We've hit 70 chapters! Aaaand just in time for Big Chance Project to come out!

Because my best friend is better at listening to books than reading them, I've spent the last several months creating an audio version of Chance. It's sort of a podcast-audiobook hybrid consisting of a few chapters per episode on Your Local Podcast App, in which I read Chance and my friends pop in to voice characters. It's super amateur and a great excuse to spend time calling my friends during quarantine lmao.

It's also great for you and your friends who like Pokémon but don't really read, or who listen to podcasts in the car/while doing other things, or who are more auditory than visual people, or who just want to experience Chance in a new form. Also there are fun bonus features like bloopers (aka me not knowing how to talk).

If you're interested, look for "Chance: a Pokémon story" on your favorite podcast app (specifically it's out on Spotify, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic and should also be on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Castbox soon). Right now the prologue is up, and I've got the first three chapters ready to roll out pretty soon. I'm super excited for this and Hope (lol) you'll give it a listen!

All right, now enjoy the world's longest pokemon battle I'm so tired of writing fight scenes lmaooooooo

Thomas wanted to go watch Dawn's quarterfinal, even though ours was right after. "Gotta do some research into our future opponent," he reasoned.

"You mean your future opponent," I said.

He gave me an exasperated look. "After all this time, you still think you can't beat me?"

"Yes? Why is this still a question? You've had your team four times as long as I have."

"And we have six badges, just like you."

"Because you take gyms at a slugma's pace when I'm not pushing you forward."

Thomas shook his head. It was the same argument we'd had a million times. But I did have a real reason for missing Dawn's battle.

"I still gotta go petition for a five-on-five," I said. All the quarterfinals were six-on-six single battles, but I wasn't ready to let Hope back out there after yesterday's fall.

"Okay, I guess I'll see you later, when you beat me," he said. I rolled my eyes.

I left him at the main arena and walked back to the pokemon center, where the registration booth was set up. I was pretty sure they'd have Hope's urgent care trip on file, which was grounds for a battle alteration, so I wasn't too worried.

"Evelyn!"

I turned – I caught a split second of Megan running at me before she tackled me in a hug.

"Megan?"

"Yep!"

"You're here?"

"I couldn't let Jonathan be the only one to visit his best friend at the tournament."

She let me go. I was still in shock. "You're here," I said again.

Megan grinned. "Yeah. Is that okay?"

"Is that okay?" I said incredulously. "It's more than okay. Arceus, I've missed you."

The full weight of my own words crashed down on me, like thick clouds that had been hovering for weeks and suddenly poured a torrent of rain. I could've cried.

"Thanks for making it to the quarterfinals, by the way," Megan said. "Very considerate of you to stay in the tournament til day three so I could watch."

"Oh, yeah, of course," I said, playing along. "All along I've been thinking, 'Hm, Megan's going to surprise me by showing up on the third day, so I should last til then, at least.'"

"Exactly," she said, nodding seriously.

Here's the thing, though: she hadn't come here last time. She and Tricia had met up to watch my battles from home, partly because they knew I'd be home for the holidays afterwards. This time, Megan implied she'd have come today whether or not I was still in the tournament, so I didn't know what had caused the difference.

Unless… we were closer now than before?

Nothing like shared secrets to bring friends closer.

"Where are you headed?" she asked me.

"The registration desk. Wanna join me?"

"Hell yeah," she said, and we walked there together.

"This will be a 5-on-5 single battle between Evelyn Meyers of Twinleaf Town and Thomas Zamora of Ecruteak City. Substitutions may be made between rounds. The battle will conclude when all pokemon on one side have been eliminated."

I exhaled. Here it was. My request had gone through easily, and Thomas had been nice enough to even out the slight disparity of his knowing my exact team by telling me his (he was benching Cassie, his quilava, who had the least type advantage over any of my pokemon). Now I just had to deal with the terrifying experience of battling a televised main arena battle with my best friend in the stands.

I glanced at Megan and waved. She waved back. Okay, maybe that part was comforting.

"Battlers, are you ready?"

Thomas and I locked eyes over the industrial-terrain battlefield (think abandoned factory floor). He smiled and said something – I couldn't hear him over the crowd (the crowd was massive holy fuck I'd never battled so publicly before), but I think he said, "Good luck."

I'll need it – if only for the time jumps.

"Ready!"

"Ready."

"Battle… begin!"

"Swaine!"

"Fai– aAAH holy shit."

I jumped at the fanfare that blasted suddenly through the speakers. I'd forgotten that main arena battles got a soundtrack. Cool. Okay. That wasn't distracting at all.

