The weather was rather fair the following morning. If you didn’t know about the state-of-emergency thing, you would just think that everyone in Jubilife had merely slept in. That, of course, was not the case.

“Giratinaaaaa, here we comeeeee!” Barry overconfidently exulted.

Hop had to admit that he was a little excited to face the traitor Pokemon. Of course, it was nerve wracking and a bit stress inducing, but if he managed to catch it, then he could beat Gloria. After that, all of his problems would evaporate. However, if Dawn or Lucas caught him trying to sneak away, they’d get mad at him and probably tell him to go back into a hotel room or something. But Hop wasn’t going to let them find out. He had a giant scheme all planned out. There was just one person he needed to get on board with it…

“Free food!” Barry chanted. “Free food!”

“If we do a good job,” Lucas added.

“What do you mean, if? This Pokemon is basically back in the Distortion Realm!” Barry chuckled.

“Barry, you’re acting a little too, well, childish,” Dawn muttered.

“Childish? Me?” Barry asked. “You’ve never met me before, have you?”

“We’ve known each other since we were three,” Dawn sighed.

Hop observed their conversation. Barry was obviously very childish. Therefore, maybe Hop could get Barry on board with his plan through the promise of something he would like. The three days he spent with Barry taught him something. Barry could not resist the temptation of free food. If it was free, he would relish it because “he didn’t have to buy it.” So, if Hop got him some food for helping him with his plan, then Barry would go along with it. It was as easy as berry pie!

“Yo, Barry,” Hop informally yapped. That language would never work if he was addressing the much more formal Dawn or Lucas, but it would work just fine with Barry.

“Yeah?” responded Barry. Hop caught Dawn looking back at them.

“So,” Hop whispered, “I have a plan.”

“To do what?” Barry inquired.

“For you to get free food.” Hop started. “So, you see-”

“I’m in,” Barry determined.

“What?” Hop exclaimed.

“I want free food,” Barry replied, “because I don’t have to pay for it.”

Hop was surprised Barry didn’t want to hear his plan. When he roped Gloria and Victor into his schemes when they were younger, they always wanted to hear what the plan was. Even if Hop gave them something in return for their service, they wanted to know what they were doing. Even though Barry was childish, it seemed rather two-dimensional of him to purely desire food. Hop was sure there was another motive hidden in there somewhere, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“So, about the scheme?” Barry snapped Hop back into reality.

Hop really didn’t finalize his plan yet. He knew that Barry needed to distract Dawn and Lucas so that Hop could go after Giratina, but how to implement this idea was unknown. Maybe Barry could send the other two on a wild goose chase. Or perhaps he could trap them in a hotel or something. Hop whispered the outline in his guide’s ear. Except he didn’t explain the catching Giratina part. He only included getting away from Dawn and Lucas and his plan to do that.

Barry looked at Hop with a sympathetic expression. “Oh, poor Hop. You don’t know anything about Dawny and Lucas, do you?”

Hop shook his head. He literally met these three less than a week ago. Of course he didn’t know all of Dawn and Lucas’s personality traits!

“I suggest that you go into a cave or something with Lucas and lose him.” Barry suggested. “Otherwise, Dawn and Lucas will not let you go anywhere by yourself.”

That was probably true. Hop knew that his two serious guides were rather stubborn. He was surprised they’d even consider chasing after Giratina, much less actually do it. But Hop reminded himself that some people can make surprising decisions. Maybe Dawn or Lucas had some other motive rather than just to save the region. Hop glanced at Dawn and Lucas. Dawn was no longer glaring at the Hop and Barry. Instead, it looked like she was simply having a pleasant conversation with Lucas while curling a strand of her blue hair around her finger. Was Dawn’s hair color dyed or natural? If it was dyed, Hop wondered if blue was everybody in Sinnoh's favorite color. Lucas’s face was slightly flustered as he told Dawn something. Hop couldn’t make out the words, but Barry seemed to read their lips really well. Maybe he was a professional lip reader.

Barry walked up towards the two talking and jabbed Lucas in the ribs with his elbow. “Eh, you talking about berries without the berry expert himself?” Barry joked.

Lucas's expression was blank. “We were actually talking about-” he started.

“Nonsense!” Barry interrupted, a wide grin on his face. “You used a berry pun! I read your lips!”

Dawn looked at Barry with a smirk. “Yeah, says the guy who thought we were talking about a xylophone when we were really talking about the Pokedex,” Dawn brought up.

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“Don’t lie in front of Hoppio!” Barry gasped.

“Maybe you should take your own advice,” Dawn commented.

The conversation the two had reminded Hop of a similar argument he had with Gloria. They were trying to convince the other on whether hats were cool or unnecessary. Sure, it sounded childish right now, but to his eight year old self, nothing was more important than the issue of hats. The conversation came up when Gloria almost lost hers walking through some tall grass. She found it rather quickly, but that made Hop notice that he was the only one of his friends that lacked headwear. A little envious due to his lack of a hat, he started declaring that hats had no purpose other than to fall off one's head. Gloria took that comment very offensively and started to list out all the ways that hats were helpful. Oh, how Hop would do anything for those days! When his friends had arguments, he wished they’d be over meaningless stuff like hats again. ‘But,’ he reassured himself, ‘everything will be fixed once I catch Giratina! We’ll be friends again!’

