Machoke held the Drednaw down with one set of arms, the other pair used as a shield to block the torrent of water jetting from Drednaw’s mouth and towards his face. From the sidelines, Machoke heard his trainer call to him with an inspiring command: “Lift up! Seismic Toss, now!” And so Machoke did, reaffirming its grip on its opponent’s shell before executing the demanding maneuver. Over Machoke’s head completely, Drednaw was upside-down and flailing helplessly. With a whirlwind force, Machoke slammed Drednaw straight into the stadium turf, creating a crater around the fainted pokemon.

“Nooo!! Ughh!! Drednaw…!” Nessa complained, rushing off the side-lines and into the combat ring. Upon reaching her trustworthy pokemon, she knelt down at his side and caressed his shell. Drednaw could only gurgle a response back, dazed by the final attack. “Ohh, Drednaw… What was I thinking? I fell right into Bea’s trap,” she sighed, “just like I told myself not to…”

Machoke’s two pairs of shoulders both relaxed now that the sparring was complete. His knees nearly gave out, but he kept strong for Bea’s sake as she strode up behind him. Her expression was its usual callousness initially, but she shared a sweet smile with Machoke. “Thank you,” she said to her partner, fishing his pokeball. “Rest well. Let your muscles recover and strengthen.”

Just as the winner was returned, so too was Drednaw, back into his Dive Ball. Nessa remained on her knees at the crater’s edge, a hand combed through her hair. “We had momentum and everything,” she rambled to herself. “I always end up losing my flow at the end…”

Bea stepped closer and offered a friendly hand to pick up her opponent. “I learned a lot from this practice match,” she said, her expression having returned to its stoic default. “Thank you.”

Nessa looked at the gloved hand that was lowered to her, but it was a glare that met Bea’s eyes. Bea blinked, not expecting such an angry expression -- Nessa refused to take her hand, deciding to stand on her own. Despite her turning away, Bea continued to have her hand reached out.

“I’m glad I could be that much for you,” Nessa said as she walked towards the doors. “But I wasn’t here to get you warmed up. I came here to improve.”

Bea frowned, following after her fellow gym leader but with nothing to say. Being a woman of few words already, it was only more difficult to speak to Nessa after having beaten her. It wasn’t intentional that both would be at Wyndon, but it happened to work out in such a way that both agreed to train together for the day. Exercises and warm-ups had gone well, but the moment there was competition, sparks were bound to fly. Bea admitted as much, still dwelling on the topic as they reached the locker rooms, that her and Nessa had indomitable competitive spirits. Between the two of them, there was never any room for losses.

The lack of conversation persisted in the locker room as both dried themselves off of the sweat they had accrued. It was not entirely silent, as Nessa’s habit of mumbling to herself continued as she toweled her body. “... hesitating when I should’ve…” she grumbled, “... and that punch was obvious, I shouldn’t have--”

“Nessa,” Bea interrupted, her towel tossed behind her neck and gripped at its ends. It was enough to get Nessa to look at her, though her glare had barely softened. Bea exhaled, “You fought very well. I didn’t mean to offend you with what I said--”

“Don’t,” Nessa cut her off, closing her locker and leaning against it. “I get it. I’m kind of heated right now. Just… let me cool off. Otherwise, I just keep getting frustrated…”

Bea nodded, finding that feeling familiar. To her side, she spotted a large, orange-colored cooler propped on a table with complimentary cups atop it. There were few better ways to cool off than to rehydrate, Bea figured, and so she went aside to fetch two drinks. She returned to Nessa, offering one of the paper cups. “Here.”

“Huh? Oh, tha-- eh…?” Nessa took the cup, but she instantly noticed that it was no cup of water. Inside instead was a bright green color, bordering on neon. She grimaced looking into the beverage, lifting it only high enough to get a hint of its scent. “Uh, Bea? What are you trying to kill me with?”

Bea hadn’t noticed until then how the water was not actually water. The green color took her by surprise, but with just one sniff of it herself, she went ahead with taking a drink. Nessa was baffled by that kind of boldness, but Bea appeared refreshed. “It’s a sports drink, I guess,” she explained, unable to determine the exact flavor. “It must be something new the League is offering. Huh…”

Nessa was still suspicious, but watching Bea finish her small serving was convincing enough. She drank from her cup slowly, first adjusting to the taste, before deciding it was harmless and finishing the rest right there. With a satisfied sigh, Nessa crushed the cup in her hand, “Actually, that was kind of… tasty. This doesn’t have sugar in it, does it?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure,” Bea replied. She finished her own drink in that moment, but then dropped the empty cup onto the floor. She winced and lightly coughed, gently touching her throat. “It tastes kind of strange… What exactly is this made of?”

