"You again!" Ash said. "What are you up to this time?"

"Hey, shut it," Meowth replied. "You ain't da boss of us. We're on a holiday to Unova, all expenses paid so long as they ain't too over the top."

"Which is why we're taking part in a fishing contest," Jessie added. "It's one of those things you're supposed to do on a holiday."

"It is?" James asked. "Huh. I thought it was just something you did if you had a fishing rod, because otherwise you'd feel bad about wasting all that money."

"Fishing isn't like that!" Cilan said, crossing his arms. "It's a celebration of the bond between fisher and fish! And I should know, I'm a fishing connoisseur!"

Iris frowned. "I thought you were a Pokémon connoisseur."

"Name me a thing you can fish that isn't a Pokémon," Cilan retorted, smiling.

"...old boots?" Iris tried.

"And if I fished up an old boot with a lure like the ones I use, I'd be quite concerned," Cilan said. "Now, let's see if I remembered to pack my collapsible fishing rod…"

While he was rummaging in his bag, Ash frowned.

"Didn't you say you'd got a Yamask last time?" he said.

"Oh, yeah, we did," James agreed. "Cute little guy. Or girl. Doesn't say much, though."

He sent the Ghost-type out, and it held up both arms and made a series of gestures.

"Hmm," Ash frowned. "I think I recognize that… can you do that again, please?"

He held up Arc, and Yamask repeated the gestures.

On Arc's screen, the letters H-E-L-L-O appeared.

"Semaphore!" Ash said. "I thought that's what it might be. How are you getting on with your new trainer?"

Yamask smiled brightly and began waving their arms again.

"Okay, since I'm the only one who wasn't fishing, I've somehow ended up judging this," Iris said. "So, Jessie has…?"

"A Basculin!" Jessie replied, holding it up. "It's got a red stripe, which clearly makes it better."

"And I've got a giant Magikarp!" James boasted. "This must be the largest one ever! It's too big to lift!"

"Eh, I think that might be one of our old submarines, James," Meowth said, critically.

"I, meanwhile, have a blue striped Basculin," Cilan reported. "Which I think means Jessie and I are equally matched?"

"As if," Jessie snorted.

"And Ash has…" Iris said, then stopped and sighed. "Really?"

"Look, I'm as surprised as you are," Kyogre rumbled. "I suspect Hoopa was involved."

"Well, it was a fishing contest," Iris said. "And I'm pretty sure Kyogre isn't a fish. So James wins."

"Yeah, that's fair," Ash agreed. "That is definitely a fish."

Meowth looked faintly confused, then shrugged. "I ain't complainin'."

At that point, the two Basculin attempted to murder one another.

Fortunately the collateral damage wasn't too bad, and the next day the friends were trekking towards Nimbasa when Ash noticed something.

"Uh… how does that sign make sense?" he asked, pointing.

"Nimbasa, ten miles… Nimbasa, forty miles," Cilan read off. "Oh, I think I heard about this. There's Nimbasa Town and Nimbasa City, though for us they're on the same road so far."

"I wonder how that happened," Iris said.

"Maybe someone got confused?" N suggested. "I think we've all found that reading maps is sometimes difficult… we didn't notice this until now, just as an example."

"Um, excuse me?" a young man asked. "Can you hold on there for a couple of minutes? We're filming up ahead."

"There is?" Ash asked. "That's kind of neat."

"Thanks!" the young man replied. "It's just me and Zorua doing it, which is a really tricky experience because of all the compositing, so a take like this is important to me."

"You have a Zorua?" Lokoko said. "Interesting… I can see how that would make film making easy."

"Well, the problem is that she's a bit iffy about doing the male roles," the film-maker said. "I don't want to push her, but… well, the film sort of has to have more than two male roles, especially when the only role Golett can play is a role that looks like a Golett."

"You know, I just had an idea…" Iris mused. "What about if we help out? Especially Ash."

"Ash?" the film-maker repeated. "Wait, you mean Ash Ketchum? You're Ash Ketchum?"

He shook Ash's hand. "It's an honour to meet you! I saw your Pokémon League challenges, they're a real inspiration!"

