While traveling with the new teammate for Ash's team, Chimchar struggles to adapt to its new surroundings.
Everything is the complete opposite of its life with Paul. That being said, mealtimes are fun and everyone treats each other with friendship and kindness compared to how Paul ran things.
Unfortunately this meant that Chimchar still has vivid memories of the lonely and harsh treatment it received from Paul, so this sudden reversal of fortune is nearly too much to take.
Especially when Ash even praises Chimchar after it loses a practice battle with Pip, Harmony's Prinplup, Chimchar breaks down in emotion.
Harmony looked on with sad eyes hating that Chimchar had went through so much, especially given how much stress it had been under with Paul as its trainer.
The next morning Jessie and James catch Dawn, Harmony, and Brock by surprise, then try to steal all of their Pokémon by trapping them in giant canisters!
But when the Zangoose show up, Team Rocket has to hide in the canisters for their own protection. Ash and Chimchar reach the scene and realize the Zangoose are about to knock the canisters off a cliff.
Chimchar has encountered Zangoose before and it's still afraid of them. Ash knows this, so he encourages Chimchar and gives it the confidence it needs to take on and defeat the Zangoose. With everyone safe and sound, it's three cheers for Chimchar, who finally feels like a part of its new family.
"Gosh when are we gonna get there," Harmony complains, "It feels like we've been walking for days on end!" She complains, not used to walking this much, Galar was such a smaller region compared to this and she was half ready to want to just take Braviary to fly to the next city without a fuss.
"We'll get there when we get there, don't worry too much," Brock explains glancing at the map making Harmony sigh once more.
The group of friends run into Gardenia, in the middle of her travels through Sinnoh. Gardenia is about to show off Pokémon battling with a friendly match, but Team Rocket interrupts to try and steal Pikachu and Chu.
Of course, the minute Gardenia sees James' Cacnea, her love for Grass-type Pokémon blinds her to everything else, and suddenly James finds himself joining Gardenia in a tag battle against Ash and Harmony.
Acting on Gardenia's advice, James has Cacnea try a new move, Drain Punch, but it only works once before Pachirisu and Aipom win the battle.
James turns down Gardenia's offer to train Cacnea, but it's still on his mind as he and Cacnea train hard to perfect this new move. Jessie and Meowth convince Ash and his friends to help Cacnea train, too.
Both Dawn and Harmony are understandably skeptical about helping Team Rocket power up, although Drain Punch still doesn't work even after Ash and his Pokémon help Cacnea train.
Gardenia returns in the middle of Cacnea's training battle against Ash's Aipom. Even though Cacnea battles with every last bit of its strength and beyond, it still can't pull off Drain Punch.
Remorsefully realizing that he's just not skilled enough to bring out Cacnea's full potential, James stops the battle and tells Cacnea to go with Gardenia.
He bids a tearful farewell to his Pokémon before running off, followed by Jessie and Meowth. But wherever he goes, James won't forget Cacnea and all their times together.
"I kinda feel bad for James, but at the same time I give him props," Harmony says softly as the group of four set up camp for the night.
"How so?" Ash asks furrowing his brows in confusion.
"Well he loves and cares for Cacnea so much, and even though they are the bad guys to us they are kinda harmless mostly. But, I give him props because he recognized that Cacnea can't thrive and learn or grow with him and Gardenia can do that. Makes me wonder how he's even part of Team Rocket because an act like that isn't common for a team like that who wants to steal pokemon, they tend to only see pokemon as power houses, not as friends and partners,"
"Huh, I never thought of it like that…" Ash says nodding his head in agreement.
On their way to Solaceon Town, where Dawn and Harmony had heard there was going to be another contest, they ran into Zoey. And whenever they had the chance they couldn't resist wanting to have a practice battle, especially Dawn with her being in a slump.
At the same time on the other side of the field, Ash was having Chimchar and Aipom battle each other to train for the upcoming Gym battle.
As the two were training Harmony couldn't help but notice that Buizel is distracted by the battle between Chimchar and Aipom, and at the same time Aipom keeps trying to watch the Contest battle between Buizel and Zoey's Glameow.
Harmony finally had enough and quickly pointed out that it seemed as though Buizel would rather be battling while Aipom would rather be in a Contest.
Agreeing with her Zoey makes a bold suggestion two the two trainers: Dawn trade Buizel for Ash's Aipom.
Dawn and Ash aren't sure if that's a good idea. To test the waters, Ash suggests that he use Buizel to battle Harmony, and Dawn can use Aipom to battle Zoey.
But before the battle can get very far, Jessie and Meowth show up in disguise, and that made Harmony put her guard up, her eyes narrowing at the scheming Team Rocket members.
Of course it seemed that Jameso was unaware of the plan, and accidentally blew Team Rocket's cover.
Seviper uses Haze and Team Rocket makes a grab for Aipom and Buizel anyway, but they end up snagging Glameow and Sylveon instead the two had been close enough to Aipom and Buizel as they were training with each other.
