Subject: [PW!] [WC] No Match For Trent Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:00:35 GMT From: Rob <robfrompw@yahoo.com> Organization: AT&T Worldnet Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Ignoring the chants of "Seadra, Seadra, Seadra" coming from the crowd in the Scarlet City Coliseum, Chuck, the Cianwood Gym Leader, marches through the halls of the building's second floor, his seven students, including Belle, marching behind him. When they reach a door with a golden plaque on it that reads "Management", Chuck slams the door open and marches up to an elderly glasses-wearing gray-haired woman who's sitting behind a small desk. Two Whirl Cup Guards standing in the room ready their batons in the event that they have to forcibly remove the man from the room. Chuck booms, "I'm here to see Maya!" Belle, Chuck's only female student, smiles at how take-charge her teacher is. During dinner last night, she had told Chuck that Trent, the man who shot a woman and a little girl during Round Two of the tournament, was being allowed to battle in Round Three and today, first thing in the morning, he's already doing something about it. "Maya's presiding over the Third Round of the Whirl Cup Competition." The elderly secretary behind the desk speaks in a raspy voice, glancing over to the muscular mustachioed man who's barged into her employer's office, "D'you wanna leave a message?" Chuck crosses his arms, a frown on his face, "No, I demand to talk to somebody in charge right away! I have a complaint." "Oh, in that case, please fill out form 28C." The elderly woman pulls a stack of papers stapled together out of her desk and extends it outwards towards Chuck, saying, "You should get a reply in the mail from Maya's office in six to eight weeks." "This is urgent!" Chuck growls and slams his hands onto the woman's desk. After the woman places the stack back on the desk, figuring Chuck's not going to fill it out, he says, "It's about today's Third Match! I think there's been a mistake." "Lemme guess. One a' your..." The old woman pauses to count Chuck's students, "Seven kids is battling today and you want your kid to be matched up with someone closer to his or her age? We've gotten at least one a' you Pokemon Trainer parents almost every year for the past eighteen years I've been working here, and I've always told 'em the same..." "That's not it!" Chuck shakes his head, "Look, just call up your boss and tell him someone's here to see him." "Her." The old secretary narrows her wrinkled eyes at the macho man, then places her finger on the intercom on her desk. It buzzes and the woman coughs before saying, "Mrs. Pearl, a barefoot shirtless man and bunch of kids are here to see you." After a few seconds, a woman's voice is heard over the intercom, "Does he have an appointment, Eunice? What's his name?" Eunice releases her finger from the intercom, "Do you have an appointment, sir?" "Of course not!" Chuck groans, "The match-ups for Round Three were displayed at the Pokemon Center just yesterday - AFTER these offices closed to the public. How could I POSSIBLY have an appointment?!" "A simple 'no' would've sufficed, sir." The secretary says, before coughing for half a minute straight. While the secretary coughs, Chuck crosses his arms to wait for her to finish. Some of Chuck's students quietly mimic the old woman's coughing, mocking her, as Belle rolls her eyes at their immaturity and asks, "Are you okay, Eunice?" "I'll be fine, dear, thanks for the concern. Apparently you got your manners from your mom." The old woman makes a retching sound, then spits some phlegm into a little cup on her desk before asking Chuck, "Now, what's your name?" Chuck promptly answers the question, "I'm Chuck, the Cianwood City Gym Leader." The old woman puts her finger back on the intercom resting on her desk and says, "He doesn't have an appointment, Mrs. Pearl, and he claims his name is Chuck." Twenty seconds pass before a response is heard coming from the intercom, "Chuck, the Cianwood Gym Leader?" "You know this man?" Eunice asks into the intercom. The woman's voice on the intercom is much faster with a response this time, "He's one of this year's Whirl Cup sponsors after years of not even showing up for the Competition. Let him in at once!" Eunice pushes a button under her desk. The door behind her desk makes a buzzing noise and she waves Chuck to go through it. Chuck, as well as all seven of his students, pile into Mrs. Pearl's office, Chuck and Belle taking the two chairs in the room and the six male students sitting on the floor. Mrs. Pearl, a fairly attractive