A/N: Hey y'all, back with another chunk of text for you. Had a surprisingly busy few days so I didn't get this out as quickly as I'd hoped, but I think it's still a fun time. Gonna try to keep updates to a once-per week minimum, though! OH, and I littered a couple Easter Eggs in this chapter and the last, for Braviary-eyed readers ;)

As always, hope you like.

Sleeping was difficult for the three of us and judging from the talking and shouting in the hallways, it was difficult for most of the other trainers set to compete this year. Hop and I stayed up late into the night looking up all the different Pokémon we could find on each route, and who would be best suited for our teams. Hop had a whole notebook and everything, writing down different Pokémon, types, weaknesses, and by midnight, he had a rotating list of about twenty choices and about twenty different strategies on how to best use each of those Pokémon. I wasn't sure who else I wanted on my team. Scorbunny was a must; though we had still only known each other for just under a week, we already had formed an incredibly tight bond. Hop was insistent that Nessa's water gym in Hulbury would be one of the eight, which meant Yamper might stick around a bit too. Stufful looked far more content to curl up on my pillow and sleep, but even Victor, who didn't know much about team dynamics, insisted Stufful could be a valuable teammate.

We finally knocked out around 2 AM, just as the noise outside our door petered out, and I slept dreamlessly, Stufful's warm body and steady breathing keeping me cozy. I awoke to him prodding me and squeaking softly.

"Morning, Stufful, you aren't hungry are you, bud?" Stufful raised himself up on his hind legs, waved his front paws in the air and landed with a crash on top of me in response.

"Oof! Alright, point made, let's get some breakfast. When the hell did you get that strong?"

"Whazzat?" Hop asked, lifting his head up from the floor.

"Hop, did you not sleep in your room?"

"Nah, I was just…oh no!"

"What?"

"I drooled all over my notebook," he groaned, holding up the sopping pieces of paper. "There goes half my planning."

I laughed at him. "I think you'll survive. Stuff and I are headed to breakfast, you want us to wait for you?"

"What about Victor?" We both looked over at the other queen bed in the room. Victor was still out like a light. He wouldn't wake up even if I threw him off the bed. I beckoned Hop to follow us out and we left the room, Stufful lumbering behind us.

Down in the lobby we grabbed a couple mugs of breakfast tea and some muffins and sat down at a table just in time to see the elevator pop open and Sonia walk out, her fiery red mane barely tamed yet perfectly positioned at the same time, once again.

"Good morning, you two!" She said, spotting us immediately. "Care if I join you?"

"Not at all!" Hop and I responded, smiling.

"Fantastic, I'm famished and I've got a long day ahead of me…oh wait, who am I kidding, you're the ones with the big day today! Opening Ceremony and all. It'll be your first time on a professional pitch. You're gonna love it."

"I know! I'm so excited!" Hop said through bites of food.

"Are you going to watch?"

"Natch," Sonia said, smiling. "I'm going to be sitting in a box with Chairman Rose of the Pokémon League himself! Perks of being a top researcher for him, let me tell you."

I set my teacup down with a clank. "Oh, that's right! Did you ever find out what he needed you for?"

She waved her hands out in an it's-not-a-big-deal gesture and looked at me. "Just some junk about the Dynamax Phenomenon. Macro Cosmos is apparently on the brink of a big breakthrough in clean energy, and Rose seems to think that breakthrough is going to come through utilizing Dynamax Energy instead of the remnants of Wishing Stars and pieces."

"That makes sense," I said slowly. "When we fought that Butterfree, I felt like there was this incredibly power surrounding us the whole battle."

"Yep, that's the connection he was talking about," Sonia continued. "We've already been able to synthesize Dynamax energy conditions for a few years now, that's how we can utilize Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokémon during official gym battles, but the problem is that that uses up a tonof energy instead of creating it. Keep this on the DL you two, but Rose is trying to get us to reverse engineer the entire phenomenon so we can figure out how the energy is naturally created."

"Sounds complicated," Hop said.

"You don't know the half of it," Sonia said excitedly. "Because even though we use Dynamax Energy so much, we barely know anything about it. You know that Dynamaxing only happens in Galar? We can't even replicate Dynamax in other regions. It might be a connection to the air in Galar, it might be a connection to Wishing Pieces, it could just be some freak occurrence that we will never be able to fully understand! We're almost completely starting at square one!"

