Chapter Text
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@sinnohleagueofficial
Please be advised that the champion will be taking no challenges this week. Challenges to the Elite Four will continue as normal.
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"I'm sorry," the woman says, two perfectly manicured fingers sliding the paperwork back across the desk. "Without an approved letter of endorsement from Galar, you can't be registered with the League."
Trish, her nametag reads, printed in pretty blue and white. Sleek and modern, just like the rest of the building that houses the Galar Pokemon League, a far cry from the ancient castle that Sinnoh relies on. A far cry too from the Pokemon Centre couch she'd slept on the night before; and it was funny, the places you could go in a matter of days, from a castle to one step from sleeping on the streets. Not that Trish looks like she understands that, with her red nails and horn-rimmed glasses and general disdain for anyone that walks in begging to be thrown a single bone.
Angie picks up her trainer's card from the counter, abandoning the rest of the useless paperwork that the woman refuses to file. "There's nothing you can do today?" she asks one more time, just to be sure. "There's no one else I can speak to?"
"Everyone in the building will tell you the same thing," Trish says in a clipped voice that suggests she is growing bored of this conversation. "It's not only a League rule - it's also a matter of import and visa laws. You can't just come to Galar on a whim and decide to train pokemon."
"Scientists can come here to catch and study pokemon on short notice," Angie points out. With every inch that Trish's brow pinches, her voice wanes; she can see already, it is a hopeless endeavour.
"Are you a scientist?" Trish asks pointedly. "If the board of scientific studies will give you a license, you're welcome to catch and study pokemon as you please, but that still won't qualify you for a League registration."
"I'm not a scientist, but I am-"
"Everyone has to go through the same process in Galar. No exceptions."
Angie bites her tongue to stem the bitter hopelessness that rises like bile in her chest, the churn of her thoughts that turn ugly the longer she stands here. No point, all for nothing, waste of time. They'll all see you coming a mile away. "Do you know where I can get a letter of endorsement, then?"
"Letters of endorsement are written by gym leaders," Trish says, "so I would suggest a gym. One of our League gyms would be the best choice."
One of our League gyms; narrowing it down to eight choices, none of which were located in Wyndon. "Thankyou," Angie says in a voice that rings hollow, and walks away before she can fight, or scream, or cry. Not that walking away will stop the tears from welling up in her eyes anyway.
The weather outside is glorious despite the bleak outcome of her day, the sky cloudless and the air just warm enough to be pleasant. She'd expected the city of Wyndon to be cold, being so far in the north and often surrounded by snowfields, but the summer days she'd experienced here so far had been exceptional. And the city itself, too, was beautiful, with its traditional red-brick buildings and neatly paved streets, packed in around modern skyscrapers and hand-crafted gardens. Designed to be a showpiece for the region, not unlike Hearthome in Sinnoh, the home that she misses more every day she is here alone.
The grounds outside its stadium are stunning too, though empty on this day, when there are no celebrations or battles planned in the near future. Not that Angie is complaining - she is grateful to be able to move out of Trish's view and sit down on a bench in a quiet corner, out of the way of the few people that pass here and there.
She reaches into her pocket as she slumps onto the bench, digging out the pokeball that is hiding at the very bottom, where it is safe. Arcanine barely waits for her to summon him before he bounds into existance, his claws cutting furrows in the grass as he skids to a halt and spins, watching her as if she might immediately want to play with him.
"What are you doing, silly dog?" she asks, and he whimpers and barks and spins around in a circle, chasing the fluff of his tail. "Do you know you're supposed to be big and scary? Your ancestors looked after kings, you know."
Arcanine stops, huffing out at breath, and then flops over in the grass as if mortally wounded.
"Yeah," Angie sighs along with him, elbows resting on her knees. "That's what I think too."
What do we do now? The question is reflected in Arcanine's eyes, his head angled to look up at her from the grass. Not for the first time, she wishes that she'd made some kind of plan before she'd blindly purchased a plane ticket and run here, thinking that it would be easy to just come to a new country and straighten out her brain and wait for the fires in her life to die. Not that she would have ever anticipated a League turning down a champion that just wanted to register to battle in their region, but five minutes of reading before she came here would have told her that battling in Galar wasn't a good back-up plan if sitting around was no longer a viable option.
"And now we're broke and we have no job," Angie says to Arcanine as he rolls in the grass. "And no way to make money if these idiots-"
A man walks past with a Thievul on a leash and a mean eye and her mouth shuts, her own gaze watching him warily as he eyes Arcanine. Her pokemon feels it too and climbs to his feet, slinking back through the grass to try and curl himself behind her legs, his head falling in her lap. "Coward," she tells him fondly, leaning down to wrap an arm around his neck in the pretense of control until the man is gone. "Don't worry about him. If he can't get a pokemon to follow him without a leash, he's not going to pick a fight with me."
Arcanine doesn't move, even after the man is gone. Angie does, but only to sit up and pull out her phone, her other hand burying itself in the fur along his back. It's comforting, the softness and the warmth, the depth of the pile; the rumble of his throat against her leg eases the anxious twisting of her stomach and the shortness of her breath, clearing her mind long enough for her to think.
This was the reason she'd kept him all these years, even after he'd proven useless as a battling companion, why he stayed with her when even the pokemon she trained and battled with every day didn't; why she'd risked public scandal to get him the certificate that allowed him to come here as a medical companion rather than just a pokemon. She doesn't know what she would do without him now. Sit here and feel cold and lonely, she supposes.
"Hammerlocke is just down the road," she says to him as she types one-handed on her phone, her other hand scratching the itch along his spine. "And that's the closest League gym. And the strongest gym in the region." She pauses to consider it, lips pursed. "We always do it the hard way anyway, don't we?"
Arcanine looks up at her from the corner of his eye, apparently without anything to say. "Well, you don't do it the hard way," she amends. "You're a freeloader and you know it." He huffs a breath and looks away again, disinterested in slander.
Fine. She'll do it herself. She can squeeze a train ticket out of her pocket, and a pokemon centre will feed and house a trainer with any card for three days, and a meeting with the gym leader on short notice...well, she can pull strings for that. She deserves one advantage in life, after all the work she's done to get absolutely nowhere at all.
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