Nessa leaned away from Bea as she responded poorly to the drink, her own worry starting to rise. She glanced at the crumpled cup in her hand, only to feel the same itching effect inside her throat. While not entirely painful, it was definitely unusual, like a weak burning sensation. Nessa gagged with her mouth covered by a fist, “What is that after-taste? Gh… Maybe it’s-- um? Bea?”

Nessa’s eyes widened at what she saw, and Bea was only a blink slower than her to realize something was amiss. What she had mistaken as post-practice exhaustion was in fact her Fighting-themed uniform becoming heavier and baggier. Dumbfounded, she stood still as her jersey and tights became blankets over her body, her shorts slipping down her legs unless she closed her knees together. In a scramble, Bea tried to lift up all her clothes, but after backing into the bench behind her, she instead tripped and fell back behind herself. Nessa reached for her, but was too slow -- Bea collapsed onto the locker room floor, her uniform completely enveloping her shrinking body.

“Agh!! Wh-What’s happening?!” Bea stammered, her usual coolness tilted far as she wrestled with her tights. The moisture of sweat absorbed into them only made it more difficult to toss off of her, a hassle that was beating her. Unable to see out of her growing clothes, Bea writhed and waved in the fabric, “N-Nessa! Are you there?! G-Get me out of this!”

Nessa was stunned by the sight, her wide-dropped jaw loosely veiled behind her palm. “Oh, man… This is freaky... “ She bit the tips of her fingers, but her nerves were jostled by a short laugh. She didn’t mean to, but another slipped out as well, leaking out as stuttering giggles. “Bea… Bea, you look…! You look so funny!”

Bea growled, her limbs whipping even harder under the clothes. “Get me out!” she complained. “What even happened?! What’s funny?!”

Without the spirit to tell her herself, Nessa bent forward and lifted up on the shirt and tights. The pint-sized body within slipped through the fabric as it was lifted without problem, revealing the naked woman that had been trapped inside. Bea sat within her shorts, the waistline wider than a hula-hoop and her shoes planted ahead of her. She jumped to her feet, reflexively taking a fighting stance, but her posture and balance alike were lost when she looked up. Following the slender, glistening skin of Nessa’s legs, Bea found her neck craned far back in order to have the gym leader completely in her sights.

So surprising was this revelation that Bea fell on her rear, back where she had been. “N-Nessa…!” she stammered. She then swallowed, noticed her nudity, and frantically threw both arms over her chest. Embarrassed into anger, Bea growled and clenched her fists, but her reaction was entertaining Nessa.

“Ohh~! Bea~ look at you! You look like a… a Raltz!” Nessa laughed. After overcoming her amusement, she offered a hand to Bea -- too similar to their situation earlier. As if keeping to their swapped roles, Bea refused the offered hand, instead flinching back defensively. Nessa chuckled, “A particularly angry Raltz…” Without approval first, Nessa reached further and pet Bea’s round head of hair, the ribbon of which had since fallen out while she had shrunk.

Bea smacked at Nessa’s wrist and kept it away with a push. “C-Control yourself!” she hissed, still trembling backwards from the woman thrice her size. Just as she tried to comprehend Nessa’s height, she as well absorbed the taller surroundings that were all around her. Before long, she again rushed to conceal her nakedness, her cheeks lit like torches. “What did you do? Is this some kind of trick?”

“What did I--? I didn’t do anything,” Nessa replied, fixing back a loose collection of black hair. “You were standing there like normal. I don’t know what caused, err, this.”

Bea stared upward, her expression of anger and shock gradually shifting to confusion and concern. Her eyes widened as a realization struck her like a punch, “The sports drink… It was the sports drink!”

Nessa flinched at the suggestion, nervously gripping her toned stomach. She glanced down, but forced a worried laugh, “Don’t be silly… I-If that were true, I’d… also be…” Her sentence trailed onto no end, for it was just as she feared; like Bea, Nessa was also shrinking. A jump of size was lost, enough to startle Nessa to stand at full height, whatever that now was. She awed at her gloves as they grew too big to wear, falling off her hands and onto the bench. Just after them, Nessa’s shorts dropped from her hips, only the front half saved by a sudden clutch. Nessa maintained a grip on them for only seconds before she tripped and fell over her sandals, collapsing onto her knees while her shrinking had yet to cease.

