Misty looked at the small town she had visited on occasion and had to say not much had changed. She traced a familiar route to Ash's childhood home only to find the other two occupants- his mother and her Mr. Mime. Mrs. Ketchem told her that Ash had been staying at Prof. Oak's lab for some reason. His mother was becoming worried because he would hardly leave the room for either meals or sleep- it wasn't healthy. Misty reminded her that it was Ash and there was probably a very important reason he wasn't sleeping in his room. As she carefully trod up the hill she noticed that on the outside everything was normal. Pokemon were out and running around but if one looked closely they would notice that there was an air of uncertainty behind everything.

Inside she found Gary who had mellowed out since the last time she had seen the researcher. He pointed to a room and told her "Be cautious if Ash wasn't in the room, it's like he has two personalities- one of a small child and the other like an angry older sibling. The last time anyone had tried feeding him without Ash being there to assure him- well the poor guy got confusioned into the wall."

Slightly disturbed by the warning she entered the room. Ash and Pikachu were in the room, asleep. Curled in the boy's arms was a form she had expected, Silver, but something was obviously wrong. His beak had been slimmed and curled as though to rip and tear, the formerly blue- now purple- plates around the eyes had looked as if they had been taken to with a sander, making the edge a cruel dagger. His scales once opaque were now an unmistakable black. The shock made her intake an acute breath.

That subtle noise seemed enough to wake the Lugia. He opened an eye, saw her and joyfully chirped, before rubbing against Ash's chest to wake him. Ash stirred; apparently there was something other than a high level attack that could get him up in the morning before ten. "Misty!" he said, but did not get up. Though he was glad that she had made it, he wasn't ready to change positions so that Sliver and Pikachu could still be comfortable. "You didn't have any trouble getting here right?"

"No," she answered. "I took the Diglett Cave and the path along the forest. Since so few people use it there really wasn't anything exciting.* But Ash, why is Silver here? And what happened to him?"

Ash shook his head. "I don't know, I can't understand Pokemon all that well, but whatever happened really bothered them. It even made Septile stop and cry. We figure something bad happened to his mother because he came to me alone, but what happened... I just don't know."

"Oh," Misty responded, knowing this was a difficult situation for Ash. He was someone who liked doing things; he'd rather be out there beating the person who did this to a pulp than here sitting on his hands. But there was nothing they could do right now, the police had no clues, Nurse Joy said that other than the obvious signs of abuse there seemed to be nothing wrong with Silver. And as of yet, no one in the academic field had responded to Prof. Oak. Though to be fair on the last one it had been a quiet plea so that researchers from someone like Team Rocket or Galactic would get their hands on it and try and take Silver.

"Well, still," Ash said to break the oppressive silence, "coming all that way can't have been easy. And we still have to get some arrangements at Shamouti done, so why don't you spend the night with my mom and we'll leave in the morning."

"Oh, right," the Cerulean Gym leader said. But she made no move to leave and he made no attempt to push her out of the room. Instead she sat down close to Ash and absently began to stroke Silver's scale-like feathers. Eventually she saw nothing was happening and sighed. Silver moaned, worried that he had hurt her feelings somehow.

"Don't mind me," she said. "It was a stupid idea anyway."

"What was?" Ash asked not sure what she was talking about.

"I just saw his feathers and thought that I might just be able to rub off the discoloration like silver oxide."

"Silver… oxide?"

"You know those new submarines that are letting us dive down further than where we can get to with pokemon?" Ash nodded unsure of how those fit in, but was willing to play along. "Well some scientists are using them to recover the cargo of ship wrecks. And when they go down, especially to wrecks that have been down for centuries they find these black items- coins, plates, spoons, forks, all that stuff. And if you rub them even slightly it turns out that they're high grade silver underneath. What happens is that if you leave silver in salt water for extended periods of time the Oxygen dissolved in the water actually bonds on the atomic level with the silver changing it to sliver oxide. But another thing about it is that the oxide actually becomes a coating that protects the rest of the silver from the salt water so only the outside layer oxidizes."

"I guess I thought that maybe we could rub that black off of him but I should have realized that you had probably already given him a bath."

"Yeah," Ash agreed to the last part of the statement, "he really loves the water. Sometimes I forget that he's Flying/ Psychic the way he's at home in the lake or the small sea inlet that the professor has out back. But you know," he continued, "it wasn't a stupid idea. I don't think anyone here thought of it. And besides trying didn't hurt anything so why not?"

"Is that your motto Ash?" she teased.

"Well it would explain why I get into so many crazy situations," he replied. They both laughed and fell into silence once more- only now it was comfortable. Pikachu woke up and jumped into Misty's lap and the four of them sat comfortably for a while enjoying being together for the first time in a long time.


*Game Reference- besides it has been a couple of years since Ash traveled Kanto- things change


File found, would you like to open it? [y] [n]

XDLog ii:

Because the work on XD002 is so experimental it has been decided that as few outside components must be involved as possible. As such it has been decided that XD002 will not be captured, who knows if the return laser or the inner workings of the ball will affect the results for the worse. XD002 is possibly the youngest subject in the lab and is displaying a behavior that is both useful and unprecedented. It seems to be developing a split personality, one its original personality is easy to coax into testing areas with even the implied threat of pain, making it very manageable. Its secondary personality is extremely violent and tends to ignore pain and only blackouts or seeing XD001 seem to be calm it; it is a powerful warrior.