It was weird, Hayley thought, to see people her age returning to school and to know that she wouldn't be joining them. It was mid-afternoon, and sitting in a park at the edge of the trainers' district, Hayley had a front-row seat to students walking home as classes let out. Endless throngs of kids and teens walked along the sidewalk or cut through the grass, laughing and chatting to each other, blind to the world outside their group. Some were in uniforms, though most weren't, and all of them carried backpacks loaded with textbooks, tablets, folders, and papers. Hayley's own backpack was back at the Center, stuffed with potions and training supplies, and this, along with the three Pokémon scuffling in front of her, marked her as an outsider.

Barrett, Sen, and Ceres were playing another game of keepaway with a battered tennis ball. Barrett was barred from using his fire spin and smog to help, given that this was a public park and not a training field or battleground, which meant he was body-checking, feint attacking, and cross chopping his opponents in an attempt to grab and keep the ball in his clawed hands. Sen, she'd restricted to only using his feet; a recent battle against a Voltorb at the arena had highlighted just how far his foot-eye coordination was behind his hand-eye coordination, and Hayley wanted to fix that and have him start working on kicks. Soccer definitely wasn't Sen's forte, but he was rising to the challenge, kicking the ball out of the range of the others and blocking it with his body. Ceres, having neither hands nor the speed to keep up with the other two, was participating with telekinesis. The sluggish pace at which she moved the ball belied the power behind the move—both Barrett and Sen struggled to wrench the ball away from her, even though she kept it close to the ground to make the game fair.

It was a victory that Hayley sat alone on the bench with only her team for company. It meant she hadn't yet come crawling back to a normal life. Even so, there was an unmistakable sense of relief at the knowledge that she wouldn't be alone for long. After all, she'd come here to meet two of her former classmates.

She spotted Gavin first. His curly brown hair was growing out past his ears, and he wore a short-sleeved polo shirt that let Hayley sneak a look at his arms—the cast had been removed, but the arm that had been broken still looked conspicuously thinner and paler than the one that hadn't. One step behind him was Corbin, who walked with his hands in his pockets and his head slightly bowed, letting his dark fringe cover his eyes. Gavin glanced at Hayley's team, too embroiled in their war to even notice the newcomers, and Hayley realized too late that she should have recalled them for this, dammit—maybe even left them with her mom. Having them out might seem like she was bragging, and she didn't want that, especially with Corbin—

There was nothing she could do about it now. Gavin turned back to her and raised his thinned-out arm in a wave, and she nodded in response, wordlessly sliding over to make room for both of them on the bench. Gavin sat next to her, and Corbin perched at the end.

"Miriam and Connie aren't coming?" Gavin asked.

"They couldn't make it." It was partially a lie, partially the truth. Marcie was still more or less under house arrest until the hearing, and Connie couldn't go anywhere without her. Miriam, though, had simply rejected the invitation that Hayley had relayed to her. "I'm never going to see any of them again once we leave Petalburg for real. There's no point."

"That's too bad. I'd hoped we'd all be able to talk."

The text message emerged in Hayley's mind's eye. "I got your number from Howie. I heard you were in Petalburg—can you meet? Miriam and Connie too." He'd been cagey about why, exactly, he wanted to see them, just saying that he wanted to talk about some things. Face-to-face, evidently, not over the phone. He looked over at Hayley's team again, and Hayley winced. "Do you want me to—?"

"It's fine. I guess it's good they're all doing well." He sighed, leaned forward, and steepled his fingers. "I'd bring out Basil, but he's at my parents'. No Pokémon allowed in class, and all that. He's probably worried about me, so I should get back soon."

Hayley remembered the little Shroomish, who had stood fearlessly up to a rampaging Vigoroth, and found it hard to believe he could be worried about anything. Maybe he'd changed, after their near-death experience in Petalburg Woods. In fact, Gavin looked like he'd changed, too. She remembered him as being meek and cringing, but now, though his words were still barely above a whisper, he sounded totally sure of himself as he said—

"Hayley. You should think about quitting training."

All her careful analysis of Gavin flew out the window, and Hayley's mouth dropped open. "What? No!" At her outburst, all three of her Pokémon stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at her. Collecting herself as quickly as she could, Hayley motioned for them to go on with training. Barrett and Ceres returned to the game, but Sen watched her for a few moments longer, only turning back at last when Barrett made a run at Ceres and tackled him in the process. Hayley shook her head. "Why would I stop? I've got two badges, and—" A thought struck her. Her eyes narrowed. "Did Melinda put you up to this?"

