We're at sixty chapters folks! can I get a yeeeeeeehaw?

Quick note, this chapter uses a battle format from the anime that doesn't exist in the games, to the best of my knowledge? Apart from the when you briefly travel with an NPC like Cheryl or Riley and they fight with you. It's just a double battle with two trainers/pokemon on a team. And if it does exist apart from that,,, idk y'all I only played gens 4 and 5 and didn't interact w other players.

While I was waiting for Def to bring Thomas to the Valor Resort, we promptly ran into Dawn and Lucas. Yayyyyy.

(What is wrong with you Evelyn that is the boy you like.)

"How's it going?" Dawn asked me. She seemed in good spirits, as did Lucas, which I took to mean my presence hadn't affected him yet (and yes my heart was melting at the very sight of him, despite my initial sense of dread).

"It's going pretty well. Thomas and I have just been training in Hearthome. How are you?"

"We're good. Lucas and I have been here since Monday. Sorry we didn't say goodbye in Hearthome; Thomas said you weren't feeling well."

I tried to remember what Monday was… Oh, I was in bed all day. Of course. "Yeah. It's okay. Uh… how've you been?"

FUCK I already asked that.

"We're doing well," Dawn said without missing a beat. "We're thinking of going to a tag battle restaurant today."

"A what?"

Thomas teleported in with Def as Dawn said, "It's a restaurant in the Resort that lets you dine for free if you can beat the owners in a battle. Hi Thomas."

"Hi Dawn! That sounds fun," said Thomas.

"It sounds like a bad business plan…?" I said.

"Bored rich people," Dawn said with a shrug.

"It won't be too busy, will it?" I wondered. "The tournament's in two days, and a battle restaurant sounds like the perfect training opportunity."

"Don't worry, we did our research, and I think we'll be okay," said Dawn. "There's a number of battle-based restaurants in the Resort, and not only does the one we're going to require six badges to challenge, it's also tag battle-based, which means it isn't even relevant to the tournament's battle format."

"And the more experienced trainers probably know to avoid the pre-tournament crowd around Valor," I mused.

"Exactly – well, besides us," Dawn said with a grin. "You in?"

I looked at Thomas, who gave me a thumbs-up. We already knew we'd be partners in this.

"Sure," I said.

Despite Dawn's optimism, there was a pair of trainers already in the waiting room at the Seven Stars Restaurant. I recognized them.

"Hey, how goes?" Ashley de Leon asked, grinning broadly. She was sitting with AJ Kaur, who was fiddling with her pokedex.

"I'm good. How are you?"

"Good. You here to battle?"

"Yeah."

She tilted her head sideways. "You seem nervous."

"Do I?"

"Mhm. Who's your partner?"

"Thomas," I said, gesturing right next to me. He and Dawn and Lucas had said hello to Ashley and AJ and then fallen back into the conversation they'd been holding beforehand, which I hadn't really been a part of to begin with (part of me felt pressured to try and talk to Lucas; more of me wanted to avoid the inevitable disappointment of doing so).

"You know him… pretty well, right?"

"I think so?"

"You'll be fine, then. Tag battles are all about the connection between the trainers. The better you understand each other, the better your battle will go."

"Yeah, and the worse you understand each other, the more likely your glaceon and flaafy will freeze and paralyze each other," AJ added, still scrolling through her dex.

"Okay, I barely knew Tejal at the time," Ashley said defensively.

"Right, so like you said, if you don't know your partner, it'll be hot garbage," AJ said, grinning slyly at me.

A server walked to the front desk and read off a clipboard. "AJ?" she said.

"Good luck," Ashley said to me, following AJ and the server in.

"Thanks, you too," I said, very much aware that they wouldn't need it.

Part of me was hoping some sudden circumstance would force a change in our tag battle lineups, so that Lucas and I would have to pair up. The more realistic side of me knew that that would go terribly, and that Dawn and Thomas wouldn't work well as a pairing either, but Arceus wouldn't it have been lovely, to get the chance to prove that Lucas and I were compatible on some instinctive level that didn't even need a relationship on the surface to exist?

Although the current lineups had stakes of their own.

"Evelyn? Are you ready?"

I blinked. Thomas was looking at me expectantly, and I couldn't tell whether I'd skipped forward or just zoned out.

"Yeah, let's go."

"This will be a one-round tag battle between the challengers, Mr. Thomas Zamora and Ms. Evelyn Meyers, and the proprietors, Lord Roman and Lady Kylie."

The waiter who'd led us to the battlefield – an empty banquet hall with a retractable floor – was surprisingly well-versed in battle refereeing, or at least the intro speech. Our opponents were dressed formally in white, giving off a mixed vibe of youth and old money. "Bored rich people" seemed about right.

"Participants may not make substitutions; the match will conclude when one team's pokemon have been defeated. Proprietors, are you ready?"

"Probably not," said Lady Kylie with a wry grin. "Considering how the last battle went, I think we're out of our depth."

"I need an affirmative, Lady Kylie."

"Sure, yeah."

"Challengers?"

"Ready," Thomas said. I nodded.

"Battle… begin!"

Four flashes lit up the ballroom. I surveyed the field – a sudowoodo, a pikachu, Coeur, and Marcassin. Thomas and I had both picked our dark types.

"Sudowoodo, dig!"

"Marcassin, ice beam!"

"Coeur, dig. Aim for the pikachu; if you see the sudowoodo, keep him down with grass knot." (I conveyed this without words, but that was essentially what I said.)

"Pikachu, discharge!"

A strategic move – Sudowoodo was out of the way of the all-hitting discharge. Coeur was too, by sheer luck, so only Marcassin faced any attack at all. Ice beam blocked the electricity that came his way.

