Chapter 291: This Is Clearly an Expert Toying with a Child!

The video continued playing.

The beach training grounds of Sunyshore City.

To practice a brand-new combination technique, May had sent out Beautifly to help train Hina’s Finizen.

"Hina, Finizen has an excellent sense of balance. Try having it perform an Against-the-Wave Leap."

May pointed toward a wave that was beginning to rise in the distance.

"That wave’s coming up at just the right time. Give it a try."

"Mm."

Hina clenched both hands.

"Finizen, Against-the-Wave Leap!"

Finizen sliced through the water and charged directly toward the rising wave.

"Fin-fin!!"

At the highest point of its leap, its body suddenly stretched upward.

Brilliant white light enveloped it.

At that moment—

Finizen evolved into Palafin.

Palafin crashed back onto the ocean surface in a heroic landing pose, sending two pillars of water exploding into the air.

May clapped wildly from the shore.

"Amazing, amazing!"

"Special training really does work best while the momentum is hot!"

"Now the combination move we’re practicing will be even more spectacular!"

Just then—

A familiar voice came from the entrance to the training grounds.

"Hmph. Well, if it isn’t Hina."

"What? Cramming at the last minute before your final Contest?"

Hina turned around.

The instant she saw who had arrived, her eyes brightened.

"Andodo?"

Andodo planted both hands on her hips and raised her chin.

"You’re working pretty hard."

"But Pokémon Contests aren’t something you can win through hard work alone, you know."

"Talent matters too. Understand?"

"Huh? You look familiar."

May poked one finger against her cheek.

Then she suddenly clapped her hands.

"Oh! I remember now!"

"Aren’t you the girl who lost to Hina at the Hearthome Contest?"

Andodo’s arrogant momentum was instantly extinguished by more than half.

"Hmph!"

"Anyway, I’m definitely winning the Sunyshore Contest this time!"

"Hina, just you wait!"

With that, Andodo whipped her twin tails around and stomped away.

[VIP Chat Group]

[May]: That line of mine seems to have done more damage than I expected. Judging by Andodo’s expression, I think she nearly cracked apart on the spot.

[Max]: Sis, that was ruthless. You opened your mouth and hit her directly where it hurt most.

[Caroline]: With May’s personality, if she becomes a mother someday, she’ll probably still be this straightforward.

[May]: M-Mom?! Why would you suddenly say something like that?!

[Caroline]: Hehe. Girls eventually grow up and get married. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

[May]: But I’m still young! Isn’t it way too early to talk about that?!

[Zoey]: I actually think Andodo works really hard. She’s just too obsessed with winning and losing. If she relaxed a little, she’d probably perform much better in Contests.

[Fantina]: Mm~ Most Coordinators go through a phase like this, though. It is another part of growing up.

The video continued playing.

The next day—

The Sunyshore Contest officially began.

Andodo swept through the competition, advancing to the finals as the top performer in her group.

Hina, meanwhile, was still somewhat unfamiliar with coordinating alongside the newly evolved Palafin during the first-round judging, so she advanced in second place.

On the final stage—

Hina and Andodo delivered a performance spectacular enough to belong in a textbook.

Once the battle began, Andodo’s Garchomp displayed overwhelming aggression.

Its combination of Dragon Rush and Sand Tomb repeatedly drew gasps from the audience.

But Hina’s Palafin used combinations of Water- and Ice-type moves to disrupt Garchomp’s performance rhythm with relative ease.

Little by little Hina seized control of the entire stage.

When the countdown reached zero, there was no suspense whatsoever.

Hina’s score stood well above Andodo’s.

She had successfully won the Sunyshore Contest.

Her fifth Ribbon—

Was finally hers.

After the match, Andodo sat in the waiting room with Garchomp’s Poké Ball held tightly in her arms.

A small television in front of her replayed the battle over and over again.

"Why..."

"Why does it always end like this...?"

Andodo muttered to herself while repeatedly poking at the screen.

Just then—

The waiting-room door opened.

A woman in a purple dress entered, holding a folding fan.

It was Andodo’s mother.

Ursula.

Ursula glanced at the frozen image on the screen before sitting beside her daughter.

"Why did you underestimate her?"

Andodo didn’t even look up.

"I didn’t."

"She’s clearly much stronger than you."

Ursula opened her fan and waved it lightly twice before leaning back.

"When did you learn to make excuses?"

"Who is she?"

"...Hina."

Andodo lowered her head, absently sliding one finger across the screen.

"I... just didn’t perform very well."

"You still haven’t realized what the actual problem is."

Ursula pointed her fan toward the slow-motion replay.

"This battle was clearly nothing more than an expert toying with a child."

Andodo opened her mouth.

But not a single word came out.

Ursula shook her head and stood up.

"You never had the slightest chance of beating her."

"Mom."

Andodo remained silent for a moment.

Then she raised her head with an unusually serious expression.

"Back when you lost to Aunt Dawn..."

"Did it feel like this too?"

"That was different."

Ursula’s hand paused.

Then she turned her back to Andodo.

"Back then, I genuinely came this close to beating her."

"You still have a long way to go."

"Understand?"

Andodo opened her mouth again.

After struggling for several seconds, she finally squeezed out—

"The two times I lost..."

"Weren’t that one-sided, were they?"

"Regardless!"

Ursula snapped her folding fan shut.

"At this Grand Festival, we mother and daughter absolutely must defeat Dawn and Hina!"

"We’re taking back the title of Sinnoh’s number-one Coordinator family!"

She walked over and looked down at Andodo.

"Starting today, your training workload triples!"

"No—"

"Quadruples!"

[VIP Chat Group]

[Skyla]: Hahahahahaha! "An expert toying with a child"? This conversation is somehow incredibly brutal and hilarious at the same time! Is Ursula really her biological mother?! Every sentence goes straight for Andodo’s heart!

[Ursula]: Hmph. Without being pushed, how is she supposed to improve quickly? I think parallel-world me handled it perfectly.

[Iris]: Strict mothers raise outstanding students. Maybe Andodo really will manage to win someday.

[May]: But her opponent is Hina. Behind Hina, she has Dawn and Asher. No matter how you look at it, that’s nightmare difficulty.

[Raihan]: Alas... If Hina had to exist, why did poor Andodo have to be born?

[Mallow]: Still, Ursula sounded genuinely inspiring when she said they absolutely had to defeat Dawn and Hina as a mother-daughter pair. That fighting spirit was contagious.

[Lusamine]: Mother and daughter against mother and daughter... Mm. This Sinnoh Grand Festival should be very interesting.

[Elesa]:@Diantha, isn’t this kind of generational rivalry exactly the sort of storyline the film industry loves?

[Diantha]: Mm. It has plenty of dramatic conflict. It could certainly be adapted into a screenplay.