"I don't talk to Melinda, and even if I tried, she wouldn't talk to me." Okay, fair point. "I'm saying this because—I've done a lot of thinking over the past few months, and I think out of the three of us here, Hayley, I'm the lucky one."

"What?" she blurted out without thinking. "That's—I mean—no offense, but you're—I mean, you—" Her attempts to paper over her blunder only dug her in deeper, until finally she cut her losses and asked, "How so?"

"I got out early, and without any deaths." Both of their eyes flicked to Corbin, who was still sitting silently and watching Hayley's Pokémon, before looking at each other again. Gavin only held her gaze for a moment before shifting and staring down at his knees. That part of him hadn't changed, at least.

"'Got out early'—you got your arm broken."

"I know. That's the lucky part. Because if I hadn't, I'd…" He shook his head. "I hated myself for quitting, you know? I thought it was my fault. But after my HNN interview, a bunch of people online found me and started sending me messages. And I found out that what happened to me, happens to a lot of people. Trainers are set up to fail."

"The system wants you to fail." A chill ran down Hayley's spine as Ennis' words came back to her. "In the end, less than—"

"Less than two percent of people actually make it as trainers," said Corbin, speaking up at last. "The League knows that, but it still tells every single person that they have to try and they have to make it into that two percent, and if they can't, it's because they just weren't good enough."

"The League doesn't tell anyone they have to do anything," Hayley countered. "We don't have to be trainers, we just—"

"We just all know that if you don't want to try, then something's wrong with you."

Hayley opened her mouth to protest again, except—wasn't that exactly what she'd thought about Miriam? That she was weird for dragging her feet and complaining and generally not wanting to go on the same journey that everyone else was doing? It hadn't been the only reason she'd thought Miriam was strange, but it had been one of the reasons.

"The people who quit after a couple months are the lucky ones," Gavin repeated. "They can go back to school and get their life back on track. But the ones who make it six months, or a year? Do you know how hard it is to go back to school after you've missed a year?"

"And then you'll have Pokémon to take care of, too," Corbin added. "Real battlers, not just housepets. If you don't want to release them, then how do you look after them when you spend all day in school or at a real job?"

She didn't know the answer. She didn't know why everyone in the world seemed to be trying to stop her from being a trainer. "You both sound like Ennis," she muttered, half to herself, because she wasn't sure whether they knew who Ennis was.

But they did know, of course. If anything, they looked surprised that she knew him. "Ennis knows what he's talking about," Gavin said after a pause. "Have you seen his posts about the League and Devon?"

"No, but I got caught up in that stupid protest in Rustboro and almost got trampled to death," she bit back. "Look, I don't—I don't know what you want me to say. I'm still a trainer, and I still want to be a trainer. I've worked really hard, and so has my team, and—that's not to say that you and your teams didn't work hard, but— I can't quit just because it might not work out. I have to keep trying."

There was another long silence, and finally, Gavin sighed again. "I figured you'd say that. I hope you make it, Hayley, but if you don't, then give me a call. The world has more washouts than it does real trainers, and if we stick together, we can force things to change."

"Change how? Maybe I can help—"

"You can't. Not while you're still in the League." Gavin stood up, and Corbin followed him. "When you're done with battling and you're ready to start fighting, then you can help. But not until then."

Another chill went through Hayley. She clenched her jaw and dug her nails into her knees. It was stupid, she shouldn't be freaked out like this; it was just Corbin and Gavin. But hearing Ennis' words come from them—it put ice in her veins. She sat motionless on the bench as they walked away. After a few steps, Corbin turned to the sky, lifted a hand, and whistled, and a Wingull swooped down to land clumsily on his shoulder. Both it and Corbin spared Hayley one last look before disappearing into the afternoon crowds.

----------------------------------------

"Gavin's just jealous," Miriam proclaimed as Hayley relayed the conversation to her. "And Corbin's always been a weirdo. They're just trying to screw with you."

"But they knew Ennis. That guy I met in Rustboro—"

"So? I've seen his posts too. He's a major troll; he goes onto every trainer forum he can find and talks about how the League is corrupt. Knowing who he is is like knowing who Secc and Nett are."

