"Hey!" Aten demanded. "Hey, I have important concerns to raise! Mostly involving violence!"
"Huh?" Ash asked, looking up. "What is it, Aten? Is someone trapped in a sand tomb?"
"...what?" Aten replied, completely thrown.
"Actually, it's kind of helpful you're here!" Ash replied. "I was thinking of doing a lesson about trapping moves and things like that, you know, not just using terrain in battles but making it, and having you for that would be really useful because you're good at setting those up."
"Would that mean I get to battle?" Aten asked, distracted.
"You'd almost certainly be able to set up traps and then see them blow up on teammates, if that's what you mean," Pikachu said.
"Hmm, well, that might be acceptable," Aten admitted, then shook his head and stamped a foot. "But that is not why I was here! I wanted to complain about what happened, which I found out about from Dragonite!"
"You mean the thing with Necrozma?" Ash asked. "Or the fireworks display?"
"I mean the wrestling match!" Aten insisted. "You had a Masked Royal match, where your team was themed around royalty, and you did not invite me! There was the opportunity for violence and I did not get it!"
"Oh, I see," Ash realized. "Yeah, sorry, Aten… I could defend myself by saying that there are other Pokémon I could have included, too, Zacian especially, but I should have thought about how much you'd enjoy it."
Aten simmered, which he was quite good at.
"What about if we plan out this lesson, a bit?" Ash suggested. "You can't be just the one on the attack all the time, but I bet we can come up with some good demonstrations of your moves, and then I can add in having Gigalith, Lycanroc and Froslass making terrain features themselves so it's a nice multi-sided battle at the end… you might need to stop mid-battle for me to explain what happened a few times, though."
"If I pull off something impressive, then I want you to explain how!" Aten demanded.
"Sure!" Ash agreed.
As it turned out, though, their planning session didn't go right through the rest of the morning.
Mostly, that was because Professor Kukui came to them with a bit of a worry. The Masked Royal was going to be doing a meet-and-greet at a local mall, and Kiawe had told everyone in tones of great excitement before saying that Kukui really needed to come and see too.
Caught off guard, Kukui hadn't been able to work out a good way to say no, and so he was now scheduled to take his students to go and watch a meet and greet for himself.
"Huh," Ash said, thinking. "Okay, so that's a tricky one. It's all about whether it's better for you to be in character on stage or with the class, right?"
"...actually it was about how it's going to be nearly impossible," Kukui said, a little confused.
"Yeah, but I've got plenty of illusion Pokémon," Ash replied. "Zoroark's pretty good at staying in character, though I guess his illusion could be broken if he gets hit… no, no, I know what we need to do."
"Does it involve me?" Aten asked. "Is this a chance for me to put on a Mask, be Royal, and take my rightful place?"
"Sort of!" Ash replied. "So… if Zacian does it, then her illusion isn't going to be solid. Same for Noctowl, and Latias and Latios. You and Zoroark do have solid illusions, and so does Purrloin if Mew's willing to be her for the day, but they break if they're hit. And Lokoko's good enough she can probably fake being solid, but that's not certain."
"So?" Aten asked.
"So, what we do is we make it part of the joke…" Ash replied. "If we can't be sure any one Pokémon can pretend to be the Masked Royal, we have loads of them doing it at different times, sometimes overlapping so it's happening all at once…"
"That was amazing!" Kiawe said, the following evening, as they left the mall. "I still don't get quite what happened, but it was amazing."
"Yeah," Lillie agreed with a nod. "I was wondering about what was going on in that first bit where the Masked Royal went to get something then came back almost straight away, but then when there were two of them… obviously one of them was fake."
Lana started giggling.
"Sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I just… when they were pointing at one another and accusing one another of stealing their masks… I know that's meant to be quite serious in wrestling but it was just hilarious. And then the third one turned up!"
"Did anyone else spot the one who flew overhead?" Kukui asked. "That might have been on wires, but he just… sort of floated through the ceiling space."
"Oh, I saw that!" Sophocles said. "That Masked Royal ended up upside down halfway through and looked a bit worried by the end."
"What I want to know is which one was the real one," Kiawe frowned.
"Oh, don't bother worrying about something like that!" Mallow advised him. "Especially because the number of times they went stomping off to get something and then came back with it, they could have swapped in several more Masked Royal doubles and we wouldn't even know."
"It was funny how they all came together to defeat that guy with the Magmortar, though," Lillie said. "They all just stopped arguing and every single one of them sent out an Incineroar."
She frowned. "Now I come to think of it… I wonder which one was real?"
"...see, the point is," Ash said, during their lesson the next day. "The terrain that a battle happens in is something that often gets ignored unless someone's planning to do something special with it. But even in League battles they don't just have the matches happen on a flat stage that can't be damaged by anything. Terrain can be all kinds of things, and it especially counts if you set it up yourself."
He waved down at the practice field they were using, which was badly marred after several cases of various Pokémon – chiefly Aten – creating terrain, and then using that terrain to do serious damage to someone else.
"For example, let's take Typhlosion!" he added, sending the Fire-type out, and Typhlosion slammed his fists together before springing into the air and vanishing underground with a crunch.
"Typhlosion can dig, but what can mess with a Pokémon that's digging?"
Mallow answered first. "Earthquake?"
"That can work!" Ash agreed. "But what about terrain?"
"Terrain…" Sophocles mumbled. "I suppose there's, um, you can't dig in water?"
"That's a good one," Ash agreed.
"Solid rock?"
"That works too, if the rock's stronger than the Pokémon!" Ash confirmed. "But here's a good one… Aten, ready?"
"I have been ready for a long time!" Aten replied, then Typhlosion burst out of the ground directly underneath him.
