As they left the gym, someone pointed at Ash.

"Hey!" he said. "I challenge you to a battle! You've just won the Fairy Badge, so it'll be a great test of if I'm ready to get it!"

"It really won't," Serena replied. "It really won't."

"It won't?" the other trainer asked. "Why not?"

He flipped open a notebook. "I'm always happy to learn, so I'll take down your advice about it!"

"This is Ash Ketchum," Braixen answered.

"It is?" the other trainer replied. "Are you sure? I've already run into eight other people who looked like that, six of them with a Pikachu."

"I'm Ash Ketchum!" Ash confirmed.

"Oh, in that case, do you have any advice?" the other trainer asked. "My name's Sawyer, I'm doing the Pokémon League challenge!"

"I guess it depends on your Pokémon?" Ash replied, thinking. "But, more general stuff… you get on well with your Pokémon, right? If your Pokémon are good friends you're most of the way there! Then the rest of it is working out what your Pokémon are good at, and focusing on improving that – and developing other skills so that they're based on what the Pokémon is good at. Makes sense, right?"

"It does," Sawyer agreed. "Hmm. So my Treecko is quite acrobatic…?"

"And in that case you should look at ways to deal with Fire or Bug moves that are also acrobatic," Ash replied. "Like using Acrobatics, the move, that might be a good step for battling Bug types. That's just an idea, though, it's not the only option."

Sawyer wrote that down.

"And how did you win your battle against Valerie?" he asked. "There might be some great tips and tricks there I can use myself!"

"Well, Frogadier relied on misdirection because he's a ninja, but we might need to pick up another couple of good ninja moves," Ash pondered. "Or perhaps instead we could focus on the other side of being a ninja, which is massive powerful attacks!"

"Is that part of being a ninja?" Bonnie asked. "I thought ninja were sneaky."

"I believe I understand," Zygarde replied. "While ninja are sneaky, that means doing the unexpected. And you do not expect someone whose thing is being sneaky to launch out a powerful elemental attack."

"Wouldn't that mean you'd expect it, then?" Bonnie asked, scratching her head. "So it's what you would expect from a ninja, and it wouldn't be unexpected?"

"In that case, it is clearly what a ninja does," Zygarde pointed out. "So it's what a ninja would do."

"Oh, right!" Bonnie said. "Thanks!"

Sawyer examined his notebook, frowning.

He looked up. "I think I missed a line there, can you have that conversation again?"

"So, where next?" Clemont asked. "There's two Gyms left, and they're in Anistar and Snowbelle… which should mean we're going southeast from here. But that might mean we miss Aquacorde and Vaniville… scheduling is hard."

"Maybe you should build a machine to do it," Bonnie said.

"I could!" Clemont agreed. "I could build a Clemontic Scheduling Calendar With Region Mapping Integration!"

"Or we could just go in the direction of Anistar and decide when we're there," Serena suggested. "Actually, going that way would probably be a good idea because there's a Showcase at Dendemille… I think, anyway."

"In addition, we would go past Dahara City," Arc contributed. "Going to Dahara City is the first step on some of the quickest journeys anywhere, thanks to Hoopber."

"I think it's pronounced Hoopa," Ash corrected. "Hoopa might get mad if you said Hoopa's name differently."

"I mean Hoopber, the special service Hoopa has for getting you where you want to go," Arc clarified. "It is a development of Hoopa Holidays."

"Oh, that's neat," Ash said. "I didn't know Hoopa was doing that now… or, at least, I didn't know Hoopa was doing that on request now."

"I was going to say," Pikachu noted.

Meanwhile, Serena was thinking. "Hmm, so we don't know what the theme is for the Dendemille Showcase, not yet, but I think it's probably a good idea for Pancham to work on his long-ranged skills anyway. There's a real style he could get from that… Braixen, do you think you and Ponyta could help him practice? I've got a few ideas about how, but I don't want to start if you won't have the time for it."

