The Darkest Day is upon us. Meanwhile, Chloe is forced to confront her past...
- Accidental Misnaming: Zacian and Zamazenta get saddled with 'Argo and Toby' by Trey and Troy.
- All for Nothing:
- After being effectively destroyed by Vox, Dahlia, and Goh, Chloe concludes that her entire train journey was nothing but a completely pointless temper tantrum.
- Rose and Oleanna learn that Project Silent Taillow was for nothing when it's revealed that anything that crosses dimensions eventually disintegrates, that Tiffany has accepted that she messed up and Arianna is reincarnated as Romsca and she has to stay on the Train until it's time for her to move on.
- An Arm and a Leg: Hazel's bite is strong enough to sever Ben's wrist from his arm.
- And Then What?: The critical problem with Rose and Oleana's plan - what happens after they grab Tiffany and derail the train? Will everyone onboard just be stuck forever in the train's desert dimension? And that's not even getting into Tiffany disintegrating if she goes through the Macro Cosmos portal.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Ash manages to get around the team limit as Charizard and Greninja come to his aid on thier own, so he can use eight Pokemon against Eternatus.
- Armor-Piercing Question:
- Rose asks if Lusamine and Lillie did anything to help Gladion get off the train, or just sat around waiting for him to return. While they have the excuse of not knowing about the details for the longest time, the question still stings. Especially for Lillie, seeing that she's fully at fault.
- During his big call-out to Chloe, Goh asks her point-blank why she gave up on him so easily, didn't trust him to talk about her problems, and if he was really that bad of a person to her.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Just like in the anime, Darkest Day starts with numerous Pokémon going Gigantamax, including Chloe's Eevee!
- Back for the Finale: Ash's Charizard and Greninja show up to assist against Eternatus.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In a way, Vox and Dahlia succeed in destroying Chloe's hero image on the Train by exposing her true nasty, vindictive self to all the Denizens.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just when it looks like Lillie will be squashed into pieces by Rose's Copperajah, Silvally rescues her.
- Brick Joke: In the second part of "The Omelas Car", Specter had been drinking too much coffee as he tried to contact London through the Infinet. Once the Infinet is back on, London gets numerous texts from Specter questioning what happened and we learn that the Knights of Hanoi have drugged him so he doesn't go barreling onto the train again.
- Blush Sticker: Vox uses the balls Goh drops to create a twisted version of this on his screen.
- Broken Pedestal: What Vox and Dahlia hope to do to Chloe, and they succeed to a degree with Chloe's uncaring messages to Goh being shown in full.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
- Gigantamax Eevee can use Copycat to imitate one of Eternatus's attacks, weakening him...but then she immediately shrinks down to the size of a normal Eevee and passes out from the strain, meaning she can't use that attack again.
- On a lesser note, this is what happens to Ash, Trip, and Serena's teams after taking on a streak of Gigantamax Pokémon. As a result, they don't have any flyers when they plan to reach Eternatus at the top of Macro Cosmos tower.
- Call-Back:
- One of the earlier chapters had Chloe's Eevee have an Imagine Spot about her achieving a Gigantamax state. Take a guess who's the first Pokémon in the heroes' side to Gigantamax when the Darkest Day begins. Moreover, Parker stated that one of his visions had Eevee play an important role and that Chloe had dark days ahead of her.
- Hazel's bronze pipe finally gets some use as a conductor to trap Ben-as-Easter.
- Ash mentioned Charizard was getting a birthday present for him in Kalos to explain why he’s not at the lab. The Pokemon finally returns with the present being none other than his old Greninja.
- The Cameo: Seeker of Crocus Sycamore somehow appears in Part 3 to comfort Oleana.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The pipe Hazel kept in her bag, hinted at in the Grand Cineplex Car, is finally useful which she lampshades.
- Again, Ignis's Thunder Grenades come in handy to attack Vox.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
- Chloe has this epiphany after getting her own words thrown back at her. All she had to do was talk to someone about her problems and none of the negativity would have happened. The only reason she kept it all in was because she believed her misery had to be something big in order to justify her actions.
- Gard and Julie admit to themselves and Chloe that if they never forced her to battle Ash, realized how they were hurting her with their bullying or maybe just tried being friends with her, it would never have gotten to an extent that they destroyed their hometown out of petty jealousy and Chloe nearly dead.