blue-haired woman in her late 40s wearing business suit, reaches her manicured hand over the desk to shake Chuck's rather large and calloused hand, saying, "Hello, Chuck. First of all, thank you for sponsoring the Whirl Cup Competition this year! Being the Leader of one of the closest Gyms to Red Rock Isle, we truly appreciate your sponsorship and we certainly hope that you will return in three years to sponsor us again. How may I help you this fine day?" "You've got a murderer competing in today's Third Match." Chuck cuts to the chase, "His name is Trent. He attacked a woman and later shot her during Round Two, along with a little girl who was battling the woman at the time." Belle, feeling important since she's sitting on one of the two chairs in the room instead of on the floor, adds, "Yeah, I saw Trent was still in the Competition when I checked the match-ups for Round Three at the Pokemon Center. Nurse Joy didn't seem to care about it, either! She said she called the officials and convinced them to let Trent compete!" "That can't be right..." Mrs. Pearl furrows her brow, rummaging through the papers on her desk until she finds a memo listing the Round Three match-ups, "Oh dear, you're right. Excuse me a moment." Mrs. Pearl flips through a rolodex on her large desk for a moment, then pushes a button on the intercom next to it, "Hi, Doris. Transfer me over to Steve in the Round Three department." Some clicks are heard coming from the intercom, followed by quiet waiting music, then a genial-sounding man asks, "Hello?" Mrs. Pearl says, "Hi, Steve. You're in charge of Round Three match-ups, right?" "Yes indeedy I am, ma'am!" Steve's proud reply emits from the intercom. Belle frowns when she hears how cheerful the man sounds. Mrs. Pearl also frowns and speaks into the intercom, her voice sounding angry, "So you're the one responsible for letting Trent, the trouble-maker who escaped from our prisons twice and shot two contestants, compete in today's Third Match?" "What?! No, I'd never..." The noise papers make when being rummaged through emits from the intercom, followed by the voice of a now much less cheerful Steve, "Oh crap. Uhh... that is... pardon my language, Mrs. Pearl, ma'am. It's just... I JUST got the memo of who's battling today and haven't gotten a chance to look at it carefully yet. I wasn't here yesterday afternoon to receive the call from the Pokemon Center - my personal assistant, Dale, was. I'm guessing he must've not heard about the Trent situation when he wrote up the memo." "How could anyone working here NOT..." Mrs. Pearl stops suddenly then squints her eyes before asking Steve, "Isn't Doris your assistant?" "No, ma'am. Doris is my secretary. She just receives calls for me." Steve's worried voice is heard through the intercom, "I hired Dale to help me with my duties here in the Round Three department." Mrs. Pearl narrows her eyes, "Isn't your only duty to receive the Round Three match-ups from the Pokemon Center and send the relevant information over to the announcer, so he knows which pictures to put up on the Jumbotron?" "It's more complicated than that, ma'am. I'm in charge of all of Day Four's events!" Steve nervously says, "Uhm, er, here, I'll transfer you over to Dale so you can ask him about today's mix-up." Clicks are heard once again, followed by about two seconds of waiting music, followed by a goofy-sounding voice that says, "Good mornin', Mrs. P! So you're my boss' boss, huh! What's happenin', babe?" "I'll tell you what's happening!" Mrs. Pearl shouts into the intercom, "You're letting a criminal who's disrupted the Whirl Cup Competition twice so far, hurting two innocent people in the process, compete in Round Three!" "Whoa, chill out, Mrs. P!" Dale explains through the intercom, "I'm not the one who put him on the list." Mrs. Pearl sighs in frustration and says, "Don't tell me you hired an assistant to help YOU out." "Hey, that's a good idea! But no..." Dale doesn't let Mrs. Pearl's frustration bother him at all, "Some lady called Joy over at the Pokemon Center put Trent on the list. She sent me the results of her computer's match-ups yesterday. I was all like, 'Are you sure Trent should be allowed to compete?' and she kept sayin' 'yeah, he's a person too' so I figured, hey, I'll just put him down on the list and if there's a problem, Steve'll tell me about it. Steve didn't say anything when I gave him the memo - he just glanced at it and told me to send it over to the announcer's booth, so I had Doris take it over there ASAP." "Thank you, that'll be all, Dale." Mrs. Pearl pushes a button on her intercom, pulls out a sheet of