"Oh, it's you again," Kahuna Hala said. "I heard about what happened on Akala, Olivia told me about it."

He sighed. "I assume you're here for a Grand Trial?"

"That's right!" Ash agreed. "I tried to work out who I should use, and I think this should work great!"

"I'm not really sure what to think of that," Hala admitted. "You've got a reputation, as I'm sure you know."

Ash nodded in a vague sort of way, then held out a Pokéball. "Okay, Hawlucha, come on out!"

Hawlucha emerged, adjusted his purple mask, and posed.

"You know you don't have to tell me what Pokémon you're using first?" Hala checked. "Though, then again, I don't really know what it does for the Island Challenge when you're so favoured by the Tapus. Have you met all four of them by now?"

"Yep!" Ash said. "Koko asked me to test Pikachu's Z move, Bulu brought Salandit – he's Salazzle now but he was Salandit then – Fini visited when I was sorting out Stoutland, and I met Lele on Akala."

"Those aren't their full names," Zygarde noted. "Not a criticism, I'm just saying."

"Right, but we were already talking about the Tapus!" Ash said. "So, are the rules the same as Olivia's one?"

"It's not a double battle, if that's what you mean," Hala replied. "This is sort of a formality in some ways, but don't think that means I'll let you off easily, Ash. Show me what you've got."

He sent out a Hariyama. "Begin! Fake Out!"

"Aha!" Hawlucha said, springing into the air as the attack flashed in. "You thought I, Hawlucha, could be surprised!"

He took off his mask, revealing he was wearing a different one underneath with a stone motif, and landed again. "But it is actually I, Hawlucha! The Unflappable One!"

"Mega Kick, Hawlucha!" Ash said, and Hawlucha raised a leg before slamming his heel down into the ground. It tore up fragments that went flying in all directions, and Hariyama used Arm Thrust to deflect the ones that were heading towards it.

"Now, Wing Attack!" Ash continued.

"I cannot!" Hawlucha said. "I am the Unflappable One!"

"Right, right," Ash realized. "Then use Earth Power!"

"Knock Off!" Hala said.

Hariyama's Knock Off knocked off Hawlucha's mask, revealing another mask underneath it.

"Now you see!" Hawlucha declared. "In truth, I am Captain Unova!"

He punched Hariyama hard enough to knock him backwards, then sprang into the air and flapped his wings for extra height to transition into a Flying Press.

"Knock Off again!" Hala decided, and another one of Hawlucha's masks went flying.

"Tremble as you face Hawlucha: terror of the night!" Hawlucha said.

Over by the sidelines, Absol giggled.

"Oh, dear," she said. "I wonder how many of those he's wearing."

"You can't tell?" Lokoko asked, laying down on her front and offering one of her paws to Absol for a pillow.

"Not at all, dear one," Absol answered. "If there's one thing that's not a disaster, for Hawlucha at least, it's having one of those knocked off."

She lay down next to her wife, taking the offered headrest.

"Everything going fine back in Hau'Oli?" Lokoko asked.

"It would seem so," Absol replied, making a contented noise.

"You thought you were facing Hawlucha! But in fact I am Hawlucha: the Mountain!"

Whack.

"Bad choice against a Fighting-type!" Hawlucha amended quickly. "A twist! In fact you were battling Sir Hawlucha all along!"

"Thank you so much," Mallow said, chopping away at her board. "It's… weird, really, I never thought it'd be possible for our shop to be too successful. And Dad's busy giving an interview… if you hadn't shown up I'd be having to cook for everyone who turned up, and I'd be totally overloaded."

"That's not a problem at all!" Dragonite replied, zesting a berry. "When a food place has a good reputation, especially if that happens suddenly, it can get overloaded and you need to prepare for trouble. If one of the people who normally works there is busy talking to reporters, why, then you need to take that trouble and make it double."

"To protect a stall from desecration, we unite Pokémon from across the nations," Buizel said, blurring from one station to another with bowls of finished ingredients or going to get new ones.

