well, I've come back to this fanfiction which I have titled 'A Tale of Two Rivals' as a reference to my own ancestor's novel, 'A Tale of Two Cities', written by Charles Dickens, the ancestor to whom I just referred. you heard me here. I'm related to one of the most famous authors in the history of the British Isles. the reference to 'A Tale of Two Cities' by my ancestor is just the title of 'A Tale of Two Rivals'. the real storyline of this fanfiction was originally written by another blogger under the penname of IWriteFandomStuff and is nothing more than loose re-telling of the Hoenn and the Battle Frontier in Kanto sagas of the Pokémon anime series told from Drew's point of view. I'm merely rewriting and blogging their fanfiction, 'The Girl With The Red Bandana', into a more family-oriented version that stays with the basic limitations that the show has more than likely set the standards for its fans, even without them knowing it. I think that Contestshipping was my first ever OTP from the Pokémon anime series. this chapter of 'A Tale of Two Rivals' a full two-thousand-five-hundred-eighty-six words worth of storyline, give or take a comment from yours truly disguised as an author's note, or two, and save for the headnote right here, the disclaimer which directly follows it, and my personal confession to the sin of having copying off of the writing material from IWriteFandomStuff's own fanfiction, 'The Girl With The Red Bandana'. 'yours truly' meaning me in the headnote right here, while the 'yours truly' in the storyline of 'A Tale of Two Rivals' being the man of the hour in the world of contest coordinators, Drew. OK, on with the disclaimer...

disclamation: I do not own the Pokémon anime in any way, shape, or form. I do not have any copies of the manga's books. I also don't make a habit out of playing the games, at all. truthfully, I don't even own most of my own fanfiction's storyline right here or in any other one of the chapters present. all rights for the Pokémon games, manga, and anime are reserved for Satoshi Tajiri and the folks of Nintendo, while the ownership rights of this very fanfiction's own storyline are originally reserved for the other blogger on this same website who writes under the penname of IWriteFandomStuff.

just like with all the other chapters of 'A Tale of Two Rivals', I only own the fanfiction in and of itself, and at least, I admit to the sin of copying off of another blogger's writing material. I hope and pray to God on high that admitting to the sin counts for something.

It was right around then that a really wide grin spread across Soledad's face as though she had just remembered something funny. I could feel my eyebrow quirk up at her giant grin as I had waited for her to explain.

Soledad: Speaking of winners…

What was she even talking about? Where was she even going with this term she had begun with? What could she possibly have been getting at with…?

Oh.

It was right then and there that the realization of just where she was attempting to steer any further conversation had hit me in the head harder than a Hariyama's Arm Thrust attack combined with a Blaziken's Brick Break attack.

The world had suddenly made sense once again. I did not really want to have such a conversation, though.

I had to force myself to yawn at the starting topic. Then, I pretended to look at a watch I was not even wearing followed by the clock on the wall.

Yours Truly: Wow, is it really almost midnight, already?

I pretended to be surprised by the time, along with pretending to be drowsier than I actually was.

Yours Truly (continued): I guess I really should get going and get to bed, and soon. Got a busy day ahead of me tomorrow; gotta shower, then pack, and finally head out if I wanna be able to check out on time and hit the road. Bye-bye, Sol_

Soledad: Not so fast, Drew.

Soledad admonished this idea of mine, though.

Soledad: You're so not allowed to leave this conversation for the excuse of just going to bed, mister. You're gonna stay right there in your seat and listen to what I have to say about the winner of the Fallarbor Contest, and you're gonna listen well.

I just groaned at Soledad and grabbed my mug.

Yours Truly: Why do you even care so much about talking to me about her?

It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else. I even tried to drink a bit more of my tea, which had since become lukewarm and was just not as good as it had been when I had first brewed it due to the decrease in its temperature. Soledad answered my rhetorical question, anyway.

Soledad: I care so much about talking to you about May because you seem like you care so much about her.

That alarming reminder made me almost choke on my tea.

Yours Truly: You can believe whatever you wanna believe about it. I still say that I'll forget her in due time.

Soledad: Regardless of how touchy you get about it, I still wanna talk about May. I watched the whole contest, you know… on Live TV, from start to finish. Of course, I also rewatched a lot of certain parts of it online, as well. You're the only one in who was in that contest that I know, and I really wanna know the firsthand details.

