>>53351122After obtaining Rowan's hard candy in Celestic Town, Dawn trekked (flew) back to Hearthome City intending to completely ignore that the gym was reopened and keep traveling back to Sandgem. However, she ran into her mother's old rival Fantina again. This time, the purple French woman wanted to see how her rival's daughter measured up. Mukkuru eagerly stepped up to face Fantina's Mismagius, but he was soundly defeated after failing to land any hits. Devastated by this loss, Mukkuru refused to leave Hearthome until he could have his revenge...
The next few days were spent in Amity Square, where Mukkuru put the team through a hellish training regime. Neji mysteriously vanished at some point and was replaced by Dokyo the Bronzor, though nobody noticed nor questioned this strange occurrence (were they all hypnotized?). Pochama tried to sneak off to nap under a tree, but Mukkuru quickly found him and dragged him back, forcing Pochama into a 1v1 battle. As Mukkuru kept beating on the defensive Pochama, the lazy penguin soon became enveloped in a dense blue aura as he evolved into Empoleon. The activation of Torrent left Pochama in a blank state of mind as he unleashed a boosted Surf at Mukkuru, slamming him into another tree. The drenched Mukkuru struggled to stand and let out a powerful scream of defiance as he too evolved into Staraptor. Senko, Hana, and Mumaji watch in awe at Mukkuru's ascension and cheer him on to take down Pochama. Mukkuru hurls his stronger body at Pochama and beats him down with a flurry of Close Combat strikes. Pochama passes out from the beatdown and Mukkuru convinces Dawn that the team is ready to face Fantina again...
