"Look at her!" Robin pulled Sinistea close as she pointed at the small Riolu. "She's adorable." The classic blue coloring of a Riolu was iconic, but this coloring was pretty, too. The little fighter was punching the air, fired up. She needed the little fiend on her team immediately. "Mist her," Robin instructed more quietly. Sinistea used aromatic mist. The sweet scent distracted the young pokemon. Robin got in close and tossed a pokeball at a safe distance. The capsule shook once, twice...

She stared at Toxtricity's pokeball in her hand as Josh lectured her, angry beyond belief that he thought this was what she needed to hear. When he offered he a retry, she shook her head. "You don't get it. Tox isn't like that." She pocketed the pokeball and turned from Josh, leaving. Before leaving, she had to leave a final remark. He'd wasted her time and poked at her shortcomings all the while. "Just because you can't control your pokemon doesn't mean I can't." She wasn't going to leave Toxtricity behind; he didn't seek violence, just chaos. It was a fine difference...

His question immediately put her on the defensive. "ME?" She inquired loudly, despite her Toxtricity being the one to rile up the Combees. She didn't see him reaching for his furret and thought he was wasting more time instead of leaving the meadow. "Dude! Get outta there!"

Against her better judgement, she stepped into the flowers and did her best to avoid kicking any low bees. She got to the guy and wrapped a hand in his shirt. "Out! Now! They're gonna summon a Vespiqueen if we-" She tugged on him to drag him away forcibly, but at the same time, her eyes landed on the Vespiqueen now standing a few feet away.

Ah. She needed to fight her way out of this one. "Tox, boom burst!" She released Benji and mimed covering her ears before she did it herself.

Tox brought the noise and emitted an ear-shattering burst of sound throughout the area. Sinistea, meanwhile, continued to generate her mist as she was completely unimpacted by the normal-type assault.

The elation and relief of victory was short-lived. Josh's anger was unexpected and, based on her experiences with him, completely uncharacteristic. Stop the match? It was over.

She felt terribly small under his booming voice. Despicable. Unthinkable. She blinked owlishly, feeling lost and afraid, until he asked what she had done to her pokemon. She had struggled to raise Toxel for the longest time, and many months ago, she had pushed him to his limit trying to get him to be stronger after her near abduction on the ocean routes by a Rocket. She had woken up to see Toxel shrouded in shadow. The guilt had eaten at her for months until February when Toxel was suddenly shadow Toxtricity, though his shadow coloring was very faint. She had figured the darkness surrounding him had mostly abated as the trust between them had grown again.

To have that guilt brought back to the forefront...

"I raised him! I made him stronger! You think I have some magical device that grants him the capacity for shadow moves?! How dare you!" Righteous anger filled her in the face of his disgust. "I won. That's what I'm supposed to do, right? I have to be strong. To protect Hoenn? To fight Rocket? You're angry that I'm doing what it takes to keep them back!?" Hot tears threatened to fall, but she didn't hold back.

For her battle with Navy to teach her that war and fairness didn't coexist, her battle with Gwyar to teach her to think through her opponent's capacities and counter them, her training with Annalise about going so far in combat as to attack a trainer if it is necessary for survival, and for Greyson to show her that the threats against Hoenn like DRK Triad would never fight with one hand tied behind her back... she was a result of her mentors, and they had all contributed to her ability to survive. She couldn't tolerate being questioned and shamed for fighting with her all when that's what gym leaders should foster in their pupils.

"You're a sore loser! That's all! To call a stop to a match that I finished is unfair. You're a cheater!" All the while, her Toxtricity was quite, but angry, and eyeing Josh like he wanted to start the rave again. Even in her anger, she knew the punishment for attacking an unarmed trainer - and one of Josh's status at that - would be criminal. She drew Toxtricity into his pokeball. She wiped at her face and smeared her heated tears. "They just give Champion to anyone, huh? You're not even worthy of being a gym leader."

Thea was a ray of sunshine. Robin was so glad she had shown up.

"Yes, more hands will make this go faster." They were, undoubtedly, outnumbered. She perked up at the mention of Thea's team's movesets. "Sing will work perfectly! By the time they wake up, the sun will be down. The little guys will be lower energy when they wake." Even if they didn't disperse, they wouldn't be creating an electrical hazard that would block travelers.

