The streets were much less crowded than the previous night as we made our way north towards the gym. Most trainers out on their Journeys were teens and young adults, and well if there was anything teens and college kids shared it was a love of sleep. So unless they were one of the trainers in the overflow on the center fields and had to pack up their camp everyday, then they were probably sleeping. Even with the insane drive people in this world seemed to have, waking them up before ten could be a struggle.

The sun had just made its way over the mountain range to the east and its light began spilling down the valley like a great flood. In its wake flocks of bird pokemon took flight from the forest. The coloration of one of the flocks caught my eye. A group of Starly watched over by a pair of Staravia heading north. Headed back to Sinnoh now that spring had come. I watched them fly for a bit. It was still a bit strange to see pokemon from other regions. However birds never cared for borders so why should pokemon?

The scent of fresh baked bread took me out of my bird watching. The bakery was still putting out their wares when I found it. I bought a loaf and ate as I walked, passing more than a few flower shops. A pidgey flew inside one of the flower shops as I passed, dropping off a sprig of fresh flowers from the mountains. Violet City was known as the city of nostalgic scents. Part of that came from a very long tradition of gardening and raising flowers supported in part by the Sprout tower and the expertise of the monks that called it home.

At some point the pavement had ended and the road had turned to cobblestone as I walked taking in the sights and scents. Flowers and trees were used constantly throughout pokemon games and that really started to be set as the standard in Johto. Stuff as simple as the city names. New Bark Town, bringing to mind new growth being the starting town. Which in my opinion was much better than Kanto’s colors. Although starting the player off in Pallet Town as in a painter’s pallet was a nice touch. The player wandered around picking up pokemon like they were picking colors to use and mixed them together to create a team, their own little masterpiece.

My best guess to the plant theming was that it was a way to highlight a connection to the natural world. Kind of a way to remind people of one of the core messages of the series: man and nature living in harmony.

Plant names had been used for characters from the beginning, Ash, Oak, etc. But they moved on to using it for more and more characters until in the later gens almost everyone was named after a flower or a tree in some way. Lonnie swore the symbolism and something about the language of flowers matched up with the characters. He had done a shit job of explaining it to me though. Most of it was spent laughing at Elm calling him as dead as his tree. Then he started flexing and asked me what I was gonna do when Guzmania ran wild over me…

Eventually the gym came into sight. A patchwork of pastures and stables made a quilt upon the landscape as they stretched towards the lake north of the city. The Sprout tower could just be made out across it as the mist on the mountain lake started to fade in the morning sun. Closer to the city itself traditional style buildings and training fields sprawled, broken up by groves and gardens. Bird pokemon constantly landed and took off from the violet colored roofs. In the center of the sprawling campus was an almost cup shaped modern tower of a few stories.

I joined the trickle of trainers heading towards the tower and returned Callie to her pokeball for now. The main offices of the gym were housed inside the tower. As for the top of it, well that was special. Falkner’s gym didn’t have audience seating and his battles were fought outside. Challengers fought him on the platform up there, the rest of the gym and all its buildings spread out below. A showdown on a man made mountain top in the wind and sometimes the rain.

That terrain heavily favored him as a flying specialist. His pokemon had the entire sky to maneuver in. I had seen a few of his matches online. If he was being particularly spiteful his pokemon would break line of sight disappearing beneath the edge of the tower to return mid attack from a different direction. I didn’t expect to deal with that but this gym did highlight one of my team’s biggest issues, mobility.

The lobby had a picture of a man that resembled Falkner overlooking it underneath a depiction of the Zephyr badge. The badge itself looked like two wings ending in the kind of weird feather fingers Lugia had. Pictures of various bird pokemon in the wild also adorned the walls. A few monitors streamed some of the first battles of the day, challengers facing off against gym trainers. Besides those, the most remarkable thing about the lobby was the inclusion of a small gift shop near the entrance selling binoculars and a guide on identifying bird pokemon. Three desks were manned by young teens wearing kimonos in various shades of blue who sounded bored as they called out people’s numbers. It almost felt like the pokemon version of the DMV. Taking a number I watched the monitors as I waited.

