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-/-
Joey's opinion on loss had always been that it was an inevitable part of life. Sure, he had felt sad after losing to King. He felt even more sad about the fact that Team Rocket had disrupted his mostly successful gym challenge.
However, considering how losing his way up the ladder had always been a part of his philosophy even before he'd become a trainer, it wasn't too surprising that he'd managed to mostly integrate the negative experiences of that trip to Cerulean by the time that he returned to Saffron.
In addition to being a healthy adult with lots of life experience and mental models to deal with negative emotions, specifically whose philosophy was about turning loss into a positive experience, he also had one more belief.
He believed that sadness was the emotion of the inactive. He'd had his mental health struggles in the past, decades ago. Like most who figured themselves out in the end, these struggles now lay nearly forgotten as faint memories of his later teenage years and early twenties.
That particularly harrowing time had taught him a valuable lesson in that Newton's laws of motion applied to emotions almost as much as they did to objects. If an object was moving, it would likely stay in motion and if it wasn't, it was likely that it wouldn't suddenly start.
Someone having a bad year would most likely continue having another one, while someone having a good year was more likely to get stuck in a positive loop.
Someone who didn't do anything to improve their lot in life would likely never improve it, but also likely never start trying.
That was why, in times when it was perhaps seductive to wallow in grief and self-pity, the most important thing to do was simply to get back up again and get on with it.
You could feel grief and self-pity while working towards a productive end.
That was perhaps why Theresa found him in an unexpected mental state when she knocked on his door at night, right before he was going to sleep.
"Are you okay, Joey?" she asked kindly in her large billowy white sleeping gown, she looked as if preparing herself to console a crying child.
Joey looked at her from his downward dog position, a part of the stretching routine he went through before bed, his Pokemon already mostly dozing off. He was wearing white and blue striped pyjamas and a comforting smile.
"It sucked, yeah, but no one ever said that life was gonna be only good things. If that's the case, might as well learn how to deal with the bad times. I'm gonna be okay," he said reassuringly.
This confused Theresa, who Joey realised had never had to deal with him experiencing an actual setback. Being an adult in a child's body with a clear goal in mind for where he wanted this life to go, he had never failed at something he'd set out to do.
Those experiences had mostly happened in his last life. It turned out that living life with open eyes taught life skills which one could use to… live life.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that," the woman said awkwardly." Just so you know, I'm here to talk if you need anything."
"Thanks. It means a lot to me. I think after training tomorrow, I'll take a bit of time in the evening to make my favourite dinner for the kids. It'll make me feel better," he replied. "Sleep well."
"Sleep well," Theresa said before lightly closing the door, leaving Joey mostly alone in his lightly dimmed room illuminated by a single candle.
Sometimes you just couldn't beat the classics.
Also, his favourite food had always had a way to make him feel better when he was feeling a bit down.
Truffle mashed potatoes with fried eggs and spinach.
He wished he could have a bottle of wine, but unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards unless he won a conference or something. Although… They'd probably just give him a non-alcoholic bubbly.
-/- 2 weeks later
It was on the morning of the Youngster Tournament that Joey woke up in his soft warm bed with a lazy yawn.
He hadn't set an alarm today, not feeling like he particularly needed one with how late in the afternoon the tournament was starting and knowing that even without an alarm clock, his body would rise somewhere between five and seven in the morning from sheer ingrained habit.
He looked to the side at the small grey clock communicating the digits of the hour to him on his nightstand to see that he was correct and that it was only 6:27.
In essence, early enough that he could still take his Pokemon to the training grounds and lead them through an intense stretching and preparation routine for the battles ahead.
Of course, he couldn't do that since all of his Pokemon were still at the Pokecenter from yesterday's efforts.
None of them were grievously hurt, of course, just exhausted from his perhaps a bit overly ambitious plans and goals.
He stood up and went through his morning tribulations to then languidly leave the orphanage at around 7:30 in the morning just as Saffron started waking up around him.
His fingers idly glided along his empty Pokebelt. It was a weird feeling to be running around without the reassuring presence of his friends. It was one that he was hoping he wouldn't have to get used to.
Walking through the hustling and bustle of a metropolis, which was only slightly less busy on the weekends than it was on the weekdays, he made his way to the southwest, where he entered the white and red building. He looked at the queue in front of the job board and shook his head.
