It was a beautiful day for Winona. The willowy gym leader was in Lilycove City for lunch with some friends and had decided to do some shopping ahead of her appointment. Now she was walking down a cute little boulevard with a bag of clothes beating against her leg in time with her footsteps. The sun was shining such that the wingull circling overhead cast matching shadows on the bricked street and Winona's shirt billowed with each instance of the day's gentle breeze. Winona sighed her contentment aloud, then her lazy smile widened. How could she be anything but happy? She was in love!

Winona's mood was not dampened in the slightest when she arrived at the restaurant and found that, in addition to her anticipated companion, there was another girl sitting at the restaurant's outdoor table and waiting for her. Even though both of them wore glum expressions and hurriedly finished their conversation when they saw her coming, Winona didn't seem to notice. "Oh, hello," she said pleasantly as she set herself and her bag down at the cozy little table. "I didn't realize you'd invited Flannery, Roxanne. It's good to see you both."

Roxanne had already looked annoyed before Winona had spoken, but the older gym leader's words made Roxanne's mouth nearly vanish into a thin line between her lips. "Yes, well, this concerns her, too," said Roxanne crisply. "Flannery has been subjected to the same," Roxanne paused before deciding upon, "delusion as I have. We called you here to put an end to it."

The strongest emotion that Winona was able to generate in the face of Roxanne's rudeness was surprised amusement. "Oh, I'm happy to talk about whatever's bothering you. Have I really been that annoying, Flannery?"

The red-haired girl gave a little jump in her chair at being singled out, even though Winona's question and her tone were as mellow as could be. "Um I wouldn't really say 'annoying,' no, just, um, a little pushy, maybe?" Flannery looked to Roxanne for an escape and asked her, "Uh, Roxanne! What do you think?"

"Oh, come on, Flannery!" Roxanne griped. "Winona's been teasing you about Brendan for weeks!"

"Teasing?" asked Winona with a frown. "I haven't been teasing you, Flannery, have I? All I've been saying is that you and Brendan would make a cute couple! How many times has he been to visit you in Lavaridge Town? And look at you! You're smiling just thinking about him!"

Roxanne's voice cut through Winona's happy observation, "That's what I'm talking about! Winona! Just because you've gone crazy since you started going out with Steven doesn't mean that everyone else wants to!"

Winona sighed wistfully in the face of Roxanne's agitation, which only served to further irritate the younger woman. "I just want you two to be as happy as I am," Winona said, "especially when you're both obviously in love!"

"I don't know about love," Flannery laughed nervously.

Roxanne's response was much more forceful. "Delusional!" she huffed and picked up her menu so that she could pretend to scan its contents.

Winona's smile widened as she said coyly, "So, I'm crazy? Then why were you shirking your gym duties to go and visit Brawly on his little island?"

"That was to catch a new pokémon," Roxanne snapped from behind her laminated menu. "Now, what looks good?"

"I didn't know you went to go see Brawly. How's he going?" Flannery asked innocently.

Roxanne slapped her menu down on the table. "I didn't go to see Brawly! It was just to catch a pokémon! He just happened to be there! You're not helping, Flannery!"

"I don't know why this makes you so upset," Winona said patiently. "Brawly's a nice guy, and pretty easy on the eyes, too. I don't blame you for having a crush on him."

"I don't have a crush on Brawly!" Roxanne tried to catch Flannery's eye, but her fellow gym leader had discovered a sudden interest in her own menu. Roxanne resorted to throwing her eyes and her exasperation up into the sky. "Look, Winona, we," as Roxanne spoke, Flannery lowered her head behind her menu, "appreciate that you think that you're helping other people 'find love' or what have you, but it's getting out of hand. You're imagining all kinds of things just so that you can try and play matchmaker for the whole region."

That remark seemed to finally pierce Winona's placidity. "It's not that bad."

"Oh yeah? What about Lucy and Sidney?" Roxanne asked. "At the last league retreat, it sounded like you were trying to pair them up next."

"Is that so wrong? They'd make a cute couple, don't you think? Well, cute in a kind of punk rock way."

Roxanne exploded, "They've never even met!" The restaurant's other patrons looked over at the gym leaders' table, but Roxanne paid them no mind. She was just getting started tearing into Winona, "And what about Liza and that boy Wally? What are you doing trying to pair off those poor kids?"

Flannery offered, "Aw, that would be cute!"

