The second of the activities at the Summer Academy was to study a Water-type Pokémon, and Ash headed straight out to start studying the first Pokémon he found.

"Okay," he said, looking between a fresh pad of paper and some tips he'd found about how to write a report. "So before I can write it all up in a proper way, I need to gather the information, but I also need to write what I'm doing. So… sampling method, close my eyes and look into the water with Aura sight, study the first Water type Pokémon I see!"

Ash wrote that down, then looked into the water.

"Oh, hi!" he said, waving. "Hey, Magikarp, mind if I ask you a few questions?"

The Magikarp he'd spotted swam up to the surface of the water. "Sorry, were you talking to me?"

"Oh, was it hard to understand?" Ash replied, in Mew. "I remember hearing that sounds travel differently in water if they're higher or lower, does this help?"

Magikarp stared, mouth agape, but that was more or less normal for a Magikarp.

"So I'd like to do a study report on you," Ash went on. "Firstly, I'd like to do a sketch so that I can properly say I've identified what Pokémon you are… do you mind holding still for a bit? I'm not great at sketching and Mew hasn't got around to teaching me Sketch, so it might take a few tries."

Magikarp turned to Pikachu.

"Is he actually real?" the Water-type asked. "Or am I having a water-deprivation hallucination?"

"You're mostly submerged in water right now," Pikachu pointed out.

"Not if I'm hallucinating it," Magikarp replied.

"So Phione are similar to Manaphy, but not quite the same," Dawn said, thinking out loud as she wrote it down. "There's differences in the antennae, I think… oh, and do Phione learn Heart Swap?"

Phione shook her head.

"Okay, so that's another difference," Dawn noted down. "Thank you. What about Acid Armor, that move where you melt into water? Is that something that you can do, too, or is that one that Manaphy can learn and Phione can't?"

The Water-type demonstrated by melting into a puddle.

"That's great!" Dawn smiled. "Thanks. And, um… habitat… can you point at a map? Or should we do diet first, it is getting near lunchtime."

"I'm impressed," Professor Rowan said. "This is a good report. I know you got a lot of it from asking Magikarp, but you wrote down about the difference between what Magikarp said and what they showed you."

"That's important," Ash agreed. "I pay attention to it with Pokémon like Aten and Lokoko and Charizard, especially, because what a Pokémon says and how they say it are both important but they can be wrong about themselves too. It's not usually polite to say it, but it can affect what you do when training."

Rowan snorted. "Hmf. A bit touchy-feely for my taste, but it clearly works."

He put Ash's report to the side, and took the next one to look through.

It was a very big one, and he opened it at the first page.

Then flipped through to the second. Third. Fourth.

After that, he tipped the report on its side and flicked through every last page, before looking up at Whitney.

"Is this just photos of Keldeo looking cute?"

"It's a video diary, but I turned it into a photo diary," Whitney said proudly. "And really, any photo of Keldeo has Keldeo looking cute in it!"

There was a mrrrrn sound that echoed through the camp.

"Oh, hold on, I'll go sort that out," Ash volunteered. "Kyogre's ended up in a shallow bit. Palkia! Can you make that bit of the lake deeper?"

The third activity for the Summer Academy was a different one entirely, which was about dealing with wild Pokémon that could resent your intrusion into their home.

"Okay, I think I get it," Dawn said, reading the instructions. "So there's some ruins near here, and we have to make our way through the Summit Ruins at night and retrieve a Summit Medal – one medal per camper, and having the medal means that you've passed."

She thought about it. "Well, if it's about not disturbing Pokémon in the ruins… a first step would be to be polite, right?"

"Speaking as a Pokémon who used to inhabit the ruins of a house, rather than the ruins of a larger place…" Lokoko began. "I think it might depend quite heavily on how many Pokémon there are. If there's more than a few then it's somewhere Pokémon live, and it's like going into a forest or somewhere like that, but if there's just one or two then they might well be grateful for the company."

"I don't actually think it says you're not meant to disturb them," Buneary replied, picking up the instruction leaflet. "It says that you're meant to get the medal, and that it's about dealing with wild Pokémon, but it says nothing about not disturbing them. I think we could fight our way into the ruins and it'd be allowed… though it'd be rude, too."

"We could always get there by digging," Swinub suggested, then thought about that. "Hold on. Ruins… does that mean it's possible to dig there, or not? I'm not sure."