After his loss in Cerulean, he hadn't concerned himself overly much with that part of trainer life and had let other things take priority.
He'd had more important things to plan.
Catching the eye of Nurse Joy, who was standing behind the reception, he got a quick shake of the head alongside a palm held up with all five fingers extended, it closed into a fist before flashing open again with all five fingers.
Ten more minutes, then. Joey nodded at the pink-haired woman and veered off towards the waiting area, where he snatched a newspaper from one of the round coffee tables before throwing himself into one of the bean bag chairs. He picked a yellow one since it complemented his outfit.
It wasn't often that he read newspapers, so the brightly coloured front page of the Saffron Local wasn't something he was familiar with. However, the topic of the Youngster Tournament was something that he was curious enough about to read the article on it.
The Youngster Tournament, the last struggles of a failing program
This year, on the very next day, in fact, Saffron will find itself hosting the first-ever Youngster Tournament in the region's history. The result of a great organisational effort made by the youth development department of the League, this tournament will serve as a miniature appetiser to the Indigo Conference, starting a two weeks later.
Hosted in Saffron due to the city's pre-existing infrastructure and the fact that many of the participating youngsters come from our very own streets, the spectacle promises to be an interesting way to spend the Saturday afternoon with one's family. Looking at organised amateur battling befitting the levels of one's children once they start their journeys has always been a big draw for the parents of Kanto.
The rewards for the tournament are not yet announced, but the participant number has already been released to the league as everyone who wanted to register had to do so this Monday to receive their seeding and participation number. The bracket of 33 youngsters will be drawn after the opening ceremony which promises to be un-ostentatious with a simple and short speech by local representative Ruth Goldberg.
It is the former who was one of the main voices behind the creation of this opportunity for youngsters to show their skills and train their public appearance muscles. Some will know her from being one of the main proponents of the youngster program, who the reader likely knows has been running into some political opposition recently.
It has been determined that there isn't truly much of a difference in terms of danger when giving a young aspiring trainer a tier-0 or a tier-1 Pokemon as a starter, which puts the entire argument of the program's existence, namely that it provides a safer beginning with more manageable starters, into question.
The League has been debating for many years now if they should simply shut down the program and integrate it into the trainer one. With the fact that the safety indexes of the Routes have been increasing year by year, it has been proposed that the starting age for trainers could be lowered to 12, thus removing the need for the youngster program to exist unless it pushes its age requirements to 11.
Functioning either as a last hurrah or perhaps as an argument for the continued existence of the program, this one tournament promises to be more exciting than it would have likely been in any of the previous years of its potential foundation.
Our very own Saffron local Sabrina has recently clinched the record for the youngster with the most badges in Cerulean. With her team of strong psychics, she has received the highest seeding in the tournament and is also the likeliest to win, at least one going by the betting odds from the Gambling Association of Kanto.
There are of course several other notable youngsters who have managed to attain three badges which in any other year would have made them more than exceptional. However, this year they are unfortunately standing in the shadow of someone whose accomplishments are as baffling as they are indicative of great talent.
In terms of the result, battling always remains an unpredictable sport, and our psychic specialist might just as well fall against a weaker trainer with a team composition that directly counters hers.
Similarly to the tournament then, unknown factors will decide the fate of the youngster program and it is quite unclear if the results of this tournament will have any impact on the political decision-making happening in the League's highest cabinets.
Ignoring these overly complicated technicalities, however, the tournament promises an entertaining day to anyone wishing to spectate and should draw moderate crowds due to its promise of showcasing local and regional talent. For those unable to come to Saffron to view the spectacle in person, the television channel 2BS will be showing the entirety of it from the minute it starts to the moment it ends.
Joey put down the new paper with a facial expression that most would find hard to analyse, somewhere between a frown and a smile.
In one way everything was going according to plan. In another way however, the dissolution of the youngster program and the sheer fangirling over Sabrina in even official sources was a bit annoying to someone like him who thought he had a much better chance of winning than the awkward 12-year-old with too many Kadabras.
Honestly, he already had issues understanding people who had a team composed of entirely the same type. In addition to this having three of the same Pokemon was taking it a bit too far, no? Sure if the Pokemon scaled well like the Abra line it meant an early advantage. However, later it would simply mean that everyone would find it very easy to make counter strategies against you.
