Howdy y'all! It's your delightfully crunchy host D-Knight here, throwing caution to the wind and engaging in a healthy spurt of fan-ficcing.
What I have here is the spiritual sequel to Minty Thrill, set a couple years after the events that happened there. Yeah, I know I chucked a fit and never finished that story, but for the sake of argument, things occurred to Tony Chambers and company during that timeline. Interesting things.

Additionally, this isn't quite a full fic. It'll only be four chapters or so, but all going well it'll be the same good-natured, grammatically flawed, plothole-filled escapades that we all remember so fondly. Or at least I do.
Theoretically, you won't have to read MT to get the gyst of TT. Mmkay? Mmkay.

Our first course of the evening, a prologue...

TONY’S TIMES
Prologue
The Thrill Resumes

I peered over the crowd, still taking in the mystique of where I was. There I stood, Furudo’s own Pokémon master, behind the stand, addressing the people who adored me so. It took a long time and more pain than one innocent lad should sustain, but it was all worth it for just this one moment of glory. I took a deep breath, before I continued my speech.
“I did a lot of things in life to get to where I am today,” I said thoughtfully, “In my travels I made a lot of friends, a lot more enemies, and even a few who were both. But whether I was just starting out from my hometown of Burake, or claiming the final elusive belt buckle from Yamashuta City, I never forgot to appreciate how I came to be there.”

I threw a hand toward the air either to accentuate my point or declare myself a Nazi. “I had to gain the trust of my Pokémon, from my beloved Leaves, to little Gigi, bless her soul, who alas lost her life last year in that tragic skiing accident.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, “I kept saying ‘No, Gigi, no! It’ll never work!!’ but she just looked me in the eye, and said to me, ‘Pidgey’. It was then I knew, I couldn’t convince her otherwise.” I slammed my fists against the stand, “So many feathers! So many little feathers…”
I looked back up at the shocked crowd and regained my composure. “But when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. So when life gave me splattered Pidgey in the snow, I opened up my world-famous branch of frozen Pidgecicles. And yes people, I owe it to you that I won the lawsuit that following month.”
The spotlight seemed to be set too bright and I was sweating now, but that meant nothing to me. I had these people hooked.

“To become the master, I had to overcome challenges from all facets of life! I conquered the gym leaders, I tamed the rogue RS Pokémon, I saved the world from destruction by that evil wench Chase Ginnit, and I cleared up that unfortunate Digimon issue of 2007. Dark year, that one.”
I looked into the eyes of the audience, into their very souls, and prepared to wrap this one up gloriously. “But above all else, to be the man I am today, I had to-”
“CHEAT!!”

A disembodied voice cut me off with such authority and treble; it seemed to make the arena shake. I looked around furiously to find this heinous culprit.
“You were a lying, cheating, stealing fool from day one, Chambers! And I could tell these people every single one of your endeavours…”
“Ha!” I scoffed, “You want to pin these wild allegations on me? We haven’t got enough time to hear your ramblings.”
“Oh I do have time.” A shape took form next to me to embody that which was the previously disembodied voice, “In fact I have all the time in the world…”
“No, it couldn’t be…” I gasped, clutching my chest tightly, “It couldn’t be you…”
But it was. It was my most hated rival, my most loathed adversary, the Gene Hackman to my Christopher Reeve…
“FATHER TIME!!” I wailed, as I was face to face with the contemptuous beast.
“You should’ve known you couldn’t escape me, Chambers!” the ancient man snarled in a throaty voice, “You can’t avoid your fate. But most of all, you can’t tell time!!”
I fell to my knees. The world seemed to be spinning. They were all lies… All lies… All lies…

“LIAR!” I shot up to my feet, flinging Leaves off the end of the bed and launching him into the wall.
“…Wha? What am I doing here?” I looked down confused. I was in my room, teddy bear in hand and wearing my ‘Pretty Ponyta’ pyjamas. It was pretty clear what was happening here.
“That bastard Father Time stole my arena!!” I cried, before giving it a little more thought, “Or perhaps, that was all a dream. Yeah, that’d be it.”
I took in my familiar surroundings, and pieced together the inconsistencies between my dream and real life. I had only ever collected six and a half belt buckles, I cheated to take on the masters of the Pokémon League, and my quest for dominance was cut short when I lost in the final round to that clown, Lamont Kong. Oh, and I only ever sold eight Pidgecicles before I ran out of Pidgey remnants.

“Saur…” Leaves moaned mournfully, crawling back atop the bed to glare at me angrily. His tail whipped around wildly, the blades of grass atop his head shook with each movement, and the cocklebur atop his back looked pointier than usual. Staring at my long-time companion Lebresaur, I could only conclude one thing.
“Leaves,” I said, staring him in the eyes, “You are really, really ugly.”
He hacked a clod of venom at me to symbolise his equally offensive response, but I wiped it off nonchalantly as I stood up. The fact that it burnt like hell was irrelevant, really.
“Well, I had the weirdest dream.” I said with a stretch, “About how I actually became the best trainer in Furudo, but Father Time told me that I couldn’t tell time at all. I wonder what he meant by that?”
The door flung open. Leaves and I looked in the direction of James, who had a most bemused look on his face.
“Tony, what in the hell are you doing here?” he said frantically, “You were supposed to leave for that job interview an hour ago!”
I looked over at the clock, which confirmed his claim. I was… late.
Taking in a deep breath, I stated the two words that summed up this situation and this life that I was living.

“…Aww Hölle.”