"Ah, this should be most interesting!" Alexa said. "This is an island I have heard of, you see – it is famous!"

"Famous?" Cilan repeated. "That sounds like it must really have got itself put on the map!"

Iris pursed her lips, then nodded. "Yeah, that one wasn't about food. You get a pass."

"Thank you!" Cilan said, entirely sincerely. "Now, what has put this island in the headlines, or if it hasn't been, what do you hope will put it in the headlines?"

Alexa got out her camera. "It's a treasure island! There's all kinds of stories about a pirate crew who operated around here, and they vanished, but they're said to have left their treasure on this island!"

"Is this pirate treasure actually real, then?" Ash asked. "I thought buried pirate treasure was mostly stories, because, normally when you get treasure you want to spend it. Unless the pirate was one of those kinds of Dragon-types who keeps a hoard, then they'd be a dragon pirate and I could see it."

"Yes, it is mostly stories," Alexa confirmed. "It's a really good story, and for that reason there's plenty of copycats. But I actually did go into the archives at the maritime institute, and some of the treasure they stole never did resurface… or, at least, that's how it seems to have gone."

She pointed. "So let's find out what really happened?"

"That could be interesting," Zygarde said. "I wonder what Scrafty would do if she had the location of a treasure hoard to use?"

"Pay Day, obviously," Pikachu pointed out.

"Your proposal is likely," Zygarde allowed.

"I know who to use first!" Ash decided, sending out Gigalith. "Can you do one of those seismic survey things you do?"

"Good question," Gigalith said. "Let us find out."

She raised a rocky foot, and stomped, and the ground shook.

"Well, I've got some preliminary results," she said, after a few seconds. "This is an island. Which, you know, good to confirm… I'm working on the rest."

"Hey!" a Nidoking called. "You'd better leave here now!"

"Oh, hi!" Ash called, waving. "Is there something dangerous on the island? We're wondering if there's any treasure here, have you seen it?"

The Nidoking snorted. "Yeah, there's something dangerous. Me!"

"Can you stop stomping around, please?" Gigalith requested. "I'm trying to do geophysics over here and it's not as simple as it sounds."

"It sounds very complicated," Cilan told her.

"Yes," Gigalith agreed. "And it's not as simple as that."

"That does sound difficult," Cilan agreed.

"Hey, what was that?" Nidoking demanded. "Don't ignore me if you can understand me!"

A Nidorina came out of the undergrowth, sighed, and kicked the Nidoking.

"Ow!"

"Please excuse my brother," she said. "He's an idiot sometimes. Did you say you were here to find out about the treasure?"

"Hopefully!" Ash told her. "Or, find out if it exists, and see if our friend Alexa can get a news story out of it!"

"Would a story have to involve telling everyone that it's there?" Nidorina asked.

"Why are you negotiating with them?" Nidoking complained.

"I don't know if you've noticed, brother, but that's a Legendary Pokémon standing next to them," Nidorina replied.

"Thank you for recognizing me," Zygarde said politely. "I do not get recognized much."

"I like old stories," Nidorina said. "Anyway, either these trainers are nice and we don't need to worry, or they're not nice and they've got a Legendary Pokémon working with them and I sincerely doubt that we can stop them."

She sat back on her haunches. "This island's partly populated by the descendants of the Pokémon of the crew who lived here. Except for the Ninetales, because he is the Pokémon of the old captain. They're sort of long lived… anyway, the treasure's a hoard of Evolution Stones, and they're part of our lives now. Eevee come here from all over Decolore to see if they've got what it takes to evolve despite the gauntlet."

"Hmm," Alexa said. "I wonder… are there any Eevee visiting today? We could film the gauntlet, and I could not say where the island is? And maybe this whole island could be made a nature preserve, though I can't promise anything there… it's who you know, no?"

A few phone calls later – and some filming, followed by editing to make sure that the island's exact location wasn't clear – the little group moved on to Cave Island.

Since Alexa was interested, they moved on to Cave Island by Dragonite.

"That was amazing!" Alexa said, once they'd landed and she'd recovered her breath. "I wonder why you don't go everywhere like that, now!"

