"And there it is!" Ash said, pointing down the valley. "Dahara City."

"This feels weird," Bonnie told them. "Why does it feel weird?"

"I know what you mean," Clemont agreed, scratching his head. "Maybe… oh, hold on, I think I know."

"Is it that it's Ash giving directions?" Zoroark asked.

"No, that's not it," Serena replied. "It's that we're the ones who are from Kalos and Ash is pointing to somewhere in Kalos because he knows it better. Because he does."

She looked at Ash. "That's right, right? You've been there before?"

"Yeah, several times," Ash agreed. "Sometimes not for very long because I'm passing through heading somewhere else, but I've gone to visit Hoopa occasionally as well. Sometimes even after having planned to visit Hoopa."

"And yes, there is an alternative," Pikachu noted. "It's when a Hoopa hole opens underneath you."

A Hoopa-hole promptly opened up underneath Ash, who didn't fall through.

"Aww," Hoopa complained, looking up through the hole. "Hoopa was hoping you could skip the boring walking bit and come straight to Dahara City!"

Hoopa crossed their arms. "How are you doing that, anyway? Hoopa is well aware that it is something you can do, but Hoopa is not sure which of the options Ash is using."

"That's Rayquaza," Ash explained. "The weather forecast said it would be sunny today, so I thought I'd have her along!"

"Hoopa approves," Hoopa said, then swirled another ring on their finger and opened a hole in front of the group. "Come on through! Hoopa has picked somewhere great for you to get your first introduction to Dahara City!"

"That sounds nice," Serena said, taking the lead as she was closest.

It turned out that, perhaps understandably, Hoopa's idea of a great place to be introduced to Dahara City was a local pool of water.

"I think that's all of it," Braixen said, a few minutes later, and blew out her wand. "It might be a bit damp, still, but in this weather it'll dry off quickly."

"Thanks, Braixen," Serena replied. "That wasn't a very nice prank, you know."

"Hoopa does not understand?" Hoopa replied, rings jingling on their horns. "Hoopa knows that water is good for humans and Pokémon who are in hot weather in the desert."

Hoopa pondered, scratching their chin. "Maybe Hoopa was not providing enough water. Hoopa could bring along Kyogre?"

"If there's really a big need for water, I could do it," Rayquaza said. "But I didn't hear anything about the city having problems with water…?"

"Oh, Dahara always has problems with water!" Hoopa said, with a huff. "Hoopa hears about how it is in a desert, and then Hoopa opens a Hoopa-hole and provides lots of water, and does Hoopa hear thanks? No! Hoopa hears complaints!"

The Mythical Pokémon sniffed. "Hoopa, my hair has salt in it now. Hoopa, you've washed away the picnic. Hoopa, why did a Wailord just land next to us?"

"Well, obviously because otherwise it'd land on top of you, right?" Ash asked.

"Exactly!" Hoopa agreed. "It is not Hoopa's fault that."

"...that what?" Clemont said.

"Hoopa will just leave it open ended, to save Hoopa time," Hoopa answered.

It wasn't more than a couple of minutes later that a woman wearing local clothes waved to them.

"Hoopa, is that Ash?" she asked, hurrying over. "Ash, it's nice to see you… where were you this time?"

"Actually, we were coming to visit!" Ash explained. "We were on the way past Dahara City, so I thought we should drop in and say hello. Then Hoopa noticed, and we skipped the walk through the desert."

"Hoopa can do this politeness thing!" Hoopa proclaimed proudly. "Hoopa is an expert at Hoopatiquette."

"Which isn't quite the same as etiquette," Lokoko observed.

"Of course!" Hoopa agreed. "Hoopatiquette has more Hoopa, and is therefore better. Are you surprised?"

"Not at all, but then, I do know you," the Ninetales said.

"And do not forget to contact Hoopa Holidays for your Hoopamoon," Hoopa continued. "Should Hoopa bring more friends here to visit along with the ones who are already here?"

"It might be nice to get a look around Dahara City," Serena said. "I heard that you can't leave, does that mean you can portal around inside Dahara?"

"No, Hoopa is unable to go through Hoopa's Hoopa-rings," Hoopa answered. "Hoopa sometimes minds but Hoopa mostly treats it as a way Hoopa is encouraged to get creative! Hoopa can do many things without needing to go through Hoopa's portals."

"What about if we show you around, then?" the woman asked. "And to introduce myself, my name is Meray. I'm one of Hoopa's…"

Meray took a long moment thinking about the right word.

"I think the best term is 'attendants'," she decided.

"Hoopatendants!" Hoopa called.

"Serena," Serena introduced herself. "And this is Braixen. That's both the Pokémon she is and also the specific pronunciation of her name."