Yours Truly: Can we please do this some other time? I really feel like I need to get to bed, like right now.

I already could no longer tell whether I was asking or begging for Soledad to let me go to bed, and it was probably the latter of the two. I did not care if I was begging for something from Soledad anymore. I just wanted to go to bed and forget this conversation or postpone its occurrence at the very least.

Soledad finally waved her right hand up in the air, dismissing my plea.

Soledad: It won't take too long. You just have to state a few of the key facts about it, maybe answer a question or two. You know, easy stuff like that.

Yours Truly: Alright, fine. Just a few, and don't you dare make it weird. So, help me if you make it weird, I swear on my mother's parents' graves that I'm gonna hang up on you, Soledad.

Soledad just smirked and rolled her eyes at me, thinking my threat to be just that; an empty threat.

Soledad: I recognized her the instant she had gone onto the stage for her appeal. I was pretty surprised that you didn't even bother to text me about it and tell me you saw her.

Yours Truly: I wouldn't exactly call that the world's most important information, you know. So, she entered another contest, big deal.

Soledad: Oh, but it is a big deal. I also wouldn't pretend I can't admit how much she had improved between Slateport City and Fallarbor Town if I were you either, Drew. This girl fell down before she even had the chance to let her Beautifly out of its pokéball in her first contest for its appeal, and in four short weeks she had pulled a win out of her red bandana after such an incredible battle.

Yours Truly: So, she won the contest this time; it just means that she got lucky in Fallarbor Town.

Soledad only gave me a point look in response.

Soledad: Do I really need to remind you that she beat the coordinator whose Medicham made mincemeat out of Roselia when you and your pokémon went up against her?

I just shifted myself and did not say a single thing back to Soledad.

Soledad (continued): Well, I'll tell you what I think, Drew; I think that you should definitely watch out for her, because the way May handled her appeal, completely prop-free, and her battle along with it, she might just be as good with contests as you and I are.

After something like that was said, I just had to respond back to her about it, it stressed me out so much.

Yours Truly: She didn't even know what a combination was until just the day before the Fallarbor Contest, Soledad. I watched her practice for a bit, and I have to say it; it was just as awful as her first contest in Slateport City. That girl's poor Beautifly ended up getting tied up in its own String Shot attack when she tried combining it with Gust. So yet again, I attribute May's win to nothing but luck.

Soledad: I seem to recall you telling me more than a few times that you don't believe in luck, Drew.

Was Soledad challenging me? I think she was challenging me with that kind of statement. I had to think of something, anything, to hit her back with.

Yours Truly: I, er… it can happen_ sometimes. This just so happened to be one of those times when it really could happen.

Well, there went any possible win I had against her in terms of speech.

Soledad: I tell you; you couldn't have possibly been watching the same contest or the same contest battle I had, because I saw an excellent performance in both. For that very reason, I fail to see why you'd have such a hard time admitting she was good.

Soledad then suddenly looked as though she were pretending something had already dawned on her.

Soledad (continued): Unless, of course, you're jealous that you lost the win to a beginner like her. I highly doubt that to be the case, though.

Yours Truly: You'd be right to do so.

Soledad: There shouldn't even be a problem, then.

Yours Truly: Well, good, because there isn't a problem at all.

I pulled my mug of hot chamomile tea reduced to lukewarm chamomile tea up to my face, took a long sip of the liquid and swished it about in my mouth so as to have an excuse not to talk to Soledad any further about the girl in the red bandana and her luck-based win in the pokémon contest in Fallarbor Town. I knew in moments like that I just could not afford to tell Soledad about any of the roses I had given May under any circumstance, because no matter what she had thought of them, the roses were still for her Beautifly. Somehow, I just knew that Soledad would never buy that kind of excuse, though.

Soledad paused for a second or two, most likely thinking her words through carefully and slowly. I know that she loved me like a younger brother and I, her, like the elder sister I never had in my own family. I could easily admit that I would have liked to know just what she was thinking so hard which was taking her so long to tell me. She was probably thinking of exactly what to say to me about May. I can admit that in addition to being the sister I never had, she was possibly the calmest and the most collected person I had ever met in my life.

That is correct. Soledad knew just how to break down my barriers if she had thought hard enough about how to do so.

