Saffron City's gym leader led Roy and Antonia to the centermost of the battlefields which dotted the main floom of the gym. The other trainers and their pokémon rapidly stepped away to give them space, but it was clear that this was not due to any sense of hospitality towards their guests but rather out of their deference to Sabrina. The young woman acknowledged her students with a small nod as she continued to lead Antonia to the center of the arena which she had chosen. "In my gym, it is not only our pokémon which are capable of great things," she said once she had stopped. "There are high expectations for our trainers as well. They must exhibit something beyond the ordinary talents of their peers."

"Like being good at pokémon battling?" asked Roy. He was still by Antonia's side, forcing down his desire to keep his distance from the strange woman talking to them.

Sabrina did not laugh, but let her smile emerge again to display her amusement. "Pokémon battling is important, but it's not the only thing, Roy."

Now Roy took a step back, shooting a worried look at Antonia as he said, "How did she- You didn't tell her my name, did you, Toni?"

"Like I said," Sabrina said, her green eyes glittering in the gym's artificial lighting in a feline manner, "in my gym we develop abilities beyond the ordinary, in our trainers as well as our pokémon."

"They're psychics, Roy," Antonia explained without taking her eyes off the gym leader, "like their pokémon are. That's one of the reasons why this is one of the toughest gyms in the region."

"'One of the toughest'?" asked Sabrina with mock offense which quickly was subsumed into her previous amusement. "I think that you'll find us unlike any challenge you've ever faced before. You may have won your first two badges fairly easily, but I won't be giving up my Marsh Badge so easily. To win it, you'll need to demonstrate the trust that has developed between you and your pokémon."

Antonia set her jaw and Roy, upon seeing her do so, tried to do the same. The display did not do anything more than invite another display of enthusiasm from Sabrina. Still, no sound of laughter escaped from between her lips and she instead snapped her fingers at the same time that the clasp on her handbag came undone. From out of the purse draped over the shoulder of her maroon top, three red and white poké balls drifted lazily into the air and began rotating in a circle while Roy and Antonia watched the display with wide, nervous eyes.

"At my gym, we do things a little differently. You are free to use as many of your pokémon as you wish, while I'll only use one of these three," Sabrina said as lackadaisically as she was discussing the weather.

"Which one will you use?" Roy asked.

Sabrina tilted her head and the cycle of spinning poké balls tilted at an identical angle. "Why, whichever one you choose. Just reach out your hand, Antonia, and select your opponent."

It was a strange way to start a pokémon battle, but Antonia gamely stretched out her hand towards the three poké balls. She tried to still the shaking of her hand, but just when her hand was about to close around one of the floating orbs, one of its siblings bounded into her hand and displaced her initial choice.

Before Antonia could utter any protests, Sabina clapped her hands and called the two poké balls still hovering in the air back to the bag against her hip. "Excellent, now, let's see who you'll be facing today." A flick of her finger caused the poké ball which was in Antonia to jerk. When the younger girl slackened her grip out of surprise, it flew through the air to slap into the palm of its owner's hand. Sabrina turned to one side and triggered the release mechanism without touching it.

The red light did not stand out much in the brightly light environs of the gym, but the pokémon which took shape demanded all the attention that a more impressive light show would have received. It was a somewhat vulpine-looking creature with a pinched snout and a broad head, possessing a red star on its forehead over two arrogant eyes and whiskers thick enough to look like a mustache. It had a thick tail coiled behind it, but stood on two spindly legs and held a spoon in one of the hands topping its thin arms. Its mustard-colored fur was obscured around its chest and shoulders by dark brown armor which added to the pokémon's fierce appearance.

"Meet my kadabra. Kadabra, say hello!"

The pokémon did not say anything. It only fixed Roy and Antonia with a contemptuous stare. Sabrina did not seem to take any notice of her pokémon's disconcerting behavior, although Roy and Antonia both shrank back from the kadabra's ire. Instead, the gym leader motioned for one of her trainers to come over to join them. Fortunately, it was not the trainer with the Mr. Mime who had been participating in the pokémon martial arts tournament earlier that day, although he was there and watching the events unfolding with an unpleasant sneer on his face.

