The next morning right after breakfast he had Xatu bring him to their last point yesterday at the periphery of Coast City. This was the 4th Tier 5 City he visited since the beginning of his expedition, but it was actually the first Tier 5 Major City among them.
The other 3 were just regular cities and one noticed the difference right away, despite all of them being Tier 5 Cities Coast City was much larger than the others. Well, it made sense to me with its location Coast City was one of the sea-trade hubs of Kanto, so its large size was a given.
Anyway, I entered the city and started my standard modus operandi, just walking around occasionally asking pedestrians questions about any good stores or restaurants. Also, if there are any gyms, halls, and/or clubs.
After an hour I stopped at one of the benches and sat down for a bit. The results had been quite surprising. I had gotten some overlapping recommendations for restaurants with nearly all of them being seafood-oriented, which to be fair was kind of expected since this was a coastal city.
I also received overlapping info on some stores which were also sea/water-oriented for the same reason. That was not the surprising part. No, that I had expected with the city being where it was. The pieces that surprised me were that Coast City had neither a Gym nor any Halls, only a Water Club.
Now, when the man told me that I was quite surprised. Those places were not there just as challenges for trainers. No, they also functioned as bases with strong high-ranking trainers in case of an emergency.
"Does that mean only the Water Club is available as an additional force in case of emergency?" I looked at the guy and asked in a stunned tone.
The man shook his head. "Of course not, we also have the Sea Ranger Office," the man began, but I unintentionally interrupted him.
"Sea Rangers?" I asked in a slightly confused tone, I obviously knew about Pokemon Rangers, but I had not heard about any Sea Rangers yet.
The guy shot me a look for interrupting him but still answered my unspoken question.
"Yes, the Sea Rangers. You know one of the 7 seven subdivisions of the Rangers." He said in a tone you would use when explaining something obvious to someone slightly slow.
Now despite knowing that I would sound stupid if I did, I still asked him in a searching tone.
"There are 7 subdivisions?" It was plain to see that the man was starting to become impatient, yet he still provided me an answer.
"Yes, the 7 subdivisions. Sea, Jungle, Desert, Sky, Marsh, Mountain, and Tundra or Arctic, not too sure about the last one. Have you been sleeping through all your classes or what?" While I did not like the delivery of that information I still thanked him.
"No, of course not. I just thought there were 6, hence my surprise. So, thank you for telling me about the Marsh Rangers. Didn't know about that group." I tried to not come across as stupid, and the guy let it go with a whatever attitude.
"Still, a club and a ranger's office do not seem enough support for a Major City." I brought the topic back on track.
"Yeah, and as I was trying to say before you interrupted me, there is also the Contest Hall." He finished the sentence he had begun at the beginning of our conversation with a tone that indicated he was starting to have enough of me.
"Coast City has a Contest Hall?" I just asked and the guy was obviously done with me.
"You know, I need to go I have something to do. See that PokeCenter over there, if you ask around that place you'll be able to find it. I'm sure even you'll be able to find the PokeCenter, so have a nice day. Goodbye!" He pushed out in one breath, pointed at the PokeCenter, and left without giving me any chance to speak.
I obviously still thanked him and wished him a nice day as well by shouting as much after him. So, here I was sitting on a bench and having a daf*q moment. I knew that there were Coordinators, but I did not know that there were any Contest Halls in Kanto.
Honestly, I should have expected that, but they never came up so I just thought they were not a thing in Kanto or at least not popular. Well, looks like I was wrong. I am currently wondering how I never heard of any Contest Halls in any of the cities I had explored.
I mean if Coast City had one, other cities should have some too, right? Which was why I was mentally going over my scouting phases right now. I noticed that I just focused on certain aspects during my questions and search, while completely ignoring other ones, like recreational opportunities or relaxing ones.
Who knows what else I had missed during my talks, just because I had focused on food, shopping, gyms, halls, and clubs. The reason why I had not seen them was much easier to explain. Cities were enormous and the few hours I had spent walking around were only enough to see a small part of them.
I decided to widen the scope of my questions from now on and to sometime in the future to check what I had missed in the cities that I had visited thus far. Now that I had gone over what I did wrong and solved them, I stood up and walked towards the PokeCenter and asked around for the location of the Water Club.
After a few minutes, I knew that the club was in the eastern area of the city, so I briefly called out Xatu and had him remember this area. Afterward, I made my way to the club occasionally speaking to others to make sure I was on the right track and 40 minutes of power walking later I stood in front of the club building.
I briefly called out Xatu once more to have him remember this area for the future as well before I entered the building. The purpose of my visit this time was only to register, so I did not think I would be here for long. I directly walked up to the registration desk and registered under the alias Jinbe. I also asked the receptionist about the member ranks, and she told me about them.
Just as with the other clubs, the water club had different titles for the first 3 ranks and the ranks after that followed the same pattern as the others just with sea in front. So, one started as a Beach Goer (Rookie), then came Swimmer (Junior), and Diver (Senior) was the third rank. After that came Sea Noble (Expert), Sea Lord/Lady (ACE), and so on.
