He's Too Busy Winning

Thankfully, Blue seems too preoccupied with the battle to take notice of your arrival. "Squirtle, use Withdraw!" he commands quickly, his pokemon hurriedly obeying his orders and retreating inside its shell just as the huge body of Brock's Onix tackles into it. The shell of Squirtle is knocked flying, and ricochets off the far wall of the gym, but, when it lands behind Onix, the tiny turtle pokemon hops out, seemingly completely unharmed. "Water Gun, now!" calls Blue, and Squirtle sends a jet of water shooting out of its mouth towards Onix. The super effective move is too much for the big rock snake to take, and it faints, Brock hurriedly recalling it to its pokeball before it collapses on someone.

"Your winner is... Blue!" announces a voice over the speaker system, and Brock goes over to shake his hand and give him his boulder badge. The two exchange words, but you're not close enough to hear them; you assume it's just Brock congratulating Blue and Blue being a cocky bastard as usual. Once he has his badge, your rival saunters out of the gym; for one horrible moment you think he's seen you as he turns to face the crowd, but thankfully he doesn't seem aware of your presence, as he turns and exits the building.

"Would the next challenger please step forward?" The announcer's voice echoes through the gym again as Brock places his pokeballs in the gym's healing machine. You wait for someone else to step forward, but no-one seems to be doing anything, so you take a deep breath to calm your nerves before stepping into the arena.

"Oh, hey there!" smiles Brock, turning to face you. "Amber, right? I figured you'd be coming in soon. You ready to battle?"

You're continually amazed by his respectful nature; the lack of sexist insults from a male trainer is nice but always throws you off a little just with how out-of-the-ordinary it is.

"Um... yeah, I'm ready," you nod, feeling almost as nervous as you did before your first battle against Blue. And we all know how that turned out...

"Ok," Brock nods. "You have no badges, so I'll use lower-level pokemon as per the league's rules. Two pokemon each, no healing items permitted. Let's begin!"

You hear the announcer yelling over the speaker system, the crowd cheering for the start of another battle, but the sounds all wash over you. All you can hear is your heart pounding in your chest as you get ready for your first gym battle...