A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys!

I have to say that I'm not a big fan of Pokemon Contests either. The ones in the game had very little purpose though I did kind of play them- the only problem I had with them in Ruby and Sapphire was the Pokeblock system- it was made in such a way that no matter how hard I tried, by the time I got to Master Rank, I always did worst in the appeals.

I think the anime has the best contests and beats both the manga and the Games in that at least it includes some battles. Contests are better in something that tries to mirror real life since it gets a bit boring in the video games- but there are more possibilities of course in something like the anime.

Of course, Vanessa gets an unfair advantage- but that's true for all Gym Leaders.

Also, I've realized that maybe things have gotten a bit too complicated in the story and I wanted to keep it simple- which is why I didn't want to introduce a whole new set of rules on Pokemon Contests that were too complex so I mainly modeled them after what I remembered form the Ruby and Sapphire arc of the anime. Plus, anime contests are better than the others.

Team Rocket, despite everything, had had a swell time on the ship.

Their main problems were getting cramps from staying in one spot for far too long- but otherwise they'd had a pleasant journey. From what they could tell, there were about a total of fifteen people on the vessel. Strangely enough, none of them seemed to have Pokemon- or they simply didn't use them for some reason.

That was good enough for them, because human eyes and ears were far easier to fool. And Jessie and James had loads of experience hiding back in Kanto.

It also meant that it would have been childishly easy for them to seize control of the ship if only they had but a single worthy Pokemon- but James had none and Jessie's Wobuffet was hardly in a position to be doing some attacking. Meowth could have been of some use but the thing was that he could only handle two people at most.

So, the days dragged on, and Jessie and James tried catching sachets of conversation to figure where they were. The people spoke words that they understood, but the accents and words weren't like those of people from Kalos- or any that they had heard of before.

Thankfully, their voyage wasn't too long and they seemed to dock somewhere in less than a week. It was easy for them to notice- it meant that the ship had stopped rocking.

So, once it was the dead of the night and when they didn't hear any activity, they left their hiding place and aimed to leave the ship.

Now, if only they had kept quiet and left- they would have probably been able to get away.

But, Jessie and James couldn't help but notice that just one room on deck was locked. It was currently being guarded, but the guard was too far away in dreamland to notice them.

Now, as this was the only locked room they had seen in the ship, they assumed, that, of course, it had something valuable in it. And so, Meowth picked the lock- something that was second nature to him by now- and they took a peek inside.

James had to stifle a gasp… inside, there were was a huge crate filled with flashy coins.

"Is that real gold?" Jessie asked. "But it can't be!" The gold, in total, had to be worth more than ten thousand nuggets!

"Let the expert check," Meowth said and stealthily removed one and bit into it. "Yup, as pure as a Gardevoir's heart, this stuff is."

James grinned. Team Rocket had left all of their stuff behind, and wherever they went from here on out- well, they had nothing left and would need money.

"We need to be careful though," Jessie said. "Just don't take too much."

Team Rocket took a coin… and then another, and then another. You might've thought that they should've been able to stop at some point, but being thieves, greed ran thick in their veins.

Sure, a single one of those coins was probably enough to buy food for three of them for a couple of months, and as long as they took only a dozen or so they could've easily left the ship and been on their way without triggering any alarms. The pirates probably wouldn't even have noticed that it was gone in the first place. You might've thought that perhaps Jessie would've had the sense to follow her own advice, but as it turns out, she was as bad as the other two when she saw how much they were hogging for themselves.

The end result being that they came up with an ingenious idea: They would simply take the entire treasure chest!

Of course, it weighed approximately three times as much as Meowth, so this was a bit of a problem, but they reassured themselves that they had it under control… never mind that it was very unwieldy and Jessie and James kept knocking it into each other's knees while Meowth tried lifting it from underneath.

They managed to get out of the door before James move the chest a bit too much and knocked it into the sentry, who was fast asleep.

Only now that last bit wasn't true.

"Huh?" he asked, confused, though likely to understand what was happening any minute now.

