It is noon at Pewter City and Red is hurrying on his way to the gym for his first gym challenge. He enters the battle arena and finds the crowd cheering for a match on stage. He sees Green facing off an opponent with his evolved Charmeleon and stops to watch for a while, then remembers that he is running late for his match and hurries off to block B for his own challenge. As Red steps on stage, the crowds murmurs how the gymleader would observe the matches from his room and grant the opportunity to challenge to himself only to the trainer that beats all the others.

Red's first opponent is a tough-looking guy with a Graveller who looks down on the boy. Red tries to get Pikachu to comly but the little mouse turns its head away. Left with no choice, Red resolves to Poli, who is already extremely low in HP and the guy immediately sees it as an easy victory. The bell goes off and Red has Poli use water gun followed by an ice beam that almost instantly takes out the Graveller. The guy gasps in shock and surprise while Red prays that his pokemons attack would take out the all opponents in one hit because Poli and Saur would faint in no time if they receive any sort of attacks.

Red's Poli and Saur go on to knock out various pokemons including Cubone and Sandshrew and is finally ready for the challenge against Brock. The gymleader walks down from his waiting room where he watches over all the battles with his Geodude, Graveller and Onix and makes his way to the stage. Red excuses himself from the battle arena for a while and begs Pikachu to help him out while crouching in front of the gym backdoor, but the pokemon continuesto ignore him. Back inside, the boy has successfully made Pikachu stand on stage but the little rat remains perky and indifferent. Brock releases his Onix and has it attack with a rock throw. Pikachu dances around and dodges most of the rocks but eventually gets hit on the head by a small one. Its eyes glare with rage and the crowd thinks it is going to retaliate with brutal force, but Pikachu surprises everyone by chasing after Red and shocking him instead.

Brock gets mad at this and thinks that Red is not taking the challenge seriously, and orders Onix to use its ultimate attack, Skull Bash. The giant rock snake twirls its body into a spiral and thrashes in a spin, heading straight for Pikachu. Red sees this and jumps in to push the electric mouse out of the way, narrowly avoiding the attack. Pikachu looks up at its trainer in shock, and remembers all things the boy has done to try to befriend him. Red then lets out a faint smile and says he really lacks the ability to be a convincing trainer. Brock, on the other hand, has ordered Onix to launch another attack and the giant pokemon comes charging at the two again. Pikachu suddenly steps up with a determined look and charges a storm of electricity around itself. It then throws the thunderbolts towards the attacking pokemon and zaps it into pieces, fainting it. This shocks literally everyone in the room as Brock drops to his kness, stunned by his own defeat. Pikachu dances around happily as the announcer walks up to declare Red as the winner.

The sun is setting and Red sits on the grassland outside the gym with all the pokemons out beside him. It turns out that only Green and himself have earned the Boulder Badge at the end and they would wait until next time to settle their rivalry. The boy stares at the shimmering grey badge and thanks Pikachu for helping him out. He introduces the little electric mouse to Poli and Saur and says they would be working together as a team from now on. He extends his hand to Pikachu and the little creature accepts it with a smiling face. But then, the smile turns into an evil grin and it starts shocking Red and chasing him around again as Poli and Saur look on...

Thanks To Coronis For Writing this for us and doing the pictures