The Gains

Cinder's eyes slowly fluttered open, as he was greeted with the sight of the ceiling above him.

He was in one of the Pewter City's Pokemon Center's provided trainer rooms.

Rubbing his eyes, Cinder sat up, but didn't got up to leave the bed just yet.

After he finished rubbing his eyes, he took a look around the room for a moment. Storm, Fafnir and Hercule were huddled up together, sleeping soundly on the other end of the bed. Then, the memories all came back to him from last night.

Last night... Hadn't been great. Until the end, that is. Most of what happened was something that he wished that he could forget. Of course, it wasn't that simple in the slightest.

At least he could move on, that was always a silver lining to their circumstances.

However, encountering team rocket so early on his journey wasn't something he had thought of. Sure, he had expected that there would be criminals going around, doing some atrocious crimes in Kanto, nevertheless, experiencing it was another thing.

The Rockets had tried to kill him, and his pokemon. An evil human was still a human, so the verdict ended with them with life imprisonment, no death sentence. A pokemon being abused and stolen from their respective trainers are still pokemon, so the Officer Jennys did their best to pacify all the pokemon and return them to their rightful owner with the League's help. The Nurse Joys in the pokemon center tried their best on saving the Aggron that hadn't been at all safe from the explosion of the two Electrode, even going so far as to use the latest medical treatment with using Ditto's cells, but unfortunately...

Cinder wondered - were all the team rocket members truly evil people? Were some not evil, but still somehow roped into participating? The ones he encountered sure was not at all kind. What would Cassidy and Butch feel knowing that their pokemon has meet its end from their actions, would they have felt sad? regret? anything?

How much evil could somebody commit before it was appropriate for their death to truly be celebrated? Where was that line drawn? Could taking joy in somebody else's demise ever, truly, be justified?

Cinder recalled last night. After he and his team finished eating with Bruno in the pokemon center, he had found himself sinking right into his bed from his assigned guest room. He had been asleep almost immediately.

He wasn't sure if it was the exhaustion that the previous day has bought him, or maybe just because he missed sleeping on a comfortable bed from just a night of camping in the forest. Either way, it had allowed him to forget the horrifying encounter he had with Cassidy and Butch, along with that Raticate and the late ferocious Aggron they released at the end. And Cinder was most certainly grateful for that.

But now, now that he regained much clarity, all this thought flooded his head like a tidal wave, and Cinder felt his head start to hurt. He couldn't stop himself from releasing a low sounding groan as he clutches his head, disturbing the electric-type from the noise.

"Mareep?" He heard his partner, Storm, voicing out his concern as the pokemon saw its training like this, Storm gently nudged his back shoulder.

Cinder tried to smile reassuringly. "Sorry bud, I just... Zoned out for a bit." He then began patting his starter's soft wooly body. "You must have been upset..."

Through the days he had been with his starter, he began to know how he loved battling, it still has a mild disposition like it's species were known of outside in the arena, but, when Storm was in battle, Cinder would sometimes notice how quickly the sheep pokemon would change gears when facing an opponent. With that kind of competitive personality, the pokemon must have been resentful when they had to face a monster like Aggron in its current stage of capabilities.

The sullen silence and avoiding looks his pokemon gavr was the answer enough for that. He shook his head at him. "It's alright, Storm. It wasn't your fault. None of us saw an Aggron coming, I suspect that's how those two criminals managed to steal and poach the other trainers and pokemon as well with that kind of creature as deterrent."

He smiled, taking this chance as an opportunity to encourage his pokemon. "We'll just have to become stronger and find more members to add into our family, won't we? That way, this won't happen again. Deal?"

That seemed to make Storm feel better, because he got a couple of happy squeal from him. Cinder grinned. "Alright, let's head down and wake up the others for breakfast. Then, we will get some training done. Oh wait, I should contact Dom and Diana first, to see if they are still around the city, that's what we promised them, after all."

Storm cheered, as it quickly turned to wakeup the others from their slumber.

...

Cinder was glad that he had received a decent amount of money while they were in the Viridian Forest. Although some of the trainers had been a poor sport who refused to pay, he got that solved with his own means. Of course, there are some veteran trainers going around the forest, and Cinder encountered a few with his team, but the veterans weren't interested in battling Cinder since he was still a rookie, they weren't at all tempted by extorting money from the young rookie through an easy battle with their teams. After all, they wouldn't gain anything out of it, except some little bit of cash from Cinder, which they already have plenty of from their travels.

But either way, Cinder wasn't complaining. Since, thanks to that, he was able to purchase two new TMs for their upcoming training, along with a restock of their pokemon foods, extra potions and Moomoo Milk for Fafnir. Since they were in the city for now, Cinder was going to keep the healing items to a minimum, as the Pokemon Center would help out with injuries anyway, but he did still want to have at least a few on hand. He could buy more once he was outside of the city, which would not be for a while.

Stopping by at the Pokemon Center, Cinder had asked Nurse Joy where he could find a good training ground within the city. As luck would have it, she pointed out a perfect place to home his team, just a block or two away from the Pokemon Center itself.

Upon arriving, Cinder knew it would be perfect.

The young trainer stood with his team on the training grounds with a Pokedex on his hand, he was currently informing both his friends, Dom and Diana, that he had arrived at Pewter City and asked of there whereabouts.

