After they left Surge's gym, Antonia and the others went out to lunch to celebrate her victory. The four young pokémon trainers didn't have the money for a fancy restaurant, but they found an eatery that was a little more upscale than the usual haunts that traveling trainers frequented. Over their plates of greasy food, talk turned to the subject of what Roy and Antonia would do now that they had each obtained the Thunder Badge from Surge.

"Well, if it's all right with you, Toni," Roy said with a nod towards his friend, "I think we should go back to Saffron City and take on Sabrina again. What do you think?"

Antonia had been petting her plump bulbasaur in her lap, but she looked up when Roy said her name. Her voice was quiet enough that Roy, Jackie, and Zach all leaned over the table to better hear her as she asked, "Do you think it might be too soon to challenge her again?" Antonia looked down at Bulbasaur and, when her pokémon croaked his displeasure, she resumed petting him around the round bulb on his back. "I don't know, Roy. Maybe I still need to work with my pokémon more."

Jackie jumped in with a question, "Does that mean you'd stick around Vermillion City to train?"

"Hope you like seafood," Zach said with a half-hearted laugh, but he looked to Antonia as intensely as any of the others.

"We could take our time going back to Saffron City though," Roy offered. "It feels like we're always in such a rush, but we could take some time and help each other train our pokémon so that we'd be ready for Sabrina."

Jackie shook her head. "It's not going to be enough just to train more. From what you've told me, Sabrina would just mop the floor with you if you aren't ready to surprise her. Between the psychic powers thing and her powerful pokémon, you'd need to develop a whole different approach to battling her. Might as well stay around here so that we can help you."

Antonia looked down at her bulbasaur again and then she said slowly, "I think I have an idea for how to beat her. It won't be easy, and I'll need help getting it ready."

"So, you and Roy will stay?" asked Jackie excitedly, only for her face to fall when Antonia shook her head.

"No, I think that it's time to start heading back to Saffron City," the shorter girl said. "We can do what Roy suggested, and take our time to travel, fitting in training along the way." With her mind made up, Antonia started to stand up, leaving the others scrambling to join her.

"Tough luck for you," Zach said snidely to Jackie as they walked out of the restaurant and into the bright midday sun, only for Jackie to slug him in the arm hard enough to make him yelp.

Roy and Antonia didn't seem to notice that exchange. They were walking out in front and already eagerly discussing their plans for the next leg of their journey. When the four trainers returned to the pokémon center, it was clear that their group was dissolving.

"Best of luck," Zach said half-heartedly on his way out the door to train. "I guess I'll see at the league tournament if not sooner," he said to Antonia, and then, partway out the door, he forced himself to say, "Good job beating Surge last night, Roy." Then he was gone.

Jackie lingered for a longer time, flitting around Roy and Antonia offering to help them pack and get supplies. Her enthusiasm, and her chattiness, were welcome at first but soon became exasperating when Jackie ran out of meaningful things to say. Sensing the change in attitude, Jackie grew quiet for a few seconds before she said, "I guess this is goodbye then, until we run into each other somewhere else."

"I guess so," Antonia said without looking up from stuffing her clothes into her backpack.

"It's been fun, Jackie," said Roy more brightly, and he managed to pull himself away from his preparations long enough to shake Jackie's hand. Following her friend's lead, Antonia stood up and offered her own hand by Jackie, only for the taller girl to wrap her in a hug.

"I'll miss you guys," Jackie said. "I hope that I can find someone to travel with me, so that I can have what you two have." As Jackie wiped away a bit of moisture from her eyes, Roy and Antonia exchanged looks of matching confusion. Before either of them could say anything, however, Jackie pulled away from them and said with forced cheer, "Go out there and kick some butt, you two! We're all going to compete in the tournament at the end of the summer, okay?"

Antonia found herself smiling at Jackie's goodbye and she said a simple, "Yes, we'll all be there together." That, along with Roy's more energetic goodbye, seemed to lift Jackie's spirits enough that the girl left them in the pokémon center without any further tears.

After a few more minutes of packing, Roy and Antonia's eyes met and he asked, "Well, are we ready to go, Toni?"

"Yes, I think we are."