Of course this greatly upset Harmony, her fist shaking as she got ready to let out another one of her pokemon only for Ash and Dawn to tell her they'll handle it.
The two trainers use Aipom and Buizel to defeat Team Rocket.
Ash's attacking style is a good match for Buizel while Aipom's flair is a good match for Dawn.
They complete the Pokémon trade, the two pokemon now happy with the decision.
Aipom and Buizel are battling in a field when Aipom deflects Buizel's Sonic Boom into an old stone tower, knocking it down. Then the skies darken and a Pokémon emerges from the ruined tower: Spiritomb.
"Ash Ketchum what the bloody hell was that! That looks bad!" Harmony says freaking out over the destroyed tower thing that looked rather old and important.
"Er...whatever it was it can't be that bad!" Ash says trying to brush it off.
However, one of the villagers is an old lady who knows this damage is the work of Spiritomb.
Long, long ago, Spiritomb caused trouble for the villagers until an Aura Guardian and his Pikachu sealed Spiritomb inside a Hallowed Tower made of stone.
"That sounds an awful lot like the tower Ash accidentally knocked down..." Harmony says narrowing her eyes at her friend who winces and rubs the back of his neck.
"Yeah...it kinda does…"Ash states and the four of them quickly promise to make things right, they're approached by some suspicious psychics that offer to help.
No matter how much Harmony states she doesn't fully trust them the rest of the group vote her and they clearly 'pretend' to help calm Spiritomb down, but then spring a net over Pikachu, Chu and Spiritomb.
However Team Rocket obviously didn't suspect the Spirtomb's strength as Spiritomb blasts the net apart and chases down Team Rocket.
Thankfully since Meowth can translate it actually discovers that Spiritomb is really looking for revenge on the Aura Guardian who sealed it in the Tower.
"We really need to stop Spiritomb, so we should lure Team Rocket into a trap and hope that Spiritomb is close behind" Harmony suggests after they sat for a few minutes thinking.
They agree but, when Team Rocket tells Spiritomb that Ash is a descendant of the Aura Guardian, and that Harmony is his maiden, therefore it turns its wrath on the two teens.
"What the hell! That's not true!" Harmony cried out but the Spiritomb wouldn't listen as the two teens ran away from it with Spiritomb in hot pursuit.
Ash and Harmony run to the ruins of the Hallowed Tower, yet Spiritomb is too powerful to be sealed away.
Both Chu and Pikachu are exhausted, but as clouds gather overhead, Ash gets an idea.
"Harmony do you trust me?" Ash speaks up.
"What kind of question is that!? OF COURSE I DO!" Harmony cries out shoving herself closer to Ash as the Spiritomb looked to be getting ready for another attack.
"Then have Chu aim a Thunderbolt at the sky! Same with Piakchu!" Ash suggests and she bites her lip nodding.
"Okay...Chu you hear that!?" she calls out to her pokemon partner who nods.
The two use Thunderbolt on the skies, attracting a lightning bolt that fills it with energy.
Then Chu and Pikachu defeat Spiritomb and the wayward spirit is sealed back into the Hallowed Tower, this time for good.
"See that was no big deal," Ash says as he and Harmony flop down next to the Hallowed Tower with a sigh of relief.
"No big deal, you have your priorities screwed on wrong mate," Harmony says with a huff, "I thought we were gonners,"
The following day on the way to Solaceon Town, where the next contest was the group of teens reach a river with an unfinished bridge.
As usualBrock immediately falls for the woman who runs the area, Isis, the stonecutter who was working on the bridge, and learns that construction has halted because Isis's Bibarel refuses to cut any more stone.
With only days until the project deadline, Isis's job is in trouble, and Brock gallantly offers to help get Bibarel back to work. But to his surprise, even the lure of delicious Pokémon food can't convince Bibarel to resume cutting.
Isis doesn't know what's wrong at all, even after Brock's effort. Mainly that was because Bibarel was trained by a master stonecutter and always used to obey her commands. But once the stonecutter left, for an unknown reason Bibarel stopped working.
The group of teens try to make up for the slack by having their own Pokémon cut stone instead, but without Bibarel, they don't have the know-how to cut stone to the right specifications, no matter how hard they tried. And they tried everything and everything to get it to work but it wouldn't.
To make things worse, Team Rocket descends on the scene and steals the construction team's Machamp and Machoke.
But luck had it as Bibarel actually decided to help and was able to beat Team Rocket and free the kidnapped Pokémon.
However, the bridge's head engineer shows up at the quarry and tries to force Bibarel out of the way so work can resume. With help from the teens, Bibarel defeats the head engineer and his Pokémon.
Then Bibarel's original trainer and stone cutting master returns, and reveals that the head engineer's blueprints were flawed. Meaning that Bibarel refused to cut any stone because it knew all along, and was only waiting for the master to return with blueprints that would work much better. Using the corrected blueprint, Bibarel gets back to work and the bridge was finished on schedule.
And with that in mind the group of four teens waved good-bye and headed on their way, after all they needed to get to another contest and even after that they'd need to head on to the next gym.