The Indigo League's championship tournament had entered its third day.
Today, all the quarterfinal matches would be completed.
After that came the semifinals and finals, with only one day between each match.
This tested not only a Pokémon Trainer's tactical skills, but also the depth of their bench.
After all, when opponents were evenly matched, an overly fierce battle could exhaust the main team, and one day was nowhere near enough to recover. That was when bench depth came into play!
There had been plenty of cases where championship contenders had their main team worn down by opponents before the semifinals and ended up losing.
That made choosing a lineup something that required serious thought starting in the quarterfinals.
On the day of his match, Gary got up early, left breakfast for Lorelei, and took Eevee-chan out for a morning run.
As soon as he opened the door, he found Ash standing outside with dark circles around his eyes.
"Morning~ What a coincidence. You're going running too?" Ash asked awkwardly, looking up at the sky.
"Yeah... quite a coincidence..." Gary said with a smile. The villa district was two whole streets away from the contestants' village. Quite a coincidence indeed.
"Then~ shall we run a little?" Ash suggested.
"Sure~" Gary nodded.
With Pikachu and Eevee, the two started running along the artificial lake.
After twenty minutes of jogging, Gary stopped, lightly sweating, and sat down on the lakeside grass with Ash, whose face wasn't even flushed and whose heart wasn't racing.
"How's your match prep going? It's a Full Battle today, right?" Ash asked.
"Yeah, don't worry. I used a very scientific method to choose my lineup." Gary raised his head, recalling last night's drawing of lots...
To keep things fair, every Pokémon at home except Ponyta and Togepi had