Even with the breeze rolling in off of the sea, the afternoon was still hot and muggy. That contributed to Roy and Antonia's lackadaisical pace as they headed north. Unlike the mad dash to the pokémon center which had first brought them to Vermillion City, the two trainers were content to walk leisurely through first the city proper and then into the northern suburbs. They didn't talk at all for the first hour of their walk, except for simple observations about a local landmark or a bird pokémon flying overhead. This was to Antonia's relief, and she felt herself growing relaxed. The thought of the Thunder Badge jostling around inside of her backpack with her other gym badges made her feel at ease. Three badges and on her way to challenge Sabrina for the fourth! After that, Antonia would be halfway to qualifying for the pokémon league tournament!

As if he could sense what she was thinking about, Roy asked Antonia, "So, what is your plan for beating Sabrina? And how can I help?"

Antonia smiled at Roy's question and said, "Thank you, Roy. I've been thinking about her and the other gym leaders. Each one was trying to teach us something about being a good trainer. Do you remember what they were?"

"Uh, no," Roy said, "I didn't think it was important enough that you were going quiz me."

"Oh, well," Antonia said with a shake of her head, "I'll tell you then." Ticking off her fingers, she said, "Brock said his challengers needed to show determination to beat him. Misty mentioned adaptability, Sabrina said trust, and Surge talked about our instincts as trainers."

The two trainers' pace had slowed while Antonia rattled off her list, and now Roy led them to a complete stop as he asked, "Okay, so what does that even mean? I only beat one of those gym leaders, remember?" Roy's tone probably would have had a hint of sullenness to it had he said that before beating Surge, but the Thunder Badge in his pocket had returned some of his blasé attitude that had eroded since the start of his pokémon journey.

Antonia didn't dance around her answer, but instead started lecturing Roy like a teacher would explain a new topic or concept to her class, "Each of the ideas that the gym leaders talked about were the key to beating them. My bulbasaur and I showed determination in breaking through Brock's pokémon's defenses and in outlasting the danger his onix posed to Bulbasaur. Against Misty we had to figure out how to adapt to a new kind of battlefield in order to win."

"What about Surge?" Roy asked eagerly. "You talk about instincts, well, how did you use that to win?" Then, with a grin, he added, "And tell me how I did it, too, while you're at it!"

"We both took different approaches, I think," Antonia explained slowly. "You trusted in your pokémon's instincts while I tried to disrupt Surge's by throwing him off-balance."

"By lying!"

Antonia ignored Roy's attempt to be helpful and continued, "But that was the only gym leader that we both beat, so I don't know if that means there were other ways we were supposed to demonstrate the principles that they were trying to showcase."

Roy nodded simply to show that he was listening, and then he asked, "And what about Sabrina? How are you supposed to beat her with trust? How are we supposed to trust her when she can do all of those weird psychic things like reading minds and making her poké balls float around her head?"

"I don't think we're supposed to trust her," Antonia said slowly. "I think it's about the trust between a pokémon and a trainer. So, that's why my plan is to spend as much time with my pokémon as possible before we get back to Saffron City, even stretching our trip out to two or three days. When my pokémon trust me completely, I think we'll be able to surprise Sabrina with how quickly we can implement our strategies."

"That makes sense to me, I guess. I better do the same with my pokémon, too."

As Roy reached for his poké balls, Antonia stopped him and said, "Actually, would you mind if we found a place by some water first before we stop? I want to let my magikarp out, since it's part of my team, too."

Roy agreed readily to Antonia's request and the two trainers kept walking for a while longer, even eating the sandwiches they had packed back at the pokémon center without stopping. Finally, they came across a small park with a campsite. The camping area was wrapped around a pond, and that was what made her and Roy decide on it as their stopping point for the day. The two trainers took a few minutes break before letting their pokémon out to sit on a quaint little dock. Roy and Antonia took off their socks and shoes and lowered their sore feet into the clear water with matching sighs of relief.

"The water feels nice," Roy said simply to fill the silence, but Antonia didn't take his bait. Instead she nodded along lazily before standing back up and returning to where they had set down their bags.

"Time to let everyone out," she said. Bulbasaur and Beedrill emerged from their poké balls without incident and were both soon exploring their new surroundings, Bulbasaur on foot and Beedrill by flying around the campsite. Antonia's magikarp needed to be in the water, so she brought its poké ball to the dock and released the aquatic pokémon into the water. The red-scaled pokémon quickly found itself floundering and rapidly opening and closing its mouth as it struggled to swim even with the pond's lack of a current.