"Sounds awful," I said, grimacing.

"Sounds awfully brilliant! This is huuuuuuuge for me, you two! If I can crack this case, I'll finally be able to break free of being 'The Esteemed Professor Magnolia's Granddaughter.'" Sonia said her title with both incredible disdain and an incredibly posh accent, causing Hop and me to snicker. "And that's why I need your twin to Gigantamax that Butterfree A.S.A.P."

"Oh, he'd love to Gigantamax—"

"Gloria—" Hop warned, though he was holding back a laugh.

Sonia either didn't hear me or didn't choose to acknowledge me. "You two want to hear my running theory?"

"Uh, yeah, sure!" I said.

"Follow me," she said, and burst from her chair and back into the mezzanine, down the stairs and to the center of the lobby. Hop and I followed her down the stairs. Stufful looked like it was about to join us but returned to eating its breakfast.

"You saw the statue, right? Of the Great Hero of the Darkest Day?"

"Of course, we did," I said, gazing up at the brilliant golden statue. The gems shone a little bit warmer today, and for a brief second, I saw our reflections in the sapphire of the sword hilt, along with—what was that? I turned around to see if someone was behind us, but there was no one there.

"What about it?" Hop asked.

"Well, you know the story of the Darkest Day, right?"

"Of course," I said. "Everyone does." And everyone did. Thousands of years ago, the entire Galarian region was plunged into a dark storm for a single day. As the storm raged, giant Pokémon roamed the land and destroyed everything in their site. Finally, a great hero arrived and struck the giant Pokémon down, and with the light of his sword and shield, pushed the clouds far, far away, where they could never return to harm anyone again.

"Isn't that just an old folk tale?" Hop asked.

"Yes, but truth is often stranger than fiction," Sonia corrected. "See, this old tale is sort of an origin theory of the Dynamax Dens that pop up all over the Wild Area. We don't actually know where they come from, and soil samples from the dens themselves are wildly different than soil samples from anywhere else. And not just anywhere else in Galar, anywhere else in the world.

"We also only have fossil evidence of some truly gigantic Pokémon, bones that are identical to bones of Pokémon still alive today in every single way except in size, which leads some scholars to believe that some parts of the Darkest Day myth are actually true. Cool, right?"

"So, what does that mean?" Hop asked, looking just as lost as I was.

"It means that there's a good chance the Darkest Day actually did happen, and if it did, that that could completely change the study of the Dynamax Phenomenon forever! I am going to shower in grant money for years!"

"But wait," I asked, squinting at Sonia, and taking some of her manic glee out of her system, "what does that have to do with energy?"

"Well, this is all just guesswork, but I posit that the Darkest Day was actually just a massive Dynamax Event that we are still feeling the effects of to this day through those dens. That is thousands of years of energy created over the course of a single day. If we can prove the Darkest Day was just a widespread Dynamax event, that means that the events can be recreated, and if we can figure out how it happened…"

"You can create a new Darkest Day?" I asked.

"Oh, of course not, that would be a nightmare. At most, we'd just recreate it at a much smaller and more easily manageable size, which would give us that energy breakthrough the chairman wants so badly. And besides, even having a perfect understanding of what caused it still doesn't mean we'd be able to recreate it. Like I said, Dynamax Energy is unique exclusively to Galar. It's more likely alien intervention than something that we can actually reproduce."

"Still sounds dangerous."

"Yes, but it's highly unlikely!" Sonia said. "You would be shocked to find out how much of the scientific method is just inaccurately predicting doomsday events. I certainly don't think we'd be able to recreate the scenario but understanding how things work is the main thing I'm hoping for. Plus, it's not my money so if I'm barking up the wrong tree, I lose nothing!"

"You sound like a mad scientist."

"I actually had that listed in my bio for a bit on all my dating apps. Surprisingly good icebreaker," she said, winking at us. "Now I've taken up far too much of your time. I've got some calls to make and some appointments to set up. I can't wait to see you two from the stands tonight!"

And with that, she walked away, leaving Hop and me in the shadow of the Great Galarian Hero.

