Author's Note: Due to the fact I fail at research, I didn't discover until after I'd written this that Ash's Aipom evolved. So Ash can now carry a 45-pound Pokémon on his shoulder. Yes.

I fail. I know. And I'm sorry I didn't update last week. Working seven days straight made me lazy.

Chapter Nine: Pillars of Sand

Wingull had ceased calling and though he heard Pokémon rustling, none approached him. He felt naked and vulnerable without his Pokémon. He hadn't lacked Pokeballs at his waist since he was nine, and should a Pokémon choose to attack, he'd be left to fend for himself. At times like this, he would have asked Pikachu to accompany him, except Pikachu had no powers right now, and he could speak English, so Ash couldn't ignore his commentary if he disagreed with it.

The sand shifted beneath his feet and he started running. Sand scattered and he stumbled, righting himself before he fell. Picking up speed, he ran faster and faster, not sure of the direction or why he was running. He needed to run, needed to not think for a while. His parents, the Pokémon League, Gary, Pikachu- it was too much to handle right now. Physical exercise, concentrating on moving and the way his body felt when it did, cleared his mind. He rolled around on the beach and remembered other beaches, many others, where he'd spent time with his Pokémon and, before then, his mother. He landed on his back and stared at the moon. Laughter bubbled in his throat and he let it loose, because it felt good to laugh, to smell the briny ocean, and to inhale deep, clean air. It felt nice to not be imprisoned in the house and to know he might be able to escape, if he really wanted to. Misty had come to him. Such freedom. Ash sighed and relaxed.

Giovanni could appear and reassert his power over Ash. Ash lifted his head and saw no one, nothing except scuttling Krabby further away. A Wailmer bubbled in the water fifteen feet away. Magikarp jumped further back and he smiled, thinking fondly of the St. Anne and the Gyrados. His childhood felt so far away.

This was the first time he'd been alone, truly alone, in years. He'd hated to be alone in Pallet Town and had stubbornly chased after Gary, who insisted he was too good for him. Traveling, he'd always had companions. When he'd been separated from them, he'd had Pikachu. Out here, Ash wasn't the Rocket head's son, wasn't the Pokémon League Champion, wasn't Pikachu's trainer or Misty's lover. He was himself and he belonged to no one. He laughed again. It was great. He'd return eventually, but he'd relish the freedom for the moment.

He relaxed and thought of nothing. It was wonderful to be no one.


Giovanni stood a few feet away and watched Satoshi. Nothing happened in his mansion without his knowledge and he'd known the instant Pikachu had lifted his son out the window. He had no intention of letting him escape after waiting so long. It appeared as though he had no intention of vacating the mansion and swimming to shore, however. Giovanni smiled. He thought of his son, younger, and how often he'd seen him unknown to Delia. He'd never been absent- he'd watched and waited from afar.

In his pocket, he had Satoshi's remaining Pokémon. He hadn't engineered them or changed them in gijinka like Pikachu. He crept through the sand and knelt. Satoshi's eyes were shut and he seemed oblivious to the world. Giovanni placed Satoshi's Ambipom next to his right hand and walked away. There. He'd given him a key to escape. He'd see how Satoshi reacted, with the information he had about his parents and now a tool if he wanted to break through the security. Should he do so, Giovanni would be terribly disappointed, but he had faith Satoshi wasn't going to flee him. He'd overheard how he reacted to his mother.

There was hope Satoshi was his father's son.


He sat up and rolled his hand over the ball beside it. He squeezed and twisted his wrist. Blinking, he opened the ball and Ambipom materialized. She grinned at Ash and Ash smiled back. Then the monkey Pokémon jumped at Ash's chest and he hugged her.

Ash looked around, cuddling Ambipom to his chest. There were footprints in the sand and he followed them to a fence, standing around the second half of the house. Barbed wire prohibited people from getting any further. Ash stared at Ambipom's Pokeball in his hand. Giovanni had given him his Pokémon back.

He jumped. Giovanni had known he was out here and hadn't done anything. Nothing Ash did wasn't anticipated by Team Rocket's boss. It sent a chill down his spine and Ambipom inquired, chattering at him. Ash shook his head.

Ambipom rode on his shoulder and Ash collapsed in the sand again. He didn't know what he wanted now. The freedom he'd experienced had fled him and he was trapped. True, he had Ambipom and Misty had Rattata. They could escape, if they really wanted to. Yet Ash didn't want to escape.