"We don't normally work here, but it's our way, learned from Ash's mom in her cafe," Leavanny agreed, swiping through some spring onions before putting them neatly into a bowl.

"How are you cooking over there?" Steenee checked. "The oven's on the other side of the kitchen."

"Tepig," Grovyle explained, nodding, and shifted to the side so she could see.

"Flames," he clarified, as Tepig blew some out to heat up the bottom of a pot.

"We know our cooking's not quite the same style, but that's why we're learning from you all the while!" Dragonite explained.

"Zoroark," Zoroark said. "Wait, hold on, was I supposed to be translating all that?"

Eventually, it turned out that actually today Ash was using Hawlucha, and that Hawlucha knew Aerial Ace. That was enough to knock Hariyama out of the battle, though Hawlucha had also run out of alter egos and had masks scattered all over the floor.

"I'm calling you back for now!" Ash announced. "Want me to return you or are you going to watch?"

"Watch, I think," Hawlucha replied.

"Well, here we go," Lokoko said. "I assume your plan hasn't changed, Ash?"

"Right!" Ash confirmed. "Good luck, Lokoko!"

"Good luck, love," Absol agreed, as Lokoko rose to her paws.

"This should be interesting," Hala decided, sending out his own second Pokémon – a Crabrawler. "Now… begin. Bubblebeam!"

"Double Team!" Ash called, and Lokoko dissolved into an overlapping cloud of dozens of Ninetales. Her tails flashed with flame, and the Bubblebeam attack whizzed through thin air without connecting with anything.

Presumably.

"Oh, it's one of this kind of Pokémon," Hala said. "Hmm. Crabrawler, start spraying that Bubblebeam everywhere, keep an eye out!"

"Mystical Fire!" Ash instructed. "Don't give away your position!"

"Of course," Lokoko agreed, flicking out spirals of flame from her tails – both real and fake – in their dozens, so that two or three times a second a fake flaming vortex descended on Crabrawler from any one of half a dozen different directions.

Some of them turned out to be real, and Crabrawler coated one pincer in water and used it to punch out at the incoming attacks – mostly to try and get the real ones – while the other one continued spraying Bubblebeam at the place where Lokoko, presumably, was.

Mostly by spraying Bubblebeam everywhere.

"Hey, Ash?" Pikachu said. "Couldn't you tell where Lokoko was by looking using Aura?"

"Probably, but then I'd know, and I might give it away," Ash answered.

"An interesting thought!" Hala said. "I'll admit, I was keeping an eye on you to see if you had an idea, but now I suppose I'll have to try something else. Crabrawler, Chilling Water straight down!"

"Huh," Ash said, thinking. "Maybe that's to keep the Mystical Fire off. Lokoko, switch to Extrasensory!"

All the many copies of Lokoko around the arena stopped, then their fur glowed with a faint swirl of gold, and a psychic pulse flashed out from all of them towards Crabrawler.

The Fighting-type swung both pincers around violently with Brutal Swing, flailing in every direction and deflecting most of the force of the beams, then Hala judged that Crabrawler had fired out enough water.

"Hit the ground!" he said, and struck a pose.

"Lokoko, look out!" Ash called, as Crabrawler copied Hala's pose. "He's Z-moving the water! Solar Blades!"

Lokoko's tails lit up green, and a whole overlapping wall of solar energy formed. Then Crabrawler smacked his pincers into the pool with an All-Out Pummeling, and a wave of water crashed out in all directions.

Ash glanced to his side just as the attack went off, towards Absol, and relaxed – then got hit in the face by the wave of water.

"Nice work, Lokoko!" he called, as the water settled out.

"What?" Hala asked, shading his eyes, then saw.

Absol was completely dry. Ash was soaked, and Hala was wet, but the water blast had been off centre and a whole quarter of the arena had been completely unaffected.

A quarter which included Lokoko – and Absol.