Roy didn't take any heed of Magikarp's difficulties, or Antonia's embarrassment. Instead, he focused on letting his own pokémon out. Charmeleon and Nidoran took shape before him and both rushed to tackle Roy to the ground before he could finish putting their poké balls away. "Hey, what's this all about?" laughed Roy as he tried push his charmeleon off of his chest so that he could get back on his feet. "Come on! Knock it off, you two!"

Antonia and her pokémon watched Roy's struggles with a curious detachment. When Bulbasaur made a tentative step towards his own trainer, Antonia turned to him with wide eyes only to see that her pokémon was smiling at her. "Not our sort of thing," Antonia said with a soft smile before beckoning Bulbasaur to her so that she could pat his bulb and scratch him behind the ears. At least, until her magikarp, which had somehow found itself washed up on the shore, needed her help being placed back into the water.

"No offense, Toni," Roy said after he had finally fended off Charmeleon and Nidoran's display of affection, "but I don't really know why you caught that thing."

"Magikarp might not look like much now, but when it evolves into a gyarados I'll have the perfect powerhouse pokémon for the team that I'm building." As Antonia talked, she gingerly picked up her struggling pokémon and walked into the water to where the water was up to her ankles. Then, she lowered Magikarp back into the water and watched to make sure that it didn't go drifting back onto dry land again. Only then did Antonia look at Roy and say, "That's actually what I want to do before we go back to Saffron City. I want Magikarp to evolve. I think I'll have a much better chance of beating Sabrina if I have a gyarados on my side. She might not expect it."

Roy shrugged and glanced over at his pokémon playing with the other members of Antonia's team before he replied, "Why wouldn't she expect that? I mean, she saw your magikarp in your last battle with her, didn't she?"

"Oh, well, that's true, I suppose," Antonia said with a frown. "But I still think that I can work on a strategy that will really work, if I can get Magikarp to evolve."

"Okay! How can I help?" Roy asked immediately.

Antonia looked down at her pokémon struggling to stay afloat in the water and her frown deepened. "Maybe you can help us with some training. You'll just have to take it easy."

Following Antonia's instructions, Roy called for Charmeleon and had his pokémon stand at the edge of the dock. Charmeleon looked uneasy around the water of the pond, but he also batted away Roy's hand when the boy tried to rest a reassuring hand on his head. "Toni wants us to help get her magikarp ready to battle the next gym leader," Roy said. When Charmeleon snorted, Roy laughed and said, "I know, it sounds crazy, but if this works it's supposed to turn into a really strong pokémon, one that'll make you look like a caterpie!"

That approach didn't make Charmeleon any more enthusiastic, so Roy brought out his trump card. "If you help with this, Antonia said that you and Nidoran can battle her pokémon. What do you think about that? I know you and Bulbasaur haven't battled in a really long time."

Interest blossomed in Charmeleon's eyes and Roy slapped his pokémon on the back and said, "I thought you'd like that! Okay, so what Toni needs you to do is fire off a few weak attacks around where Magikarp is swimming, so that it can try to dodge them. Don't make them too strong though, because I don't think that it will take much to seriously hurt it."

"Ready, Roy?" Antonia called from the water. While Roy had been talking to Charmeleon, she had waded further into the water so that she was submerged up to the hem of her shorts where she was trying to steady her magikarp. As soon as she had let go of her pokémon to talk to Roy, Antonia's magikarp slipped onto its side and made helpless gurgling noises.

"Yeah, are you ready?" Roy shot back with a friendly laugh. Antonia nodded and moved away from her pokémon as quickly as the water would let her.

"You can do this, Magikarp," Antonia said mechanically, but she still covered her eyes when Roy's charmeleon began shooting small bursts of sparks at her pokémon. The sparks landed harmlessly in the water and sizzled and smoked without harming Magikarp, but this was due more to Charmeleon's control than anything that Antonia's pokémon was doing. In fact, as Charmeleon kept up a lazy cycle of attacks, Magikarp's panicked splashing about made it harder and harder for the larger pokémon to avoid hitting it.

Finally, one of Charmeleon's weak attacks struck Magikarp and Antonia's pokémon let out a loud, blubbering cry that quickly became muffled as the stunned pokémon sunk completely below the surface of the campsite's pond. "Okay, that's enough for now!" Antonia shouted to Roy and his pokémon. She strode through the water to her magikarp and reached into the water to help her pokémon back to the surface. Magikarp had a small burn between its eyes.

