On Potpourri Island, one of the Pokémon Orienteering organizers – the local Nurse Joy – told them all about the rules.
They would each get a map of Potpourri Island, and a compass, and would have to navigate to five difficult-to-reach spots on the island and collect stamps there. The first to return to the start point with all five stamps would be considered the winner.
"And, because it's a Pokémon Orienteering competition, you'll have one partner Pokémon working with you," Joy told them. "You'll have to make good use of their abilities to complete the challenge… any questions?"
Ash put his hand up.
"What if you've got one Pokémon who doesn't go in their Pokéball, and another two Pokémon who follow you around because they like it, and then there's a fourth Pokémon who you actually want to do the challenge with?" he asked.
Joy blinked, then looked closer.
"That's not a hypothetical with you, is it?" she asked.
Ash shook his head.
"I think so long as you only get advice from one of the Pokémon it should be fine," Joy judged. "Any other, more normal questions?"
"All right, Ash," Lucario said, some minutes later. "Now, firstly, I have no questions yet about your ability to fight as well as many Pokémon, and as a consequence I am aware that you are able to use Aura in certain ways."
Ash nodded.
"Instead, you're going to be doing the meditation stuff, right?" Pikachu checked.
"Correct," Lucario told him.
He gave Ash a pair of gloves. "I borrowed these from Rota, but hopefully you will not need them. For now, simply try and summon forth your Aura… try and open your perceptions to the world around you."
"Right," Ash said, closing his eyes, and breathed in and out.
"This never seems to work right," he admitted. "I always get distracted by things, like Pikachu breathing or whatever."
"I don't breathe that loudly, do I?" Pikachu asked.
"That might actually be the problem," Lucario mused. "For the point is not to shut out the world, but to become aware of it. You should not be fighting, or struggling… not trying to ignore Pikachu, but also avoiding becoming focused on him."
His voice was soft and relaxed, and Ash did his best to follow along and do what Lucario was saying.
"Become aware that you are a part of the world."
Then, suddenly, Ash got it.
"Huh," he said. "That's really cool!"
"Good," Lucario told him. "Now that you have started to sense the Aura of others, your next step will be to start seeing it."
"Oh, did I go too fast?" Ash apologized. "Sorry."
"...go too fast?" Lucario repeated. "Ash, can you already see things with Aura?"
"Yeah!" Ash agreed.
He pointed, still with his eyes closed. "There's a couple of Spearow over there, I think… and is that May?"
Lucario turned to look. "It does appear to be May, yes."
The time-displaced Pokémon thought for a moment. "Can you tell what Pokémon she has with her?"
"It… looks like she's got Manaphy in her backpack and Combusken flying alongside?" Ash tried.
"Correct," Lucario said, now sounding impressed. "You picked that up very quick."
"It's a bit like danger sense," Ash replied. "That does seem to be something only Absol can do, but… huh."
He pointed. "There's something weird over there. Aura weird, I mean."
Zygarde stepped a little closer. "In this direction?"
"That's right," Ash agreed. "About ten steps in front of you."
Zygarde approached, then stopped, and sniffed at it.
"I have no conclusions to draw," they decided.
"That's very subtle," Lucario mused. "I can just about see it, now I know where to look, but it's a very faint distortion."
"So… should we be worried?" Pikachu checked.
"I am aware of no way in which it would be dangerous," Lucario told him.
"Bonsly?" Brock called. "Bonsly!"
"I really should have warned you when he got out of his Pokéball," Vulpix said, paw on heart. "That's on me."
"The problem is, I could find him easily if I got him upset, but I don't want to get him upset when I don't have to." Brock sighed. "And he's really good at pretending to be part of a tree."
"I am?" Bonsly asked, then went yipe and stopped saying anything.
"I think he's in this tree," Brock decided. "Power Whip!"
Vulpix drew in the air with one of her tails, and made a vine leading down from a likely-looking branch. Brock grabbed hold, hoisted himself into the tree, and tapped a suspicious leaf.
"Yahaha!" Bonsly said, jumping, then drooped slightly. "You found me..."
Max checked the map, peering through his glasses, then looked around.
