"Bing," Arc said, getting Ash's attention halfway through a training session.
Leavanny lowered her Leaf Blade, and Dartrix stopped firing Leaf Blades at her, and they both looked over at Ash.
"What's up, Arc?" Ash asked.
"Lusamine has just raised an Ultra Guardians alert," Arc explained.
"Then let's go!" Ash declared. "Come on back, guys! Ibid, let's go with Thunder Bird one today, and Arc, get us to the Ultra Guardians base!"
Arc waited until Ibid brought Zekrom, then picked them up and put them down again in the Ultra Guardians base underneath the school. Ash started getting changed, so he was ready for the others to show up down the lifts, and Pikachu went bounding over to Garchomp.
"Hey," he said. "How's things?"
"Oh, you know, not bad," Garchomp replied. "Was halfway through a documentary on this place called Altomare, apparently there's supposed to be Legendary Pokémon there?"
"Literally on Ash's team," Pikachu told him. "Latias and Latios, they're twins. Same Moon Ball, too."
Garchomp couldn't decide whether to sigh in exasperation or giggle himself silly.
"Ultra Guardians, launch!" Lillie said, taking the lead today, and her Ride Altaria went whoosh as they took off through the waterfall.
Sophocles, Pikachu, Lana, Mallow, Kiawe and Ash followed, and the seven Ride Pokémon of varying sources shook out into formation behind Lillie as she checked her video communicator.
It was technically a phone, but Lusamine insisted that video communicator was a better name for it.
"What course do we need to take?" she asked.
"Turn one hundred and eighty degrees from your takeoff course," Lusamine advised.
Altaria turned their head, slightly confused, and chimed a question.
"I don't know," Lillie admitted. "But, one hundred and eighty degrees is just going right back the way we came, so let's go for it."
Altaria banked around, climbing as they went so they wouldn't run right into their fellow Ride Pokémon, and the other six followed.
"Now, continue on that course for two minutes," Lusamine said. "The target is in Hau'Oli City. I'll give course corrections when you're closer."
"Two minutes doesn't sound like a long time…" Lillie frowned.
It wasn't, and they touched down a couple of minutes later at a construction site.
"I think it would have been quicker to walk…" Sophocles admitted, looking back towards the school. "Still, thank you, Metang."
Metang made a buzzing noise.
"I can see something unusual here," Lillie reported. "It's like… a large number of bricks, held up on four stilts made out of a single column of bricks each. The bricks have eyes on one side."
"I see it," her mother confirmed. "Codename is UB: Assembly, at least until Ash works out how to talk with it."
"It's not doing anything aggressive at the moment," Mallow pointed out. "Which is good. It's just standing there."
"Where are we, anyway?" Kiawe said, looking around. "I don't think I've seen this construction site before, but I haven't been into this part of Hau'Oli recently."
"Let's see…" Lusamine replied, over his video-communicator. "It's… hold on… there we are. It's the construction site for the Viren Tower resort."
Kiawe blinked. "What? How is that guy still able to do this kind of thing?"
He frowned. "And, uh… can we just leave the Ultra Beast here? It's not doing anything except blocking construction, right?"
"That wouldn't be fair to the Ultra Beast," Mallow said.
Then they looked around at the sound of something going thwack against the ground.
"Okay, that's good, is that enough to work from, Arc?" Ash asked.
"Insufficient data," Arc replied.
"Then let's try one more," Ash said, and threw a Beast Ball. The Assembly opened up a hole in itself, and the Beast Ball went straight through the hole.
Arc went bing. "I believe we should have useful data now," they said.
"Yeah, I can see!" Ash agreed, crouching down to scoop up the Beast Ball again as it rolled back. "Ibid, can you get Unown for me?"
Once Unown had arrived, Ash had them use Double Team, and then Double Team but vertically, and between them the two moves resulted in a whole eight-by-eight matrix of Unowns.
"Now, close all the eyes!" Ash directed. "Great! Now… can you make some of the doubles turn around so the Assembly can't see them? That's brilliant… and, make this pattern like that, okay?"
Unown bobbed up and down, as some of their M-shapes turned around and others stayed facing the blocky Ultra Beast, then all their eyes opened at once.