"Why did I bring you along?" Roxanne grumbled. When she saw the smile playing on Winona's lips, Roxanne jabbed her finger at her friend and snapped, "Look what you've done! You've made all of us into dopey, lovesick morons!"

"Maybe we should order," Winona suggested without bothering to hide her laughter. Roxanne's agreement was grudging while Flannery gave hers with obvious relief. For a few minutes, at least, the conflict was forgotten as the three women made their decisions and gave their orders to a friendly waiter.

As they watched their server hurry off to deliver their orders to the kitchen, Roxanne couldn't resist asking Winona, "Well? Are you going to try and set him up with some random girl, too?"

Roxanne's attempt at getting under Winona's skin fell flat as Winona just laughed and said playfully, "No, I already have my hands full with you two."

Flannery chose to hide behind her glass of water next as Roxanne huffed and leaned back in her chair so that she could fold her arms across her chest. "You're impossible. We're not your projects, and there's nothing for you to work on, either. Right, Flannery?"

"Oh," the other gym leader said uneasily. She had drained her glass and was now unable to escape her friend's snare. "Roxanne's right. Winona. You're just imagining things."

"Is that so? You and Brendan are just friends?" Winona rested her elbow on the table and her chin on her knuckles as Flannery squirmed under the older woman's gaze. "Well, you must be very good friends then. I heard Brendan tell Steven how much he likes going to Lavaridge Town to see you."

"He said that?" asked Flannery eagerly. Roxanne's frown and Winona's smile both grew as Flannery gushed, "He's so sweet, and such a good listener! Last time, he stopped by my gym without telling me, so it was such a nice surprise to see him, but I would have liked a heads-up so that I could have baked him some lava cookies. Brendan told me he loves those, and nowhere has better lava cookies than Lavaridge Town!" Flannery finished proudly.

Winona's voice was nearly as excited as she told Flannery, "Oh, that's so sweet! He's so nice, isn't he?"

As Flannery launched into another salvo, Roxanne cut through her friend's excited chatter by loudly remarking, "Oh, good. Here comes our food."

Their waited set the three girls' respective lunches in front of each of them. Roxanne's thank you was significantly more restrained than those of her fellow gym leaders and she stabbed her fork into her salad with noticeably more violence than was necessary. "All right, so Flannery has a little crush on Brendan. I'll give you that, Winona, but that doesn't mean that you should be making it your business!"

"Why can't I care about my friends?" Winona asked cheerfully. "Why shouldn't I encourage them to be happy like I am?"

"Deranged isn't the same as happy," Roxanne shot back. She chewed a mouthful of her lunch before offering another rejoinder, "I'll admit that Flannery has a mild infatuation with Brendan, but what does that have to do with you? You don't have to put yourself in the middle of things. Just let them develop naturally! That's how it happened for you and Steven, after all. No one had to push you two to be together."

Now Winona paused. She took a bite of her sandwich to give herself time to think of a response and, when that wasn't enough, she carefully dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin.

Roxanne sensed her advantage and pressed Winona further, "If someone had told you three months ago that you were going to fall head over heels for Steven, you'd have called her crazy! You might have even hardened your heart and refused to consider your feelings altogether!"

Winona rested her hand on her chin and asked, "Is that what I'm doing now? Am I keeping you and Brawly from being together?"

"What? No! That's not what I mean! I was talking about in general, or about Flannery!"

"Me?" asked Flannery. "No, that's not what's really been bothering me, I just don't like being embarrassed by Winona. It doesn't matter to me what she thinks is going on between me and Brendan if she isn't so public about it. I'm not going to change how I feel just because someone tells me that I should feel one way or the other."

Roxanne shot her friend a look of angry betrayal and muttered again, "I don't know why I brought you along." She didn't have the chance to say anything else before Winona spoke.

"I didn't mean to get in the way of you and Brawly, Roxanne," she said apologetically. "I only wanted to help you fall in love, too."

"I'm not in love with Brawly!" shouted Roxanne with enough force that the girls' waiter, who had been carefully busying himself with wiping the table next to theirs, hurried off to perform some real work somewhere else. "I don't even like him, I mean, not like that." It looked as though Roxanne's resolve was going to falter, but then she called up a wave of fresh outrage. Her meal, and those of the other gym leaders, was forgotten as Roxanne ranted, "He is the single most frustrating boy that I have ever had the misfortune to meet! He's lazy, apathetic, and doesn't show a shred of curiosity about anything! He's an unmotivated, unthinking, unaware beach bum who has no business running a lemonade stand much less an official pokémon league gym!"