I ended up focusing on a fight between a challenger’s Pidgeotto and a Fearow taking place outdoors. I could only assume the cameraman was actually a rotomdrone as they kept up with the battle keeping the two mostly in frame. The Pidgeotto was on the back foot, or well wing in this case. It was desperately trying to stay above the Fearow firing off Gust after Gust. Its trainer was starting to sound nervous demanding it climb higher. Fearow gracefully dodged the attacks as it climbed, reaching the same level and then flew higher than the Pidgeotto. It started to circle picking up speed. The gym trainer ordered a Drill Peck, their voice calm. Fearow started a dive and began to spin like a drill, its features blurring as it picked up speed and glowed with a silverish energy. The challenger desperately ordered a quick attack. Fearow slammed into Pidgeotto at great speed, sending it into what looked like an uncontrolled fall before a red beam shot out and they were returned. The match was called and the monitor switched to a different feed.

I frowned, lost in thought. In my old world I had a friend that was really into airplanes and air combat. He had way too many hours on simulators and had tried to explain the basics to me. I had just watched two birds fight but it reminded me of it. Most aerial combat to my rather simplistic understanding boiled down to energy management. The higher you were the more potential energy you had. You could trade height for speed which you could spend out maneuvering your opponent. Or that speed could be used to climb gaining height and put energy back into that store of potential energy. Was there some way to exploit all that? Maybe the lower the bird pokemon were the lower their top speed? How would I even keep them low? The only member of my team that flew was Mal but that wasn’t so much flying as it was telling gravity to take the day off.

My number being called took me out of my theorizing. I handed my card over with the customary little bow to the very bored looking teenager at the desk who was just a bit too young for their own journey. He scanned it and began to type.

“Trainer Grayson of Ecuteak and… it says here you’re sponsored?” the teen sounded surprised.

“Yes, by Mr. Pokemon. Is there some sort of issue?”

Shaking his head “Uh no just surprised is all. Never saw someone get sponsored by him before. My old man loved his show as a kid.”

“His show is pretty great.” I admitted.

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“Okay, it looks like we have a spot for you in four days with a gym trainer. If you win, you’ll get a shot at the boss the next day, weather and time permitting.”

I nodded. Gym trainers served as a sort of great filter. At the end of the day Falkner was only one man. There were only so many times he could battle in a day. There were maybe a thousand or more trainers just here in Violet City wanting to take on the gym. Filter that many people through a couple dozen gym trainers and the number facing Falkner every day turned into something much more reasonable.

“Looking at your record this is your first gym challenge and first year as a trainer. Three members on your team and for battles you have eight wins and no losses. Looks like youngsters and a bug catcher?”

I counted my fight with Silver as a win so it was nine. But I didn’t record the fight and it seemed neither did he. “Yeah.”

“Great, uh… I’ll put you down for a 3v3 battle then. That should give us a clear idea on what an appropriate challenge would be.”

And that was the second part of the great filter that gym trainers acted as.

Gym leaders were good.

Damn good.

It was common in the games that you didn’t even see gym leader’s full teams until the post game when you could have rematches with them. You wouldn’t get through a full team of level fifties or higher with a fresh starter. Instead the gym leaders put forth teams that offered an appropriate challenge based off of your badges and team. Most challenges were set on a badge rating, however it was not uncommon for gym leaders to tailor the challenge in such a way to encourage the growth of the challenger. They might highlight a weakness in the team or training methods. In rare cases someone might be much stronger than their number of badges indicated and thrash a lower badge challenge team. Gym trainers and in some locations gym trials as well served to scout out challenger teams, as badges and team composition could only tell you so much.

A few minutes later I headed out my timeslot secured. I left the gym campus and headed towards the lake. Most of the lakefront was the city park. After avoiding the camps of trainers that had set up there I found a quiet spot by the water. A bridge stretched across the lake in two great arcs stopping briefly at an island midway with a willow tree.

