The Challenge

Summary: Ash's return home for an extended visit becomes more interesting than he could have imagined when Professor Oak informs him of the requirements to become a gym leader – especially since one of the requirements involves him returning to the Indigo Plateau for another go at the Kanto Pokemon League Competition. Throw in a changed rival and a few new friends who have decided to return to pokemon training and you've suddenly got yourself a friendly challenge that just might have some interesting results for Ash! Sorry to say, but no Palletshipping this time. The first chapter or so are a bit slow-starting but the story will pick up in pace pretty quickly.

Rated T just in case.

Disclaimer – I own the storyline, the OCs, my interpretation of the characters, and nothing else.

Chapter 1

It was still pretty early when I finally crested the hill that overlooks Pallet Town. The sun was fairly high and the sky was clear with only a few clouds, the air was chilly but it was a welcome change from the icy cold of Sinnoh. Looking down, I could see the town bristling with life, which I supposed it should be considering it's already eleven on a Thursday morning. The morning traffic had already subsided downtown and there are few cars on the streets. I could see the entire town from my perch on the hilltop, even the eastern outskirts which contain my house and the vast expanse at the southern edge of town where Professor Oak's lab, reserve, and mansion are located.

Home sweet home. Finally.

I couldn't help the wide grin that spread across my face as I take in the sight of the town; judging by the way Pikachu is bouncing and chirping on my shoulder, I'd say he's as happy as I am to be back. It's been nearly a year since I last visited home and it felt good to be standing on this particular hill. A breeze ruffled my hair and I fought back a shiver despite how used to the cold I had grown since I began training in the Sinnoh region. Sinnoh is where I've been for the past two years, I competed in the Pokemon League competition there in October and I've been slowly traveling back to Pallet for the past month. Now… I'm headed home for a while. I'm heading home so I can decide what to do next; I mean, I've traveled through the four major training regions along with a minor one, I've competed in six of the major pokemon competitions and a ton of smaller ones and I've done well in all of them. And now I have no idea what to do or where to go. With my eighteenth birthday soon approaching, I'm starting to grow nervous as training rarely works out as a career. I'm hoping Professor Oak and Tracey can help me decide what to do next, because I sure have no idea.

Looking back on the nearly eight years that I've spent traveling from region to region as a pokemon trainer, I suppose this concern about the future is the biggest way I've changed. I really haven't changed that much, all things considered. My hair is still a horrible mess, though it's longer, now about the length Tracey's was when I first met him. My jeans are still worn to the point where I'm almost afraid of what Mom's reaction will be when she sees the state of them – I know she's definitely going to drag me out shopping sometime soon, especially since I'll be home for the next several months. Still the same old Ash, just a bit confused about what to do next.

I glanced over at Pikachu with the grin still on my face. "Ready to go home, buddy?" I asked, laughing when he squealed in joy. "Same here – we'll be just in time for lunch if we walk fast enough."

--- --- ---

I had been home for well over an hour, telling Mom, in great detail, about the competition in Sinnoh in between bites of food and listening to her talk about the changed she had made around the house since I last visited; something about a bigger vegetable garden and a renovated bathroom, I hadn't exactly been listening closely. As much as I enjoyed catching up, I was pretty eager to speak to the professor as soon as I possibly could, more than that though, I really wanted to catch up with the other people in town. I know I hadn't spoken to Tracey in months and he isn't my only friend in town either.

"Hey, Mom? Have you seen Professor Oak lately?" I asked after a few moments of wondering when to head over to the lab.

Mom paused in the middle of describing the dilemma she had faced in painting the kitchen three months prior and nodded. "I ran into him at the grocery store last week actually. He's been quite busy at the lab, apparently he's undertaking a big research project, and May isn't helping him out as much as she used to since Gary's home."

I glanced up as I snagged a chocolate chip cookie from a plate in the middle of the table. I hadn't seen my old rival, now friend, in perhaps two years – the last time being when I had by chance run into him in Sinnoh. If he were still a trainer, I'm sure I would've run into him at the Pokemon League Competition in October at the very least; but, instead of training, he's been… Actually I don't know what he's been doing in Sinnoh. The last, and only, time I ran into him in Sinnoh, he said he was going to school in Pastoria City. If that was the case, then I can't see what he would be doing home, unless he was simply visiting for a few days.

"When did Gary get into town?" I asked, absently scratching Pikachu behind the ears as he munched on one of Mom's freshly baked cookies.

"He moved home in August, Ash – don't you ever keep in touch with your friends?"

"I try to," I hedged defensively. "It's not that easy when you're traveling though."

"Why don't you go over to Professor Oak's lab and catch up with everyone then?" she suggested calmly while she poured herself a cup of tea.

I gave the suggestion little thought since I had already been planning on doing so but a sudden different thought made me pull my pokedex out of my poket, flip it open, and glance at the date in the bottom corner of the screen. December eleventh. Gary's birthday, I realized dimly, eighteenth birthday to be exact.

Well, I thought, this is going to make things awkward.

