I won't keep you from the beginning of the story for long. Just a reminder that this story takes place before JN89, "The Gates of Warp!" or as it's known in Japanese, "ディアルガ&パルキア!時空大異変!!" "Dialga & Palkia! The Space-time Cataclysm!". If this is your first time finding a story in this series, welcome, and I hope you check out the rest of the series. If you're following from Book 1, I hope you enjoy this next story as it unfolds.
"And with that, I hope you all understand the lesson. There'll be a test on this material at the end of the week, so make sure to study hard. I look forward to seeing all of your smiling faces first thing in the morning once again tomorrow. And three, two, one…"
Right on cue as the teacher counted down, the bell in the school rang, indicating the end of the day's instruction and the beginning of the rest of the day. For one boy, there could be no greater source of joy than being able to get out of this stuffy classroom. He began cramming his books into his backpack with reckless abandon, not caring about how they would all fit inside. Given that his 'backpack' was more commonly used by travelers to store their gear, it had more than enough room for him to be sloppy with his packing.
He stood up and pushed his chair in, ready to go, and he looked over towards his childhood friend, hoping that he would see her just as excited and ready to go. And then his heart sank.
She was being very tidy in her preparations, stacking her papers before slipping them into a folder. Then, with the entire stack prepared, she put it all into the old leather bag she used as a backpack, making sure to keep it all neatly organized.
"C'mon, Chloe!" he whined. "We've gotta hurry!"
Chloe looked up at him, her emerald green eyes looking sharp enough to pierce him. "What are you in such a rush for?" she asked. "We don't have anything else to do today."
The boy shook his head. "I just have to get back to the lab to see everyone there!" he said, gesturing wide. "You understand that, right?"
"I guess you really are more excited to do research on that rather than doing your homework, aren't you, Goh?"
Chloe's words hit at the heart of the matter, but Goh wasn't daunted. "Of course! I have to see everyone first, but I want to look more into what's going on with the feather, too!"
"There isn't a single part of you that knows the meaning of patience, is there?" Chloe sighed. "You can't rush through everything, you know. Sooner or later, you'll need to slow down and start taking things as they come. You're going to try to find a shortcut and only realize too late that it's a dead end."
Goh grinned confidently. "No way. I'll always find a way to keep moving forward. Where there's a will, there's a way, and there's always a way to the future in the palm of my hand!"
A wadded-up ball of paper hit Goh in the head. Turning to see where it came from, Goh saw one of his classmates, a boy wearing a bandage on his nose named Yeardley, standing near the door. He gave them a wry smile and turned to leave the room.
"Dorks," he said as he stepped out.
Goh felt his fingers clinch into a fist, but Chloe's hand on his shoulder turned his attention away from Yeardley. "Are you really going to let him bother you?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I was just thinking that another hit would help fix his nose," he said.
Chloe wasn't enthusiastic about his posturing. "You got lucky he didn't want to admit that he got his nose broken by you the first time and said he fell down the stairs at school," she reminded him. "If you do it again, you might get expelled."
"That's just more time to spend with Ash at the lab," he said back, not truly thinking about what he was saying.
"I guess if Ash is your most important friend," she said looking away from him.
"Hey, don't talk like that-"
"Though I guess I should be glad you actually have a friend other than me," she said, Her emerald eyes seemed to glow mischievously in the afternoon sun.
"Hey!" he protested. "I have friends other than you! You're not special!"
His outburst seemed to strike at Chloe, because the look on her face was like he had just slapped her. The light in her eyes dimmed and she looked away. "I see."
She began to pull away from him, walking ahead, but Goh set his pride aside and grabbed her by the hand to prevent her from walking further ahead.
"I'm sorry. That's not what I meant."
By now, the two of them were the only ones left in the classroom, and the sunlight cast its shadows over the walls, giving the room an intense atmosphere. Chloe looked at him, a light pink creeping onto her cheeks.
"What did you mean, then?" she asked, watching him closely.
Goh frowned. "What do you mean, what do I mean? Isn't it obvious?"
She pulled her hand free, but didn't walk away from him. "Maybe I want to hear you explain it," she said.
