"We hope to see you again!" the nurse beamed. I grabbed my Pokéballs and put them back on my belt. I began to head off when another trainer started talking to me.
"Isn't it great" she said, gesturing towards Nurse Joy.
"Huh?" I blurted out, following her gloved hand. "Oh...yeah I guess"
"It's so nice that it's free. I always have a lot of trouble with my Pokémon battles, that I'm usually here two or three times a day." she prattled on "I just hope my Pokémon don't hate me for all of this. I just want to be a good trainer like my dad was..."
"Are you just starting out?" I ask.
"Yeah!" she opens the side of her jacket and points to her trainer card. "I've yet to actually beat a gym leader, but..." her milk-white face went from happy to sad. She started to look at the ground and gripped her orange shirt with her hand.
"I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this to be honest. I always try to keep a happy face and train, but this is the third time I've been here today, and I don't think I'm good enough for a gym leader yet." she sighed. "I'm just so happy this is free, if this cost money I don't think I could ever be a trainer with all the mistakes I've been making."
"It gets worse, you know." I added. "Pokemon Centers may be free, but do you know how much money you waste on everything else?" She stared at me with her big sapphire blue eyes and moved her hair out of her face.
"So, the only way to get money is to beat other trainers, or gym leaders. Now the latter is fine, they always have money, but the former. Oh man, when you beat them and they walk up to you with their hand out for a good game handshake. It pisses me the **** off." I continue on "Imagine that, you've wasted around 15 minutes in this stupid fight beating this kid with your superior Pokemon, and he just comes at you with his hand like "Oh jeez, I don't have any money. I hope he'll accept this crappy handshake I give him instead". DOES THIS KID KNOW HOW MUCH TIME AND TROUBLE HE CAUSED ME. Poisoning my Pokemon, and knocking out another. Revives aren't ****ing cheap either. You can't even ask them for money either, because that's bad sportsmanship."
"And if you're an actual GOOD Pokémon trainer like me, you gotta abide by the stupid 50% rule. So if I had around 100,000 pokedollars, GUESS WHO GETS HALF BECAUSE I LOST. The amount of times I'll buy 50,000 pokedollars worth of goods to beat a gym leader only to be outclassed by him, and then to add insult to injury I HAVE TO GIVE HIM HALF OF MY REMAINING MONEY." I seethed. "It only gets worse from there as well. I'm kicked out on my ass and told "try again next time" and have to do a walk of shame back to the damn Pokemon center to get my Pokemon back up to health, which incidentally is why I'm here right now. So now, I'm going to have to beat some weaklings to get more money back, oh but only if they have some because otherwise I'll get that stupid handshake again that I despise with a passion, and then finally when I get some money from the few rich pricks who actually have some, I'll be able to try this again, but oh no. Since I've spent the whole ****ing day training, I won't be able to take on the gym anymore because it's night time and it's time for bed."
"But at least the Pokemon Centre is a freestay lodge for trainers, right?" She broke in.
"Hahahahaha. Oh man, if you can get there in time." I disagreed "There's a limit on how many trainers they can take in and it's always a small stupid number like 40 or something. Look around you, girl. There's more then 50 trainers waiting for their Pokemon to be healed, and possibly more in this city. I mean, if I'm lucky enough to get a room, I'm grateful but I usually never am, so this means I either gotta set up camp somewhere close by, or go to a hotel. But before that, we've got feeding time. I gotta eat, my Pokémon gotta eat and Poké-food ain't cheap either. Especially for someone like me who has six Pokémon on him at all times, all different types requiring different foods, and traipsing around the city to several places to find the best offers they can on Pokefood is a massive hassle that wastes more time, and even then you're spending around 10,000 Poke dollars on food, along with the additional costs of medicine that'll you probably need several of this is coming into the vicinity of 30,000, and when trainers barely give you anything these days good luck with that."
"Maybe it gets better?" I continued "Maybe when I get super strong Pokemon and win battles left and right against strong trainers who ACTUALLY have money instead of just little kids who barely have anything, but LOVE to poison, or put my Pokémon to sleep, but nonono. I have to deal with all this dumb **** l have no control over and lose tons of money to. Hell, even if it did get better, you know how HARD it is to catch Pokémon these days? Those awful Pokeball companies have made Pokéballs flimsy as ****. If you fail to catch a Pokémon, the ****ING ball breaks. You know how many balls I needed to catch my damn Pikachu? 31, and that took around an hour since the little ******* kept paralyzing my guys and wasting ti-" I stopped and looked at the girl, who seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"Uh...I mean, h-have fun Pokémon training kid. It'll be a whole lot of fun. hahaha....hah...." I promised "Like, this has just been m-my experience with Pokémon training, I'm sure yours will be different." I check my Pokegear and noticed the time. "Oh man, I'm pretty late."
I rush ahead to the door, and look back at the girl who hasn't moved an inch since I talked to her. "Uh...good luck" I shout back with a smile on my face.
"I...shouldn't have told her that" I whispered to myself as I left the Pokemon Center.