"There's, uh… okay, I think this map says there's a bridge?"
"Can I see?" Mightyena requested, and Max crouched down to point at the relevant part of the map.
"If I'm right, we're about here," Max explained.
"Then I'll go and look," Mightyena said, and loped off before Max could say anything.
"I'll wait here, then!" Max called.
He shook his head, trying not to laugh. "At least Nurse Joy said that translations are okay…"
If she'd said that it wasn't, would I have had to not connect with you for the whole competition? Ralts asked. I wouldn't like that.
"I know," Max agreed. "I wouldn't have liked that either."
He shrugged. "Still!"
"...okay, that's going to be a pain," May said, standing back a step to look at just how tall the cliffside was. "I think we came the wrong way."
"Buss," Combusken told her, offering a hand.
May took it, and Combusken gripped onto her wrist as well. Then he flew up the cliff, not going too fast – so May could hold on – but reaching the top in a lot less than a minute.
"Maaaaan!" Manaphy cheered. "Man, mana!"
"You want to go again, huh?" May asked, taking the Lunatone stamp out of the box – next to a giant Lunatone statue – and marking her map. "I'm sure Combusken wouldn't mind having another go later… so it looks like there's just one to go! It's around here on the south coast."
At the end of the event, May turned out to have come second, and Max third.
Brock had come almost at the back of the pack, because Bonsly had treated it like a game and made Brock look for him over a dozen times, but he'd had fun so that was what mattered.
And as for Ash… nobody was quite sure where he was.
"Thanks, Latios," Ash told the Psychic-type. "That was a really quick save."
"Pleasure," Latios replied.
"So, Ash," Lucario said. "Do you recall how you said that you saw a strange Aura effect, and I said that I was aware of no way in which it would be dangerous?"
"I certainly remember that," Pikachu said, before Ash could answer. "Quite vividly."
Lucario looked around at the bubble of air surrounding them, which was – from the quality of the light – quite clearly a long way underwater.
"I have changed my mind."
"Likely cause, semi-stable space time conduit," Zygarde stated. "Cause unknown. Based on observation, Ash moved to just the right place to trigger it."
Golden light glittered in mid-air, and a Hyperspace Hole formed.
Hoopa glared out of it. "Hoopa calls Hooparight infringement!"
The next morning was when Jirachi woke up again, and he got to meet both the new additions to May's team – Eevee, who waved hello with her ears and turned her tail green to help distinguish herself from Brock's Eevee, and Manaphy who was delighted to meet him.
The feeling was mutual.
"And… boop!" Jirachi said, tapping Manaphy on the forehead, and Manaphy laughed and tried to catch Jirachi's arm. He missed, though, and Jirachi floated back a few inches before doing it again.
"Boop!"
The Psychic-type looked over at his notional and legal trainers. "Hey, Max, May, when do you think he's going to be able to play catch? Or is that a question for Brock? Or Ash?"
"It might be a question for Mew?" Ash frowned. "I'm not sure. It's about how Pokémon grow up, so… it could be any of those, really."
"Then we should try it some time!" Jirachi said. "Can we borrow the GS Ball?"
Ash rummaged in his bag to find it. "Sure, but, uh… it might be a good idea to have someone around to make sure it doesn't hit Manaphy. It might startle him."
"How about if we see if he wants to throw?" May suggested. "What do you think of that, Manaphy?"
"Mama May!" Manaphy said, giggling.
"Okay, that one I didn't even have to translate," Vulpix told them, standing upright in a single fluid motion.
"Were those his first human words?" May asked, astonished. "Did you know Manaphy could do that?"
"I know a few Pokémon can do that, but I didn't know about Manaphy one way or the other," Ash said.
"Oh! I know!" Jirachi realized. "I can wish that Manaphy will be safe during the game! That doesn't sound too hard, it'll just make sure he doesn't get hit. Right?"
On the Wisteria Contest Hall floor that evening, May first bowed and then sent out Skitty.
"Let's show off your new tricks!" she said. "Begin with Fire!"