- Rose wonders if things could've been cleared up if Tiffany was able to talk to him sooner. Tiffany explains that the Infinet just came up months ago, she had no idea it was possible for her to contact him, she didn't have her phone on her (as it came with nasty texts and emails) and deep down didn't want to talk to him.
- Deadly Prank: In hindsight, what Class 5-E thought was just going to be another way to mock Chloe ended up with her being dead-dead and, had it not been for Tuba, would've stayed that way.
- Defiant to the End: Malika and March resolve to go down fighting.
- Didn't See That Coming:
- Whatever Rose did, it weakened the barriers between the Pokemon world and the Train enough for Vox to take advantage of.
- Vox is stunned when Goh accepts Chloe's apology...and even more stunned when he bites down on two Thunder Grenades painted like Pokéballs.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Neither Rose nor Olena clearly thought about what happened if they got Tiffany out of the Train and all the passengers and denizens that would get hurt in the process. It turns out that items that leave their dimension disintegrate. So what happens if a child goes through it?
- Chloe also gets a moment like this when she realizes that Goh taking Tokio's broken promise so badly, and his irrational actions back the, was because he was a kid who didn't know any better.
- Again, Gard and Julie learn how their insults over Goh not being there for Chloe practically destroyed her life, his life, their lives, and the entire city.
- Double-Meaning Title: The Darkest Day either reflects the emergence of Eternatus or how it's the "darkest day" of Chloe's life when she is forced to reflect on everything she did back in her spiteful phase.
- Drama Queen: Chloe gets to see in full just how histrionic she was in her early days on the Train. In particular, remembering that at one point she was dead serious in her threat to run away again if one person didn't apologize to her makes her feel sick to her stomach.
- Dramatic Reading: Dahlia reads out several of Chloe's phone messages, and she doesn't spare any of the details.
- Engineered Public Confession: Goh went along with Vox's interview so he could reveal the true nature of the butterfly pendants to the train, as well as expose the identity of the Unsub.
- Everyone Has Standards: Chloe's former bullies, Julie and Gard, find the farewell texts she sent to Goh to be extremely abusive, and they look on in horror upon seeing the image of Chloe falling to her death, realizing that they never wanted her dead for a silly dare.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: While Chloe is trying to think of something to say to save face during the interview, she begins asking herself why Goh took Tokio's allegedly broken promise so badly when he was a kid...and it's right at that moment that she realizes everything is making sense.
- Malika scoffs at the army of corgis at the shore...before realizing that in order for her to see them at the distance they're at, they need to be huge.
- Forgiveness: Despite everything that has happened, Goh forgives Chloe for what happened in Blossoming Trail.
- Forced to Watch: Since Chloe is somehow stuck on the Train from the Macro Cosmos portal, she can't do anything but stare in her "interview" as Vox and Dahlia waste no time tearing apart her image as the hero of the Train and reveal her nasty behavior in Blossoming Trail to everyone.
- Hanlon's Razor: During her "Eureka!" Moment, Chloe finally stumbles upon a connecting factor between many of the actions that shaped the Blossomverse.note To put it quite simply, it was because they were all children. They kept encountering situations that they didn't know how to handle and made mistakes because they didn't know better, yet truly did have good intentions even if their actions made it seem otherwise. As for the Cerise kids, they ignored the Razor and assumed malicious intent from everyone in Vermillion City.
- Heartfelt Apology: After being thoroughly ripped apart by Vox, Dahlia and Goh, Chloe gives the latter a tearful apology while groveling at his feet, telling him that he is and has always been a good friend to her.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: When Vox asks if Chloe was more important than Tuba, she admits that she wasn't and was fully accepting that she would die in Silent Hill.
- Hero of Another Story: The Seeker of Crocus that comforst Oleana is currently going through his own Train trip.