Sprout tower was in clearer view now and I looked for the sway. Legend had it that a hundred foot tall bellsprout had been used for the central pillar of the tower. If you had ever seen a Bellsprout then you knew they almost never could stay still. Their stem body constantly undulated even when they rooted themselves.

I took out my notebook and my team’s scans from last night. I could visit the tower some other time. I had to see what exactly I was working with.

Pokemon: Porygon, the Virtual Pokemon

Level: 17

Moves Known:

Conversion

Conversion2

Sharpen

Tackle

Thundershock

Psybeam

Pokemon: Teddiursa, the Little Bear pokemon

Level: 12

Moves Known:

Fling

Covet

Scratch

Baby-Doll Eyes

Fake Tears

Lick

Leer

Fury Swipes

Pokemon: Dunsparce, the Land Snake Pokemon

Level: 14

Moves Known:

Flail

Defense Curl

Mud-Slap

Rollout

Glare

God I missed my perfect information from the games. I wasn’t even sure about natures much less abilities. IV’s and EVs? No way I was getting any of that. I sighed and slowly I started to play out battles in my mind.

What were the likely teams we’d face? Dual type Normal and Flying birds if it held true to the games. Natu or a Murkrow were also possibilities.

It was hard to prepare against Flying type. They had such a deep pool of pokemon to pull from and nearly every one of them was dual type. It was a stupidly strong type sometimes. Hell, look at Lance, the so-called Dragon specialist. He often had more Flying type pokemon than he had Dragon. Sometimes his entire damn team was Flying. Falkner however was more a Bird trainer than he was a Flying trainer. That focus made things much easier, limiting the possibilities.

Would they surprise us with something? Locally there was Skarmory which was Steel/Flying and was one hell of a defensive wall. It was birdy enough for Falkner but was more likely to be a match up when facing Jasmine in Olivine. Maybe some out of region stuff like the Starly’s I saw were on the table.

My current worst case scenario was a Gilgar or even worse a Gliscor. Falkner wouldn’t use one but a gym trainer might. They were flying scorpion bat things and they were Ground/Flying, which was a great defensive typing. The Ground typing negated their weakness to Electric. The only thing that put a real dent in them was Ice. It was for things like Gliscor that the good old Thunderbolt and Ice Beam combo were for. Gliscor had a great defensive stat, decent coverage moves and could heal off of being poisoned. They could poison their opponent and then just heal through the damage while they waited. They were a wall that was damn hard to break.

Then there was the mobility issue. Surprise surprise flying pokemon fly.

I ran through some more likely battles before I began to write and plan.

Mal was clearly the strongest counter to birds I had. His mobility was the best and he had Thundershock. Combined with our Conversion shenanigans then he was the tankiest and would be able to deal plenty of damage as well. Turning into Ghost type against what I suspected were going to be a bunch of dual Normal/Flying birds would really limit their options for attack. If he finished learning Ice Beam then he could handle the worst case scenario as well with ease. He was much slower than the birds but I had an idea that might just work. Mal would have to be held in reserve to handle what Callie and Dunsparce couldn’t.

Callie had the worst match up. Her only ranged attack was Fling which was throwing a held item at something. It’s not like I could give her a bag of rocks. She’d also have to be able to hit a bird in flight. Fling didn’t work here. Most of her other moves were debuffs. She might be able to exchange blows in brief moments when attacked with physical moves but that was not something to count on. No, she had to be put into a position where she could succeed.

Dunsparce would be the lead. She knew the fewest moves and Mud-Slap was not going to be effective as an offensive option but it didn’t matter. She knew Glare. Just how hard was it for a bird to fly when paralyzed? I’m gonna bet pretty damn hard.

It would work. Dunsparce in the lead, ideally take out the first pokemon and at least get a Glare off on the second. Callie could then come in and be effective. Mal would clean up after. It was the first gym and I was probably horribly over preparing but… pokemon was serious business.

I was getting that badge.