--- --- ---

I didn't head over to the Oak place immediately after finishing catching up with my mother; instead I decided to shower, unpack, and relax for a little while before heading out. After all, part of the reason I came home was to relax, what good was it if I didn't at least try to do that? Pikachu was perched on the windowsill as I tossed most of my training equipment unceremoniously into my closet just to get it out of the way for the moment. My few articles of clothing were thrown in a pile on the floor for washing later on – I would definitely have to go out shopping with Mom at some point soon to replace the worn sneakers and grungy jeans. I quickly grew bored after lying on the bed that I had all but outgrown for a few minutes and switched on the old pc that was sitting on my desk while thinking about the old friend that I would certainly be seeing at the lab whenever I went over there.

Gary and I were once best friends, along with Kate, the girl that lived down the road from my house; we were nearly inseparable. Mom had been friends with Kate's mother so we were playmates before preschool, where we met Gary. The three of us were in the same classes in school until Gary got to skip part of second grade but, even then, we played every day either at my house, in Kate's backyard on her tire swing, or, most often, in the woods around Gary's house and in the lab with pokemon. That was before Gary's parent's died though, after that happened, Gary never hung out with us. I didn't understand it back then and always tried to get him to play with us for years, only to have him respond cruelly and turn his back on me. I finally understood after I had been travelling through Kanto for a few months and homesickness hit me – I knew what it felt like to miss a parent, but I could at least talk to my mom on the phone or visit her, Gary didn't have that possibility. It was too late then, our friendship was a full-blown rivalry and Gary had replaced me with a new best friend: her name was Anna and she was one of May's friends, which meant she was over a year older than Gary, closer to two years to be exact. She went with Gary on his pokemon journey when we had decided at six that all three of us would go together. Kate went along with May, Anna, Anna's sister, and two more of May's friends when Gary left and I hardly saw her.

Our trio was broken up… until the competition at the Indigo Plateau, that is. You see, Kate was one of the other two trainers that left at the same time as Gary and I, but she quit training after a little less than a year. After Gary and I lost in the Indigo League, she returned to Pallet to resume normal schooling and our friendship picked up again as though nothing had happened. By 'our friendship' I mean mine and Kate's; Gary and I didn't put aside our rivalry until after we were done with the Silver Conference and, even now, our friendship was practically nonexistent.

I couldn't keep his mind from drifting to what Gary had been doing home since August. The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder about what exactly he had been up to in Sinnoh. I had never really thought about it until now, Gary was only fifteen when he left for school and I wondered if it was some sort of prep school or an actual university. Being the grandson of a world-famous professor and having spent years of being homeschooled after his parents died, a prep school would be unlikely but I always figured he was too young for university.

Damn it, now I'm curious, I thought as I stared blankly at the computer screen after replying to an email from Misty telling me about the baby Horseas that had been born at the gym. I would definitely have to find a way to go up to Cerulean City to visit her.

I pull up the internet on the pc and search for schools in Pastoria. I find that there are only two schools other than the regular elementary and high schools in the city – one is a community college, unlikely, while the other looks far more promising: the Sinnoh University of Biology Sciences. Now that I see the name, I remember hearing about it; it's an incredibly prestigious school that accepts only the best of the best. Several famous professors either occasionally teach there or have taught there; Professor Birch apparently teaches an ecology class there during the summer semesters when he's not too busy with research and I remember Professor Oak once saying that he taught there when his son went to school there.

Curious, and having plenty of time to spare, I spent the next hour skimming through the website, looking for something interesting. I found that the school was fairly small with a program that allowed students to get a degree in two years – a glance at the program plan online shows that it was two years consisting of three semesters with at least seven classes during each of those semesters. It definitely sounded to me like something Gary would do: rush through it to get another accomplishment out of the way before moving on to yet another one. Apparently the students started classes at sixteen but they have to have at least a year of experience as a pokemon trainer (according to the website it was because researchers have to know how to work with pokemon), an eight month research internship, and top grades in school.

Well, I figured, Gary has grown up in a lab and has a little more than four years of training experience. I never did found out where Gary had been or what he was doing while I was training in Hoenn so I guess that was when he did that internship thingy.

I didn't find anything of particular interest on the website other than that – the school didn't even have sports teams or anything; it was just classes and research. Could you get any more boring? I remembered that Pastoria itself was an interesting city, as he spent a lot of time training there and in the area around it. It's interesting that place could produce such a boring school. And why would Gary – out of all people – be the one to go there? One thing I know about Gary is the fact that he couldn't stay put for ten minutes without getting bored.

That makes no sense… Now my head hurts.

Flipping the computer off again, I figured that I might as well head over to Professor Oak's lab before it got any later.

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::Author's Note::

This story is a spinoff of my fic Beyond the Walls, it corresponds with chapters 24 and up, it's also kinda AU from the whole Diamond & Pearl part of the anime series since I don't really know much past the Orange Islands. This is Ash's side of things, you don't have to read Beyond the Walls to understand it, though that story does explain Gary, Tracey, and all of the OCs - not that they matter so much in this story.

Also, this fic started off as Changes, it had been posted as eight chapters that I, quite frankly, thought sucked. I completely rewrote the entire fic and it now is faster moving and doesn't focus so much on the characters other than Ash.