Soledad: Need I remind you that there was a time that neither you nor I knew what a combination was.

So, Soledad chose a different tactic with that sort of question, had she? Surely, she had known that I had only found her to be quite condescending with that kind of softer than usual tone in her voice, didn't she?

Soledad (continued): There was a time when I'd never even heard of contests, and you didn't know much about how an appeal worked. I didn't even know how to score big points in the beginning of my journey to be a top coordinator, and you didn't know much about how to take care of your pokémon to help Roselia shine her best in the contest hall.

I could only respond to these questions of Soledad's with nothing short of a confused look on my face.

Yours Truly: What are you getting at, Sol?

Soledad: What I'm getting at is that everyone was new at some point in our journeys. Some people take a little longer to get into the swing of things than others do is all. However, everyone starts out at the stage in their coordinator careers where they're unsure of what they're doing, and they'll also try to learn all of the tricks of which it takes to make it big in this calling. I know you were natural at pokémon coordinating when you had first started out, but do I really need to remind you that even you took a whole year of trying it out first before you finally got the hang of it?

Soledad (continued): Obviously, there are always gonna be learning curves. You lost your own first contest, yourself, mind you, I couldn't even make it past round one in my first ever contest, and many, many, many, many, many other top coordinators lost their first ever contests in their own way. There were even others like me in my first contests who did even worse than May had done at her first contest, but they got better. They all worked to their best efforts, fell into their own rhythm after a bit, found their own style and rolled with their own punches. That's where May is, I bet. I also think it's pretty harsh and unfair of you to constantly judge her based on what you saw about her in her first ever contest, in the first time she had ever even tried this whole thing out. She had clearly turned it around since then and took what she had learned from it to heart. She had made incredible strides of improvement in her performance between Slateport and Fallarbor, just like you had in the first contest you ever entered and continue to do.

Soledad (continued): I just don't think you should really write her off as a hopeless nobody doomed to failure, especially not when even you've learnt so much from her.

Now, that was certainly a laugh from Soledad.

Yours Truly: What could I possibly have learnt from the likes of her? How to have great footing in the arena? What attacks do well in combinations with either Gust or String Shot, as long as it's not both at once?

Soledad: You realize that you can stop using mistakes she's made as an excuse for denial in just how you really feel about her performance, don't you? So, she'd made a few mistakes, haven't we all? Maybe I never made the same mistakes that she had, but I admit that I've made pretty poor decisions, both in appeal showcases and in contest battles, and I had paid for them wholly.

That was around when I had first begun to notice that my mug of chamomile tea was almost running on empty.

Soledad (continued): May had learnt exactly what combinations were and used them to her advantage in the final battle in the Fallarbor Contest. You also have to admit that that String Shot/Tackle combination attack did wonders in trapping her opponent's pokémon and gave May a little extra time to fully think her battle strategy through.

I was already almost done with my tea, there was barely any left in my mug.

Soledad (continued): It's all a part of growing into your own person, Drew. May's clearly impressed even you in a way or two, simply because you went and caught a new kind of pokémon just so that you could work to match up with one of her contest partner pokémon's signature moves.

Just what had been left of my chamomile tea at the time? Three sips or something?

Soledad (continued): If you think you can tell me that you didn't catch a pokémon like Masquerain just for the sake of showing up May and her Beautifly's own Silver Wind, you're not really as smart as you think you are. I'd already made the connection by then. It's also far too late to even try to deny it, Drew.

At the time, I could not decide whether I should have simply chugged the rest of it down like a Munchlax and just be done with my chamomile tea or take it slow and merely sip the rest of it.

Soledad (continued): It's fine to be human, you know, Drew. It's always OK to accept that you might have been wrong about this May girl, and that she might just have a future ahead of her in the world of coordinating and pokémon contests.

That did it for me. I definitely had to chug the rest of my hot tea down my throat like a Munchlax.

Soledad: You told me earlier that you had wanted to try and change up things in your routine some, and do you know what that takes? It takes a few or more steps out of your comfort zone and to accept new challenges head on. It doesn't even matter how unfamiliar they are to you. You won't know it works until you try it.

Yours Truly: Oh, and I suppose you know just what I'm missing here and even what I'm not accepting?

My attention stayed on my mug when I had told her that, however, since I was really talking more to myself than anyone else.