"Let the challenger in."
Reiji knew who had set this whole thing up: that little brat. He'd been the one to offend the kid first, and now the kid had found a way to trap him—cleanly and legally.
If Reiji walked away from the job, he'd owe a penalty, plus compensation to every trainer who'd come here for a Gym challenge, just to keep them from blowing up.
They'd thought of everything. Reiji didn't have a good option. It was probably the orchard manager's idea anyway. A kid wouldn't plan something this airtight—an old fox would.
"All right, bro," Senta chirped, dragging the words out like he was enjoying himself. "You'd better really try this time. Don't lose again."
Reiji's leg tensed. He wanted to kick the brat again.
"You're his big brother?"
The challenger walked in, saw Reiji standing on the field, and assumed he was the acting Gym Leader.
"I am," Reiji said, because Senta was already winking at him. "I'll take your challenge."
"Good. I already finished the fixed-target test with him. Next is moving discs, then the surfing contest. After that I get the Coral-Eye Badge," the challenger said. He was the same trainer from earlier—Senta had bailed halfway through, so the badge was still out of reach.
"Send out your Pokémon." Reiji released Poliwhirl. Water Gun target shooting? Fine. He could handle that.
"Go, Poliwhirl!" The challenger released his own Poliwhirl.
"Launch the disc," Reiji said. "You go first. One disc."
Senta lifted the remote and grinned. "Ready? I'm launching."
The challenger nodded.
"Poliwhirl, focus. Hit it!" The boy and his Poliwhirl stared at the launcher.
A dull yellow disc snapped out of the machine. The challenger's Poliwhirl fired Water Gun and clipped it cleanly in midair.
Reiji paused. Hitting a moving target meant the other Poliwhirl had put real work into its aim.
"Poliwhirl, your turn."
"Poli!" Reiji's Poliwhirl sounded almost offended.
The pace picked up. One disc became two, then three in a burst. The challenger's Poliwhirl dropped one. Reiji's didn't miss.
That was enough to decide it.
"Your Poliwhirl is trained well," Reiji said, then let his eyes slide toward Senta. "Better than certain people. Go practice."
Senta's face tightened. He'd wanted Reiji to lose so he could laugh, and instead Reiji won—and used the win to jab him right back.
The challenger didn't even hide it. "Thanks. Yours is strong." He glanced toward Senta as well. "Way stronger than someone who's already lost three badges and had to drag in outsiders."
Senta snapped, voice sharp. "Who's dragging in outsiders? If you've got guts, fight me!"
Reiji laughed once. "This is a Gym challenge, not a street fight. Get the next trainer in."
Senta bit down hard, eyes still on Reiji. "Just you wait."
When the next challenger stepped up, Reiji decided to save Poliwhirl's stamina. For now, he let Kingler and Pelipper fill in.
They were steady shooters. Three-disc and four-disc bursts, they hit every time—more than enough for rookies coming in cold.
The second challenger couldn't even clear the fixed targets, never mind the moving ones. Reiji sent them off to train and come back later.
After that, he started matching the lineup to the trainer. If it was a younger kid who wouldn't stop talking and kept bouncing in place, he used Kingler and Pelipper. If it was an older trainer who looked prepared and kept their head, he sent Poliwhirl out.
He turned over challenger after challenger. Before long, the Gym filled with the same whisper: someone strong had taken over the field, strong enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the real Gym Leader. The difficulty wasn't "normal" anymore.
Some rookies heard that and backed out, choosing to train first and return another day.
Others got more excited. They hadn't come to farm an easy badge—they wanted to test themselves against an expert, and they had no respect for the three lucky winners who'd slipped through earlier.
Reiji kept raising the bar. Fixed targets, then moving discs—one target, two, three, four. If someone could keep up, he escalated again: both sides firing at once, racing to hit the same disc, trading clean hits back and forth.
Only when a challenger stayed with him at that level did Reiji decide to push harder.
"Your Pokémon are trained well, kid," Reiji said, then turned and called to Senta. "Go get two pieces of black cloth."
Senta blinked. "Why would we need cloth?"
"Just go." Reiji didn't bother being polite. "If you refuse and I lose later, don't blame me. That'll be on you."
Senta's jaw clenched, but he waved the driver over to fetch it. He wasn't going to hand Reiji an excuse.
A young man stepped up with a Golduck and smiled like he'd already won. "What, you're giving up? Hurry up. I'm not leaving without my badge."
The driver returned with several strips of black cloth and handed them to Reiji.
Reiji folded one into a small band and tied it over Poliwhirl's eyes. He gave another to the driver. "Bring that to him."
The young man stared at the cloth. "What's that for?"
"Final round of the Water Gun test," Reiji said. "Blindfolded moving targets."
"What? Since when is that a thing?" The young man's smile slipped. "I've challenged this Gym before. Nobody told me that was part of it."
"Now you know," Reiji said, and left it at that.
He wasn't doing the surfing contest. He didn't have a Pokémon that could carry him properly.
Poliwhirl was too small. Kingler was slow in the water. Surfing was dead on arrival, so every challenger had to be stopped here, during target shooting.
Behind them, Senta had been called out of the Gym without anyone on the field noticing. The driver took over the launcher remote.
The young man had no choice. He tied the cloth over Golduck's eyes.
"Start with one disc," Reiji said. He nodded to the driver, then lifted his voice. "Poliwhirl, ready."
"Poli." Blindfolded, Poliwhirl faced the launcher and held still.
The disc snapped out.
Poliwhirl fired Water Gun at once and shattered it in the air.
The young man went stiff. "That's impossible. It can't even see."
Reiji kept his voice even. "Your turn."
At the back door, two people were watching: Senta, and a red-haired young woman beside him.
Senta's eyes were wide. "No way. How does it hit that?"
The woman spoke quietly, sharp enough to cut. "Senta. This is the trainer you dragged here?"
Senta's shoulders dipped. "Yeah. I wanted payback because he ignored me. I didn't think he was like this."
"And what did I teach you?" she said. "Don't use Pokémon to attack trainers. Why won't you listen?"
Senta folded immediately. "I know I was wrong."
"Good." She didn't even look at him when she gave the punishment. "Go copy my Blastoise training notes. Three times."
Senta tried to protest. "But—"
"Ten times."
His face drained. "I'm going."
That shout of "ten times" carried into the Gym. Reiji and the challenger both turned toward the back door—and only then did they notice the red-haired woman standing there.
The challenger's jaw went slack.
Reiji's throat dried out. Sweat broke across his back so fast it felt like someone had poured water down his shirt.
He recognized her. She was the red-haired woman he'd run into on the luxury cruise when he and Shun fled Kinnow Island.
Back then he'd knocked on a door at random—and somehow knocked on the Gym Leader's room. Even remembering it made his stomach twist.
He forced himself not to react. If he acted like he knew her, it was over.
He'd used Ditto to disguise himself at the time. She shouldn't recognize him. He needed that to be true.
Reiji turned back to the field as if nothing had happened and nodded at the challenger. "Go ahead. Take your shot."
If he could finish today's Gym challenges without being exposed, he'd leave Mikan Island tonight and never come back.
The boy on the field wasn't the Golduck trainer anymore. That one had blindfolded Golduck, failed to hit a single moving disc, and gotten eliminated immediately.
The new challenger didn't even look at Reiji. His eyes stayed glued to the red-haired woman.
"I'm not battling you," the boy said. "I'm challenging Cissy."
Reiji stared at him for a beat.
Great. Another one.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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