Giovanni
With how long he’s been a gym leader, a summons from the Indigo League is common enough that he’d hardly blinked when his secretary had passed him a familiar looking envelope. It happens at least once a year, twice when there’s a gifted trainer that sweeps through their ranks with all the chaotic force of a hurricane. A new champion is herald for change. It’s new blood that trickles from the very top, dripping on the lower echelons from elite four to gym leader and even further down. Truthfully, he’d been expecting such an invitation after that fateful encounter with the girl.
The change comes with no real surprise. Isolated and distanced as he is from league business and his supposed peers, he still manages to hear of the rumours whispered within the halls of every gym and every pokémon centre. It’s the worst kept secret that Agatha had long been planning on retiring and that Lorelei would be stepping down to focus on her academic career. Nor is he surprised when he’s asked once again, for the eighth year in a row, to assume one of the vacant positions.
Two decades ago, such an invitation might have come as an honour. What trainer hasn’t thought of becoming a member of the Elite Four at least once in their career. Giovanni would be lying if he said otherwise. Back when being a gym leader had been more than a front, a sleight of hand to fool a captive audience. Then he’d been pulled away by other pursuits, tugged and leashed to the ever expanding Team Rocket. What use did he have for the instability of such a position when he had his own kingdom to oversee?
It’s a safe assumption that Lance only asked as a formality, that much is obvious when the boy looks shocked when Giovanni accepts. It only snowballs from there, the great change, the great winds of that buffets all of the League. And there is the girl at the head of it, hardly the victorious champion he’d been expecting. From the first meeting and onward, all Giovanni had seen was a girl ready to tumble and fall at one more strong gust.
He waits for her, seated on a bench outside the Indigo Plateau, hardly interested in the view from so high above. Giovanni takes one look at the girl, sees the unmistakable red tinge to her eyes and his attention is back to the vast stretch of dark forest below.
“What sport would there be in betting on such sure odds?” He leans back on the bench, arms thrown over the back as though he were some simpleton caught up in the splendour of yet another mundane sunset. “I’d come all this way expecting to be challenged. At the very least to be entertained. Thus far, I’m only bored.”
Smoke curled in thin tendrils from the cigarette and vanished into the wind. The thin amber warmth of the butt did little for the chill that settled down her spine and drifted like detritus into her toes. Unspoken frustration bubbled under her chest, it was unspeakable. There had been a news headline she’d seen, one that blared past her vision in a bright red banner. New Indigo Champion Comes With Host of Disciplinary Issues in School. They dragged out her school records and aired out her dirty laundry for the entire world to say. At least what they could find. Leaf failed to mention her track record of kleptomania.
In a meeting of college graduates Leaf flunked-out of middle school. When she was in school she spent it in a haze of inattention and ‘lost’ homework. Otherwise, she played hooky, smoked, drank, and got in fights. Her resume was sixteen gym badges, a flawless defeat of the elite four, and a champion’s title. The skill set needed for running a successful meeting was not one she possessed. She was a good trainer but as one commenter brusquely put it: ‘she was not prepared for the politics of the role of champion.’ The longer she stayed on this mountain the more she was certain of it.
Wasn’t that her life. She can’t do that and she can’t do this. It was impossible and she needed to give that idea up. Isn’t it cute that a little poor girl from Viridian things she can be champion? How many nights did Leaf reason and argue with herself, that it was time to give it up. It was time to go home. And how many times did Leaf took herself off that edge? Too many times to count.
Leaf’s toes tapped a tight pattern against the pavement as her jaw flexed and tightened. She spared Giovanni a side-eye, pinning him with a cold glare. Leaf scoffed, pulling the cigarette from her lips. A pet victory on him in her back pocket didn’t feel so satisfying now. She couldn’t fight her way into a smooth meeting and good press. Giovanni didn’t need to say anything to irk her into frustration-- the irony of the situation alone did the job.
“You’re losing good money, and here I thought you were a gambling man,” Leaf muttered to her hands. She took a last drag from the cigarette then ground it out against the bench arm. “Do you think I’m going to give up?”
It’s an ironic, rhetorical question and if Giovanni was smart he wouldn’t answer it. Fourteen-years-old picked fights with men like him if they were at least two things: stupid and stubborn. With a thin grin, she added vindictive to the list. She writ the vow of his defeat in her blood and sweat; And handed it to him with a set jaw and a furious gaze. With a pretty paycheck and her pride on the line, they’d have to throw Leaf off the mountain.
“It’s hilarious,” Leaf said. “They bitch about my middle-school report card and you spent twenty years the boss of Team Rocket, right under their nose.”
