Chapter 1: The Hunt

Ash was running, the moonlight's silver glow ripping holes of faded light through the dark forest. Then he saw a man in the distance, His face covered by the shadow of a tree, but Ash knew of the danger he meant. The man was angry at Ash, and because of that Ash was running.

There was another one, running in the shadows to the left of Ash, running silently, quietly. Only seen by chance and quickly Ash changed direction to avoid him. Maybe the first man had friends. He must have been really angry.

But Ash continued to run, dodging branches in the air and roots on the ground as the silent winters night was disrupted by his heavy breathing. His face sweaty, his legs wanting to collapse. But still running towards safety.

Ash's sprint stopped as he tripped on a root, smashing his face into the hard unforgiving earth. Hoping he didn't break his nose, hoping he wasn't bleeding. He had to run.

Suddenly a red light ripped through the darkness. A Pokéball, Ash was sure, it had to be. Then silence torn to shreds as a howl shook the night air, it told Ash he would have to run the other way. They were everywhere, everywhere, hiding in the shadows, hunting him in the wilderness.

But he kept on running and running and running. As fast as he could go, with strength in his legs he didn't know he had.

Another howl and then another. There were three Pokémon, maybe even more people. All angry at him.

Ash quickly dodged a sharp piece of wood that was stuck in the ground, losing his footing, spinning, trying to get back to running again. A Houndoom jumped out at him, its face red, black and silver, like fire in the moonlight, silver daggers in the shadow, ready to rip him to shreds.

Ash fell, rolling, kicking the Pokémon on top of him, pushing him up, as the Pokémon floundered at the sudden strength his prey had found.

Suddenly the strength in Ash seemed to disappear; he dropped the Pokémon to his side, skewering it on the sharp piece of wood he had just dodged.

He didn't look back to the predator, he had to get up. So he did. Pushing himself up with what little strength he had. His exhaustion catching up to him like a train that had no breaks. It distorted his vision, made him dizzy, and forced him to stumble.

He rolled into a small hole in the ground, concealed by the darkness. If they found him here, they would have him. He couldn't run, he couldn't move, he couldn't even think. Then he saw one. Bright crimson in the still glow of the moon. Ash's breathing stopped and he became silent.

His face seemed blurred, as Ash couldn't see clearly. Nothing was clear in this darkness. He was walking on the forest floor silently, his breath a whisper as he went to the corpse of the Houndoom. Checking if it was alive. Then when the figure turned to the small hole, Ash had already run away. Ash had to run, or be caught by them.

Even though he was dizzy.

Even though he was tired.

He darted through the forest of night with what little he had left within him.

He fell; his panic was of no use. His body had reached its limits, went beyond them, and crumbled against the monsters in red and black.

A voice spoke in his ear, as if the person speaking was right beside him. "There is now way out." It said spoken in a deep tone as old as the earth, filled with certainty and strength in its judgement.

Eyes closed, unable to see his captors face Ash replied, I know." Breathlessly.

"This is your future." The voice said, fading into eternal nothingness. Just before Ash woke up, remembering his dream through the hazy window that dreams are remembered, making nothing of it, because, after all, it was a dream, a nightmare, and nothing more.

It was a bright day in the Sinnoh region, as Ash, Dawn and Brock made their way to where Ash would soon face up against Paul in a six on six Pokémon battle. In the countryside of Sinnoh the grass stretched towards the dominating view of Mount Coronet, sparse trees covering the landscape, and blades of gray stone jutting out of the ground. The sun shining as the sound of the wind became the soundtrack to the long road Ash Dawn and Brock took.

"So Ash" Dawn asked curiously, "Do you think that you can beat Paul?"

"What do you mean think?" Ash replied, shaking his head in false disappointment, "Oh Dawn, and I thought that you had faith in me. Oh Dawn why! Why don't you trust me Dawn why?"

"Oh, be quiet Ash," she said smiling. "I was trying to be serious, because Paul is a good trainer. Maybe one of the best." She continued as Ash was frozen in his thoughts momentarily.

"Yeah, but I'm sure my Pokémon can do the job! Isn't that right Pikachu?"Ash said smiling as his Pokémon readily agreed.

"But Ash" Dawn asked, "He did beat you before. Paul's a good trainer. Maybe... maybe he's just better than you." Causing Ash to look straight towards Dawn for a moment with shock and disappointment in his eyes. Knowing the truth in her words, but uneasy at how she could praise Paul so easily.

"Hey, what's that?" Brock said suddenly, looking further up along the path where a person lay alongside a large stone. Causing the three to run up to the person immediately, and forget about their conversation. The closer they got to him the more apparent it was that he was in danger. His face was dirty, covered with mud, his arms covered in cuts that had become enclosed up with dried up blood. His black and red clothes torn at places, covered with thick mud in others. Which was surprising due to his evident old age.

