"That's odd, isn't it?" Bonnie asked, looking at the program. "It says there's no Theme Performances. Aren't those the first round?"
She looked up at the stage, which was much bigger and more impressive than the ones in the other Showcase Theatres they'd visited. "How can you have a competition if you don't have a first round?"
"It's because the Themes are about showing your connection with your Pokémon," Clemont explained. "They don't need to for this bit, because it's presumed that you've got a good connection with your Pokémon if you've won three Keys… so now it's about showing you can put together a good performance."
He looked over the program himself. "It's actually quite convenient that there's twenty-seven contestants, though. If there were more or fewer then it'd be much more awkward."
"Why don't you just say more or less?" Chespin asked him. "Fewer sounds weird."
"It's accurate, that's why," Clemont said. "Accuracy is important."
"I could make a comment here about Keen Eye and the fact you need glasses, but it might be construed as mean," Chespin said. "Wait, I said construed. Now I'm doing it!"
"So… there's going to be three rounds, right?" Ash asked. "Twenty-seven to nine, to three, to one. And then it's the final against Aria who's the reigning Queen?"
"That's right," Clemont agreed. "That means that if Serena does very well she's going to be in a total of four Freestyle Performances, and we'll be seeing fourteen of them."
"Showcases are a lot more exclusive than Contests," Ash decided. "There were lots more rounds in the Grand Festivals I've seen… plus there's how only girls can take part in Showcases, too."
There was an opening ceremony, where Monsieur Pierre explained how the whole thing was going to work, and Ash wondered whether the reason Showcases were so exclusive was that Monsieur Pierre had to be there for all the Showcases. Or if they had other organizers that the friends had just never met.
Serena wasn't up first, but she was in the second group, and the group performances were just a bit more complicated than the finals of other Showcases – with each member of a group performing with one of their Pokémon on their own, and then a joint performance with all three of them at the same time.
"There's Serena!" Korrina pointed, as the cameras showed the next round of the Master Class beginning. "I wonder what she's going to do."
"And Pancham," Lucario agreed. "She's had months to think up performances, so let's see what happens…"
Serena bowed to the audience, then drew a wand from her sleeve and began flicking it up and down. Each up-and-down movement was accompanied by a little chime, and Pancham clapped along before using Stone Edge – making a ring of six stones appear in a flash of light, each one about the size of a small chair and cube-shaped.
Serena jumped up onto one of them, and began going from slab to slab, even as Pancham moved to one of them and hefted it into the air – giving Serena a kind of step to use, kicking off from it while it was in the air and using it as a support to get higher.
By the time she got to the next one, Pancham had lifted it as well, and the Fighting-type moved quickly to keep up with Serena's movements – letting his trainer ascend a kind of virtual staircase that was only there when she needed it.
After a complete circuit in the air, though, Pancham switched from lifting with a throw move to doing something else. He lay on his back in the middle of the circle and began rapid-firing punches out, each one slamming into the underside of a block and throwing it up into the air.
That kept going for six quick circuits, with Serena hopping steadily from stone to stone, then she jumped off and did a twirl on the way down before landing softly in a flash of white light as the stones landed in a stack.
She tapped the top stone, and all six of them went crack as gravel fell off – revealing artistic depictions of a Braixen, a Litleo, a Ponyta, a Pancham, a Sylveon and a Buneary.
Korrina glanced at Lucario. "Do you think we could do that?"
"I don't know, but now I want to try," Lucario admitted. "When I heard about that bit about fearing the Pokémon who's practiced one punch a thousand times, I did not expect it to be quite that way."
"All right, kid, I give," Clay decided. "Good work, you've won yourself a Badge."
"Phew," Max sighed. "That was… a tricky challenge."
"Of course it was," Clay agreed. "I heard you were one of Ash Ketchum's friends, so of course I went to the trouble."
He shook his head, looking at all the holes in the wall. "Still, wasn't expecting your Shroomish to pull off a Bullet Seed quite like that. That's a fine Pokémon you have there."
"I'm going to have to reassure Houndour," Max decided, mostly speaking to himself. "Still, she did good work too… and thanks for the battle."
He turned to wave at May and her team. "And thanks for your moral support!"
"Our pleasure!" Eevee said, gently glowing with golden light as she held her Primal Form active.
"It's always nice to watch one of your battles," Dragonite agreed.
"Now, you might want to get yourself to a television," Clay advised. "They're doing the Master Class in Kalos, and I hear another one of Ash's friends is taking part."
"Oh, the Master Class," May said. "Wait, that's going on now? I thought it wasn't for hours!"
