<Starter for @badmusejail>
Green cracked his back loudly after the dust settled, grin on his face.
“That was really good!” he praised, Eevee turning from her crumpled opponent and returning to sit proudly at Green’s heel. The grunt didn’t seem like they believed him, but Green continued.
“No, I mean it. Hey, you battled me last week right, and you didn’t get as far as you did today, that’s improvement. You’re making progress and that’s more than a lot of people can say for themselves. Don’t be too hard on yourself, okay?”
And Green meant it. Even these lower-level trainers showed so much potential, so much more than the headstrong and obnoxiously cocky gym challengers he’d been dealing with.for the better half of a decade. They were fundamentally better enrichment, left him more energized than the temper tantrum throwing aces that bitched when they lost and got themselves kicked out.
And that’s to say nothing of the actually incredibly powerful trainers he’d faced here. Not just powerful, but skilled, and there was a difference. The divide between someone who could brute force a problem and actually work their way around it was eons wide. And the more time he spent in the Rocket training grounds, the more he realized that the bulk of them strove to be the latter. Even if they hadn’t all risen to the challenge yet.
This level of challenge and engagement alone would have made his predicament worth it. Without question. But coupled with the idea that he was actually doing some good, even if it meant getting his hands dirty? It just sweetened it all. Not to mention the slow discovery of his Grandfather’s actual history. Though admittedly, he was trying to put that on the back burner, as if he could compartmentalize it. He couldn’t, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
His challenger had left, leaving Green and Eevee to their own devices to train together. He didn’t notice at first, so wrapped up in their own teamwork, but the area had almost completely cleared of other people, the way the forest clears in the presence of a top predator. Green almost wondered if he had missed something, when he noticed that another individual had entered the training space.
“Yo.” Green greeted, cocky as ever. He didn’t quite recognize this person- he was horrible with faces and relied on peoples signature styles to remember their names until he repeated interactions with them a good handful of times. It was trouble when he first became a gym leader and started attending more casual events. He registered that the man had a powerful presence about him, and that pinged his radar. Unfortunately, that only had the effect of making him just a little bit more insufferable.
Maybe if he’d had the benefit of recognizing the man that walked in, he would have understood why the rest of the rockets quietly exited the training space.
