In the morning, Ash is the last to wake up, he awakens at noon. He looks up and Misty is staring at the wall, sort of zoned out and dazed. Brock walks up to Misty and claps his hands in front of Misty's face. Misty comes out of her trance and finds everyone laughing at her. She blushes and looks away from everyone. "Aren't we supposed to go to that one place we were invited to?" she asks, breaking the silence. "Oh yeah" says Ash, "lets go" he says as he puts on his hat. "Well then, shall we?" asks Misty, she grabs Brock's arm and drags him to the door. "Okie dokie" says Ash. Our heroes then leave the hotel and go to the address the invitation had given, the coliseum. The doorman bows as they present their invitations, "Wow" says Ash, "This has got to be the fanciest place I've ever been to." "Yeah" chorus's everyone else.
The doors were highly glossed wood, and the walls were elaborately carved marble, they were statues of pokemon that even Dexter couldn't analyze, there was one that sort of looked like Togepi, but larger and with wings. Some, Ash could recognize, like Arcanine and one that looked vaguely familiar (it was Mewtwo) he knew he had seen it somewhere, but couldn't put his finger on it, his mind couldn't focus on the memory, there were two other statues that looked familiar too, one was a small cat-like creature (mew) and the other was a bird. "Hey guys!" Ash called, "this is the rare pokemon I saw when I first left on my pokemon journey!" everyone gathered in front of the statue to look at it. Ash and his friends walk on to see that the long corridor ends in large stone gates, Misty whistles the pokemon theme, and it echoes on the walls. The gates swing open, as if triggered by something. Ash and his friends walk through the gates, and see a huge battlefield.
On the wall, there is a plaque, it reads; 'Crimson Island coliseum, formerly the New Island research facility' "This place looks familiar…" says Ash. "What do you mean Ash?" says Misty, "this is the first time you've been here." Ash shakes his head, trying to focus his thoughts, "I could've swore I've been here before…" he is cut short as his gaze is drawn upwards, to a tall tower, with a windmill on it. "Wow, have you ever seen anything like it?" Asks Ash. Pikachu jumps on Ash's head to get a better look, "togei, togei, prii!" says Togepi. No one answers Ash's question, they are all in awe at the size of the coliseum. A mellow, amused voice interrupts their awe. "Welcome, welcome! I am professor Hamilton." Ash turns to see a man dressed all in black, his pale complexion seems to 'flicker'. Our heroes are a little stunned, this man looks familiar, like they all knew him, yet he is a complete stranger…"hello professor, I'm Ash, and these are my friends; Misty and Brock." The professor bows politely, though he seems a little disappointed that Ash brought his friends. "How do you do?" asks Misty. "I am fine, and you?" replies the professor. Misty says, "I'm just peachy keen." Ash cannot help his curiosity, so he asks, "um… professor, can you tell us why we're here? I mean, why did you invite us, and what are we going to do?" "Well…" says Professor Hamilton, "I've invited you because you are all fine examples of trainers, and we are going to celebrate that." It looks like our heroes are going to party hardy 'til the brink of dawn.
Just then, out of no where, a blaster ball falls out of the sky. Uh oh, looks like our heroes are in for some company. The blaster ball explodes in a huge fireball, luckily, it doesn't hurt anyone, but it leaves a bunch of smoke! Ash and the gang are coughing and gagging on the smoke, "pi,ka,ka,ka,cha" coughs pikachu. "Prepare for trouble!" a shout penetrates the smoke, "And make it double!" a voice yells in reply. "oh no! its team rocket!"(obvious) Ash throws a pokeball, "Pidgeot! Whirlwind the smoke away!" Pidgeot flies up in the air and starts flapping its wings, "pidgaw, pidgaw!" it screeches. The smoke is blown away, and team rocket continues their motto, "To protect the world from devastation!" yells Jessie "To unite all peoples within our nation!" James shouts. "ah, the notorious team rocket," says Professor Hamilton coldly, "I've heard of you." Team rocket ignored him and continued, "to denounce the evils of truth and love!" screeches Jessie, "to extend our reach to the stars above!" crooned James, "Jessie!" "James!" "team rocket, blast off at the speed of light! Surrender now, or prepare to fight!" they chorused.
"okay, okay, now we've all heard your motto, now we can all get on with our lives." Said Ash, his voice was full of boredom. "ha ha, you won't get off that easy, twerp," Said Jessie "we're here to take your pikachu, go Arbok!" Ash calls out Bulbasaur, "Bulbasaur! I choose you! tackle attack!" yells Ash. Bulbasaur runs up to Arbok and Weezing and tackles Weezing as James yells, "Weezing, its grime time!" Weezing is still spinning from Bulbasaur's attack, smacks into Arbok as it uses it sludge attack. "good job Bulbasaur!" yells Ash "now use solar beam!" the bulb on Bulbasaur's back glows as it gathers sunlight to use in its solar beam. Bulbasaur releases the solar energy, aimed at team rocket, the beam explodes in a super-bright light, and team rocket is thrown up into air. "looks like team rocket is blasting off again…." "good bye! Hope I don't see ya soon!" Ash yells after them.
