"Well, here's my house," Kukui said, opening the door and standing back. "What do you think?"

"It's really different to how houses are built in Kanto!" Ash replied, looking around. "So, it's all one big room?"

"That's right," Kukui agreed. "The kitchen's over there, and… well, you can see most of the rest, right?"

"Yeah," Ash agreed.

Then a Rockruff came skiding around the corner.

"Hi!" they said. "You're back! Who's this?"

"I'm Ash!" Ash introduced himself. "Is this one of your Pokémon, Professor?"

"No, Rockruff is a wild Pokémon, but they stay around here," Kukui explained. "Most nights, anyway."

"Oh, so a bit like Zygarde, then," Ash decided.

"That's right," Kukui agreed.

Rockruff was looking puzzled. "What's a Zygarde?"

"I am," Zygarde explained. "It is probably best to consider me one of Ash's Pokémon by association."

They inspected the chairs, then jumped up on one.

"Zygarde used Dibs," Ibid reported.

"What's dibs?" Rockruff said. "Is that a move? And who said that?"

"Dibs means you're being the first to ask for something, so you get priority over it," Ash told the Rock-type. "It's not a move, it's just a thing that people do kind of… half as a joke and half because it's a way of deciding who gets something."

Now Rockruff looked very confused.

"You understood me?" they asked.

"Yeah!" Ash agreed. "Mew taught me how to listen properly, you know, like Pokémon know how to do! I guess it must be a bit harder than I thought, because of how long it takes people to get it, but I didn't know how hard it was when I learned and maybe that helped. Oh, yeah, and this is Ibid, he's the one who mentioned dibs."

Rockruff inspected the red cube Ash put down, sniffing it, then jumped back as Ibid used Transform and turned into a miniature Rockruff.

"Rockruff," he said. "The Puppy Pokémon. Other examples of Puppy Pokémon include Lillipup, Growlithe, Yamper and Fidough. This Rockruff uses gender neutral pronouns."

"Oh!" Professor Kukui gasped. "Sorry, Rockruff, I didn't know."

"Well, uh…" Rockruff tried, tail flicking as they tried to work out what to say. "I mean… apology accepted?"

"Rockruff says apology accepted," Ash relayed, and Kukui sighed in relief.

"That's good to know," he said. "I'd hate to offend a Pokémon so much without realizing, and even more to not fix it as soon as I knew. Thank you, Rockruff."

He clapped his hands. "Now, let's get dinner sorted out. Can you help out, Ash?"

While Ash was helping Kukui cook, Pikachu held out a paw to Rockruff.

"Nice to meet you," he said. "You'll probably meet Ash's whole team eventually, so, word of warning… some of us can be a bit weird. If you're overwhelmed or whatever just say, though."

"Thanks," Rockruff decided. "That's nice to know."

They tilted their head a bit. "How weird is a bit weird?"

"Um," Pikachu began, thinking. "Well. A good starting point is probably that the first Pokémon Ash caught as a trainer was a Mew in disguise as a Caterpie. Then he caught her again as a Mankey, again as something she called a Dracozolt, and after that it all gets a bit complicated."

He shrugged. "Then you've got his childhood friends, which, you'll probably meet most of them sooner or later. Just, watch out in case one of them is actually Zoroark, he likes pulling that kind of thing."

"Is Mew the strangest?" Rockruff asked. "Because that sounds a lot more than a bit weird!"

"Depends how you count, really…" Pikachu said, half to himself. "Arc might be. Actually, come to think of it…"

He did a half circle. "Marshadow, Ibid, me… against Zygarde, Arc, and you… yeah, I think half the Pokémon in the room right now are non-binary. Neat coincidence. Of course, it wouldn't work if Ash was a Pokémon today."

"A what?"

"This is nice!" Ash announced. "What's it called?"

"Well, technically it's called a plate lunch, but we're having it at dinner," Kukui explained. "So you could say it's a decreased priority lunch, with an Avalanche of flavours!"

"Interesting," Arc said. "I do not think there is a lunch element, but I am missing my complete set of plates. May I have some?"

"Sure," Ash said, sectioning off a bit.

There was a burst of golden light as Arc swapped into Arceus Mode, took a bite, then changed to Steel Form.

"Thank you," they declared, swapping back to Phone Mode.

"It's always important to have the complete set of options, just to try them out," Kukui voiced, as Rockruff scrubbed their eyes and tried to work out if they'd just seen what they'd seen. "You know, I was going to sort out a new Pokédex for you but I really don't think you'll need one."

"No, Ibid does most of my Pokédex stuff, and Arc handles the rest," Ash agreed, then looked around at a knocking sound. "Huh?"

There was an orange and black face with a high orange crest looking through the back window.

"Is that…" Kukui began. "Tapu Koko? I swear that's what Tapu Koko is supposed to look like."

Then the Tapu drew back an arm and threw something through the window, before running off.

"Hey!" Rockruff yipped. "Rude!"

Pikachu caught the flying object, and Arc's ring glowed as all the glass froze in mid-air. Then the glass all flowed back together into the window pane, resealing with a flash of golden light, and Arc dimmed again.

"Thanks!" Ash told them. "What's this, Professor?"

He took the bracelet from Pikachu and held it up.

