Max and May set off the next morning, May with her shiny new Wallace Cup Ribbon, and her Dragonite explained that to make things simpler he'd been asking for help from the Ryuunited Kingdom whenever the two siblings needed to fly anywhere and was that okay?

Ash told him that that was fine, it was their choice not his, and they shared a goodbye before the Maples flew south and west back to Johto.

"You have nice friends," Dawn said. "Which makes me feel good about myself, in a way."

Buneary giggled. "That's one way to think of it!"

"And it's a good way," Whitney said. "Unless there's honestly a real problem you need to fix, it's much better to feel good about yourself and who you are than to feel bad… which isn't always as easy as it sounds, but it's a good thing to aim for, right?"

"Absolutely!" Rapidash confirmed, rearing up and planting his hooves in mid-air.

Then Lake Valor next to them rippled, and a blue shape came up out of the water.

"...okay, wow," Azelf said, blinking. "I am… spoilt for choice here. Goodness!"

"Spoilt for choice?" Pikachu repeated.

"The other two Lake Guardians and I sometimes associate ourselves with a human who has the right attributes to fit," Azelf explained. "That means they've got a strong connection to our trait – willpower, knowledge, or empathy. And in this case, well, wow!"

They flicked a tail in front of themselves. "I'm going to have to compare notes with Uxie and Mesprit, which sucks, because I hate keeping notes. I'm more of a doer, as Legendary Pokémon go."

Rapidash was still reared up, but he cut out his horn's psychic glow for a moment and they thumped back to the ground instead.

"Not that I'm arguing with making friends with humans," he said. "Especially these humans, because they're great. But aren't you supposed to maintain a sense of mystery?"

"Oh!" Azelf said, tails going straight out behind them. "You're right! Sorry about that, I completely forgot!"

They vanished in a teleport.

A few seconds later, an ethereal misty version of Azelf floated out from the lake.

"...um, can I get some advice?" Azelf asked, peering out of the water underneath their ethereal misty double. "I was going to do a mysterious playful reach-out-a-hand thing, but there's three of you and I don't have enough hands. Should I do you in order, or…?"

"Well…" Whitney mused. "It sounds really mysterious and adorable, so… maybe we could split up for a few minutes, and you could do each of us individually?"

"Oh, that might work," Azelf said, pondering. "And that would leave it unclear which one was first, too."

"So, I know you're new to being a Legendary Pokémon," Pikachu said, looking up at Yveltal. "How would you talk to someone who you had a mystical connection to?"

"Well, the first one who counts is Ash," Yveltal said. "So with him, it would probably just be saying hello. But with someone else?"

He inspected his wings.

"I'm an Yveltal. So I think a good start would be to ask them to PLEASE DON'T BE SCARED, THIS IS A SOCIAL VISIT."

Pikachu contemplated that.

"Good start," he said. "Assuming that you're at the point where humans can understand what you say without translation assistance."

Yveltal folded his wings.

"This is harder than I was expecting," he admitted.

"Pastoria Croagunk Festival," Ash said, reading off the leaflet. "That sounds like something I could enter, if Croagunk is okay with it."

He reached for Ibid. "Can you-"

"Already doing it," Ibid interrupted, and Croagunk's Pokéball appeared in a flash of teleportation.

"Thanks!" Ash told the Pokédex, sending Croagunk out. "Did you hear any of that?"

"I heard the word thanks," Croagunk answered.

He took the flyer from Ash's hand. "Pastoria Croagunk Festival… interesting. Do you want me to enter?"

"If that's okay with you," Ash semi-confirmed. "It says there's a test of strength and a beauty contest…"

"I can help with getting Croagunk ready," Whitney volunteered. "I've got some great Poison-type beauty care equipment I use for Nidorina, and I brought some of it with me to Sinnoh because Sinnoh has Poison-types as well. There's these great fine mesh steel gloves, for a start!"

Dawn chuckled. "I hadn't thought about that, but that is the kind of thing a trainer with a Poison-type would need," she admitted. "I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever get a Poison type."

The number of Croagunk entering the Festival was a lot more than any of them had expected, including Croagunk himself. It seemed that Croagunk was the mascot of Pastoria City, and every single household had one – and while they hadn't all entered, a lot of them had.

Many of them even had nicknames, like Craig and Chrissy – one of them the previous year's winner and the other the local Nurse Joy's Pokémon – and Dawn and Whitney got involved for a bit with Rapidash's help to sort out that Chrissy did not want to marry Craig, which was apparently a possibility until that had been clarified – but then the beauty contest round came around.

One by one, the Croagunk paraded past, and then they all came out on stage again as the judges – the bombastic Crasher Wake among them – tallied up the total scores.

"Hm!" Crasher Wake said. "We'll be saying goodbye to number two, number five, and number eleven. Also, number four isn't a Croagunk."