Robin suddenly wished she had that move under her belt, too. Another thing for her pokemon hunting list, then. "I've actually never heard a pokemon sing..." She watched as her Marshadow punched a Pawmo out into the distance and sighed a little. She needed less brute force pokemon.

Yeah, that level of preparation was impossible. A fight was inevitable, but they could minimize damages. But she couldn't help a tinge of dread as Greyson talked about Rocket. Particularly, that comment about painting League as the villain... was he suggesting...?

"You don't think they're going to twist the narrative, do you? I mean, who would believe that?" She spread her arms wide, gesturing vaguely to the world around them. "After Kanto, they're clearly -- there's no -- who could believe the League would contribute to the destruction of what they protect?" Was propaganda something else to put on her radar?

She rubbed at her face. Then, she considered Greyson's question. "Yes, after the poison outbreaks, I realized I was super limited in helping people. I had antidotes, but the cuts and scrapes... My medkit only goes so far. I have been meaning to hunt for fairies or grass types that possess some healing capability." Indeed, it made her think about the first time she met Greyson when she had a kid with a broken limb and she had no ability to fly with her team at the time; Greyson had provided air support, and his Comfey had held the kid together on the trip.

"Oh!" Robin said as the lost the Granbull and stumbled upon a new visitor. "Pink!" Her very helpful observation, paired with rudely pointing, told Sinistea all she needed to know. The pink fairy ahead was Robin's next teammate. Sinistea floated over, generating aromatic mist, which the fairy seemed partial to. The two of them chittered in their respective pokemon languages. Robin, of course, couldn't follow most of it, but both of them returned to her with pleased expressions. "Let's go, then!" She offered up a pokeball for the fairy.

The shieldon was very cute and brave. She saw it stomping around and taking no ish from a larger pokemon. She wasn't sure how territorial they were naturally. They seemed like natural protectors, though, and it seemed he was looking to prepare himself for a life of protecting others based on how he didn't give an inch to the larger shieldon. These were the kinds of things that made her want to study pokemon behavior, but she knew it would get boring. Data collection wasn't a strong suit of hers.

"Yahoo!"

The strategy was paying off. In not sweating the small stuff, she was blasting past other racers who were wasting stamina on head-to-head races. She peeped the Wailord as she passed the gigantic pokemon, glad Carracosta was a far smaller specimen. She watched the duel ahead of her as two races fought for the place right ahead of her. Still, she doubled down on her strategy and didn't try to get in the middle of it. "Carra, steady and consistent is making HUGE progress for us. Keep it up, OK?" She patted his shell comfortingly as the duo ate the waves and prepared mentally for the upcoming obstacle.

The Slateport street fair was one Robin rarely made time for, but the stars had aligned this time around. She munched on kettle corn as she walked through the streets. There was a strange uptick in pokemon running around. "I don't think all these guys are caught pokemon," she murmured to Sinistea over her shoulder. "Might find something interesting. Greyson was talking about trap moves, so if we find a bug that looks promisi-" Her train of thought was interrupted by some large Granbull bumping into her; she dropped her bag of kettle corn, and the fairy snatched it and continued hurrying away.

"Ah," Robin said sagely, "one of those days."

Boltund was a good KO, but that Charizard was a huge problem. Sinistea was more defensive when terastallized, but her offensive capabilities were innately not stacked against the Charizard. Her boost in power might not be enough. Toxtricity, disobedient as ever, was really acting as bad as he had when he first evolved and the shadow energy had meshed terribly with his newfound evolved energy.

Charizard was lighting the field on fire. Sinistea cried out under the attack; she couldn't keep taking hits after her skirmish with Boltund earlier in the battle, so she succumbed to the attack and fainted.

Robin had to think fast, as Josh's Charizard was powerful and fast as ever, and her windows of opportunity were going to continue to close. She had learned all about ruthlessness and unexpected attacks to hold the upper hand, and she wasn't about to forget those lessons now. Tox needed a moment to find his voice, so his powerful sound moves were out, and she needed a real showstopper to put a dent in Charizard.

If Toxtricity wanted to be a bad shadow mon, then she'd lean into it. "Tox, bring the party! Start a rave!" Tox perked at the command, finally getting her blessing to rock out, even if he couldn't rely on his usual sound attacks with his injured throat. Even as the fierce flames of Charizard's attack licked at his limbs, he generated a powerful shadow rave throughout the terrain.