- History Repeats: Chloe's Jerkass Realization in this arc has quite a lot in common with Parker's in The Cyan Desert Car Part 6, as both Cerise siblings confront the fact that they never needed to happen. In the days after the fact, Parker realized that with the Unown at his disposal, he could've focused on giving Ash and his friends some magical adventures that everyone would enjoy, deepening their bonds. But instead, he opted for Cold-Blooded Torture and ended up being Hated by All. Weeks after her return, Chloe realizes that she could have enjoyed her trip on the Train without repercussions and allowed herself to recover from the bullying and stress she'd endured, without letting her loved ones think she might be dead before giving an ultimatum to ensure everything would be perfect upon her return. In both cases, the siblings assumed their highest priority was punishing those they believed had wronged them, and in the end their grudges ruined what should have been purely enjoyable experiences. The main difference between these two is that Chloe fully realized what she did wrong, took full responsibility for her actions, and gave a sincere and tearful apology, which Goh accepted. Parker, meanwhile, began sailing back up denial river before the chapter was even over, and struggled to accept his guilt for the remainder of the Arc.
- Hourglass Plot:
- The interview is effectively Chloe's own version of Nightmare Therapy, complete with a grinning demon as the host, a doppelgänger adding insult to injury, and all her mistakes getting thrown back in her face, all while being Forced to Watch.
- In Blossoming Trail, Goh was repeatedly lambasted over how he was a terrible friend to Chloe with no way to hit back. Now Chloe is the one getting it drilled into her that SHE was the bad friend, and she's in no position to argue over it.
- Hypocritical Humour: Oleana is incredulous that her sister - who's transformed into a talking pirate ferret - would comment on how she barely recognized her.
- I Hate Past Me:
- Chloe is not proud to face everything her old self had written, nor see her rather dramatic reactions back before she got on the Train. Having all of her abusive speeches and texts repeated back to her makes her physically ill.
- Gard and Julie also hate their past actions and insults about Goh when they see videos of him actively looking for her, as it reminds them of how they destroyed so many lives in the process and convinced Chloe that Goh never cared about her.
- Internal Reveal:
- Gard and Julie learn a lot of what Chloe went through when she ran away from home and are horrified upon learning that she could've been dead because of their dare. They also end up seeing firsthand just how nasty Chloe really was, with her messages being particularly dickish.
- Rose learns what happened to his daughter and Oleanna meets up with Romsca, the reincarnation of her sister.
- Ironic Echo: Dahlia takes sadistic pleasure in repeating Chloe's tirades and messages back to her, particularly her first blow-up at the beginning of the first story and her poorly-worded ultimatum that sent Parker over the edge.
- Irony: Chloe groveling at Goh's feet as she begs for his forgiveness is a nod to how at the beginning, she wanted everyone to grovel at her feet.
- It Amused Me: The only reason Class 5-E forced Chloe to fight Ash was because they knew she would lose and wanted to see her get humiliated. Not so much after it ruined their lives and nearly had Chloe die by the claws of a giant dragon...
- It's All My Fault: Chloe falls into this, only bolstered by the fact that her former bullies tell her that not everything is her fault and they also screwed up with how they treated her.
- Just a Kid: This ends up being Chloe's answer for why everything that led up to the present moment happened the way it did.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: One could make the case the interview is one for Chloe, being forced to actually confront and address her abusive treatment of Goh and facing the judgment of the formerly adoring train.
- Laser-Guided Karma: This chapter focuses on Chloe having the full extent of her past misdeeds biting her in the ass. It's also invoked as part of Vox and Dahlia's plot to thoroughly discredit Chloe in the eyes of the Infinity Train's denizens.
- Chloe not only has to rewatch every moment in her life where she acted like a selfish, petty, and entitled Jerkass to everyone, but also listen to Vox and Dahlia read every single text she made in Blossoming Trail, which were extremely cruel and abusive. And because this happens in a public "interview", everyone on the Train who once knew her as a kind, helpful girl ends up learning just how cruel Chloe really was the past.
- Goh, who's also attending the "interview", tearfully gives Chloe an epic What the Hell, Hero? speech on how she mistreated him, lashed out at him for not being a "good friend" when she frequently shut him out of her life, and turned him into a scapegoat for everyone to point fingers at, which led to what happened with the Unown. He then asks her if he was a truly terrible person who deserved his abuse. Chloe is so devastated by this that she tearfully begs for forgiveness at Goh's feet, which is also karma for how back in Blossoming Trail, she wanted all of Vermillion City to grovel for her forgiveness out of spite for not being catered to on her terms.
- Limit Break: Both Gladion and Ash use Z-Moves against Eternatus.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Naturally, Julie and Gard are completely lost during the interview. Julie at least manages to keep the pace, but Gard is flabbergasted the whole way through.