"Sorry," Lokoko said, with a smile. "The pool of water you were aiming at wasn't quite where you saw it."

Crabrawler considered that.

"You're translating, right?" he asked, got a nod, then turned to Hala. "Do we have to do the bit where I probably get set on fire now?"

A couple of days later, and with Ash now equipped with a Normalium Z after Hala decided that he 'was just going to pick randomly', Sophocles came up to Ash at the end of a lesson.

"Mr. Ketchum?" he began.

"Just Ash, please," Ash asked. "What is it?"

"There's a race coming up soon," Sophocles explained. "The Charjabug Race! It's a race where you make electric cars and drive through a race course with them, and I really want to take part! Only, it's only open to Charjabug, and I don't have a Charjabug… do you think you can help?"

Ash stepped back a pace, looking Sophocles up and down.

"Hmm," he said. "Pikachu, what do you think?"

"I don't think he's quite right?" Pikachu replied. "Electric maybe, but somehow I'm getting more of a Yamper vibe. Not sure but that's my first guess."

"I get what you mean," Ash said, nodding. "Probably best we go looking for one, then!"

"Huh?" Sophocles asked, as Ash headed for the door. "What did that mean?"

He looked over at his friends, who were mystified or in the case of Mallow resigned. "What does he mean, a Yamper vibe? Am I about to get a Yamper instead?"

"No, that's not what he means," Mallow provided.

"Coming, Sophocles?" Ash asked. "We're going to go looking for a Charjabug!"

Sophocles collected up Togedemaru and hurried to follow.

"So how are you going to find a Charjabug, anyway?" Sophocles asked. "I tried looking myself but they're hard to find, it seems like."

"Well, we can either find a Grubbin or a Charjabug, either would be okay, because you could evolve a Grubbin!" Ash said. "It'd have to be a Grubbin who wanted to evolve, though, or who didn't mind evolving… but what's really important is to find one who's interested in being your Pokémon!"

He sent out Phanpy. "All right, Phanpy?"

"Yep!" Phanpy agreed, raising her trunk and taking a sniff. "The air here smells nice!"

"It does!" Ash agreed. "Now, did you hear what we're after?"

Phanpy nodded. "A Charjabug that would like being Sophocles' Pokémon!" she agreed. "Is that spelled with a j or a g?"

"J," Ash told her. "And they're sort of blocky shaped. Like this."

He took Ibid out of his pocket, and Ibid reformed into a miniature Charjabug.

"Charjabug," Ibid explained. "It buries itself in fallen leaves and barely moves, munching on humus. This duplicate Charjabug has a reduced energy capacity compared to a real one."

"There you go!" Ash said. "And, like Ibid said, Charjabug usually bury themselves in leaves!"

"Got it!" Phanpy said, rolling off.

"Is that going to work?" Sophocles asked.

"At this point I think you know the answer to that," Togedemaru chided her trainer.

"Found one!" Phanpy said, coming back with a Charjabug who was trying to shock her – an attempt which was unaccountably failing, possibly because Charjabug wasn't a Pikachu. "One potentially friendly Charjabug!"

"Thanks, Phanpy!" Ash said. "Charjabug, do you mind if we have a talk? It's okay if you want to leave afterwards, don't worry."

Two days later, at the Charjabug Race, one of the officials frowned.

"I think I'm going to have to disqualify you," he said. "Firstly because your team doesn't have three people on it, secondly because oversized Charjabug are banned from this competition because their battery life is so much larger, but mostly because your Charjabug is made of cloth."

"Drat," Darkrai grumbled, throwing off the cloth and stomping off, stopping only long enough to disconnect Victini's ears from the electrodes.

"Say hi to Tobias for me!" Ash called. "Okay, Sophocles, everything ready?"

"Yes!" Sophocles confirmed. "Kiawe?"

"Car's all set!" Kiawe confirmed. "Charjabug?"

"Charj-ed," Charjabug buzzed.

"Then let's go!" Ash declared.

AN:

Sometimes, a motto just happens.