In which May actually completes her team, and the writers finally remember to add the little 'current teams' note at the end.

The pair left Fortree City as soon as Pikachu and Breloom had been returned to their proper trainers. There was nothing left for them here, and Lilycove City was where Lisia had told them to meet.

And, it seemed, Norman had gotten the message through to Wally.

"I hear you're starting up some kind of evil team," Wally started, having called almost as soon as his friends had stepped into the tall, nose-picking grass that led to the Kecleon bridge. "Your dad said you wanted me to be your third."

"Well..." Brendan swallowed. "We had a Contest star join before you did. You can split the authority."

"Tell him it's not an evil team," May hissed, having heard those words in particular. "He might want to know that before he makes a decision."

"Who said it wasn't evil?" Brendan challenged. "I never did. I only said I wanted to take over Hoenn before Archie or Maxie, nothing about using it for my own purposes."

Wally laughed. "Good or evil," he decided, "I still want in. I won something off the big guy in Team Magma, and I want to put it to use."

"What did you win?" Brendan asked, knowing that May would like to know. Even if she was trapped in the really tall grass at the moment.

"You'll see," Wally said, taunting him already. "So, what's our team's goal?"

He'd gotten a lot of confidence since his uncle let him go on a journey. Brendan wondered how he was really holding up. "Team Breakneck has only one mission at the moment, and that is to stop Team Magma and Team Aqua at any cost. Lisia's orders are to use Ali to distract and confuse them into submission, since she swears she's no good in battle. Maybe you can be her partner in crime, like May is to me."

"So she uses her bird to distract them while I have Kirlia sneak up and take them out, ninja-style," Wally decided. "I can settle for that."

"No killing," Brendan warned. "I don't want to be on the news yet, and I don't think Steven would give out bail money for murderers, if you even get that option."

Wally made an offended sound. "I do what I want," he said, and switched off.

Brendan didn't take him seriously, but looked back at the grass as it rustled before spitting out May. She held a Great Ball in her hands and her eyes were lit up. She'd replaced Castform, that much was clear.

"Do you want to say hi to our new teammate?"

She was more excited than he could remember, more so than even after joining forces with Latias. It almost took him by surprise. "What is it?"

May released the Pokémon from the Great Ball. It was a large, white, fluffy thing, on four legs, with a dark scythe-shaped horn (or ear, he couldn't tell) growing out of one side of its head, and a matching knife tail. He hadn't encountered one before, but he'd heard of them.

"Aren't they endangered, or something?" He looked down at the Pokémon. The Absol stared back. "Don't you have to have a permit to catch an Absol?"

"They're not endangered," May said, shrugging. "Not anymore. And even if I do need a permit, my dad is Professor Birch. I can get one in two seconds."

"You have a point."

"And since when were you Mr. Legal Pants, anyway?"

"You have another point."

She was satisfied with that, and she bent down to ruffle her new Absol's head. "He's so cute, isn't he?" she asked, dropping the subject. "I named him Dusky."

"What?"

"Dusky," May repeated, and the Absol sat down in front of her. "Defined by a dictionary as 'lit as if by twilight.' Since he's a light-colored Dark-type and all, I thought it would be cute."

So that's what she'd been reading the night before. "You read a dictionary?"

"Skimmed it," May clarified. "Only made it through the E's. It was boring. Don't ever do it."

Brendan looked down at the Absol, who didn't appear to mind his name. "Well," he finally decided, "if you want Dusky to come along with us outside of the ball, he should be prepared for walking."

"I was going to put him back!"

Brendan laughed a little. "Of course you were. Wouldn't want his pretty white fur to get dirty, would we?"

"Who puts up fences like this?"

May's outburst was right on cue. Maybe there was something to the best friend thing, they seemed to know each other well enough to become predictable. He had to step up his unpredictability game.

"I think it was to keep the lines to the Safari Zone in check," Brendan said, checking his Pokenav map. "It also has a connection to Mt. Pyre here. Dusky has a type advantage against Ghost Pokémon, it could get him used to battling with a trainer."

"But he's so fluffy," May objected. "I wanted him to be a Contest-exclusive partner."

