Saber, the Manectric that Josh rode to the Gym on, greeted Callan with a friendly bark before sliding to a stop near him. The member of the Elite Four came with good news and bad news. "Does not surprise me one bit." He made sure there was no one surrounding him before continuing, as part of the information related to the meteoroid operation was privy only to Gym Leaders and up. "I have a Luxray that will be able to activate the beacon when we get the signal from the Commish." He already got the secure email from League HQ about it.

"But you are correct, that's why we're here." He brought a printed copy of the League performance report with him to reference as the training went on. "So the more I've sat down to study the report, the more I'm beginning to realize that the real culprit here is TRICK ROOM. In the space of a TRICK ROOM, the very concept of speed is inverted. The slowest Pokémon move like the fastest of Thunderbolts, and the fastest Pokémon lunge at their foes in slow motion. Obviously it's a serious threat against a Gym Leader whose entire focus is gaining advantage through speed."

Josh had enough experience to understand that his goal as a Gym Leader was not to win battles. His role in the Hoenn League was as a mentor and a teacher. Win or lose, his goal was to make sure each and every challenger either understood the lessons his Gym was trying to teach, or direct them toward resources that would enable them to understand said lessons. "An important aspect of being a Gym Leader is not only understanding the niche your Gym has carved out, and not only understanding the most common ways challengers have to defeat your advertised battle strategy, but also demonstrating the knowledge to counter their strategy." He exhaled deeply. "Which is why I've come to you. I want to pick your brain on the best ways to, as a trainer who relies on speed, deal with a Pokémon team revolving around TRICK ROOM while still using such speedy Pokémon."

Josh had come prepared, bringing his six best fighters with him. These were the six he would go to war with Team Rocket with, when the call of duty came. As a Gym Leader, being made to fight on the front lines was far from an if. It was absolutely a when. He followed the young Elite Four member into a warehouse that served as a regulation-sized Gym. Josh looked a bit puzzled; for a rock star, this seemed a bit too bare bonds of an arena. No stands, almost no technology, no glitz at all. Perhaps the TERAVOLT member didn't enjoy the spotlight after all? It was certainly functional, and would at the very least let both challenger and Leader put their full focus on the battle.

As Charlie the Slowbro prepared to set up the TRICK ROOM that would presumably cover the bounds of the entire arena, Callan proposed the best way would be to have a practice battle. "Experience is the greatest teacher, after all. I think a practice battle would be wonderful," the Mauville Leader agreed. "But before we get started, do you remember our last battle? Is there anything that immediately comes to mind that you think would be good at circumventing TRICK ROOM? Because I won't mix words. There are days I wish it suffered the same fate as PERISH SONG."

TRICK ROOM teams were something Josh had become more than familiar with. It was by far the tactic he had lost the most Gym battles to. Most of the rest of his losses were to extremely tough teams, able to withstand his swft blows and fight back after his Pokémon had run out of steam. TAUNT was quite the good idea; with how fast his Pokémon were, some well-timed goading would solve a lot of his problems. "That solves a lot more than the speed disadvantage. I never thought about how useful a few cutting words would be. Perhaps the pen really is mightier than the sword," the Mauville Leader laughed. "Now it's just a matter of learning which Pokémon can easily set it up. From what I've gathered, it's mostly Psychic, Ghost, and Dark-types. Ones associated with the paranormal, it seems."

What more interested Josh was not the ways of stopping TRICK ROOM, but the ways of mitigating the distorting space once it had already surrounded the arena's bounds. It was something he had learned the hard way; its size covered an entire regulation-sized Gym arena, and there would be no escaping it without going out of bounds and incurring Pokémon disqualifications. Weathering the storm would almost certainly require use of TAUNT, and he would almost certainly need to teach the technique to more of his team if he wanted to make it reliable. At the speed his battles typically went, TRICK ROOM typically lasted for the whole match.

The solution Callan mentioned hit Josh like a Beast charging him at full speed. He wasn't expecting the solution to such a problem to be so simple. "So..." he trailed off. "So you're saying that QUICK ATTACK and the like are unaffected by TRICK ROOM? I thought all this time that they would be impossibly slow in there!" The Elite Four member offered a test of both scenarios. "I'd be down, but preventing TRICK ROOM from going up in the first place just seems like memorizing which Pokémon most commonly use it. So how about we first work on fighting within the distortions first?" Josh suggested.

Callan was right. While it was a general rule of thumb, it didn't cover every Pokémon capable of using the move. Perhaps Josh was also jaded by most of his losses being to TRICK ROOM teams specifically engineered to defeat his Gym. After all, Hoenn's Gym Challenges were among the toughest in the world! He thought his own challenge was plenty tough, but clearly it wasn't tough enough if the Council was chewing him out over it!

