Unlike Pallet Town, New Bark Town was where the overwhelming majority of locals began their tourism journeys, an honor it had been granted as one of the Alliance's starter towns.
People from outside the region would even come here specifically to receive their starter Pokémon. Pallet Town had its own three starters, and Professor Oak presiding over them on top of that, but it wasn't particularly famous within the Alliance.
Outside of Pallet Town locals, basically no one came there for their starters. The two towns sat at completely different statuses within their respective regions.
So even without the Silver Conference, New Bark Town would have been lively. With the Silver Conference in progress, the place was bursting.
By the time Ash and the others arrived, the streets were practically overflowing with people, each one walking with a Pokémon at their side, and quite a few Officer Jennys were on hand directing traffic.
Normally a town only had one or two Officer Jennys on duty. Other security was hired locally. The Jenny family was a large clan, but it wasn't large enough to put a dozen Jennys in a single town. If New Bark Town had this many out, the population was overflowing badly enough that the Jenny clan had pulled people in from elsewhere to keep order.
For Brock, this was a paradise. He stared at the line of Officer Jennys keeping the crowd in order, all but drooling. In a heartbeat he was in front of one of them, a bouquet of roses materializing in his hands, launching straight into his classic declaration of love.
"Ah, Officer Jenny! You're like a star in the sky! In this sea of people, my eyes found you instantly, that gleam in the night, the sparkling sun lighting up my heart"
"All right, all right, that's enough. With this much sunshine in your heart, all your hard work is going to evaporate." Misty had Togepi tucked under one arm and grabbed Brock's ear with the other, dragging him away from a thoroughly bewildered Officer Jenny.
In Misty's arms, Togepi waved her tiny hands like a delighted child, beaming. Maybe the scene amused her. Maybe the crowd's energy was infectious. It was a little strange. Togepi hadn't gone through much real training, yet she was already an Mid level Pokémon, and at that level she still hadn't evolved once. That shouldn't have been possible.
Pokémon like Bulbasaur, who deliberately held back their own evolution, were the exceptions. By the time a normal Pokémon hit Mid level, at least one evolution should have happened, and pseudo-legendaries too. Togepi simply wasn't budging.
Ash had checked her over and found nothing wrong, so he'd left it alone. If she didn't want to evolve, fine. Being held by Misty all day worked for her too. She got the kind of constant warmth Misty needed as much as she did. Holding something close to your chest kept it from feeling empty.
While Misty hauled Brock back by the ear, Serena, standing a little off to the side, gave a slightly awkward smile, then leaned over to Ash. "What's wrong with Brock? He seems"
"Like he's sick?" Ash cut in, finishing the sentence she didn't dare to.
Serena nodded, hesitant.
Back in Pallet Town, Brock had been completely normal, aside from playing a quiet assistant-around-the-house role at Professor Oak's place. He'd come across as an unusually ordinary person, capable of nearly anything domestic.
Traveling with someone like him would have made everything easier on a journey. Then they'd gotten out the door, met an Officer Jenny, and Brock had transformed into someone else entirely.
"What's going on?"
"Don't mind him, that's just Brock. He loses it whenever he sees an attractive older woman. Although honestly, his reaction is even worse than it was when we parted ways before." Ash scratched his head, half-laughing, half-grumbling.
Brock's tendencies had been a thing before, but never this dramatic. Charging straight at someone in a packed street, and the bouquet of roses he'd produced? Grabbed off the display at a nearby flower shop in passing. He hadn't even paid for it.
Once Misty had hauled Brock back, Ash took the roses out of his hand, walked them over, and quietly returned them to the flower shop with a wry smile.
"Ahem. Sorry about that. I'm not usually like this. I just got a little excited seeing so many Officer Jennys. Don't mind me." Brock, back to himself, cleared his throat and explained to Serena.
Losing face in front of Ash and Misty was business as usual. This was a new addition to the group, though, and a new addition who had previously thought well of his skills. By now, whatever image he'd built in Serena's eyes was probably in pieces.
"It's nothing. I just didn't expect that side of you, Brock." Serena said it with her hands clasped behind her back, smiling, seemingly unbothered.
Brock's outburst wasn't great, but it hadn't caused any real harm to anyone. It bordered on harassment, but Misty had intervened fast enough.
"Hey, he just can't keep himself together when he sees a pretty older woman. You're being too easy on him, Serena." Misty tossed Brock to one side, clapped her hands theatrically, and turned. "Anyway. Where to from here?"
After that small detour, Serena brought them back to the real question. They were in New Bark Town now, fine, but where exactly were they supposed to register for the Silver Conference?
"Just over to the Pokémon Center there. We register inside." Ash had already worked out the process for the Silver Conference. It was simple. Bring your ID, head to the Pokémon Center, find Nurse Joy, and you could register on the spot. If the process weren't so simple, the Pokémon Center would have been even more crowded than the streets.
They finally reached the front of the Pokémon Center. It was the busiest spot in town, between the registrations and the steady flow of injured Pokémon being brought in for treatment.
The Pokémon Center had to register Trainers from across the League right now, and the place was chaos. Ash and the others pushed through the line for almost half an hour before they finally got inside. On the way through, Brock's familiar affliction flared up again, but this time Misty was ready and shut him down before he could even start.
Ash registered successfully for the Silver Conference.
