A New Dream

Ulterior Motive Fashion: Paul's POV

"Well done, Dawn," Olivia called from her side of the makeshift battle area. 

Dawn's battle ended up being almost three times as long as mine and her Piplup looked exhausted, but somehow she managed to pull out a win. She had sent out her Eevee at the beginning when Olivia sent out her Probopass. I wasn't sure if Dawn was lucky or if her Eevee was just naturally slippery, but by using Natural Gift and an excellently timed Wish Eevee was able to pull off the victory. Wisely, Dawn replaced her with Piplup for the anorith and lycanroc.

Anorith went down fairly easily, all things considered, but Lycanroc had been a much tougher opponent. When Olivia started doing the motions for her Z Move I had seen the fear in Dawn's eyes but I'd felt proud when she quickly did the move for her own Waterium Z move, finishing just seconds before Olivia. Piplup had been able to trap Lycanroc in the Hydro Vortex before it created the enormous rock to crush Piplup.

Dawn went to Piplup, who was teetering around dangerously as if he was drunk. She scooped him into her arms just as he was about to fall over and she smiled gently down at him, rubbing her nose against the top of his beak affectionately and I saw him raise a flipper in a tired salute.

She's used Z power twice now and I still haven't used it once, I thought and surprisingly I felt more accepting than annoyed. Seeing Dawn with her pokemon and all of the attention and unfettered affection that she lavished on them, it made sense that she could connect with them in a way that I had never even considered.

Olivia walked over to the two and handed her the Rockium Z, going through the motion that ended in a deep lunge to the side with both arms up in the classic 'show off your biceps' position. I rolled my eyes and once again wondered why the moves had to be so dramatic, but as always Dawn clapped politely. Olivia rose to a standing position and placed a hand on one hip, giving Dawn an adoring smile.

"Your performance really was incredible. It was so clever to use your opponent's rock type moves against them," Olivia complimented and I rolled my eyes. 

The "battles" from last night had been a joke. Dawn surprised the heck out of me when her Ribombee used Psychic for the first time, not to mention that she managed to teach her barely hatched Eevee Swift, but seeing her waste the move on making a sparkling rock cyclone had soured my mood a bit. Sure she got ooh's and ahh's, but it was still a waste of a potentially powerful move in my opinion.

"Paul, are you ready to go?" 

I blinked and then flinched back as Dawn leaned towards me, her face close to my chest and tilted up so she could meet my eyes which had been facing the ground.

"Don't do that," I snapped, turning from her and walking swiftly away from the kahuna battlefield.

"Good luck with your Island Challenge!" Olivia called from behind me.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Dawn turn and wave at her, walking backward without a care in the world. My eyes flicked to the rock in her path and for a second I considered letting her fall over. Remembering how easily she hurt herself though I growled slightly before wrapping an arm around her neck and pulling her gently but firmly towards me. She stumbled at the unexpected pull, nearly crashing into my chest, but I quickly let go and stepped away from her.

"What was that for?" she asked with obvious surprise but no anger.

"You were going to trip," I replied simply and Dawn's eyes found the large rock that she had been about to run into.

"You could have just told me," she countered with a teasing smile as she jogged to catch up to me.

I didn't respond, since I didn't really know why I hadn't done that now that she mentioned it. We stopped by the Pokemon Center and Dawn turned over her pokemon for a check-up with Nurse Joy. Nurse Joy started gushing about Dawn's win at the showdown and, rolling my eyes, I walked over to a bench in the hall and sat down, leaving them to their conversation.