"Swaine, use dig!" I heard faintly across the field.

"He's playing tag," I told Faith. "Don't get tagged."

Faith audibly giggled and started to zoom. Thomas's sandslash peeled open the metal floor and dug a tunnel through the dirt below it.

"Put him to sleep when you can."

Faith continued her erratic zooming until a bump appeared in the flooring. Swaine tore through it a second later, but Faith was ready with a hypnosis that caught him before he could take a swipe at her. He sank down, half-in, half-out of the hole.

"Nice! Get him with nightshade!"

Faith shot a flurry of ghost-energy ripples at him, both of us hoping to keep him down after the sleep wore off (I don't know why sleep and getting K.O.'ed are different, I just know they are). I didn't realize she was drifting closer to him until it was too late.

"Wait, Faith–"

Swaine awoke and lashed out, his claws emitting gray-violet ghost energy. Faith wheeled back like a big purple tumbleweed.

I vaguely heard Thomas yell "Swaine, rock–" something.

"Faith, dodge the rocks," I said. Not the most helpful command. I'm so glad we had battle music to distract us and make it hard to hear anything. In WHAT world was this a practical scenario? (…okay, I can think of many worlds this simulated but it was FRUSTRATING.)

Faith pulled herself upright and looked for rocks to dodge. Unfortunately, neither of us anticipated the rocks coming from up above. Rock slide. Shit. It knocked her out of the air and buried her in a mound of rocks.

"Shadow claw!"

"Get out of there!"

Faith emerged from the rocks easily (perks of being able to control your own corporeality), but Swaine was already there. One last shadow claw took her down.

"Gengar is unable to battle!"

I recalled Faith. "Thanks, Faith. Rest up." Guess I'd have to prove Faith's abilities to Thomas another time.

I threw Prom's pokeball next, forgetting that Thomas could switch too. And he did. For Esther. His ampharos.

Well… fuck.

"At least she doesn't have poison moves," Prom said. I bit down a smile. Fair. But also, he was a water type, and they were on a metal battlefield.

"Esther, thunder!"

Fuck, shit, uhh… "Use the tunnel Swaine dug!"

Prom dove through the rift in the metal and into the ground. Lightning crashed down, illuminating the entire battlefield in an explosion of light. I jumped and recoiled, never quite so glad that the battlefield terrain didn't extend to the trainers' boxes. The crowd was bursting with excitement, easily audible over the soundtrack.

"Prom, you good?"

"Yep!" I heard. "Good call."

"Thanks." I looked up at the sky. It had been overcast all morning, and I was starting to feel a dusting of water drops on my face. Definitely good for thunder (definitely bad for us, despite Prom's swift swim ability). I frowned at the field, trying to think of something. Prom only had a few special attacks, but I wasn't sure how close to Esther I wanted him to get. Not that distance was much of a benefit in this lightning weather.

Thomas called out– I'm sorry, did he just say toxic?

Esther gently conjured and poured purple sludge into the hole nearest her. I viciously flipped him off. He raised his hands apologetically (you can't apologize for something you're still doing dumbass). I got that it wasn't meant to actually poison Prom (it was too slow for that) so much as flush him out of hiding, but still. The audacity.

"Okay, here's the plan."

I gave Prom instructions. Water shot out of the hole by Esther like a fountain, splattering her gently. She backed out of it, seeming relatively unconcerned, but there was purple on her yellow fur that disappeared as it sank into her skin.

That'll teach you to put poison near Prom.

Prom shot out of that same hole in the ground, protected by aquajet, barreling into Esther. She summoned another bolt of lightning from the sky, but not before he surrounded them with a protect. A second thunder hit the ground off to the side of the protect, by which time Prom had put ice over the metal floor below him.

They fought, Prom with the many physical moves he'd picked up, ice and dark and steel and fighting energy flashing within the bubble, Esther with electric special attacks that Prom couldn't dodge in their microcosmic battlefield.

The protect suddenly fell, Prom's body coursing with static. Paralysis. Esther raised her arms.

And thunder came crashing down.

"Buizel is unable to battle!"

"Great work, Prom. Return," I said. He'd gotten a lot done with the odds stacked against him – Esther was bruised and badly poisoned, and she'd had rainy-day thunder on her side.

Okay. Trust, Def, and Coeur were left. Versus… well, his whole team. But if he'd noticed that two of my three were fighting types, then surely he'd send out…

We threw pokeballs at the same time. Coeur versus… yep, Silver. "Okay, we're gonna try and get him with ice fang… Actually," I said, reconsidering, "what if you froze a dark blast?"