Neither Winona nor Flannery said anything at first. They just watched as Roxanne struggled to slow her breathing and her beating heart. Beneath her dark hair, Roxanne's face was flushed pink. Slowly but surely, the gym leader regained a fraction of her previous poise.

"Wow, Winona was right. You do like Brawly."

Flannery's simple comment was all it took for Roxanne to come undone. Her cheeks reddened again, but this time her anger was so great that she didn't bother putting it into words. Instead, she violently pushed her chair away from the table and stood up just as forcefully before striding away from Winona and Flannery with her purse clenched tightly in her fist.

"I'll go after her," Winona told Flannery.

"Does that mean I have to pay for all of your food?" the younger gym leader called after her friend, without receiving a response. "Aw, man."

Roxanne walked quickly and even with her longer legs, Winona was only able to catch up with her friend when Roxanne sank onto a park bench and pulled her legs up onto the seat so she could wrap her arms around them. Winona hesitated, but only for a moment, before she sat down next to the younger woman and put a reassuring hand on Roxanne's shoulder.

"Is it really that obvious?" sniffed Roxanne into her knees.

"Is what obvious?"

That made Roxanne groan, "Please don't make me say it, Winona! Fine. Is it obvious that I," Roxanne grimaced, "that I like Brawly."

"Well," Winona said diplomatically, and she was thankful that Roxanne continued without waiting for her to finish her answer.

"I don't even know why I like him, Winona! All those things that I said about him at the restaurant are true," Roxanne said with her voice still muffled by her legs, "but even then-"

"He's really cute?" suggested Winona, which earned her a red-rimmed glare from Roxanne. "Sorry, but he is, isn't he?"

Roxanne exploded, "Of course he is! He's a total hunk! He's so hunky that he's making me use words like 'hunky!' But I'm not supposed to be mooning over another gym leader! I didn't become a gym leader so that I could turn into a silly little girl with a crush!"

Winona's voice was carefully neutral as she said, "Like me, you mean."

She looked uncomfortable, but Roxanne still said, "Yes, exactly. You weren't my official mentor, but I always looked up to you as the kind of gym leader that I wanted to be like. You were a strong trainer, but also confident and always in control. Whenever I didn't know what I was supposed to do, I knew that I could always look to you and follow your example." Roxanne unfolded her body and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before turning to Winona again and saying, "This whole thing with Steven's turned you into a hopeless romantic, and a totally unserious gym leader."

"Oh," Winona's earlier display of sympathy disappeared behind a steely voice and a stoney expression. "You don't think I'm a serious gym leader since I started dating Steven, is that it?"

"Yes. Are you going to tell me I'm wrong?" Roxanne followed Winona to her feet and her words and face were as hard as the older woman's.

But now Winona allowed herself a smile, albeit one with an edge to it. "Oh, no, I'm not going to tell you anything. I'm going to show you," Winona said, "with a pokémon battle."

At that point, Flannery caught up to them. "Why are salads so expensive?" the red-haired gym leader asked, and then she saw that Winona and Roxanne were squaring off. "Are you two going to battle, right after eating?"

Roxanne rolled her eyes, but Winona turned her cool smile on the new arrival and asked, "Would you mind refereeing for us, Flannery? I'm thinking we'll have a one-on-one battle. It shouldn't take too long."

"You sound pretty confident for someone with a type disadvantage," scoffed Roxanne, "but sure, one pokémon a side is fine with me. There's a park over that bridge. Do we want to have it over there?"

The three of them crossed the bridge over the narrow manmade river to a stretch of green field which lay in the valley below the street of shops and cafés. A few passersby recognized the gym leaders and word spread such that there was a small crowd gathered around the park's grassy arena which Winona and Roxanne had chosen as the site of their battle.

Neither of them paid the impromptu audience any mind. Instead, Winona and Roxanne only stared each other down as they each readied their poké balls. "Ready?" Flannery asked her friends, and when they responded with matching nods, she said, "All right then, battle begin!"

"Skarmory, steel wing!" Winona ordered just as Roxanne called to her own pokémon, "Rock tomb, Nosepass!"