His discussion was also starting to expose to his subconscious mind another great flaw in his thinking. Josh had a tendency to view things in black and white. No in-betweens: everything was either one extreme or the other. "Right. It's a tool in your toolbox more than anything," the fledgling Gym Leader agreed. "It just feels like the move is the be all, end all of most of the problems I've been having. It feels like it's just unbeatable, with the Pokémon my Gym limits me to using. I think I have a lot of homework, and searching for Pokémon on top of that, ahead of me."

Josh shook his head as the twisted dimensions materialized. Other than the tiles of light, it looked very similar to the Space-Time Distortions that has popped up around Hoenn. It felt indescribably alien to Josh, though he had been used to it for quite a while. He had already suffered dozens of defeats to the move as a Gym Leader. Now was the time to turn the tide, get his metrics back to where they belonged, and make a bid to be the most successful Gym Leader in Hoenn.

He sent out two of his fastest, strongest Pokémon: Saber the Manectric, and Twilight the Absol. "Alright, let's put this into practice!" The two nodded, the Manectric letting out a confident bark. The two flexed their legs and lunged into the pocket dimension covering the arena's bounds. The moment the two entered, they went from being blurs to looking like they were charging in slow motion. "When the time is right, try to use your QUICK ATTACK, like Callan suggested," he asked of both his Pokémon, though of course they needed opponents.

And with that, the dice were cast. Charlie was blistering fast inside the warped space that was the TRICK ROOM-encased battleground. It stretched the arena's entire bounds, all the way to its white lines. Unlike at his own Gym, where he could at least attack from the outside and remain mobile, here he was on the Elite Four's terms. Terms that left the speed-oriented combatant at a severe disadvantage.

But today was not about winning. The moment he challenged Callan in his element, he knew he was to lose. Today was about learning. "I've already learned much even before our battle started," Josh remarked. "Never did I think a few goading words would be so powerful. I'm going to have to talk to FERNANDO SILPH and his company about playing a direct bulk order for TAUNT syringes."

Even if Josh slipped and didn't predict a challenger's use of it correctly, he still had options. One such option he already had, which Callan mentioned was weathering. "Normally, you would consider weathering defensive, yes? But you may recall from our battle that I have an offensive way to do so." He cupped his hands outward from his mouth and cried toward his two large Pokémon. "Now!"

Josh's reaction to Charlie's SCALDing surge was as instant as a human could do so. The two swift Pokémon lazily flexed their legs back, crouching then assuming lunging stances. What would have been a split second process looked like it was happening in slow motion. That lengthened wind-up was all Charlie needed to prevent the Absol from completely dodging the surge of water and steam, burning claws and paws coming at Charlie in a blur.

Josh's offensive way to weather TRICK ROOM was a tactic ever familiar to Callan if he had remembered their battle or previous battles: his Manectric's THOUSAND CUT JOUST. While not a proper Z-Move, the tactic felt like one. Every slice of the Manectric's claws came just as fast as before, the blur of each individual QUICK ATTACK unaffected by the warped space. The attacks were still slower than normal, though; every pivoting motion the Manectric made to transition to the next QUICK ATTACK of the Joust was greatly exaggerated, leaving the electric-type vulnerable between cuts.

As Josh had learned, even a confounding barrage would not be able to take down very many Pokémon that could make use of TRICK ROOM well. Whether physically, mentally, or even spiritually, they were tough, some possessing nearly impenetrable defenses. Under its influence, Callan's Slowbro was just as lightning fast as the very swiftest of Josh's racing team, able to complete the motions for launching a potent PSYCHIC shockwave in a split second.

Understanding the distinction between an attack's wind-up and the attack itself was the key to beating a TRICK ROOM that had already been established, as it was only the wind-up time that was reversed. Just as he was beginning to see this, the shockwave had struck Saber and Twilight, sending the Electric-type flying across the battle court and out of bounds with a loud thud once it had left the confines of the warped dimensions. Even Twilight was not fully immune to the Psychic-type attack, the psychic-type's assault able to pierce through the Absol's defenses.

As he was about to say something to Callan, the standing Elite Four member laced his tongue with some truly scathing words that pierced his heart with a blade sharper than anything man had ever crafted. And every single word was true. Josh was holding back, but not for the reason Callan was saying. He had been under the understanding that the purpose of today's battle was to learn how to fight under TRICK ROOM conditions, not to win. As the speech went on, it tore his mind to shreds.

He had lost it.



With a scream, Josh pinched his fingers over the KEY STONE of his MEGA GLOVE, Twilight sounding a loud shout of her own. Shrugging off her burn from being bathed in the purple of light of MEGA EVOLUTION, she grew in size, sprouting wing-like tufts from her shoulders. While she was incapable of flight in this form, her imposing demeanor and increased claw sharpness made her nothing to be trifled with.

"Twilight, etch your true feelings onto that Slowbro's skin, NOW!" the racer's loud tirade continued. "AND MAKE SURE IT NEVER FORGETS THIS!" The dark-type Illumina Pokémon lunged toward Callan's Slowbro in seemingly slow motion, its forehead blade filled with the energy of both light and darkness as it attempted to brutally NIGHT SLASH, aiming for a critical hit.