"Okay, Chespin, are you ready for this one?" Clemont checked. "Your job's to try and hit Fletchling, and Fletchling's job is to try and dodge. Got that?"

"Right," Chespin agreed, twanging one of her quills. "I'll do my best, I guess."

"Exactly," Clemont confirmed. "Now, Pin Missile!"

Fletchling blurred into several Double Team images and came swooping down, dodging away from one attack and having the second attack turn out to have hit an image instead of the real Fletchling.

"That's a good start," Clemont told Chespin. "Now, let's try using fire control!"

"Isn't that more Fletchling's thing? Or maybe Fennekin's?" Chespin asked.

"No, this is fire control!" Clemont answered, producing a small eyepiece. "This is a lens design I made, I call it the Fire Control Clemontic Gear! It should make you much more accurate – just aim where the lens tells you to shoot!"

"Ooh, that sounds interesting," Chespin admitted, taking it and slipping it onto her head. "There's a dial on here, what does that do?"

"That changes mode," Clemont told her. "There's Wide Mode, Zoom Mode and Scope Mode – for now use Wide Mode, that way you can track fast moving targets."

"Right," Chespin said, turning the dial. "Wow, it's like I can see where Fletchling's going to be!"

"You can, assuming he doesn't change course, of course," Clemont told her. "What's more, if it's set up right it'll predict the time your attacks take to move to where Fletchling is and take that into account. I'm very proud of it!"

"Umm… Clemont?" Bonnie asked, as Chespin tried out the Fire Control Gear and missed by a wide margin. "I don't think this is my bag."

"What?" Clemont replied, distracted. "It looks right. Why do you think that?"

"Dedenne isn't in it!" Bonnie explained, then reached in and pulled out a Pichu. "And he is instead."

Pichu looked baffled. "Did something go wrong?"

"Excuse me, but is the bag you're in right now the bag you'd normally be in?" Pikachu asked. "Because it looks like the bag Bonnie would normally carry, so either it's her bag and you're in the wrong bag-"

"No, this is definitely the right one," Pichu interrupted.

"Then the bags have ended up mixed up," Pikachu finished. "What's the name of your human?"

"Oh, hold on, I know who he must be!" Bonnie realized. "That girl we met, and her older sister – this must be their bag and their Pichu! And that means that they must have my bag and they must have Dedenne too!"

"Lena and Lyn, that's them," Pichu agreed.

"Lena and Lyn!" Bonnie repeated. "I'll remember that!"

"Wait, what?" Pichu asked, blinking.

"Though we still need to work out how to find them – and to find Dedenne," Clemont said, already thinking. "Hmm. What about if… we could give the Fire Control Gear to a flying Pokémon, and they could look in Zoom Lens mode?"

"I could ask Lily if she can help?" Serena volunteered.

"Or maybe one of Ash's Pokémon can help too!" Bonnie said.

"No, I know what we should do," Clemont decided. "I'll build a special Clemontic Gear, like the Beedrill Attraction Gear but one that's built to attract Dedenne! And that'll make Dedenne come and find us, and if Lena and Lyn follow him then that will mean we can sort Pichu out as well!"

He reached for his toolkit. "I'd better get started!"

Zygarde held up a paw. "Or we could just retrace our footsteps to where we saw them, and then use scent to track them," they suggested. "I know the theory and I suspect Ash has Pokémon who can do it particularly well, because it's a thing that can be done and his team is like that."

"...or we could do that," Clemont admitted. "It doesn't seem right to not use a piece of technology, though…"

A few days later, they met a ninja – a human, full-time ninja, who had a Frogadier as his Pokémon, and who offered to give some tuition on how to be a proper ninja.

"Okay, so we've covered the first bit, about springing movements," Sanpei said. "That's something to keep in mind at all times – it does you no good to only do it while training. You should make sure it becomes part of your movement in such a way that it is your default, that you do it without thinking – only then have you mastered an art."

"Right."

"Yeah, that makes sense!" Ash confirmed. "It's the opposite of being versatile, but it can work just as well, because if you have a trick you know that well then your opponent has to work so much harder to find something to counter it. We'll both remember that!"

Sanpei nodded. "Good. Now, the next step is that when you do your basic exercises, you should combine your own movements with those of your Pokémon. Your connection becoming deeper would be a significant improvement… though I have to admit, sometimes this basic rule doesn't apply."

"Actually, I could make that work," Ash said. "You just need the same basic body plan, right?"

"Yes, but… I'll be honest, this would be easier if you were going to be working with your Froakie," Sanpei admitted. "Actually, that was what I had in mind in the first place."