"Great. Now we can go take on Violet City. Hey, Serena, do you want to enter the Silver Conference too?" Ash slipped his Pokédex back into his pocket and asked casually.
Surprise flashed across Serena's face, with a touch of panic underneath. "Huh? Me? Me? That's impossible. I just started traveling, I only have one Pokémon."
"What does that matter? Everyone starts somewhere. Six months ago I'd only just hit the road, and I went straight to the Indigo League. Fighting through every region's gyms was what pushed me to where I am now.
Battle is the fastest way to grow. Even if you're not crazy about gym battles, Serena, you can still use them and the Silver Conference experience to push yourself. Down the line, you can put that experience to work in any other field you choose," Ash said, laying it out plainly.
Once you'd shown yourself you could excel in one area, building real confidence anywhere else became much easier. Even if Serena didn't have a passion for League battles, this could still become an experience worth carrying with her. Otherwise she'd just be drifting along after them with no goal of her own.
That kind of journey was meaningless. The scenery along the road mattered, but so did having somewhere to be going. When you reached a goal after real hardship, the sense of accomplishment, the lift you felt afterward, was the kind of feeling you couldn't get any other way. That was why Ash wanted Serena to enter the Silver League.
Whatever the final result, whether she actually made it to the finals or not, at least she'd have a goal. At least she'd have entered.
Serena's smiling face shifted into hesitation, her small hands clenched in front of her. After a moment, the expression on her soft face firmed into resolve.
"Okay. I want to enter the Silver League."
"That's the spirit. Nurse Joy, can you register my friend too?" Since they hadn't even left the registration desk yet, Ash got Serena signed up on the spot. Nurse Joy took Serena's Pokédex and entered her into the Silver Conference.
"Phew. We haven't even challenged a single gym yet and already" Serena started, then took her Pokédex back and held it to her chest. Heart pounding, she calmed herself with a breath before asking Ash for some details. She was a Silver Conference contestant now, so she might as well take the gym challenges seriously. Before this, she might not have cared much about who the Gym Leaders were. Now she wanted to know.
"So, next up I'm planning to take on Norman, the Petalburg Gym Leader from Hoenn. According to Professor Oak, when an external Gym Leader comes to a regional League's city, they're only allowed to bring their strongest main Pokémon. They can't level down to match the challenger. So Norman isn't a fit for you, Serena."
For rookie Trainers like Serena, Gym Leaders usually prepared a calibrated lineup of beginner-friendly Pokémon. When Ash had challenged Brock back at Pewter City, Brock had only used Mid level Pokémon, even though he'd had a High level Pokémon available. A standard Gym Leader matched the experience of whoever was sitting across from them.
External Gym Leaders were a different rule entirely. The League explicitly required them to use only their main Pokémon when away from home. So when you faced an external Gym Leader, you only had one option: throw everything you had at them. Even then, beating an external Gym Leader was brutally hard. Whichever region they came from, anyone holding a Gym Leader's seat was the cream of the crop. Rookie or veteran, the challenge was steep.
The League had built incentives into the system to encourage challenges. As long as you took on an external Gym Leader, you only needed four Badges to qualify for the Silver Conference instead of eight. On top of that, defeating an external Gym Leader carried extra rewards. Sometimes money. Sometimes rare Poké Balls. Sometimes Technical Machines and matching items.
The rewards for an external Gym Leader weren't on the same level as the rewards for the local Gym Leader, and neither was the difficulty.
Ash's goal wasn't merely to challenge the local Gym Leader of each city. His goal was to take on the strongest Gym Leader of every region. He intended to become the champion of the Eight Greats, which meant defeating every one of the elite-tier Gym Leaders. Norman was his first target.
Norman's ace was Slaking, the so-called Lazy King, a Normal-type known for sleeping through half its turns. Even so, its level was reported to be close to Champion. The rest of his main team was all Top Elite Four caliber. If Norman hadn't repeatedly refused the offer, he'd long since have been one of Hoenn's Elite Four.
Serena's first target obviously wouldn't be Norman. Violet City had its own local Gym, though, and that was a reasonable starting point for her. She'd been given the chance to challenge it, so her opening target stayed at Violet City.
"Hmph. From the way you're talking, you really think you can defeat my father, defeat the Petalburg Gym Leader? Do you even know how strong the Petalburg Gym Leader actually is?"
Just as Ash was walking Serena through how Gym Leader challenges worked, a childish voice piped up from behind them.
They were standing just outside the Pokémon Center now, and with the entrance still mobbed, they'd stepped to one side to clear the foot traffic. Ash turned and found a small boy standing there. Light blue hair, dark green short-sleeved shirt and shorts, almost a full green outfit, glasses sitting on his nose. A kid under ten years old.
"Hey, little guy. From the way you're talking, you sound pretty familiar with the Petalburg Gym Leader. Are you from Hoenn yourself?" Seeing it was just a child, Ash dropped the bantering tone, crouched down to his level, and spoke gently.
"Of course! Everyone in Hoenn knows the Petalburg Gym Leader! Give him time, and even Mr. Steven, Hoenn's Champion, is going to be left behind by him! He'll be the strongest Trainer in all of Hoenn one day!" The little boy said it with absolute pride.
If you didn't know better, you'd think he was talking about himself. Even Norman himself wouldn't dare claim he stood above Hoenn's Champion. That was the strongest Trainer in the entire region we were talking about.