"Dawn!" Zoey said, sounding delighted. "Fancy meeting you here!"
"I'm travelling with Ash," Dawn pointed out. "And he's doing the Gym Challenge."
"Still, I'm mostly not here in Snowpoint," Zoey riposted. "It's home, but you're not in Twinleaf Town right now, right?"
Dawn nodded. "Good point."
"Anyway," Zoey went on. "I know you're here for Ash to do the Gym Challenge, but I think you should meet a friend of mine first… since she's the Gym Leader, it'd be hard for you to not meet her, this would just simplify things a bit."
"That's actually really convenient," Ash said. "So you know Candice?"
"Yeah, we were in school together," Zoey agreed.
"That seems kind of young for a Gym Leader," Ash admitted. "Well, among the youngest I've met? I guess there's Misty and the twins at Mossdeep."
"Ash, you have literally been offered an Elite Four slot," Pikachu reminded him. "Years ago."
"Yeah, good point!" Ash agreed. "Never mind."
Candice turned out to be a teacher at Snowpoint City Trainer's School, and interrupted her teaching of the adult class to say hello when Zoey came in.
Then she caught sight of Ash.
"Well, this was a good day up until this point," she said.
"Hey, that's rude!" Whitney protested.
Candice blushed. "Oh! Ah… you're right, sorry, I didn't really think about how that would sound… I don't mean it's not a good thing you're here, it's just… oh, dear…"
She sighed, then covered her face with her hands.
"Can we try again?" she mumbled through them.
"Sure," Ash agreed readily.
"Okay," Candice said, visibly focusing. "So, uh, I've heard a lot about you from other Sinnoh Gym Leaders, and it's usually been about how your Pokémon are completely ridiculous. So I was mostly thinking about what weird things would be happening."
"I'd object, but… fair," Pikachu admitted. "I still remember that magical moment during my first Gym Battle, where we discovered the Type Chart was inaccurate."
"I'm taking class, now, so I'll be an hour or so, but Zoey's got a spare gym key," Candice added. "She can let you in, if you don't mind waiting in a room where I only have a cooling system instead of a heating system."
On their way to Snowpoint Gym, Dawn filled Zoey in on what had happened since they'd last met.
"So, Riolu thought about it, and he decided that he liked the sound of taking part in Contests," she explained. "So now I've got a Riolu, which is nice! That does mean I have seven Pokémon now and I need to rotate them, but fortunately that turns out to be pretty simple."
She smiled. "And Happiny decided that she liked the sound of being part of Whitney's team at the end of our time together, so while I'm not looking forward to that it's nice to know that everyone in the group will have somewhere to go to."
"And to think I only saw you about a week ago," Zoey chuckled. "You do get a lot done sometimes, Dawn."
"I think that's mostly all of us," Ash shrugged.
"Observational data indicates: It's mostly you," Zygarde corrected.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention," Dawn brightened. "Zygarde's got a warm coat now! They're a Ground-Dragon type, so they sometimes have trouble with the cold, but the warm coat seems to be working out great."
"I do not currently have something recognizable as a thumb to up," Zygarde apologized. "But if I had, I would be."
When Candice arrived, the first Pokémon she chose to send out was an Abomasnow.
"I'd make a joke here about no hard feelings," she began. "And turn it into a snow pun. But, honestly, it got old really, really fast."
Whitney giggled.
"Okay, Dragonite, you first!" Ash said, sending out the Dragon-type in a flash.
Candice blinked. "Um… you do know that's a half-Dragon half-Flying type, right?" she checked. "I'm just wondering, because both of those Types are weak to Ice."
"I know!" Ash agreed. "That's why I picked Dragonite, not Dragonite or Dragonite or most of the others. I could have picked Dragonite, but Dragonite hasn't had a battle for longer, technically."
Zoey stared.
"Are you following what he's saying?" she asked Dawn, mostly out of curiosity.
"I'm not familiar with all the Dragonite by name," Dawn admitted. "But I got the basic gist."
"Scald!" Ash went on, and Dragonite exhaled a blast of hot water. His scales shimmered, drawing the water in so it surrounded him rather than falling to the floor or hitting Abomasnow, and within a few seconds Dragonite was surrounded by a slightly-larger Dragonite shape made of water that was visibly steaming and which only left his mouth, nose and eyes free.
"Great work!" Ash complimented. "You worked with Dratini on that, right?"
"Of course!" Dragonite confirmed. "But I prefer a Dragonite shape to anything else."
"Ice Beam!" Candice ordered.
Dragonite whipped his wing around as a shield, and the Scald around him followed with a series of rippling motions. It absorbed the force of the Ice Beam with a crash that sent echoes and reverberations through it, and ice began to drop to the ground – but Dragonite just started using Scald again, replacing the hot water as fast as it was cooled down and keeping him at a toasty sauna level of overall heat.
"Now, Fire Spin!" Ash instructed.
A surge of spiralling flame whipped out from Dragonite, hammering down at Abomasnow and making the snow in the air hiss, and Candice shook her head.
"I didn't know the details, but I expected something like this was going to happen," she admitted.
Abomasnow lasted quite a long time, all things considered, and when Dragonite dropped back to the floor he was still engulfed in hot water but he'd had to replace it a lot. There was ice all over the floor, and a kind of glittering diamonddust in the air from the time Dragonite had had to flash-boil some of his Scald to dodge out of the way of a Sheer Cold – creating a cloud of steam which had promptly frozen in mid-air.
