"Oh, huh, I never really realized that," Ash admitted. "I saw Baccer on TV, but for some reason I thought it was Galarian?"

"I believe you're thinking of a different game," Zacian said. "Possibly two of them. Maybe even three. But we don't really have Baccer in Galar, unless it's changed a lot since I last visited my brother."

"Last month," Pikachu contributed.

"Which is rather my point," Zacian agreed.

"Yeah, the Pokémon Baccer World Cup is fairly soon," Dawn said. "In fact, it's going to be before the Lily of the Valley Conference, and I think it'd be great for us to go and watch it – since we've got the time, I mean! You've got all your Badges, after all."

"What do you guys think?" Ash asked, looking at his Pokémon.

"I think you should go!" Zorua said, immediately. "I bet it'd be great fun, which is something I say based only on assumption and not second-paw retrospective knowledge!"

"I wouldn't mind," Zacian decided. "It is not as if we cannot train just about anywhere."

"That's a good point," Whitney said. "It's actually hard to think of a place that wouldn't be good for training Pokémon."

She frowned, then brightened. "Oh, I know! It'd have to be somewhere that's uncomfortable for the Pokémon you're trying to train, and not in a way that means that they can quickly learn how to avoid being uncomfortable there. So if you were training a Fire-type Pokémon, then doing it underwater would be a bad place unless you were training them to swim."

There was general agreement on that.

"You're spending a lot of time talking about Baccer, but I don't actually know what it is," Aten pointed out. "So, what is this sport? Is it violent?"

"Well, normally in the games I've seen they really beat the stuffing out of the top," Dawn mused. "But no, usually if one Pokémon hits another Pokémon then it's a foul and the team that got hit gets a bonus."

"In that respect, it's a lot different to traditional Galarian football," Zacian said, her voice turning wistful. "I've seen games which were five hundred humans and one thousand Pokémon a side, on a pitch three miles long, and the main rules were – firstly, get the ball into the goal, secondly, no maiming."

She snorted. "My brother, of course, has taken part in such games. He's mostly reconciled to the new rules… mostly. But he does like being a goalkeeper so there you go."

"Is there any chance we can skip the Baccer tournament and organize a traditional Galarian football game?" Aten inquired. "It sounds much more entertaining than whatever the rules to Baccer are, and I am fully aware that I don't know what the rules to Baccer are yet."

"It involves knocking a spinning top into a floating target," Ash explained. "It's three Pokémon on each side, and I'm not sure if it's a rule or just a tradition but the teams are always themed – so you'd have a team that was Pichu, Pikachu and Raichu, for example, or Shinx, Luxio and Luxray."

"...so, traditional Galarian football is off the table," Aten sighed. "Well, I suppose it would be hard to find a field big enough…"

Since nobody had any objections and several people and Pokémon were quite interested, they decided to head for Crown City. It was just a few days away, and they didn't have to rush, so there was plenty of time for all three trainers to spend time with their Pokémon and relax.

Which meant different things for different people and Pokémon.

"Okay, Chimchar, let's see a double jump!" Ash requested.

Chimchar jumped into the air in front of him, then flame flashed around his feet and he kicked off from the soft pillow of air produced by the heat.

"Great!" Ash said, as Chimchar landed again. "You've got the hang of it! And you know what the trick is?"

"Well, no?" Chimchar replied. "Unless the trick is being able to double jump, in which case, yes, I do know the trick."

"It's that there's no difference between coming down after jumping once and coming down after jumping twice," Ash said. "So you should be able to jump indefinitely."

Chimchar looked contemplative. "Ooh," he said. "So I can be almost a flying Chimchar, just by jumping again and again?"

"Exactly," Ash agreed, then a Skiploom hit him in the face and promptly turned into a Zorua.

"Ow," the Zorua said, as he landed on top of Ash and as Pikachu floated down from where he'd been standing before Ash was abruptly knocked over. "What did I just hit?"

Ash's Zorua emerged from his Pokéball in a flash. "You hit my trainer, but that's okay, it was an accident," he said. "Hi little bro, it's nice to meet you at last!"

"Sorry, what?" Pikachu asked, blinking. "Is this some kind of Zorua and Zoroark custom where all Zorua are considered to be siblings? Or is this one of the Zoruaclones?"

"What are you talking about?" the newcomer asked.

