Ash had a pretty good idea of where they were supposed to be heading, but for some reason he kept getting side tracked. Now he found himself off course from Viridian, watching Brock from the beach as he cooked. Well, at least it got him the chance to get some training in and two more positive things happened. First, Abra finally evolved into a Kadabra. The feeling was odd when Kadabra had connected with his mind, but Ash could always remember a time that he had connected on an emotional level with his Pokemon, so having one in his head although weird at first, he got used to quickly. The second good thing was that he caught a small Krabby while training, adding it to his growing list of Pokemon he could use. The only down side was when he called Professor Oak from inside of the lighthouse that they had noticed had the door wide open, to check on his Pokemon that were at the lab and Oak just had to tell Ash all about how many Pokemon Gary had already caught, and then to show him the giant of a specimen of Krabby that Gary had caught.

Sometimes, Ash wondered why Professor Oak seemed to encourage the rivalry between himself and Gary. Did he do it for his own gain? To freak Ash out so that he would not do as well? Or did he do it because he wanted to encourage both boys to do as much of the research out in the field that he could no longer do? Whatever the reason, Ash took a deep breath when Oak asked him to check in on Oaks friend bill because he owned the lighthouse on the very beach they were on right now, and he wasn't answering any of Oak's calls. Ash sighed, it was always something. Well, he might as well get it over with.

"Bill?" Ash called, "I'm Ash, a trainer from pallet town, Professor Oak said to check on you."

"I'm over here." A voice called out, muffled for some reason.

The reason became clear as a giant Kabuto stepped out into the light. "Hey, can one of you give me a hand? I was putting on this costume and the zipper got stuck. I can't get out!"

Ash sighed as he and Brock struggled with said zipper until finally it gave out and Bill gratefully offered them a bed for the night. Now Ash didn't want to stay in the creepy light house with it's probably insane keeper but the offer of a bed was pretty darn tempting. So they all decided to stay the night. But late at night, when everyone else was asleep for some reason Ash awoke and walked out to the balcony of the lighthouse where he noticed Bill staring out into the darkness.

Ash didn't even get a word out before the emotions hit him

"Lonely." they said but that wasn't quite it. it was a feeling as if all of his friends and family were gone where he could not reach them and he could not find anyone like himself. Looking out into the fog, Ash gasped. The feelings were coming from a gigantic Dragonite.

Ash whipped into action, first telling Kadabra to hack his pokedex so it wouldn't register a capture, before reaching out with what Ash knew would be a blue hand. When Ash had been small, he had discovered he had the ability to empathicaly link with Pokemon. He hadn't known why when he did this, his hand would turn blue, *but then he had found a book that had the legends of a subsection of Kanto called Rota where Aura guardians lived. Ash had been so excited to learn that he had some of the abilities mentioned in the book, like an empathetic link with most Pokemon and he also found that when he concentrated, he could sense where Pokemon were.

Shaking off the memories, Ash stepped up to the railing until he had his hand almost touching the giant Dragonite. Ash then concentrated as hard as he could on the feelings of friendship he felt for Brock and Misty until the Dragonite came close enough that Ash could touch one of its ginormous paws.

"friend" Ash felt the Dragonite say as it allowed itself to be sucked into a Pokeball. Ash was never so glad that he had thought ahead to have Kadabra mess with his Pokedex than that moment. The Dragonite needed a friend, not to be treated as an experiment. Which is exactly what would happen if anyone ever found out about Ash having him. Ash then looked over at a shocked looking Bill.

"Are you going to say anything about this?" Ash asked, Kadabra at the ready to mess with Bill's memories if he had too.

"No, who would believe me anyway?"

Ash smiled and went back to bed.

End

* Personally i think someone that doesn't want Ash to know he's helping but knows about Ash's aura gave him a book. But it only has the basics like the legends of Sir Aron and how to use his Aura to connect with Pokemon and to sense them. I don't want an OP ash so this is as good as he gets although i may have the movie where ash visits Rota happening sooner than it did. How come they didn't reveal this sooner by the way? I think that they always had the idea of what Aura was, but didn't want to reveal it right away.

Ash's new pokemon

Kadabra: Teleport, Confusion, Recover (not unlocked yet), Light Screen (not unlocked)

Krabby: Crabhammer, Guillotine (not unlocked yet), surf, vicegrip, bubblebeam

Giant Dragonite: no attacks that Ash knows of (he's keeping it in a Pokeball he doesn't use because he doesn't want people to know he has it.)

Ash's team

Kadabra

Pidgeotto

Squirtle

Bulbasaur

Mimikyu

Charmander

*Giant Dragonite (technically in his team but Ash isn't going to use him except in emergencies)