"…Who?"

Miriam groaned. "Never mind. I forgot you're not online."

"I go on the internet all the time—" Miriam waved a hand to shut her up.

"Look, you're freaking out over nothing. Now I kind of wish I had gone—I could have called them idiots to their face." A wistful expression passed over her for a moment. "Anyway, are we still battling today, or are you too scared now?"

"We're battling," Hayley responded immediately. She needed to push that conversation from her mind, and she needed to remind herself that there was a reason she was still doing this. Hayley and Miriam hadn't sparred since Dewford, but when they had, Hayley had still been able to beat her nine out of ten times. A victory now would help get her head back on straight.

"Okay, then let's stop talking about those losers and go grab a field."

This would be their first three-on-three, and Hayley's first time facing Zero, as well as Miriam's first time facing Sen. They'd agreed on no substitutions; it would be a knock-down, drag-out brawl between whichever two Pokémon wound up fighting each other, and that suited both of them just fine. They claimed an empty practice field and made their way to opposite sides.

"Are you ready?" Hayley called. Miriam nodded. They didn't have a referee, so it fell to Hayley to call out, "Release on three! One, two, three!"

They threw their balls at the same time. On Hayley's side of the field, Ceres appeared, and on Miriam's, Zero flickered to life. Miriam groaned so loudly that the trainers in the neighboring plot turned to look at her. "Seriously? Lead with another Pokémon for once! Zero, psychic conversion!"

Miriam hated fighting Ceres, Hayley knew, because of how long Ceres took to faint. And in the time since they'd last sparred, Ceres' expanded movepool had made her exponentially more annoying. Her disable and yawn wouldn't work against Zero, Hayley quickly thought, but the rest of her moves would be just fine. "Water gun."

Zero's panels flipped around, becoming a uniform pale pink. The jet of water hit just as they re-solidified, bouncing harmlessly away.

"Psybeam!"

"Protect!"

"Diverting power to offensive systems." Zero's force-field body lost some of its luster as psionic rings shimmered into being in front of it. They raced forward, and others followed them, forming a rainbow beam that… struck the ground at the exact midpoint of the field. Miriam smacked her forehead.

"The Slowpoke, Zero! Psybeam the Slowpoke!"

"Input received. Recalibrating." This time, the beam raced towards Ceres. But Ceres had had plenty of time by now to erect a forcefield of her own, and the beam was absorbed by her rippling green barrier.

"Keep the beam going! Break the shield!"

"Keep protecting. You're doing great." Hayley was content to stay on the defensive. Fighting a Porygon wasn't like fighting any other Pokémon, she'd learned from the short amount of research she'd done. They didn't get injured, and they didn't faint from damage or exhaustion; instead, they were considered down for the count when their power ran too low to continue functioning. Everything a Porygon did, from sending out attacks to manifesting their holographic body, was powered by their internal battery. Using force fields to deflect an attack away from their core took energy, and so did attacking back. Right now, maintaining its psybeam was chipping away at Zero's energy reserves just as surely as being hit by a volley of water guns would; all they had to do was withstand it, and it would knock itself out.

Miriam had come to the same conclusion. After several seconds where the beam failed to even crack Ceres' shield, she grunted and called out a new order. "Cancel psybeam! Sharpen and tackle!"

This was their opening. "Psi-slam!"

Ceres still couldn't multitask very well. In order to start up her confusion attack, she had to drop her protect shield. The angles of Zero's body thinned and sharpened, its beak and legs extending out into polygonal lances, and seizing an opening of its own, it charged—but Ceres caught it. The psychic energy signature of its body counteracted her telekinesis and made it slip around in her grasp like an Eelektross in oil, but Ceres was determined to keep hold of it. She dragged it to the ground and pinned it there—though it was less of a "slam" and more like she'd gently pushed Zero down. As it struggled against the clay, Hayley called out one of the few moves Ceres could multitask with: "Water gun!"

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"Agility! Get out of there!" Zero's body reformed itself into a single diamond shape and rocketed away, but not before Ceres' water gun landed a solid hit.

"Warning," it said as it zipped back and forth in the air. "System power at fifty percent."

"Dammit, Zero, don't just tell them your health! Psybeam the Slowpoke again!"

