Regardless, now that the matchups were settled, there was no point overthinking it. They could only hope Dawn would perform well.
The already brief break passed in a flash.
Just a few minutes later, the second round of the Battle Evaluation began!
And first up was Dawn's battle against the man called Brother Tai!
As the five-minute countdown began, Brother Tai released his Pokémon without any hesitation-Empoleon!
That was hardly surprising. A Starter Pokémon was generally a Pokémon Trainer's mainstay, after all, and he had used this very Pokémon against Dawn both yesterday and the day before. Empoleon already had a rough understanding of Dawn's battle style.
Most importantly, knowing that Dawn had a Piplup, sending out Empoleon would give him a natural degree of dominance thanks to their different evolutionary stages!
And even if Dawn sent out another Pokémon, his Empoleon would be more than capable of handling it!
While he was thinking this, Dawn sent out her Pokémon too.
Just as Brother Tai had been guessing Dawn's lineup, Dawn had naturally been guessing which Pokémon he would send out.
And she had largely guessed that he would choose his Empoleon.
After all, neither she, Ash, nor May had managed to settle things with him yesterday or the day before. If this man wanted to continue, he ought to send out Empoleon.
For a moment, she considered sending out another Pokémon. In the end, however, her refusal to admit defeat took over. She steeled herself and actually sent out her Piplup!
Thus, as two flashes of blue light passed, a dramatic scene unfolded-Piplup versus Empoleon!
Seeing these two Pokémon of the same species at different evolutionary stages, the crowd was surprised, but they could also almost conclude that Piplup was probably no match for Empoleon.
After all, one had