Coeur suddenly shot into the air in the middle of the battlefield. Sudowoodo didn't emerge – did he get her? Did she get him?

"Discharge!"

"Go back under!"

"Rock tomb!"

Coeur dove back underground. Marcassin lunged at the pikachu, shaking off the discharge attack even as he got closer to its source. The two sparred, night slash against iron tail. Neither Coeur nor Sudowoodo surfaced.

"Coeur, what's going on?"

"I'm stuck!"

Marcassin got the upper hand (two swords are greater than one tail) and knocked Pikachu back.

"What do you mean you're stuck?"

"He got me with rock tomb!"

In the meantime, Thomas had yelled something to Marcassin, who shot an ice beam into the oh fuck.

"THOMAS, NO!"

Sudowoodo and Coeur both burst out of the battlefield, streaks of ice energy flying out from under them. Coeur tumbled to the side, battered and icy.

"She was still under!"

"Shit, sorry!"

"Pikachu, let's get the umbreon out of the way! Thunderbolt!"

"Protect!" Thomas yelled.

Marcassin lunged in front of Coeur, putting up a shield–

I blinked and the battlefield had shifted. Coeur was saying something about being stuck.

"Thomas, don't ice beam the holes, Coeur's in there," I said quickly, before he could say anything.

"Uh… okay. Marcassin, future sight, over the entryways."

The absol let out a series of white-blue blasts that disappeared above the holes in the ground. I checked back in with Coeur.

"Can you see him?"

"Barely."

"Okay uhhhh–"

The battlefield shifted again; Coeur was back aboveground, somehow, clashing iron tails with the pikachu. Marcassin did a quick swords dance before jumping back in with night slash towards the sudowoodo–

"I'm stuck!"

It all had shifted again. I tilted my head back at the ceiling. "Dialga, would you fuck off," I hissed, frustrated. Thomas noticed.

"Time trouble?" he said quietly.

"Loads of it. Coeur is under, by the way."

"Oh, copy that. Marcassin, future sight!"

Back to Coeur. "Okay, send some shadow balls at the sudowoodo."

I heard some muffled explosions underground. "Pikachu, protect!" Lady Kylie yelled.

"Sudowoodo, now!" Lord Roman shouted.

Pikachu jumped into the air before creating a protect bubble around herself, forming a complete sphere rather than the usual dome. Then the earth began to shake.

"Oh, Arceus, Coeur!"

Marcassin lost his stance and fell; Sudowoodo climbed out of one hole just as Marcassin's future sight kicked in, exploding in a burst of blue-white psychic energy. Sudowoodo rolled to the side and struggled to get up. Coeur didn't emerge.

"Coeur? Coeurage, are you there?"

Another flash back in time.

"Battle… begin!"

I checked that I was still holding Coeur's pokeball and threw it. Thomas picked Marcassin again. "Follow Coeur underground," I said to him.

"What?"

"Coeur, dig!"

"Marcassin, follow her!"

Coeur and Sudowoodo dug tunnels into the ground. Marcassin dove in behind Coeur just before electricity flew over the tunnel's opening.

"If Pikachu uses protect, it's an earthquake," I told Thomas quickly.

"Okay."

Pikachu, the only aboveground pokemon, was now darting erratically around the battlefield. Her evasive maneuvers couldn't protect her from Coeur, who burst from the ground directly below her, hurling her into the air.

Another jump in time: Sudowoodo crawled out of a hole in the ground, I don't know when, and was greeted by a zap of Marcassin's white-blue future sight. Coeur emerged from a different hole and the same thing happened, but the psychic energy seemed to pass right through her. Dark type. No effect.

Another jump in time, still no clue when: an empty battlefield with tunnels everywhere. "Coeur?" I shouted.

"Hey! You're back!"

"Can you give me an update?"

"It's just me and the sudowoodo underground. We're both pretty weak, so I'm hoping to take him out in one. I can see him with aura, but he can't see me."

I remembered, suddenly, that aura isn't only used for communication and sensing.

"Do you think you could pull off aura sphere?"

"Ooh, I dunno but I can try."

We waited. None of us could see what was going on underground, but what I hoped was happening was Coeur sneaking up on Sudowoodo, forming an aura sphere quickly, before he could notice the glow illuminating the elaborate system of tunnels this battle had formed across the field, and–

BOOM!

A cloud of dust flew outwards from the explosion. Thomas and I shielded our faces, and when the dust began to settle, I strained to see what had happened.

There was a sudowoodo lying in the middle of the field. Nearby, still standing, was…

Marcassin?

"Sudowoodo is unable to battle! The match goes to the challengers!"

I fumbled for Coeur's pokeball but couldn't find it. "Here," said Thomas, handing me a pokeball. "She fainted while you were frozen, so I called her back."

"Thanks," I said, heart falling.

"We won," he said, sounding intentionally cheery.

You won, I thought.

Dawn and Lucas's battle went smoothly. They talked throughout the battle, rather than relying on sheer pre-established compatibility like I'd expected them to. When Lord Roman and Lady Kylie tried to use the tunnels to their advantage, Kenna – who was an empoleon now – flushed their pokemon out with hydro pump, which Lucas's glalie froze once they were aboveground, trapping them in ice. Their battle was as good as won.

And our battle? What did it prove?

That Thomas could carry us both if I was useless? We knew that.

That my pokemon could handle themselves without me, and that I had no control over how our battles went? Good thing we had a tournament in a day and a half. I was super ready for that. Fucking superb.

That Dialga had found a new way to fuck with me, this time by (I think?) sending me back a bit and then propelling me forward, setting me on an alternate timeline with no idea when I'd branched off from the original, which was terrifying because of the possibilities this new fuckery created, particularly as these jumps got worse and worse?

It sure as hell didn't prove what I'd hoped it might between me and Thomas.