"I wonder if this is likely to make either of the Pokémon in the eggs more interested in Contests," Latias said, considering.
"Maybe," Koraidon replied. "That wouldn't be a shame! I don't think dad would mind doing a Contest as the Coordinator, if one of us asked."
Ash nodded, glancing back at them.
Koraidon and Ash both took up the kind of space that could only really be accommodated in the disabled space for a Contest Hall, but one plus side of that was that the arrangement of seats didn't put anyone behind Koraidon if she sat behind Ash.
On top of that, May's egg was in Max's lap, and Ash's egg was apparently balanced on Koraidon's head. What was actually going on was that Latias was holding it in place with both hands, but since Latias was invisible it sort of gave the impression that Koraidon was just really good at balancing.
It certainly seemed to be giving Koraidon the giggles.
"It'll have to be Miraidon's turn next, if there's another Contest before they hatch," Koraidon declared. "This is funny."
"Hey, look," Brock said, getting their attention. "It's May's go."
May walked out to the middle of the floor, then bowed, and sent out her Octillery.
"Not Cosplay-chu this time?" Max asked, surprised. "I thought they made a costume."
"They did make a costume," Pikachu agreed.
"Octillery, Water Pulse!" May called, and Octillery launched a salvo of Water Pulse attacks into the air.
May watched them carefully, then began pointing them out. "Flamethrower! Psybeam! Flamethrower!"
The targeted Water Pulses exploded at the top of their arcs, sending drizzle raining down across the stadium, but several of them were still intact – then May pointed to one of the ones that was left. "And – Water Pulse!"
The one that she'd selected for being hit by a Water Pulse got extra water added to it, cancelling out the downwards momentum and launching it higher. Octillery hit the other half of the Water Pulses on their way down with Flamethrowers and Psybeams, then the one double-sized Water Pulse came down towards them and May revealed the trick she'd been working up to.
"Signal Beam!"
A sinister beam of white light hit the water blob – and didn't destroy it. Instead, the beam itself flashed into the water and split into a multicoloured rainbow, one which lit the whole of the falling raindrops inside the arena, and for almost an entire second the rainbow shone there to a chorus of impressed 'ooh' sounds from the crowd.
Then the double-sized Water Pulse hit Octillery, but she'd fired a last-minute Aurora Beam so it burst into a cloud of icy fragments that rained down like ice dust. Instead of just flattening her, which would also have been a possibility.
"That was nice," Latias said. "I wonder where the idea for that came from?"
"I… think it might have been partly to do with me?" Koraidon asked. "And Miraidon and Marshtomp. It was when we were practicing to make sure Marshtomp could still deal with fighting under sunlight, and he used Scald at the same time as Miraidon used Solarbeam, so it made a pretty rainbow effect. I guess Signal Beam was quicker to charge, though."
She tapped a paw on the ground, contemplatively. "It's funny how ideas like that happen, right?"
"Yeah, sometimes things come from somewhere where you can only see how it works afterwards," Ash agreed.
There was a bit of a weird thing where someone called Jeremy arrived for the Appeal round only in the middle of the Appeal round, and then his wife showed up to say he should come back home, but May spoke up and said that if it made him happy to compete then really he should be allowed to compete. And that it wasn't really very nice of someone to keep their husband from doing what they wanted to, so long as it didn't hurt anyone.
Ash wasn't sure why the Jeremy's wife didn't want him to compete in the first place, but he approved of the idea that the man could compete.
Then Jeremy made it past the Appeal Rounds with his Butterfree, and he – like May – moved on to the Battle Rounds.
"Oh, so that's what the complete costume looks like," Ash said, as May sent out Cosplay-chu for her first Battle Round. "I only saw the bits."
"What is that a costume of?" Latias asked. "I don't really recognize what it's supposed to be."
"Really?" Ash asked, surprised, then stopped and thought about it.
May's Pikachu was wearing a brightly coloured top, with close fitting cuffs, and a bottom half that was in a much more dark colour.
She was wearing a warm hat, one with holes for her ears, and a pair of goggles too, and if that was it then maybe it would have been hard for him to work out what it was – but she had a pair of carefully carved boards on her hind paws, as well, and a pair of sticks in her forepaws, and combined that made it obvious to Ash that she was a skier.