The smart thing to do in this situation would be to dump the chest and make an exit for it- maybe even swipe a few coins if one could think that one could get away with it.

Instead Team Rocket clung to the chest and disembarked from the ship, stopping to pick up any coins that they had dropped.

The pirates had raised the alarm back on their ship, and Jessie and James knew that they couldn't be too far behind.

"Let's shed some weight," James finally said when he could hear his pursuer's panting behind him.

At long last, Jessie seemed to agree. Jessie and James both threw the chest backwards and Meowth took a single coin between its teeth and they all made a beeline for the trees that were within sight.

The pirates, however, only paused for a minute to consider the gold before resuming chasing the Team Rocket trio.

It was as the trees were just within a few second's running distance away that James felt something whizz past his neck and embed itself in a tree.

It was a knife.

James tripped and took the other two with him. They looked up to see a bunch of pirates who did not look pleased at all.

And of course, at this time, Jessie's Wobbuffet decided to come out to give its two cents on the situation with a loud call proclaiming its name, as usual.

"I knew I should've brought another Pokemon," Jessie grumbled.

"What do we do with them?" one of them asked.

"We kill them," another one said. "Lady Elizabeth wants no witnesses."


It turned out that getting Ash ready for Pokemon Contests was sort of like trying to ride a bicycle- it was hard at first but once there was enough momentum it was even harder to stop.

Duke Hamnet knocked on the door to Ash's office to notice that Ash was sitting on the floor, with a bunch of notes on Pokemon Contests surrounding him in a semi-circle while he was looking at them intently and apparently waiting for enlightenment to strike. His Pikachu had already fallen asleep right besides him- it was already past the wee hours of the night.

"Ah, sir, there's a matter at hand," Duke Hamnet said.

Ash looked up. Duke Hamnet now regretted coming at this late hour- he'd heard that Ash was awake so he had decided to give his report now instead of later- but seeing the dark circles under Ash's eyes gave him second thoughts.

"What is it?" Ash asked.

"Ah- well, if this is not a good time, it is a matter that can wait until the next morning," Duke Hamnet said.

Ash shrugged. "If it's important, I'll hear it."

"The first is a matter regarding Thomdolt," Duke Hamnet said. "I had visited him earlier today in order to inquire about matters regarding his venom… and whether or not we could, ah, have use of it."

Ash frowned. "I'm not gonna start poisoning people. And no one knows the secret of his venom anyway, right?"

"You could force it out using your Gym Badge," Duke Hamnet said. "He hasn't sworn to keep it a secret- at least not on the Gym Badges."

"But it isn't of any use anyway," Ash said tiredly. "The others will have, uh, food tasters, right?"

"I was thinking that we could perhaps force it down their throats," Duke Hamnet said. "If you had enough Badges, perhaps, theoretically you could negate her Badge's power and force her mouth open to quite literally pour the toxin down her throat. I don't think it's ever been done… but theoretically speaking…"

"It wouldn't matter because I won't be doing it," Ash said. "No matter how frustrating all of this stuff with Vanessa is."

Duke Hamnet inclined his head. "I am well aware that you would not use it against Vanessa…. but I was referring instead to Selena. If we can't beat her in a fair battle, than it might be our only hope. And before you refuse- I merely wish to point out that Selena is a whole different beast from Vanessa. She's cruel beyond anything you can imagine- you may not have heard much about how she behaved before the Barrier was erected and even when the treaty between the Gym Leaders was being signed. Using unfair means would, well, it would hardly be unjustified in this circumstance."

"Okay, ignoring for a moment that I won't do it and all the moral problems, you just said yourself that it is simply a theory and we can't really test it," Ash said. "We don't know if it'll work… and especially since Selena can apparently manipulate the Elite Four Champion's power somehow to make this new smaller barrier that I can't get through. All I can work out from that is that she either has the new one hostage… but I thought he was in His Majesty's domain."

