>>58311763Guy #2, placeholder name Steve Kent. He's a superhero fan who decided to live the dream and trained a team of heroes to pretend he has his own Poke-JLA. Secretly a comic book nerd but pretends he's cool and only watches the movies. Became rabidly patriotic and served in the air force after being told it was how he could be a "true hero," has grown attached to Flying-types as a result.
The guy is pretty insecure, with a grudge against Domino and a bad habit of spouting one-liners. He sticks to his ideals and favorites no matter what, hence his favorite Pokémon (Ledian) being on every single team the regional League would allow it on.
Lucky for him, Steve grew to be 6' tall and was born with a cinematic baritone voice that makes him look and sound way cooler than he actually is.
His gym involves a slow escalation of general superhero stuff. All challengers are given unique costumes (paid for by the League, to their great dismay) that they can keep after leaving. The gym challenge begins with stopping a bank robber, escalates to preventing a proper supervillain from using some contraption to blow up a building, and keeps escalating until the challenger and the gym leader fight side by side...
...except, the leader never shows his face. He narrates all of this through a microphone, and only fights the ultimate supervillain (blatantly styled after Domino) beside a cut-out of Steve in his hero uniform. The supervillain uses Steve's team, too, by shooting the leader's pokeballs out of another contraption he made up. The badge eventually comes out of the same contraption, and most challengers never see the real leader's face.
When questioned about this during League interviews, which are often done purely through audio or text, Steve claims it's to keep his real identity secret.
And it works, because his real identity is only known to other League members and nerds online. 