Amourshipping : One Day Off

Chapter 14

Serena had practiced the routine with her Pokémon over a hundred times over the next three days. Getting it down to the mark, tweaking little bits until they were perfect. Committing it to memory, getting their cues all right. It had been a lot of hard work. Ash had helped her, which made thing easier, but it had still been a hard task to get everything done and ready to go. 

It finally came to the day when she had to perform. She stood in front of the mirror in her room, staring at her reflection, contemplating everything she had learnt about her performances up until this point. From every failure there was a lesson to be learnt, and Serena had learnt them all. Now all that there was left to do was to put it all to action. There felt to be a lot of pressure this time around. Her last performance had gone well, so it felt like she now owed people a bigger show. 

She heard a knock on her door. It was quite a rapid and heavy knock. Ash's. "Serena, it's time. You ready?" 

Serena went and opened the door, revealing it was indeed Ash. "Yeah, I'm ready." 

"You feeling alright?" 

"Nervous. Worse than last time. But that aside, I'm fine." 

Ash smiled. "You'll be great. I know it. You've worked hard on this, it'll pay off, you'll see." 

Serena nodded and smiled back at Ash. "You always know just what to say." 

"Let's go, Serena. I can't wait to see you win this thing." He held out his hand for her, which she took smiling. 

"You think I'll win?" 

"I believe in you, Serena. You can win this one, I know it." 

The two made their way to the lobby, where they met Bonnie and Clemont, and made their way to the Performance Hall. It seemed to be a big thing in Forestcove town, as there were lots of people going to watch the performance, and lot of competitors were there too. Many of them looked to be first timers, nervous and excited, while even more appeared to be experienced performers, ready to show off the fruits of their experience and hours of labor. It had been no different for Serena during her debut, but she still got the same chills she did when she walked up the steps to the performance stage in her previous attempts. Her first one ended in failure, though her second one had gone much better, placing in the top ten. Now she was aiming for number one.  

The group lined up together, waiting to sign Serena into the performance. Around them were some performers who were taking this time to get in some last minute practice. One of the performers had an Eevee, and it's performance consisted of using Double Team and wish, which created a starry glitter that fell around both trainer and Pokémon. Some Performers were using some more unorthodox Pokémon for performing, such as a Klang, or a Girafarig, or a Magnazone. 

Serena looked at one of her Pokèballs, the one which contained Pancham. Today was going to be Panchams performing debut, something it had been looking forward to for a long while now. She was certain that Pancham was more than ready to go. She let Pancham out of its Pokèball, and knelt down besides it. "You're ready, right Pancham? You and me, we're gonna win this and take home the gold!" 

Pancham pumped it's fist back at Serena, signalizing its confidence. "Cham, Pancham!"

"Pancham looks ready to go." Clemont commented, seeing the energy Pancham had.

"Well, Pancham has been looking forward to performing for a while now. I think it was starting to get a bit frustrating for it. I'm just glad that Pancham seems so ready for this." Serena said, watching as Pancham began to do stretches, preparing itself for its performance.

"Confidence is defiantly good." Ash commented, complimenting Pancham. "You feeling confident, Serena?" 

Serena nodded. "Still nervous, but that's got to be normal, right?"