As they crowded around the man Dawn whispered in shock, "What do you think happened to him?"

From what could be seen the man needed help. The man was old, but not frail ,his body seemed to be strong although broad shoulders, and white hair that did not hide the deep wrinkles that time had thrown onto his face, and bags as dark as coal marked under his eyes from his experience at what must have been many, many sleepless nights.

"Mr, are you awake?" Ash asked the man on the floor quietly as Brock checked his vital signs.

"Of course he's not awake." Dawn scolded, in a tone that seemed adequate for anyone that wanted to snap common sense into the Pokémon master to be, so that she could divert attention from how scared she was deep down at not knowing what to do. "If he was awake, he wouldn't be sleeping. He is sleeping Brock? Isn't he?" she asked, with a voice that had switched tone to one of deep worry.

Suddenly the man groaned, waking up, clutching something in his hands. When he saw the group his eyes shot open, his breath caught in his mouth, until Brock said in a calm voice, "are you alright?"

Suddenly the man's attitude relaxed, as he placed himself in a more comfortable position to sit in. He looked at the three with his dark eyes before he spoke; "I'm fine, thank you." In a deep rich accent, earthy and ancient, like the foundations of a castle that had crumbled around of it.

"Are you hurt?" Brock asked, to which the man shook his head, standing up, and shaking himself to wake his muscles up, showing just how tall he was in comparison to the rest of the group.

Dawn's concern appeared as she asked the man to "Relax, you were out on the ground, and you're hurt very badly."

"Nonsense" He replied, looking around the area. Unable to hide the sense of alarm he felt inside, as he wondered just how he got to where he was. "Where are we?"

But before they could answer a large mechanical claw reached out and grabbed Pikachu.

It was Team Rocket again, with Pikachu in their balloon.

"Quick, go Chimchar!" Ash shouted, as Team Rocket looked at him with irritation.

"Ay, twerp! Can't we at least do our motto?" Meowth shouted.

"No!" Ash shouted back. "Give me Pikachu!"

"Haven't you learnt yet? We're not giving Pikachu back!" James said the Pokémon trainer as Pikachu was held in Team Rockets mechanical glove that probably wouldn't allow Pikachu to let loose any of its electrical attacks.

"Why not?"Ash shouted back.

"Because we're Team Rocket, uniting the world against the evils of truth and love!" James shouted with irritation in his voice like the rest of Team Rocket had "Now do you see why we need to tell you our motto?"

Then all of a sudden the balloon popped, forcing the glove to let go of Pikachu. Ash immediately ran out to catch his Pokémon, whilst Team Rocket was sent "Blasting off again!"

There in the sky where the balloon used to be a Pidgey remained, flying in mid air before the old man returned it into a Pokéball. Suddenly everyone turned to look at the old man who was lying, knocked out on the ground moments earlier with looks of shock. He merely smiled and in a calm voice said, "While you all were talking, I thought I might ask Pidgey to pop their balloon." As the rest of the gang wondered why they hadn't thought of doing that before.

"Now if you all would be so kind to tell me where exactly it is that I am?"

There he stood. In the darkness of the room Ash was in. He was somewhere in the shadows, patient, waiting. Sometimes Ash would see a flash of red; hear his breath sigh wisps of wind. But he always remained just out of reach of his eyes, like the shadow just beyond a child's bedroom, waiting, watching, forever there. Ash knew he was there because Ash could hear the man's footsteps make the ground shake with each solid step. A solid sharp click that came with each step the man made, coming from what seemed to be all directions.

"You can not escape" the man in the shadows said with a great low growl.

"What?" Ash asked, caught short of breath from the unexpected voice confident in the darkness. Predatory like the great wild Luxray, that carried bright yellow eyes that pierced the thick smoke of night. As if the man could also see through the shadow, leaving Ash exposed before him.

"You can not escape." He repeated. "This is who you are." He stated. "This is who you are holding back." He knew.

"I don't need to lie." The man whispering on the back of the boys neck, silent and certain like the Arbok who had already coiled itself around its pray and prize.

"You are dreaming."

If it wasn't for the train breaking down the three would have reached Lake Acuty earlier, but there are some things that could not be helped.

Ash walked outside of the Pokémon centre to see the old man in the distance with a Pokéball in hand. Ash quickly rushed up to him and saw him release his Pidgey in a blast of red light.

"So is that your Pokémon?" Ash asked the old man having seen the Pidgey briefly against Team Rocket.

The old man gave a small smile and nod to Ash saying "I just recently caught this little one. But I'd like to ask you who those three thieves were, the ones we met before."

"Oh, don't worry about them." Ash replied shaking his head, "They're just Team Rocket, not much to worry about."

"But." The old man said, interrupting Ash, "I remember a Team Rocket from Kanto, although they seemed different to these people."

