>>57446389Our silly girl keeps preparing for the upcoming contest by training with beautifly. As she goes away to train by herself, she leaves her torchic behind with the gang. It's starting to become obvious that she's not giving torchic enough attention. Inside the pokemon center, Max mentions this to the gang and suspects she no longer finds Torchic cute/special, to which Brock and Ash say that that's impossible because Torchic is May's starter pokemon and starter pokemon are always dear to their trainer.
Nurse Joy asks the gang, specifically Max, to take care of a selection of Hoenn's starter Pokemon, as one of them will be later chosen by a young new trainer. She leaves the PC with Brock joining her to take care of a stranding Wailord that was reported by May, who found it while training in the near shore. The torchic of that selection turns out to be ferocious and tries to escape the PC. Ash and Max, joined by May's torchic and Brock's mudkip, fail at stopping the other torchic from escaping, and soon after that torchic evolves into a combusken.
Our girl gets back to the PC and asks Max for her Torchic. Turns out her torchic was pretending to be the torchic that evolved so that the new trainer wouldn't get scared/overwhelmed when seeing a combusken (Ash was making sure the new girl wouldn't choose Torchic). Max spills the beans and May reunites with torchic. In that moment, everyone notices TR is kidnapping Wailord. Combusken decisively stops team rocket, with May noticing its tremendous power. In the end, the new trainer chooses mudkip and, although unplanned, her salaryman dad chooses treecko.
ALSO SAPPHIRE CAMEO LOOK AT 2ND ROW ON THE RIGHT.