"Now this one!" Ash said, holding Arc up for Unown to see, but most of his attention was on the side of the Ultra Beast. "And it's called… Stakataka! Great, now we know their name, we can ask the next question… this pattern?"
Communicating with Stakataka took a while, but eventually Ash and Unown and Arc between them were able to convey that they wanted to send Stakataka back to their home instead of keep them there.
By the time they'd done that, though, Viren had arrived along with a giant golden statue of himself that he wanted to put on top of Stakataka.
"I can see some problems with that!" Kiawe said. "Firstly, how come that guy's still not in prison?"
"Nothing's been proven!" Viren announced. "So shut it, kid!"
"Nothing has yet been proven in a court of law," Arc agreed. "You are, as yet, repeatedly credibly accused of various illegal activities. In addition your bail is getting preposterously large and the court date is next week."
Stakataka seemed baffled by all this.
"Secondly," Kiawe went on. "How is that a statue of you?"
He pointed. "It's way too, you know. Good looking."
"Hey!" Viren snarled. "This is a perfect representation of how I look!"
"You should probably not say that in public," Arc informed Viren.
Viren looked baffled. "What? Why not?"
"It could be considered an attempt to conceal your identity," Arc explained.
Viren said something extremely rude.
Then Nebby arrived.
"Ready, Ash!" he announced, landing with feline grace after having jumped over the construction site wall. "Let's go!"
"Right!" Ash agreed, slotting his Solgalium Z. "Let's send Stakataka home!"
They blew a hole in the universe underneath Stakataka, and the Ultra Beast flashed an eye-pattern of goodbye on all four vertical faces before dropping through.
So did Viren's statue.
"Oops," Nebby said. "Sorry, I think we shook the ground too much and the cables broke."
Viren seemed to be very cross about the whole thing.
Ash and Nebby did go through to see if they needed to retrieve the statue, since it had accidentally ended up in another universe and that might have been littering, but by the time they got there Stakataka and a few other Stakataka had either left with it or possibly eaten it. So that wasn't an option any more.
Then Lusamine contacted them again.
"As thanks for your work as part of the Ultra Guardians, I've decided that you should get a holiday," she said. "I can't give you a day off school, because that's not really how this works, but I searched my complete repertoire of options and found a solution."
"Hmm," Lillie frowned, thinking. "There's a few options I can think of…"
"So I've sorted out a spa day!" Lusamine added. "Because the beach episode is a tradition, but Alola is all beach-side anyway so this is the closest equivalent. I've got a booking set up for you all on the Pokémon Paradise Resort."
"That's not one of Viren's, is it?" Kiawe asked.
"No, actually, it's much more ethically managed," Lusamine replied. "It attracts customers from all over the world, but it limits the number who come so they don't overload their resources."
"That sounds like it'd be nice," Ash said. "How many is the booking for?"
"Well, I wasn't able to get enough for your whole roster, Ash," Lusamine apologized. "You can probably take your Alola team, though, including Nebby, because they've done so much for the Ultra Guardians… and the Ride Pokémon are coming along, as well, because they're part of the team. Though you can only really bring one Thunderbird as well as Garchomp."
"I'll let them work it out themselves," Ash decided. "That sounds like a great time, though!"
He frowned. "Actually, uh… Zekrom, it might not be good for you to be the one who does it? At least, not if there's going to be a pool with any other Pokémon in it at the same time. With Zapdos she could at least have a Pokémon with Lightningrod next to her, but Teravolt means that won't really work out."
"It is not ideal, I know," Zekrom sighed. "Still, there is an alternative location in northern Johto I've heard about. Much nicer for Electric types specifically, I'll have to go there."
When they reached the resort, Mallow had a surprise straight away.
"Wait – you're…" she began, then looked confused and nudged Lana. "That is Oranguru queueing in front of us, right?"
"That's an Oranguru," Lana replied. "I don't know the specific Oranguru you mean."
"He helps me out sometimes," Mallow explained. "He's got a sort of cafe in the woods. I've talked to him about my problems, and he's, you know… wise about it."