Bea was in disbelief, but she pushed herself to be at Nessa’s side. Her own size-changing hadn’t ended, and so Nessa still loomed over her, their heights only equal while Bea stood and Nessa sat. Once in front of Nessa, Bea froze, not knowing what to do. Hoping to provide some sort of support, she didn’t expect to be taken into Nessa’s arms, forced into a tight embrace provoked by fear. Bea winced and struggled, but the fellow gym leader’s grasp was too encompassing to squirm out of.

“Bea!! M-Make it stop!” Nessa whined. “You were right, th-this isn’t funny at all! I-I can’t even sit on the bench anymore…!”

Bea groaned, finally getting an arm between the two of them and using it to pry herself free from Nessa’s chest. “I think it’s… stopping on its own…” she explained, carefully comparing herself to everything around her. At the very least, the pace at which she was shrinking had significantly slowed, and the gap in size between her and Nessa was closing. Standing between two piles of clothes, the women were at their normal proportions compared to each other, neither one taller than four inches.

Needing physical comfort, Nessa was quick to reel Bea into her arms again, though her hug was much less oppressive. “Bea, this is freaky…” she complained, dizzied by the cityscape of lockers on either side. “Wh-What do we do? Sitting here is giving me the creeps…”

Bea softly wrestled out of Nessa’s arms again, allowing only her wrist to be held. “I agree, we have to do something. Find somebody, ask them--”

“A-Are you mad?” Nessa interrupted. “Bea, I’m worried of someone finding us. We’re two high-profile gym leaders, you know! Doll sized! W-We have merchandise bigger than us!” She scoffed, “Anyone could just… pick us up like collectibles! Two gym leaders for the taking! Us!”

Bea frowned. “Would that actually happen…?”

“Bea… You really don’t think of these sorts of things, do you?” Nessa sighed, a break in her stream of worries that was too brief. A moment after, both women shuddered into each other, hearing the creak of a huge door being pushed open. Somewhere down the road-length hall, footsteps clapped against the ground, each smack echoing off the locker doors as its volume pounded greater and greater. “S-So-Someone’s coming…! Hide!”

“Nessa, no!” Bea urged Nessa to stay, but she was already dashing aside. Bea nearly followed her with intent to drag her back, but her attention was strongarmed towards the approaching presence. The footsteps crescendoed into a reveal, a figure donning a similar gym uniform as the two once wore, thigh-highs designed with a toxic drool, and hot pink hair styled with a bug-shaped ribbon. Bea and Nessa recognized the woman as Klara, a gym leader in training that had made impressions all across the Pokemon League.

The carefree smile spoke clearly of Klara’s lack of awareness to Bea and Nessa’s troubles. As such, her footfalls continued unfrettingly, car-sized boots with pink toes smashing into the ground in a steady rhythm up to where Bea stood her ground. She wanted Klara’s attention, she intended to throw up her arms and wave and shout, but her nerves were blown back by the encroaching boots, the wind of every footstep billowing past her nude frame.

Nessa watched in horror as her fellow gym leader was struck with paralysis, right in the path of Klara’s walk. She bit her lip hard, unable to break free from stillness herself, but just as she anticipated a cruel scene, the drumming footsteps stopped. There was hesitation, Klara’s right foot hovering in the air. Bea shielded herself, peeking over her raised arms and up at the bewildered expression.

“Yuck,” Klara spat. “What are these lockers even for?” Disgusted, Klara used that same foot to first clear her path of the uniform piled on the floor. With a single kick, Bea’s clothes were kicked away by the force of a bulldozer. Bea was blindsided by the movement, her balance overwhelmed by the wall of sweaty fabric thrown onto her. Swept into the mound like a wave, Bea’s little shout of terror went unheard by the woman causing such distress.

Nessa stumbled away from the mound pushed under the bench, relieved to see that Bea was alive, if a bit tossed around. She went to her aid, untangling the clothes and setting Bea free, but while keeping an eye on Klara’s movements. The thundering of the giant’s walk subsided at the end of the corridor, in front of the water cooler. Nessa gasped, “She’s going to drink it! She’ll shrink, j-just like--

But instead of pouring herself a cup of the sports drink, Klara opened the top and smiled at the sloshing contents. She hummed a pleasant, poppy tune while retrieving a device from her pocket. The thin contraption was some sort of reader, which Klara then submerged the stem into the green drink. “Acidity levels… normal,” she noted to herself, not missing a beat of her melody at all. “Temperature… a little low. Hmm…~”

Nessa began to understand, and Bea was just a step behind her, viewing the scene alongside her. “That… wasn’t a sports drink,” Bea explained aloud, her arms falling from her chest. “It was a poison. I-It was a poison Klara made…!”