"It's not like I'll be doing much of anything else," Braixen said. "Except trying to work out how to use Minimize, then reverse it, and only apply it to my wand twig."

"Maybe Latios can help you with the first bit of that," Ash suggested.

The next evening, Braixen was staring at her twig-wand as they sat around the campfire.

"So, is this part of me or not?" she asked. "That's what I'm trying to decide. Because, on one level, it's not, we picked it up after I evolved. But on the other, it is, because who'd ever see a Braixen without one of these and think it was normal? It'd be like seeing a shaved, um… shaved… Pokémon with long hair. Sorry, I drew a blank."

"A shaved Piloswine?" Ash asked.

"Exactly!" Braixen agreed. "But what I need is to be able to decide which it is, and then do both at the same time. It's a really tricky bit of double-thinking and I'm not used to it yet."

"I get what you mean," Serena said, nodding. "You want to use Minimize, and cancel it at the same time, so you don't change, and include the twig in cancelling Minimize but not in using Minimize in the first place."

She considered. "Would it help if I handled one of those for you? You're my familiar and that is a thing that goes both ways."

Then Hawlucha ran up with an egg.

"Hawlucha knocked this off a tree by mistake!" he said. "Hawlucha is worried that it might be hurt! Hawlucha is not an eggspert!"

"What do you think, Arc?" Ash asked. "Is the egg okay?"

"Egg watch," Arc replied. "This egg is about to hatch at any moment."

Four seconds later, it hatched into a Noibat.

"Hi!" the hatchling said. "My name's Noibat! Who are you?"

"Going down the list could take a while," Pikachu said, then jumped down from Ash's shoulder. "I'm Pikachu. Do you mind if I ask how sophisticated you are?"

"That's a big word and I don't know what it means, but I want to know," Noibat told him.

"It means sort of, complicated in a way that means there's extra meaning, and that shows you're thinking about it," Ash said. "Oh, and I'm Ash."

"Hmm," Pikachu said, as the rest of the group introduced themselves. "I'm not sure how Zoroark will rate that one, but it's probably going to lead to him still thinking of himself as one of the smartest Pokémon on hatching…"

"So what happens now?" Serena asked. "Do we know where Noibat's parents are?"

"If you do that would be a big surprise, because I don't," Noibat replied. "I don't remember them either. I was up there for a while before I hatched."

"Hawlucha is most sorry," Hawlucha declared. "I didn't realize you were up there."

"That's okay, I didn't realize you were down there, so we're even," Noibat said.

He tried flapping his wings to take off, and found it was much harder than it seemed.

"Ow," he added. "How do you fly? And why do I feel all tingly?"

"Maybe you're hungry?" Ash suggested. "You haven't eaten anything in your whole life."

"Oh, I think I should eaten something," Noibat agreed.

Noibat wasn't much of a fan of the stuffed tamatoes, though he did like both the apples and the sliced-apple tart they went into.

Once he was fed, though, Ash sent out Fletchinder to help Noibat learn about flying.

"And maybe it'd be good to have Charizard," he mused. "He did learn how to fly pretty quickly."

Ibid teleported out, then teleported back again five seconds later.

"Charizard said, and I quote, Sorry, I'm on a date," he reported.

"Oh, that's fine," Ash said. "Well done for coming back without taking the time to tell him what it's about, Charizard's happiness is important and we can always get his help later."

He turned his attention to Noibat. "Okay, so, there's several different kinds of flying, but for now the important one is probably hovering. That's easy to get wrong because you really do have to think about how your wings work – what you want is to be lifting your wings up so they don't push on the air, then moving them down so they do push on the air. Otherwise either you don't go anywhere or you push yourself down every time you lift your wings up."

Noibat nodded, then tilted his head.

"How do you do that?" he asked. "Make your wings not push on the air, I mean?"

"The way I do it is like this," Fletchinder said, then blurred into invisibility.