While Antonia examined her magikarp to see how serious its injury was, Roy whispered to his own pokémon, "Nice shot, Charmeleon." Charmeleon did not say anything, but his tail thumped against the wooden surface of the dock behind him all the same.

"I think Magikarp is going to take a break," Antonia said as she approached the dock. She glanced over her shoulder at where her pokémon was still trying and mostly failing to tread water and sighed heavily. "I heard that magikarp are helpless, but I really didn't think that it would be this bad."

"It'll be fine," Roy said with forced enthusiasm. He did not need to fake the emotion when he tried to casually add, "How about we have that battle now?"

Antonia chewed her lip and looked from her pokémon to Roy and said, "Okay, but I have a few ground rules for us."

Once they were all on the shore among the scraggly bits of grass peaking through the damp sand, Antonia explained, "Since we're not near a pokémon center, I want to make sure that our pokémon don't get too hurt. So, can we try not to hurt each other's pokémon too badly, or poison anyone?" She nodded at both Roy's nidoran and her own beedrill at that.

Next to him, Charmeleon performed a theatrical yawn which turned into a displeased growl when Roy struck him in the arm. Despite the reprimand, Roy had his own concern with Antonia's plan. "What about those supplies we bought before we started walking? Couldn't we battle without holding back and just use those to take care of our pokémon when we were done?"

"Well, um, I thought maybe we could save those for when we're farther away from a pokémon center."

"Okay," Roy said with a shrug, "I guess we could try doing a soft battle, or whatever you want to call it."

He and Antonia took up positions across a stretch of the campsite's lawn from each other. Their pokémon were by their side instead of in their poké balls, and there was no referee, but otherwise they had remembered enough of their battling experiences to give their match the feel of an official battle. "Are you ready, Roy?" Antonia called across the field.

"Yeah!" Roy said, and then he laughed. "You know, this is our first rematch after you beat me back in Viridian City!"

"We've all gotten a lot better since then," replied Antonia with a genuine smile. "How about we start off with our first pokémon again?"

Roy nodded his head and shouted, "Works for me! Charmeleon, get in there!"

The red-scaled pokémon trudged slowly to take up a position in front of his trainer. Charmeleon made only the flimsiest pretense of preparing for battle. His stance was sloppy and instead of an intimidating roar he let out another annoyed yawn. The obvious lack of enthusiasm was a sharp contrast to Antonia's bulbasaur, which hopped eagerly to the battlefield and brought out his vines to wave threateningly in front of his face.

"Use your vines, Bulbasaur!" Antonia ordered. Then she immediately added, "But don't hit him too hard!"

The clarification came partway through Bulbasaur's attack, and the pokémon struggled to weaken his attack midway through its execution. The vines which he was bringing down slowed after a noticeable show of effort, and the blow they struck against Charmeleon's red hide was not even enough to make the larger pokémon flinch. To add further insult, Roy's charmeleon responded to the attack by scratching carelessly at where he had been hit, as though Bulbasaur's vines had been no more than a minor nuisance.

"Oh, boy," muttered Roy to himself, but he resolved to try and stick to Antonia's plan for now. "Charmeleon, send out some weak fire attacks, like you were using on Magikarp!"

Charmeleon shot Roy a look of frustration and then, with a performative sigh, he let out a few balls of fire which were so small and dim that they were hardly visible in the bright summer sun. Bulbasaur brought his vines up to try and bat them away, and was successful at stopping all of them but one. The one of Charmeleon's attacks which got through the weaving shield of vines struck Bulbasaur on the cheek but didn't leave so much as a scratch on his blue skin.

Now, Roy let himself ask, "Is this really working, Toni? I mean, what are our pokémon getting out of this?"

"They're training," insisted Antonia, but there was plenty of uncertainty in her voice.

"If we're going to train, let's do something else," Roy said. "We can have them practice their attacks or whatever in other ways, but I think a battle should be a battle."

Antonia chewed her lip and looked at Roy's charmeleon and then saw that his mood was reflected in Bulbasaur's expression. A quick survey of the other pokémon saw that Nidoran and Beedrill felt the same way. Magikarp, on the other hand, was still too busy flopping determinedly in the shallow pond to have an opinion on the matter. "Do you really want to have a real battle?" she asked without specifying an audience of her question.