But the outcome of the battle was already inevitable. Even without protecting, Ceres barely felt the psybeams that Zero fired at her; all she had to do was counterattack and wait. Within another minute, Zero's form unceremoniously collapsed mid-psybeam, and its core dropped to the ground and shone red. "Warning. Main system power depleted. Operating on reserve power."

"Ugh. Come back, Zero." The Porygon's reserve power was just enough to encase it in a small holographic bubble and float it slowly back to Miriam's hand. She grumbled loudly to herself as she replaced the core on her belt and drew out another ball. "That matchup sucked. This one'll be better. Xena!"

The Elekid materialized onto the field with a cheer. This time, it was Miriam who raised her hand and called, "Attack on three! One, two, three, charge!"

"Water arc!" Ceres' water gun had been sidelined somewhat over the past couple weeks in favor of disable, protect, and confusion, but they'd squeezed in time to work on one more form. Ceres drew in a deep breath and spat out a long jet of water, moving her head back and forth to curve it like a fire hose. Even with the increased area, though, Xena was too quick, hopping away while still spinning her arms. Confusion would have been a surer hit, but Hayley hadn't wanted to use it; she needed Ceres' head to be clear for—

"Thunder sho—"

"Disable!" That. Electricity arced from Xena to Ceres, sparking up and down her body, but Ceres wouldn't feel it for a while yet. She shut her eyes and hummed, and the line of lightning faltered, then stopped. Xena frowned and turned back to Miriam, confused.

"Electricity's out, Xena," Miriam huffed. "Swift barrage. Make it hurt."

"Water gun."

Xena drew back her arms and summoned her gleaming stars as Ceres took another breath. Disable would only work for as long as Ceres could keep her focus, and Hayley and Miriam both knew it. Once the pain of the previous attacks caught up to her, she would falter, and Xena would be free to shock her into submission; until then, both sides could only try to do as much damage as possible.

Unfortunately, in this matchup, Xena was positioned to do a lot more damage than Ceres.

Xena launched star after star at her opponent. They'd grown bigger and brighter since the battle against Roxanne, and faster too, flying out like machine-gun fire. Each one exploded against Ceres in a flash. Hayley kept a cautious eye on Xena's horns—no sparks. Disable was still working. Even so, it wasn't looking good. Ceres, with her attention split, could only aim slowly and clumsily with her water gun. The stream of water managed to knock out a number of stars, but more always came to take their place, and it never got close to hitting Xena.

Hayley chewed her lip. Disable might have been the wrong choice after all; she'd kind of backed them into a corner. Ceres couldn't use protect or confusion until she dropped disable, but the second she did, Xena would electrocute her. Maybe she should try it anyway? The clock was ticking. "Ceres, drop disable and psi-slam!"

"Wait, really?" Miriam turned a baffled eye to Hayley, visibly wondering if this was a trap. It earned them precious seconds. Panting, Ceres squinted and grabbed hold of Xena—

—and then threw back her head and bellowed in pain. They'd run out of time. Miriam grinned wickedly. "Thunder shock! Don't let up until she faints!"

"Protect!" No good. Even with the few moments it took Xena to charge up, Ceres couldn't focus enough. Her shield flickered around her, then faded again, leaving her a sitting Ducklett to Xena's attack. Electricity enveloped her, and she moaned again, muscles twitching and tensing against her will. Hayley sighed, pulled out her ball, and recalled her.

"Hey! No switches!" Miriam shouted.

"I know. I'm recalling her from the fight." There was no point in getting beat up when you couldn't win; Ceres, unlike Barrett and Sen, understood that. "You did a great job," Hayley whispered to her ball, before replacing it on her belt and running her finger over the two others. Barrett was the obvious counter to Xena, but Barrett had also fought Xena so many times that Hayley could already envision the battle blow-by-blow. Better to try something new and get some experience. She sent out Sen, and Miriam laughed.

"Seriously, are you throwing the match?" Then she paused, and her eyes narrowed. "You better not be—"

Hayley held up her hand. "On three! One, two, three, psi-tackle!"

"Thunder wave!" But Sen's confusion was much quicker than Ceres', and it took both Miriam and Xena by surprise. The telekinetic wave hit and sent Xena bouncing across the ground, discharging her electricity into the dirt.

"Force palm!"

"Quick-dodge!"

