Deciding that it was probably up to Riolu whose Pokémon they became, like it was up to Happiny (who still hadn't decided), the friends thanked Riley for his kindness and then flew to Chocovine Town – which was where they'd been going in the first place.

There was a Contest there, and Dawn entered Nickit in the Appeal round along with Buneary in the Battle Round. At her urging, Whitney entered as well, and after some consideration picked Rapidash to go out and perform an Appeal.

"And here comes Whitney's Pokémon," Mr. Contesta said. "Let's see what they plan to do."

"We've seen Whitney take part in the Wallace Cup," Sukizo pointed out. "And – ah, a Galarian Rapidash! I believe we even saw this Rapidash, though that was a while ago. So perhaps they've picked up a remarkable new trick?"

"Minimize!" Whitney called, and Rapidash's horn lit up with a flash of Psychic energy. The Unique Horn Pokémon shrank down until it was only about as tall as Whitney's waist, then used Mystical Fire to conjure a pair of flaming wings that spread at Whitney's command.

Following up from that, the Fairy-type took off – flame wings beating and hooves glowing with every hoof-step as he half-walked on air and half-flew by benefit of his wings.

Whitney signalled, then held up her hands, and Rapidash landed with his hind hooves neatly resting on Whitney's palms. He reared up, pawing at the air, then took off again and cancelled the Minimize.

Now back to full size and with his wings beating in great flaming sweeps, sweeps which sent sparks and embers flying but which didn't set the grass alight, he circled the arena and came galloping past Whitney. She stretched out her hand as he came past again, this time from behind her, and in a complicated move that took only a couple of seconds she swung up under his body to end up standing on his back between the flaming wings.

"My word!" Mr. Contesta gasped. "What just happened?"

"I don't think that…" Nurse Joy began, then leaned forwards. "Hold on. I think I see… that must have been Rapidash using psychic powers again. It's easy to forget with all that fire Rapidash is using, but Galar ones are Fairy-Psychic."

"That must be it, yes," Sukizo agreed. "An excellent display of both performance and trust, then!"

"Wow!" Whitney said, while they waited for the Battle Round to begin. "That was a lot of fun! I can see why you enjoy it, Dawn!"

She patted Rapidash on the back. "And you did great too – that quick-mount move went perfectly!"

Rapidash preened, tossing his head to make his mane flow around him.

"It looked it," Dawn said. "I'm quite pleased with Nickit's work, as well."

"I didn't see?" Whitney admitted. "What did she do?"

"I borrowed one of Piplup's old routines," Nickit explained. "All of it."

She shook her fur out. "I did get a bit damp, obviously, but it was worth it! I don't think they expected me to use Whirlpool. Or Whirlwind."

"Or Peck," Dawn pointed out. "That too."

The Dark-type swung her tail around in front of her, and wrung it out like a towel. "There we go… unfortunately I can't just steal the water out of my own tail."

"I wonder how often one of the Contest Pokémon we've seen is actually a Zorua," Ash said, watching the Battle Round in the audience.

"You don't think that it might be never?" Pikachu said, then rethought. "Sorry, stupid question."

"No, it does help," Ash admitted. "Maybe they're a Latios instead or something."

"I think if there's a Latios in hiding as another Pokémon, revealing that they really are a Latios would be the kind of thing worth revealing as part of the Contest," Happiny said, nodding. "So they'd have to be playing the long game for some reason."

"Mmm," Purrloin yawned. "Playing the long game sounds fun, but I don't think I'd have the patience for it… plus, four different Types of attack could give me away as not being what I was pretending to be. Unless I was pretending to be a Ghost, a Fairy type, or something that can ignore Electric attacks, or all three."

"More than four Types," Pikachu pointed out. "Actually, those four Types are the only ones which wouldn't burst your Illusion, but it'd be a giveaway anyway that they didn't work."

"Oh, good point," Purrloin said. "Of course, the smart play is probably to pretend to be a Zorua pretending to be something vulnerable to electricity, and then take the hit and let it supposedly disrupt my illusion."

She yawned again. "But usually by that point it's more fun to start causing chaos."

"Chatot!" Whitney called, out on the arena floor. "Turn it up past the end of the dial!"

There was a flash, and Chatot Mega Evolved.

Buneary spun in a balletic twirl and threw a Hammer Arm attack at Mega Chatot, and the Flying-type retaliated with a resonant blast of sound that rung in the air and carried the word NOPE with it. It stopped the hammer in mid-air, and Mega Chatot followed up with a shredding electrical-guitar chord as he used Overdrive.

Dawn's Buneary backflipped, Bouncing through the air, and ice swirled around her mouth and her paws. She hit the ground with a flash of blue light that froze it under her, but by the time she was following up Mega Chatot had already begun singing a tune that somehow sounded like walking through an ancient stone temple as the sun set behind nearby hills.

"I don't even know what move that is," the announcer admitted. "But it's quite impressive!"

"Relic Song?" Happiny suggested.

"Probably!" Ash agreed. "I think I heard Mew use it once."

Whitney ended up winning the Contest, earning herself a Ribbon, and she put little Ribbon stickers on the Pokéballs of both Pokémon who had been involved with winning it.

"There you go!" she said, then looked up at Dawn. "That was okay, right? I know you're the Coordinator here…"

"It's fine," Dawn assured her. "It's not like there aren't other Contests, and honestly it's great to battle against people who know how to keep up… it's a good way to make sure I'm putting in the effort, I guess."