The pokémon trainer who Sabrina had called over was a boy no older than Roy or Antonia. He was dressed in jean shorts and a t-shirt with a large smiling face on it, which his own closely expression mirrored. "Hi, I'm Cameron," he said and held out his hand, "looks like I'll be reffing your match with Sabrina."

Roy and Antonia both introduced themselves when Cameron did not give any indication that he already knew their names. "Hey, it's great to meet you, both," the boy said, "but, ah, which of you is the challenger, exactly?"

"I am," said Antonia.

"Got it," Cameron said as he curled his thumb and forefinger into an "okay" gesture and he started towards one side of the arena's perimeter.

Roy and Antonia both felt themselves relaxing a little after this encounter. It was the first time that it had felt like the Saffron City pokémon gym was not a completely unfriendly and unsettling place. That relief diminished though when Sabrina's kadabra delivered another icy glare in their direction that sent both of the trainers scrambling to the side of the arena opposite of Sabrina.

"How are you feeling, Toni?" asked Roy in a low voice.

"A little nervous," she admitted as she worked to place her feet at the exact center of the little box outlined on the floor in paint, "but I think that I can do this. After all, she's only going to use one pokémon and I have three."

Roy laughed uneasily, "Yeah, but one of your pokémon is a magikarp." Then, more seriously, he added, "Just, uh, be careful, okay, Toni?" Then, he stepped off to the side to let her face her opponent on her own.

From the side of the arena, Cameron's voice rang out with the clarity of a bell ringing, "The battle between the gym leader Sabrina and the challenger Antonia is about to begin! The gym leader will be allowed one pokémon with no substitutions while the challenger will have," he paused here to look over at Antonia mouthing the word "three" and Roy holding up three fingers, "three pokémon to use, and will be allowed substitutions! The challenger has chosen to face the gym leader's kadabra, and now she will send out her first pokémon!"

Antonia reached down into her own bag and pulled out a poké ball which caught the reflection of the lights overhead on its red top half. Then, she hurled it into the air with a cry of, "Beedrill! I choose you!"

The air of the gym was filled at once by the thrumming buzz of Antonia's pokémon's beating wings. The spectators, including Roy and Cameron, looked up at the yellow- and black-striped pokémon flitting in the air above the battlefield, but Sabrina and her pokémon remained intensely focused on Antonia.

"Okay," said Antonia to herself, and then, to her pokémon, she shouted, "Hit that kadabra with some of your poison stings!"

Before Beedrill could finish aligning itself in preparation for firing its toxic darts at its opponent, Sabrina's kadabra had already shifted its stance slightly and was holding up its free hand as if to shield its eyes from the lights while the hand clutching its spoon remained by its side.

Beedrill began its barrage of stingers, firing four of the needling attacks at Kadabra in quick succession, but the earthbound pokémon simply moved its hand through the air as if swatting a troublesome pest. In doing so, its psychic power sent the poison stingers off course so that they fell far away from it. Beedrill's initial attack failed to get within a yard of Kadabra.

Antonia blinked and tried to replay the events of the past minute in her mind, but there had been no words of command from Sabrina, not even any moves or gestures. The trainer standing on the other side of the battlefield was just standing there and smiling enigmatically. Her brow furrowed, but Antonia kept her voice even as she ordered, "Try again, Beedrill! But attack from different directions!"

Her pokémon loyally flitted through the air over Sabrina and her kadabra, pausing in its movements now and then to fire off another series of poisonous needles from the stinger on its abdomen and the pair on its topmost limbs.

This attack proved ineffectual as well. Sabrina's pokémon simply batted away the onrushing projectiles with lazy waves of its hand, even when the attack came from behind it. It was impossible for her to hear the neutralized missiles fall to the ground, but Antonia imagined that she could hear them and each failure weighed heavier and heavier on her. While she looked around for some kind of clue for which action she should take next, the girl became aware of the audience which had gathered to watch her battle with the gym leader. Roy was a friendly face, but the other trainers watching her were at best curious and at worst sneering.

"Focus on the battle, Antonia," called Sabrina from across the battlefield. It was impossible to tell from her voice if she was trying to offer genuine advice or was teasing her opponent. The small smile on her lips offered no clues as to her intention.