"Time zones," Clay reminded her, sagely.
"Oh, great," May groaned. "Uh, Dragonite, can you give me a lift? Max, you follow me with Ralts once you've picked up your badge!"
"Kids these days," Clay said, as Eevee and the others returned themselves and Dragonite performed a smooth take-off right through the open window. "Right?"
"All my Pokémon are young too," Max pointed out. "Except Jirachi who's ridiculously old but who's also about six most of the time…"
After making it through the first round, Serena's choice for the second round – still with only one Pokémon – was her Sylveon.
"I think I'm starting to get the idea of the Master Class," Sylveon said, thinking. "Because it's all these Showcases in quick succession, it's testing to make sure you've got enough working ideas and enough variety to make it through the whole tournament – right?"
"That's definitely possible," Serena agreed, then adjusted Sylveon's little Sylveon-themed pointy hat. "All right, let's go!"
She walked out onto the stage with the other two contestants in the second round, and waited until it was her turn to go. Then she took a wand from her waist, triggered a spell to cancel one of the layered Minimize and un-Minimizes that Braixen had placed on it, and as it expanded into a beribboned staff she signalled to Sylveon with her other hand.
Sylveon took a deep breath, and blew out a Fairy Wind – a cloud of bright pink and blue sparkles that hung in the air – and Serena flicked her staff out into the cloud. She drew out a long trail of multicoloured light, then two, as each end of the staff dipped into the cloud in succession.
That was the set-up, but there was a lot more they had planned. As Serena twirled the staff, she brought it down for a moment at a slant, and Sylveon jumped on to run up it like a ramp.
This time she used Petal Dance, making a second cloud, and jumped off to do a somersault before landing as Serena started using the Petal Dance to work with as well.
"I remember seeing this one in practice," Bonnie said, doing her best not to be too loud. "I think it looked different then, though."
"It looked different each time," Tyrunt agreed, doing his best not to be too big. "Maybe that's part of the point?"
Lokoko brought up a tail, considering.
"I think it's probably just that they practiced how to dance, rather than the specific dance," she decided. "It's spontaneous, that way. Sylveon knows that the staff being down like that means it's time to run up it, but it's something she can react to… that kind of thing. It's different every time."
"Do you think Dawn does something like that, sometimes?" Chespin asked, nudging Luxray. "You know. Go back in time and re-do a Contest if the Contest didn't work out okay?"
"I don't even know if that would be possible," Luxray replied. "How would I know? Have you not yet noticed that I'm trying not to get sucked into all this nonsense?"
"Yeah, good luck with that," Chespin replied. "Hey, that looks nice."
Somewhere in there Sylveon had added two more glowing clouds to work with, Sparkly Swirl and Mystical Fire, and Serena's work with them had drawn them together into an overlapping pattern sort of like the woven ribbons of a maypole.
Then she flipped the staff around and tapped it against the floor, Sylveon struck a pose, and the ribbons all suddenly flowed together into a multicoloured Sylveon shape before dissolving.
"I think that bit was new," Dedenne said. "Was that bit new? I'm not sure. I can't remember, I know at one point it was an explosion at the end instead."
"Now that's stylish," Malva said, as Serena and Sylveon bowed. "I've got to admit, while the whole Kalos Queen thing isn't my area of expertise it's still nice to watch, sometimes."
Her Houndoom barked, and Malva chuckled.
"Don't be silly," she said, stroking the Dark-type's back. "I can enjoy something, it's not forbidden or anything. Besides, these people are clearly the best at what they do, that's why they're there."
Houndoom rolled her eyes, prompting Malva to tut.
"Silly," she said, then returned her attention to the Holo Caster.
It was tuned into conventional TV, not holographic, but the picture was still just as good as she'd expect. They were showing the crowd as they voted, now, and Malva frowned before leaning forwards.
"There's something about that," she said, then reached out and paused the broadcast playback. Skipping back a few seconds, then advancing frame-by-frame, she finally got a good picture of what she was after.
One of the groups in the crowd had a strange green-and-black canine Pokémon, sitting neatly between a Ninetales and a kid in a blue jumpsuit.
"That's… Clemont, right," she said. "The kid with the two robots running his gym. And there's something about that canine Pokémon that's familiar."
Houndoom examined the picture, then made an oom sound.
"Fine, fine," Malva decided. "I think that's around where Ash Ketchum is sitting, so I've probably just seen his team before anyway. Goodness knows he has a preposterous team."
AN:
If you've never seen Doggo Mode, you don't recognize Doggo Mode.