- The Man Behind the Man: Remember the reveal of the Apex not being behind the massacre of the Noir Princess Car? As it turns out, Vox manipulated the footage behind-the-scenes to make them seem like the culprits, when it was actually Ogami's doing.
- Manipulative Editing: Vox is at it yet again, using this to downplay The Apex's threat among other things.
- The Medic: Since her team isn't strong enough to take on Gigantamax (at first) Chloe busies herself by using Ponyta's Heal Pulse with Eevee's Copycat to help the hurt people around her.
- Mental World: Goh takes Ogami into one of these in order to get him to see the truth.
- Misery Poker: The interview makes it clear that Chloe's been playing this game since day one, acting and making her situation out to be way worse than it actually was in order to garner the sympathy she believed she wouldn't get otherwise.
- Museum of Boredom: The Dust Museum Car, where Psykhe is kept. Everything you never needed to know about dust!
- Must Make Amends: Why Lillie wishes to fight Copperajah on her own; it's her fault for Gladion being on the Train in the first place and not caring if he could've died all because of one act of spite.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Julie has this reaction when she sees how Goh nearly worked himself to death trying to find Chloe, as it just reminds her how she and the other classmates bullied Chloe about "No-Show Goh" allegedly not caring about her, resulting in Chloe unable to open up to anyone and believing that he never cared.
- Both she and Gard have another when they realize that thanks to their little dare, Chloe nearly wound up dead-dead by the hands of a giant dragon.
- And of course, Chloe gets several of this as not only is she made to look back at everything she did and said, but also gets a "Eureka!" Moment that renders everything that happened because of it utterly pointless.
- Not Helping Your Case: Mentally, Chloe bitterly notes after Goh reveals the reason why he both snapped at her and filmed the video with Ash that if he had just explained what he meant, she would've been more understanding...which is the same scapegoating Goh says she's been doing to him since Blossoming Trail.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Trey and Troy were the ones who unleashed Zacian and Zamacenta, and apparently fought off Swordbert and Shieldbert in the process. All in the space of a few hours.Ash: Is this what it's like with me?
Gladion and Chloe: Pretty much, yes. - Oh, Crap!:
- Goh when he realizes that Vox has recovered from his grenades.
- When Ogami notes that Goh shouldn't known a certain stitching technique on the taxidermy displays, he realizes that he's stuck in his own memory tape.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Alastor hates new technology, so the fact that the Hazbin Hotel has a television means something is going on.
- Painting the Medium: Scenes are usually given a 0-0-0-0-0-0-0 to divide them, so when Rose's experiments start blurring the lines between the world and Train, the scene dividers start looking like they're glitching out. Similarly, the chapter numbers shift from roman to arabic to words to an ugly mix of all three.
- Perspective Flip: A case can be made for Vox and Dahlia's "interview" with Chloe. In the past, Goh recording Chloe's disastrous battle with Ash and then declaring that she had no dreams or goals was seen as insensitive from her point of view and culminated in her running away. Here, Goh reveals that his actions were all meant to motivate Chloe to start chasing after a dream, but her bitterness and self-loathing clouded her better judgment.
- The Poorly Chosen One: Vox and Dahlia start painting Chloe as this during the interview while her "Chloe of the Vermillion" persona is brought up. Not because she's not capable, but because most of her actions either come down to her having so many power-ups, luck, or simply being at the right place at the right time.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Chloe reaches this realization where if she hadn't given up on Goh and told somebody about her problems, none of this would've happened.
- Rose questions why Tiffany didn't have a phone or her or why she never tried talking to him sooner. She explains that having her phone meant dealing with a lot of nasty messages, she didn't know it was possible for her to contact him and a part of him didn't want to.
- Literally for the Horace/Mark/Grace problem. By not letting Horace return to his home and instead killing him, Mark makes Grace think that the vortexs were going to kill her and thus made her spend eight years with a lie that "I'm the expert on the Train" and creating the Apex.
- Pose of Supplication: After realizing that all of her own mistakes stem from her own immaturity, Chloe tearfully gets on her knees with her head touching the floor, begging for Goh's forgiveness.