Silver was already in the air, blasting forth silvery-green wind. Coeur dove under a partially-collapsed conveyor belt nearby, poking her head out to blast dark and ice energy at Silver when the wind let up. He dodged.

"Lure him lower," I suggested.

Coeur bolted out from under the conveyor belt, aiming for a heavy steel table. A silver wind followed her there, but when she arrived safely below it, Silver descended to see her.

"Now!"

Coeur shot out with ice in her teeth, latching on to Silver's wing. He flapped wildly with the other, trying to shake her loose. She let go to protect against his next silver wind attack, but his wing was already frozen in a block of ice.

"Awesome, let's get some quick hits in with ice."

Using a combination of quick attack and ice fang, Coeur was able to dart in and out while Silver was still stuck on the ground. Thomas had him switch to swift, which would do less damage but almost-definitely hit. Coeur blocked with blasts of aura energy, which helped negate the normal-type attack. We were wearing him down.

"Now! Blast him!"

Coeur understood the unspecified blast attack to mean every blast. All the energy she knew how to wield spiraled into a vibrant globe above her. She flung it forward – Silver did his best to move away, but given his frozen wing, that wasn't much.

"Noctowl is unable to battle!"

"Nicely done," I said.

"Merci beaucoup," Coeur said cheerfully.

Thomas recalled Silver. I opted to keep Coeur in. He let Marcassin out.

"X-scissor!"

"Ooh, definitely dodge that."

Coeur waited for Marcassin to get close and dove away from the sword on his head. She ducked under the sort of partition you'd find in line at a theme park – a chain held up by poles in the ground. Marcassin, who was bigger, nearly ran into it.

"Wait, use the partition to your advantage."

Coeur crossed back under the chain links, weaving between the poles so that Marcassin had to cross back and forth in pursuit of her. His sword got stuck on the wrong side of the chain, yanking him back by the head.

"Marcassin, double team!" Thomas yelled.

Marcassin shook himself loose. Suddenly there were six of him, all with glowing green swords.

"Coeur, does aura let you see…?"

"Which one's real? Hell yeah, I can."

"Don't go for him just yet…"

Coeur ducked and dodged the swords swinging at her. She ran a circle around the cluster of absols in front of her and surrounded herself in aura energy just before she reached the real one. Marcassin, caught off-guard, tumbled sideways and lost the bug energy in his sword.

"All right, let's speed things up."

I had Coeur combine quick attack with the aura-based physical attack (aura rush? Let's say aura rush). Marcassin caught on and started to boost his x-scissor with quick attack, which made a little less sense as a combination (quick attack and aura rush are full-body tackle-type moves; x-scissor is not). Still, it made him fast enough to dodge most of her attacks. An x-scissor and aura rush collided, knocking both of them back. Marcassin hit the corner of the steel table. Ouch.

"I've got an idea," said Coeur.

"Go for it."

It was the minefield strategy we'd used with shadow balls in the past – Coeur conjured aura spheres and let them drift across the field, filling the air with them. Marcassin prowled at a distance. I was nervous about this one; shadow balls wouldn't have hurt Coeur as an eevee, but aura spheres against an umbreon?

The aura spheres drifted out slowly, pushing Marcassin into a corner. He lashed out with x-scissor, causing it to explode in his face. The next one he gently pushed back in Coeur's direction. She surrounded herself in her aura and absorbed it. Right. That's a thing she could do.

Marcassin maneuvered through the aura spheres, pushing some aside or back at Coeur, dodging others. A few hit as they grew denser, but for the most part he made it through the moving minefield of aura.

And then she bashed him with aura rush. He flew sideways and rolled to a stop right in front of Thomas.

"Absol is unable to battle!"

"Hey, well done!" Marcassin and Thomas hadn't seen the distraction for what it was, ultimately giving us that round.

"Thanks!"

Thomas let Swaine back out. The rain was picking up now, which couldn't be good for him.

"All right, get him down with grass knot!"

Swaine ran toward Coeur. I waited for him to trip on a grass knot and fall, except the floor was made of metal Evelyn you overconfident bastard.

"Shit, ice fang!"

Coeur prepped an ice fang, but Swaine's claws were suddenly in motion. She had nothing to latch on to as the fury swipes cut into her face and ears.

And she was down.

"Umbreon is unable to battle."

I exhaled. Damn. "Sorry, Coeur," I said, recalling her. Okay. 3 to 2. Not bad. Trust or Def was next. Against… Swaine, possibly. But I needed Def for communication, leaving him last.