Sen leapt forward, palm glowing. Xena rolled to her feet, and just as Sen brought his hand down to strike, she blinked away. Sen's palm impacted the battlefield, cracking the clay and sending up a small dust cloud.

"Back up and swift barrage!"

"Sen, keep going! Like we planned!"

Sen versus Xena was a bad matchup, true. He couldn't touch her without getting shocked, and his only long-range option was confusion—and while Ceres' confusion would have been able to pin Xena to the ground and hold her there, preventing her from building electricity, Sen was still best at quick, forceful bursts. Xena, with her round body and scrappy temperament, barely took any damage from being rolled around; for a knockout blow, Sen would have to hit her with a force palm while she was grounded. Even so, Hayley and Sen had three advantages. One, Hayley had already discussed all this with Sen ahead of time in preparation for an eventual Sen/Xena matchup, and he was clever enough to lock in the information and know exactly what he had to do. Two, Xena didn't have anywhere near the stamina that Sen had, and she had already gone all-out on attacking Ceres. Her expression was gradually morphing from a smile to a grimace, and as she windmilled her arms to launch another swift, the movement was slower than before. And three, Xena was fast, but so was Sen.

Sen ran straight through the swift, not even bothering to detect away—he simply crossed his arms in front of him to block the explosion. When he was within range, he thrust his hands in front of him and knocked Xena down again. This time, he was able to leap on top of her and land a hit before she blinked away, though it was only a glancing blow.

"Evasive maneuvers! Charge!"

"Keep up the pressure, Sen!"

As battles with Xena so often did, it devolved into a chase around the battlefield. Xena quick attacked away and spun her arms, Sen ran towards her, and just as he raised his hands to knock her down, she quick attacked away again. She wouldn't be able to keep it up for long, though—the distances she traveled were getting shorter and shorter, and her breathing was becoming more and more labored. One more hit would do it, Hayley thought. And it looked like they would get it. After her fourth quick attack, Xena faltered and went down on one knee, and Sen seized his chance. He ran in and—

"Shock wave!"

Crap! "Detect!" She'd expected Xena to make her last stand with thunder shock or spark, not shock wave—when had she even learned shock wave? Sen's eyes glowed, and he shunted himself over to the left, but while thunder shock and spark were linear and easily dodged, shock wave wasn't. Yellow bolts of electricity jagged out in every direction, and one struck Sen directly in the chest. He grunted and doubled over, fists clenched and muscles convulsing.

"Push through, Sen! One more force palm, you can do it!" He didn't need her encouragement, but it couldn't hurt. Gradually, he straightened up again, shaking his head to clear it. Xena tottered away as he did, but her steps were unsteady, and the pinwheeling of her arms was irregular and slow. When Sen at last straightened his arms and pulled one hand behind him, gathering energy, she'd only made it a few feet away, and the spark between her horns was barely visible. Sen lunged towards her, grabbed her by the back of her head, and shoved her to the ground, the burst of his aura and her lingering electricity going off like a miniature flash bomb. When it faded, Xena had fainted, and Sen was still standing.

Miriam scowled as she recalled Xena. "Whatever. You know I saved the best for last. Eat this." She tossed her last ball, and Yuna materialized onto the field. She sized up Sen and ground the teeth of her jaw together with a malicious giggle. "One, two, three, stealth rock!"

"Force palm!" There was no elegant strategy Hayley had come up with for Yuna; they just had to hit her as hard as they could. Sen happily obliged, racing ahead with one fist sparking. Yuna, crouched down on her knees, didn't react to him coming; she was fully engrossed with her work on the field. Her jaw, however, was alert. It opened wide and shrieked, twisting in front of Yuna and gnashing at Sen. Sen leapt over it and aimed his force palm down at Yuna's back, but the jaw once again flung itself in his path, and his attack exploded against its hardened steel carapace.

As Sen stuck his landing on the ground, Yuna stood up with a pleased cry. The battlefield had now become a minefield. Hayley dug her nails into her palms. "Stay close to her! Only walk where she walks!"

Miriam laughed. "Great plan. Sweet scent."

"Agh—get back! Psi-tackle!"