After making this comparison, Hop couldn’t stop noticing the similarities between his friend group and Barry’s. They each had one girl in it, both who were the Champions of their respective regions. Dawn and Gloria fit that description perfectly. There was a boy who was fun-loving and adventurous. That was, of course, Barry and Hop. And then there was the somewhat reserved and quieter boy. That could kind of apply to Lucas and Victor, though it was more of a stretch than the other two. But then how was Barry’s friend group still together? Was it because Dawn was such a social outcast that even as Champion she couldn’t get any friends? Was it because they all were higher class than most kids? That hotel attendant said Barry was the son of something called a “Frontier Brain,” Dawn was a Champion, and Lucas’s family worked in a lab a lot. Hop wanted to know their secret, but he didn’t feel like it was the right time to ask one of them.

Suddenly, the three slowed down to walk with Hop. “Who were you calling yesterday, Hop?” Lucas asked.

“My friends,” lied Hop.

“Oh, that’s nice!” Dawn grinned. “Who are your friends?”

“Oh, just two friends from my childhood,” Hop smiled, reminiscing about the good old days. If Dawn knew, maybe she would understand. “One of them I haven’t talked to in a while,” Hop added, “because she’s a Champion.”

“You said you were from Galar, yes?” Dawn chirped. “So your friend is Gloria Bailey, correct?”

Hop nodded. He didn’t know that Dawn actually met Gloria.

“Oh, she’s talked about a few of her friends before!” Dawn jumped up. “I think she brought up you.”

Gloria talked about him in front of the Champions? Great… She probably brought up some embarrassing memories of him or something. Hop bet she made a real fool out of him. “What… what did she say about me?” Hop pondered aloud.

“Just some childhood memories. Nothing too important, other than the fact that you are one of her best friends,” responded Dawn.

Are. Not were, but are. Hop felt himself faintly smile. Did Gloria still really consider him her friend? If she did, then they could meet up and… NO!!! Hop stopped himself from going down that path. ‘Gloria wants nothing to do with me until I get stronger!’ Hop thought. ‘Dawn just slipped up her words.’

“So,” Lucas interrupted Hop’s train of thought, “do you want to tell Hop where we’re going, Dawn?”

“Well, east of Jubilife City is a town called Oreburgh City. If you go a little bit north from that and go east through the entirety of Route 208, then we’ll be at Mt. Coronet.” Dawn explained.

“And Mt. Coronet is where these Distortion Realm portals are, correct?” Lucas asked.

Dawn nodded. Hop was extremely confused. Distortion Realm? That was a very foreign term to him.

Barry saw Hop’s uncertainty and added, “The Distortion Realm is a messed up place. It’s like Sinnoh, but it’s so weird. Floating islands everywhere!”

He paused before muttering, “It’s Giratina’s lair, too.”

“So Giratina,” Hop thought aloud, “can be caught there?”

“Let’s change the-” Lucas anxiously started.

“It’s not worth the cost, Hop,” Dawn stated.

“Why is it not?” yelled Hop. “Is it because you’re afraid I’ll take your Champion position? Are you really that greedy?”

“No, Hop,” Dawn responded, obviously annoyed, “I’ve seen the effect Giratina has had on people. It basically overwrites the capturer’s brain. It’s happened before, Hop, and I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

“So?” Hop rebelled. “It sounds like you have first-hand experience!”

“Well, I don’t,” Dawn clarified. Hop smirked. He was about to say some mean comment about how Dawn ‘shouldn’t believe in such childish stories’ when he noticed that each one of his guides looked extremely uncomfortable as they stopped walking. Even Barry, the chirpiest and happiest of them all, looked distressed. Actually, Barry looked the most anxious of them all.

“You know how you asked me about Dialga earlier?” Lucas asked. “Well, Dialga is part of a trio, like the three of us. So we each decided to take one of them. Since my family was always fascinated with it, I took Dialga.”

So it was Dialga in that pokeball Lucas was smiling at back in Sandgem Town!

“Since I loved the color pink, I took Palkia.” Dawn added. “Palkia is a Pokemon that controls space, by the way.”

“And that left…” Lucas quavered.

“I got Giratina,” Barry shuddered. Dawn and Lucas rushed next to him, making sure he wouldn’t faint or something along those lines.

Hop desperately wanted to change the subject. “Look! Is that Oreburgh City over there?” Hop exclaimed, pointing at a building in the distance.

“Yeah, I think it is,” Dawn said.

Barry didn’t jump up and down. He didn’t make a comment about food either. He just looked on, a worried gleam in his usually cheerful eyes. Hop wanted to know the details about the ‘possession,’ but he didn’t want to disturb Barry anymore. The four started walking again, with Dawn and Lucas in the lead. Hop was behind them, right next to Barry.

“Hop,” Barry whispered. It seemed less like an excited little child’s whisper and more like a concerned adult’s. “Promise me you’ll give up on catching Giratina.”

Hop didn’t know if he really wanted to promise that. But maybe it could be a little white lie to make Barry revert back to his excited, cheerful self.

“Okay, I promise,” Hop whispered back. Then he remembered how Barry would help him distract Dawn and Lucas. Why would he do that if he was against Hop catching Giratina. “Why did you want to help me distract Dawn and Lucas, then?” Hop blurted out.

“Because I would use the distraction to get rid of Giratina.” Barry responded seriously. “I'd get rid of it permanently.”