Free Badge?

Lance made his way back to the League building, Charizard was rightfully exhausted so he used one of the other Pokemon he had, but that's not important.

When he arrived he made his way to his office walking through the halls, but when he walked into his office he was immediately greeted by the sight of the 3 new members of the Elite 4.

Damian, Darwin, and Tempest. Lorelei was out doing some acting stuff or fashion, honestly, he can't even remember half of what that woman does.

When they noticed him Damian gave him an apologetic look as Tempest and Darwin both ran at him bombarding him with questions about what happened.

"Why didn't you let us go!" Darwin yelled.

Lance tried to wave it off, "Well I didn't think you would want to, how did you even find out,"

Tempest pulled out her phone and started scrolling through pictures of Lance personally arresting Team Rocket and 2 Admins, one of which was Cliff, "It's all over Pidgey!"

Tempest then pointed at the picture of Ciff, "He was on the ship, he broke my dad's arm! I wanted to get revenge for him!"

Darwin pushed her to the side, "Forget that if he was there then that Admin girl was there too," he said with a growl

"I want to get revenge on her for what she did to me, if only I brought Gastrodon or Flygon with me too, curse those stupid rules for marketing purposes." 

Lance started sweating, "Well, you see I didn't actually know they would be there, in fact, I only went to stop something private, but that's not important,"

But that didn't seem to quell the two young adults, so Lance thought of something, "You know he is in custody, what if you both go ask him questions, maybe you could find some answers and find their base."

They both started to squint their eyes, not opposed to it but also questioning why he specifically suggested it, "Fine, but next time you better keep us informed, we are your new Elite 4, and I'd rather have some action than being a glorified secretary."

Then Tempest and Darwin walked out of the room leaving Damian only there with him, "So how was the situation on Cinnabar?"

Lance waved his arm as he went to sit on his chair, "Well from what I heard about 80% of the Grunts were captured with the last few retreating after I arrived, as for the reason why I went there, well let's just say everything turned out alright."

Damian nodded, "Well, the situation here was pretty uneventful until about 10 minutes ago, I can't say it was pleasant though, I can't believe as a child I wanted to be champion, but you were gone for about an hour and I wanted to rip my hair out."

Lance chuckled, "Well in your defense that was for Kanto and Johto, but still it isn't fun,"

Damian looked at Lance, "So what now, I don't think Team Rocket will stop at whatever they were doing, and most of us are unprepared for a sudden invasion."

Lance thought to himself, "Well, I suppose we need to do 'that', I didn't expect to have to call one this soon."

"You mean-"

"Yes, I will call a Gym Leader Meeting, this is complicated since we have 2 newly appointed Gym leaders in Erika and Janine."

"I guess this is kinda a welcoming party and a strategy meeting."

"Yes, I just hope things can go smoothly, lord knows things have been complicated as is."

Then at the next moment through the doors, 3 familiar People walked in, it was Spark, Candela, and Blanche.

Spark was the first one in and also the one who pushed the door open, "Helloooo!! Mr. Lance, we're back!."

Then they all noticed each other, and for 10 seconds there was prolonged eye contact until Lance cleared his throat and turned to Damian, "Sorry to cut this short, but I need to talk to them."

Damian nodded understatedly and walked out, giving a nod to the 3 and closing the doors behind him.

Lance looked at the 3, "So now we can talk, tell me exactly what happened."

—

It was the next day, Blaine invited them to their gym but for obvious reasons they took the first day off, so today they met back up and started walking together to the Gym, as for Gary's cheerleaders, he sent them away to do whatever for now since he knows Ash and Green would just annoy him about it.

So they made some small talk with each other about random topics.

"Look I'm just saying, if you're drowning all you have to do is just drink the water," Green said confidently 

"Right, are you homeless just to get a job, why didn't I think of that." Gary responded sarcastically, "Didn't we have this conversation before."

"We don't talk about that, after all, that was the day 'that' happened," Ash said shivering and Gary nodded also shivering.

"What do you mean?" Brock asked, "Did something happen, it couldn't have been that bad."

"Ohhhh, you have no idea…."

—

{Flashback no Jutsu}

All the guys in Class were hanging out just playing some random games, with the exception of the two edge lords since this was before Silver tried being better, they were 6 at the time so they didn't have any care.

Suddenly Ash kicked the door down holding bags, throwing some at People and quickly approaching Gary, "Everyone, this is bad! We need to leave Kanto NOW!"

Ash started randomly packing things rambling on about, 'everything is over, we need to change our names, this will make for some insane dad lore.'

But Gary put his hand on Ash's shoulder, "Hey calm down, it can't be that bad, I mean nothing I can't do anything about right."

Ash slapped Gary's hand and put both hands on his shoulders, "Gary the Group Chat has been leaked!!"

Everyone in the room stayed silent hearing that, Gary looked at Ash seriously, "We need to burn Pallet Town down."

—

Ash and Gary still shivered remembering that day, and Brock was the only one who understood it, as Green was just laughing.