On the way north from Chocovine towards Snowpoint, the friends took a road which – predictably – involved going over some snowy mountains.

"Based on the information I have available, this is going to be a regular thing," Zygarde said, snuggling deeper under the blanket inside Ash's backpack and firmly in Core mode. "The name Snowpoint implies cold weather. The latitude is high and so is the topography."

"You'll be fine," Chimchar told him, also in Ash's bag. "I'll keep you warm… I'm just glad my tail's wrapped in that nice flameproof fabric."

"At least Froslass is helping the rest of us stay warm," Dawn said. "Thanks, Froslass."

"It's a bit odd for an Ice type to be heating things up, but that is about fifty percent of my fighting style," Froslass agreed, gliding along with the Fire-type version of an Icy Wind hissing in her hands.

Ten minutes later, they were all running for the nearest shelter.

"I don't understand what's going wrong," Rayquaza said, over the sound of the hail. "I'm trying to use Air Lock and it's not working… do you think I need to Mega Evolve?"

She shook her head. "Or Revert? If I were Primal Groudon then I'd be able to make it very very sunny?"

"Maybe there's a Pokémon that can do something like Desolate Land, only for snow?" Ash suggested. "Or maybe we should just get indoors until the hail stops!"

They finally reached the cabin, and hurried inside.

"Visitors?" a Froslass asked, looking up. "How helpful."

"Is this yours?" Ash said. "Oh, uh, if you don't want us here then we can leave?"

He shrugged. "I thought it'd be better to offer?"

"I am glad you are here," Froslass replied.

Ash's Froslass was looking around in puzzlement. "Something doesn't seem right…"

"Ah, interesting," the wild Froslass said. "But please, have some soup."

She brought out a bowl of steaming soup, and Happiny took it. The Normal-type wobbled and sat down hard, and Ash stood up.

"Okay, something's wrong!" he said. "Happiny is way stronger than that!"

He shaded his eyes. "Wait, is this an illusion?"

"How on earth did you-" the wild Froslass began, but then Ash's Froslass was right in front of her.

"Froslass can do illusions?" she asked. "How come I didn't know that? Did I miss a class about it? Can you show me how to do it?"

"I – that is-" the wild Pokémon began. "It's not – that's not the point-"

"Oh, hold on!" Rayquaza realized. "So the hail was an illusion too! That makes a lot more sense."

She sighed. "Phew! I was worried that my Air Lock wasn't working."

On questioning, it turned out that Froslass had a reason for the deception.

Her friend, a Snorunt, had run away – chased by a human that Froslass had trusted until he'd left and tried to steal the Ice-type. So Froslass had wanted help to find Snorunt, but the only way she'd been able to think of to guarantee that her help wouldn't betray her was to get hostages so that it wouldn't work.

While that was a reason, Ash immediately pointed out that it wasn't a good reason.

"So…" he began. "If you'd taken a hostage, and we were people who didn't care about keeping Pokémon safe, wouldn't that just mean that having a hostage wouldn't help? And since we're people who do want Pokémon to be okay, isn't a hostage not needed?"

"Well, it's at least possible that someone could be motivated by loyalty," Nickit mused. "So in that specific situation, Froslass could get help from trainers. But did you ask any of the local Pokémon to help out?"

Froslass looked embarrassed. "Um… actually, I didn't think of that…"

Nickit sniggered.

"Can we try and work out where Snorunt is?" Whitney asked. "They are cute, after all."

"Yeah, I'm a big fan of making sure that Snorunt are safe," Ash's Froslass agreed. "But I still want to learn how that illusion thing works."

"I've got an idea!" Rapidash said. "Froslass, you're worried about humans, right?"

"Well," Froslass began, sounding a bit flustered. "I mean. A bit? It's sort of worrying, at least?"

"Then would it help if you were being helped by non-humans only?" Rapidash went on. "That's actually an option, and it might teach a lesson about everyone being the same on the inside."

"Being helped by non humans only?" the wild Ice-type said. "How are – what are you talking about? How would that teach a lesson?"

"Friendship!" Rapidash said, rearing up and posing with his hooves telekinetically frozen in mid-air. "Or magic. I sometimes get those mixed up."

"Well…"

"I wonder what I'm going to turn out to be," Dawn said, looking at the little mug which Ash's Froslass had heated to a steaming temperature, then drank it down.

Everything suddenly got much bigger, and she blinked. "Wow! So I'm smaller than that Absol Ash turns into…"

"You're a Plusle," Pikachu said, casually spoiling several seconds of discovery. "That's interesting… well, I suppose you do have more Electric-types than anything else right now."

Whitney had already taken her own potion, turning into a little Snom, and the wild Froslass was still staring.

"A-hem!" Whitney said. "So, Froslass. Your friend is a Snorunt, right?"

That got a nod from the startled Ghost.

"And would you say that you consider them to be part of your family?" she went on.

"Well… I suppose so, yes," Froslass admitted, after thinking about it.

"Good!" Whitney said, and bounced a few times before jumping up on a rocky bench. "Call for Family!"

Snorunt appeared next to her on the bench.

"Aah – w-what the – huh?" he demanded. "I was just being chased by that jerk on a snowmobile! How am I here?"

"I'm not really sure how it works, but it works!" Whitney said. "One Snorunt rescued!"

She looked pleased with herself. "I'd have said earlier but I wanted to see what Dawn would be. It's fun, isn't it?"

"It is weird to actually feel electricity," Dawn admitted.

AN:

Bench Snom.