"Probably not, then," Pikachu assumed. "Can you get off my trainer, at least?"

The new Zorua did so, looked carefully at Dawn, then turned into a copy of her with a puff of smoke.

"You know, it's a bit rude to take someone's shape without asking, if you've got the chance to ask," Whitney said sternly. "It's – ohmygosh you still have a little Zorua tail even in disguise! I didn't know that was a thing and now I want Ash's Zorua to do it every time!"

"What I want is to get help with Meema!" the new Zorua insisted. "Someone bad took her, and she's scared, and I'm scared, and I need to help her!"

Over the course of the next few minutes, the new Zorua – who, after some discussion, agreed to be called Wild Zorua just to distinguish him – explained about how he and his mother had been captured by someone who was up to no good. They'd imprisoned them both in cages, and Zorua had escaped, but he wanted to find his mother and make sure that she was okay.

Everyone agreed it was a good idea, but moving beyond that raised a few questions.

"That's going to be tricky," Whitney admitted, frowning as she thought. "Do you think Absol can help?"

"You have an Absol?" Wild Zorua said. "Aren't they scary Pokémon?"

"No, Absol are able to tell if there's danger around," Ash told him. "So it's a common misunderstanding, because you often see an Absol and danger in the same place – but that's because of the Absol who spend their time trying to save people from dangerous situations, or possible disasters."

He shrugged. "Maybe there are Absol around who just don't want to meet anyone, but if you had an Absol who thought of meeting someone as a disaster then you'd never see them, so people don't see them."

Wild Zorua's lips moved for a moment before deciding he got that.

"Anyway, uh, we've still got enough potion, easily," Ash said. "Or I could go through Lokoko and ask if her girlfriend is available… it's probably more polite to do it that way so Absol doesn't have to see me if she doesn't want to."

"Or we could skip that and just go to Crown City," Ash's Zorua told them. "Really, it's the simple solution."

"Why Crown City?" Pikachu asked.

"Well, firstly, none of your business," Zorua countered. "Secondly, it's the closest town, and it's a good chance to check my little brother out and make sure he's not hurt himself. Thirdly, who's the expert about Zoroark here, you or me?"

Pikachu frowned.

"I'm not sure where to even begin with that, except for the second point," he said. "It isn't just me, right? Most of Zorua's reasons made no sense."

"Pikachu's got a point," Ash said. "Though he is the expert about Zorua line Pokémon, at least."

"What about if we ask Absol to call if we're doing something wrong?" Dawn suggested. "Then we can try out Zorua's suggestion, and if it's fine it's fine, and if it isn't then what happens is just as if we'd asked Absol to begin with."

"I like that plan," Zorua said. "Because that way you get to actually see that I'm right!"

"So obviously you didn't just hatch," Ash's Zorua was saying, as they reached the outskirts of Crown City. "But what I want to know is, how mature were you when you hatched? Because, not to brag or anything, but I was quite bright from the moment I hatched while a lot of other Pokémon seem to take a lot longer to get to that level of being-a-grown-up-Pokemon."

"Tell me, how is what you're doing different from boasting?" Starly checked. "I just want to be sure I'm following the details, here."

"Well, I'm not bragging," Zorua replied. "You can tell because I said I wasn't. Anyway, bro, how mature were you? Or do we need to ask Mom?"

Wild Zorua looked at Zorua, and shook his head. "You're really weird."

"Is that an ask Mom?" Ash's Zorua checked. "I think it's an ask Mom to me."

A little way ahead, Ash stopped and pointed. "Oh, hey, look at that – they're really serious about this Baccer tournament here, huh?"

"It is a big deal," Dawn agreed. "But yeah, you don't see giant TV billboards all that often, especially not playing adverts like that."

They stopped to watch, as someone announced that another themed team was entering the Baccer World Cup – and not just a late entry, but a team composed entirely of Legendary Pokémon.

"Huh," Azelf said, twisting their tails around one another and then unwinding them. "Did any of you hear about that? Because it sounds like the kind of thing one of you would be involved in."

"Not me," Ash replied. "Though, maybe Brandon's involved?"

As they watched, the screen showed a shiny Entei, shiny Raikou and shiny Suicune, posing first one by one and then all together, and the team name of the Nimbasa Legends.

"Nimbasa's in Unova, isn't it?" Dawn checked. "It is a World Cup, so maybe it makes sense."