"That looks like a Z-ring to me," Kukui declared. "And it's got a Z-crystal in it already. Well, normally people get them by passing the trials, but that was much more direct! I'm Thunder-Shocked!"

"All right, class!" Ash said, at school the next day. "Today we're going to be learning about the weather! Everyone to the railing!"

He waved in the direction of the open-air classroom wall, which had an overhang in case it rained, then vaulted over it. "Come on!"

Once everyone had come to the railing, with expressions ranging from the enthusiastic to the puzzled to the worried, Ash waved up at the sky.

"What kind of weather is this?" he asked.

After a moment, Kiawe put up his hand.

"It's… well, it's sunny, but I don't know if it counts as Sunny Day," he admitted. "I never really thought about it before."

"Yeah, there's a kind of weather we don't normally think about because it's just the normal one," Ash agreed. "It's sometimes called clear skies, I think, but the important bit is that it doesn't have any special effect. You can usually tell because there's at least some clouds in the sky, like there are here, or because the sunlight doesn't feel way too hot."

Then he waved in the direction of the sea. "But natural weather sort of bounces back and forth a bit! That's because when it's sunny, that makes water evaporate, like a puddle dries up faster in the sun, and that water rises into the air, and eventually it gets cold enough up there that it turns into clouds and finally rain! That's called the water cycle."

He sent out Zapdos. "But if we want to see more kinds of weather without having to wait too long, we need some help! This is Zapdos, I first met her when I was seven, we're great friends!"

"Did you say seven?" Mallow asked. "Really?"

"Zaaap," Zapdos nodded, then took off with a sweep of her yellow-and-black wings to hover just overhead.

"Let's get a look at how the water cycle works, first," Ash decided. "Pikachu, Surf!"

Pikachu formed a surfboard out of water, took it in both paws, and smashed it into the ground.

"So now we've got a puddle!" Ash said. "Sunny Day, Zapdos!"

Zapdos did as instructed, making the sun blaze brighter over that place in particular, and little wisps of mist came off it.

"Normally it takes hours for this to happen, so the water in the air isn't really visible," Ash clarified. "It's like how you can dissolve a bit of sugar in water and you can't see it, but once there's enough sugar in there you can see some because it won't fit… and it rises up until it gets cold enough, and suddenly it makes clouds!"

Zapdos made clouds, each about a foot across and hovering neatly in the air not much above the head height of the students.

"And then raindrops get bigger and bigger inside them until they fall out as rain, and make more puddles," Ash concluded. "Then there's hail and snowstorms, which are really just cold rain, and there's sandstorms which happen because you get wind in a place where it's sandy, but that's enough about how natural weather happens. Let's look at the kind of variety you can get in weather made by Pokémon… Zapdos, start us off with a Storm Cell!"

This time, Zapdos swept her wing across, and a curl of dark, sooty mist wafted off her feathers. It formed a black layer that sparked with internal lightning bolts, and Ash pointed.

"This is a lot like Rain Dance, but instead of being full of water it's full of electrical energy," he explained. "It doesn't have big enough droplets to fall like rain, but instead they all fizz around and charge each other up and so there's enough to make really big thunderbolts… it's like a thunderstorm, but without the rain bit, so it's more of a lightning storm."

Sophocles held his hand up.

"How did she make that?" he asked. "I haven't heard of Storm Cell before."

"It's like how a lot of Pokémon moves are equivalents of one another in different types," Ash said. "This is just an electric-type weather move. Like this one – Zapdos, show us some Pollen Rain!"

This time the air around Ash filled with a kind of pink-yellow haze.

"This is really bad for hayfever, if you've got it," Ash said. "It's Grass-type! And that's interesting, isn't it, because Sunny Day and Rain Dance help some Grass types – which just goes to show that it's not as simple as thinking that some Pokémon are helped by weather that fits their Type. It's a lot more complicated than that… and even though it makes Grass types stronger, it's also kind of dangerous!"

Zapdos compacted the Pollen Rain into a Weather Ball, then used Sunny Day and set the pollen-ball on fire.

"Is everyone following so far?" Ash checked.

"No, but keep going please," Lillie requested. "This is amazing!"

"Actually, maybe I should talk about weather abilities!" Ash decided. "First there's the ones like Leaf Guard!"

He sent out Meganium, who waved.

"Meganium's got Leaf Guard, which means that she can't be affected by status conditions so long as it's sunny," he said. "That includes being set on fire! Then there's abilities like Snow Warning or Drought which make the weather be a certain way, and finally there's abilities like Cloud Nine or Air Lock which stop weather from happening at all and turn it back to clear skies… let's demonstrate that, okay? Zapdos, let's see some really cool weather!"

Zapdos spread her wings dramatically, and used six weather moves at once. The green fire of Dracorocco sparked off every available surface, a Sandstorm whirled in the background, it started to rain honey, strong winds seethed in a neat little bundle, dense fog formed near the ground and darkness began to drift down like snow.

Then Rayquaza peeked out of Ash's jacket, and the weather all stopped at once.

"Well done, Rayquaza!" Ash said. "Do you want to meet everyone?"

Rayquaza gave it serious thought, then nodded, and floated out from under Ash's jacket. He put the jacket down, and began going along the row of students. "That's Mallow, there…"

"In my old class, I never got Legendaries visiting," Kukui said.

He shrugged. "This is better though."

AN:

Weather is an important topic.