Antonia took in a breath and let it out, but her next command was not delivered in as ringing a voice as the previous ones had been. "Go for a dive, Beedrill, as fast as you can!"

Beedrill obeyed its trainer's command as soon as it heard it. It tucked its wings in tight and launched itself at the earthbound kadabra with its front stingers held out in front of it like a swimmer diving into a body of water. But by then, Sabrina's pokémon had already turned around to face it and meet Beedrill's challenge. It watched the incoming pokémon impassively, with only its one free hand reaching out to meet its opponent.

Antonia watched for the impact, but to her dismay the two pokémon did not collide. Beedrill had gotten less than a foot away from its target before it had suddenly and violently stopped. Now, it was being held in place by an invisible force, and Beedrill resorted to frantically beating its wings and buzzing its confusion and fear, all of it useless. Sabrina watched the one-sided battle between Beedrill's body and her own pokémon's psychic powers with the same idle expression that she had worn since the match had started. Antonia, on the other hand, was biting the inside of her cheek as she tried to decide between crying out for Beedrill to try something to break free or calling her pokémon back to safety.

The choice was made for her when something flickered across Sabrina's green eyes. Her Kadabra's open hand suddenly closed violently, and Beedrill's struggles became at once more desperate and more constrained. Then the mustard-colored pokémon brought its fist around its body and then down. Antonia's beedrill followed in turn, flying helplessly through the air before slamming into the ground at the center of the arena.

Antonia watched her pokémon's impact with a lump in her throat that only grew more painful when her dazed beedrill looked up at her with its multifaceted red eyes. It seemed to her like it was seeking some kind of answer for why this was being done to it, and why she was not stopping it. Antonia did not want to, but she felt obligated to try and urge her pokémon to get back up and to keep fighting. The lump obstructed her words, and she was not able to get any out before Sabrina's kadabra brought its fist up again, and Beedrill with it, before hammering both onto the floor of the pokémon gym.

It was harder for Antonia to watch her beedrill slammed into the ground again, and she was determined that there would not be a third such attack on her poor pokémon. With trembling fingers, she found Beedrill's poké ball in her pocket and recalled it to the safety of its interior.

"Make the call," Sabrina said in a soft voice to Cameron.

The boy cleared his throat nervously and said, "Beedrill is unable to battle! The challenger will send out her next pokémon or forfeit the match."

Despite the referee's words, Antonia did not move. She stood there, swaying a little on her feet. Beedrill's poké ball was still in the hand of the arm which hung limply at her side.

"Bring out your next pokémon, Antonia," the gym leader said to Antonia as quietly as she had spoken to Cameron, but it still carried on the still air to Antonia's ears. It was deathly quiet in the gym, and that was something else which marked this gym battle from the others which Antonia had been a part of or witnessed. Even Roy was silent. Antonia did not want to see him, or any of the others, but she was aware of them all no matter how hard she tried to focus on Sabrina and her pokémon.

There was no choice but to push forward, Antonia thought, and then she almost smiled at herself for how those words sounded like what Roy would have thought in the same situation. What kept the smile from forming was Antonia's knowledge of how that strategy had turned out for Roy again and again. Still, she was in a battle with no choice but to do her best, and her next pokémon was her most experienced battler.

"Go, Bulbasaur!" Antonia cried as she released her first pokémon from his poké ball. The squat green and blue creature took shape in a burst of red light. First, his attention was drawn to Sabrina's kadabra and then he turned his body and head to look at Antonia. "That's our opponent today," Antonia said breathlessly. "It's a kadabra, a psychic pokémon, like the one that Roy's charmander battled." Bulbasaur growled at the memory, and Antonia added, "We just have to beat this one pokémon and we'll win, okay? Beedrill couldn't get any hits in, but I trust you."

Bulbasaur's stubby tail wagged at the praise and his eyes narrowed in determination when he turned back to face off with the kadabra. The smaller pokémon growled again, but his foe simply stared him down. The kadabra did not move a muscle, and Sabrina did not utter any orders. Yet, despite this, Antonia was reluctant to act.