"I'm a regular," Oranguru supplied. "I'm glad to hear I've helped you out by listening."
"Oh, that's neat," Ash nodded. "I wondered if they let Pokémon book visits by themselves, but it sounds like they do!"
"How do they do that, I wonder…." Mallow said.
"Well, Oranguru could do it a different way, but I know there's a web design business in Kalos that's run by Pokémon," Ash mused. "Maybe Oranguru just does it by going to the local library and using the computers? Typing things out in emails doesn't need you to talk, and he can do all the rest of it."
"Very perceptive," Oranguru congratulated. "Ah, it seems we're at the front of the queue."
There were a lot of different options about the kinds of therapy to put the Pokémon through, most of which applied primarily to the Ride Pokémon, and then there was a separate play area which the Pokémon who weren't getting therapy could go to to play around in.
Since none of the therapy sessions were scheduled just yet, everyone ended up heading over to the play area to spend a bit of time.
"Ahh," Mallow's Steenee said, sinking into the hot spring water. "This is nice."
"What's it like for a Grass type to bask in hot mineral water, anyway?" Torracat replied, jumping into the water and setting herself on fire with a whoosh of bubbles. "It's like water, rock and fire all mixed together, so what does it do?"
"It's relaxing, is what it is," Steenee said, then evolved into Tsareena. "Oh, well, I didn't expect it to be quite that relaxing..."
"I'll give it a go!" Dartrix announced, perching on one of the trees over the hot springs, then spread his wings and visibly fell asleep.
"Wait," Lycanroc said, tilting their head. "Is he going to do what I think he's going to do?"
Nebby started giggling.
With strigiform dignity and a snoring noise, Dartrix face-planted into the water accompanied by a loud sploosh.
Salazzle, Togedemaru and Popplio held up score cards.
"I'll… just go and make sure he's okay," Torracat volunteered, taking a breath and then plunging under the water before swimming over to her teammate.
The actual spa treatments were almost as varied as the Pokémon.
Altaria and Dragonair went through a moisturising treatment, which turned out to mean a mud bath, and Dragonair was nervous about it until they gave it a try – whereupon the Dragon-type decided emphatically that they did enjoy it, and Lana chuckled before helping out.
And vowing to have a proper swim later, of course.
Sophocles treated Metang with a series of herbal oils, which presumably in some way helped, while Kiawe's Charizard and Silver both went through a comprehensive massage from their respective trainers.
Ash fortunately knew enough about how to care for a Charizard that he was able to help Kiawe work out exactly which muscle groups to rub, and Silver talked cheerfully to them all about how to Dive and how he'd got tips from Ash's Charizard.
As for Garchomp and Flygon…
"Come on, Flygon, I know you can do it!" Mallow cheered.
"Pika-kachu! Pika!" Pikachu cheered as well, this time for Garchomp, as the two Ground-and-Dragon-types swam back and forth as fast as they could.
It was called the Stress Course, but no matter what you thought of it it was strange to see two flying Ground types underwater. It was like they were trying to cover all the bases for where a Pokémon could go, though then again Ash's Charizard already had that one handled.
"Look, can someone explain to Poipole not to draw on the pool side?" Marowak asked. "It's very flattering, don't get me wrong, but I think someone's going to complain."
"Don't worry, I can handle this," Salazzle told her. "Hold on a second."
He went over to the cold spring, which had been a hot spring before Snowy went into it and would be a hot spring again in future, and came back with Snowy a moment later.
"Can you check if this little bit of the coloured stuff is freezable?" he requested.
"Sure," Snowy agreed, swirling up a Powder Snow, and exhaled it in a long stream of breath that turned Poipole's lightning-bolt into a frozen lightning-bolt.
"Great, thanks," Salazzle said, then drenched the whole area in Ganlon scent.
"Wait, are you going to-" Marowak asked, then there was a washoom as Salazzle touched it off and froze the lot.
"There," he declared, picking the whole painting up. "Job done. No complaints needed, Poipole not disappointed. Anyone for some scent therapy? Presumably if I surrounded you with Custap scent it'd be familiar or something."
AN:
I think Stakataka doesn't like things to be tacky.
And of course you've got to have a beach episode.