"Clemont," Clemont said. "I'm one of the Gym Leaders of Lumiose Gym, with the other two being Clembot and Clembot: Dark Mode."

"Bonnie!" Bonnie said. "Dedenne is in my bag, because he likes it there."

"And this is Zoroark," Zygarde stated, tapping the Snivy riding on his back. "With him you have to clarify."

"I did wonder, I was going to say," Meray said. "Your actual Snivy evolved into a Servine, right?"

"That's right!" Ash agreed.

"So… I was wondering," Serena said, dropping back slightly to speak with Meray as Hoopa explained about how Dahara Tower was a really fun place to use when doing Hoopa Hole trick shots. "Is it a coincidence that Hoopa doesn't use pronouns?"

"Hoopa likes to avoid using pronouns about Hoopaself," Meray answered. "Hoopa is a gender."

"You mean agender?" Braixen checked.

"Not quite," Meray answered. "Hoopa is a gender, and that gender is 'Hoopa'."

"Makes sense," Braixen decided.

Then Meray's brother Baraz showed up, pointed a bottle at Hoopa, and unleashed a wave of dark smoke that surged towards the Psychic-type.

Hoopa snatched a ring off their horn, and held it out, and the shadow went through with a whoosh and vanished.

"Meray?" asked Baraz, confused. "What just…"

He looked down at the bottle. "I… it must… the spirit in the bottle, it must have taken me over when I picked it up. I wanted to help Hoopa, but…"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize-"

"Hoopa recognizes the bottle!" Hoopa announced. "Hoopa had a lot of Hoopa's power locked away by Ghris, but Hoopa does not mind, Hoopa has found ways to live vicariously through everyone else in the entire world."

Hoopa then waved a hand. "Hoopa does not mind much, but Hoopa would also actually quite like to get Hoopa's power back?"

"That was what I was hoping," Baraz said. "I wanted it to be a surprise present, I know how much Hoopa likes surprises."

"Hoopa loves surprises!" Hoopa agreed.

"So… do we need to get that power back, or something?" Ash asked. "Was that actually Hoopa's power, or an evil spirit, or something?"

He glanced at Hoopa. "Where did it go?"

"Hoopa's portals are very easy to understand!" Hoopa told them. "They go from Dahara to Anywhere, because they go from Hoopa to Anywhere and Hoopa is in Dahara. So that is where the shadow went."

"But we're in Dahara," Meray pointed out. "So where was the other end of that portal?"

Hoopa shrugged.

"Well, that… could be a problem?" Serena said. "Hmm, I might need to contact Lily for some help, but I could do it with magic."

"Or we could ask Arceus for help," Baraz suggested, touching his Arceus-ring necklace. "The Original One can help with a lot of things."

Ash's phone beeped.

"I am a Not So Original One," they said. "And I can tell you that I currently do not know. I am searching."

"There's a simple answer to this!" Clemont told them. "It's science!"

Twenty minutes later, he put the result of science down on the table.

"Here we go!" he said. "The Clemontic Speedy Hoopa Tracker!"

Serena looked up from an iced drink. "Why does your Speedy Hoopa Tracker look like a Shaymin?"

Clemont frowned. "I'm… not entirely sure, actually," he admitted. "I was going to have it track Hooparings, since that's the most distinct energy signature, but then I remembered Ash talking about meeting other Pokémon who can use Hooparings, and… at some point it just ended up like this."

"Why is it a Speedy Hoopa Tracker?" Baraz asked. "It's not even hard to track Hoopa, you just ask for Hoopa and Hoopa answers. Sometimes you don't need to ask."

"Well, I tried building a Shadow Tracker, but it just pointed at Ash's shadow," Clemont explained. "Then I built a Speedy Shadow Tracker, but it told me that there was one at Pallet Town in Kanto, which in hindsight might explain why it looks how it does."

"Why not make it a Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker?" Hoopa said. "Hoopa is sometimes speedy but Hoopa is not a shadow."

"That might do," Clemont agreed, tapping a few controls, and the Speedy Hoopa Tracker changed lustre so the metal bits were matte-effect instead of gloss.

Then a portal appeared right in front of Hoopa, and a shadow lunged through.

Hoopa yelped, holding up another portal, and the shadow was diverted away again – directly into the Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker, which promptly vanished in a blur of motion.

"...at least it is speedy, brother," Bonnie said. "That's good work!"

There was a boing as the Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker tried going through a portal, and bounced off. Then it came speeding back towards them, and stopped floating in mid-air.

"Objective: track down Hoopa," it stated. "Complete. Objective: prove that I am the better Hoopa."

"I didn't even program that one in!" Clemont protested.

The Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker didn't bother listening to the correction. It instead made a much bigger Hyperspace Hole in mid-air, summoning a Moltres that crackled with dark energy through it, and Hoopa gasped.

"Hoopa is going to have a chance at a Pokémon battle!" Hoopa declared. "Hoopa chooses everyone!"

While there were logistical issues with simply choosing everyone (i.e. each Pokémon had to come in by a portal one at a time), along with issues of space (Dahara City was not of infinite size) and possibly catering issues, Hoopa still got a good start on bringing in Pokémon who were willing to help, along with the much larger category of Pokémon who had no idea what was going on.

The Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker was summoning Pokémon as well, each one sizzling with shadowy corruption of some kind, but with Hoopa's own summoning happening faster there was a kind of uneasy standoff going on.

"Oof," Solgaleo said, hitting the ground not far from Ash and friends, then shook his mane out. "Ow."

"Hi, Solgaleo!" Ash waved. "How have you been?"

"Ultra!" Solgaleo replied, brightening. "It's been a while since we met here, Ash."

"It has!" Ash agreed.

Then Arc went beep.

"I would like to request elevated privileges," they said. "Please confirm."

Ash looked at his phone, then shrugged. "Sure?" he decided.

"Thank you," Arc replied. "Escalating."

The sky split open, and Arceus floated down from above in a wave of rainbow light.

Arc leaped into the sky as well, golden light coalescing into their true, non-phone-y form, and rose to meet their template.

"It is not a long story, but it involves Hoopa a lot," they explained.

"I see," Arceus replied. "In retrospect, I suppose it was inevitable. Is that the Prison Bottle I sense down there?"

"Correct," Arc replied.

The Alpha Pokémon and the beta version thereof both lit up in a surge of golden light, which swept over all the Pokémon that the Speedy Hoopa Shadow Tracker had summoned and swept away the corruption like morning mist. It hit the possessed robot, as well, hammering the robot away with a metaphysical blow and leaving the shadowy corruption exposed.

Then Ho-Oh fell out of one of Hoopa's portals, upside down and wearing an eye mask.

"I'm awake!" he announced, despite significant evidence to the contrary, and lit up in a surge of rose-coloured fire.

"So… what happens now?" Hoopa asked, as they gathered around the crater that held the results.

"In my defence," Ho-Oh began, slowly. "The first thing I saw was a disembodied spirit."

"Oddly enough, I am not going to condemn you for that one," Suicune told him. "It's a sign of you having a good heart, even if you do also have a bird brain at times."

"I'd object, but I really can't," Ho-Oh admitted.

The solid gold Hoopa shifted.

"Ow," they said.

"Oh!" Hoopa gasped. "So this is not a statue of Hoopa! Hoopa wondered why two Arceus plus one Ho-Oh would make a statue."

"I believe that that is the shiny version of Hoopa," Arceus stated, tilting xer head. "Do not quote me on that, however. In fact, do not quote me on things in general, it simply leads to holy books and that can be tiresome."

"That's a really shiny shiny Pokémon," Bonnie declared.

"What should Hoopa call you?" Hoopa asked. "You are also a Hoopa, but Hoopa is Hoopa and having more than one Hoopa who is Hoopa is Hoopa. Hoopa means confusing."

The shiny Hoopa evaluated itself.

"I do not have the directive to be the best Hoopa any more," they stated.

"That is a long name that would be really complicated to use," Hoopa sniffed. "And it still has Hoopa in it. What about if Hoopa calls you Gold?"

"What I would like to know is, what happens now?" asked the Moltres who the shadow had first summoned.

The various Legendaries exchanged glances.

Ash put up his hand. "Sports day?"

"Hoopa is surprised that you are not taking part in the speed events," Hoopa said half an hour later, reaching through a portal and bringing in some ice cream. "Hoopa saw what Hoopa is fairly sure qualifies as you going very fast indeed before."

"That was when I was a Shaymin," Gold replied. "Now I am Gold, and not a Shaymin. Maybe if I was Gold the Shaymin then I could do that."

Gold paused, then made a portal and ducked right through before coming out again.

"Are you still prevented from going through your portals?"

"Hoopa will check!" Hoopa declared, and promptly found that Hoopa was not. "Hoopa must send a thank you note to whoever was involved!"

Hoopa gave about half a second's consideration to trying to work out who specifically was responsible, then nodded firmly. "Hoopa will just send notes to everyone who was here."

Down below, a Koraidon and a Miraidon gamely attempted to catch up with Shaymintwo.

AN:

Fortunately, they avoided the Dark Future.

Just in case it happens and FF goes down, most of my recent work has been crossposted to AO3. Other works will be migrated if FF does go down.