Cheren’s not up yet but I think he will be making a few calls today. He wants to book a round-trip flight to Sinnoh. He plans on staying for a week to visit his palemate and catch up.

He also wants to tell Crystal about the confirmation that the champions will have an exhibition tournament. He’ll get her and the Mister tickets if she’d like.

But right now he’s still sleeping low blood pressure and all

So, end-of-the-year evaluations are over. It consisted of a written test (Monday) and a skill test (Tuesday). Today was mainly for those old enough to start their journeys—if they passed both tests, they got to challenge Cheren to an official gym battle. Now that trainer’s school is over for the year, the kids can focus on end-of-the year stuff for their academic schools. Some of them still volunteered to help at the gym over the summer, though.

Overall, I think the kids did really well and he’s proud of them. He looks tired but there’s a content smile on his face. He won’t tell me who he gave badges to, though he assures me each of them earned it.

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The Driftveil Tournament was a preview for the Regional and World Leader Tournaments that occurred in January. The latter tournaments were exclusively gym leaders only.

This summer would be the Type Expert tournaments, and to get fans involved, there are amateur tournaments going on right now. About four trainers for each type are chosen to participate the major tournaments in the summer, going against gym leaders, too.

Also, I think Clay would try to get the champions to agree to an exhibition tournament on the last day.

Why I’m figuring this out I don’t know

He is determined to beat Ruby at a pokemon battle before the PWT Type Experts this summer. Just once would be enough.

I remember one of the first posts I made on this blog was about if he envies Ruby’s skills as a trainer, and he does a little because he expects more from himself. He still has this complex toward protags, but I don’t think it is as bad as before.

He has accepted that he’ll probably never defeat Touya or Touko, but recently he realized he can’t settle on never beating Ruby. He recognizes his natural skills for battling and he’s had more experience than him, so it makes sense for Ruby to be better. But it’s just something he wants to prove, I guess. That he deserves being a gym leader.

… Actually, I think he wants to prove it to him as much as he wants to prove it to himself.