It was her bulbasaur who made the decision to charge at his opponent. Sabrina's kadabra's eyes widened in surprise for an instant before it hurried to leap out of the way of Bulbasaur's attack. Antonia's pokémon struggled to turn himself around, which gave his trainer the time to issue an order. "Bulbasaur! Trip it up with your vines!"

Bulbasaur righted himself and grunted as his two dark green vines uncoiled themselves from their resting place under the bulb on his back. The two vines zipped through the air towards Sabrina's pokémon like serpents eager to strike, but first one and then the other one hit an invisible barrier and were sent careening away from their target. In response, Bulbasaur merely shifted his weight and the reeling vines stiffened again and came at the kadabra again, this time from different directions. With one attack coming in from its left and one from its right, Sabrina's kadabra had to divide its attention and its psychic power was only directed at one of the vines angling towards its feet. That vine was thrown backwards into the air. There was just barely enough time after handling the first threat for the kadabra to sidestep the other vine before using a burst of psychokinetic force to send the vine hurtling back towards Antonia's bulbasaur.

The redirected vine slapped the other pokémon full in the face with his own failed attack, but Bulbasaur continued to concentrate on the other vine which his opponent had so hastily diverted. The first vine which had been blocked by the kadabra's psychic defenses was still in the air and with a force of will, Bulbasaur halted its flailing motions. He stiffened the vine so that it became a thin club which he brought down on his foe's head.

The blow from the vine struck the kadabra with a crack. The sound echoed in the quiet of the gym, to be joined shortly by Roy shouting, "Way to go, Toni!" Her friend's cheer and the sight of Sabrina's pokémon stumbling around while holding its head finally gave Antonia the permission to smile that she had been denying herself.

Strangely, Sabrina was also smiling. There was still a distinct forcefulness in her voice when she said, "Kadabra! Focus!"

Her pokémon shook its head one last time, and then Kadabra adopted a fighting stance again. Antonia lamented her failure to follow up on Bulbasaur's surprise attack, the first time that she had seen any success against Sabrina's powerful pokémon. But she could not linger on that failure before Kadabra's outstretched hand started to lift Bulbasaur up and off the ground.

"Bulbasaur!" Antonia shouted as her pokémon croaked fearfully. "Use your vines to steady yourself! Don't let Kadabra knock you around!"

The vines which were her pokémon's main weapons had been retracted into their place under Bulbasaur's bulb, but now they extended again. The vines grasped desperately for purchase on the surface of the gym's floor, but to no avail. Bulbasaur made the same frightened sound as before, and he brought the vines up in front of his face in a moment of panic. One of the vines stayed aloft, but the other one fell with Bulbasaur's body to the ground, landing on his side. Kadabra grunted in annoyance and waved its hand to send the vine in its psychic grasp out of the way. As it reached out towards Bulbasaur again, the smaller pokémon tried to shield himself from Kadabra's attack with his vines again. Kadabra's hands closed and one of the vines stiffened, and Kadabra made another annoyed sound and batted Bulbasaur's appendage away with its mind.

Bulbasaur's wide face lit up with understanding and he started to advance on Kadabra one step at a time. Kadabra continued trying to reach past the barrier of vines, and its motions grew more frantic with each failure. Before the advance could continue, Antonia said, "Bulbasaur! Keep trying to trip it up!"

Confidence fled from Bulbasaur's face to be replaced by confusion. But he made his choice, and stopped using his vines for defense in favor of launching an attack with them. The twin appendages surged towards Kadabra's lower limbs again. Unfortunately, they failed to reach Sabrina's pokémon before it thrust out its hand and sent a wave of psychokinetic force at its opponent. Bulbasaur went flying backwards, spinning through the air towards Antonia's head. The girl screamed and raised her hands to cover her face, but Bulbasaur's flight was halted just as violently as it had begun by another gesture from Kadabra. Bulbasaur's prone body was raised higher into the air and then slammed down to the ground. The process was retreated twice more before Sabrina and her pokémon were satisfied.

Antonia looked at her battered pokémon laying on the ground before her sprawled on his belly. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open to gulp in great gasps of breath. Without thinking about it, Antonia's hand had found Bulbasaur's poké ball and she was squeezing it tightly. She brought her arm up slightly before letting it fall back to her side.