"You caught him before we stopped Team Magma and Team Aqua. He's going to battle eventually."

May looked down at the Great Ball that held her new friend. Brendan was right. "Let's meet up with Lisia first," she decided. "She can tell me if he's good enough for Contests, and what kind of moves he knows. We'll need something with Surf to take us across to Mt. Pyre, anyway."

"We have Latias."

"I have Latias," May reminded him. "You don't."

"But doesn't your best friend get free rides?"

May pretended to think. "Um...no. Not unless he behaves himself." She couldn't stop the smile, though she tried. "If you promise to let me go check out the Lilycove Contest Hall, I'll let you ride Latias with me to Mt. Pyre after. Sound good to you?"

Brendan grumbled under his breath, but had no choice. He may be the one leading the team, but for as long as May held their only legendary, she was the one who directed them.

Besides, if he was being honest with himself, he wanted to see Lisia again, too. It had been way too long.

They had no idea that they had just barely missed Team Aqua preparing to set out for Mt. Pyre themselves.

"Oh, there's another guy?"

Lisia had sketched out Team Breakneck uniforms, as promised. Brendan had to be impressed by her dedication, but May had told her that there was now another boy involved, on a mission of his own, and she hadn't gotten around to showing off the designs yet.

"His name's Wally," Brendan explained. "May supervised him catching his first Pokémon, and then we met him and his uncle in Mauville City and he declared himself my friendly rival."

"He says he had an encounter with Team Magma," May continued. "I didn't actually hear the story that well."

"All he said was that he won something off 'the big guy,'" Brendan finished. "I'm pretty sure he meant Tabitha."

Lisia returned to her drawings. "What does Wally look like?"

"Skinny," May said immediately, her eyebrows scrunching again, like she was trying to describe Wally as a fictional character. "And I don't just mean he isn't fat, I mean he doesn't have muscles, either. He's our age, though, so that should be expected. He's skinny, pale and mostly green."

Laura looked confused by the description, but Lisia, being a young teen herself, understood enough to roll with it. "Mostly green," she repeated, putting the pencil back to the paper. But she didn't start drawing yet, and looked up to search them for any hesitation. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you can still stop Team Magma and Team Aqua without starting your own team, right?"

"We can," Brendan agreed, sitting down and casually playing with his Key Stone. "But the whole point of Team Breakneck is supposed to put us in charge of Hoenn. Not entirely for the power, we'll let other people do the actual ruling, just that the bad guys have to get through us first."

"It's totally about the power," Lisia said bluntly. "You can't fool me." She looked back at the paper, and then her head snapped back up. "Are those Key Stones?"

Well, it certainly took her long enough. "Of course they are," Brendan said, stretching his arm in a way that showed it off even more. "I'm just waiting for my Lairon to evolve into Aggron. I already have the Aggronite ready."

Lisia's eyes were wide and almost too blue, and Brendan was grateful that she turned them on May. "Which Mega Stone do you have?"

May opened her mouth, then closed it. She wasn't sure she wanted Lisia to know about her legendary yet - it wasn't that she didn't trust her, she just didn't want Lisia to accidentally mention it to the press. "I was actually thinking about asking my dad if he can get me an Absolite," she decided, patting Dusky's ball. "I just feel that it would be better for Contests if my Mega Evolution was more...fluffy, than the option I have now."

For a second, it looked like Lisia was going to ask. But, she just turned to her Altaria with a smile. "Mega Absol is so pretty, isn't it?" she asked him, and he chirped in agreement. "Is your Absol a boy or a girl, May?"

"It's a boy," May said proudly. "His name is Dusky. Mega Absol isn't too pretty to look gender-neutral, is it?"

"He'll be fine," Lisia promised. "Ali here gets mistaken for a female all the time, but I know he's a boy. And I think I remember that Brendan's Aron was a girl, but Aggron is a pretty tough-looking Pokémon." She laughed. "Huh, even Chaz has a female Machoke. Maybe we should invite him to be part of Team Breakneck."

"Let's not," Brendan and May said together.

Lisia's laughter got louder. "I thought that was how teams were formed," she teased.

