She must’ve succeeded in becoming a Dragon Master! Pokemon League Champion? You can’t get much better than that! But, wait… if Rebecca took the title from her that means…
“Whoa– you’re the Champion!?”
“I’ll be sure to tell her that. She may have mentioned you a couple times but my memory isn’t the best around.”
Rebecca nodded, resting her chin on her hand before using her other hand to take out her trainer’s license that had her champion registration on it. She offered it to Ash to look at.
“Yup, I’ve been the Unova Champion for eight years running now. It would’ve been ten but I had a little incident with Team Plasma ten years back that delayed things for two years.”
“Wait– League!? The Pokemon League? Iris is there!?”
“O’course I do, met her while I was on my journey through Unova.”
Rebecca nodded, softly chuckling a little.
“Mhm, she fills in for me sometimes when I’m sick and can’t battle up there. I ended up taking the champion title from her when we were both a lot younger. She’s older than she looks.”
The compliment brought a smile to the young trainer’s face, happy to hear someone praise his battling skills. Hearing her assumption, Ash tilts his head. Younger? Funny, it was usually the opposite.
“Younger…? Aha, no one’s ever told me that before!”
“Hm, maybe I’ve been spending too much time around Iris then…”
“She certainly always makes everyone at the League feel younger with her shenanigans.”
The champion got dragged into a prank or two the younger Dragon master came up with while she was up at the League.
The boy nods, following her inside. At her direction, he plopped down at the kitchen table, glancing around the house. Despite being able to only see one room, the house seemed quite large! He focused his attention back on her as she approached.
“Oh, y’ saw that? Yeah, it was a great battle–!”
It would’ve been better if he’d won. It was a total curb-stomp battle, one that he didn’t feel very great about. Nobody would, after all. Pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, Ash accepted the ice pack, removing his hat to place it on his head.
“I’m Ash Ketchum! Nice to meet’cha!”
“Oh I certainly agree, I was very impressed with your performance. ”
She had been so impressed at the time that she went through most of his battles from the conference to see his strategies. The ideas some trainers came up with absolutely fascinated her sometimes.
“A pleasure to finally meet you, Mister Ketchum. I have to admit though, and I hope you don’t take offense to this, I was expecting you to look a little younger. I honestly have no idea why.”
Ash reaches out to accept her hand and propping himself back up.
“It’s th’least I can do.”
The champion led him inside, plopping him down at the kitchen table before going into the fridge to get him an ice pack. Rebecca adjusted her headphones before finally remembering where she had seen the kid before.
“You’re the kid from the Lily of the Valley Top 4, aren’t you? I remember watching your battle on TV a while back.”
She handed him the ice pack, sitting down at the other side of the table with her chin in her hand.
The champion walked outside with a worried look, closing the door behind her as she gave the other a nod of acknowledgement before kneeling down to look him over.
“Indigo said you might have gotten hurt. Are you feeling alright?”
Back in the Game 