Duke Hament frowned. "If indeed the Elite Four Champion is alive, then he would naturally be with His Majesty instead of Selena. It is possible that His Majesty has decided to help Selena, but even if we ignore the fact that he's far too lazy to go to such extents, well, the two hate each other like a Seviper and Zangoose. It's hard to imagine them working together unless something extreme forced them too- and I don't think that His Majesty believes that you are a big enough threat anyway."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough," Ash said. "So a big no on the poison front." He rubbed his eyes wearily. "Is that it?"

"No, but first of all, Sir Ash, while this sort of perseverance is admirable, you need your rest just like anyone else," Duke Hamnet said. He was about to add that Ash needed it especially since he was only ten years old and still growing- but thought that it would be overstepping it a bit too much.

"I know, I know," Ash said. "Everyone's telling me to cool it, but the thing is that before, I didn't take it seriously because I kept putting it off for later- and now that it's right in front of me- I just can't stop thinking about the Pokemon Contest. And I just have to win."

Duke Hamnet shuffled his feet. He knew that he should probably say something positive during this time, but cheering up depressed rulers wasn't something he was very good at- Freyja usually had the exact opposite problem of moping around all the time. "Well Sir, it is important, but I'm ah- certain we'll prevail. And worrying needlessly isn't going to improve the situation anyhow."

Ash nodded silently. From his reaction, Duke Hamnet guessed that he had done a rather poor job. "Well sir, onto other business- well, I wasn't finished. I trust you remember about the three regents that Vanessa has left in charge?"

"Yeah, a bit," Ash said. "I think one of them was called… Mary?"

"And the others are Catherine and Elizabeth," Duke Hamnet said. "As you might know- Vanessa had completely abandoned the administration of her domain and prefers to wander about without a care in the world."

"I can see where she's coming from," Ash said.

"It goes far behind simply delegating others to do her tasks," Duke Hamnet said. "She has quite literally in almost every single sense given up every single duty and isolated herself by wandering around her domain- doing whatever struck her fancy. And her domain is very large, Sir Ash, so she split it into three parts which her regents rule like their own private fiefdoms. They are also horribly corrupt and I'm not even sure if all the scandalous stories regarding them are true or not. Today I received three messengers from Vanessa's domain, and they each told the most peculiar story. Each of them claims to represent one of the three regents, and the funny thing is that they each seem to have no knowledge of the other. All three of them want to betray both Vanessa and the others in order to swear allegiance to you, in return for being able to keep their land and money that they have."

"Do you know if they're telling the truth or not?" Ash asked.

"I don't think we can," Duke Hamnet said. "They carried no official seals that we can check for certain like Sir Fredrick did since they don't come from Vanessa herself- and you could force the messengers to speak the truth using your Badge, but I have no doubt that they would've expected that and we need to remember that even if the messengers think they're telling the truth- it doesn't mean that the three of them actually mean it."

Ash rubbed his face. "How're they saying that they'll help me beat Vanessa?"

"They want to defect to your side when you challenge her," Duke Hamnet said. "Each of them claims to be more skilled that the others at Pokemon Contests and just shy of Vanessa's level."

"Why wouldn't they just call me if-" Ash said before realization hit him. "Of course, because Selena's monitoring the telephone lines."

Duke Hamnet nodded. "Interestingly, you might note that Vanessa's domain is the least digitized of all the domains in Galea. Her three regents have resisted using computers and insisted on using pen-and-paper methods since otherwise they would leave a telltale electronic trail."

"What should we do then?" Ash asked. "They haven't given us any guarantee."

"I was going to suggest just telling Vanessa about their treachery and hoping that she killed the three of them- weakening her own power," Duke Hamnet said. "Of course since we have no proof that'd never work."

"I don't see a reason to trust any of them then," Ash said. "Plus, if they're really as greedy as you say they are- then we shouldn't be making deals to let them keep whatever they've got in the first place." Ash let out a big yawn. "I really think that's all for today, I need to get some sleep."

Duke Hamnet nodded and left.

Ash slept peacefully, but he had a weird dream in which he saw a group of Bidoof waltzing away while Gary played a Pokeflute in the distance while Lance of the Elite Four was building a snowman, but when he woke up he didn't remember the dream at all.

A/N: Thanks for reading. Do please review if you liked!