The two gym leaders watched the ensuing clash between their pokémon with keen interest. Nosepass emerged from Roxanne's thrown poké ball with its stubby blue arms raised over its head to raise a pair of rocks from the ground, which it then tried to direct so that they would sandwich its opponent between them in a crushing blow. Winona's skarmory, however, had also emerged onto the battlefield ready for action. Its gleaming metallic wings shone in the sun and Skarmory angled its body so that its wings sliced through Nosepass's attack and sent the halved rocks falling back to the earth. Skarmory continued its flight towards Roxanne's pokémon, but countering Nosepass's rock tomb had slowed the flying pokémon enough that its opponent was able to pivot on one of it stumpy legs to avoid the swooping skarmory.

"Thunder wave," ordered Roxanne.

"Dodge it," was Winona's equally calm response.

Skarmory angled its sleek body to avoid hitting the ground after missing Nosepass with its opening attack before taking to the air to try and avoid the oncoming counterattack. But Nosepass maintained a steady lock on Skarmory's erratic flight pattern. Raising its arms again on either side of its red nose, Nosepass sent out a pulse of energy which was invisible to the naked eye, but all of the gym leaders could tell that it hit Skarmory from the way that the bird pokémon jerked violently and dropped a few feet in the air before it recovered.

Even though her pokémon had managed to stay aloft, Winona was frowning. "You've learned some new tricks, Roxanne," she admitted to her opponent.

"We've been training with Wattson," replied Roxanne with more than a hint of her usual pride. She couldn't resist adding, "Maybe you and Steven should have been training!"

Winona's voice was as hard and sharp as her pokémon's plumage as she snapped, "Focus, Skarmory! Hold it off with an aerial ace while I think.

Skarmory answered its trainer with an ugly caw and then it swung around and dived towards Roxanne's nosepass.

"Harden," Roxanne ordered and her pokémon obeyed by stiffening its already rock-hard body and bracing itself for Skarmory's dive. Its nose guided Nosepass's body so that it swiveled this way and that as it remained ready to meet the other pokémon's attack head-on.

One of Winona's eyebrows raised and she brushed a strand of hair behind her ear as she watched her skarmory crash into Roxanne's pokémon with slashing blows from its beak and talons. The attack left only surface-level scratches on Nosepass's tough body, but Winona was smiling again.

Roxanne saw her friend's grin, but dismissed it in favor of ordering, "Rock tomb again, Nosepass."

Her pokémon thrummed with energy as it tore another two clumps of earth from the ground next to it. Without opening its eyes, Nosepass continued to follow Skarmory's flight with its whole body. It didn't attack until Skarmory was suddenly seized by a muscle spasm courtesy of Nosepass's earlier thunder wave technique. As Skarmory fought to regain its previous altitude, Nosepass launched its attack.

The pair of rocky missiles smashed into each of Skarmory's wings and drove the started pokémon to the ground where it was pinned under the two piles of earth. If it wasn't for its hard metal feathers, Skarmory bones might have been broken by the attack.

While their trainers watched, the two battling pokémon raced to make the most of the situation in Nosepass's case or to escape it in Skarmory's. Enough of the ground around Nosepass was torn up from supplying its rock tomb attacks that it struggled to muster enough rock and dirt to create a third salvo. While Nosepass scraped together its next attack, Skarmory rolled about and fought against the twin weights on its wings.

Skarmory's efforts were starting to bear fruit when Roxanne yelled, "Don't wait! Attack it now!"

But by the time that Roxanne's order had reached her pokémon and Nosepass launched its attack, the grounded skarmory had freed one of its wings.

"Fury attack!" Winona shouted and her skarmory swung its freed wing in front of it so that the sweeping motion sent a flurry of knife-like feathers at Nosepass. The rocky pokémon didn't move to avoid the attack, so every one of the sharp feathers struck its lumpy body and crisscrossed Nosepass with more shallow scratches.

The attack broke Nosepass's concentration enough that it forgot its own attack and Winona's skarmory was able to finish freeing itself. Now that it was able to move freely, Skarmory flew for Nosepass and slashed at its foe with its talons before rapidly flapping its wings and taking to the air again. Below, Nosepass resumed tracking Skarmory's flight.

"It's magnetism, right?" Winona asked Roxanne from the other side of the battlefield. "Your nosepass is following Skarmory with its nose because my pokémon is a steel-type, right? But that makes it harder for it to dodge our attacks, too!"

"Maybe," Roxanne conceded with a small smile, "but this battle won't last long enough for you to do much with that information." Her voice changed as she continued, "We'll show you right now! Zap cannon! Fire!"