"Do you want this to continue?" asked Sabrina. "Do you trust your bulbasaur to continue battling?"

One of Bulbasaur's eyes opened and it found Antonia. Her pokémon's gaze threatened to pierce her, and so Antonia looked away before she dared to worry about what Bulbasaur was trying to tell her. She was afraid that he was unable to go on, but she was also afraid that he would insist on continuing to battle. It was easier to take the decision herself, and Antonia raised the heavy poké ball in her hand and called her pokémon back to safety.

On the sidelines, Cameron looked over to Antonia with an unspoken question written on his face. When Antonia nodded, he said, "Bulbasaur is unable to battle! The challenge will send out her next pokémon or forfeit the match."

"Okay," Antonia said hollowly. She replaced Bulbasaur's poké ball with another red and white sphere.

"Oh no," whispered Roy.

"Do you really want to continue, Antonia?" Sabrina asked.

Antonia shook her head and said, "No, but I have to try." She held out the poké ball in front of her and her voice cracked as she said, "Go, Magikarp."

The red light which accompanied her final pokémon's appearance seemed dim and lackluster in the harsh lights of the gym, and the actual creature which she summoned looked no better. Antonia's magikarp was a helpless fish, flopping uselessly on land as it tried to get its bearings. For a moment, the only sound in the gym was that of the pathetic pokémon's struggles. Then some of the trainers watching the battle began to laugh. Their initial embarrassed outbursts soon invited more and more boisterous laughter.

Roy's face grew red with rage while Antonia's colored with embarrassment. Before Sabrina or her pokémon had the chance to do more than rebuke the onlookers with harsh glares, Antonia recalled her magikarp back into its poké ball. Then, she turned around and fled.

Roy followed her immediately. He did not offer any apology to Sabrina or Cameron, and he let his anger at the mocking crowd die so that he could focus on chasing Antonia. His footsteps joined hers and soon the slap of the soles of their shoes were echoing loud enough to drown out any talk from the other trainers.

Antonia pushed her way through the front doors and outside of the gym, and Roy was only a few steps behind her by then. She hesitated on the sidewalk, looking around with her wide eyes to decide where she should run to next. This gave Roy the chance to stop her. "Hey, Toni!" he said. "Stop!"

"Go away, Roy!" Antonia said as she turned on him. "Leave me alone!" Her glasses could not hide the tears around her red-rimmed eyes, and the trembling of her body was evident to any passerby who might have cared enough to notice.

Roy noticed, and Antonia knew that he did. She reached out and tried to push Roy away, and although Roy let the force of her blow push him back a step, he quickly made up the lost ground. He stood in front of Antonia with a glum expression on his face, and said, "I'm sorry that you lost, Toni."

"Let's go back to the pokémon center," Antonia forced out. "I just want this day to be over with." The girl took off her glasses and ran her forearm against her eyes to wipe away tears and to muffle the sound of her sniffles. Then she put them back on, turned away and started walking, keeping enough distance between herself and Roy so that he would see the back of her head instead of any signs of weakness.

"I'm sorry that happened," said Roy again as he trailed behind her. "I thought that it was a good battle, though. Sabrina's pokémon was really tough, and those psychic powers are really something else."

There was not any response from Antonia until the two of them had reached the end of the block and crossed the first intersection on their journey back to the pokémon center. Then, she said, "I shouldn't have challenged her, or I should have won. It was stupid to take her on without having a plan to win. I just felt so excited after seeing Jesse at the tournament today, and I wanted to do something that I could be proud of. I wasn't thinking."

"So, what then?" asked Roy. "You're never going to battle anyone unless you know that you can beat them? That doesn't sound like any fun. I mean, winning's great, but if you won all the time, how would you know if you were getting any better?"

"How would you know?" Antonia replied. Both the young trainers froze in their tracks as the weight of what she had said hit them. Roy's head dropped and the two of them finished their trek through Saffron City in silence.

When they got to the pokémon center, the pair retreated to their separate rooms. Roy and Antonia did their best to avoid each other, and even when their paths crossed in the pokémon center's cafeteria they did not speak to each other. They remained in their separate worlds.