Sen jumped backwards, avoiding as much of the field as he could, but his landing spot was unlucky. A razor-sharp rock the size of Hayley's fist erupted from the ground, striking his left arm and shattering into lacerating fragments. Sen cried out, but he held his position. Instead of sending out a confusion attack, though, his eyes began to glow—detect? No, foresight. He was scanning the field to see where the rocks had been placed. Hayley let out the breath she'd been holding. Maybe they still had a chance—

"Feint up and kabuto astonish." What? The feint part of that order, Hayley understood, but—Kabuto? As her mind raced to figure it out, Yuna melted into a hazy, incorporeal shadow. Sen snapped out of his foresight and raised his hands in a defensive pose—but it was no use. Yuna rematerialized jaw-first and clamped her jaw around Sen's head.

"Sen!" Panic surged through Hayley as she pictured his bloody, headless corpse. She scrambled for his ball, but before she could aim it, Yuna and her jaw both shrieked in unison. Waves of absolute wrongness washed across the field, and Hayley dropped Sen's ball to clamp her hands over her ears. Sen was screaming too; she could hear it. She'd never heard him scream before.

But then the screaming stopped. Blinking her eyes back into focus, Hayley saw Sen, very much not decapitated, grabbing Yuna's jaws with his hands and wrenching them apart. Hayley and Miriam both watched, stunned, as he pried her off, swung her around, and threw her several feet away. Two of her own stealth rocks went off as she bounced, popping ineffectually against her steel skin. Sen straightened himself up for a final assault—

—and fell over. He was down for the count.

"Holy shit," Miriam breathed, echoing Hayley's own thoughts. With as much dignity as she could manage, she bent down, picked up Sen's ball, and recalled him. On the field, Yuna staggered to her feet, slightly dented but ready for round two.

Focus. There was one more match to go. Hayley's options for releasing Barrett were to aim for a spot she knew would be clear of stealth rocks, which would put him dangerously close to Yuna, or to send him out further away and hope he landed somewhere safe. She opted for the latter, releasing him close to her edge of the field and crossing her fingers. Yuna couldn't create infinite stealth rocks, and if they were packed as tightly as they seemed to be, she'd probably gone for a small radius instead of covering the whole arena.

Her gamble paid off. Barrett emerged safe and sound with no rocks erupting under his feet. Hayley gave a sigh of relief and raised her hand one last time. "One, two, three, watch out for stealth rocks! Use fire spin!"

Barrett grunted his assent, planted his feet, and began whipping up a long streamer of fire. With his unarmored stomach, he was particularly vulnerable to stealth rocks, as the numerous scars he'd collected from previous battles against Yuna showed; as much as he loved melee combat, he'd learned the hard way not to throw himself into a minefield for the sake of some cross chops and flame wheels.

"Focus blast! Make him move!"

"Stay close to me, Barrett!"

Barrett thrust his flames toward Yuna, who hopped out of the way with a grace that defied her bulk. His control was still slow at long ranges; his only hope was to catch her in a trap. As he tried to curl his thin sheet of fire around her, her jaw, still misaligned from Sen's manhandling of it, opened up and let out a loud belch. Aura began sparking at the base of its throat, coalescing into a ball like the world's brightest loogie, until Yuna swung her jaw forward and released the orb at Barrett. Barrett leapt out of the way—only for a stealth rock to rocket up from where he landed and slice into his stomach. Hayley blanched, and Miriam grinned.

"We left a couple rocks on your side, too!"

Then nowhere was safe. The rocks had to be less dense near the edges, at least, and if Barrett could make it to Miriam's side, then it might be clear—but in order to get there, they'd have to make it through the center. Standing back and using fire spin might still be the safest strategy, but with focus blast in Yuna's arsenal and rocks scattered on their side…

They had to go into the minefield after all.

"Barrett," she whispered, taking advantage of his close position to give an order Miriam wouldn't hear. He turned to look at her. His stomach was already dripping blood, but he ignored it; his attention was fully on Hayley. "You need to get close. Feint in right next to her, put up a fire shield, and burn her as much as you can. Okay?" Barrett nodded, eyes gleaming.

In the time it took Hayley to give her direction, Yuna had already started firing up another focus blast. Barrett faced her and growled. Just as the orb broke free, Barrett vanished into smoke and rushed towards Yuna. Too light for the stealth rocks to detect, his path forward was unobstructed, and he landed safely on the ground an inch from Yuna's nose. Yuna cackled and pirouetted, swinging her jaw at him, but Barrett dodged out of the way and began weaving fire in a shell around him.