"That was fun!" Ash summarized. "Oh, can someone help Dragonite get rid of the hot water? I don't want to drop loads of hot water on the gym floor, it'd melt the ice layout."
"I'll get it," Froslass volunteered.
"Thanks!" Ash told her. "...wait, I just realized – Candice, I forgot to ask if your gym has a special challenge?"
"Don't make too many ice puns?" Candice suggested. "I don't know, I never really worked one out yet."
"I could suggest something," Zoey mused. "We should think about it later."
"Sounds great," Candice said. "Are you going to continue battling with Dragonite?"
"No, I think he needs a rest," Ash answered, recalling the Dragon-type now that most of the water had been siphoned off by Froslass. The remainder dropped towards the floor, only to turn into snow on the way down as Froslass used Icy Wind, and she spread her arms.
"Viola!" she said.
"I think you mean voila," Happiny corrected.
"I did wonder why people say the name of a musical instrument when they finish something," Froslass admitted.
Ash next sent out Grovyle, who landed on the ice with sure feet and waved. "Morning."
"It's afternoon," Candice's Sneasel replied.
"Ah, sorry about that," Grovyle shrugged. "I meant to be here earlier, but I thought I saw an Absol cross my path, and they say those are bad luck, so I had to go another way… and to avoid going somewhere where the Absol had crossed my path I had to work out where the Absol had been, and it was a lot of effort to put in over a Pokémon which it turned out hadn't been there in the first place."
Sneasel tilted her head, trying to follow that, then gave up and threw her arms up. "Whatever."
"Shall I call begin?" Zoey suggested. "Begin!"
"Ice Shard!" Candice said.
"Grass Shuriken!" Ash replied, and blades of swirling grass and sunlight flashed out to strike and counter Sneasel's Ice Shards.
"Keep it up!" Ash added, prompting Grovyle to amplify his barrage.
"Wait, what's going on?" Candice said.
She leaned closer, watching as the shuriken – now accompanied by Bullet Seed knives – broke through Ice Shards without being broken through themselves, and sent icy or green fragments scattering all over the floor.
"Grovyle explained it to me," Ash said. "It's that Ice is a mix of Water and Air, while Grass is Wood and that's a mix of Water and Earth, and Water cancels out Water while when it's between Air and Earth then Earth beats Air. So he's got the elemental advantage."
"That…" Candice began. "None of that makes sense!"
"It's his attack, so I think you'd have to argue with him about that one," Ash shrugged.
Sneasel took a hit from a Grass Shuriken as one of them got too close to her, then Grovyle darted forwards in a blur of green motion and swiped out with a Leaf Blade. Sneasel retaliated with a Triple Axel, spinning around to kick out at Grovyle, and the Grass-type took a solid blow before turning into a bundle of sticks.
His Substitute move discharged, Grovyle darted in again.
"Impressive, teacher," Happiny said. "You didn't copy any moves, though. I was keeping track."
"She didn't use any moves which would be good ones for me to copy," Grovyle replied, with a shrug.
"Did they just say-" Candice began, then shook her head firmly. "I don't have time to go over that, I guess… right. This is my third and final Pokémon."
She sent out a Mamoswine, who landed with a crunch on the hard ice floor and made a hoom noise.
"Come on back, Grovyle," Ash instructed, taking out a Safari Ball instead. "Probably Suicune!"
It was, indeed, Suicune.
She landed on the top of the sloping ice with sure paws, then was abruptly left hovering in mid-air as every single bit of ice in the main gym room melted at once.
Mamoswine let out a shout of surprise as he splashed into the pool, and only the quick reactions of Whitney's Rapidash made it so that the trainers present only got wet up to their knees.
"That's freezing!" Zoey yelped.
"...ah," Suicune said, looking down at her paws. "I actually didn't intend that one… there must have been some water left in the ice from Dragonite's battling earlier."
"Well," said Candice, once she'd been lifted over to the side of the room (where there was a support structure) and she'd returned Mamoswine. "You've got the Icicle Badge."
She shook her head. "And I'm not taking challengers for the rest of the day, at least."
"Honestly, that's fair," Zoey told her. "From what I've heard, dealing with Ash is… an experience."
"You're coping better than Blaine did when Suicune broke his volcano!" Ash volunteered.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Candice decided. "It sounded a lot like one, after all. Anyway, I think Mamoswine needs a bit of relaxing, calming experience after that… I know I do."
There was a chiming sound.
"Oh, that's the doorbell," Candice said. "I'd better see who it is."
Ash and the others followed her, partly because going out the front door was as good a way to leave the building as any other, and so they were there when Candice opened the door.
"Hi, Paul!" Ash waved.
"Oh, it's you," Paul replied, then frowned slightly. "How is Chimchar doing?"
"He's doing great!" Ash answered. "Thanks for asking after him. Are your Pokémon okay?"
Paul shrugged.
"I'm here to challenge the Gym," he went on.
"Sorry, I'm not taking any more challengers today," Candice told him. "I took one, it was Ash Ketchum, and that was about as much of that as I want to handle. Plus he melted my gym floor."
The trainer blinked.
"What?" he asked. "...how?"
"It was mostly Suicune," Ash explained. "A bit of it was what Dragonite had left."
"...well, then," Paul replied, after thinking about that. "I'll challenge Candice tomorrow, then."
"Please tell me you're more normal," Candice requested. "It'd mean a lot to me right now."
"I'm normal!" Whitney said proudly. "Except sometimes I'm Ice-Bug."
AN:
Being an expert around Ash Ketchum is a bit of a harrowing experience.