If she was that insistent, maybe they should invite Chaz. Then again, May hadn't beaten him in a Contest, and so she wasn't sure exactly how she felt about the guy.

"What do you have for our costumes?" Brendan asked, looking more at Ali than at Lisia. "If we're going to go around recruiting people, we might as well match, right?"

Lisia and Laura shared a look. "It might be easier if we actually took proper measurements, Brendan," the costumer decided. "Lisia and May are equal, for the moment at least, but if I'm going to be doing any kind of work for you, I'd prefer if I didn't have to guess."

Brendan wasn't a fan of the idea, and looked at the girls and Ali as if they could give him any assistance. May just smiled and waved.

"You'll be fine," Lisia said, so sure of herself that Brendan almost calmed. "She made my uncle's better costumes, and he turned out..." She trailed off, then wrinkled her nose. "Well, she's still working with the family."

"Your uncle, huh?" Brendan took a seat next to her. "So when are we going to meet him? He's got to know his student has become a master herself, right?" Lisia focused even more on her sketches, but Brendan saw her face turn a little pink. "All right, don't tell me. I can guess. Is he older or younger than whatever parent he's related to?"

"He's younger than Mom," Lisia stated, deciding this was good enough. "By a lot."

Huh. That was an interesting fact. "And how much older than you?"

"I'm not sure. More than ten years."

"Do you look more like your mom or your dad?"

Her lips turned up a little. "Mom," she repeated, almost as if there was an inside joke she was dying to let him in on but couldn't.

"And how close is the family resemblance there?"

The smile grew more mocking, but Lisia remained quiet. Ali made a soft Altaria call, as if warning Brendan that any further questions were best reserved for later.

He could handle that. He probably had enough to go on now. Besides, from the look on her face, May seemed to have known all along.

"So," he whispered as Lisia returned to her costume design, "who is the guy? I'm kind of curious after everything I've heard about him."

"We'll meet him eventually." May looked almost smug. "You should really pick up a Contest magazine or two. The relationship isn't exactly secret."

May hadn't wanted to enter the Contest, not even with Dusky as her partner. She swore it was because all of his moves were for different types, but something told Brendan she just wanted to explore Mt. Pyre. Something about using urban legends about Ghost-types for her inspiration. Brendan didn't really care at first.

But it was only when they came to the edge of the land, Mt. Pyre in the distance, that he realized that he was a little scared of going into a cemetery unsupervised.

May was skeptical. "You're afraid of ghosts?"

Brendan gave her a light shove. "No. I'm afraid of zombies. Ghosts are images of the deceased, zombies are the reanimated corpses that come back to feed on the flesh and brains of the living."

"I'm aware of the difference," May reassured him. "Zombies aren't real, you know. I thought that the boy who was more than willing to provoke the forest gods would have no problem with one little graveyard."

"The forest gods are different. They eat souls, and I know mine is either sour or shriveled." He folded his hands behind his back and stared out at the island graveyard. "But my flesh is young and not too chewy, and my brain is cooking."

"Don't worry," May said with a taunting smile. "Dad always told me that boys' brains tended to give out at our age and come back in our mid to late teens. It's probably wrung out like a sponge and slowly reabsorbing stuff."

She said it like she knew what she was talking about, and that annoyed Brendan more than anything else. "And what did the professor say about girls?"

"Oh, that?" She shrugged. "He said my brain would work just fine, but my behavior would break, especially around cute boys. He was right about that, so why wouldn't he be right about you?"

It wasn't anything that the movies hadn't warned him about, and May was his best friend. She'd be his reason and he'd be her restraint. They'd work together to navigate the challenges of growing up, just like they were now working together to put a stop to not one but two criminal organizations.

Somehow, he couldn't shake the feeling that they'd done things backwards.

But it couldn't be helped. All that could be done now is allow May to let Latias out of the ball just long enough for her to carry them both across the water, and prepare for a cemetery adventure.

Pokémon teams:

Brendan: Adam (male Blaziken) Breloom (male) Lairon (female) Spoink (male)

May: Jerry (male Marshtomp) Masquerain (female) Pikachu (female) Torkoal (male) Latias, Dusky (male Absol)

Professor Birch: Castform (female)