"Yeah, but I'm a ninja too," Zorua said. "And Ash can do quadrupedal, and also bipedal. But the merit of doing it this way is that I'll hear it now and then again when Ash tells Froakie and Grovyle and stuff, so I'll actually remember it."

He shrugged. "I've got an excellent memory about some things, but not others. And this is ninja stuff so it should stick, but I'm not going to take bets about it when I could just game the system and be sure."

"I'm sorry, but Ash can do quadrupedal?" Sanpei's Frogadier repeated. "How?"

"We can do that bit later," Zorua waved off. "But what's the third bit? I want to know if we should skip to that and get back to the second bit later."

"Actually, the third bit's running across water," Sanpei told him. "That's… not something you can do already, is it?"

"Well, I know Suicune can walk across water," Ash volunteered. "But Entei and Raikou have to be running to cross water, that's how they get the speed needed to do it… we could probably give that a go! Hey, Zorua, you do Extremespeed and I'll do Agility!"

Sanpei and Frogadier watched them.

"That's a lot better than we did, first time," the Water-type said. "And a very, very big splash."

Ash came back to the surface, shook his head, then reached up to grab onto the water surfboard of his hovering Pikachu. "Phew! Okay, let's try that again!"

"Sure!" Zorua agreed.

Ninja training behind them – or, mostly, behind Ash, though Clemont still felt that his Muscle Mass Magnifying Machine had a real niche in Pokémon training for those who couldn't actively keep up with their Pokémon at full speed – the foursome and their Pokémon companions moved on to a town called Camphrier Town.

The town had a problem, and the problem was a Snorlax that was more asleep than normal at this time of year, and the solution to the problem was a Pokéflute. But the Pokéflute's owner, Lord Shabboneau of Shabboneau Castle, wasn't around, which meant the friends had to go and find out what was going on.

Then one thing led to another.

"Phew," Serena said, wiping her brow, as Lord Shabboneau's Pokéflute playing finally woke up the Snorlax. "That took far longer than it should have done."

"Yeah," Bonnie agreed. "And we still need to get my brother back!"

She brightened. "Still! That princess we left him with seemed to really like him, so maybe she'll marry him!"

"I don't think that's how marriage works," Lokoko said. "I know that I'm a Pokémon, not a human, and that so far my only interactions with marriage have been on the outside looking in. But it's something I've found interesting to look at, especially… well, especially recently. Would you like to hear what I think, Bonnie?"

"Oh, um… yes, please," Bonnie decided.

"What I think marriage is, is… complicated," Lokoko tried. "It is certainly between two people, and could be between more than two. It involves the people agreeing to share a lot about their lives and who they are. It's a commitment, and that means that it's something which you shouldn't do for simple reasons."

She swept her tails across. "It doesn't have to mean everlasting love. It doesn't have to mean that this is the one person with whom you will spend the rest of your life. It can be for love, or for friendship, or simply because it makes sense to the two of you. There is no one thing marriage is."

Lokoko then flicked her ears, and raised a paw to her muzzle to hold in a giggle. "But I can certainly tell you that if at least one person who would be doing it doesn't want it to happen, that is a good reason to not have a marriage."

"Oh," Bonnie said. "I never really thought about that. Thanks!"

Then Clemont turned up, panting, wearing a vest and boxer shorts and with his backpack slung over his back.

"I can't see her, sir," Bunnelby reported, from inside the backpack. "I think we might just have gotten away with it."

"And I can understand you, so that's good," Clemont said, then sank down and put his hands on his knees. "I knew I should have fixed up the Muscle Mass Magnifying Machine… hah… for speed instead of jumping…"

"Are you okay?" Serena asked. "It sounds like you got away from that awful Princess Allie?"

"That's right," Clemont agreed. "Or I think I did… hah… I left a robot duplicate of me behind, so she might not have noticed yet."

"You made a robot duplicate out of the things you had in your bag?" Ash asked, impressed. "Science is amazing!"

"Actually I made a robot duplicate out of my jumpsuit, a wig, a dress mannequin and a rudimentary chatbot, and the chatbot is what I made out of the things in my bag," Clemont said, sounding like he'd recovered his wind a bit. "And, uh, we should probably keep going in case she finds out…"

"It is nothing more than she deserves," Zygarde said, firmly. "She agreed that the Poké flute would be put up against Ash's Pikachu in a battle and then declared that she meant the loser would get the prize. That is not appropriate."

AN:

The Snorlax one was a very odd episode.