"Here we are," Clemont said, with a sigh. "Back in Lumiose City. It's nice to be back."
"Yeah, it is!" Bonnie agreed. "Tyrunt, you haven't seen this place before – this is where we live!"
"Wow," Tyrunt said, eyes glittering as he looked around. "Who lives in the giant tower? Is it a princess?"
Bonnie turned a bit red.
"That's actually Lumiose Gym," Clemont told him. "Which is where Bonnie and I live, so… yes, sort of!"
"What do you mean, sort of?" Bonnie complained.
As Clemont tried to find a way to defend his choice of words, Ash checked Arc. "So, uh… there isn't a specific place where the League is held every year, right?"
"Correct," Arc confirmed. "The announcement should be shortly. Fortunately, it is hard to conceal something like an entire stadium being built, and I was quite sure this was the place the League would be held even before I received a push notification from my future self confirming that."
"Well, if they're still building the stadium… that means there's time to get in some training," Ash decided. "I wonder who we'll see at the Pokémon League – maybe Tierno and Sawyer? And Alain, too, of course…"
Arc turned out to be correct, not that anyone had expected anything else, and before long the Opening Ceremony rolled around – and, continuing a tradition which had sort of just happened even without any direct continuity, Serena, Bonnie and Clemont were invited to join the Elite Four in their viewing box.
"Of course, not all of us are here, you understand," Wilkstrom admitted. "You see, Malva's out there as a roving reporter. It's… hm."
He tapped his chin, which went clank. "Do you consider it to be a hobby if it's the thing you do most of the year? Or is being an Elite Four member the hobby?"
"It's what she does," Serena suggested.
"That should do," Wilkstrom agreed. "Yes, it's what she does, so you might not even meet her for the whole League. I hope you don't mind."
"Come on in, make yourselves at home," Siebold invited. "There's a lot of space in here, I was worried they might have overdone it, but apparently it's just easier to completely fill out the space between the stadium view and the wall on this side… I don't understand it myself."
"It's structural support for the big display on this side," Wilkstrom explained.
"Thank you for having us," Clemont said. "Oh! That reminds me, I should show you my latest piece of work. I think it's finally working."
He took the Translation Gear out of his bag and put it on a table, then activated it.
"What's that?" Drasna asked, looking over from watching the preparations for the opening ceremony. "I've heard about your reputation."
"No, no, I ironed out all the potentially explosive problems months ago," Clemont assured her. "This is the Translation Gear, it's finely tuned to make sure humans can understand their Pokémon even without the aid of magic or psychic powers."
Serena sent out her Pokémon, one by one, and they found seats which had a good view of the arena.
"Though magic's also a solution that can work, of course," Braixen contributed, doing a curtsey. "It's lovely to meet you."
"La magie reste tout de même une option viable," the Translation Gear said. "Enchantée."
"Wow, that is impressive," Drasna said. "Well done, Clemont, I had my doubts because of your reputation but that's astonishing."
"I agree," Siebold nodded. "That will make discussions much easier."
"Are you sure that's working?" Ponyta asked. "I didn't understand what it said at all."
"Huh?" Litleo replied. "No, made sense to me."
Ponyta looked troubled, especially as the Translation Gear began translating what she'd said, but then the opening ceremony was starting and that drew their attention.
"Good afternoon to everyone in Kalos," Malva said, looking into the camera. "I'm at the League Conference here in Lumiose City, and as part of our coverage I'm going to be interviewing some of the trainers taking part – from first-timers and rising stars through to the trainers with the longest competitive battle records taking part."
She turned to her side. "First on the list is Ash Ketchum. Ash, you've been to several Pokémon League Conferences now, what do you think of the Lumiose City one?"
"The stadium's great!" Ash replied. "I guess it is brand new, but that doesn't change that it's a good stadium. And the rules are neat, too, because of the bit about changing the battlefield in the middle of matches. It means that you have to be good on lots of different battlefields… that's something that you don't always get challenged on."
"It sounds like you've had experience at that before, then?" Malva checked, and Ash nodded.
"Yeah, it varies… some Leagues just use grass for the whole tournament, which is fair, so I get it, but it's more interesting to have to deal with other challenges as well. There's some Pokémon that do a lot better or worse if they have somewhere to hide, and so long as it's random it's not biased."
"I see," Malva said. "Now, Ash, you've actually won at least two Pokémon Leagues in the past, and I notice you haven't taken up the position as Champion of any of them. Why is that?"
"It's not really something my Pokémon or I want to do," Ash replied.
"Yeah, and he couldn't sit still long enough," Pikachu added.
"Pikachu's right," Ash laughed. "I couldn't sit still long enough. It's way too important to me to be out meeting new Pokémon and finding out about different regions… even if I did stay somewhere for months, I'd just want to move on again eventually. It's how I am."
He shrugged, and Malva nodded.
"Well, since it's come up, I have to ask," she said. "It's not just a rumour that you can understand Pokémon?"
Somehow after that the interview got sidetracked into Ash explaining how you said Pikachu's name in four different dialects.