- Psychological Projection: Dahlia assumes that Goh's feelings towards Chloe are identical to her feelings about Mia Fey and that he'll be happy to face death to spite her. Turns out no, he's willing to forgive Chloe and move on.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Goh spells out his problems with Chloe, particularly her bitterness, self-pity, inability to forgive, and melodramatic tendencies, at the end of the interview. It proves to be so effective Chloe actually asks for his forgiveness, which he's happy to give.
- The Reveal:
- Vox is the one who made it look like the Apex set off the rampage in the Noir Princess Car when it was really Ogami.
- Chairman Rose's plan is to harness enough energy to stop the Infinity Train because his daughter, Tiffany, was taken away from him.
- Goh filmed the video of Chloe's fight with Ash to show her how she was starting something new, and his Armor-Piercing Response at the curry blowup was to motivate her to do something.
- Rewatch Bonus: Chloe's first moments of battling Ash, lashing out at her family, and then running away in the first story all take on new meaning after reading part 3 of this arc, especially with the knowledge of Goh's true motive behind recording her battle.
- Rule of Three: Upon seeing Vox talking about Chloe, Gard notes "I have questions" and Julie and Chloe have to exclaim "Not now, Gard!" three times in a row.
- Super Mode: As Gladion snarks, half of Ash's Pokemon he uses against Eternatus do this with Infernape's Blaze, Greninja's Ash-Greninja form, Lucario's full Aura charge, and Pikachu putting on Ash's cap for a Z-Move.
- Taxidermy Is Creepy: The Mental World of The Unsub has taxidermic copies of the Red Lotus Trio and a spot saved for Goh in it, displayed like a museum. In fact, the techniques are so familiar to The Unsub they eventually realize where they are and what's about to happen.
- Tears of Joy: Chloe sheds these after Goh forgives her.
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Chairman Rose's plan basically involves trying to create an artificial Immovable Object by using energy from Eternatus in order to stop the Unstoppable Force that is the Infinity Train.
- Villain Has a Point:
- Rose is going to endanger thousands of people for his plan, but he's not wrong that at least he's doing something whereas both Lillie and Lusamine didn't notice (or in Lillie's case, bothered to care) that Gladion wasn't even on their world for months on end.
- Vox and Dahlia waste no time tearing Chloe apart for her emotional abuse of Goh, and how her actions on the Train were never truly her own.note
- Villains Act, Heroes React: How Rose differentiates himself from Lillie and Lusamine. He spent time and resources to go and save his daughter, while neither of them (while justified at the time) didn't know or cared that Gladion could have died on a Train.
- Wham Episode: Darkest Day begins and Chairman Rose's plan is to harness enough energy to stop the Infinity Train in order to get his daughter back.
- Wham Shot: When Chloe sees a photo of Rose in a magazine, he notices the figure with him is a girl. And not just any girl, but the narration reveals that his daughter is Tiffany of the Apex!
- Wham Line:
- Rose's end goal is revealed with this line.We're trying to stop a train.
- When Oleana is unsure what to do, she hears a reassuring voice. When she asks who this is,???: In another world, I am the Seeker of Crocus.
- Rose's end goal is revealed with this line.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The third chapter. Vox And Dahlia reveal the full extent of Chloe's past cruelty, spitefulness, and emotionally abusive behavior through a public "interview", leaving both Gard and Julie incredibly appalled and disgusted with her. Everyone else on the Train who knew her as a nice girl who could do no wrong starts going through a huge Broken Pedestal moment as they all learn how Chloe treated her family and friends back in Vermillion City. But the crowner comes from Goh, who gives her a tearful "The Reason You Suck" Speech detailing everything she did to him to make his life an utter hell, just because she thought he was a poor friend and was more concerned with Playing the Victim Card instead of hearing his side of the story. Chloe is reduced to tears by the end of it, and she grovels at Goh's feet and tearfully, genuinely apologizes for her mistreatment of him.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Goh proves surprisingly good at this while taking on Vox and Ogami, figuring out new plans when the initial ones don't work out.
- You Answered Your Own Question: Chloe's "Eureka!" Moment takes the form of this: as the "interview" keeps going, she mentally tries to look for something to say and asks herself why Goh got so broken up over a failed promise with Tokio when he was a kid...And then it hits her: Goh was a kid back then and was thus prone to childish and irrational reactions. Or as the narration calls it, "Stupid, stupid simplicity."