"Thanks!" Ash replied. "I'm glad I could help out… I wonder if Zorua, Noctowl, Latias, Latios, Lokoko, Aten and Zacian would like to be part of a film? Plus whoever wants to appear as themselves, too…"

"You're too late!" the Dark Emperor boomed, folding his arms. "Nothing can stop the World Consumer now!"

"The World Consumer?" Princess Grace repeated. "I didn't think that was real!"

"You thought wrong!" the Dark Emperor replied. "I'll unleash him and you'll all see!"

He waved a hand with a flourish, and the World Consumer emerged from the mists.

Princess Grace and Prince Noble stared.

"...are you sure that's the World Consumer?" Prince Noble asked, trying not to laugh.

"Of course!" the Dark Emperor said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"It's tiny and cute, that's why," Princess Grace said.

"Yeah, it's more of a Squee Creator-" Prince Noble began, then collapsed to the ground as the World Consumer pounced him and knocked him out of frame. "Aagh!"

"And cut!" Luke said. "Good take!"

"That means you can get off my nose now," Zorua added, a bit nasally, as Princess Grace and the Dark Emperor reverted to being Luke's Zorua and Ash's Latios. "Any time, Aten."

"Don't you mean The World Consumer?" Aten replied. "You knew there was a price for ad-libbing jokes!"

Nimbasa Town came next, the one which wasn't Nimbasa City, and Ash was first in line to sign up for the Club Battle.

"So, how does it work?" he asked.

"Shouldn't you know before deciding to sign up?" the person at the desk said.

"Yeah, but I don't really think it's possible for someone to be running an official Pokémon tournament that I wouldn't be interested in," Ash replied.

The woman chuckled. "I suppose so. So the idea is that you have three Pokémon registered for the tournament, and you can pick one each round."

She looked slightly nervous. "You… are planning on not using any Legendary Pokémon, right? Or any of your ridiculous ones that beat Legendaries?"

"Eesh, leave him some options," Pikachu said.

"Pikachu's got a point, I normally make sure to train my Pokémon against Legendaries…" Ash said, thinking. "Including the Legendaries, because it's a rotation. What about if I enter Pokémon I haven't used in an official battle before?"

He frowned. "Or, is this an official battle? I could borrow one of my friend's Pokémon to make up the numbers, if they say it's okay."

"Normally we wouldn't allow that because it's against the spirit of the competition," the woman said. "But in this case I think it's the only thing that would preserve the competition itself… go ahead, but you'll have to get back in line after asking."

"That's fine!" Ash agreed.

"So… okay," the woman said, some minutes later. "You've got a Roggenrola, a Pidove and a Magneton."

"That's right," Ash confirmed. "I haven't used any of these Pokémon in official battles so far, partly because one of them is technically a wild Pokémon, but she hangs around my friend Keldeo a lot."

The woman visibly decided to ask no more questions whatsoever.

"Darumaka, use Fire Punch!" Dino ordered.

"Steel Beam!" Ash replied, and his Magneton – part of the Spiritmob – fired out a beam of silver light from their three eyes. Magnets pulled and tugged on it, making sure it hit Darumaka, but the Fire Punch still got through and knocked Magneton backwards.

"Now, Magnetic Flux!" Ash went on, and Magneton's magnets spun around with a whummm. The silvery Steel-type energy that had splashed over Darumaka responded, and the Fire-type found himself suspended in mid-air by a powerful magnetic field.

"Great work!" Ash told them. "Keep them up!"

The two hosts of the tournament sighed.

"I suppose it was too much to hope for that Ash Ketchum wouldn't do something absurd," Freddy O'Martian said.

"Well trained Pokémon, though," Don George admitted.

"At last!" Georgia said. "I get to battle you, Dragon Master Iris!"

Iris looked down at the Pokéball in her hand. "Uh…"

"Something wrong?" Georgia asked.

"Not really," Iris replied. "Don't worry, you'll do fine."

She sent out Archen, who gulped slightly on seeing the giant Beartic that Georgia had sent out.

"You'll be fine, Archen," Iris said, reassuringly.

"That's not a dragon either!" Georgia complained. "Oh, whatever. Beartic, Ice Beam!"