Questions popped into both their heads as to why Klara would be responsible for such a thing, but there was no chance to dwell on them. Both women took notice of Klara’s reaction to her cooler of poison, that she was inspecting all sides of it with suspicion. On her haunches, Klara examined closely the faucet of the cooler, tenderly touching it with a gloved finger. She ooed, “Someone was a little thirsty…”

With that clue in mind, Klara’s head turned back towards the bundle of clothes she had walked over moments prior. From her angled expression was a sly grin that complimented her cutesy spin, aimed back the way she came. Nessa and Bea were paralyzed by the first glance to befall them, gravitating into each other’s naked forms as the thundering footsteps started up again.

Nessa, despite her earlier reservations in regards to contact, was the first to speak up when Klara had finally parked her feet only a short distance from where the duo stood. “K-Klara, s-something weird happened!” she explained, shivering. “Your d-drink did this to us, w-we need to get back to normal--”

“Two test subjects! Lucky for me~” Klara sang, overpowering all of Nessa’s griping. “Wow! And not just some nobodies, either! I was expecting some boring staff people to come around and take a swig, so what a surprise! Not just one, but two doll-sized gym leaders to experiment with!”

The words petrified Nessa back into silence, her emotions a whirlpool inside her. Bea’s anger, however, prevailed over all other feelings. “This was on purpose? You set out a trap to shrink people?!”

“I wouldn’t get volunteers any other way~” Klara laughed, succumbing to her haunches so that she could inspect the two more closely. The drop of such enormous weight so quickly made both women topple backwards, intimidated by how Klara’s waist was so close above them. A delicate hand rested along Klara’s puffy cheek, “I couldn’t have asked for better test subjects~ Don’t either of you know better than to drink strange green liquids? You really did this to yourselves~”

The insult stung, enough for Nessa to be rekindled. “If you made this, then don’t you have an antidote?” she asked. She nodded afterwards, breaking away from Bea and pleading with her hands together. “Give it to us! Your weird shrinking poison works, s-so just turn us to normal!”

Klara giggled, gesturing to shush Nessa. “Of course there’s an antidote! I wouldn’t poison people at random without one~” To Nessa and Bea’s dismay, however, the troubling direction sensed in Klara’s eyes spoke ill of this promise. “But~ it’s my antidote, so I get to decide when it’s used. Sounds fair considering you already swiped some of my poison~ That takes days to brew, you know!”

“Hah… That’s funny, Klara,” Nessa stammered, faking any and all amusement. “But… we’re gym leaders. Both of us. We have important things to do! Being part of some weird experiment isn’t one of them.”

“Hee hee~ Oh, trust me, I know you two are gym leaders,” Klara giggled. “I know too well~ Which is why it’s so~ funny to see both of you looking like this! You don’t even look like gym leaders anymore~ Just a pair of cute dolls, waiting to be toyed with, hee hee~”

Nessa babbled furiously, pushing Bea to step up. She moved away from Nessa’s reach, affirming an unwavering stance in front of Klara’s crouched position. Despite the opposition’s crotch staring at her from between two thighs, Bea spoke with confidence, “This is not a joking matter! Klara! Listen to your superiors. Bring us an antidote as fast as possible. Is that understood?”

“Superior?” Klara scoffed, her smile brightened. “Please, pretty lil’ Bea~ You are far from being a superior now.” Bea glared at her, but the tease was the truth. In such a miserable form, Bea lacked any power behind her authority. To emphasize this, Klara repositioned her seat, careening her rear forward and planting it on the floor, only an inch away from where Bea held her ground. The impact made Bea shiver, but she remained standing as two socked legs spread out around her and Nessa. Klara reclined with her arms propped behind her, smugly staring down at the test subject within arms reach of her crotch. “Scary, right~? Hee hee~ Just think of it as a dynamax battle! Gym leaders shouldn’t be scared of those~”

It was indeed similar to the gigantic brawls Galar gym leaders were accustomed to having, but the energy was entirely different. Even when Klara struck a playful pose with her hands raised like monstrous claws, the intensity felt more serious than any pokemon battle. Klara’s shadowcast eyes confirmed that on her end, all of this was quite entertaining, and she was only beginning...