"I think it means that digging there would be difficult," Dawn told him. "And it might make the ruins collapse or something, which could be dangerous."

"You could say the same thing about fighting your way through," Pachirisu said. "Unless you relied on us Electric-types, because we wouldn't do as much damage as even a single Fighting-type blow."

An Aura Wheel formed on her wrist, then she dispelled it with a fizzle. "Not that I think we should do that, anyway."

"I think I'll avoid offering further advice," Lokoko decided. "My main idea at the moment is about being invisible."

"Hmm…" Shinx said, tail twitching, then shook her head. "No, I can't work out a way I could even begin being invisible, so I can't make you a rival about it."

"Or…" Nickit began, rising from where she'd been napping by Dawn's bed. "We could do it my way."

"What's your way?" Piplup asked, interested. "Does it involve some kind of heist situation? Because clearly I'd be the kingpin in that situation."

"I had you pegged more as a secret agent, actually," Nickit told him. "Possibly also a kung fu artist. No, actually I was thinking more in terms of doing this."

She rummaged in her tail, and pulled out a Summit Medal.

"Okay, how did you do that?" Shinx said, blinking. "That was seriously kind of impressive."

"Spectral Thief," Nickit replied. "It's kind of abstract, honestly, and I think that's the best way to come to terms with it."

"That is impressive," Dawn agreed. "The event doesn't actually start for another hour or so, though… can you get a negative time score?"

"I think we're going to find out," Shinx said.

The next day, Dawn found out how her friends had done.

Ash had just asked Giratina for help, which had meant he could take a path straight through the space the ruins took up without actually disturbing any of the Pokémon, while Whitney had teamed up with a girl she met near the entrance to the ruins.

The girl had turned out to be some kind of angry ghost, but Whitney's quite persuasive self-defence tactic had consisted of sending out her Miltank.

"And that's how my Scrappy Moo beat the ghost!" Whitney finished.

Miltank posed. "I should have kept the cape from Hearthome!"

After everything else, the final event at the Summer Academy was to do a Pokémon Triathlon.

This, as Professor Rowan explained, meant working with two different Pokémon – first to get to a checkpoint, then to ride on a rental Pokémon from that checkpoint through the woods and to a second checkpoint, and then to ride across the lake on a different to return to the start/finish line.

"Any questions?" Rowan asked.

Someone put up his hand.

"Why is it called a triathlon if there's only two Pokémon?" he asked.

"You're the third one," Rowan answered. "Any further questions?"

There weren't any, and once everyone was on the starting line there was a bang and everyone set off running.

"That's interesting," Rowan's assistant said, nodding as Ash shot out well ahead of the rest of the runners. "How do you think he did that this time?"

"Agility, I shouldn't wonder," Rowan muttered. "I'd complain that him running that fast means he's got an unfair advantage, but I'd be fooling myself… of course he's got an unfair advantage anyway."

Ash skidded to a halt at the first station, and looked around at all the Pokémon ready to take part.

"Do I get to choose?" he asked.

"I'm supposed to work it out randomly," the person running the station said. "Uh… random roll… there. Oh."

"Which one is it?" Ash said.

"The Bastiodon," that one of Professor Rowan's assistants said. "But, seriously, you could probably pick again…"

He was speaking to nobody, because Ash had already gone over to Bastiodon.

"Let's do this!" he said. "Ready?"

Bastiodon nodded, and Ash got up on his back.

"Then let's go!" Ash said, and the Steel-type lumbered off.

The second trainer arrived not long afterwards, a boy called Michael, and Professor Rowan's assistant did a random selection again.

"You've got… Darkrai, it looks like," the assistant said.

"Darkrai?" Michael said. "That's a neat Pokémon!"

He hurried over to the Dark-type, then paused. "Why are you wearing a moustache?"

Darkrai picked him up and began taking long strides down the race route.

"Thank you for giving me a ride," Dawn said, getting up on Glastrier's back. "It's much appreciated."

Glastrier tossed their head.

"I've mostly ridden on Dragonites, when I needed to ride anywhere before," Dawn added. "So… let me know if I'm doing it wrong and I'll do my best to change what I'm doing, okay?"

That seemed to be acceptable, and the Ice-type set off.

As they did, Dawn saw that Whitney had managed to end up partnered with Keldeo again, and smiled – at least, until the non-shiny Xerneas came past with Angie clinging onto her back.