Ash was thinking about something else. "I wonder if Ho-Oh knows anything about those three. They're shiny Legendary Beasts, so it sounds like the kind of thing he'd be involved in."

Entei jumped out of his Safari Ball, and tried not to laugh too much.

"I agree," he said, sniggering. "We should definitely ask Father if he knows about a group of shiny Legendary Beasts he reincarnated, possibly by sneezing."

Then Wild Zorua ran up, knocking Dawn to the side a little and reverting with a blue flash to his Pokémon form, and landed on the railing they'd been leaning against.

"That's him!" he said, pointing at the screen as the team's owner came on screen. "That's the bad man who took Meema!"

"Told you!" Ash's Zorua said, sounding very smug.

Dawn suggested that they could just wait until the Baccer tournament happened, and try to arrest him then, and as they were wondering about that someone approached them.

"I heard you were talking about Grings Kodai," he said.

Wild Zorua jumped, though despite looking like Ash at that point he wasn't as good at it as Ash was. "Is that his name?" he asked, then scowled and folded his arms. "How do we know you're not working with this Grings Kodai person?"

"That couldn't be further from the truth," the man told them. "My name's Karl, and I'm investigating Kodai… there's something fishy about him, and I'm going to do an expose about him and show what he's up to."

"Oh, you're a journalist?" Whitney asked. "That sounds like an interesting sort of job. I know someone in Goldenrod who does it for the radio, though she's usually not in town because her job takes her all over."

Karl chuckled. "Yeah, I travel sometimes, but most of the time I stay around Crown City – it's a big place and there's a lot to report on. Kodai, though, there's some really odd rumours around him, not even the sort of thing you get from normal criminals."

"Normal criminals…" Ash repeated, considering that. "You mean the ones with giant robots?"

Karl shrugged helplessly. "If that's your idea of normal, then I don't know what doesn't count as normal. But people say that Kodai can see the future, and that's how he's so successful… but not by knowing what to invest in. More like, knowing what people to get rid of."

"Hmm," Ash's Zorua pondered. "When you say, see the future, do you mean, see the future? As in, if he was using his eyes?"

"It's just a rumour," Karl replied. "So I don't know… why?"

"Well, it just occurred to me," Ash's Zorua explained. "If he can see the future, then the best way to sort him out without him knowing is to not be wherever the places he's going to see the future are. Or, alternatively, to show him something that's not what he wants to be seeing… we did ask Absol to keep her super-Pokemon senses tuned, right? Because in that case I think it's time for Ash to take some potion!"

"How do you know that he doesn't see whatever's important?" Dawn asked. "I'm not saying your idea is wrong, I'm just wondering."

"Well, if he did see whatever was important, then you can't win anyway," Zorua said. "Except by using really, really overwhelming strength. But – ooh, no, I know, new plan!"

Grings Kodai folded his arms.

"Here is what is going to happen," he said, glaring at Zoroark. "You are going to go down to Crown City, tonight, and you're going to cause illusions there – illusions of three shiny Legendary Beasts causing damage in the city. I know you know what they look like."

He waved a hand. "I want the damage to be serious, bad enough to make the police evacuate the town… or, at least, to look that bad on the cameras."

Zoroark snarled, and Grings gestured sharply at her.

"Quiet," he added. "You're going to do this, because otherwise you'll never see your child again."

Zoroark glanced over at the cage which held Zorua – which, though she didn't know it, was one of the illusions Grings had made– then sank back slightly, defiance bleeding out of her.

"I'm glad we understand each other," Grings chuckled.

Then a hole appeared in the air.

"Stop that, Zoroark," Grings said, before blinking as the illusion continued.

He wasn't at all sure why Zoroark was making such an odd illution. There was a strange, ghostly Pokémon on the far side, and there were an odd mix of Pokémon, and some humans as well. One of them looked very familiar, but before Grings could recognize him he spotted that the familiar-looking human actually had a Zorua's tail.

"Meema!" the familiar-looking human said. "You're here!"

"Child?" Zoroark asked. "But – you're there?"

"Nope!" said a Zorua. "It's all a trick by him. Hi, Meema! I'm your second-laid first-born son, nice to meet you again for the first time!"

Grings had the sinking feeling that this might not be an illusion.

