"Ash Ketchum, right?" the Santalune Gym Leader asked. "I've heard a lot about you! Mostly from my sister."

Alexa leaned out from behind her. "It's me, I'm the sister," she explained. "And this is my sister, Viola! She's the younger sister, of course."

"Why of course?" Viola asked. "Is it that obvious?"

"Ah, you know, it's the prerogative of an older sister to tease, is it not?" Alexa said. "But I should step back and let the two of you get on with it."

"Sure!" Ash agreed. "I wanted to ask, do you have any kind of rule about what Pokémon I should use?"

Viola considered.

"Hmm," she said. "Well, my normal rule is that you use at least one Pokémon with type advantage against Bug types, if possible, but I wouldn't complain if you didn't. Otherwise, it's three Pokémon a side, and part of my speciality is the environment!"

"Okay," Ash replied, thinking. "I've got two recently caught Pokémon from Kalos, so… I guess it makes sense if I withdraw any of my Pokémon that have knocked out one of yours? If my Kalos Pokémon still need more training, they need more training and I'd want to keep working on them to make sure they're developing right… hold on a minute while I get the other Pokémon I'm going to use?"

"But of course," Viola allowed. "Oh! And I hope you'll give permission for me to take photos of the battle?"

"I don't mind!" Ash told her.

Viola's first Pokémon was a Vivillon, a butterfly Pokémon with pink wings, and Ash held up Ibid. "That's a pattern, right?"

"Correct," Ibid replied. "Vivillon come in hundreds of patterns, and this is one of the more common ones. It is called the Meadow Pattern."

He demonstrated several other patterns, including a pure black one and one which had several concentric rings of rainbow colour. "This is known as the Spectrum Pattern, because Rainbow Pattern was incorrectly recorded as being taken."

"Ahem," Viola said.

"Oh, right," Ash apologized, and sent out Fletchling. "Get ready!"

"Right!" Fletchling replied, hovering in the middle of the battlefield.

"Begin!" Alexa said.

"Double Team!" Ash called. "Then Razor Wind!"

"Left, Vivillon," Viola countered, camera already raised. "Now, Sleep Powder!"

"Don't let the powder get you!" Ash revised his instructions, as Viola took a photograph of the scene. "Build up a Razor Wind and attack from a distance!"

"Psychic, you know what to do," Viola said.

"Blow away the cloud with Razor Wind!" Ash reacted, and Fletchling did a flip before flaring his wings and sending the whitish coils of cutting wind forwards.

They hit the Sleep Powder cloud and dispersed it, but Ash was frowning.

"Wait," he began. "That wasn't moving-"

A glob of Sticky Web hit Fletchling from behind, gumming up his wings and sending him into a crash.

"A clever tactic, no?" Viola asked.

"Yeah, but-" Ash said, then cut himself off and checked Ibid. "What moves does Fletchling know, again?"

Ibid listed them off, and Ash nodded as he thought. "What's the description of Double Team?"

"One description is: The Pokémon moves back and forth quickly to create multiple images of itself," Ibid said.

"That's it!" Ash realized. "Fletchling, Double Team! Move back and forth quickly, and keep doing it!"

Fletchling got to his feet and tried to flap his wings, grumbling, then a pair of blurry Fletchlings appeared next to him and vanished again.

"Again!" Ash called. "Keep it up!"

Blurry Fletchling clones appeared again, and again, then Ash pointed.

"Now!" he said. "Use the heat you've built up – Ember!"

"Vivillon, look out!" Viola called, but an explosion of flame had already engulfed Fletchling.

He emerged from the fireball with smoke trailing off his wings, did another Double Team, and spat an Ember at Vivillon.

The fireball intercepted his opponent at close range and detonated with a wham.

"Ah, Ash," Lokoko chuckled. "It's always interesting when he does this."

"What do you mean?" Serena asked.

"Ash has other Pokémon who use Double Team," Zygarde explained. "Pikachu is one of them and Lokoko is another, and the way they use the move is explicitly not about moving back and forth very quickly."

"Quite," Lokoko agreed. "But, well, that's Ash for you."

"Your turn, Froakie!" Ash said, sending out his new Water-type, and Froakie made a three-point landing as Viola sent out her own second Pokémon – a Surskit.

"Surf!" Viola ordered, as Alexa called for the match to begin. "Ice Beam!"

Surskit did a twirl, with feathery ice spreading from underneath her like a sped-up movie, and within a second her deliberately-weak Surf and powerful Ice Beam had turned the entire battlefield to ice.

"Careful, Froakie!" Ash called. "Have you battled on ice before?"

"I've battled on an iced up pond once before," Froakie said, then tried lunging after Surskit and immediately fell over. "That didn't go well either…"

"You need to watch out!" Ash called. "Moving on ice is tricky because if you have too much force that's along the surface you end up starting to slip, and once you start slipping you lose all your grip! Try moving slowly and carefully!"

Surskit was under no such constraint, gliding around and firing Signal Beams, and while some of them hit a Frubble bubble double others hit Froakie head-on.

"Maybe use a clone to push against?" Ash suggested, then shook his head. "Actually, no – Froakie, we can work on this after the battle, but I think I'm going to call you back now!"

"But I can-" Froakie began, then his latest clone got hit by an Ice Beam. It slid into him, knocking him as it shattered, and he did a complete flip before thumping onto his front.

"Ow," he added. "Okay."

Ash called Froakie back, then switched for a different Pokéball. "Snorlax!"

"Really?" Pikachu asked.