Lightning sparked around Skitty's tail for a fraction of a second, then Skitty applied her Normalize ability to the attack. It turned from a Shock Wave into a Normal-type attack, a current of well-aimed force, and that was what it was for only a moment until Skitty did her special application of her Ability.
Turning off Normalize, she made the attack collapse back into being Typed – Fire typed – and it wrapped around the paw-shaped tip of her tail until she flicked it out in a complex, looping wave that danced in the air.
And spelled out the word MAY, in cursive, tracing around and through the pattern shape fast enough to leave the whole of the arc glowing at once.
"Now, let's see some fireworks!" May called, and Skitty used Water Pulse.
Being Skitty, she converted them into two Grass-type pulses and two Ice-type pulses, plus one hissing ball of green that was a Dragon Pulse Except Not The Actual Move Dragon Pulse, then switched back to using type-changed Shock Wave and hit the first two with Bug Shock Waves – then, just as the effect began to hit, caught all of the first four with a single Fire Shock Wave.
They burst into flames and fragments, sending sparkles all over the place, and Skitty then used a Fairy-typed Shock Wave that wove in and out of the Dragon Pulse in a complex, looping shape. It fell apart too, raining multicoloured sparks down on the trainer and Pokémon, and May picked Skitty up.
"Sign your name!" she said, and Skitty did just that – this time using a conduit of glowing light, a Steel-type Shock Wave which looked like a Flash Cannon condensed down into a skywriting neon tube.
"Is anyone else starting to honestly wonder what her Pokémon can't do?" Mr. Contesta asked.
"They certainly are a remarkable bunch," Mr. Sukizo agreed. "But isn't that true Coordinator flair? Not just having amazing moves, but amazing ideas and great precision and passion in executing them!"
"I'm just happy to be watching," Joy said.
In the Battle round, this time, May found herself up against Drew in the semi-finals.
Specifically, her Arcanine was up against Drew's Flygon.
"Left!" she called, ordering Arcanine to dodge out of the way of a Dragon Breath – then stopped and whistled, impressed, as Flygon's wings hummed and the Dragon-type used their resonant sound to redirect the Dragon-typed attack.
Arcanine, of course, hadn't stopped to watch, and had just kept dodging. That prevented her from losing too many points, but Drew's attack had shown such skill that it lost May some points anyway.
"Wrap it around your wings!" Drew said.
"Fire Spin, Arcanine!" May countered. "Wrap yourself in it to hide where you are – and use Extremespeed! In fact, use Extremespeed and keep changing directions!"
Arcanine did as May ordered, whipping up flames around herself, then began darting back and forth. Each turn meant she had to halt for just a moment, whirling on a single paw to dart in a radically different direction, and each one was accompanied by a swirl of flame before she blurred away again at a speed too fast to clearly track.
"Sandstorm!" Drew said, as Flygon looked back and forth to try and keep track of his opponent.
"Attack!" May instructed.
Arcanine blurred in to attack, slamming home an Extremespeed attack, and let her Fire Spin reach out at the same moment – turning the swirl of Flygon's forming Sandstorm into a momentary flash of molten glass, before it rained down around the arena in cooling blobs.
Neither Pokémon was out yet, though, and Flygon's wings hummed as he repositioned himself.
"Bulldoze!" Drew instructed. "Slow her down!"
"Fire Spin!"
"No hard feelings, right?" Drew checked, after the Contest. "That was a really tough one."
"I know what you mean," May agreed. "I'm exhausted! And so is Arcanine, I'm sure."
She sighed. "I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that you didn't win a Ribbon here either… on the one hand it means I got beaten by someone who didn't even win, but…"
Drew snorted. "Hey, I'd have won if I'd faced you in the finals," he protested. "Flygon was just about out of puff too by then… not that facing that Ice-type Ninetales helped."
He offered his hand, and May shook it.
"If I don't see you before then… I expect to beat you in the finals of the Kanto Grand Festival," he told her.
"Exactly the same to you," May retorted. "And this time Arcanine's going to know something specially set up to beat your Flygon!"
AN:
I'm slightly leery of pointing people towards the TVTropes page as it contains tropes from unposted chapters. But it's there, so do as you wish.