The girl he was talking to seemed to clam up and shake her head no. It was a bit weird. Maybe she figured she made a huge misstep with the weather line. It was awkward sure but it wasn't anything to get so upset about. "OK...well I'm going up that way... so yeah...you two try not to fight any more OK? Yeah..." Katya was as chipper as ever, waving at the two girls as Erik turned around and headed up the hill towards Oak's lab. "[color=007236]Rose![/color]"

It wasn't all that steep of a climb but still Erik was glad to be done with it. The outside of the giant laboratory  look like it had been well kept anyway. All the herbivore Pokemon around here it was hard to see how it couldn't be. Cries could be heard from all over the area. Most of them sounded happy at least. Erik was in awe of how how massive the complex was, while Katya was just breathing in the clean-ish air and fragrant scents coming off her fellow Grass types.

As Erik walked up to the door a younger looking girl came running out moving at a Rapidash clip. She was flying by too fast for Erik to even ask what was going on or why she was running like that. Must have been excited to start her journey or something. He could only shrug as he continued in past the still open door. From the sounds of things there were people talking to the left of the hallway. Just as well it looked slightly cleaner than anything that was on the right hand side of the lobby.

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Gary was taken back by the kind of reaction he got from the assembled group of trainers. A couple of them seemed way too excited to be seeing him, the youngest one was so overwhelmed she ran off. [i]Nice to know I still have the effect on people.[/i] The other two were just...there. [i]I remember when I had the entire group though.[/i] As Erik shuffled in behind the people, in place of the departed Claire, The Viridian Gym Leader figured that was as good as it was going to get for now.

"All right rookies, you may think that you're just going to have a walk in the park through this league, but there are some tricks up our Leaders sleeves that you might not be ready for. I should know. I took this challenge ten years ago before I was hired on as Viridian Gym Leader. You all are going to be travelling across brutal terrain, over oceans, through mountains. You'll be fighting again wild animals, ten times the levels of the Pokemon you have with you. But at the end, is a pretty nice reward. Money, a bunch of it, as well as a claim to fame that will never die. Champion of Kanto. If you're ready for that, then come forward and grab your Pokedexes. If not, you may want to follow that little girl out the door right now."