He looked up from his newspaper to meet the eyes of Nurse Joy after the ten minutes had passed. The woman shrugged helplessly and held up her fingers, again indicating he had to wait ten minutes more.
He rolled his eyes at her chagrin, knowing perfectly well that life in a hospital could sometimes get messy. If his Pokemon were in any sort of emergency, he was sure that she would tell him and the simple fact that he had to wait a bit wasn't that much of a bother, as everyone liked to pretend that it was.
Not feeling like he wanted to continue reading the newspaper which felt slightly biased he stood up and started making his way to the part of the Pokemon Center that housed the public computers.
He hadn't been using the computers a lot recently. At the beginning of his journey up until his capture of Metapod, he'd used it to ask some questions on the forums and just troll around a bit. Now, he already knew most of the basics, and it was better to rely on actual literature rather than just what Peepeepoopoo69 thought was the best move to teach a Rattata.
But if nothing else the forums usually provided at least some entertainment and who knew, he hadn't done a lot of research on the youngster tournament because it was impossible to say who would be participating. Maybe there would be some useful information in the thread that had surely been created for it.
-/-
Welcome to the League Circuit Forums! The best place to discuss with other battle enthusiasts and exchange training tips.
Kanto → Trainers → Jonathan_Joestar → Megathread
Topic: A place to follow the career path of promising young trainer Jonathan Joestar
Original Poster: AverageRaticateEnjoyer
(Showing page 2/2)
►Ashthought (Verified youngster)
Am I legit hallucinating, or did this guy seriously fight bruno? Link
►KingKongSuperstar
If you are hallucinating, then I'm hallucinating the same thing. A 3v1 loss against Bruno, Rattata, Metapod, Diglett against a Hitmontop
►Dissmypokeanddie (Verified Ace-Trainer)
One of the weirdest things I've seen in a while, why exactly is an Elite Four member fighting a youngster? Seems legit, just hard to believe. Are we sure this isn't some different Bruno? Maybe a bug.
►Hitorhit (Verified Trainer)
Once again it becomes completely obvious that Joey cheated in his first gym-badge. If he can't even beat a fighting type 3 on one, how did he beat one 1 on one in the Saffron gym. Scam. Scam. Scam.
(User was suspended for this post.) Mod note: Please for the love of god, just let it go already. It's been 9 months.
►Madboiii?
@Hitorhit, Are you feeling good in the head? I'd like to see you try beating an Elite Four member with even a full team you dumbass
(User received an infraction for this post.) (You know why)
►NOPEISNOPE (Verified Trainer)
This kid is so weird. Saw that he lost the Cerulean gym challenge, but there's no recording. King is very by the books, so its very weird that we can't find one…
►AverageRaticateEnjoyed (Original Poster)
Definitely weird, but to be fair Jonathan isn't very consistent with his videos being available. Also the first gym battle was scrubbed for some reason.
►Grasstropeabused (verified trainer)
Battled the kid recently. He's mega good. That Rattata of his is fifth badge tier easily, I guess if he lost Cerulean his other Pokemon probably lag behind a bit.
►Metapod master race (verified trainer)
I mean, he made the mistake of catching a Diglett, things have been dragging him down ever since.
►Hesss (Verified Trainer)
@ Metapod master race
Sure, the Diglett is the problem…
►Spiderkid (Verified youngster)
I'd bet on him if it wasn't for Sabrina, the battle against Surge was super nice. Used it as reference material when I went there for my third badge. Unfortunately, someone with four badges and three evolved Pokemon that we know of is hardly going to lose to someone with three badges and two first-stage Pokemon, especially when the only evolved one is a Metapod. Still cheering for him though! Fight!
► Saffroncitygentleman (verified retiree)
Just received some interesting information from a friend of mine from Silver City… Its a bit hard to verify though. Something about privacy clauses, will try to dig more.
Welcome to the League Circuit Forums! The best place to discuss with other battle enthusiasts and exchange training tips.
Kanto → Events → Youngster Tournament → Megathread
Topic: A place to discuss the upcomingYoungster Tournament, its participants, and its prizes
Original Poster: LeagueOfficial
(Showing page 7/7)
►Ripper (Verified youngster)
I don't know. The prizes are cool, but third place getting an Ultra Ball is a bit weird. I'd hardly find the opportunity to use it for at least another half a year.