"Goone, stop them!" he demanded, sending out a Mismagius of his own as his henchman reached for Scizor's Pokeball, but then a Pikachu jumped off an Absol and hovered in mid-air in front of Goone.

"Rapidash is here, so I know you can understand me," the Pikachu said. "So… don't try anything."

Grings reached for the control system for his illusions. "Entei!" he called.

"Noctowl, Foresight!" the Absol countered, and all the illusions in the room turned hazy and transparent at once.

"This doesn't make sense," Grings said, backing away a bit. "I saw myself taking the time ripple from the countdown clock – I saw it! It hasn't happened yet!"

"Hey, Meema?" the non-human-disguised Zorua said. "Think you can make an illusion of that? Thanks for revealing it by the way!"

He puffed himself up. "I thought that this creepy Grings guy couldn't see into another reality, so we could just sneak up on him through the Reverse World! Simple!"

It proved surprisingly easy to get the police to arrest Kodai after that, because they didn't just have Zoroark to tell everyone what had happened to her but also the help of one of Grings' assistants, a woman called Rowena.

She was able to give the inside view on a lot of his plans, and show his computer files, and Officer Jenny was shocked to find that Kodai had come to Crown City two decades before seeking a Time Ripple – and when he'd touched the Time Ripple that had given him his powers, the backlash had killed all the plants in Crown City.

"He was here to do it again," Rowena explained. "He found out that the powers were fading with time, and his visions were getting blurry… and he didn't want to run the Kodai Network without that advantage."

"This is pretty crazy stuff," Jenny commented. "It'd be unbelievable, except… you know, for all the evidence."

"I was hoping I'd be able to get enough together to get Kodai arrested, or that I could run an expose on it with Karl," Rowena said. "I work with him, but we had to be careful about it because Kodai's powers let him see the future – I needed to find out the limits first."

"So… does this mean there isn't going to be a Baccer team of Legendary Beasts?" Stantler asked, shimmering into visibility. "Because I was looking forward to seeing how that would work."

"What I would like to know is why this Zorua keeps calling me Meema," Zoroark requested. "How does that even work?"

"Oh, it's pretty simple," Ash's Zorua said. "So in the future you have me, and at some point which I think is less far in the future I go into the future, the first future I mean, the future of the future, pick up my egg from you, and go into the past. I then pretend to be you pretending to be a ninja, give my egg which is really your egg but which is actually me to Ash, then I don't know the rest because I wasn't there for it but I assume I come back to whatever was the present then and is the future now because I haven't done it yet."

Zoroark blinked.

"No, now I understand even less," she said. "What?"

Zorua explained again, then again with diagrams, and eventually managed to give enough of the details in a spread-out-enough way that Zoroark managed to grasp it.

"So… you are happy?" she asked.

"Oh, absol-utely!" Zorua confirmed. "Just to be clear, I said it that way because my trainer is the currently Absol over there. And I heard about this whole event from myself, including how you seemed a lot happier once you realized that it was some humans who were trouble and other humans were great, and… well, Ash is a great trainer and I have such massive fun with him."

"But are you my big brother or my little brother?" Wild Zorua said.

"I was laid second but hatched first," Ash's Zorua told him. "Which means I'm the big brother, but also the little brother if that's convenient to me."

A pink Celebi appeared next to him.

"Hi!" they said. "So, quick question – have you been trained as a ninja?"

"I have!" Ash's Zorua agreed. "Wait, does this mean I'm about to go forward in time to go back in time?"

He stepped back and took a careful look at Zoroark, then turned into her.

"This feels weird," he said.

"Quick!" Celebi said. "To the time-ripple!"

They swooped out, Zorua following, and a moment later Zorua came in through the other door now back in the form of a Zorua.

"Did you miss me?" he asked.

"Meema, I have a headache now," Wild Zorua complained.

"Baccer is pretty fun to watch," Ash said, in the stands. "And it's great to see your friends out on the sporting arena!"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Whitney agreed.

The referee blew his whistle. "Foul by the Omnipresent Guardians!" he said. "Damage to the ramps. The Coronet Fighters get a free hit!"

"Would it help if I reverted the ramp to how it was before I stepped on it?" Dialga asked.

"I think they'd appreciate it, but it's still a foul," Giratina advised. "Palkia, I think you should take the north side..."

AN:

Zorua's secret origin is revealed.

Not that he's been necessarily all that subtle.