To say that Ash and company never
existed is not to say that they didn't make it through the portal. Although their births were erased from the
timeline, they were protected from these changes by a secondary effect of the
portal. In order to prevent problems
for its user, it cut the user off from the rest of the timeline, eliminating
most of the paradoxes of time travel and helping to prevent some unfortunate
situations (i.e. nonexistence) from occurring.
Even with this protection, however, Ash had still gotten his friends
into a very strange situation.
Ash and his group of fellow travelers
had arrived in a town that seemed familiar to them, but was not easily
identified as one that they had been to.
It was certainly not where they had came from, and it confused Misty and
Ash greatly. Brock was able to figure
out what was happening surprisingly quickly, and he owed it all to newspapers. The discovery of Celebi was still very
recent, so he still clearly remembered reading an article about it. After figuring out that he was in a
different time and place, he discovered where and when with the help of another
newspaper. He glanced around and saw a
man sitting on a bench, reading the Pallet Times. The newspaper was marked "Monday, October 6,
1980". He quickly pulled the other
two into an empty alley and quickly explained the situation to them.
"We're in Pallet Town, 20 years
in the past. No one knows who you are,
because you haven't been born yet; nor do they know about Celebi, because it
hasn't been discovered yet. We need to
make sure events happen the way that they're supposed to and find a way back to
our own time. Be careful not to do
anything that effects anyone, unless it's unimportant or helps us get
back."
"Why can't we just keep going
like nothing happened?" Ash inquired.
"Do you know how much that will
change the future? What if half the
people you know are never even born?
What if Team Rocket attacks, and you can't stop them because you didn't
want to take the trouble to get out of a time you weren't even supposed to be
in in the first place?" Brock seemed very angry.
"Excuse me, I couldn't help but
overhear your conversation. Do you have
any proof that you're time travelers, or are you just insane?" The voice was not one that Brock had heard
before, but it sounded kind of like Ash's voice.
"I think we just messed up the
future," Brock whispered.