"Man, I can not believe you guys actually managed to save yourselves after that, seriously if you were any older I'm pretty sure you might have gotten arrested."

"Don't even say that," Ash said, "I mean it was hard enough being the youngest person there, heck I'm the youngest out of the 6 of us."

"Oh really, when were you born?" Misty asked

"In May,"

"Oh, my Arceus…,"

"Wha- you are like 1 month older than me, what were you looking down on me as a toddler!!"

"No no I just mean I thought you were older-" Misty said as she realized something, "Wait how do you know my birthday, I never told you guys."

"Oh, your sister told me," Ash said, "I mean seriously being born on April 1st must have been tough."

"Wait, I think we're glossing over something, why do you have my sister's number!" Misty shouted

"Well I only got the pink one, Lily I think, yeah she just gave me her number and spammed my phone for a while," Ash said like it was the most natural thing, making Brock keel over in a corner.

"That… is actually really accurate, I mean I can't even say I'm mad it's just how she is," Misty said looking dejected.

"Well if it makes you feel any better, Yellow's also older than me," Ash said immediately, making Brock and Misty look up and between Ash and Yellow.

Misty put her hands together and breathed, "How?"

Ash shrugged, "I mean she was born in March, so she's also older than you."

Misty's head spun trying to process the fact that she was the second youngest person here, "Is there anything else I need to know."

Ash shrugged, "Green's 11," that one was enough to make Misty fall over.

Meanwhile Green punched Ash in the shoulder, "So you did remember my birthday, and you two idiots didn't get me anything."

"Remember the Moon stones?"

"Those don't count," Green immediately said

Ash and Gary both looked at each other immediately remembering how shameless their friend can be.

"Sigh", OK then what do you want?" Gary said

"Hmmm, can I get a-"

"No" x2

"Wha- but I didn't even say anything!" Green argued

"Does it involve me and Gary in tuxedos, again?" Ash said

"..."

"..."

"... Now it doesn't."

This went on for a while until they eventually made it to the Volcano, it was connected to Blaine's hotel but he told them of a separate way behind the Volcano so they all took it leading them down a staircase going down.

When they went down they eventually came to a clearing, and inside they came to what looked like a makeshift Gym, in the center there was a battlefield held over Lava by chains that just screamed safety hazards.

When they also came in they saw Blaine sitting on a nearby table, he waved them over as he laid 3 badges in front of them.

"Good to see you all made it just fine, sorry again usually I would have a riddle or puzzle around as a Gym Challenge but circumstances have changed that.

"Don't worry about it old man," Gary said nonchalantly, "Let's just get what we all came here for!"

"About that," Blaine said, "I would be glad to present you all the Volcano Badge, you all proved you deserve it."

"Ehh"

Yellow turned to Brock, "Can he just do that?"

Before Brock could answer Blaine spoke up, "Gym leaders are meant to test the participants of the League challenge, that could mean a battle, a test, or a number of other things, the participants don't even have to particularly win, just prove themselves."

Then Blaine looked at the 3, "And I say that battling and winning against 3 Admins and capturing 1 more proves you are capable trainers, so as Gym Leader of the Cinnabar Gym, I am happy to give you all a Badge, no battle required."

The 3 just looked at him for a moment

Then Blaine looked to the side scratching his cheek, "And also, most of my Pokemon are still injured from the attack, I'm afraid I couldn't give you all a proper battle, since as far as I'm aware this is your 7th Badge."

That made more sense to all of them, as in a 7th gym battle the Gym leader is allowed a full team of 6, and 18 7-badge level Pokemon would be hard to have since it is very rare for a Pokemon to be satisfied with only their current level, not to mention hard to even get.

So Ash, Green, and Gary all picked up the badge.

"Umm, well I guess a badge is a badge," Gary said

Green shrugged, "I ain't complaining, this one was the one I was scared for the most."

Only Ash looked at his Badge instead of putting it away. Brock, Misty, and Yellow were about to congratulate them, but Ash slammed it back on the table.

"Sorry old timer, but I can't accept this that easy," Ash said as he smirked.

"What is wrong with you? It's a free Badge why would you not take it!" Misty yelled.

Although no one said it like Misty did, they were also still curious, so Ash answered, "I'm invoicing the gimmick challenge, I already got 1 and I'm not stopping for a free badge"

That made most of them twitch their eyes, but Blaine understood, "Well, that makes things complicated, in this case, it's far more complicated since I can't just give you the credit for it."

"But what I can do is this, since I don't have a Pokemon for this kind of thing in the 7-badge teams at the moment, I'll use 1 Mega Pokemon from my 8-badge team, and you get 3 Pokemon, does that sound fair?"

Immediately, and understandably, Brock and Misty tried talking him out of it,

"Hey come on, why does that matter," 

"It's just a few more battles, you don't need it,"

"Just be reasonable for once,"

But Ash completely ignored those suggestions and smiled at Blaine, "Then let's dance!"