nearby.

Reiji, on the other hand, was not going. He still had to keep moving toward Celadon City and the Celadon Gym for his next badge, so this was where they split up. Just yesterday he had warned Shun not to go anywhere near the Vermilion Gym, the Viridian Gym, or the Saffron Gym…

Those Gym Leaders were all Team Rocket operatives, and the Viridian Gym Leader was Team Rocket’s boss himself. Better for Shun to stay far away from all that.

There were plenty of other Gyms anyway. The Indigo League guidebook listed far more than just eight. There had to be at least a dozen, otherwise where else would Gary’s ten badges have come from?

But when Reiji got up that morning, fed his Pokémon, and went to knock on Shun’s door, he found the room empty.

Where had that kid run off to?

Had he already left? Without saying goodbye? That didn’t seem like him.

Puzzled, Reiji packed up his things, slung on his backpack, and stepped outside the Pokémon Center, only to find the battle field out back unusually lively. Trainers were battling there, and the noise explained why the place had sounded so rowdy.

Once he got closer, though, he realized something was off.

The mood around the field was ugly. Everyone seemed angry.

“That guy’s way too full of himself! Somebody beat those outsider Trainers already!”

“Exactly! Treating Pokémon like tools and chasing nothing but strength—people like that don’t deserve to be Trainers!”

“The weak only know how to bark.”

That line ignited the crowd all over again. The Trainers watching from outside burst into fresh outrage, all of them shouting for someone to beat that arrogant bastard in the ring.

After standing there and listening for a while, Reiji finally figured out what the argument was about, and why the Trainer in the ring had managed to piss off nearly everyone around him.

The reason was simple.

His whole philosophy clashed with theirs.

In fact, the two sides could not have been farther apart.

The Trainer in the field held views so extreme they were never going to go over well here, and that was what had kicked off the conflict.

Put simply, most of the people here saw Pokémon as partners, some even as family.

The guy in the ring saw them as battle tools.

That was the whole divide.

No wonder everyone was furious. If Reiji went around openly calling Pokémon tools, he would probably have a pack of self-righteous idiots screaming after him too.

He watched for a while longer and noticed something else: despite all the outrage, none of the Trainers outside had actually beaten the man.

So this wasn’t just empty trash talk. He really did have skill.

Otherwise he would never have been able to act this arrogant for this long.

And his Pokémon were already close to Advanced tier, which meant he had enough strength to justify at least some of that confidence.

No matter how much the crowd cursed him, the Trainers who had already lost could only swallow it. Barking louder didn’t change the fact that they had been beaten.

Reiji was content to just watch. He had no intention of stepping in. He was a Trainer from the Orange Archipelago, which meant he counted as one of the “outsider Trainers” the crowd kept yelling about. He wasn’t from Fuchsia City either, so half those insults applied to him too.

Because no one dared challenge him, the Trainer in the ring only got more arrogant. He barely even looked at the people outside anymore. His eyes were full of contempt.

Then Reiji noticed someone step out of the crowd.

The moment he saw who it was, the corner of his mouth twitched.

It was someone he knew.

And the only person he knew here was Shun.

So if Shun was the one walking into the ring… who else could it be?

“That idiot kid,” Reiji said with a helpless laugh. In truth, he was the weird one here. Shun’s reaction was exactly what you’d expect from a young Trainer. Reiji just wanted to stand back, eat popcorn, and watch the show. He had already turned into an old hand.

“Brother, the Trainers here are too weak. Let’s go.”

“Isn’t there another one stepping up? Paul.” The older brother shook his head, looked at Shun, and smiled. “We’re only traveling for fun this time. No rush.”

“Another one? He never learns,” Paul said flatly. The “big brother” he was addressing was obviously Reggie.

The two of them had come to Kanto together after hearing the rumor about Dratini in the Safari Zone.

Instead, they had found out the whole thing was nonsense. There was no Dratini there at all. Just a bunch of worthless junk.

And in Paul’s eyes, it wasn’t only the Pokémon that were worthless.