"Huh?" Ash asked, confused – that was his entry number – then looked again.

Crasher Wake was right. It wasn't Croagunk.

One of the other judges cleared his throat. "Mr. Ketchum, did you intend to enter what appears to be some kind of ice cream Zorua in a T-shirt?"

"No, I'm… pretty sure Ientered Croagunk," Ash said. "I don't know what happened, uh, sorry about that?"

Aten was visibly simmering, and slowly looked down at the plain white T-shirt with the word CROAGUNK printed on it in black.

"I am not sure how I got here," he said, in a surprisingly calm voice. "But when I find out there will be some kind of violence."

"It was all the attention," Croagunk said. "I panicked."

The Dragonite he was talking to gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry," he said. "Now that we know about that, we can either try and help you get over it or Ash can adjust what he asks you to do."

"I've been okay in gyms before," the Poison-type added. "It was just something about all those people looking at me and comparing me to other Croagunk, trying to decide which ones looked better than me… so I unentered myself."

"Ally Switch, right?" Dragonite said. "Oh, and you should probably prepare yourself for what happens when Aten realizes what just happened."

"Why Aten?" Croagunk asked.

Dragonite pointed down at the board next to them, which was laid out with a peculiar mix of markings and game pieces.

"He was teaching me how to play Senet," the Dragon-type explained. "Since you appeared in his place, I assume he was the one you swapped with."

"Ah," Croagunk said. "I may need to do some more dodging in a few minutes, then."

The next morning, Ash knocked on the door of Pastoria Gym.

"Just so you know," Aten notified him. "This – while appreciated – does not mean I am giving up my slot against the Ghost gym. This is extra."

"Yeah, you have had a lot more of a wait than I was expecting," Ash agreed. "But what Croagunk did wasn't really very good manners, even if he didn't mean it to target you, and you're the one who was most wronged by it so I thought I'd do a nice thing to make up for it."

"It is…" Aten began, then shivered from his head to his fluffy tail. "Ugh… appreciated."

Ash gave him a pat. "That's okay! And it's good of you to say thank you, as well."

Then the door opened.

"Aha!" Crasher Wake said. "I thought I'd be seeing you here sooner or later! Come in, come in!"

Crasher Wake's main challenge room had huge banks of seats either side, and was mostly made up of a large pool with floating platforms on both sides.

"So I've watched Ash do a few of these," Dawn said. "And there aren't usually this many seats. Are Gym Challenges a spectator event here?"

"Well, not really," Wake replied. "But I do do wrestling matches here! Those draw an enormous crowd, especially when I challenge my Poliwrath or Gyarados!"

"You challenge your Gyarados to a wrestling match?" Pikachu reiterated, blinking. "Do… you usually lose?"

"I usually win!" Wake told Pikachu. "He's come out on top in a few bouts, but I still hold the gym champion title!"

"Ash, I think he might have Aura," Pikachu said. "And if not Aura, something."

"Yeah, maybe," Ash agreed. "Ever tried learning Pokémon moves, Mr. Wake?"

"...I did not expect you to put that thought in his mind," Pikachu confessed. "Not sure why."

"No, but I really should!" Wake announced. "But that's for later! For now, here are the rules of the challenge!"

He clapped his hands together. "Each trainer will use two Pokémon! You may not use an all-Water team, because the fens are where land meets water! And neither trainer may shift mid-battle!"

Ash held up his first Pokéball, Wake did the same, and Ash sent out his Moltres just as Wake's Floatzel emerged onto the battlefield.

"That's an unusual Moltres," Wake mused. "Much smaller than normal. I've heard of large Pokémon but not small Pokémon…"

He signalled to the referee.

"Let's get ready to rumble!" the referee called. "Begin!"

"Sunny Day!" Ash called.

"Into the water!" Wake retaliated. "Bulk Up!"

"Watch out, Moltres," Ash warned. "Solarbeam into the water!"

Light flared around Moltres, and speared down into the water. The whole pool lit up, shattered rainbow light flaring and playing across the walls and ceiling of the gym, but Floatzel didn't seem to be bothered.

"Aqua Jet!" Wake ordered, and Floatzel burst out at high speed before ramming into Moltres. "And Waterfall!"

Moltres kept taking the hits, and Wake frowned slightly.

"Drive him away with Flamethrower!" Ash called. "His Water attacks are weaker, you can overpower it!"

"Flamethrower!" Moltres agreed, wings flaring out as he used the Fire-type attack, and the combined physical wingslap and burst of flame drove Floatzel away. "Sky Attack!"

Golden flame flashed around his wings, and Wake snapped his fingers.

"That's what I'm missing!" he realized. "Floatzel – Ice Fang!"

"Fiery Wrath!" Ash called.

