In the next town, and by chance, the friends ran into Dawn's mother Johanna.

She listened with some surprise to Dawn being a possible Gym Leader depending on how things worked out, admitting that she didn't know how Gym Leaders were selected but that she hadn't thought it would be quite like that, but then once that was discussed she had a question for Ash, Dawn and Whitney in turn.

The local Contest had asked for her as a judge, and while she wanted to accept she was also teaching a lesson. So it would be an enormous help if they could take over the lesson for the day, and free up Johanna to help judging the Contest.

"They ask people to judge Contests?" Pikachu asked, a little surprised. "Don't they have special families whose job that is? You know, the Joys, and whatever those other two we keep seeing are?"

Johanna blinked, but rallied. "No, the only family traditionally involved in Contest judging is the Joys. The other two judges are usually non-competing Coordinators, local dignitaries, or similar."

"Huh," Pikachu said. "Wait, those other two turned up in every Contest I've seen in Hoenn, Kanto and Sinnoh. Is it the same guys every time?"

His ears twitched. "Weird coincidence."

A few hours later, after Johanna had finished with the Contest, she met back up with her class.

"I'm sorry I wasn't around," she said. "What did Dawn, Ash and Whitney teach you?"

"It was really cool!" one of her pupils said. "We got to fly on Dragonites!"

Johanna blinked. "...pardon?"

"And we got to talk to them, too!" added Thomas, another of her students. "Dawn showed us how to tell if a Contest routine was going well, then got us all to help Ash Ketchum's Dragonites learn how to do a sparkly thing with Dragon Pulse making sparkles rain down all over the arena – it was really cool!"

Johanna chuckled. "Well, I'm glad you had a good time," she said. "Do you think you all got a better idea of how to have a Pokémon do a Contest move?"

"We really did!" said Sarah, one of the girls. "I had the idea to get Dragonite to learn how to do it in a different colour, and it really worked – I didn't know Pokémon could learn differently coloured versions of moves."

"A lot of being a Coordinator is working on different variations of moves," Johanna said, then frowned. "Hold on a moment. Did you say you were riding on the Dragonites while they were practising?"

"No, there were Dragonites to ride on and Dragonites who were practising," Thomas explained. "We were each working with three of them, so they could test against one another, and Ash, Dawn and Whitney were working with three each as well."

Johanna counted under her breath. There were five students, so… "Twenty four Dragonites?"

"Well, there was one who was watching as the safety person, he was wearing a King's Rock and a shiny vest, and two who did the cooking," Sarah said. "So, twenty-seven, really!"

"Are there not rules about how many Pokémon you can have with you at once?" Zygarde checked.

"I think they have to do with Pokéballs," Ash replied, frowning. "But, really, the Dragonites weren't with me, they were just visiting."

"That is all right then."

"Hmm," Dragonite said, contemplating his knives. "What do you think about the idea of having stir fry?"

"Stir fry does sound nice," Ash replied. "Though, do you mean stir fry as in a meal, or stir fry as in a way of cooking things? Because I'm not great on how to cook, but I think I've heard of that meaning both."

"I mean stir frying a stir fry," Dragonite said. "Hmm. You can roast a roast, and you can stir fry a stir fry. What other foods can you cook like that?"

"You can microwave a microwave," Pikachu pointed out.

"That's not a food," Dragonite replied. "And a microwave wouldn't fit in a microwave."

"You could if you cut it up," Pikachu said, folding his arms. "Haven't you ever heard of food preparation?"

A moment's pause. "Also, Aron."

"True," Dragonite admitted.

Then a Pidgeot swooped overhead, fortunately flying high enough to not blow the food everywhere.

"Hey!" called the Pidgeot's rider, as it banked around and shed height before landing next to them. "Are you Ash Ketchum?"

"That's me!" Ash agreed. "Is something up?"

"I wanted some help," the rider replied. "I'm a Pokémon Ranger, but I'm not really equipped to deal with a Heatran, and there's a Heatran out there!"

He gave a thumbs-up. "My name's Ben!"

"It's great to meet you," Ash replied. "What kind of help do you need?"

"Well…" Ben began, thinking. "This Heatran knows Eruption, and I can't stop it because I can't find enough Pokémon who are immune to heat. I just need a few minutes to calm it down with the Styler, but I have to be close enough and that's kind of hard unless Heatran is held in one place."

Ash nodded. "Hmm… well, I guess there's Entei and Ho-Oh? That's a good start."

Ben snapped his fingers. "Right, that's why your Ranger Profile says that you should be helped out whenever possible and you're a really capable Pokémon trainer, you've got a ridiculous number of Legendaries. Entei's a good suggestion, too, and so is Ho-Oh… I think that gives us three Pokémon we can use to keep Heatran in one place. Then, hmm… can I borrow a tough Flying Pokémon, too?"

"You don't think I'm tough?" Pidgeot asked.

Ben laughed. "I can guess what you're saying," he said. "But I wasn't about to ask you to get close to an erupting Heatran, not if there's another option."

"That is a good point," the Flying-type admitted.

"So, who's number three?" Pikachu said. "I know Ash has other options, too, like Froslass, but he didn't mention them yet."

"Froslass, good point," Ash agreed. "I'll see if she's available."

"Oh, huh, if you've got a third Pokémon who can do that then never mind about loaning out a tough Flying Pokémon," Ben said, taking out his Styler. "I can handle either of them myself, but not both?"

"Yeah, I think I can get Silver to help," Ash decided. "He's got a trick that should work."