I anxiously pulled down on the Rotom-phone's screen, refreshing for the third time in five minutes, but the number stayed exactly the same. Eight Hundred Forty-Six. There were eight hundred and forty-six trainers crammed into the surprisingly large underbelly of the pitch. I could hear constant pounding above us as musical acts and pyrotechnics and who knows what else went on above us.

"You know these holding areas used to be dungeons back when this was a real castle?"

"Really not helping, Victor."

"I'm just saying, it's a bit on the nose is all," he continued. The dungeon walls were long gone, instead replaced with miles of white drywall that were only occasionally broken up with posters of various gym leaders and champions of past years. Hop, who seemed to actually care about History now that it was about Pokémon battling, was squeezing himself between all the other trainers, trying to see who he recognized from other gym battles before Leon's time.

The other trainers seemed to be keeping themselves busy the same way I was – poorly. Almost every one of them was around my age. Some, like Hop, looked excited at the prospect of running out on to the pitch to the cheers of thousands of Galarians, while some looked positively sick to their stomach. Many were trying to find a way to wear their plain white uniform comfortably, though most, like me, had given up hope trying to make the too-short, short shorts and awkward-collared shirts look or feel anything other than ill-fitting. Some of them wore jerseys that signified that they trained under a gym leader. Hop had mentioned earlier when we arrived that one of the most common ways to get an endorsement was to study under a gym leader's watchful eye. The gym with the most highly ranked trainers won their own award, presented at the closing ceremonies before the battle between the League Winner and the Champion. All the trainers nearby looked to be around my age – there were no age restrictions for competing in the tournament, but outside of gym leaders and the champion himself, there were just not many viable ways to make a living making a trainer, so most flamed out by the time they turned twenty. But even then, I did see a few familiar faces. I thought I saw Eddie and Sam somewhere, but too many people had come and gone in front of me to even guess where it was, I saw them first, let alone if they were still there. I hoped I would see them again soon.

Instead, I saw a small black and yellow mouse, not unlike a Pikachu, weave through the crowd and hop right onto my lap excitedly. It sniffed my hands as I held them out gingerly, and once it had, it snuggled right up to me and…was it purring? Could mouse Pokémon purr?"

"Hey, you wouldn't happen to be Marnie's, would you?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, she is," came the bored-sounding voice. I looked up and was shocked to see that instead of the stuffy old challenger uniform most were wearing, Marnie's outfit was a dark black, skintight Polyester tank, just barely covering down to the tip of her belly button Across the front was a magenta logo for Team Yell, askew to the point that it was hardly recognizable. Instead of the awkward short shorts, she also wore bright pink, equally form-fitting shorts and pink sneakers, which at least had the same shape as the standard Challenger shoes. Her hair was fixed up just like it was when I saw her in the hostel bathroom and her sharp green eyes were well aware of the fact that I had been staring at her for far too long.

"I'm from Spikemuth," she explained, glancing away, "Only makes sense that I trained with the Dark-Type gym." I thought I could see just the faintest hint of color cross her pale face, but her face reset to its factory default. "Seems Morpeko's taken a likin' to you."

"Uh…y-yeah."

"Not bad, Gloria. She's a good judge of character. I do need her back, though. We can't have our Pokémon with us when we take the pitch this time. Too many weak trainers around."

"Hey—" one of the nearby trainers said.

"I wasn't only talkin' about you," she said to him dryly. "Uh, mind if I come on to the pitch with you and—damn, are there two of you?"

"Yeah, we're twins," Victor said, looking back and forth between Marnie and me. I saw something click in his mind and he smirked. "You're welcome to, Marnie, was it?"

"That's me," she said, smiling, but still looking completely disinterested. I laughed suddenly, then blushed and turned away. Marnie had turned around and returned Morpeko to her Pokéball when I looked back up. On her back was the number 960.

"You are not allowed to make fun of me and Sonia ever again," Victor whispered, his smirk even bigger.

"Criminy, is it really that obvious?" I whispered back.

"Gloria, your face is pinker than her shorts."

"Alright, Trainers in Block A!" shouted a voice from down the hall. "You are all set to head out, so follow me straight to the pitch! It's time!" Victor and I got up quickly and flanked Marnie as she walked out. Hop trotted back to us.