The Trainers here were too.

“Useless Pokémon and useless Trainers. Keep saying ‘believe in them,’ ‘trust them,’ ‘cheer them on.’ If that kind of blind passion is all it takes to win, then anyone can do it. Friendship. Bonds. Pointless nonsense.”

“That bastard’s way too arrogant!”

“Whoever it is, I don’t care—just beat this smug outsider already!”

Reiji could only shake his head at that. The guy really was spraying his contempt in every direction. Even Reiji felt mildly insulted.

Still, he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t a kid anymore. This wasn’t the kind of thing worth getting worked up over. Someone that arrogant was bound to get put in his place sooner or later.

Like Shun, who was already stepping up to do it.

“I don’t agree with that,” Shun said evenly.

He had heard everything, of course, but he was no longer the hot-blooded kid from Kinnow Island who had to fight over every sentence someone threw at him.

Reiji had told him before: losing once didn’t matter. You could always win next time. A loss was just the groundwork for a future victory.

If Reiji knew how much of that sermon Shun had actually taken to heart, he would probably regret handing out so much motivational nonsense in the first place. A professional layabout preaching grit and perseverance to other people felt a little ridiculous.

“Oh?” Paul tossed his Poké Ball up and down in one hand. To him, Shun looked no different from the other Trainers here—just one more guy he could beat easily. “Then prove it.”

“Fine.”

Shun took out a Poké Ball too, and both Trainers threw at the same time.

Bang—Bang—

The two Pokémon appeared on the field, and the battle was on.

Shun sent out Infernape.

Paul sent out Grotle.

“Tch.” The moment Paul saw Infernape, he clicked his tongue. So his previous battle had been watched after all. Otherwise nobody would have sent out a Pokémon that cleanly countered Grotle.

“Infernape… that’s one of Sinnoh’s starters. Is he from Sinnoh too?” Reggie frowned thoughtfully, clearly trying to place Shun’s background.

“Oh? Infernape?” Surprise flickered across Reiji’s face. He hadn’t expected Shun to own a starter, let alone a Fire/Fighting-type beast like that.

Why hadn’t Shun used it yesterday?

And where had the old drunk even gotten his hands on a starter like that?

Still, if Shun was confident enough to use it openly, then it had to be legitimate. Not the kind of starter that would cause trouble if someone traced it.

After all, for any Trainer with actual resources, starters themselves weren’t that rare. The black market had plenty.

What really mattered wasn’t their potential.

It was whether the starter’s background was clean enough to raise openly.

That legitimacy was what gave it real value, along with the status that came with it.

When he looked at Shun’s life on paper, it really did feel suspiciously protagonist-like. Born in a rough place, orphaned young, raised in an orphanage, an old headmaster, a crowd of younger kids looking up to him, a childhood friend, a mysterious old man guiding him… and then along comes some random transmigrator named Reiji…

“Holy hell. I’m the cheat item,” Reiji muttered to himself as realization hit.

He hadn’t gotten treatment like that even after being stranded on a deserted island. So who exactly was the protagonist here? Between Elekid and now Infernape, he was honestly getting a little jealous.

There was no referee for this one, so the battle followed the usual unwritten Trainer rules.

At the moment, Paul was clearly at a disadvantage, but there was no way he would switch out. If he did, it would mean he was scared, and that would make all the boasting he had done before look pathetic. Paul would never swallow that kind of embarrassment.

Since Paul refused to switch, he and Shun locked eyes for a second, then shouted their commands at the same time.

“Grotle, Mud Shot!”

“Infernape, Flame Wheel! Punch through!”

“Fer!” Infernape leapt and wrapped itself in a spinning wheel of fire, smashing through the Mud Shot as it charged straight at Grotle.

The closer it got, the less effect the Mud Shot had. The clumps of mud were knocked aside one after another, completely unable to stop the spinning firestorm.

“Grotle, Protect!”

