After the gym battle and decisions on what to do next

After returning Smaug once she made sure he was alright, Vali received her fourth gym badge and grinned as Erika said, "Congratulations, Vali. Both on the win and on the evolution."

"Thank you for giving me this chance, Erika," Vali told the gym leader with a bright grin as she clutched the gym badge in her hand, "I hope that once my team and I finish gathering our gym badges that you'd be up for another battle if we have time,"

Erika smiled lightly, "I'd be happy to though I think you should probably hurry to pokemon center."

"Right," Vali nodded lightly, "Thanks again, Erika!"

With that, Vali met up with Steven and they began making their way out of the gym. She paused at the lobby when a girl around the same age as her complained to the girl at the front desk, "I won't be able to battle inside if the whole place smells like this."

"I'm sorry, but the outdoors battling area is no where near complete," The Gym Trainer manning the desk informed the girl, "It won't be complete for another month. Either you'll have to battle in the gym like everyone else or wait until the outside battlefield is complete,"

The girl sneered at the Gym Trainer, "You'll be hearing from the League!"

With that, the girl stormed out and Vali asked, "What was that about?"

"That was one of the trainers that have a scent based allergy or some other form of condition that makes battling inside the gym difficult for them if not impossible in some cases," The Gym Trainer explained as she shuffled the papers on her desk, "An outdoors battlefield is being constructed as we speak, but it is taking a while due to the League workers trying to ensure the quality of it is on par with the one inside the gym. Because of this, trainers like that one have been attempting to lodge complaints about it with the League who are well aware of the problem,"

"Shouldn't there already be an outdoors battlefield?" Vali remembered reading that every gym had one though most rarely used them since the inside ones were usually enough.

"Unfortunately in the two years before Miss Erika took over, Mister Thomas, Miss Erika's grandfather, let the outdoors battlefield fall into disarray," The Gym Trainer answered with a sigh, "Due to the weather we've had over the last few years, it's left the outdoors battlefield completely trashed and unsalvageable resulting in a new one having to be reconstructed," She shook her head, "That doesn't even cover the fact that a family of Bulbasaur have taken it over,"

Vali felt bad for Erika having to deal with this kind of thing, "Well, I hope the League doesn't get angry at Erika since it really isn't her fault."

The Gym Trainer smiled at Vali, "Thank you. Are either of you going to schedule a rematch?"

"No, we won our battles," Steven answered as they began to head to the door, "Thanks for asking though,"

Smaug and Arwen ended up stuck in Nurse Joy's care for three days due to the fact both of them had poison in their system. Despite Smaug burning away almost all the poison, a few particles managed to get into his lungs. While it wasn't that dangerous given his high body temperature, the fact he'd just recently evolved made Nurse Joy leery of letting Smaug out of her care until she could be sure the poison didn't have a bad effect on his evolution. Nurse Joy wanted to watch over Arwen since this was the Ponyta's first real exposure to poison. Celina spent a day with Nurse Joy and was banned from training for two days to fully recover much to the Pidgeot's ire. Of course, Celina wouldn't be so annoyed if it weren't for the fact she wasn't allowed to fly with Vali.

Vali was a bit annoyed as well, but she wasn't about to disobey Nurse Joy. Despite the pink hair, the entire Joy family could be scary especially when it came to stupid trainers not keeping their pokemon's health in mind. Instead of trying to argue against the pink haired woman, she handed over the rest of her pokemon to get checked over while she spent time focusing on the egg she'd gotten from Ninetales. Even Eevee ended up in Nurse Joy's care, she didn't want to take any chances with anyone.

Steven had already done the same when they'd returned from their gym battle. While Vali was cleaning the already clean egg shell, they spent time discussing where to travel to next. Fuchsia was high on the list along with the Safari Zone which boasted quite a few pokemon. While the idea of adding to her team wasn't something she really focused on, she would admit that visiting it would be fun if only for the opportunity to take good pictures. Steven wanted to check out just what kind of pokemon were there and maybe find something he wouldn't normally find in Kanto since he hadn't really caught any new pokemon outside of his Sandshrew. Steven wanted to check out the Kanto Power Plant to catch a Magnemite or two ever since he'd spoke with Lt. Surge. Vali just wanted to check it out and see if she could take any interesting pictures. After that, they'd go to Lavender Town where Vali was hoping she might catch a ghost-type.

While she might not be big on adding to her team, Vali honestly wanted a ghost-type since they were dead useful and because it would give her a defense against psychics. With what happened in Saffron the first time, she really didn't want to risk something like that happening again. There was also the fact that ghost-types were interesting, the whole thing about them being former humans/pokemon that had died really made her wonder just how true it was. Other than that, she knew that most ghost-types were pranksters which she could appreciate. If for nothing else, she wanted a ghost-type to help her prank Sirius the next time he pissed her off.