"Hey Marnie, wow, lookin' great! Almost wish I trained with a gym, because I look ridiculous!"

"I know," she said simply.

"We both look ridiculous," Hop said to me, mirroring Victor's smirk.

"Hop, now is not the time," I said through clenched teeth, but he laughed it off and patted me hard on the back.

"You'll forget about it in twenty seconds. Here…we…go!" The pace of the crowd started to pick up, first to a quick walk, then an awkward jog, and finally into a more relaxed jog as the group turned a corner and started running through a dark hallway. At the end I could just see red. Bright red, getting brighter and brighter with each passing step until I was through the tunnel and out on the pitch for the first time.

The roar of the crowd was deafening. Hop was grinning ear to ear, Victor grabbed my shoulder and pointed to a camera, and I waved, wondering if I was on the live feed right now. Even Marnie couldn't hide her excitement. I glanced over to see her gazing out in wonder, but the second we made eye contact again, she soured up and I looked away, feeling yet another blush come on.

The pitch itself was made of a bouncy turf. I knew that Kabu, the fire-type Gym Leader, had his battles here, so the grass had to be flame-resistant, but it still felt quite a bit like real grass. It felt surprisingly natural to jog on. As the crowd cheered itself into a frenzy, I saw the other groups of trainers pile onto the pitch, until it was positively filled with all eight hundred forty-six of us. We milled about on the turf for a second until the lights shifted to the far end of the pitch, where a giant stage had been erected in front of a massive LCD screen.

From the sky above, a massive pillar of flame erupted, much to the audience's delight. I didn't have time to register that no normal Pokémon could produce that much flame before I saw its source: A hundred-foot tall Charizard descended into the crowd, its wings spread out like a phoenix and blazing with enough fire to light up the entire city of Motostoke. Was…was this a Gigantamax Charizard?

As the Charizard landed it began to shrink and I could see on the big screen behind the stage that there was a man riding on the back. Leon. Of course, it was Leon and his Charizard. He hopped off his partner Pokémon and did his signature pose, shoving his hand to the sky, and the crowd erupted a third time.

The cheering continued for nearly half a minute until Leon relaxed his arms and held them out in front of him instead, signaling for them to quiet down.

"Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen of Galar!" He cried into a Mic at the edge of the stage. "It's that time of year again; time for the Galar Gym Challenge to begin! It looks like you've met our challengers. Nearly nine hundred this year! One of the biggest crowds I've seen in my ten years of being your unbeatable Champion! Ha, I'm almost nervous!"

The audience was eating his performance up, and I couldn't blame them. He was already an incredibly charming and charismatic man to begin with, but with Charizard by his side and in his element, he looked positively electric.

"Of course, I'm not the only one whose got his work cut out for him! I think it's time you met our eight Gym Leaders! Our top gym leaders, and some of my closest friends and colleagues. And you best believe they're ready to battle! First, let me introduce to you our eighth seed! Heh, seed. I didn't even plan that. Right next door in Turffield and taking the Grass Gym by storm in his first year as a gym leader, the Wooloo Wrangler himself, MILO!" Cheers erupted as a muscular man jogged onto the stage. He was wearing a green uniform with a leaf on it. I was surprised to see that he made it this far: Grass type Pokémon rarely made it into the finals and Eve, and the grass type gym was notorious for barely qualifying any of their trainers for the challenge at all. He would be much more challenging than his type would suggest.

"In the seventh seed, we have the beautiful Water Siren herself, NESSA!" A dark-skinned woman in a uniform somehow even skimpier than Marnie's took the stage, and the hooting and hollering sounded a bit more masculine. Nessa took it in stride, striking a dramatic pose next to Milo before shaking his hand. The two looked to be good friends.

"In sixth, and for his nineteenth year in a row, representing Motostoke himself, the ever-burning KABU!" the cheers were the loudest yet as the older trainer in red took the stage. He didn't have the excitement of the grace of Milo or Nessa, but he held himself firm and respectfully. I felt Hop nudge me. Kabu was one of his favorite leaders, and one of the most consistent battlers in all Galar. I would really have to come up with a winning strategy when I faced him.

