As Mir ran past the beginning parade and into the contest building, she spotted Max. He looked excited when Lucario passed by him so she decided to talk to him. "Hey, kid. You look like you're ready for a battle. Whaddya say you wanna battle my Lucario after this parade's over? And this new Ditto I got could use some more training. For now we gotta go be in this contest. So if you want to, I'll meet you over in that field over there when I'm done." Then barely before he could answer she sped off and walked to the stage just as her name was being announced.
"And our next trainer is Mir, with her pokemon, Lucario, Ditto, and Flygon!" Mir walked up and bowed, with Lucario just behind her. "Ready? GO!" She shouted. Lucario jumped up and vaulted off her back, doing a flip in the air before landing in a crouch, waiting for a command. "You wanna play a game, Lucario? Let's have Ditto come help you! GOOOOO!" She threw Ditto's pokeball into the air and it opened in a shower of pink sparkles and stars. Ditto glowed pink as the stars circled it and dissolved into the ground. Ditto was across the stage from Lucario. "Ditto, transform!" Mir shouted. Ditto changed into Cubone as the audience looked in awe. "Set up some pins so we can play." Cubone used Focus Energy and made its bone twice as big then demonstrated to the audience its strength by breaking the bone into three pieces. It stood them up in a triangle. "Great. Lucario, let's go bowling!" Lucario Quickly formed three aura spheres and juggled them high in the air while the audience's faces lit up. Then he caught them all and hurled them at the bones. With a crash the bones fell over and shattered. The audience cheered. "Now, Cubone, let's evolve!" Ditto transformed into Marowak perfectly. Then, as instructed, Marowak and Lucario both performed Bone Rush and sped into each other, meeting in the middle and sparring with their bones like in a sword fight. They both threw their bones up into the air as Mir released Flygon. Its pokeball opened in a burst of white smoke as sparkles flew everywhere and dazzled the crowd. Flygon flew straight through the middle right away and caught both the bones. "Dragon Claw!" Flygon slashed the energy-bones into a million pieces of glowing dust. Then Ditto changed back to its original form and Lucario grabbed it and launched it into the air as he stepped out of the way. Flygon used Dragon Tail and spun around rapidly, cutting Ditto in half. The audience let out a loud, collective gasp. Then Ditto was cut into more and more little pieces and fell to the ground. "Flygon, use Sandstorm!" Mir shouted. Sand started swirling up around the stage and the pieces of Ditto and the broken bones came up into the air and spun around in a giant tornado. Flygon stopped the storm and the bone sparkles flew into the audience. Lucario jumped back out into the middle of the stage and caught the pieces of Ditto as they fell. Flygon flew down to Mir's side and Ditto regenerated and put itself back together as Mir went into the middle with her pokemon and bowed once more, overjoyed and proud as the audience cheered. Surely she would win!
Mir got perfect scores from all the judges and the announcers proclaimed she would be moving onto the next round: actual battles. There were another 30 minutes before she would have to go back on so she rushed outside to get some more practice. Mir knew her pokemon were amazing, but Flygon hadn't trained in a while and Ditto was brand new. She wasn't sure they would be as good in a battle as they were in their demonstration.
Mir ran out past the parade and saw Luke and Victini smiling by their float. "Well, hopefully I didn't miss too much," she said to herself. Then she went to the field she told Max to meet her by and waited to see if he'd show up.