“Tch. Shame it’s still a Grotle,” Reiji muttered as he watched. “If it had already evolved into Torterra, the extra Ground typing might’ve made this a real fight.”

Against a Fire-type like Infernape, Grotle was under pressure the whole time. Its strongest Grass-type attacks were useless here, and any Grass-based offense just got burned away. All it could really do was rely on one or two Ground-type moves to keep Infernape in check.

As long as Shun avoided Mud Shot, Bulldoze, and Earth Power, Grotle had no game left.

In the end, Grotle managed one last surge thanks to Overgrow, but Overgrow only boosted Grass-type attacks. It did nothing for its Ground-type moves.

And Grass-type attacks against Infernape were resisted anyway.

No matter how unwilling Grotle was to go down, it still fell to Infernape’s flames.

Boom—

“He won! He won!”

“That arrogant brat finally lost! Hahaha!”

“About time! Let’s see him act so smug now!”

“Tch. So what if he won? That Infernape’s a Sinnoh starter. It’s not from Kanto, and it’s definitely not from Fuchsia City.”

“Unbelievable. He’s still talking like that?”

To be fair, Reiji actually thought Paul’s argument made sense. If Shun won, it still didn’t mean the local Kanto Trainers had beaten Paul. It just meant another outsider had.

So what exactly were all these keyboard warriors celebrating for?

None of them had the guts to get in the ring themselves.

And if they found out Shun wasn’t local either, they’d probably start cursing him too.

What Reiji still didn’t realize, though, was that the guy using Grotle was Paul.

If he had caught that sooner, he’d have found the whole thing even more amusing. Paul had actually traveled through Kanto? Reiji must have missed that detail back when he watched the anime.

“Hey! Whose side are you on? Why are you talking like you’re defending that guy?”

Because of his earlier comment, a few of the keyboard warriors had turned their attention toward Reiji, but he had no intention of indulging them. All they knew how to do was bark.

He answered calmly, “Sorry, I’m from the Orange Archipelago, not Kanto. I’m not taking either side.”

“Damn it! Are we really at the point where even some backwater place like the Orange Archipelago can look down on Kanto?”

Reiji kept walking, and the sore losers behind him shouted toward the ring instead.

“Hey! You with the Infernape! What region are you from?”

“I’m from the Orange Archipelago,” Shun answered, clearly not understanding why anyone cared. He had already beaten Paul’s Grotle and was just waiting for Paul to send out his second Pokémon.

“Gyar!” Paul’s second Pokémon hit the field with a fierce roar. It was a Gyarados.

Shun didn’t switch out either. Paul hadn’t switched in the first battle, so he wasn’t about to do it now. Being at a type disadvantage was fine. He had already taken the first round through smart prep. This second one didn’t matter as much.

“Damn it! So it still wasn’t a Kanto Trainer. Are there really no Trainers left in Kanto? Do we just let outsiders walk all over us now?”

“Win or lose, they’re still outsiders…” The keyboard warriors were dying inside.

Reiji felt absolutely nothing for them. He wasn’t a Kanto Trainer, and he wasn’t really an Orange Archipelago Trainer either.

He was just a shameless outsider.

No one was going to relate to him.

After putting some distance between himself and the crowd, he found a better seat with a clear view of the field and watched the second battle between Shun and Paul.

Gyarados versus Infernape.

Shun was probably going to lose this one.

The match started.

Then ended quickly.

Just as Reiji expected, Infernape was suppressed by Water-type attacks and finally went down in frustration. It didn’t even manage to trigger Blaze.

It had already fought a hard battle against Grotle. Even though it won, it hadn’t won easily. Its stamina was down, and it was carrying damage.

On top of that, Gyarados had the type advantage and was a higher level than Infernape. Winning had always been a long shot. You could tell that much from the fact that Gyarados’s Intimidate alone was enough to shake Infernape. The level gap was obvious.

Once Infernape went down, Shun sent out his second Pokémon.

He threw the Poké Ball into the ring.

His next Pokémon was Electabuzz.

[End of chapter]

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