"Fighting all the way to fifth, and that is a pun I did come up with, another rookie gym leader, give it up for BEA!" If Kabu looked a bit stiff in his introduction, Bea looked like a plank of wood. Her resolve looked so stoic that she could have been a Steel-type gym leader, and she had the muscles to look the part as well. Even from far away, I felt like I could perfectly trace the lines of her abs.

"And in fourth! A fairy-type Leader and a fairly persistent feature in the gym challenge, please welcome, in her last year with the league, OPAL!" A frail old woman took the stage, with the help of a gym challenger who wore a matching pink fairy-type uniform. She looked like she would blow away in the slightest breeze, but I had seen plenty of gym battles against her in the past few years. She was a difficult opponent to even Leon with her incredibly versatile fairy team.

"In third, I have no idea how an ice type trainer could have a hot streak this long, please welcome MELONY!" Clad entirely in white, a slightly heavyset blonde woman of around forty, dressed in all white, took the stage. I hadn't seen as many gym battles of her, but I knew her ice types would be tough for even a scorcher like Scorbunny.

"Before we get to our first seed, I regret that I have to share some bad news for you. Finishing in the second seed was none other than our Beloved Steel-type Leader, Peony. Unfortunately, he has decided to pull out in the last minute. We're in talks with our ninth and tenth seeds to see who would make for the best challenge for these trainers, but trust me, even our ninth or tenth best trainer in the league is going to be more than worthy of fighting on in his place. In the meantime, let's think of it as a little surprise. Keep you all guessing, you know?" As he said this, there was a ripple of confusion followed by light applause. I glanced at Hop and Victor, who looked just as confused as I did. Even Marnie had one of her eyebrows cocked.

"But of course, our first seed trainer. He needs no introduction; we all know it's RAIHAN!" The crowd was almost as loud as it was for Kabu as the lanky dragon master strode confidently out onto the stage. He gave Leon a fist bump and wrapped his arm around Melony, whispering something in her ear. She feigned shock and smacked her hand across his chest, just making him laugh. The two clearly had a close bond, which was surprising, as dragon tamers tend to avoid Ice Types in battle.

"And there you have it! Your eight…well, seven gym leaders! We've got a long season ahead of us, and I'm already buzzing with excitement! I know we'll all have a…champion time!" The crowd erupted again.

Hop, Victor, and I stayed back in the locker room, still buzzing from the ceremony. Everyone had headed back to the Budew Drop Inn to rest up before they all headed to their first gym, but Hop had told us Leon wanted to meet with us after the ceremony. We sat there in the empty locker room when we heard voices coming from behind the door. It burst open and Leon, dressed in a much more casual look of sweatshirt and baggy jeans, waltzed in.

"How was that for a ceremony! What a crowd tonight! I couldn't see you three, but I was so excited that you were just in the crowd with me! What did you think?"

"I think you still shouldn't have said anything about Peony dropping out of the—oh, so this is what you're playing at, eh?" the man next to Leon was an older man, maybe about forty years old. His hair was stylish, cut in a pompadour style with black and grey hair slicked back and falling lazily down the sides of his head, shaved closely around his head. He wore a perfectly fitted grey suit that looked like it was fresh out of a men's catalogue, and shiny black wingtips on his feet. His olive skin was just a shade lighter than Leon and Hop's, a nice shade of cocoa that made him look like a corporate version of diversity. I couldn't quite place where I had seen the man before, but as his small posse filled out behind him, including a blank-faced blonde woman who was either twenty-five or forty, a couple Macro Cosmos security guards still in their league uniforms, and a familiar-looking trainer in a violet trench coat and a mop of silvery blonde hair, I could see that he was an important man indeed.

"You must be Hop, I presume," the man chuckled, taking a couple steps in and reaching out his hand to shake. Hop happily took his hand and shook it. "Firm grip, just like your brother. And these must be the twins? You're right; spitting image of each other they are."

"Hop, Gloria, Victor, this is Chairman Rose Legatum, in the flesh," Leon said, beaming.

"THE chairman?" Hop asked excitedly, starting to buzz with excitement.

"Oh, no," the man laughed. "You haven't built me up to be some sort of legend, have you? Hate to disappoint you kids, but I'm just a man who likes Pokémon battles, nothing more. This is my assistant, Oleana. If anything, she's the legend. I wouldn't get anything done without her!"

