After leaving Pokémon Mansion with their new friends, Ash decided to make sure something was sorted out once they'd stopped for lunch.

"Sandshrew?" he asked. "I'm glad that you decided to become one of my Pokémon, but what I wanted to check was… what kind of thing you wanted that to mean."

Sandshrew looked puzzled.

"There's more than one kind?" she asked. "I don't really understand it very well, sorry."

"There's more than one kind," Ash agreed. "So, just with me for example, a lot of the Pokémon I have are Pokémon that I train for battle and use in things like gym battles. A gym battle is sort of… a test of how strong my Pokémon are, and how good I am at making them strong and thinking through what they should be doing."

He waved a hoof. "Does that make sense?"

"I think I understand," Sandshrew replied. "It's sort of like what my grandmother told me about the Trials, back where she was from. But there it's often Pokémon doing the testing."

"That sounds really neat, actually!" Ash admitted. "But, uh – yeah, that sounds like the same kind of thing. Do Pokémon do those trials, then?"

"No, human trainers do with their Pokémon," Sandshrew answered. "I don't remember all the details, sorry, I last heard about this a while ago."

"That's okay," Latias told her, reassuringly. "If you forget something, that's not your fault, it's just something that happened. Right?"

"I think so, yeah," Ash agreed. "Maybe Uxie has something to say about that, but I guess we'll be meeting them anyway later on… anyway, uh, I was talking about what being my Pokémon could mean. And another thing it could mean is that you don't get involved in anything. Like Mew, who doesn't get into battles as much as possible because they don't want to."

He nodded over at Dawn, who was walking Chimchar through an idea involving Flamethrower as Riolu watched. "And Dawn's Pokémon are mostly Pokémon who do Contests, which are all about looking good, though they do have some battling."

"What about that other person, Cynthia?" Sandshrew checked. "And are there other ways?"

"Cynthia's speciality with Pokémon is battling," Ash explained. "But she is one of the really strong trainers that people test themselves against, so it's a bit different with her."

He considered. "I guess those are the main options… a Pokémon who doesn't battle, a Pokémon who does Contests only, a Pokémon who does training for conventional battles. But those are really big categories."

"Yeah," Zorua contributed, patting Miraidon's head. "Miraidon can give people rides, and they could do that whether or not they were also battling."

"That is correct," Miraidon said encouragingly.

Sandshrew gave herself a look over, in case she'd got much bigger while she wasn't looking.

"I think… do you think I'd be able to battle?" she asked. "I don't want to pick something that I'm not able to do."

"It's okay to change your mind," Ash assured her. "But about if you're able to or not… personally I think the answer to that is that any Pokémon can do well at formal battles. It's whether or not they want to that matters more."

He frowned, thinking of an example. "So… one of my strongest Pokémon is my Charizard, but when I met him, as a Charmander… his first trainer had abandoned him because he was too weak."

Sandshrew gasped.

"What?"

"Yeah," Ash agreed, a bit uncomfortable. "Some people just… aren't nice to their Pokémon. Which is why it's important that you know you can change your mind… that's why it matters to make sure that all Pokémon can do that. Because if I'm in charge of you, I'm… someone who can tell you what to do, I guess, and that means that I need to be careful with that. And it means you need to know the limits, in case I forget."

"You won't forget," Zorua said.

"I hope I won't," Ash agreed, smiling. "But I was talking about Charizard… and he got to be really strong, but for a while he didn't listen to me much, because he was sort of reacting to what his first trainer had been like, I think. It took us a while to get over that, but once we did, Charizard's been a really important part of my team when I need him."

"And there's me, too," Latias spoke up. "I spent a long time where I lived before meeting Ash, and I didn't train to fight at all. I'm a Legendary Pokemon-" Sandshrew jumped slightly. "-so you'd expect me to be good at battling, but I wasn't. Until I had a reason to work on it, and Ash's help, and once I did then I think I'm quite good now."

"You're great at it, Latias!" Ash told her. "You really have put in the work, and it's helped me out too."

"I've never heard of your kind of Legendary, but I guess you are teammates with a Mew," Sandshrew admitted. "Sort of. Anyway, I think…"

She looked contemplative, then nodded.

"I'd like to see if I can learn to battle," she decided.

Zorua rose up on his hind legs, and clapped.

"Woo," he said.

"Only, what does that mean?" Sandshrew added.

Ash checked his Pokédex. "Well, you're… a Steel and Ice Pokémon, so that means there are some Pokémon types you especially want to watch out for, Fire and Fighting."

He considered. "With Fire, maybe you can keep yourself cool to avoid the Fire-type attacks from doing damage?"

