When they got to Jubilife, Dawn went to go and get a Pokétch, and Ash sent Sceptile back to Professor Oak's laboratory.
He also got a video call from the Professor, and Koraidon leaned in to wave as well.
"Ah!" Oak said. "Hello there, Koraidon. How are you finding Sinnoh?"
Koraidon looked confused, and thumped a paw on the ground.
"It's right here," she said.
"...do you mean, what does she think of Sinnoh?" Ash asked, after a moment. "Because I think she decided you were asking how she found where Sinnoh was."
"Oh, silly me," Oak said. "And yes, that is what I meant."
"Oh, okay," Koraidon replied, and sat down.
"It's cool," she said, after some deliberation. "The air's sort of crisp. I like it."
Ash translated, and Oak nodded.
"Yes, Sinnoh is further north, so it's cooler than Kanto in the same way Kanto is cooler than Hoenn," he told her. "Since you have so many Dragon types, Ash, don't forget to keep an eye on that, though I imagine Koraidon will manage just fine… now, I wanted to check with you on something. Do you think it would be a good idea to seek approval for increasing your maximum team size again?"
Ash thought about that.
"Maybe?" he said. "I guess there's me, Mew, Pikachu and Latias who are all going to be together on this for most of Sinnoh at least, and only really one of us is going to be battling in any one battle, but I don't know if that's a good enough reason."
"Well, it's up to you," Oak replied. "I wanted to make sure you knew it was an option… and how have you been finding it, travelling with Cynthia so far?"
"I think," Ash began, then stopped. Frowned.
"I don't really know yet, but not in a bad way," he resumed. "It's more like… it's easy to not think about how she's a Champion when talking to her, and I think it's made me think about how being a Champion actually works. Because…"
He tapped a hoof on the ground. "When I was growing up, I thought being a great Pokémon trainer, being a Pokémon master, meant becoming Champion – and that meant being all about Pokémon. But now I've met three Champions, and… that's not really been what any of them are like?"
Oak nodded, but didn't say anything – wordlessly inviting Ash to continue.
"I mean that, uh, Steven loves his Pokémon, but he's into rocks and fossils as well," Ash resumed. "And Lance was out helping stop people from doing bad things, and Cynthia's really into history. And… I guess it's kind of pointed out that you don't have to be fully focused on winning, to be Champion – and that it's actually important to have something else, maybe? I don't know if this is making sense."
"I think it makes a lot of sense, Ash," Oak told him. "Personally, I think you don't have to force yourself to have something you do outside Pokémon training, but if something naturally appears… it's perfectly fine to spend some time on it. Don't deny yourself something just because it doesn't fit with Pokémon training."
"Well, uh… at the moment it's more like, learning about my family? I think?" Ash said. "Or, saving Pokémon and humans alike from all kinds of problems, there's that too…"
Buneary reached out his paw, touching the Pokéball switch, and vanished with a flash.
Starly jumped into the air for a moment, flared his wings, then struck a pose. "Ta-daaah!"
"Is that meant to do something?" Miraidon checked.
"Huh?" Starly asked. "No, I'm just making it official with a celebration."
"Right," Miraidon decided.
"By the way," Starly added. "Your eyes are neat. Weird, but… yeah, neat."
Miraidon smiled. "I am glad to be neat."
"They're digital," Mew told Starly. "One of the things that means is that… something digital is made up of individual bits that can be either on or off, rather than a fuzzy in-between-y sort of place."
Cynthia was busily taking notes, since it was the first time she'd seen Miraidon up close.
"Oh, there you guys are!" Dawn said, waving as she came over. "So, good news – I got my Pokétch, but also, the Contest here still has spaces and I managed to snag one. That's this evening, so it's time to see how Turtwig, Piplup and I do in the Appeal and Battle rounds!"
She looked contemplative. "Now, I just need to sort out my dress…"
"A dress?" Ash asked. "Are Sinnoh contests different?"
Buneary came back out of his Pokéball, Bouncing up to Ash's back, and Dawn considered the question.
"I think so," she said. "It's mostly a style thing, but generally speaking the Coordinators in Sinnoh dress up to compete. They use Seals, as well, or… it's much more traditional to use them, I guess?"
She shrugged. "I've never really questioned it, it's just the Sinnoh style so it's what I'm used to…"
After some deliberation, Dawn entered Turtwig as her Appeal round Pokémon and Piplup for the Battle round, while Ash and Cynthia went off to get seats in the audience.
"Now, this is something I did hear about, but it can't be easy for you," Cynthia said. "It's so easy to forget about this unless you've experienced it."