"Yeah!" Ash replied, as Snorlax skidded wildly before falling over. "Snorlax, ignore Surskit for a bit and listen closely, okay?"

Snorlax flopped onto his back, apparently deciding that the best way to avoid collapsing was to already be collapsed.

"I'm going to get you to start moving again!" Ash explained. "But when you move, do a twirl! That way, you're going to be gyroscopically stable and you won't fall over – if you start you'll just wobble your way back to being upright! Now, Agility!"

Snorlax pushed himself upright, wobbled a bit, then used Agility and began twirling in a quite graceful but also extremely fast balletic movement.

Almost as soon as he'd begun, he nearly fell over, but wobbled and precessed and got back to being upright.

"Great work!" Ash said. "Now, Mega Punch?"

Surskit looked worried.

"Which way should I punch?" Snorlax asked, still pirouetting.

"Whichever way Surskit is!" Ash told him. "And since I guess from your perspective that's all directions, just punch in all directions! Surskit's the closest thing to you so you'll hit her first! Extremespeed!"

"Well, I'm glad I got photos of that," Viola decided. "Or otherwise nobody would believe me about this battle."

She turned to Zygarde. "And thank you for catching my Pokémon."

"It is my pleasure," Zygarde replied. "It would not have been my pleasure if she was still using Ice Beam, but I still would have tried."

"Now, I know you've knocked out two of my Pokémon, but you still have a third to handle," Viola went on. "And you've only got your Froakie left."

"I kind of get the idea Ash likes doing things the hard way!" Alexa supplied. "It's because that's a nice easy holiday from doing things the impossible way."

Ash sent Froakie back out onto the battlefield, which was now mostly ice-free from the collateral damage of the hit Snorlax had scored, and Viola sent out a tiny fuzzy yellow Pokémon.

"Oh, wow, that's a really really small Pokémon," Bonnie breathed. "I can hardly see it! What is it?"

"Cutiefly," Ibid reported, transforming into one and flying over to her. "Bug and Fairy type. They can sense auras, and tell which plants are about to open."

"That's not all they can do," Alexa said. "Wow, sis, you're really going with Cutiefly?"

"You did say Ash liked hard challenges," Viola replied. "Count us in!"

"Right," Alexa agreed. "Three, two, one, begin!"

"Water Pulse!" Ash called, and Froakie sprang into the air before throwing a Water Pulse attack. Just before he'd actually thrown it, though, Cutiefly was already dodging, and the attack went zipping past Viola's Pokémon.

"Hmm…" Ash said, thinking. "Keep it up, Froakie!"

"Bug Buzz!" Viola ordered, and the Water Pulse and Bug Buzz attacks crossed one another in mid-air. Cutiefly's erratic movement got her out of the way just before the attack would have hit her, but Froakie had no such luck and got hit in the side.

"That's a very acrobatic Pokémon," Serena said. "I think? I'm not really used to doing this whole commenting-about-battles… it just seems like that's the sort of thing you're meant to say."

"I think it sounded all right," Clemont told her. "I have to admit, I'm not quite sure how it is that Froakie keeps missing Cutiefly. Missing isn't something Froakie does much, though that's only really close-in. And Cutiefly's doing their best to stay out of range."

"It's actually because Cutiefly can sense auras," Alexa explained. "So she's reading what Froakie's about to do, and that helps her react quicker and get out of the way of attacks."

"Froakie, make a clone!" Ash said. "Now, throw the clone at Cutiefly!"

Froakie's Frubbles coalesced into another Froakie, and he hoisted it up with one hand before throwing it as fast as he could.

"And turn it into Bubble!" Ash called.

The clone dissolved into a spread of bubbles, too dense for Cutiefly to get through, and two of them hit the Fairy-type and knocked her for a loop. She recovered, though, and Viola raised her voice.

"Make sure to dodge further away from where the clone's going in future!" she said.

"Froakie, mew me-e-mew!" Ash instructed.

Serena pointed. "Wait, what just… did I imagine that?"

"Ash's main Pokémon dialect is Mew," Lokoko said. "Sorry, he usually doesn't do that so I wasn't ready for it."

Froakie formed another bubble clone, and did a complicated dance with it that swirled them back and forth. A cloud of bubbles came up around both of them for a moment, then one Froakie lifted the other and threw him.

"What Ash said was-" Lokoko began, then the throwing Froakie burst into bubbles and the thrown one lashed out with a punch.

Not being a fool, Cutiefly had already been dodging, but Froakie's Feint Attack hit anyway and knocked the Bug-type to the floor.

"-pick randomly if you throw yourself or a clone," the Ninetales finished.

"Don't let Cutiefly recover!" Ash called. "Bubble!"

"I wasn't sure if Cutiefly would work out what was going on, but this way I made sure Viola couldn't work out what was going on!" Ash said. "And since Cutiefly was able to tell what Froakie had planned, I knew that she'd know which of the two Froakie had picked – but she didn't know that I knew that and so she didn't know that what looked like a trick was actually to hide the real trick!"

"I'm now even more sure than before that you're ninja enough," Froakie told his trainer. "Though I might need to sit down with a piece of paper and work that one out."

"Magnificent!" Viola declared. "You have certainly won the Bug Badge!"

"It's still just the Bug Badge?" Alexa asked. "Did we not discuss this?"

"Thinking up poetic badge names is hard," Viola defended herself. "And, Ash, I hope you have a wonderful time on the rest of your journey in Kalos!"

AN:

After the Rainbow Badge, the Soul Badge, and the Relic Badge, a badge called the Bug Badge is a bit of a basic one.

Ah well. It's not like this is the start of a trend, is it?