But that was the thing. Obvious to Ash.
Latias had grown up in Altomare, and she hadn't necessarily seen any pictures of skiers before. And they hadn't really encountered anyone since then who was a skier, not that Ash could remember, and certainly not enough to make it so she'd recognize one on sight.
That… was a lesson Ash should have learned already, but it was a hard one to remember, because it was about making sure you remembered to try and think about what other people could know. And that was hard when all you had to go on was what you personally knew.
And, at the same time, it was really important for someone like him who could do such amazing things to keep it in mind. To remember it, and make sure he didn't screw up by accidentally assuming someone knew something when they didn't.
It wasn't something he could possibly check all the time, but… he could do better.
"She's a skier," Ash explained, then. "Skiers use skis to slide on snow-"
"Begin!" the organizer called.
"Quick Attack!" May ordered.
Pikachu did something to her skis, and slid forwards on them fast – faster than a normal Quick Attack, and sliding straight past the Farfetch'd she was facing. A plume of icy mist rose up behind her as she moved, floating in the air and adding a kind of smoke-effect to her skis, then she slid around in a turn.
"Thunderbolt!" May said, and Cosplay-chu threw her ski poles up into the air. She used Thunderbolt, which Farfetch'd deflected with his leek, then caught the ski poles again and used them to block Farfetch'd's counterattack.
"How do you say something belongs to Farfetch'd?" Max asked. "I'm thinking about how to write this down, if it's something Professor Oak would want to know."
Jeremy turned out to have a Venusaur, to go with his Butterfree, and he was skilled enough to make it to the final opposite May.
May's Pikachu kept up the same high-speed sliding and dodging as she'd used against both her quarter-final and semi-final Battle Round opponents, but Jeremy and his Venusaur turned out to have a much better idea of how to deal with that than anyone else had. Despite being a big and heavy Pokémon, Venusaur used his Vine Whip attacks to swipe across at or near ground level and force Pikachu into making turn after turn rather than get up speed – then rained down curling Razor Leaf patterns on her, scoring glancing blows despite Pikachu doing her best to defend herself.
"What I don't really know is what that move is," Max frowned, leaning forwards. "Mist?"
"It could be, but why is she moving so fast, then?" Ash replied. "And how is that to do with a skier… Brock, do you have any ideas?"
"I know the answer, but I helped them work on it, so saying how would be cheating," Brock defended himself.
"Hmm," Pikachu frowned. "Skier… I wonder…"
May looked up at the scoreboard, seeing that they were losing points, then pointed.
"Pikachu!" she said. "Jump! Then Quick Attack straight in and Thunderbolt!"
Pikachu used one of her ski poles to kick off the ground, jumping, and the Vine Whip passed underneath her. She landed upright again, shot forwards in a plume of icy spray, then got hit by the other Vine Whip attack and knocked into the air.
"Oh!" one of the announcers said. "That's a remarkable blow-"
"Now!" May said, overriding him. "Avalanche!"
"Avalanche?" Jeremy asked. "Venusaur – Frenzy Plant!"
Vines came crunch-ing up out of the ground, seething and reaching for Pikachu, but the first one that got to her got beaten aside by a ski pole – and Cosplay-chu began riding along the vine, ice swirling around her skis much more intensely now, as her Avalanche built up strength.
"Avalanche is a move that's stronger if you've been hit," Ash said, half to himself and half to remind the others who couldn't remember Marshtomp using it in the Ever Grande Conference. "And she just got hit, so…"
Ice was swirling around Pikachu like a comet, now and she kicked off from one vine to another before crashing into Venusaur with the force of a metaphor.
May made a special effort to seek out Jeremy after the point where she'd won the Silver Town's Ribbon, and told him that he'd done really well – especially since he'd been training in secret – and that she thought he had a real talent.
Ash was fairly sure she was doing it so his wife could hear, and after she'd finished the woman sighed.
"You're right," she admitted. "It always seemed like there was something else that was more important-"
"-but there's no point doing something all your life if all it does is make you sad," Max finished. "We met someone in Hoenn who was making the same mistake, and it is a mistake… but I think realizing that is a great first step."
AN:
Sewing is hard, so Cosplay-chu has even more pre-Contest work required than most Pokémon...