"Fly!" Iris retorted, and Archen pushed herself off the ground with a flex of her legs and a flap of her wings. That wasn't enough to actually take off by itself, but it got her away from the initial blast, and the Flying-type hopped and skipped along the ground in a half-run half-jump for a moment longer before rising properly into the air.

"Keep your speed up," Iris said. "Good… look out! Dive!"

Archen dropped down, avoiding the second Ice Beam, and looked back at her trainer for a second before going back to facing forwards in lieu of crashing. "Chen!"

"I know, I'll think of something!" Iris replied. "Uh, Wing Attack – no, Double Kick!"

Archen was already turning in to use Wing Attack, heard Double Kick, and got sort of confused.

There was a flash of bright light, and when it faded Iris had an Archeops instead.

That meant she now had four wings, two of them on her legs, and she kicked Beartic before looking back at her trainer. "Aar?"

"That's good, yeah!" Iris agreed. "Not what I expected, but better!"

"That was weird," Mew said.

Pikachu stared at his teammate. "You're saying that. You."

"No, I mean why she thought she had to evolve to do that," Mew shrugged. "I guess she is still new to battle… that might explain why she's winging it."

Pikachu threw a berry pip at Mew. "That was bad and you should feel bad."

"Let's do this, Stoutland!" Burgundy said. "Beat that Pansage!"

Cilan smiled. "You know what to do, Pansage…"

The referee called for them to begin, and Pansage backflipped away from Stoutland's first charging Tackle. He plucked a tiny sprig from his coat, blew on it so it flickered, then held out a hand and used a torrent of Hydro Cannon that lasted until the onrushing blast of water had washed Stoutland out of the arena and flooded it to a depth of six inches.

Burgundy blinked. "What. The heck. Was that."

"Oh, it's a restaurant-trained Pokémon's special!" Cilan said. "Eau avec l'eau."

"...water with water?" Burgundy translated. "That doesn't explain – but – how does that have any relation to a restaurant?"

"Even a restaurant can suffer from the pipes bursting," Cilan replied with a smile. "It's similar to another of his specials, Laser Light Display with Extra Light."

"That was an interesting experience," Archeops said, once the tournament was over. "I think I learned a lot."

She looked down. "One of the things I learned is that it's a lot easier to hover if you have twice as many wings."

"Yeah, that's a real benefit," Iris agreed. "And we also learned that Pidove has something weird going on."

"I said I was sorry," Pidove said, not for the first time, and tried to hide in N's mane.

"It's okay, it's not your fault," Ash told her. "You just have a really good memory for what it was like to get boosted by Victini. And fortunately Dwebble's Sturdy!"

"You're a helpful friend, Ash," N said. "And that's one of the reasons I'm not too concerned about your… unusual… relationship with probability."

He smiled. "I can accept that most Pokémon are happy with their trainers. It has the ring of truth about it. But at the same time I'm sort of glad that I'm seeing how the speed at which Pokémon around you get better is… not normal."

"It isn't?" Ash asked.

Iris tried not to laugh.

"It's a pity that all of these get used up once they're used once," she said, spreading out the set of Wings that had been the tournament prize. "I've never really understood how they work, either."

"Or why they're called wings!" Axew contributed. "They look like feathers to me."

"Like the Rainbow Wing," Ash said. "I assume, anyway… maybe it sounds better?"

"Good morning," Marshadow said, a day or so later. "Did you all sleep well?"

"I guess so, I feel well rested," Ash replied, stifling a yawn. "Why?"

"Someone tried to steal your dreams," Marshadow explained. "Well, two someones. A Beheeyem and a human."

"It probably didn't work, then," Iris guessed. "Did you help out?"

"I stole your dreams right back, then gave them back," Marshadow explained. "Of course, they just stole them again, so I restole them back. Then they stole your dreams again and I stole them back. This went on for..."

He rummaged around in Ash's shadow, pulled out a calculator, and tapped some numbers into it.

"Some time," he decided. "Then they got bored and left, or possibly the shouty rant was relevant. I'm not sure, I'm just a simple country Ghost type."

"Thanks, Marshadow," Ash said. "Well, let's keep going! Not far to Nimbasa City now!"

AN:

Because Archeops is the Pokémon best at flying kicks.