The Astonishing Red

Doubles was also a mainstream format of Pokémon Battle.

Even in the Pokémon games of his previous life, doubles was far more popular and entertaining than singles.

The reasons were simple: doubles had more combinations, more tactics, greater unpredictability, and placed more emphasis on the trainers' mind games.

However, singles remained more popular in this world.

After all, reality was not a turn-based game. Even one-on-one battles were full of variables.

At the very least, the most popular competitions—including regional conferences, the World Gym Challenge, Elite Four level matches, and the Masters Eight Tournament—were all singles formats.

Still, plenty of trainers were passionate about doubles, and there were several fairly prestigious doubles competitions, including both solo doubles and two-person doubles formats.

Tiannan Gym's challenge format was two-person doubles. Its longstanding tradition was for a husband-and-wife pair of Gym Leaders to guard the badge.

For that very reason, Tiannan Gym had always attracted trainer couples from all over Donghuang to challenge it, even if they were not collecting badges for the Donghuang Conference.

That became even more apparent after the internet age arrived, and the Gym had gradually begun trending toward internet celebrity status.

On a whim, Xia Chen and Red came to challenge the Gym without an appointment and ended up waiting in line for several hours.

It was only when their turn finally came that they learned the format here was two-person doubles.

"So, what do you think? Want to team up and battle together?"

Red made the suggestion with obvious excitement.

Over the past few years, he had battled Xia Chen two or three times on and off, but they had never once been teammates. This doubles match was a good opportunity.

Xia Chen readily agreed. "Sure."

Although he had never battled doubles with Red and they had