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"You know, Serena, that was a super great battle earlier!" said Ash, out of absolutely nowhere.
They were in their room in the pokemon center, Bonnie brushing Dedenne in the corner, Ash talking some kind of strategy all animated with his team, Serena patching her spare jacket under Braixen and Pancham's staring. It was night out, all sparkly and starlit.
"You really think so?" asked Serena. She looked up. Ash was lying flopped on his bunk, chin resting on his hands, Pikachu nuzzling vaguely at his ear. The rest of his pokemon were gathered around, blinking a little. So there'd been no warning of the topic change for them either, except maybe for Pikachu.
"Yeah, 'course I do!" said Ash. He swung his legs around a little. "That was an awesome battle, 'specially for someone who hardly ever battles! You an' Pancham an' Braixen should be really proud of yourselves!"
"Cham," said Pancham, turning its head aside and blushing wildly. Braixen bopped it gently on the head with its stick but without looking, because it was staring at Ash, wide-eyed. Serena totally understood how it was feeling.
Not only had Ariana — who was a performer too, and how cool was that! — thought they'd had a great battle, but so did Ash. Serena was maybe a bit biased, especially because she didn't really know anything about battling except what she'd learned from Ash and Clemont, but Ash was definitely one of the most amazing battle trainers she'd ever seen (no offense to Clemont, who was also amazing of course). She hadn't even really liked watching battles before she started travelling with him, because with Ash and his team battling stopped being brutal or terrifying and started just being art. They moved so smoothly it was almost like dancing, and read each other so well, and—
So um, if she was blushing, she was totally justified.
"Um, thank you..." she finally managed.
"Yeah, of course!" said Ash. "Come to think of it, the way Pancham redirected Aromatisse's Charge Beam with its Dark Pulse, and also that combination move you pulled off at the end, they totally reminded me of watching a Contest battle!"
Bonnie looked up. "What's a Contest battle?" She paused. "Oh, yeah, Serena, you were totally awesome!"
"Oh, thank you too, Bonnie," said Serena. Dedenne complained, so Bonnie went back to brushing it. "Ash, I don't know if I've heard of Contests?"
"Oh, yeah!" said Ash. He tossed himself to be sitting on the bed instead of lying on it. "They don't have Pokemon Contests here, do they? You see 'em a lot 'round where I'm from, Kanto, Sinnoh, those regions. They're originally from Hoenn." Pikachu jumped up on his shoulder and Frogadier arranged itself to be lounging on his lap. He patted Sliggoo's head. "They're a bit like Pokemon Showcases, kinda, except the performance round goes first and then after it there's a battle round!"
"A Showcase with battling?" said Serena. She tried to imagine it. She supposed there was a kind of showmanship to gym battles, and if she tried really hard she could almost translate it to the Showcase stage in her mind, but how did they account for the unpredictability of a battle? "How strange..."
Ash laughed a little, touching the back of his neck. "It's not so strange when you see it! The battling's all about showing off your pokemon as impressively and beautifully as possible, see? All sorts of awesome combo moves and stuff!"
"Brai!" said Braixen. (Braixen! Not Fennekin! Serena was never going to stop being excited about how awesome today'd been!) "Brai-braixen?"
"Yeah!" said Ash. "Totally like the battle you guys had today!"
"Chu pi, chupikachu!" added Pikachu, and then immediately got into a discussion with Hawlucha about... something. It involved lots of gesturing and made Ash laugh a little. Serena decided she could find out later, because knowing those two it would probably make no sense to her even if she could understand them.
"So, um," she said instead, "you sure know a lot about Pokemon Contests, Ash. Have you ever competed in them?"
"Oh, just a couple," he said, waving his hand around until it landed on Fletchinder's neck and stayed there. "But I travelled with a couple really awesome coordinators — that's people who do Contests, like how performers do Showcases — for awhile, so I got to see a bunch of amazing Contests!"
"Awesome!" said Bonnie, lifting Dedenne in the air. Dedenne jumped onto her head from her raised hands, apparently tired of being manhandled, and fell asleep immediately. Bonnie frowned for about half a second, then remembered she was excited and said, "I wanna see a Contest!"
Serena laughed. "I'm sure we can find some on Pokevision later, Bonnie. Maybe we can look up Ash's friends?"
"Mm, totally," agreed Ash. "I dunno if May an' Dawn are on Pokevision but they might be! You'd like them, Serena," he added, confidently. He was looking right at her, sure and certain like he always did. One of his hands was petting Fletchinder and the other one was still on Sliggoo's head. "Contests, I mean, although you'd totally also like May and Dawn. You had fun battling today, right?"
Serena thought about it. She'd definitely tried to have fun. Battling was new and kind of scary, and definitely not something she'd ever expected to have to do as a pokemon performer, except of course for battling Team Rocket whenever they turned up. But that was never real battling, with rules and a field and stuff, it was just a quick exchange of moves that ended with Team Rocket blasting off into the sky. Real battling was different. Real battling was what Ash did, all sharp commands and lightning reactions and watching your pokemon get hurt.
And— it had been hard, battling today. Everything had moved so fast and in so many directions at once, or had seemed to, even though looking back she was pretty sure it'd been a much slower-paced battle than any of Ash's she'd ever seen and Ariana's pokemon hadn't even moved from their starting positions the whole time. She'd had to figure out how to keep track of Ariana, and her pokemon, and Pancham and Fennekin-turned-Braixen, and she'd had to remember that she was in a fight and was supposed to be calling out attacks and also making sure her pokemon didn't get hit, and she'd kept getting distracted by thinking how glad she was that her pokemon had forgiven her for shouting at them in the morning or by trying to remember what it looked like when Ash or Clemont battled, and she'd winced every time an attack hit because she couldn't believe her pokemon were letting her just let them get hurt.
It had been hard, and had totally made her understand how much work battle trainers really had to do, and she didn't like seeing her pokemon hurt, but at the same time— she remembered the thrill of Braixen's evolution, and the way all the moves connected and drew bright colors in the air, and the bits and pieces of the battle where she'd felt truly in synch with her pokemon, minds and hearts, in a way that was totally new, so different from the synchronicity of performing on stage together.
"Yeah," she said, "I think I did."
"Pika!" cheered Pikachu.
Serena put her hands on Pancham and Braixen's shoulders. "Did you two have fun, too?"
They nodded vigorously, and Serena realized she was grinning.
"That's great!" announced Ash. "I'm so happy for you!" He nudged Frogadier off his lap and jumped to his feet, throwing a fist in the air. "Serena, we should totally train together!"
Serena blinked. "Uh, right now?"
"If you want to!"
"I don't," she said flatly. "I'm in my pajamas." His arm and face dropped, and she felt bad even though he was also in his pajamas. "Uh, what do you mean, we should train together? Like, have a practice battle?"
His face brightened right back up. "Yeah! You like battling now, right?" He was nearly bouncing. "So you should do it sometimes! Ooh, we could do Contest battles, that'd be so cool!"
Bonnie clapped her hands. "That'd be so cool!" Serena swore she could see Bonnie's eyes sparkle. "I wanna see Ash and Serena battle, please Serena?"
Serena looked down at Braixen and Pancham, her wonderful wonderful pokemon, the best partners a performer could ever ask for. She weighed the thrill of synchronicity and the pain of seeing them hurt. She asked: "Well, what do you two think? Should we train with Ash?"
"Pan!"
"Braix!"
Serena raised her head, and fixed Ash with her best stare, and hoped she wouldn't regret this in the morning.
"You're on!"