Moltres was almost all the way through charging Sky Attack, and sort of juggled the two moves for a moment before firing them both at the same time. Floatzel's Ice Fang bit into the Sky Attack, but the Fiery Wrath punched through and slammed Floatzel hard enough to negate his momentum.

Quick as a flash, the agile little Moltres dove underneath Floatzel and used Solarbeam again. That knocked Floatzel into the air, hard enough that he just touched the high roof, and Moltres got out of the way before Floatzel came back down to slam into one of the floating platforms.

"One! Two! Three!" Crasher Wake began to count, then stopped. "Actually. Floatzel, are you awake?"

Floatzel's answer was a snore.

"Well, that's an elimination by my count!" Wake decided. "That's not a Moltres at all, is it?"

"No, he is a Moltres," Ash said, offering his arm, and Moltres landed on it. "He's Galarian, though, he's just also Shiny so he looks like he's our type of Moltres."

"Crafty!" Wake declared. "All right, pick your second Pokémon!"

Aten hadn't actually gone back into his Pokéball, so he jumped straight out onto one of the floating platforms.

"An interesting challenge!" Wake said. "Another Type mystery, I see. Well, two can play at that game!"

He sent out his second Pokémon, which was an Incineroar with blue in place of where a normal Incineroar would be red and a large champion's belt fitted with a glowing crystal.

"Oh, I've never seen one of those," Ash admitted, as a small droplet of blue dripped away from the end of Incineroar's tail.

"He's my Heel!" Wake said. "He's a Delta Incineroar."

"Hmm," Aten mused.

The referee called for them to begin, and Ash pointed. "Work off some Frustration!"

"Darkest Lariat!" Wake countered.

Incineroar surged forwards, hopping from one platform to another with feline grace, and met Aten coming the other way. He went into a spin, a flicker of flaming energy on each palm, and slammed into Aten hard enough to knock him flying backwards.

"Ouch!" Aten said, dropping back to a platform, then phasing through it into the water when Incineroar pounced on him to launch a follow-up attack.

"He's a Ghost type!" Wake declared.

Aten popped back up, slapped a paw on the platform he was on, then dropped down again.

"Shadow Claw!" Ash said, as Aten appeared on the platform furthest from Incineroar. "Wait until he gets close!"

Incineroar jumped from one water platform to another, and when he reached the middle one Aten had slapped a surge of Grass-type energy turned into a clamp that fastened on Incineroar's leg. Incineroar growled, burned it away with a blast of fire, and his fur caught fire as well.

"Incineroar!" Wake said. "You know that was oil based!"

The Heel Pokémon snorted, then jumped across to Aten's platform. The Ghost-type Zorua lashed out with Shadow Claw, dodged away from Incineroar's flaming punch, and watched carefully before slipping around behind Incineroar and grabbing onto his tail.

"Tail Whip!" Wake said, striking a pose as Incineroar flicked Aten off his tail. "Malicious Moonasault!"

"Uh oh," Ash winced. "Endure!"

"I hate it when I need that move," Aten said, having just enough time to get his opinion across before Incineroar hit him with a Z move that drove him from over the middle of the pool to the bottom of the pit.

The impact knocked all the water out of the pool, sending it surging out to soak everyone in the stands and several rows of empty seats.

It also washed off the rest of the paint, revealing that Delta Incineroar had literally just been Incineroar painted blue.

"Okay," Aten said. "Firstly: ow."

He rolled back upright. "Secondly… secondly, Frustration."

Aten turned out to be extremely frustrated, though fortunately for Incineroar he did land in the Pokémon Centre.

"Well, that's the Fen Badge won!" Crasher Wake said. "That's one tough little Pokémon you've got there!"

"Thanks," Ash replied. "Yeah, he's really been putting in the work."

He jumped down into the empty pool to retrieve Aten, then caught the Fen Badge as Crasher Wake lobbed it to him. "So, uh… I'm guessing Delta Incineroar is Incineroar's stage name?"

"Correct!" Wake agreed. "Are you going to need help getting out?"

"I shouldn't," Ash answered. "Hold on a moment."

He waved his hand, then jumped, and a swirl of Razor Wind air caught him and lifted him out of the pool again.

Wake adjusted his mask. "I'm going to need to experiment with Pokémon moves myself, now. Step one… learn how to do Darkest Lariat!"

"I'm not sure who to feel sorry for in this situation," Dawn admitted. "Any thoughts?"

Whitney considered.

"I think we should get Ash's Froslass to dry off our clothes," she said. "That's the best Pokémon for the job I can think of at the moment, anyway."

Dawn inspected her own outfit. "Good point."

"I'll try to do better with shielding next time," Rapidash promised.

AN:

Of course Ash trains Moltres to fight like a different Moltres. Would you expect anything else?

Especially when it's known that he has a Noctowl who fights like a Legendary Bird...