"Yeah, but don't worry about Jessie and James, sometimes they do more good than bad." Ash said thinking back to the occasional times when they would be a great deal of help.

"Yes." The old man said reflectively with a small smile, "sometimes the greatest help comes from those who have been ignored until they are needed."

"What?" Ash asked in confusion.

"Oh don't worry." The man replied calmly, "Although I remember you talking with your friends." He said, "You are supposed to have a battle today against your rival? Are you not?"

"Yeah"

"How do you think you will do?" He asked, looking into Ash's eyes.

"Well I think I'll do fine." Ash said uneasily against the man's gaze.

"Have you practiced?"

"Yeah" Ash replied. "Well a bit." He said changing his answer because of the fact that they had to rush to the battle ground after what happened to their train, leaving little time to practice.

"Well do you want to have a practice battle?" the man asked as Ash grew a smile, ready and eager for a battle anywhere, and anytime.

Ash quickly ran to a safe distance and shouted "Go Grotle!" as his Pokémon was released onto the grass between them. His opponent called his Pidgey as Ash looked on with confusion saying "But it's a Pidgey." To which the old man did not reply. "You only caught it a few days ago" Ash blurted in shock wondering just what was wrong with this person.

"Do you want to battle?" Ash's opponent asked. Sure that his choice in the bird was a reasonable one.

"Yeah" Ash said confidently. "Grotle, let's start off with a razor leaf."

But his opponent had quickly devised a plan, shouting "Fly around it Pidgey" then "to the left" and, "dive" in a loud and clear voice as he tried to steer the little Pokémon through the attack. Ducking and diving, Pidgey made its way through the attack without a scratch. Finding itself very close to Grotle at the end of the attack. Pidgey's trainer shouted, "Get underneath its shell." And the Pokémon quickly complied by finding a secure perch between Grotle's body and its shell.

"Shake it off!" Ash commanded, but no matter how hard his Pokémon tried the Pidgey clung.

All Ash could see was his opponent's confident smirk, as he ordered Pidgey to "use peck." The Pokémon pecked Grotle in a spot that caused the Pokémon to cry out in pain, and tears to roll out of its eyes as it buckled, unable to stand on its own feet any longer.

The man sighed, holding out his hand in front of him and said "stop" gently, ordering his Pidgey to return into its Pokéball. "You lost Ash, Pidgey could have stayed there and kept on attacking, and your Pokémon wouldn't have been able to do anything about it."

"What do you mean? If you were so confident why'd you stop?" Ash asked in confusion, knowing that Grotle had been in great pain from the spot that Pidgey had chosen to attack, but hopeful in his mind that he could have turned the battle around somehow.

"Because" the old man replied, putting his Pokémon's Pokéball away and looking to the young boy and his Grotle who was now panting on the floor, having just discovered a pressure point on his body that the Pidgey had exploited. "You have a big battle soon, and I would like to see how you manage to do in it. A simple potion should help your Pokémon" the old man said, throwing Ash a potion as he applied it to his Pokémon.

"But this means you forfeit, so I win." Ash said, still confused slightly, causing the old man to sigh, holding his hand to his head and shaking it lightly.

He stopped and looked at Ash with sympathy, "winning and losing rarely tell you everything, performance, flow, technical ability, tactics, knowledge of your opponent and their Pokémon all play a role and can always be improved. You win and lose battles but you must always, always try your best to become better as a trainer no matter what."

He looked at Ash with a deep intensity in his eyes as if he was facing a demon he had promised to slay "In chess" he continued, "the checkmate is only possible with all the moves made before it." The man explained, "Sometimes the outcome of a Pokémon battle has been decided before it even starts. Before the battle you knew my Pidgey was weak, you knew your attack would hit, you knew that I couldn't get up close, and you knew that Grotle had no pressure points that could cause it pain. That is why you lost."

"Yeeaah..." Ash drawled, confused at the speech that was just given to him, feeling gears in his head grind and feel his brain collapse in the effort of trying to understand what the old man had just said. Until the only thing he could think of saying was, "I don't know how to play chess."

"Then maybe one day I'll teach you." The old man suggested, looking down at Ash with a soft kind smile.

But then Ash said something that changed the outlook the man had on Ash, one thing that made the events of the future much more certain "Maybe, I guess. Personally I prefer snakes and ladders. But thanks for not hurting Grotle too badly, I don't know what would have happened if he was injured before the battle. I don't know what I would do if any of my Pokémon were badly injured" he said blinking, "because if they were hurt, it would be my fault."

Ash lost the battle. He lost horribly. His Pokémon were injured, battered and bruised. His style was ineffective against Paul, although calling the way Ash had battled as a style would be too much of a compliment. It was more like him trying and Paul stopping every attempt he made to make a mark on the battle. Beaten like a puppy that had displeased its master.