Giovanni needed to trust him enough to let him stay with him...and then Ash could begin finding the younger Giovanni, the one his mother had almost destroyed. He needed a plan. Being on his best behavior wouldn't be good enough.

He'd talk to Misty and Pikachu. They might have some ideas.

"Pikachu?" Ash called at the window and Pikachu's blond head, with its strangely fitting earrings, appeared through the window. He extended his arm to Ash and frowned.

"I don't think I can lift you up on my own," he said. "Hang on. I'll get Misty."

"Ambipom! Am!" Ambipom said and Pikachu stared at it. The Ambipom skittered up the wall and dangled out, Pikachu holding its tail, to provide Ash a mini rope. Ash snatched it, Ambipom cried in dismay (Ash must've been heavier than she thought), and, with a new, unseen addition, they hauled Ash back through the window. The going was slow- Ambipom couldn't carry Ash very well, and Pikachu had to reassure her she wasn't going to dislocate her tail. Someone (probably Misty) heaved and Ash smacked into the wall. His clothing was dragged along it and he had a split second view of Misty's room from an odd angle close to the ceiling before he sailed through, his fall broken by three warm bodies.

"Ash, I'm glad you're back too, but...get off!" Misty said and shoved him off her. Pikachu did the same and Ambipom squeezed out from under. Rattata, who couldn't have helped even he wanted to, was staring at them from the doorway.

"Where did Ambipom come from?" Misty asked.

Ambipom blinked innocently. Ash stared at her and she grinned at him; it was the familiar mischievous look he'd come to associate with her. She blew him a raspberry.

"I don't know how Giovanni got her. She wasn't part of my original team at the Pokémon League. And the last time I saw her, she'd gone off and left me and Dawn."

"Giovanni does strange things," Pikachu agreed. He leveled Ash a cool stare. "Are you ready to talk?"

Ash nodded. "But maybe we should do it in a more comfortable place than the floor."

"Good idea," Misty said, staring at Ambipom. Ambipom blew her a raspberry too and crawled onto Ash's left shoulder. Pikachu scoffed and Ambipom asked him a question. Pikachu scowled.

"I'm half human now. Ash's shoulders are all yours," he said. Misty blinked.

"Ambipom has a crush on me," Ash explained. Misty's mouth puckered into a little 'oh' of understanding and she smiled gingerly.

"She isn't the first Pokémon of yours to crush on you," she remarked. "Remember Chikorita? And after she evolved into Bayleef?"

Pikachu snickered. " 'Hi, Satoshi'. BOOM."

Ash rubbed the back of his neck. "Bayleef was a little heavy when she jumped on me." He winced, remembering the bruises her jumps had left on him.

"Do you want to sit on the bed?" Misty inquired and beamed at her bed. Ash sat on it and it flowed beneath him. Her grin, if possible, broadened. At Ash's look of incomprehension, she said, "It's a water bed, Ash. Everything in this room is water related. I never had a room like this, not even when I lived in the Cerulean Gym."

"But why go to such great lengths to make you happy?" Ash said.

"I don't know," she said. "But that's not the point."

"He gave me Ambipom back," Ash said. "I think he trusts me enough not to use her to escape."

"If you really wanted to, you could swim back to Vermilion City," Misty said. "The window here was no accident either."

"Nothing here is an accident," Ash said. "The intercom Pikachu connected to my mother's room, him giving me back the Pokeball, and anything we've 'discovered'...Giovanni meant for us to find it."

"We're pawns in his game now," Misty said. She joined him on the bed and removed his customary cap. Ambipom gave her a death glare and Misty stared back. She ran her fingers through Ash's hair and said to the purple haired monkey Pokémon, "Uh uh, pal. This one's mine."

Ambipom scoffed at her. "Am. Ambipom. Ambipom."

"She says, 'I don't think so'," Pikachu said. He stretched and sprawled across the bed. "When did I become Meowth?"

"When you became the only Pokémon here who can translate," Misty replied.

Pikachu sighed dramatically and held his hand over his forehead. Misty rolled her eyes and Ash smirked. Rattata climbed onto the bed too and hopped into Misty's lap. Ambipom and Rattata exchanged a look and Pikachu lifted his head.