"Thank you, chairman," the woman said dryly.

"So, I finally get to meet the two trainers that finally dragged an endorsement out of the unbeatable Leon!" Rose said, clapping his hands together. "You two really must be something special. I'll have to keep an eye on you. Have you met the boy I endorsed? Say hello, Bede."

"Hello," the trainer said softly.

"Didn't you almost bowl me over yesterday after registration?"

Bede's face flashed with recognition and anger before he pushed it back down deep. "I…I am so sorry that happened. I was having a really rough morning, and I didn't mean to leave such a bad… first impression."

"He's like that," Rose said, beaming. "But watch out. I saw this kid at the trainers' school downtown last year and let me tell you, he's going places. I just had to endorse him after seeing him battle with his partner, Hatenna. Maybe we could make a wager to see how far our champions could go?"

"I'm not much of a betting man, Rose, you know that," Leon chided softly. "But Hop and Gloria are no slouch either. Even Victor's got some smarts in the battle department, I reckon."

"Yes, who endorsed you, might I ask?" Bede asked in a voice that was almost too sickeningly sweet. "If the champion didn't, of course."

"Uh, Professor Magnolia did," Victor said timidly, looking at Bede funnily.

"Oh, Professor Magnolia has an excellent eye for Pokémon battles," Rose laughed. "She's the reason we were able to retrofit our stadiums with synthetic Dynamax energy. Really, she's the one who made the league challenge what it is today. My company wouldn't be worth as much as it would be if I hadn't invested in her research. In fact, we're working with her and her granddaughter, Sonia on a new project of mine! I'll be sure to keep an eye on you as well, son."

Victor smiled at the compliment, and Oleanna whispered in Rose's ear. Rose's smile turned into a frown, and then that frown quickly faded into a tired scowl.

"Ah, well, duty calls. I really wish I would have been able to really get to know you three, but there is a party for league donors, and if they feel they've been spurned, I feel the league's pockets get a lot emptier, if you know what I'm saying!" With a laugh, he turned and walked out of the locker room, Oleanna at his side and locked in step with him. Bede followed them out, but not before shooting a haughty look at the three of us.

"Damn, they'll probably want me at that meeting too," Leon groaned. "You two, your Mum's in town and she very forcefully told me that you are not to leave town until you've told her goodbye again. Please do not hesitate to see her, her ear pulling is no joke." Leon rushed after the group, leaving the three of us alone in the locker room. For the first time in nearly two days, there was complete silence.

"Guys," Hop said. "We're officially gym challengers now."

I grinned, and so did Victor. It was finally starting to sink in. We were competing in the largest competition that Galar had to offer.

"Are we going to travel together? I know a lot of trainers go on their own," Victor said softly.

"No," I said. "I wouldn't trade anything in the world to travel together. Besides, I have to see Hop lose to every gym leader."

"We'll see about that Trubbish talk once I sweep every one of these gyms," Hop said playfully.

"You'll be talking Trubbish because you'll be Trubbish," I shot back, laughing.

"Hey, what was up with that Bede kid?" Victor said suddenly. "He was the kid that straight up knocked you over yesterday, right?"

"Of course," I said. "I'd recognize that dumb purple coat anywhere. Bet he had to put up a good face since Rose was right there; he's probably insufferable when the chairman isn't around."

"Lee always said Rose brings out the best in people…" Hop said, but his voice trailed off.

"Did you not like Rose?"

"I didn't say that," Hop said. "He seems a little…too charming, does that make sense? Like it's all a front."

I shrugged. "He's gotta be worth a fortune. He's probably not used to hangin' around regular people like us."

"Maybe…" Hop still didn't look convinced, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind and grabbed his bag and uniform. "C'mon, your Mum is waiting for us. I'm going to see if she can get me one last free snack before we really hit the road."

A/N: And that's that! I really wanted to capture the grandeur of this opening ceremony, as well as spend some time throughout this fic showing how big the gym battles are to the people of Galar. So there's that to look forward to. But as for now, we still have to get to Turffield. And that means a certain rival battle is coming up...

NEXT TIME: TWO ON ONE