Lucas can't give verbal orders, and Barry can't focus on the right things sometimes-- but they leave Twinleaf, get a Pokedex, and try becoming trainers anyways.
"...are you guys teaching Chimchar sign language?"
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※ Current Progress: Veilstone City...
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Eterna City Gym is large and beautiful-- like a nature park, crowded with lots of grass Pokemon in every corner. Vines strung down from the roof, encrusting the open ceiling with ivy. The walkway is peppered with little bridges and long streams, all built to a size suited for Pokemon more so than humans.
Luce found himself enamoured by the sights.
This was much more than anything he'd ever imagined. In the games, they were a one-room structure that was either a structured maze, or a clock embellishment that served as the Gym puzzle. He was fairly sure those were similar in the manga as well.
There was a large, grassland battlefield in a raised platform near the end. That could be seen from the entrance, but the tall trees between the roads and the various notes of Trainers wandering about made it difficult to find the route immediately.
Looking up, Luce found the currently empty audience stands, but they were high, narrow bridges made of steel rather than rows of long seats. One could argue those were actually for gardeners to tend to the higher plants, rather than for the audience.
"Here for the gym challenge, kids?"
Standing at the fence of one of the bridges and holding onto the ceiling light for balance, is none other than the gym leader Gardenia herself.
Barry's jaw drops at that. "Hey, isn't that dangerous?"
Luce nods vigorously, because those bridges are high, and Gardenia was dancing the edge of that height like it was Tuesday for her. Barry did call her a tomboy, but this has absolutely nothing to do with how stereotypically masculine she prefers to act.
In response to that, Gardenia simply laughs, spinning in her spot twice before launching right off.
Barry and Luce made shrieks of horror, though the latter does so in a silent variant-- but Gardenia catches herself on a vine, yodeling in pure joy as she swings down a tree to the other, peaking at a new vine before swinging right down once more.
Chimchar squeals at the sight, hopping excitedly on Luce's shoulder before pouncing to Barry's, interfering in Starly' personal space but ignoring it pointedly. He looks back at Luce as if he was expecting permission to run ahead and do his monkey thing.
"Spitfire, no!" Barry says for Luce.
Gardenia lands squarely before them, a chuckle at her lips. A Cherubi had latched onto her shoulder on the way down, chirping happily as Gardenia posed with her.
"That's one lively Chimchar you've got!" she's endeared, and in a similar situation Luce really wants to snuggle that Cherubi, "we've had quite an empty day today, so you can challenge the gym now if you want. I'm Gardenia, the gym leader."
