Josh's confidence wasn't without merit; as defeatist as he was and as much as he was apt to downplay his strengths, the master skirmisher was a force to be reckoned with in battle. Speed was a brutal weapon, requiring split-second timing to counter. It was timing that even battle-hardened generals of Rocket's army would have difficulty finding. Even speed had its limits; all it took was one skillful or lucky strike to turn the tide of combat. That one lucky strike on Kairi turned into several, the empowered Dark-type attacks forcing Josh to withdraw her before the vicious Pokémon could eviscerate her.

If Lulu Flint wanted a naval battle, she would get one.

Hurling a Poké Ball toward the ocean, Josh slid off Resheph's back and onto a saddle-wearing Lanturn, Illumina. While the electric fish was not as fast as the rest of the Leader's Pokémon, she was brutal to face in the water. Reaching her relatively meager, but still fast, top speed, Josh flicked the blue and yellow Pokémon's reins, Illumina's powerful tail propelling her into a leap. Near the apex of it, she loosed a DISCHARGE from the light in front of her eyes in an effort to fry the Honchkrow and test its presumably nonexistent swimming skills. If the Houndoom was on the wrong side of the ship, it may not have been out of range of the wide electric blast, either!

Josh reined Illumina toward the fleeing Corviknight, looking to tag the fleeing scientist with a direct Discharge, but the HAZE covered Lulu Flint 's escape too well. The rest of the Rocket crew had escaped the vessel on their own flying Pokémon, and without a Pokémon with Defog, there was little he could do. He had stopped a small Rocket operation on the high seas, the vessel on the way to its eternal resting place beneath the waves of Dewford.

The casualties were piling up; no less than twenty of the Gym Leader's Pokémon were in League tents, recovering. Josh felt awful making so many of his Pokémon suffer for what he felt was a pointless war whose lines would never budge. For every small victory, there was a small defeat elsewhere. War was one of the duties of a Gym Leader, though, and he was realizing how much of a lifestyle it was. He didn't regret it, though; Mauville Racing Grounds was his pride, and there would be no way he could maintain it as is without public funding. If he were to be ousted as Gym Leader, he would have to scale the place back substantially.

Turning his Lanturn around, Josh rode along the coast toward the League camp on the south shore, where his Kingdra, Dewgong, and Vaporeon would get the medical treatment and rest they badly needed. Shortly after his arrival, he would receive another call from kyle lopez requesting his presence on another sector of the island.

There truly was no rest for the weary, was there?