At the entrance to the Mossdeep Gym.
Tate and Liza watched Baimu leave. They let out a long breath, though a sense of loneliness lingered.
"Looks like we still have a lot of growing up to do as Gym Leaders."
"Yeah. I can't believe I was afraid of a challenger. So what if he was a little strong? It's an insult to my grand dream of facing the depths of space head-on!"
"...What do those two things have to do with each other?"
"Everything! It's an analogy. Can't you tell? No wonder you've never passed language class."
"Like your grades are much better..."
After the Gym battle, the underage Gym Leaders and twin siblings argued until they were red in the face. A short distance away, Rei sighed and rubbed her forehead, wondering when her two troublesome kids would finally grow up.
She was supposed to be the director of the Space Center, yet here she was, playing full-time babysitter to those two clowns.
This wouldn't do!
She needed to have a serious talk with Keen!
Rei made up her mind.
Elsewhere.
At the Pokémon Center.
After handing his three battle-worn Pokémon over to Miss Joy, Baimu quietly replayed the match in his mind.
Setting aside paired performances in Pokémon Contests, the Mossdeep Gym battle had been his first proper Double Battle. Keeping track of two Pokémon at once and setting up plays for both took a lot of concentration. The difficulty rose exponentially.
Still, Double Battles weren't the dominant format in this world. At most, he would face another best-of-three in the Ever Grande Conference preliminaries. It wasn't a big problem.
The pleasant surprise had been Mega Mawile.
He'd already set his expectations for her attack power extremely high, but her performance in the Gym battle had been good