"Because there's a lot you miss if you fly overhead that fast," Ash answered. "I mean, uh, we're here at Cave Island to visit the cave, right? But it'd be easy to miss if you were going over, and then you'd miss out on seeing the Pokémon who live in the cave and everything else about it. Flying around is great, but walking is how you really experience somewhere."

"Ash is like a swimming pool," Pikachu said. "He's very clear, and sometimes shallow, but you can easily miss the deep end."

"I like it," Pansage told him.

"Wait, is that – Ash?" a familiar voice asked.

"Clair?" Ash replied, turning, and brightened. "Hi! I didn't expect to see you this far from Johto, but then I wouldn't expect to see Gary this far from Kanto and I'm here so it makes sense."

He waved to her. "This is Clair, she's the gym leader at Blackthorn Gym in Johto! That's a Dragon-type specialist gym, and it's the first one I battled myself!"

Iris looked distinctly interested.

"I was sure you were from Kanto, though," Alexa said.

"He means in person," Clair replied, sighing slightly. "Lance still keeps bringing up that I didn't warn him, even though you didn't battle his team like that. Are you actually an Absol at the moment?"

"Not that I've noticed!" Ash replied.

Clair's expression said that, though she hadn't expected that answer, she really should have.

"And who are your friends, Ash?" she asked.

"Well, this is Alexa," Ash began. "She's a journalist from Kalos, we met her earlier this week. Then this is Cilan, he's one of the Striaton Gym Leaders. He specializes in cooking, and I guess he's a Grass-type trainer at home but the Pokémon he's got with him don't really have a single type even two of them share. And Iris is a Dragon Tamer in training, or a Dragon Trainer in training, or a Dragon specialist… a Dragon Master apprentice? Though I guess she's a journeywoman as well because she journeys around all the time…"

Ash shook his head. "Anyway, you two are both Dragon type Pokémon specialists!"

"Ash, given your team, you could claim to be a Dragon type Pokémon specialist," Clair said. "You have an entire micronation of dragons, with twenty-seven Dragonite. You have four of them literally standing behind you."

"Actually, I'm one of Iris' Pokémon," Dragonite said. "So really it's three."

"I'm afraid to ask," Clair went on. "But what Pokémon do you have, all three of you? I'm up to date on Ash's team because of the Vertress Conference, but apart from that-"

"Actually, have they done the edited together highlights yet?" Ash checked. "Of the Elite Four challenge, I mean, because… no, wait, I used Arc against Virgil, so you know about them."

"Yes, I'm aware of your Arceus," Clair said. "If that's the one you mean."

Ash nodded. "Right, but there's another Pokémon I picked up since the Conference," Ash went on. "Or, during the Elite Four bit, but we didn't make it formal until afterwards. Ready to say hello?"

Giratiny came out of his Pokéball, and waved.

Clair blinked for several seconds.

"Okay," she said. "Where did you get a miniature Giratina? Who seems to be shiny, if I remember what Giratina look like."

"Well, he was originally a nightmare that Caitlin's Musharna made to battle Pikachu," Ash explained. "But because he was a mental construct out of how we think of Giratina, he was just helpful and not really all there, but I decided to experiment with what would happen if he went through a portal into the Reverse World before the dream mist went away, and it made him real. There wasn't much Giratina-ness to go around though so he's not very big."

"Gym Leader Clair?" Iris asked, while Clair was still assimilating that. "I wanted to ask about how to be a skilled Dragon specialist – without neglecting my other Pokémon, that is. I've got a full team now, plus myself, but I keep struggling about how much to focus on my dragons – I've got Excadrill, Archeops and Emolga, those are my non-dragons, and then my dragons are Dragonite, Axew, and lastly Zekrom-Reshiram-Kyurem."

Clair blinked several times.

"I have multiple questions," she said. "Firstly, that's eight Pokémon."