"Back up and fairy wind!"

"Grab on!"

Yuna skipped back, but Barrett was faster. He wrapped his arms around her neck and clung to her, holding on just as tightly as he'd gripped the tennis ball in their keepaway game. Yuna squealed and spun, jaw thrashing back and forth as it tried and failed to find an angle to reach him.

"Tackle him! Use the rocks!"

"Keep holding on!"

Yuna dove forward and belly-flopped down, and the ground exploded under Barrett's back. Barrett snarled, but didn't let go. Instead, he pulled his head back and launched a stream of embers into Yuna's face.

"Hey! Foul!" Miriam shouted as Yuna stumbled back, wiped at her face, and wailed. Hayley grimaced.

"Watch out for the eyes, Barrett!" Privately, she thought that this was fair game after whatever that Kabuto thing had been, but they didn't have a real referee, so she'd play nice. In fact, Yuna's metal skin was starting to deform—they probably ought to back off the fire altogether. She didn't want another Ramona incident. "Cross chop! Finish it!"

Barrett stood up and crossed his arms. Yuna was still cringing, so it fell to her jaw to swing around and protect her. But Barrett once again ducked under the gnashing teeth and struck true on the soft spot he'd made with his flames. Yuna staggered back, and one foot landed on a buried stealth rock. With her skin weakened, the fragments dug in deep this time, making Yuna cry out once again in pain. One more cross chop from Barrett struck true on her forehead, and Yuna finally crumpled and went limp. The battle was over.

"Great," Miriam grumbled. "Now we've gotta sit here and babysit the field until the stealth rocks go away. Did you have to knock her out?"

"It's a battle. That's kind of the point." They both recalled their Pokémon, and Hayley gingerly edged around the field to get to where Miriam was standing. When she made it over, she released Barrett, Sen, and Ceres safely away from the buried rocks. Ceres and Sen were barely conscious, and Barrett was still bleeding. She checked out Sen to make sure he didn't have any critical injuries she'd have to fight him over, then began spraying a potion on Barrett and Ceres. "All three of you did great," she said. "I'm really proud of you."

"I would've won if Zero would just get his act together," Miriam said as she tended to her own team. "I don't know why he keeps aiming his attacks at the ground."

"I don't know why you keep calling Zero 'he,'" Hayley said. "Porygon are computers. They don't get genders."

"Yeah, but I've got the Dexter voice app loaded onto him, and the Dexter voice is a boy's voice," Miriam retorted, with the tone of someone who had already thought this argument through and decided their logic was flawless. "So he's a he."

"Okay, but he…" Dammit, now she was doing it too. She sighed. "Whatever. I guess it's not like Zero knows the difference."

"Anyway." With first aid done, Miriam began tucking her potion bottle back into her bag. "More importantly, I want to know how the hell your Pokémon all have that much energy. Sen especially. I've never seen a psychic tank our kabuto like that."

"Well, we—"

"And don't say it's because of jogging and weights and stuff. If I hear that lecture from you one more time, I'm going to scream."

Obediently, Hayley didn't say it. "Part of it's about pacing, too," she offered. "You've got a really aggressive style, which isn't a bad thing, but going in with your strongest attacks all the time tires you out faster."

Miriam scoffed. "It works fine when I'm not fighting someone who drags things out on purpose. Like you."

"I don't…" Hayley trailed off as Miriam's words sank in. She didn't try to drag battles out, but—she didn't not do that, either.

Hayley had never pictured herself as a reactive or defensive battler. She'd always figured her style would be about straightforward power, coming out of the gates guns blazing and overwhelming her opponent before they could stop her. Honestly, she'd figured that was the only sort of style she could do, given that she wasn't a master strategist or a genius at thinking on her feet. But in the months since she'd started, she'd constantly found herself outmuscled, facing everything from type disadvantages to deadly high-level threats, and the only way forward had been to draw back and think. To observe her opponent, withstand their assault, and wait for a chance to strike back.

Was that the sort of trainer she was, then? The kind who outlasted, rather than overpowered? The kind who went through all sorts of punishment and came out on the other side as the last one standing?

Was that the sort of person she was?

"Huh," Hayley muttered. Then she turned back to Miriam and said, "I guess if you want to beat me, you'll have to start jogging."