Nosepass's stubby body and Roxanne's outstretched finger were both aimed at Winona's skarmory and they both followed its flight as it tried to avoid the anticipated attack by frantically diving and swooping. All the while, sparks began to dance atop Nosepass's rocky skin as the ball of crackling electricity suspended between its forelimbs steadily grew larger.

Winona laughed defiantly, "You think you're the first trainer who's tried using an electric attack on my birds? Ground yourself, Skarmory, with your wing!"

Right before its opponent launched its fully charged attack, Winona's skarmory dipped one of its wings into the ground. Skarmory advanced on Roxanne's nosepass even as its sharp wing cut a shallow groove int the grassy ground and revealed the rich black dirt which lay underneath the surface. The initial blow of Nosepass's zap cannon attack slowed Skarmory's momentum even as the static charge in the air set the hair of the three gym leaders on edge. But the vast majority of Nosepass's accumulated power was channeled through Skarmory's metal wing into the earth where it dissipated uselessly.

"Using your skarmory's own body as a conduit," Roxanne said with a tone of grudging respect, "was pretty smart. I suppose you haven't lost your head completely."

"That's nice of you to say, Roxanne," replied Winona, "and we're still not done yet!"

Sure enough, Skarmory put on a final burst of speed and leveled out its body as it streaked towards Nosepass like a gleaming bullet. Skarmory's wings shone brilliantly in the midday sun as it struck Nosepass hard enough that it sheared off a piece of the silent pokémon's red nose and knocked it to the ground. As Nosepass struggled to get back onto its feet, Skarmory rose back into the air with a triumphant caw.

Winona and her pokémon's sense of elation was short-lived, however, as the lingering effects of Nosepass's earlier thunder wave attack made Skarmory's muscles spasm and briefly sent the flying pokémon plummeting towards the ground before it powered through the pain in its wings and stayed aloft with a series of mighty but pained flaps of its wings.

Roxanne saw opportunity in that brief display of weakness, and her voice rang out to her own pokémon, "Rock tomb, Nosepass! Make it count this time!"

There was barely enough time for Winona to shout a warning to her pokémon, much less for Skarmory to heed her warning. The twin mounds of earth which Nosepass had called up form the ground rose into the clear blue sky and collided into Skarmory like two clapping hands. The force of the paired blows sent a rain of rock and dirt showering the ground, and the falling body of Winona's skarmory.

Winona, Roxanne, and Flannery watched Skarmory hit the ground and then Winona said, "It's okay, Flannery, you can call it. Roxanne's won."

"Skarmory is unable to battle!" Flannery announced for the benefit of the battle's audience. "The winner is Nosepass! Congratulations, Roxanne," she added a little stiffly as the people and pokémon which had been watching the match between the two gym leaders broke out in polite applause.

As the crowd broke up, Roxanne walked over to Winona and waited patiently for the older girl to return her injured pokémon to its poké ball before holding out her hand saying, "Thank you for the battle, Winona."

"Thank you, Roxanne. You've gotten even better since the last time that we battled," Winona said approvingly. "Working on your nosepass's electric attacks has really given you a lot more options while still letting you be true to your specialty."

"Oh, well, thank you," said Roxanne. "You and your skarmory handled our tactics very well, I thought. I should have known that you would have prepared a countermeasure for an opponent using electric techniques, though. I'll have to work to come up with a response with Nosepass, and maybe with Wattson."

"Maybe we could help you practice, too," Winona offered, before adding with a small shrug, "and don't worry, I won't bring up Brawly at all, except in a purely professional capacity, I promise."

Roxanne's composure faltered and her words came out faster than usual as she said, "Well, I suppose, perhaps you and I could talk about him sometimes, I mean, just if I have any questions about, you know, anything."

"Oh, sure thing, Roxanne," said Winona. A smile had broken out on her face again, but she tried to keep her excitement in check. Even so, she couldn't resist the temptation to prod her friend, "So, do you still think that dating Steven has made me a worse trainer and gym leader?"

"You lost, didn't you?" sniffed Roxanne a little too quickly for her comeback to land with the intended sting. Roxanne recalled her nosepass and then turned away from Winona and started walking away from the other gym leaders.

Winona went after her, with Flannery bringing up the rear and calling, "Hey! Wait up, you guys! Can I get some advice about Brendan now?"