#also no geeta until we get dlc and potentially learn more ab her....

[steel--fairy]

Character Headcanons #1

champions and the leadup to them becoming champions!

lance started his journey at 14, the traditional age in the dragon clan to let kids go out on journeys. they have to pass a certain test in order to receive a dragon type and he did (clair failed the first time rip). his first pokemon was a dratini ofc. he did all the johto gyms, beat the e4 and made champion rank, then went on to the kanto gyms (which i see as being a common thing among high level trainers from kanto and johto. you do your own region and make it to the champion level if you can then try the other 8 across the mountain). he travelled the world for a few years and after he returned, he joined the e4 at about 24ish and made his way up to being the leader of the e4. he was pretty content in that position but wasn't too upset to become sitting champion when red unexpectedly left.

steven became a trainer a bit older than most expect. he was content to travel and mine rocks and never really considered being a trainer until a bit after he turned 16 and his dad was like "well you're old enough to start learning how to take over from me someday : )" and steven was immediately like "actually i think im gonna try being a trainer I'll come back latermaybebye" and yeeted himself out of rustboro faster than you can say electrode. he ended up being very good at training which was just a bonus. shortly into his journey he learned about mega evolution and completely halted doing the hoenn gyms to yeet himself to kalos to learn about it properly. when he gets back he basically just. curbstomps everyone with the fairly unknown mega evolution ability and becomes champion at around 19ish.

wallace comes from a family thats very established in the contest circuit, with several older sisters who were all master ranks coordinators. he started young (10 or so) and very quickly rose to being a top coordinator in hoenn. however his older sisters all eventually stopped competing leaving him miles ahead of the rest. its very boring when you're basically just competing against yourself so he was like "well im going to try being a trainer now : )" at 16ish and was instantly successful at that too. it also scratched his competitive itch a bit better, especially when he became a gym trainer (and later gym leader) for juan as he liked the challenge of trying to fit his team to the challengers level. it got even better when this one guy managed to absolutely destroy everyone in the gym despite having a pretty severe type disadvantage and they became best friends and rivals : ) as for being champion, he takes over from steven shortly after the whole team magma-aqua fiasco.

cynthia had a very protagonist like journey. she set out at 12ish with her gible, got a pokedex from prof rowan and set about filling it (though she had already gotten a badge or two by the time she ran into rowan), had some grand adventure, became champion very young (13 or so) and has held onto her title ever since.

alder is super interesting to think about because he's old lol i imagine that the unova league was still fairly newish at that point in time so the concept of going to a gym to battle was very thrilling and unique, though not everyone thought it was a good thing. alder started his journey pretty young (13ish?) and took his sweet time doing the challenge as he just loved exploring so much. he only became champion at like 18 or 19 and not because he was bad at battling. he was probably one of the first champions in unova and reigned for quite a few years. then of course his first partner volcarona died. he resigned from battling for a long while until pulled back in a bit before bw starts. the previous champion unexpectedly retired due to illness, and since they hadn't been ousted by battle, all the members of the pokemon league voted for a new champion. alder was fairly surprised when he got a call saying he was up for champion duties round 2 if he wanted them, but agreed to come back until a new champion won the title.

iris challenged alder and won : ) haha, she's just a bit too young to have as much history as the others lol she wasn't ever a gym leader, but she did work as a gym trainer for her grandpa which was great practice.

diantha came from a rich family who wanted her to focus more on her acting career than battling but diantha was insistent on taking time off to try the gym challenge. (her parents were mortified. it's one thing to have a few leisurely battles at the battle maison where you can make connections but to join the rabble in the gym challenge? eugh.) but her parents bought her a specially bred ralts and off she went. she was young enough (14 or so) but by that point she had a decent acting career which led to her being noticed every so often. she quickly became champion (diantha's good and kalos doesn't exactly have a strong battling culture) which caused a huuuuuge argument between her and her parents who were still very stage parenting her.

leon is like cynthia. he was basically another little 10 year old protagonist prodigy who quickly rose to the top. but for some hc's, he got his sponsorship from kabu. motostoke was the closest gym so he and sonia took the train there to ask for it. kabu, as most gym leaders do, asked for a battle to see if they were good enough and was blown away by leon's already evident skill with his charmander.