"young man, you demonstrated great courage while ridding us of those thieves, how about we go and celebrate?" Ash nodded vigorously, "yeah!" The Professor motions for them to follow him, so they do. "I thought we might do a little activity first," Professor Hamilton said mysteriously. "ok, this wont take long will it?" The Professor doesn't answer, he leads them to a table, where he motions for them to sit down. "ok, I'm going to pass these pictures around and ask a few questions, ok?" says Professor Hamilton. Ash and his friends nod, Ash is wondering when he'll get to eat. The first picture to go around is a test, it is easily identified as a Sandshrew. "See, this isn't that hard is it?" the next picture is harder to identify, but eventually Brock says, "that looks like a Dragonite." The Professor nods. The next picture is an Articuno, which no one can identify. After that is a Zapdos, the next picture is passed around and Ash calls out, "it's a Moltres!" he remembered that one because he saw one at the opening ceremonies of the pokemon league. The next picture is another bird, Ash says "that looks like the bird I saw, it flew over the rainbow."
Professor Hamilton hadn't been expecting this, "you really saw this pokemon?" he says "yeah, that's the one I saw." The Professor nodded, he was contemplating telling them what it was, "that pokemon's name is Houou, it is often regarded with respect in the pokemon world, it symbolizes the virtues of love and peace." Ash nodded, "well, we'd better get on with this" said the Professor, as he passed out another picture, it was mew. Ash gasped, "I think I've seen this one before, but I can't remember where, or when… I just get this weird feeling of déjà vu when I see it…" Professor Hamilton was awestruck, how could Ash have seen this pokemon, all he had was a picture of a carving. The next picture was passed around, it was the last one. It was a simulated picture of what the pokemon duplicated from mew's DNA looked like (Mewtwo). Once again, Ash stared at it for a minute and called out, "I think I saw this one too, but it looked a little different…" Ash was struggling to access the memory, but all he got was little flashes of what the pokemon looked like. Misty was almost sure Ash was bluffing, but he wouldn't lie about something like this, would he? Apparently Brock thought he was bluffing,
"This pokemon is Mewtwo, it was recreated from the DNA of Mew, the pokemon in the carving." Said the Professor. Mewtwo! That's what it was, Ash could almost remember now, he saw the pokemon Mew, fighting with Mewtwo. Sweat was breaking out on his forehead, he started feeling ill as the memories returned. Misty saw Ash, and how he looked ill, she said, "wow, Ash, you don't look so good, maybe we should finish this up tomorrow." Ash was shaking, he remembered most of what happened now, he recalled swimming to a place called New Island, where he met some pokemon trainers, and a super pokemon, named Mewtwo. The memories were too much for him, he was shaking uncontrollably and he fainted, he opened his eyes once before he woke up, he saw Misty and Brock helping him to the hotel.
When he woke up, Misty was watching over him. His friends had taken three hour shifts on watching him, now it was Misty's shift, or it was, but she decided to let everyone else sleep, she had a touch of insomnia. He groaned as he sat up, "Wow, it feels like I was hit by a bus." Misty jumped, "your finally awake! Are you ok?" Ash was still dizzy, so after he tried to sit up, he was forced back down. "I'm ok, just a little dizzy." Upon hearing its trainers voice, Pikachu wakes up and runs up to Ash, "Pika, Pikapi, Pikachu!" pikachu says as it hugs Ash. Ash gets another flash of déjà vu, pikachu running up to him and hugging him after something bad happened to him. All the pieces were coming together now, yet he still couldn't remember all of what happened. Misty hovered over him, a worried look on her face, she was afraid he might faint again. "Ash, are you sure your ok?" she asked, a slight tremble in her voice. "I just keep on seeing these things in my mind, like I'm reliving a bad dream." Pikachu looked worried too, "pikapi, pikachu" it said as it patted Ash on the shoulder.
Brock finally woke up, he glanced at the clock, 11:48, he gave Misty a look. "why didn't you wake me up? You've been watching Ash for almost 7 hours." Ash looked at Misty, trying to find an explanation. "I couldn't sleep, so I thought there was no point in having both of us awake." Was her explanation "ok, well since your awake now Ash, can you tell us what happened? I mean, one minute your fine, and talking your face off, like normal, then the next, you faint. What happened?" there was concern in Brock's voice. "Ash says he's been seeing things in his mind, like he's reliving a bad dream, in those words." Brock nodded, "I've heard of something like that, its something like total recall, where a person remembers something that they've blocked out of their memories or like their recovering from amnesia. I wonder what Ash is remembering." Ash tried to sit up again, he was dizzy, but he succeeded. "I keep on seeing the pokemon that was in that picture the Professor showed us, Mewtwo, it was fighting with another pokemon, and, and, I remember a huge ball of energy being hurled at me…" Ash had started shaking again "I know it sounds crazy, but I think they killed me…"
To be continued…