►King of the skies (Verified youngster)
@ Ripper, don't worry about it. Man, you have two badges, so you're not even a contender for fourth place.
►Michaelle (Verified Trainer)
@ King of the skies, Bro, you have one badge, won six months ago against… Whatever the name of Celadon's gym leader is. At least Ripper has two, which puts him in the top 10% of youngsters this year. The four youngsters with three badges and the one with four are complete statistical aberrations
►Hitorhit (Verified Trainer)
You guys are just lucky I can't participate, or I'd wreck you. Bunch of babies
►Grass that bends in the wind (Verified non-Gym.Leader)
@ MichealleHis name is Tadghsiobhan, you're welcome.
►NOPEISNOPE (Verified Trainer)
I mean, I think it's quite clear that the youngster with four badges will take first place. Has an advantage because she can have four Pokemon to choose from and lock in depending on the needs. The youngsters with three badges will fight for places 2,3,4,5, and the rest will have to figure it out
►AverageRaticateEnjoyer
@ NOPEISNOPEActually, the League rules stipulate that the participants have to lock in which three Pokemon they will use for the tournament before it starts.
►NOPEISNOPE (Verified Trainer)
Oh really? I didn't know that. Well, that removes a bit of the advantage. But, well, my money is still on Sabrina.
►Psychohead
Sabrina for Win Sabrina for Win Sabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for WinSabrina for Win Sabrina for Win
(User was infarcted for this post) (No spamming)
-/-
"Sorry about the wait," a voice suddenly said from behind Joey as the boy immersed himself in the trainer forums.
The ghost-typed youngster startled slightly, before coughing into his fist as he stood up and turned to face the nurse Joy, who had walked from her counter.
"It's okay, Nurse Joy. I don't have anywhere to be, and I understand that delays happen. It's not like you'd choose to delay something if it was your choice," he said before pausing, "at least I hope so."
The pink-haired woman looked down at him in amusement before turning around and shaking her head. "Your Pokemon are all doing great considering the tight schedule you've had them on recently, It's very clear you feed them well," she said as the two of them went back to the receptionist's desk where the nurse pushed towards him the tray holding the Pokeballs of his team.
Joey took a few seconds, about four, to clip all of the Pokeballs back to his belt before shrugging. "They're all okay with it, and considering that time waits for no man, it's often our stamina which must be challenged if we want to achieve something," he said.
The nurse simply sighed and shrugged her shoulders briefly before vibrating in place as if doing a factory reset on her brain. "Well just make sure that you don't exhaust yourself or your Pokemon. There's just one tournament left and the season is over so make sure to have a good rest rather than just training the whole time," she said with a dangerous tone in her voice.
Joey sweat-dropped and nodded. Of course, he'd been planning on giving his Pokemon time off, but if everyone wanted to train, what was the point of taking more than a week? A week was enough time to get bored and to want to get back into things, that at least had been his experience with his job in his last life. Although, to be fair, he had enjoyed his work. Well, so did his Pokemon, though. "I'll be sure to let them rest as much as they want to when the season ends. They have done more than enough," he reassured the worried woman who had likely seen many youngsters and trainers overexert their Pokemon to the point of permanent injury over the years. It couldn't be easy being a medical professional in a world where teenagers got state-mandated biological superweapons.
"Are you going directly to the stadium?" the nurse asked as a farewell.
Joey shook his head. "The thing isn't starting for another few hours. I think I'll go to a restaurant first and enjoy a nice big meal I didn't have to cook," he said as he turned around to leave. "Have a nice day!" he shouted while raising his hand.
A nice big expensive meal was just what the doctor had ordered, because, for better or for worse, after this tournament, his first year as a trainer was officially going to be over.
He wondered if anyone he knew was going to watch the tournament on television. He also wondered if Professor Oak had received his letter. He'd sent it yesterday evening but had paid for the express option. And when people said express in the Pokemon world, they meant it.
There were a lot of exciting things up ahead. He couldn't wait.
-/-
AN: The next chapters will be hype, for a reason you know and for a reason you can't know. If you wanna read ahead and support my endeavours there's always Patreon ;)