"Yeah," Ash agreed, stepping aside to let someone else past. "It's all a kind of... snarled up thing? Where we need to get a set of seats that suits having me in the accessible place while also having the people I'm travelling with next to my seat, so we need to get here early enough, but that means that we're in the place people go..."
He frowned, then shook his head. "I don't really think there is a better solution, though, it's just how it is and it's something I have to be used to."
"Maybe there is a solution, but it's... probably too much trouble to try and find one?" Latias guessed. "Or, not worth it, at least."
"Can you quiet down?" one of the other spectators asked.
"There's no need to be rude," Cynthia chided. "The Contest hasn't started yet."
"Yeah, but-" the spectator began, then saw who he was speaking to, and made a sort of squeak noise before stopping.
"Is that deliberate?" Pikachu wondered. "No, don't bother translating, I was thinking out loud."
Dawn came out on stage third, looking to Ash like she felt a lot more nervous than she was trying to tell herself, but sent out Turtwig with a flourish and told him to use Razor Leaf before the swirl of petals from his Seal had fully dispersed.
Turtwig duly used Razor Leaf, but in the specific way that Dawn had wanted – firing out a whole succession of Razor Leaf attacks into the air, and tilting them as he changed how he was aiming.
Some of them went straight up into the air with the cutting side of the leaf first, so they kept most of their momentum and reached nearly to the roof. Then Turtwig switched his aim and the way he was angling the leaves at the same time, so they had more of their flat side involved and hit the air harder. That in turn meant that they slowed down quicker, and in some cases even curved through the air, and they fell around Turtwig in a circle after not going very high.
The Grass-type didn't just have those two options, though. He went back and forth between them and also worked in a lot of the intermediate steps, so the leaves went spraying out in a complex pattern that went back and forth like a display fountain, and when it ended with a flourish from both Dawn and Turtwig a final cloud of leaves drifted gently through the air - having lost all their momentum in a spray near the top of the hall, so they floated down like confetti.
"It's amazing what you can do with just one move, huh?" Ash asked quietly. "That's one thing that's cool about Contests, seeing that kind of inventiveness."
During the Battle Round, Piplup handled his first opponent with the help of careful timing from Dawn – she made sure that he used a sharp, snappy Bubblebeam at a distance, an agile Peck in close, and then when the other Coordinator's Bidoof used Rollout she replied by telling Piplup to use Bide.
That was good tactics, of course, but what turned it into a good Appeal move was that Piplup didn't just take hits until he exploded. Instead, there were little flashes of white when Bidoof hit him, and he managed to avoid being knocked about too much – in fact, he managed to make it so he tumbled over, then sprang back upright again, looking almost as if he'd been planning it all along.
Then he triggered Bide just as Bidoof came in to hit him again, a spring-loaded impact knocking Bidoof cartwheeling through the air, and that combination was enough to get them into the second round.
The second round, though, saw them facing a Coordinator called Zoey and her well-trained Glameow.
Ash wasn't an expert on Coordinating, but he felt like Zoey and Glameow had a level of coordination that Dawn hadn't reached yet. Dawn had tricks that her Pokémon could pull off, and she'd clearly spent a lot of time thinking about what to have her Pokémon do, but Zoey and Glameow had gone a step past that and into ways they could interrupt the rhythm of their opponents.
Whether it was a Shadow Claw to disperse the Bubblebeam, a Fury Swipes to parry the Peck… the counters Zoey was ordering didn't always work, but when they did it looked impressive and cost Dawn points, and then it turned out that the Catty Pokémon had something ready for Bide, as well – wrapping Piplup up in her long, springy tail, using Iron Tail to keep Piplup from just shoving his way out, before flicking the Water-type into the air to let his Bide detonate away from where Glameow was.
"...really impressive," Dawn said, after approaching Zoey outside. "My mom's Glameow uses some moves different, but even with the same Pokémon using Iron Tail then mom's Glameow uses it differently to yours."
Zoey chuckled. "Well, that's… wait, hang on."
She stepped back, and made a picture frame with her thumbs and forefingers. Then looked at Ash.
"You're not from the past, right?" Zoey asked. "Or going there? Because I could swear I saw a picture of a Top Coordinator who looked a lot like you."
"That's… probably my mom," Dawn replied. "Johanna, right?"
"...huh," Zoey said. "Now I feel glad I didn't finish my sentence about how it's not surprising a Coordinator's Pokémon knows more tricks than some random pet Pokémon…"
AN:
Something about being near so many Legendary Pokémon just makes people jump to conclusions, I suppose.