"Oh, by the way, that Rattata has a crush on you, Misty," Pikachu said. "In case you didn't already figure it out."

"Giovanni trusts me enough to give me one Pokémon," Ash said. "And a way out, if I really wanted it. But what does he want me to do? Become a Rocket in full?"

"You'd never become a Rocket," Misty said. "He hasn't spent much time with you since he kidnapped you, either."

"Is it really a kidnapping if Satoshi can escape?" Pikachu pointed out. "He's not actually trapped here. He might be without most of his Pokémon, and I'm relatively powerless, but he could still flee if he really wanted to."

"He knows I wouldn't," Ash said. "I won't back down and I think there's good in him. I intend to find it."

"You think eventually, Giovanni will let you out where you can talk to him?" Misty asked. She ran her fingers through Ash's hair again and Ambipom swatted at her wrist, knocking it out of Ash's locks.

"Hey!" she protested. Ambipom fluttered her eyelids and feigned innocence. Ash, who hadn't seen the move, stared at the Pokémon and his girlfriend.

"I'm on to you," she warned Ambipom. Ambipom grinned.

"Maybe then, Giovanni will change me back," Pikachu said. "The proportions and distance are all wrong. I keep expecting the ground to be closer and the ceiling to be further."

"What do you think he'll do about your mother?" Misty said and, in a lower tone, said, "What would you do?"

"Mom lied to me for years," Ash said. "She thought she was protecting me, and I guess she was, except Giovanni probably could have taken me at any time. He didn't because he was waiting for me. He wasn't waiting for her. I don't know..."

His throat constricted. "I don't know if he'll keep her alive."

"What would you do?" she repeated and squeezed his shoulder. Ambipom glared at her and raised her tail threateningly; Misty glared back and the fire in her eyes prompted Ambipom to back down.

"I don't know," he said. "On one hand, she raised me. On the other hand, she betrayed my father, doomed everyone Team Rocket encountered, and she lied to me. I'm furious at her and I don't think her reasons were good enough, but..."

"She's your mom," Misty finished.

"You know, you never told me what happened to your parents," Ash said. He blinked, realizing it was a rather personal question.

"They joined Team Aqua," Misty said. "A few months after I was born, they both joined and left us to fend for ourselves. I don't know why they did it. They might've been brain washed. I've never actually met them."

"So your parents are part of an organization too," he said. She nodded and looked down, heart heavy.

"How do you plan on convincing Giovanni to mend his ways?" she inquired, looking up and touching his face. He held her hand to his cheek.

"There have to be things he loved before he met my mom, things that made him happy that weren't cruel and sinister," Ash said. "Simple things, maybe. Things that made him feel like a kid. I'm going to find them."

She smiled softly, bitterly. "Good luck."

"Do you think you'll ever meet your parents?" he asked. "Team Rocket might have something to do with Team Aqua."

"I wouldn't know what to tell them, even if we did meet," she said. They lapsed into silence and Rattata crawled up her stomach. She scrunched his ears and laid her head on the pillows. Ash watched her for a few moments. He'd known Misty for years and she'd never mentioned her parents before. He had to wonder how she really felt about them. Was it the way Giovanni felt about Delia, like he'd been abandoned?

"You know, if Giovanni really wants to talk to me and for me to be his son again, he could at least have dinner with us," Ash said. Misty sat up with a soft 'huh?'

"Hey, Pikachu, you think you could rig the intercom to reach Giovanni?"

Pikachu contemplated this, one eye shut and the other open. He frowned, gnawing on his lip and looked at the intercom in Misty's room. He opened his other eye and met his trainer's eyes. Ash stared back.

"I could, but it'd take a lot of experimentation," Pikachu confirmed. "I'd have to figure out which rooms had your father in them, and then check every single one for him. There's a chance he won't answer, either."

"Nothing here's done by accident," Ash said. "He'll know we're trying."

"As long as he doesn't decide to ignore your call because he knows we're trying," Misty said. She stared at the window with a determined look. "But I don't think he will either. He wants you to act on your own before he counters."

"Is everything like a gigantic Pokémon match to him?" Ash wondered.

"Maybe," Pikachu and Misty said.

"Then it's one we'll win," Ash decided. Ambipom agreed and Pikachu grinned.

"You'll never change, Ash Ketchum," Misty said, rolling her eyes. "I swear."