A new type of Pokémon Center

After leaving Cerulean City, Gongping continued assessing the remaining Gyms. Compared with Cerulean City, the others were truly a sorry sight: either their Gym Leaders lacked sufficient experience, or some of their Gym Leaders were constantly away with no fixed whereabouts.

Once Agatha had also finished this round of assessments, the two reviewed the Gyms' conditions together and finalized the results.

Apart from the Cerulean Gym and Cinnabar Gym, which retained their Gym status, all the other Gyms were downgraded and temporarily stripped of their qualifications. All the Badges they had issued were also invalidated in the Pokémon League's records.

With only a dozen or so days left before the Indigo League began, this move by the Kanto Region immediately sparked widespread outcry. Six Gyms were marked red in this assessment, three had their qualifications revoked without being assessed, and another needed an immediate assessment of its new Gym Leader after the previous one passed away. Thus, Gongping and Agatha had actually assessed seven Gyms. Apart from the Cinnabar Gym and Cerulean Gym, the other eight had all lost their qualifications.

It had to be said that some Trainers really had gone from having eight Badges to none, effectively losing their eligibility to enter the Indigo League.

A wave of criticism rose online again, but a single statement from Gongping's verified account left them speechless.

"The Pokémon League publishes these Gym assessment results every season. Choosing nothing but these eight Gyms means you were hoping to take a shortcut in the first place. Trainers like that aren't suited to entering the Indigo League anyway."

Gongping's words were forceful. He also attached the eight Gym Badges he had earned to enter the previous season's Indigo League, along with the corresponding assessment scores of those eight Gyms.

Besides the Indigo League, Gongping also listed his Gym Badges from the Unova Region and Hoenn Region, along with their assessment scores from the local Pokémon Leagues.

This model-student approach of showing off his report card left quite a few Trainers rather speechless. They had not expected the Sandstorm King to be a little petty, going online to trade insults with people whenever he had nothing else to do. Had all the criticism he received a while ago made him start retaliating?

Gongping logged off after posting. As a newly appointed member of the Elite Four, his workload had been enormous lately. After finishing this round of Gym assessments, he still needed to head over to Lorelei to prepare for the opening ceremony of a brand-new Pokémon Center.

The Elite Four's offices were all within the Indigo League grounds, in a single building. Besides the Elite Four and the Champion who led them, over a hundred Pokémon League staff members worked there on various tasks.

On the other side of the mountain range lay the venue for the Johto Region's Silver Conference, where Johto's Elite Four also had their offices.

As the location of the Pokémon League headquarters, the greater Kanto area differed from other regions in that a single Champion oversaw both regions, with an impressive lineup of eight Elite Four members under them.

Lorelei's office was on a different floor from Agatha's. Compared with Agatha's side, Lorelei had far more staff, and quite a few of them were wholly engrossed in going online. These were the so-called paid internet commenters.

At the Sandstorm King's arrival, several staff members gave him admiring looks. His report-card post had put him among the trending topics again. It had to be said that this Elite Four member, Gongping, really liked stirring things up.

Lorelei welcomed Gongping warmly and took him into her office before handing him several documents. "Two Pokémon Centers are opening over the next few days, and on the same day, too, so we'll each go to one."

Gongping opened the documents and took a look, feeling a little puzzled. "Yinhua City? I remember that city having a Pokémon Center on both its northern and southern sides."

"A storm flattened a Pokémon Center in Yinhua City a while ago, and even Nurse Joy went missing. The local authorities decided to rebuild it as a new type of Pokémon Center, but funds were tight. Negotiations with the Pokémon League continued until now, and they finally settled on building a new-style Pokémon Center."

These new-style Pokémon Centers added various new facilities and functions to the traditional Pokémon Center's combined lodging and aid services, expanding their comprehensive capabilities. The most important addition was ecological rehoming.

"Over the past few years, the number of abandoned Pokémon has kept growing. Some Trainers even release Pokémon in places other than where they originally caught them."

Good Trainers used their Pokédex to screen Pokémon as they caught them, keeping suitable ones and immediately releasing unsuitable ones on the spot. Some Trainers, however, only decided after a long time that a Pokémon did not suit them, then released it wherever they happened to be traveling.

Pokémon like these often met extremely tragic ends. Some were captured and taken away by groups like Team Rocket, while others were caught outright by unscrupulous merchants and served to customers as food.

The Pokémon League struggled to investigate cases of Pokémon being released midway through a journey, away from where they had originally been caught. To prevent such situations, some new-style Pokémon Centers had now begun adding facilities for keeping them.

The Pokémon Centers would take in Pokémon that Trainers planned to release, paying roughly the purchase price of ten Poké Balls. This encouraged Trainers to participate while also preventing more tragedies.

There were more and more new Trainers now. Every year, besides the newcomers who went to Pallet Town to collect their Starter Pokémon as usual, local Pokémon Centers also offered an incentive policy: in addition to their Starter Pokémon from Pallet Town, they received another Pokémon for free.

Compared with veteran Trainers, new Trainers were more willing to accept somewhat weaker Pokémon. Their worldviews were still developing, and they readily formed deep bonds, making it less likely that these Pokémon would suffer emotional wounds again.

"A little while ago, a Trainer from the Sinnoh Region caught a large number of rare baby Dragon-type Pokémon there, intending to raise one exceptionally powerful Dragon-type Pokémon. Afraid of being blamed for catching so many at once, he bought a plane ticket to Kanto and sold all those dozen or so baby dragons to a local restaurant in Fuchsia City."

A trace of heartache entered Lorelei's voice as she mentioned this. "The local restaurant didn't recognize those Pokémon from the Sinnoh Region at all, nor did they know how rare they were. You can imagine how those dozen or so babies were cruelly cooked and eaten just like that. Although we investigated and took action against the restaurant afterward, the person responsible had already returned to the Sinnoh Region."

Ever since the first Pokémon Center with this new rehoming function was established, such centers had faced fierce opposition from many people. They believed this was the Pokémon League encouraging Trainers to abandon Pokémon, and that it was an extremely utilitarian approach.

This view was very popular online. Every new-style Pokémon Center faced all kinds of questions when it opened, and some Trainers would even rather sleep on the streets than stay in one.

"So I'm going to the opening ceremony mainly to deter protest groups and troublemakers?"

"Yes. Your fearsome reputation precedes you. Once they see you there, plenty of people won't dare cause trouble."

Lorelei pushed up her glasses and shook with laughter as she spoke. Gongping did not mind his senior's teasing. As he picked up the documents on the new-style Pokémon Center and read through them, he kept feeling as though he had overlooked something.

"New Island? A danger zone?"

On the map of Yinhua City, a small island to the northwest was marked as dangerous, which made Gongping a little curious.

Lorelei thought for a moment. "Apparently, the island's magnetic field is chaotic, and its weather is unusually severe, too. That's why the local authorities always mark New Island as a danger zone to warn Trainers visiting for the first time."