Charmeleon only rolled his eyes, but the others showed their enthusiasm by nodding or, in Beedrill's case, by flying a series of excited loops in the air. "Is that okay?" Roy asked Antonia without doing anything to hide the smile on his face. "I want to have a real battle with you, Toni."

"Well, okay," Antonia said, a grin beginning to creep onto her own face. "But we should still try to be a little careful, okay?"

"Deal!" Roy said, and then he turned to his pokémon and said, "Charmeleon! Try a-" But before he could give an order, his pokémon was already charging Antonia's bulbasaur with his claws outstretched and a savage smile on his face.

"Look out!" cried Antonia and Bulbasaur tried to jump to one side to avoid Charmeleon's flashing claws, but he was too slow and Roy's pokémon scratched red lines in his side. Overwhelmed by the heat of the moment, Antonia yelled, "Use your poison powder!" Then, her mouth shrunk as she let out a small, "Oops."

But even as a cloud of purple spores erupted from the bulb on Bulbasaur's back, Charmeleon reacted in an instant by breathing out a blast of fire which caught the poisonous particles and ignited them before they could touch his skin. "Wow, way to go, Charmeleon!" Roy cheered.

"Did you teach him that?" Antonia wondered, and her eyes only widened further when Roy shook his head.

While their trainers were talking, Charmeleon and Bulbasaur put some distance between themselves and two pokémon eyed each other with a mixture of wariness and excitement. Bulbasaur's vines surged forward and lashed at Charmeleon's limbs to try and throw his larger opponent off-balance while Charmeleon fended off the attacks. Even as he was being battered by the vines, Charmeleon advanced on his foe to try and land another blow with his claws. As Roy's pokémon came closer, Bulbasaur shifted tactics from hammering Charmeleon with his vines to trying to grapple the larger pokémon. One vine wrapped around the red pokémon's arm and another around the opposite leg. The strength and control that Bulbasaur had shown in Antonia's battle with Surge were at work again, but Charmeleon called on the same determination that he had shown during his own bout with the gym leader's raichu.

Because Bulbasaur couldn't choose between holding off his opponent or drawing him closer, Charmeleon chose for him. Charmeleon closed the gap and roughly seized Bulbasaur by his bulb. While Bulbasaur's vines struggled to hamper the larger pokémon, Charmeleon strained to lift Bulbasaur up off of the ground until the squat pokémon's four legs were scrambling fruitlessly in the air. Both pokémon were struggling for dominance and their trainers watched their clash with awe.

Antonia came out of her trance first and shouted, "Get out of there, Bulbasaur!"

Her pokémon grunted and tensed up the bulb on his back. Charmeleon loosened his grip on Antonia's bulbasaur and the smaller pokémon fell to the ground just as his bulb fired another cloud of purple spores. Charmeleon tried to counter the attack the same way as it had before, but his burst of flame came too late to stop the poisonous attack from dispersing and landing on Charmeleon's scaly skin. Roy's charmeleon pulled back from Bulbasaur and scratched at his arms as though he could prevent the poison from taking root by doing so.

"You've still got this, Charmeleon!" Roy said and his pokémon looked ready to continue the fight when Antonia yelled, "Stop!"

The battling pokémon froze in place and the battle stopped as Antonia strode past her bulbasaur to Roy's charmeleon. Reaching into her bag, the girl pulled out a syringe filled with some medicine and, without waiting for Roy's permission, she grabbed Charmeleon's arm and injected the antidote into the surprised pokémon's arm. "What are you doing?" Roy asked.

"Healing your pokémon before the poison can spread too much," explained Antonia. "I'm sorry, I should have reminded Bulbasaur not to use any poisoning attacks, especially after I forgot." She let go of Charmeleon's arm and the red pokémon pulled it away from her. He walked over to Roy's side while Antonia continued, "I'm sorry, Roy, I got too excited." She looked back at her pokémon and added, "Bulbasaur got too excited, too."

"It's okay," Roy said, "it was the heat of the battle. I was the one who asked for us to go all out, remember?"

Antonia nodded, but her attention was still fixed on her bulbasaur, which was looking sheepishly at his forelimbs scratching at the ground in front of him.

"It's okay, Toni, I mean it," Roy said again, but it was impossible for him to tell if Antonia heard him.