While holding onto Briney, Ruby quickly ducks under as Crawdaunt fires a hyperbeam. The attack smashes into the side of the boat, and Briney quickly orders his Wingull, Peeko, to attack the Crawdaunt. Peeko dives down with a quick attack, and slams its beak into the red lobster, but to its own shock, its beak cracks instead and the Crawdaunt pins it down easily with its giant claws. Briney gasps in surprise and realizes the special shell armour characteristic of Crawdaunt must have protected it from the attack.

A huge wave throws the boat up and down, and Briney loses consciousness after hitting his head on the deckboard. Crawdaunt prepares to attack again, but Ruby turns around and pokes at the soft part below its mouth. Ruby says there seems to be areas where Crawdaunt isn't protected by its shell armour, and the red lobster gets stunned for a while. Ruby grabs the chance to pull Briney up from the sea, and places Peeko in the fainted old man's arms. He looks around to see that no other people are around, and orders Coco to start spinning around chasing its own tail. Crawdaunt then gets impatient and delivers a swat on Coco with its claw...

Later, Briney slowly awakes from his faint and is surprised to see that a fancy bandage is wrapped around Peeko's cracked beak. Ruby remarks that Peeko looks cute in the bandage and Briney snaps at him for doing unnecessary things. He wonders where the Crawdaunt went and Ruby points towards the other end of the boat. Briney gasps in shock when he sees the red lobster tied up in ropes, and Ruby explains with a funny look on his face that the strong waves earlier have knocked out the Crawdaunt and thrown it on the deck. Briney knows well that Ruby is lying but decides to drop the matter. He notices Coco is still spinning around and wonders what it is doing. Ruby takes out his Pokedex and explains that Skittys love to chase their tails. Another wave hits the boat, and Briney quickly gets back to steering wheel to steady themselves.

Briney takes another look at the fainted Crawdaunt and notices that it is under the attract status. He sees its cracked shell and starts realizing what has happened. Skitty must have made Crawdaunt attracted with its cute charm ability, then smashed it down with a double-edge. But the probability of cute charm taking effect is low, how can such a small Pokémon endure a number of physical blows from a Crawdaunt? Briney turns around to watch Skitty chase its tail and suddenly understands. With the rapid spinning, every hit of Crawdaunt comes into contact with multiple parts of Skitty's body, and that no doubt increases the chance of cute charm taking effect.

Skitty starts to get dizzy from its spinning, and Ruby picks it up with an embarrassed smile. Briney wonders to himself why Ruby deliberately hid the facts from him, and decides that the boy must have his own reasons. He approaches Ruby and starts thanking him, but Ruby gets seasick again, and dashes towards the edge of the boat to throw up. A while later, Ruby sees Dewford appearing on the horizon, and Briney says he will continue on his quest for Relicanth after dropping him off there. The old man says he will also try to find out the cause of the recent earthquakes, and if the ecology has changed in response to that. He looks up in the sky, and wonders what is starting all the abnormal phenomenons in Hoenn.

Meanwhile, Sapphire is also nearing Dewford on Wailulu. The giant Wailord suddenly lets out a sneeze, and creates a giant wave that sweeps towards the beach on the island. Sapphire picks up some distant cries and quickly tells Wailulu to propel her up with its water sprout. She sees swimmers desperately rushing away from the giant wave, and notices one guy still lying calmly on his surfboard. Sapphire hollers in shock and covers her eyes, but then sees that the young man is surfing adeptly with his Makuhita on top of the wave.

Sapphire hurries towards shore, and runs up to the young man to apologize. The young man realizes the big wave is caused by Wailord's sneeze, and says it is rare to have a nice wave to surf on. Sapphire is astounded at the young man's love for surfing, and the young man says he is currently training with his Makuhita. Sapphire wonders why he would teach a fighting Pokémon how to surf, and the young man explains that fighting consists of both brutal and subtle forces. While brutal forces is determined by power and strength alone, subtle forces require the ability to make use of your opponent's strength and turn it back on them. Surfing trains one's skills to convert the forces of the waves into one's own force to stay lifted, and the logic behind is the same as subtle forces.

The young man takes a look at the Stone Badge on Sapphire's backpack and says she must be there to challenge him. Sapphire quickly realizes the young man is the gymleader of Dewford, and he introduces himself as Brawly. Brawly remarks, however, that he will be leaving on a training journey the next day, and that the only time he is available in the gym will be from that night to early next morning. Sapphire gets worried and Brawly says he'll be waiting at the gym.

Later, Sapphire walks along the shoreline of Dewford and wonders what she should do about the gym challenge. Not far ahead, Briney is anchoring his boat and Ruby merrily hops on shore. He and Sapphire quickly notice each other and let out a cry of shock...

Countdown to our heroes' rival showdown: 70 days!

Thanks To Coronis For Writing this for us