paper that reads "From the Desk of Mrs. Pearl, Whirl Cup Manager" and writes something on it as she says, "I'm really sorry about this mix-up, Chuck. Could you please do me a favor and take this memo to the announcer's booth down the hallway? It'll tell him what to say to disqualify Trent from the Competition." Mrs. Pearl signs her name at the bottom of the memo when she's finished writing it and she hands it to Chuck. "Here, Belle." Chuck says, handing the document Mrs. Pearl wrote up over to the blonde teenage girl sitting next to him, "I wouldn't have even looked at the Round Three Match ups if you hadn't told me about what you saw. You should be the one to take this paper to the announcer's booth. And besides, I've still got a few more complaints I'd like to issue." "Thank you for all you've done, Master!" Belle salutes her teacher, "I'll go save us a good seat at the Gym Leader Section after I hand the announcer the paper." She races out of Mrs. Pearl's office, hearing Chuck say something about the poor quality of the food sold at the Coliseum on her way out. She runs down the halls of the second floor of the Coliseum, reaching a door that has a sign reading "Announcer's Booth" posted on it after about a minute. Imitating Chuck, she slams open the door to the booth and steps into the small room where the Whirl Cup announcer sits to announce each day's matches. "Folks, we just heard back from Nurse Joy. Seadra will be just fine!" The announcer says into the microphone he's holding in his hand as Belle enters the room. Despite being about thirty years old, the announcer is almost completely bald and he's combed the few gray hairs he has left over his scalp. He looks very thin except for his belly, which protrudes so far it serves as a table for a pizza box. He's only wearing black earphones, a white undershirt, pink boxers, and gray socks. The man has a slice of pizza in one hand and a yellow book titled "Pokemon Stadium Announcing For Dummies" in the other. When the announcer turns his head to see who's entered his booth and sees that his visitor is a teenage girl, he drops the yellow book and the pizza slice. He covers his skinny legs and pushes a button on the microphone that reads "Off", having learned from his past mistakes, before saying, "Don't look at me! DON'T LOOK AT ME!" Belle is glad to fulfill the announcer's request as she covers her hazel eyes with her free hand and extends the paper from Mrs. Pearl's office to him with the other. "Th-this... is from... Mrs. Pearl..." The announcer snatches the paper away from the blonde girl who's covering her eyes, reads it quickly, and gasps. He opens his pizza box, pulls out a small yellow paper that's now covered in grease stains, and confirms that Trent is set to battle in Match Three. Immediately, he grabs his microphone and pushes the "On" button on it. Belle quietly slips out of the announcer's booth, closing the door behind her, and she hears the announcer's voice emit from loudspeakers in the second floor hallway as she walks to the Section of the Coliseum where Gym Leaders sit. The announcer's message is as follows, "Before we move into today's second match, I'd like to take this moment to correct a mistake I made earlier. Before today's first match started, I said it was the first of four matches to be held today. In reality, it was the first of three. Obviously, Trent..." Belle hears booing coming from the crowd gathered at the Coliseum, despite that a thick stone wall separates her from the audience. When the booing starts to quiet down, the announcer continues, "Trent is disqualified from the Whirl Cup Competition for the crimes he committed shortly after his Round Two victory. Mamoru, the young man... er, woman... er PERSON he would have faced in Round Three will advance into the Semi-Finals without facing the wanted criminal." Belle waves to the Whirl Cup Guard posted at the Gym Leader section and he recognizes her as one of Chuck's students since she had sat there with Chuck throughout the entire second day of the Competition. Belle steps out into the Gym Leader Section, where she sees Jasmine, the Olivine Gym Leader, sitting by herself, and Sissy, the Mikan Gym Leader, sitting with the Four Sensational Sisters of the Cerulean City Gym. Almost everyone in the Coliseum is still cheering after having heard that Trent has been officially disqualified from the Whirl Cup Competition. Belle joins the cheer by applauding while she walks down to the unoccupied row in the Section that's closest to the Arena. She then sits in the center of the row to watch the rest of today's matches. -Belle