[center][h2]Thomas Thorne[/h2][/center]

He wasn’t sure what he had expected the Champion to be like. With everything else running through his head, to be honest, he hadn’t given much thought to anything else, but if had to pick something he probably would have expected the Champion to be more… enthusiastic about this at least? Right now the older trainer was talking to them like a reluctant caretaker, someone who had been stuck looking after a bunch of kids when they’d rather be doing something else and, come to think of it, maybe that’s exactly what he was. He certainly didn’t sound like he wanted to be here and the way he was talking down to them really didn’t seem like something someone who was doing this willingly would do.

Instead he sounded blunt, impatient and dismissive. Perhaps that was Tom’s own biases at work, maybe he just wanted to see the Champion in the worst light possible, but when one of the other lottery winners got in his face about something Isaac had said it made it clear he wasn’t the only one a little put off by his attitude.

There was nothing worth catching on the route between here and Cherry Grove, huh? Objectively, that was probably true; there were stronger Pokémon to be caught in the more dangerous parts of the region, like the mountains, deep in cave or out in the middle of the ocean. But it wasn’t like they would be able to make it that far with just a single Pokémon right? Every trainer had to start somewhere and didn’t get the luxury of starting out with a strong and rare Pokémon to make the early part of their journey a breeze like some did. Some of them had to work for every bit of progress and needed to catch a team of these ‘worthless’ Pokémon to do it.

He’d caught both of his Pokémon on this route.

Maybe that was why he was still stuck here.

Tom slammed the heel of his palm against the wood of the bench he was sitting on, pushing himself up to his feet. [color=ed1c24]“Just let us catch whatever ‘worthless’ Pokémon we want Champ. You don’t need to hold our hands about everything.”[/color]