Several symbols glowed all at once, sending cords of light whipping out, and they passed right through Aten to wrap around Typhlosion.
"Aten set some traps!" Ash explained. "Then, when Typhlosion came up through the ground, he activated Aten's traps and snared himself. That's like terrain too, because it relies on Aten predicting where Typhlosion is going to go."
Aten shook his fur out. "Not that it was hard."
"Aten's right," Ash nodded.
He pointed. "So because Dig is a move that works to attack by bursting out of the ground, it means that Aten could be fairly sure where Typhlosion was going to be, and it meant he could set up a trap there. But even if Typhlosion or his trainer worked it out, it'd still be helpful because it meant Aten would have time to react. Terrain controls movement, remember!"
He was about to go on, but Professor Kukui leaned his head out of the classroom door. "Ultra Guardian alert, guys!"
"We'll finish this later, then!" Ash decided. "Aten, Typhlosion, Scrafty, any of you want to come along?"
"I'm fine," Scrafty shrugged.
"I've heard about those missions, not enough violence," Aten declared.
Typhlosion was actually interested, and Ash recalled him before running for the lifts in the classroom.
"So… this isn't an actual Ultra Beast, exactly," Ash summarized, as the other Ride Pokémon crowded around his current flier – Noivern, this time, who had demonstrated his Song of Storms and earned himself a Thunderbird Six badge. "Or it could be, but you don't think it is."
"That's right," Lusamine confirmed. "There's heavy electromagnetic interference coming from Wela Volcano, and it's getting worse. If this keeps up, we won't be able to pick up calls to International – I mean, we won't be able to detect signs of dangerous Ultra Aura."
"That was convincing, mother," Lillie said.
"You know, I am amplifying the conversation, you guys can spread out a bit more," Noivern said, trimming his wings slightly.
The other Ride Pokémon spread out a bit.
"Thanks!"
"Wela Volcano," Kiawe frowned. "I can't think of anything there that could cause it… do you know exactly where it is?"
"No, we don't have the sensor network," Lusamine replied. "You'll have to establish one."
"I do," Zygarde said.
They were sharing Garchomp with Pikachu, today, and their antenna lifted up. "Please hold. Establishing magnetic anomaly trace."
"What's going on?" Lusamine asked.
"Zygarde's doing a search!" Ash explained. "They've got Z-cells all over Alola."
"Lots of them, in fact," Zygarde replied. "Which is a little odd. When I got here I had not expected there to be quite this many in Alola… it would seem to be more of a Kalos thing."
They shrugged. "Locality identified. Passing information to Arc via Greentooth."
"Okay, we've got somewhere to start!" Ash said. "Let's go and look!"
"Well," Kiawe began, once they were on top of Arc's marker. "Those are Graveler, those are Geodude, and those are… Spark Stones, I think?"
Charizard flew a bit lower, and Kiawe nodded. "Yeah, they're Spark Stones. You find them as the result of an eruption, but, uh… generally speaking they're found underground I think. Especially the big ones like that."
He shrugged. "Maybe the signal we're picking up is just loads of Geodude and Graveler? But you'd think they would have shown up before now…"
"Well, if they do normally live underground, we should find out why they're not living underground now, right?" Ash asked.
Then there was a white flash below them, as someone sent out a Pinsir.
"Clear off!" he shouted. "Pinsir, Storm Throw!"
The Geodude and Graveler fled, and the Pinsir's trainer got out a pickaxe before digging into the rock.
"Anything?" another man asked, walking over.
"Yeah, loads," the trainer agreed. "There's plenty of Spark Stones here too, not as many as the main vein but this is going to make us rich!"
"Okay, that's it!" Kiawe said. "Charizard, let's go down!"
Noivern dropped as well, and so did the rest of the Ride Pokémon, and about ten seconds later all the Ultra Guardians were next to the pair of rock hunters.
"Do you have permission to mine here?" Lillie demanded, before Kiawe could actually explode.
"Permission?" the second rock hunter said, then snorted. "What do you mean, permission? The rocks are available for everyone, and we're part of everyone!"
"Wela Volcano's a sacred site," Sophocles said. "It's actually not available to anyone. It's true that finding the occasional one for a Geodude or Graveler to eat isn't something people get worried about, but you're mining them to get rich."
"So?" the first rock hunter replied. "What's it to you?"
Ash frowned.
"You were following those Geodude and Graveler, weren't you?" he asked. "That's clever, actually! Following them to see where they're getting food – but you said there was a main vein. Did you drive them out of their home before?"
"How did-" the second hunter said, then shook his head. "It doesn't matter! They're our stones now and they'll make us a lot of money as jewellery!"
"Do you guys work for Viren or something?" Kiawe asked.
There was a flicker of light behind the rock hunters.
"Hey!" Ash said, raising a Pokéball. "If I beat your Pinsir, will you stop chasing the Graveler and Geodude away and mining all the Spark Stones they were going to eat?"
"World doesn't work like that, kid," the rock hunter snorted. "Pinsir will settle you though."
Ash sent out Typhlosion.
"Huh, neat," Typhlosion said, sniffing. "I don't know if it's because of a volcano or what, but I think I can smell some of those stones underground…"
"What's this about mining Spark Stones?" Officer Jenny asked, having picked herself up from where Hoopa had dropped her – directly behind the Rock Hunters.
The rock hunters, including the ones who were working in a mine they'd made out of the Geodude and Graveler colony's home, got very arrested.
Officer Jenny was getting quite good at doing that.
Then Typhlosion dug around to find some Spark Stones for the local Rock-types, and that seemed to serve as a peace offering.
"Hmm," Aten said. "In hindsight, I probably should have asked how long they were going to be…"
AN:
The high prevalence of stupid land developers and the like in Alola would be concerning were it not for how quickly they face consequences.