And Thomas knows this, I realized. He knows it's gotta be Trust, then Def. I'm screwed.

Oh, wait, obvious solution.

I let Def out instead.

Thomas frowned but kept Swaine in. "Shadow claw!"

"Dodge that. Let him tire himself out."

Def waited for Swaine to get close before teleporting behind him. Swaine pivoted and ran at him again, but then Def was gone. Def did this a few more times before Swaine managed to clothesline himself on the suspended chain and took a second to catch his breath.

"All right, go for it."

Def teleported right in front of Swaine – not behind, where Swaine was defended by spikes – and delivered a leaf blade right to the face. He was gone before Swaine's claws swept through him. At this point, Swaine had taken enough damage from Faith and Coeur's matchups that one more magical leaf did him in.

"Sandslash is unable to battle!"

"Nicely done!"

"Merci."

"I'm keeping you in, okay?"

"D'accord."

I pretended to pull out Trust's pokeball and throw it. Thomas took the bait and let out Oliver.

"Surf!"

The massive wave that appeared out of thin air made me reconsider whether I'd actually "tricked" him. Type advantage or not, this was Thomas's strongest pokemon, his former secret weapon.

And if Def couldn't beat him, I'd be sending Trust out to fight a water-ground powerhouse of a wooper.

"All right Def. Use protect!"

He actually teleported right in front of me and enveloped me in the shield with him, which wasn't the plan but did mean I didn't get soaked and/or washed away by the surf that came crashing down over us. I couldn't complain.

"Grass hits, preferably leaf blade," I said.

Def teleported up to Oliver and swiped. Oliver splished out of the way like a fish in shallow water, evading easily. He shot ice at Def, blasting him all the way across the field.

"Never mind, magical leaf is also good."

Def went for it, but Oliver pulled up another wave to block it. The water soaked the leaves, rendering them mushy and powerless. Def didn't quite dodge the falling wave in time, but teleported away before it had done more than push him down a little. When it had splattered on the factory floor, Def teleported back in and landed a solid leaf blade, then teleported back out before Oliver could retaliate.

"Nice one!" I cheered. Oliver landed in a puddle, which seemed to disappear beneath him. He seemed fine when he got back up. Water absorb? Did it work that way? I guess if the water came from a water attack to begin with…

"Okay, we gotta get him in like, one hit… or else keep him away from water."

"Euh… how?"

"Unsure. Focus on the one-shot for now."

Def teleported in for another leaf blade, which Oliver evaded again. Maybe he could trap them in a protect? No, Oliver could still summon water in there. He could psychic Oliver higher up… did rain heal with water absorb? Either way he could still use water pulse or something.

I frowned. Def kept ducking in and out with teleport, missing most of his leaf blades. The problem was as long as Oliver had water, he was healing, and he could get water wherever he was. Plus it was raining.

"Def, I think you just gotta get as much damage in as possible before he can heal it away."

"D'accord."

"Midair will help. Don't fall too fast."

Def took hold of Oliver with psychic and flung him upwards. It wouldn't prevent healing later, but it would buy him time for now. Def teleported to meet him. He slashed up with leaf blade, teleported to ground level, landed, and jumped upward before teleporting back to Oliver so his falling speed wouldn't build up. As a result, he was still weightless when he reached Oliver again and hit him with another leaf blade. Def teleported down and back up. Leaf blade. Oliver tried to heal himself with a watergun, but the next leaf blade got him spinning too fast for it to help much.

After he jumped a fifth time, Def took Oliver in his arms and teleported him safely back down.

"Wooper is unable to battle!"

The crowd roared. Thomas's jaw was completely on the ground. I exhaled in relief (hahahahaha get it re-LEAF). That was our biggest competitor down.

Which meant that when Thomas sent out Esther, it was only a matter of evading until the toxic poison finished her off. Rain was coming down in fat drops that hit me like hailstones, but Esther's boosted-accuracy thunder had nothing on Def's teleportation and protection abilities. Eventually she simply crumpled in the middle of the rain-soaked floor.

"Ampharos is unable to battle! Which means Evelyn Meyers of Twinleaf Town is going on to the semifinals!"

"Holy shit Def," I said, grinning. The battle music gave way to a triumphant fanfare. I could hear Megan cheering amongst the crowd. Def teleported back to me and gave me a hug, arm swords withdrawn.

Thomas and I met in the middle to shake hands. "I told you," he said, a big grin on his face. His eyes were full of light. If he was at all upset about his loss, it didn't show.

I extended my hand, then pulled him into a hug when he took it. "Thank you," I said with my face in his shoulder.

He always did have faith in me.