Ash was alone now, sitting far away from the Pokémon centre on the grass. Alone, thinking why? Thinking how? Redoing all that had just happened inside the confines of his mind wondering what went wrong, wondering if it was the power, the passion, the preparation, or maybe the predictability of his actions. He just wanted to know what had gone wrong. Asking himself if there was something that he had done to earn such a humiliating defeat, and facing the thought that perhaps, he was just simply a pathetic trainer.

It couldn't be his Pokémon, could it? They tried their hardest, and Ash summarised that if they weren't powerful enough he was the one who should have trained them prior to the match.

Eventually Ash led himself safely to a conclusion after what seemed like hours listening to the silent trees, the wild wind and loud voices in his head. There was only one person to blame, himself.

Paul had prepared, he knew what Ash was going to do at every turn whilst Ash was overconfident coming into the match. Just like the old man said earlier. Or maybe, as a trainer he just wasn't good enough?

Suddenly Ash heard a sombre voice say "Hello boy" to him.

"Huh?" Ash said looking at the person who managed to come up beside him undetected. The old man sat down next to Ash, looking into the distance as Ash was before at a crop of trees in the distance that seemed to be particularly interesting, letting the soft silence say all that needed to be said as Ash and the old man looked together into the distance. Waiting for the right time to break the silence.

"You were horrible." The old man stated in a firm tone when enough time had passed for the boy to become comfortable around his presence, still keeping his gaze fixed in the distance. "You lost against a superior opponent and deserved to lose, and quite frankly." He sighed, "Quite frankly, if you carry on like you do now you will not get very far."

"No." Ash countered with a quiet anger in his voice and fists clenched, attempting to salvage some pride in a battle of words after having lost all of it when it mattered. "My Pokémon tried their hardest; they did everything they could and even more."

The man turned slowly until his eyes were locked in with Ash's. A look of stern compassion embedded in his posture, silencing the young boy. "Your Pokémon tried, but it didn't matter. It's good, very very good that you have this bond, it's hard to find anyone with a bond with their Pokémon like the one you have. Never give up on it, but your Pokémon weren't the problem. You were the problem. You were stupid, absolutely stupid. Your choices were predictable and poor."

Ash looked down to the ground, his heart growing heavy with the weight that was placed upon him, because he knew that it was his fault, his responsibility, now that his Pokémon were hurt. But what was worse was the fact that if he carried on there was a chance he would be throwing his Pokémon into the same situation again. Would it have been better to quit? Normally Ash would have said a firm no to the mere thought, but now for what seemed the first time in his short life he began to think otherwise.

"But-"he gasped, at a loss for words as the fighter within him realised that there was nothing to fight. There was reason in the old man's arguments, he knew what was wrong, the trainer was the weak link, and the thought seemed to freeze Ash inside. "I'm a good trainer, I earned my badges." He whispered weakly.

The man snapped at Ash in an instant, "So did everyone else who made it to a league." Then he paused, letting his words be absorbed by the young boy, the young boy who had no idea what to do, who seemed lost in a world of monsters that he himself had made. So Ash did the only thing he could do. He got up and he ran.

By the time he reached the Pokémon centre, he had slowed down into a walk. Trying his best to hide his sadness from passersby, unused to the feeling and the idea that it had come from. On the rare occasions that he would suffer from such a setback he would cry, but usually he would at least wait until he was alone. Try and keep some dignity, some self respect, because when everything else seemed to crumble away they were some of the few things he would have left.

"After walking through the door he heard his friends talking, wondering if they had seen him or not. Checking his eyes for tears and thankful that there were none there. But stopping once he heard them talk.

"How do you think Ash is doing?" Dawn asked.

"I don't know" Ash head Brock say in a sad tone as if he was really truly worried about their friend. "I guess he's just thinking about things."

"Shouldn't we help?" he heard Dawn reply with worry in her voice.

"No." He heard Brock say firmly, "this is something he's got to do on his own."

"But I'm still worried about him." Dawn protested, "I know what it's like to get into a slump and I don't want to see Ash get into one. I mean come on we're his friends! We should be helping him!"

"I should have gone with Paul! At least he knows how to train Pokémon. Gah! I just had to meet up with Ash first." He heard Dawn shout.

"I know I've been with him for too long now." He heard Brock agree. "He's never gotten anything worthwhile and the moment he gets a strong Pokémon he always lets it go. Everyone else was smart enough to get away from him, but it's like he's always following me."

"Should we just leave him?" Dawn asked.

"What do you mean Dawn?"

"Let's travel with someone else, anyone else. Come on Brock, what do you think?"She suggested.

"Good idea" Brock Agreed. "Let's go before he comes back. I can't stand to see his face again."

Then Ash felt everything go black. Not knowing if he was in a dream or not.