"Great!" Ben decided, flicking his Styler on, and drew a complicated squiggle on the ground. There was a flash, and a Latios appeared.

"Hi!" the Dragon-type said, brightly. "Is it my turn?"

"Okay, that's new to me," Pikachu admitted, as Ben patted Latios on the neck. "What was that?"

"Pikachu's interested in hearing what that was," Ash translated. "I'm kind of interested too!"

"Oh, I met these guys in Oblivia," Ben explained. "I learned all these neat ways to call on powerful Pokémon from the Oblivia region by drawing Ranger Signs, then when I got reassigned to Almia I found out that they still work outside Oblivia! It's been really helpful."

"Yep!" Latios agreed. "Distance means nothing to ancient time-space warping technology… probably because otherwise it wouldn't be very good time-space warping technology."

"Just nobody tell Hoopa about it," Dragonite suggested. "Otherwise there might be another of those Hooparight infringement letters going around."

Some minutes later, Heatran looked around at the Pokémon forming a rough square.

There was Ho-Oh, to the north. There was Entei, to the east, who was also flying despite being an Entei and not a Ho-Oh. There was a Froslass, to the south, though she appeared to be on fire. And, to the west, there was what appeared to be a Zapdos, an Articuno and a Moltres occupying precisely the same position.

"Okay, clearly I am actually dreaming," he said.

Whitney said she was sorry to have missed it, when she heard about what had happened, though she'd been talking Dawn through different approaches to getting around fast with the help of a Pokémon and it was something she hadn't regretted. So that was okay.

They had a very nice stir-fry, that evening, and pasta the next day, and Dawn continued training up for the Grand Festival that was coming up.

Then, as they were passing through Arrowroot Town, Dawn frowned.

"I was wondering if I should do the Contest here," she admitted. "To see how some of those new routines are coming along. What do you guys think?"

"Personally, I think it's up to you," Whitney said. "If you feel like taking part, take part! If you'd rather spend the time doing something else, then that's what you should do instead."

She spread her hands. "Sure, sometimes there are things you have to do, but there's not much point obsessing over things you don't have to do and turning them into things you have to do for no good reason. Right?"

Dawn chuckled. "I don't think I follow that, but I get the idea, and it's a nice one. Thanks, Whitney."

"Any time!" Whitney agreed.

Then a woman in formal dress waved for their attention – specifically, for Dawn's. "Excuse me, Dawn? Do you have a moment? I've been waiting for you."

"Oh, sure," Dawn agreed, then glanced at her friends. "Do any of you recognize her?"

Pikachu shrugged. "She seems new to me. But Zorua's more of an expert on what people look like."

"Maybe she's seen you on TV?" Ash suggested. "That happens sometimes, but not as often as you might think."

"Oh, yeah, could be," Dawn agreed.

The woman – Freesia – led them to a fine house, and introduced them to Princess Salvia. She was a Princess, as the title implied, and she was going on a good-will tour of the towns around Sinnoh as part of her obligations as Princess.

She was also extremely similar looking to Dawn.

"Oh!" Whitney said, straight away. "I want to test something out! But it kind of takes a while to wear off, so, do you have anything you're planning on doing in the next few hours or so?"

She glanced at Ash. "Few hours? I can't remember how short the smallest dose lasts. It always seems to be different each time."

"I think there was that one time it lasted six hours?" Ash said, frowning. "So you'd have to guess at least that long, or you might make a mistake."

"Forgive me, but what are you talking about?" Princess Salvia asked. "I'm afraid we haven't even got to what I was hoping to ask about."

She clasped her hands. "You see, I've always wanted to be a Pokémon Coordinator, but my life as it is at the moment simply doesn't allow it. But I've been following Dawn's journey, and when I found she was heading in the same direction I was… I wondered if perhaps we could swap places, just for a day, so I could see what it was like to be a Coordinator."

"Well…" Ash began. "I think we have about four or five different ways of having someone impersonate you, but… yeah, the most reliable one probably is Dawn because that one isn't going to be exposed by a Luxray or a Dark type. Or by personality."

"Oh, what's your count?" Whitney asked. "I count, um, Zorua, Purrloin… can Nickit do appearances yet? Then there's Mew, and Lokoko, Zacian, Latias and Latios can all do illusions… so can Froslass, sort of… wait, you're grouping them by category, aren't you? That makes sense!"

"I have another suggestion," Pichu said. "What about if we get a Celebi involved? I know time travel is supposed to be used only for serious purposes, but this has got to count, right? It's letting someone fulfil their childhood dream."

She tugged on her ear. "And if you have Princess Salvia do the same day three times over, she could spend one pretending to be Dawn, one being herself as her own alibi, and one as a Pokémon."

"I support this idea!" Whitney declared, immediately.

Salvia turned out to be a Minun.

Whitney then showed them all that she'd written the word Minun on a piece of paper before Salvia had tried out the potion, and put it in her pocket – which was a little confusing to Freesia and Salvia, until Dawn showed them what she looked like when she took the potion.

Salvia also turned out to have a beautiful Togekiss, and she and Dawn spent almost an hour flying around on Togekiss before getting down to the business of actually working out the finer details in Salvia's routine.

Halfway through doing that, another Princess Salvia came in – this one human and dressed like Dawn – and joined them for dinner, being very careful not to say anything about how the Contest had gone.

"Do you know, I dare say this is the strangest day I have ever had," Princess Salvia dare said. "And it's only the first time around."

AN:

This has been in the planning stage for a while.