After I had registered and learned of the ranking system, I decided to leave the club, but before that, I asked some of the people there how to get to the Contest Hall. Once I had a rough idea of how to get there I left. I had learned that the Contest Hall was across the city in the western area, which together with the Sea Ranger Office, which was located in the southern area near the sea, covered 3 sides of the city.
This theoretically left the northern area weaker in an emergency, but maybe they just thought that part was safer since it was in the direction of Cyan City. Or, what was more likely was that I was still missing something. Anyway, I called out Xatu once again and had him bring me back to the area around the PokeCenter since that was closer to the Contest Hall.
Once there, I obviously asked for additional directions and I repeated doing that on the way as well. It took me about 30 minutes of power walking to reach the Contest Hall and I had to say it looked neat. There was a sign that said "Contest Hall" and the building itself looked great as well. I had no idea how they managed to use orange, blue, pink, green, and yellow on one building and make it work, but they did.
Anyway, I entered through the entrance and noted that there was a large H on the glass panels. I saw the help desk, and since I had no plans to register I went up to it. Wow, that was a lot of information. It took me more than an hour to get a rough picture and somewhat understand it as well, but I had done it. First, let me mention that about 20% of all Tier 5 & 6 Cities had a Contest Hall.
Now, about the workings of contests. The way contests worked here somewhat resembled the format of the games but was different at the same time. First of all Contest members were divided into 2 categories. Those that focused only on the Appeal and those that focused on the Appeal as well as Battle.
The first group was called Appeal Contestants and the second one was the Coordinators. Yep, the ones we know of. The Appeal was divided into 3 areas and 5 themes. The 3 areas were Visual, Dance, and Moves, while the themes were divided into Coolness, Beauty, Cuteness, Technique, and Toughness. This meant that Contestants had in total 15 options to participate in.
Winners of a contest would receive a Ribbon that had 2 distinctions depending on the contest. The first distinction was the color, depending on the theme the color of the Ribbon would be different. The Coolness Ribbon was orange, Beauty was blue, Cuteness was pink, Technique was green, and Toughness was yellow.
The second distinction was the difficulty. It went from 1 star to 5 stars, so a Ribbon would have a medal with the letters V, D, or M, depending on the area, as well as 1-star to 5-star depending on the difficulty.
Contest Halls had different ratings that depended on the difficulty of the contests they hosted. Regular for 1-star to 2-star contests, Super for 3-star to 4-star, and Hyper for 5-star contests, which explained the H on the entrance. This was a Hyper-Contest Hall.
What else? Hmm, right. Contestants had their own ranking system as well. Amateurs had 0 or more 1-star Ribbons, Connoisseurs had 3 or more 2-star Ribbons, Professionals had 3+ 3-star Ribbons, Experts had 3+ 4-star Ribbons, Masters had 3+ 5-star Ribbon, and finally Authorities needed to have 9 5-star Ribbons or more.
Also, Contest Halls were overseen by a Coordinator called Chief, whose rank depended on the rating of the Hall. For Regular Halls the Coordinator would be an Expert, Super (Master/Ace), and Hyper-Halls had Masters/Elites at the helm. The Chief had his own staff including lower-ranked Coordinators.
Now, this brought us to the Coordinators. Coordinators needed to earn Ribbons from Appeals as well. However, they had to challenge Contest Hall members before an on-call jury to qualify for next star difficulty. The Coordinator would not only need to have a certain strength to qualify, but their fighting style also had to appeal to the jury.
The strength of the Hall member depended on the difficulty level. For 1-star, the member would be equivalent to a Rookie-class trainer. 2-stars would result in a Junior equivalent. 3-stars were Seniors, 4-stars were Experts, and 5-stars could be ACEs or Elites.
Naturally, Coordinators needed to have their own tournament as well, so they had the Festivals. They had 4 circuits in total. The Minor Festival was held every 3 years, and Connoisseurs with 5 ribbons could participate in it. The Major Festival was held every 5 years, and Experts with 5 ribbons could participate in it.
The Grand Festival was held every 10 years, and Masters with 5 ribbons could participate, and finally, the Global Festival was held every 20 years, and Authorities could participate in it. Authorities were generally equal to either Elites or Champions in strength.
Now when I heard that these guys and gals had 4 f***ing circuits and I only knew of 2 for regular trainers, I was like stop right there, what the hell is going on here? So, I asked around and it turned out regular trainers had 4 circuits as well. I really should have asked my parents about that instead of assuming there were only the Junior and Senior Leagues.
Anyway, regular trainers had the Junior League that was held every 3 years for Rookies and Junior-class trainers. The Senior League was held every 5 years for Senior and Expert-class trainers. The Grand League was held every 15 years for ACE and Elite-class trainers, and the Global League was held every 30 years for the Champion and Master-class trainers.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what the requirements for participating in the last two events were, but I was going to learn of it somehow. After digesting all of that information, I asked if there were any other large or important places to visit in the city and they told me about the Performance Theatre and the Stadium in the southern area.
Once I heard that I had another daf*q moment, I was having way too many of those today. Now another thing I had previously ignored showed up. Anyway, I asked for directions and had Xatu teleport me to the PokeCenter back in the southern area.
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