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On the day of the opening ceremony, a pipe had burst in one of the homes of Spikemuth, so Piers had stayed behind to help get it sorted. Thankfully, Marnie understood why he couldn’t make it to see her at the beginning of her very first Gym Challenge.
Such occurrences weren’t exactly uncommon and Spikemuth wasn’t exactly the wealthiest city, so Piers usually ended up having to help whenever something ran amok. Not that he could complain. He loves his city, even if everyone else had a hard time seeing its charm.
So on the official first day of the Gym Challenge, the seventh gym leader was noticeably (or not so noticeably) missing from the line-up of Gym leade rs.
Days passed, and Piers spent his time either helping around Spikemuth or just rocking out at his best attempt at a stadium. Given that he was seventh in-line, it was a tall order to expect anyone to reach him so soon after the challenge had just begun, especially with how far away Spikemuth was in the first place. During that time, he and his trainers spent the time cleaning up around the town, making sure there wasn’t too much lying around- just doing whatever they could do to impress the challengers that came his way. Who knows, maybe some would take a shine and move in?
More days passed, and that’s when Piers started to suspect that something was off.
It wasn’t like he could expect hordes and hordes of challengers like Milo and Nessa, who were the very first milestones of the challenge. Still, there should’ve been at least maybe one or two speedrunners hoping to blast through the challenge. Maybe it was just a slow season?
More days passed, and Piers wondered if maybe he had done something wrong. It was no secret that Spikemuth was declining and that it wasn’t a popular place, but someone should have challenged him by now. Even his own trainers left the city more often, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Still, what exactly could he do? All his job asked for was that he stay in Spikemuth and test whoever came by, so it wasn’t like he could do much else.
(Maybe if he was good with people like his sister more people would come by…)
As more time passed, Piers’s doubts only grew, but all he could do was keep on doing things normally as he waited. If nothing else, he couldn’t afford to show his unease around the people looking up to him.
One day, Spikemuth was louder than usual, which was pretty impressive given that he was holding a concert on that day. His trainers seemed agitated for some reason that day, and it wasn’t until sometime later at noon did he realize why.
To think that they had gone so far…
Piers locks eyes with the very first challenger of the season. He may not be the best Gym Leader, but for Spikemuth’s sake, he had to at least try.