Most of the way through his first round battle, Trevor winced as his Aerodactyl went crash into the ground.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "That looked painful."
"Daaact," Aerodactyl cawed, rolling over and pushing herself upright with her wings, then shook her head out.
"If you can still fight, go ahead, but don't strain yourself," Trevor warned.
"Aerro!" Aerodactyl insisted.
Trevor looked from her to the Mega Charizard X hovering overhead, willing to wait instead of hitting Aerodactyl while she was down, and clenched his fist before nodding.
"Okay," he said. "I won't disagree. Now… Hyper Beam!"
Aerodactyl let out a jet of reddish light as she took off, which Alain's Mega Charizard nimbly dodged away from, and the Dragon-type counterattacked with a powerful Flamethrower that concealed his position – before slamming a Thunder Punch into Aerodactyl.
That was it for her, and she fell back to the ground for the last time.
Trevor recalled her, then switched to his last Pokéball.
"Let's do this, Charizard," he said, sending out his starter, and Mega-Evolved him in the same moment – resulting in an explosion of light as Mega Charizard Y rose into the air, ready to battle against Alain's Mega Charizard X.
"Dragon Breath!" Trevor ordered.
"Steel Wing!" Alain retaliated.
"It's sort of weird, seeing two different Mega-Evolutions of the same Pokémon at the same time," Serena said. "Especially battling one another. I'm used to the idea of there being more than one Rhyhorn in the world, and with Absols there's only Mega Absols, but… it's like when Ash battled Alain that one time, there were two Charizards doing different things then as well."
"Ash has a Charizardite Y?" Drasna asked. "That's interesting. I think I've seen him use a Charizardite X in his old battles."
"Well, he does have one, I think," Clemont replied. "But that's not what she meant. It's… something else."
"Oh, the Bond Phenomenon," Diantha realized. "Professor Sycamore's no closer to working out what on earth that is, by the way, so if you've got any ideas then he'd probably appreciate it."
"I've tried taking notes on how strong friendships have to be to cause it, but there's no connection I can easily work out," Ponyta supplied. "There's probably some other variable we're just not seeing. You know, like if you were trying to work out how the photoelectric effect worked without knowing about electrons, or… colours."
Diantha listened to the translation.
"No," she decided. "I don't know."
"Hmm," Ponyta said, getting her notebook out. "Note to self: come up with less elaborate examples."
"You could try using an analogy that involves ice cream," Sylveon suggested. "Ice cream is nice and sweet."
Ponyta tapped her hoof against the floor.
"Perhaps," she said.
"I've got one," Chespin said, waving her paw. "I've got one! It's like if you were trying to work out why some foods made you fatter, if you'd never heard of the calorie!"
They considered that.
"Well, it does involve ice cream," Sylveon said. "So there's that."
"I wonder if Malva is going to show up here at some point," Wilkstrom pondered. "I don't know what she'd think of a lot of these conversations, but is she really going to spend all her time doing interviews?"
"There's a lot of interviews to do," Drasna shrugged. "There's over sixty trainers in the tournament."
She winced. "Ouch, that one looked painful."
"So, what do you think about that battle?" Malva asked Alain. "It's rare that we get to see two of the same Pokémon battling at that kind of intensity."
"It was a good challenge," Alain declared, patting his now-reverted Charizard on the back. "It's always an experience to battle other strong Mega-Evolved Pokémon."
"Yes, I understand you have quite a reputation for battling Mega Evolved Pokémon," Malva agreed. "I've even heard of you travelling all the way to Hoenn for a special battle against Steven Stone, is that right?"
"That's not all I did there, but yes," Alain agreed, as Charizard let out a happy rumble and leaned into his hand. "To me, battling the strongest Pokémon is the best way to test yourself – how else are Charizard and I to know that we're getting as strong as we can be?"
"Well, I'm not here to argue," Malva said. "That's an interesting philosophy, Alain. Is that part of why you've only used your Charizard so far?"
"It's part of it, yes," Alain nodded. "I do have a whole team, but Charizard is definitely my focus."
"That makes your style very different from one of the other trainers here at the Lumiose Conference," Malva went on. "In fact, I think I'd be right in saying that the possibility of the two of you having a battle would be right up there with the things everyone's looking forward to out of this year's conference. What do you think about Ash Ketchum?"
"I've battled him before, and he's quite an enigma," Alain said. "He definitely uses his Pokémon in a different way to me, you're right, and I hope to battle him here to see which of us is stronger when we go all-out."
Malva nodded along. "And what do you think about his latest battle?"
"I actually didn't see it," Alain apologized.
"Mostly people are talking about what his tiny Giratina did," Malva explained. "They hid inside the fluff of a Mega Altaria so that the other Pokémon couldn't target them with Fairy attacks, then… actually, I'm not sure what move it was, but it soaked the Mega Altaria's fluff so much that it couldn't fly any more."
Alain paused mid-way through giving his Charizard a scratch.
"I'm… not sure I would have thought of that," he admitted.
AN:
Yes, the Translation Gear just translates into Ash's-Clefairy.