Hard Enough

There was a noticeable pulse in the air of the Gym that grew as we approached the middle of the day. People from around Pewter and even further afield had begun to trickle in gradually despite there only being one or two matches for badges early in the morning.

I was expecting this but I was still taken a bit off guard by the almost electric feel in the air.

I spent most of my time going through the regular motions but I could see it affecting others as they completed their tasks with an energy that saw them wrapping up much quicker than usual. This left them idle, which was never a good thing. So I started assigning the various Gym trainers odd jobs such as taking out pokemon from the reserve and having them train on the battle courts while offering to fight any takers.

Others I sent out to patrol the streets or to even drop in on various playgrounds.

It got to the point that I ended up handing out garbage bags and pointing them out the front door with there still being two hours before the match.

Rachel approached me with her transceiver raised. She was obviously recording what I assumed to be a gym video, or perhaps it was a livestream?

“The man! The mountain! Brock! How are things going today? Any nerves about the match?” she said with a chipper tone.

“Nah, This is old business for me now. The attention might be new but we’ve been running this show for a while now. The biggest point of interest will be for who gets chosen. That will impact how I fight the most,” I said easily.

Before I could say anything else, Dennis marched up and coughed into a fist. “Brock! There appears to be a number of people coming in looking to reserve seats for the coming match… should we let them in? There aren’t any people fighting at the moment,” he said.