The Pokedex has a huge 'MOTHERFUCKER' signature behind it that left Cinder still bitter bitter, he regretted asking for an autograph from the Elite Four member yesterday.

After he didn't get a reply after a while, he tucked his Pokedex inside his back pocket.

Cinder gazed at the wide, open rocky landscape, large rocks and boulders jutting out the ground, and the occasional slopes.

It was perfect, perfect on their preparation on their upcoming challenge against Brock, the Pewter Gym Leader.

Almost all the gyms, that were run by a type specialist utilized a battlefield that emulated the preferred typing of the gym leader. Having been run by rock-type specialist since the day Pewter was founded, the Pewter City Gym was known for its battlefield being that of a landscape filled with rocky terrains, not too much unlike this training grounds.

Cinder and his team would have to get used to battling on battlefields like this. Which is why, this area is made for the perfect training grounds for them to prepare at.

Making a mental note to thank Nurse Joy later, Cinder turned to his pokemon. Storm and Hercule lined up in front of him, while Fafnir got close towards his legs. The sheep and tadpole knew what was coming, so they held a gaze of expectancy towards their trainer.

This was a moment where his true test began. Up until now, Cinder has been training Storm, not so much for Hercule since he had just caught the tadpole a few days ago in the forest, not to mention Fafnir wasn't able to join them on training yet, despite how the baby dragon showed much enthusiasm in it. His time at the Viridian Forest was mostly spent simply hiking through the forest, having quite a lot of few battles in, which were always a boon for getting him and his pokemon to gain more experience in battling and honing their skills. So to say, there had never been any session of training except for yesterday's morning, which was only a few hours training, not real dedication to just training alone.

That all ended today, Cinder knew better than to assume that he and his team were a match for any Gym Leader in Indigo the way that they were right now. And even before Falkner's television interview, Cinder knows how important it was to plan ahead. Which was why, the training season he had in mind would be tailor made with the Pewter Gym in mind.

Comder would have to get his pokemon to hone themselves in areas where they were needed to excel at in order to win the upcoming battle. This meant getting used to the rocky battlefield, and figuring out the best way for each of them to combat rock-type pokemon.

Specifically, rock-type pokemon that were being wielded by somebody who was dedicated to the typing. Although Cinder doubted that they would be going up against particularly high level rock-type pokemon, due to being rookie level, that still didn't change the fact that the gym leader was an expert on the ins and outs of the rock-type. Gym leaders never went easy on their challengers, to Cinder's knowledge. Even when not using their strongest team, they would simply utilize the pokemon that they did use in the best way possible. Even if they faced first staged pokemon in their battle, the gym leader would use every tactic that they could to ensure that those pokemon gave them the toughest fight possible.

No trainer in the world could win a gym battle with so little experience without being prepared for that.

"Alright," Cinder began, eying his team carefully. "We're in Pewter City to win our first Gym Badge. The gym leader here specializes in rock-type pokemon which means that's the typing that we have to be prepared for. However, we can't forget just how powerful gym leaders are compared to the usual trainer we faced. These people are meant to not only protect their respective cities, and run them, but to also test trainers and pokemon like us in order to determine who's ready for the Indigo Conference. That's exactly what all of these battles are going to be: a test."

He paused to see if his team was following. So far, so good. "We faced some tough pokemon in the forest. Like that Raticate, for example." Cinder saw Hercule and Storm perk up more. He sank his hands into his pockets and let out a deep sigh. "But I'm afraid that experience just won't cut it. From here on out, our real adventure is going to begin. We are going to be facing pokemon that put all of the trials that we faced in that forest to shame. I'm not just talking about Pewter, either. I'm talking about the rest of our journey in general. As we improve, so will the other trainers traveling through Indigo. And the gym leaders will have less and less reasons to be lenient with the pokemon that they choose to use against us as we acquire more badges." He eyed his team carefully, doing his best to look serious and get his point across, but not scare them. "I'm not exaggerating when I say this. If we try to challenge that gym-any gym, in fact- the way that we are now, we won't stand a chance. We'd be eaten alive. And there are plenty of other trainers out there who would do the same thing to us too."

Korrine, Red and Blue immediately came to his mind.

Cinder paused to take in the reactions of his teammates. To his surprise, Fafnir was the most hardened of them. The baby dragon was soaking up every word his trainer said, staring at Cinder intently. Cinder was caught off guard by his change in demeanor. Ever since they had left Viridian Forest, Fafnir hadn't been so timid anymore, it seemed that the helplessness in helping them yesterday had also affected Fafnir, not just Storm, Hercule was too, and Cinder could see that.

Either way, as all his pokemon seemed pretty determined now. Cinder didn't know what was going on in their heads, but what had once been an incredibly timid and inexperienced pokemons was now the most determined to rise to the challenge.

Their expressions made it very clear where they stood on the matter: they were in this as a group, along with their trainer.

A smile appeared on Cinder's face as Storm patted his Poliwag friend's back to get his attention. As Hercule turned his head to look at his sheep friend, Storm jammed his hoof, curled into a fist, against his chest, and let out a determined "Mareep!" Hercule emulated his behavior, but with his tail, since he had no arms.

They were set.

Then, suddenly, his Pokedex made a sound, indicating he received a message.