"...sorry, I didn't get that," Noibat apologized. "Can you do it again? And this time I can use Supersonic?"

His ears began to hum slightly, and Fletchinder reappeared before repeating the process.

Noibat promptly copied him, and flew in an up-and-over arc which led to him going bonk on the ground.

"Ow," he said, sounding cheerful enough.

Ash had been watching closely, and he snapped his fingers.

"Got it!" he said. "It's about wing shape, you're copying Fletchinder too closely and he's got a different wing shape. Hold on a minute please."

Noibat rolled back upright, and watched curiously as Ash knelt down and reached into his own shadow. A mug came out, and Ash took a quick drink before changing into a Noibat.

"Very smooth," Pikachu complimented his trainer. "I barely noticed the Absol stage there."

"Thanks!" Ash replied. "Okay, so you want your wings to be a bit more like this…"

Noibat picked up how to fly quite quickly, which was good, and then asked what he could learn next.

"Oh, can I have a go?" Braixen asked.

"A go?" Noibat repeated. "What do you mean?"

"She means that she's going to try and use sympathetic magic theories to work out what you'd do well with," Serena clarified. "See, a lot of Ash's Pokémon – and a lot of the Pokémon his friends have, too, from what I know – are good at a specific kind of thing, and focusing on that kind of thing makes it easier to learn things."

"Right," Braixen agreed. "Hmm, so you can fly, and you're cheerful, and obviously you're a bat… hmm…"

She tapped her wand against her chin, then brightened. "What about if you learn to make other sounds? Sounds that other Pokémon can hear, like Heal Bell?"

"Oh, yeah, that could work," Ash agreed.

"Heal Bell," Noibat repeated. "Does that heal other Pokémon?"

"It heals the user and other Pokémon," Ash nodded. "It gets rid of anything making them asleep, or paralyzed, or things like that, but it doesn't actually get rid of damage. Other moves can do that though."

"Then maybe I should learn to do those moves too!" Noibat said. "And play music to help Pokémon in battles!"

"You're not allowed to help in a battle unless you're actually taking part," Clemont warned. "Not in an official one, anyway, and it's rude in a friendly battle. It's because otherwise it's not fair."

"Oh," Noibat replied, looking upset for about half a second. "But I could still do it the rest of the time? To make people feel better? And… waait!"

He fluttered his wings excitedly. "Wait, wait! What about if I'm in the battle? I could do it to help myself out then, right?"

"I… suppose you could," Clemont agreed. "How would that work, though?"

"I can see how that would work!" Ash said. "So if Noibat is using Lucky Chant, it keeps him safe from attacks, because it works on teammates and he'd be his own teammate."

"And, thinking about it, nothing actually requires a Pokémon to only be able to play one kind of music at a time," Braixen mused. "Couldn't he be doing that at the same time as also using attacks?"

"This is how it starts, isn't it?" Luxray sighed. "It's like watching a car drive down the road with increasing speed, and you can already see it's not quite touching the ground…"

Half an hour later, Noibat was listening to Silver.

"I don't actually know how it works," the Flying-type admitted. "Dad's involved, and the magic stones around Shamouti are involved, but he's never actually had to have it done. But the Guardian's Song is supposed to make the climate storms vanish, and turn it into a nice day at the same time as taming the Beast of the Sea and stopping it from going wrong elsewhere in the world."

"So music can even control the weather," Noibat gasped. "That must be really hard, but it's doing it over a really big area, so if it was going on over a smaller area then it'd be easier so long as you knew the right music…"

He did an excited flip, tumbled over on the ground because he didn't quite get the landing right, and sprang to his feet with undiminished enthusiasm. "This is going to be a lot of fun!"

"So, you're coming with us?" Dedenne asked. "Anyone in particular?"

"Probably Ash," Noibat answered. "And of course!"

AN:

There's a lot you can do with an expanded twig. A wizard's staff, a broomstick, a boomstick (this is a Fire-type...)