"Then go ahead and challenge it."
Gary stepped aside and gave up his place in line.
"Huh?" Barry was taken aback, then said in surprise, "You're pretty decent. Fine, I'll let you come in and watch my battle afterward. That way you'll know ahead of time which Pokémon the Leader uses and can plan your tactics."
"Heh."
Gary nodded with a smile.
Barry might have been reckless, but he was good-natured at heart. He genuinely wanted Gary to get a look at his Gym battle.
Unfortunately, that battle was never going to happen.
"Hey! I'm here to challenge the Gym, so open up already!" Barry shouted at the entrance.
"Gym challengers, please proceed this way."
Barry looked bewildered, but he followed the voice prompt over to a cabinet beside the reception desk.
"This Gym does not require a challenge. You may receive your Badge directly. Please help yourself."
With that, the cabinet door slid open, revealing a row of Beacon Badges inside.
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean? You're just handing out Badges?"
"That can't be right!"
Barry was completely stunned. For a rookie like him, this was unheard of.
"Correct. At this Gym, the Badge may be obtained without battling."
"That's… that's a foul! I'm fining you for that!" Barry said indignantly.
As the son of a Frontier Brain, Barry understood Gym regulations better than the average Trainer.
"Please help yourself."
The robot didn't care about any of that. Those were simply the instructions it had been programmed with.
"Fine, I'll take one, then."
Barry had gone through a lot of trouble to reach Sunyshore City. He couldn't very well walk away without a Badge just because the Leader had set things up this way, so he reached in and took one.
"Thank you for your patronage."
Barry stared at the Gym in frustration, then seemed to remember something. He turned to Gary and asked, "You didn't get to challenge it either, did you? Did you just take a Badge too?"
"No. I don't approve of a Gym like this," Gary said.
"Then what are you going to do?" Barry asked.
"Sinnoh isn't just Sunyshore City. There are other Gyms in the region — I'll just challenge those instead," Gary said, unbothered.
Any region could have up to eighteen Gyms, and Sinnoh had more than eight. As for Ash, two of the Badges in his collection had been obtained without a battle as well.
"That's a fair point, but you came all this way. Doesn't it feel awful not getting to fight anyone?" Barry asked.
Gary smiled slightly. "What, do you want to battle me?"
"Yeah! Are you up for it? I came all the way to Sunyshore City, and I'm strong," Barry said confidently.
Sunyshore Gym was recognized as the toughest Gym in Sinnoh. Any Trainer who dared to challenge it naturally had confidence in his own strength.
"All right, I'll battle you."
"What format do you want?"
Gary was also curious about Barry's strength. From what he'd seen, Barry looked like a Trainer at the level of a League Conference top-sixteen finisher. Most of the Pokémon on his team would be around Gym level, and perhaps one or two of his main ones were close to quasi-Elite.
"Let's do a three-on-three. If you win, I'll give you this TM. If you lose, you pay me one million," Barry said.
Gary was stunned for a moment. He hadn't expected Barry to be the type who liked wager battles.
Gary had never taken part in a gambling match before, but most wager battles were only two or three thousand — a few tens of thousands at most. A million was far too large.
"Do you usually open at a million?" Gary asked.
Even someone with pockets as deep as Gary's wouldn't casually push a wager that high. His family had money, but he wasn't about to throw it away.
"No!"
"Then why is it a million when you're betting against me?"
"Because I think you're a really strong Trainer, and the clothes you're wearing look expensive. Anyone can tell at a glance you're not short on cash," Barry said.
Gary was surprised.
He hadn't expected the reckless Barry to be that observant — able to judge whether someone had money just from how he dressed.
"A million's fine, but what TM is it? Is it worth that much?" Gary asked.
"Snarl. The move isn't all that powerful, but it's a spread attack. It can counter Double Team, and even if a Pokémon hides in the air, it'll still get hit. It's a very practical move," Barry said.
Snarl was indeed a spread move, just as Barry said, and it could hit airborne targets. It also went through Substitute. The key point was its added effect — it lowered the target's Special Attack every time it landed.
Its only drawback was low power. At just 50, it needed to be used by a Dark-type Pokémon to get the most out of it.
"All right, I accept," Gary said.
The two of them found a public battlefield near Sunyshore Gym that hadn't been used in a long while.
Both stood in the command boxes at either end of the field, ready to begin.
"Let me see what you've got. My vanguard is this one!"
"Go, Staraptor!"
Barry released his Pokémon first.
Go!
[LV44 Staraptor / Quasi-Elite]
Not bad at all — it actually had Elite potential.
Barry might be reckless, but he was smart about raising his Pokémon. He didn't simply catch everything the way Ash did; he decided whether to raise a Pokémon based on its own qualities.
Staraptor was a powerful bird as far as fourth-generation regional birds went, since it could learn equalizing moves like Endeavor.
"This battle's yours."
"Go, Magnezone."
Gary tossed a Poké Ball into the air without much ceremony.
Go!
The Poké Ball opened midair, a ball of white light shot out, and a Magnezone appeared.
[LV59 Magnezone / Champion]
"Whoa! Your Magnezone is a shiny!" Barry said in surprise.
The difference between an ordinary Magnezone and a shiny one was fairly obvious. One looked gray and silver, the other white and silver. Then there were the eyes — an ordinary Magnezone's were red, while a shiny's were blue.
"Yeah. I raised it back when it was still a Magnemite," Gary said.
"What?! How lucky can you get? That's a fine! A fine!" Barry yelled.
Gary looked awkward, unsure what was wrong with Barry.
"'Fine' is just my catchphrase. I'm not actually fining you," Barry explained.
"I know."
"Can we start?"
Gary already knew that and didn't care. Right now he just wanted to finish the battle quickly so he could get the Snarl TM.