It's morning, and I know that what I plan to do today will be a whole lot harder by the fact that no one will cooperate with it. Juliet looks at the rock gym as if it was dropped there from outer space.

"Is there any way for me to duck out of this?" she complains.

"No." I say, "Please."

Juliet reluctantly steps forwards. A trainer sees us and challenges us, sending out his Dwebble. Juliet defeats it with a Mud-Slap, and then he sends out his Relicanth. It dives at Juliet for a bite attack, huge jaws snapping, but Juliet bounces off one of her ears with unparalleled grace and launches another Mud-Slap from a vantage point, her ears covered in dirt and slathering it on the Relicanth. She manages to get some in it's eyes, and it writhes, huge maw open, until finally with a quick kick to the underside of it's jaw, it falls silent.

Juliet begins to glow blue, and she collapses, too fatigued to fight it off. Her ears grow longer, growing huge claw-like formations, and a brown beard of fur surrounds her mouth. A ring of fuzzy fur grows around her stomach. She gets up, and looks down at herself, shuddering.

"I'm hideous." she says dully, as if she can't believe it's her own body.

Unlike almost every Diggersby I've seen in Kalos, and the one in the Pokedex, she's slender. Almost like a Lopunny. In fact, with the whiskers draping behind her and the huge, fierce claws, she looks nothing short of deadly.

She sighs. "Happy?"

"Yes." I say, hugging her. "I am. You should be too. Shin would be really proud. He'd want you to get stronger, right?"

She looks at her ears, grasping a whisker with them. "I guess."

Chrona charges ahead, sprinkling poison dust from her flowers while she launches leech seeds from the top, behind her, Crypt headbutts and bites everything in his vicinity. Rune and Pich stand to the side, talking casually.

"Chronnnaaaa wait up for meeeee!" wails Crypt, flailing his little dinosaur arms. He lands squarely on his face, and then bites the rocky ground. Chrona comes to what looks like a large rock wall, but then uses Vine Whip to scale it. Heading on to the next level, Crypt just sits there, waiting. Dusty as usual has declined to do anything and sits in his Pokeball. I think of ways to get the tiny Sandile out, but with a twinge of regret realize it's not my place to make him fight.

I don't want to be like most humans. I don't want to abuse my Pokemon. I make a mental note to put him away and...

Juliet looks at me, forlornly.

"You really didn't want to evolve, did you?"

"It's fine."

"It isn't."

"It's fine, Lilly."

"If you don't want to fight in the next gym battle, just don't fight. If I hadn't been overworking you guys so much, Kimiko might still be here right now."

"I'm not your tool, Lilly. I'm a sentient being and I want to fight not because you say so, but because I like your cause and let's face it, it makes a pretty good book. Ten thousand reads, by the way. Not bad. I just... you need to be back with your family. I will get you there if it takes me out with it. Alright?"

"Alright." I say with a sigh, still too guilty to say much more.

She grabs the rock wall and climbs up, and with a few Pokeballs for transportation, the team makes it up most of the rock wall. The battles are relatively easy. We reach the final platform with in a quick hour of entering. I smile. Piece of cake.

The gym leader strides over, "Are you a new challenger?"

"Yes."

"Let's dance."

"Came here for Pokemon. Bad dancer."

He facepalms really hard, and mutters, "Alright then, let's Pokemon. You ready or not?"

"Juliet?" I ask, and she nods and steps forwards. "Yes, we're ready now."