"That's true," Iris admitted. "But Zekrom, Reshiram and Kyurem share one Pokéball, and what comes out is either one of them or a single Pokémon which is a gestalt of more than one of them. Or once a Dragapult Kyurem with two Dreepy for Reshiram and Zekrom, but Dreepy are a special case anyway…"

"I have more questions than when I asked that one," Clair told her. "Shelving that for now, and we will come back to it later… I expect… you mentioned yourself?"

"Oh, yeah," Iris agreed. "You know that potion Ash uses to turn himself into an Absol? I took some, and it made me into a Zoroark, so I took the opportunity to try out being all Dragon types! I'm also a costumed hero except that my costume is just being a Zoroark, but since I turn into Dragon-types when doing it I've got the name of Dragonizer."

Clair looked like she was thinking very deeply for quite a long time.

"This must be how Brock and Misty felt all the time," she said.

As she eventually got around to explaining, Clair was also on Cave Island to visit the cave there. She'd heard about an unusual Druddigon, possibly shiny, and wanted to have a look.

"Huh," Ash said, thinking. "Gigalith, can you help us find that Pokémon?"

Clair held up a hand.

"I appreciate the offer, Ash, I really do," she said. "But part of why I'm here is as a challenge to myself. To track down this Druddigon myself. I've got Dragonair and Dragonite, and Drakloak and Dreepy, to help me look."

She frowned slightly. "Though, saying that, I sort of wonder if my idea for how to find Druddigon has been influenced by knowing what you're up to."

Pansage held up a hand. "Can I try guessing? Are you going to have Drakloak fire Dreepy through the cave system and see if they can spot the Druddigon?"

"And now I'm sure it was," Clair decided. "Though Drakloak doesn't know Dragon Darts, so she's just giving him a push… well, let's see how well it works."

"This is fun!" Dreepy said, after his third high-speed round trip through the cave system. "Again, again!"

He floated up slightly to Clair. "Oh, and, um… I only saw one Druddigon and it was normal coloured."

"Thank you," Clair said, as Dreepy took his place on Drakloak's head again. "Ready, Drakloak?"

Drakloak nodded, sharply, which sent Dreepy drifting off before slowly falling to the ground. Before he reached it, Drakloak used Dragon Tail and sent Dreepy whizzing off into the distance.

"Why did Dreepy make a sort of 'wheet' sound there?" Iris asked, attentively.

"That's actually translated," Emolga informed her.

"Yes, he's picked up a habit of calling it yeeting when I do that," Drakloak said, shrugging. "It keeps him happy."

Then Dreepy came back again, phasing through a wall much quicker than last time.

"I found them!" he called. "They found me!"

The wall collapsed as Druddigon came stampeding after him.

"Zacian, get ready!" Ash called.

"I'll try and calm them down," Clair said. "Dreepy, phase out so you won't get hurt!"

"Sure!" Ash agreed. "But Zacian's Fairy-type, so she can get in the way of a Dragon Rage or whatever."

"Oh, wow," Iris said, quietly, as Clair advanced to try and get Druddigon to relax. "This is like when I met a Druddigon when I was younger. That's what really made me think Dragon-types were cool…"

She shook herself. "It's so weird to think that you're seeing someone you look up to trying to do a thing you've already done?"

"Sorry I bounced off your nose," the droopy Dreepy said, a few minutes later. "I didn't mean to."

Druddigon listened, then nodded. "I understand," he said.

"Rampaging is a bad habit that many dragons have," Clair's Dragonite told Druddigon. "But it's something you can learn to deal with. You just have to make sure you learn a new habit instead, of being calm."

"Shiny Pokémon are so cool!" Alexa announced, adjusting her angle. "And so are Clair's Dragonair and Dragonite!"

Then Druddigon headbutted one of the Pokéballs on Clair's belt, and her Gyarados came out.

"...that would have looked a lot more cool if I'd actually known that Pokéball wasn't empty," the Dragon-type admitted. "Sorry, I tried to keep track but… um… that was embarrassing."

"There are more dignified ways to ask to become someone's Pokémon," Dunsparce noted.

AN:

Though it doesn't happen here, I am fairly sure that if this particular Gym Leader took the potion she would be Dragonclair.