And we were like, "Dude! Spoilers!" but we didn't want to ruin his fun, so we mostly just whispered that amongst ourselves and changed trajectory to go on with the story ourselves. And we had just finished the last battle of the tournament to qualify to face the Champion when Grawp decided he wanted to play Smash Brothers...which was also kind of weird, because supposedly it was his brother's turn with the Switch.
So we switched gears and started playing Smash Bros., which led to some interesting dialogue, such as, "Why are you playing as that character?" "Why not?" "He's a boy." (After playing as Zelda, then Peach, Athena played against Grawp as Link. I'd already played against him as Sheik, but that elicited no comment.) The other really good one was, "Do you have any Pokemon characters?" "Just Pikachu." "Okay, you be Pikachu." Then to his brother, "Should I be Lucario or Incineroar?" ...Great. Athena still managed to hold her own pretty well for a while.
Eventually the children went off to do other things, so we were able to get back to the Pokemon story, and now we're thinking about how cool it would be to cosplay Zacian and Zamazenta. But we didn't make it all the way to the end of the story, because! that Pokemon battle in Smash Bros. had us thinking maybe we should master playing as Pikachu and Jigglypuff (Jigglypuff had challenged us before, but we lost, and we hadn't fully unlocked it before we started playing today), so next time he tries to come at us as Incineroar, we can destroy him. ...Or at least, not be destroyed. We're just not great at fighting games. But the point is, we had to play some Smash Bros., and there you have it. And just before we turned it off, we unlocked Pokemon Trainer!
Today I'm thankful for having a good time playing Smash Bros. with our nephews, getting to unlock some more characters later, getting to see more of the story in Pokemon Shield, cool cosplay ideas that may or may not ever be acted upon, and having more ice cream (we ordered groceries online again, but we forgot to get milk...).