Glastrier snorted out a cloud of icy mist, and began to accelerate.

Dawn just did her best to hold on.

"That's great!" Ash said. "You're really getting the hang of it!"

Bastiodon swerved around a tree, accelerated, then the ground he was running on turned out to actually be an artfully designed bit of patterned cloth over a pit. He went into it with a crash, and Ash jumped clear before sliding to a halt.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Ow," Bastiodon said, then shook his head. "I'm okay."

"Then we need to get out of this pit," Ash said, thinking. "Hmm… I know! Back up to that side of the pit, okay?"

Bastiodon did just that, and Ash got on.

"Now, Extremespeed!" Ash called. "Ram your way through that pit side on the way up! It's like a ramp with a wall on it!"

Bastiodon charged, and Ash ducked behind his head shield as the Steel-type went wham through the pit side and smashed his way onto level ground.

"Which way is it, again?" Whitney asked.

"Not sure, sorry," Keldeo replied. "Oh, um… this way?"

Whitney followed him.

"Well, I don't know if it's the right way," she said, after a few seconds. "But it does look nice."

"It does, doesn't it?" Keldeo smiled. "Having a nice walk is much better."

Jumping off Bastiodon as he skidded to a halt, Ash waved to the assistant at the second spot and was handed a token.

"Number… fifteen," he read. "I guess that's… that Wailmer there! Let's go!"

A net came flying out of the forest as he jumped on Wailmer's back, and Ash blocked it with a swish of Razor Wind as Wailmer got going.

"I wonder who put that there," he said, frowning. "That could have hurt someone."

Shrugging, Ash crouched down. "Hey, Wailmer! Want to learn this trick I taught a Snorlax once?"

"What kind of trick?" Wailmer asked.

"Well, I think it's a trick," Ash hedged. "Brock once told me that pulling a fast one was a trick, anyway… but it'll definitely help us out in this race!"

"All right!" someone said, just ahead of Dawn as she slipped down from Glastrier. "Palkia can warp space, right? Can you warp space so the goal is just over there?"

Palkia rumbled something, and a shimmering wormhole appeared in front of him.

"Oh, I guess I need to tell you where to go," she said. "Forward… forward… no, back a bit… wait, there! That must be it!"

She stepped through the wormhole, and fell into a pit trap.

A Victini snickered, then joined a trainer and Darkrai before they'd even reached the random-Pokemon-select station. The three of them set off with a shoom of displaced air, quickly following where what looked like a Wailmer was carrying what looked like Ash at what looked like far too high a speed.

Dawn was next to get to the Pokémon select, and got tag number eleven.

"Eleven," she said out loud.

Thin air squeaked next to her, and a Latias decloaked.

Dawn took one look at the headphones sitting half-on half-off her head and the portable games console she was messing with, and waved. "Hi, Latias!"

Latias gave her a claw-thumbs-up, then put the handheld away and floated down for Dawn to get on.

"Great work!" Ash said, as Wailmer slid up the beach at over a hundred miles an hour and kept going. "Turn left here… we're almost there…"

Then there was a blur of black and orange and white, and Darkrai and Victini shot across the finish line just before Ash and Wailmer arrived.

"Finally!" Darkrai said. "At last! Our latest scheme was the best yet! We've actually won a race!"

He looked at Ash. "And we beat that goody-two-shoes trainer, too!"

Ash looked at his shoes, in case they would give him a clue what that meant, and Victini sniggered.

"Aww," Wailmer sighed, bouncing. "Still, it was a really close finish!"

"You did great," Ash told her. "Well done."

Wailmer beamed, then Professor Rowan came over and shook Ash's hand.

"Congratulations on a third-place finish," he said.

Darkrai froze.

"Third place?" he asked. "But that would mean…"

"Who came first, then?" Ash asked, as Wailmer evolved to Wailord behind him.

"Hi!" Whitney said, Keldeo trotting behind her. "We had a lovely walk, and apparently we won? Professor Rowan said that he could only give us first place even though we hit all the way points and then crossed the finish line four times before anyone else crossed it once."

"Drat!" Darkrai said. "Drat, drat, and double drat! Foiled again!"

He turned to his teammate. "Victini, do something!"

Victini considered, then used Overheat and set Darkrai on fire.

"Triple drat," Darkrai grumbled, as Victini snickered.

AN:

Whitney has sort of accidentally ended up a bit of a horse girl.