"You seem thoughtful," Latias said.

"Yeah, I guess I am," Ash agreed, watching as Sandshrew did an attempt at Rollout.

She was definitely getting the hang of moving while coiled up, though it was a long way from there to having a powerful move… and Ash was paying attention to her, but he was also thinking about something else.

"I started thinking about why I like doing gym battles," he explained. "Or… why I think I do, anyway. Or… it's hard to know exactly how to put it. But I've been thinking about why I enjoy that kind of thing."

Latias nodded, and Ash kept going.

"I guess it's because… well, of a lot of reasons, all bundled up together," he said. "But one of them is that it's one of those times when there's a really well defined… puzzle, I guess. And you're working to complete it, and somene else is working to stop you completing it… or, two people are, the trainer and the Pokémon."

"And two of you are working to complete it, as well," Latias agreed, following along.

"Right," Ash confirmed. "It's a way of sharing that with my Pokémon in a way that's… it involves working together over a long period of time to get the right tools for the battle, and it involves working together and thinking quickly during the battle itself. You need to know one another well, and you need to put thought into how your Pokémon develop, and then when you're doing the training there's endurance and dedication and skill. But in the moment, there's passion and thinking quickly and bravery… it's like it tests everything about a trainer and a Pokémon at once."

Latias thought about that, remembering the gym battles and other battles she'd seen Ash take part in. Even some of the ones she'd done herself.

"I can see that," she said. "When I'm in the middle of it, it always feels a bit frantic, but… there's those moments when everything clicks, right?"

"Yeah!" Ash agreed. "The moments when everything you're working on lines up together, they're amazing, and that's a lot of what feels good about it. During the actual battle… but I was thinking about how everything leads up to it."

He shrugged slightly. "But… not in a way that means I'm obsessing over it? More like, a battle is the result of who you are as a Pokémon and as a trainer, and everything naturally leads up to it. Or it can, anyway."

"I think that got away from you a bit," Pikachu said.

"Maybe, yeah," Ash agreed. "Great work, Sandshrew! How are you doing?"

"I'm a bit dizzy," Sandshrew admitted, wobbling on her paws. "I don't know how long I could keep this up in a fight."

"Practice would help with that," Ash replied, thinking. "But it's not the only thing that could help… what about if we take a break, and see how you do after a minute?"

He looked over at where Dawn was working with her Pokémon, then frowned. "Actually… now I think about it…"

"What's that?" Sandshrew asked. "That sounds like you had an idea."

"Ash having ideas is a bit of a lottery," Pikachu said. "Let's find out!"

"Pikachu, that's rude," Latias giggled.

"Well, you know Powder Snow already, right?" Ash double-checked, and got a confirmation from Sandshrew. "So…"

"How are you doing, Sandshrew?" Ash asked, cantering along.

"Bit dizzy now," Sandshrew replied.

"Right!" Ash said. "In that case – jump, uncurl, and use Powder Snow!"

Sandshrew did just as instructed, bouncing before uncurling, and her Powder Snow attack drifted out in an arc that glittered in the air in front of her. Part of it hit the ground, freezing the grass, and the rest lost momentum and drifted away in the breeze.

"There!" Ash said. "See, that way, you can launch an attack to cover when you're a bit more vulnerable, and it'll give you a break from rolling around."

"That would work," Sandshrew said, still a bit wobbly, and sat down. "Did you get the idea from anywhere?"

"I got it from Dawn and her Pokémon, a bit," Ash explained. "See, it's a flourish like you get in a Contest. But it's also a way of giving you a break and of using an attack, and… when you do that, as well, you're changing how you're acting. So someone can't predict as well what you're going to do, especially if you get used to using it."

He frowned. "I guess at first you've just got a couple of moves, but… oh, actually, I don't want to forget this idea. One of the Gyms we're going to be battling later on is an Ice-type Gym, and you'd be a really good choice for that."

"I think I get it," Latias said. "Because, um… because Ice-types are normally ready for Fire-type attacks, exactly because they're such an obvious choice, but an Ice-type like Sandshrew can handle the temperatures just fine, right?"

"Right!" Ash agreed. "And if she's already experienced at spinning around, then a good move to make use of that when we get there is Gyro Ball…"

AN:

Always good to make sure everyone has the same understanding of the boundaries involved.

From now I'll be going on a hiatus with Accidental Apotheosis, though I've got other projects I'm working on. One of them, Golden-Eyed Heir to Myth, is only found on AO3 owing to concerns about the levels of violence I'll be showing (due to the base game) while others are on fanfiction as well.