Goh felt his brow furrow. "Well… I mean... "
It felt strange to be put on the spot like this. He wasn't quite sure if he had an answer to give her that she would find satisfying. There was also a sense of fear within him, as this topic was approached. He wasn't sure what it was about talking about this with Chloe, but he knew that if he didn't say something soon, his face was going to be permanently disfigured from the burning feeling on his cheeks.
"You're-"
"There you two are!"
A girl with short, blonde hair leaned into the classroom. Her bright blue eyes glanced from Goh to Chloe and back.
"We were in the garden looking for you two but you never showed up, so I was wondering what was happening…?"
Chloe and Goh both looked at each other, and then turned away from the other.
"Trouble in paradise?" she teased.
"Mika-" Chloe's voice sounded like she was talking down to a child, not a peer, but the tone was enough to cow Mika into obedience.
"Fine, fine… I don't care about that anyway," Mika said with a shrug. "Deliah and I just got worried that maybe the two best friends in all of Sunset Junior High were having a fight and we came to see if you all had forgotten anything back here."
"Deli's here too?" Chloe asked, looking over at Mika.
"P-Present…"
A small hand waved from the doorway, hiding behind Mika. Deliah and Mika were friends of Goh and Chloe from when they attended elementary school together, Now in junior high, they were split with Chloe and Goh remaining in the same class while the other two girls were off on their own.
Deliah was a shorter girl with long, messy brown hair, which made her an excellent foil to the taller, blonde, and neater Mika. Even after all this time, these girls were part of Goh's world, though he spent much less time at school than he did in the past.
Goh held back his laughter. "There's only one reason you would be interested in coming back in here for us, Mika, and it certainly isn't our friendship," he teased.
Chloe nodded. "Yup. There's only one thing in the world Madcap Mika is ever interested in."
The blond girl tilted her head sideways as she blinked at them. "And that is…?"
Sunset Junior High School was a premier academic institution for students from ages twelve to fifteen in the Kanto Region's Vermilion City, and since Goh and Chloe sat on the upper end of that scale, they attended thanks to the hard work of their parents.
Goh reminded himself that despite his lack of attendance, tuition wasn't cheap.
But the faculty at Sunset seemed very lax with the attendance rules, and had even worked out a system with his pseudo-employer to allow him to continue working towards his true dreams and goals with the caveat that he still had to attend school occasionally, mostly for tests but also for the occasional presentation or announcement. Today was such an announcement, letting him know that there would be a test at the end of the week, though since it was only Monday, that meant there would be several more days before the test actually occurred, which was something of an annoyance to Goh, but given that this was his trade-off to continue pursuing what he truly enjoyed? He'd make that exchange every day if he had to.
One of the best features of Sunset Junior High School's campus, in Goh's estimation, was the garden. And though there was a lot of natural beauty, both maintained by the school's gardening club as well as its suite of gardeners and custodians, there was something else that Goh enjoyed about it.
"Grooki!"
"Dace!"
"Leon?"
"Pichu!"
"Vui!"
Staying in this garden were a cadre of strange, mysterious creatures, all watching with wide and excited eyes as Goh and Chloe approached, only to freeze up when they all saw Mika with them.
These creatures were called Pocket Monsters, or Pokémon for short. Looking at them and seeing the green Chimp Pokémon Grookey, the tall Striker Pokémon Cinderace, the cool Agent Pokémon Inteleon, the energetic Tiny Mouse Pokémon Pichu, and the fluffy Evolution Pokémon Eevee, it may seem like this was the extent of their variety, but even Goh knew this was less than a percent of a percent of how widely varied they could be. He wasn't sure how many Pokémon there were in the world even as he knew they were divided into eighteen types or how those types interacted with each other in Pokémon battles.
What he did know was that he wanted to catch one of every kind of Pokémon there was. A chance encounter with a mythical Pokémon in his youth inspired him to want to meet and catch these Pokémon until he had worked his way back towards that myth that so enraptured him.
"C'mon, guys, Mika won't bite you," Goh said, holding his arms wide.
"Of course not," Mika said, crossing her arms indignantly.
Chloe shrugged. "Yeah, but you can be a bit rough when you go to hug them," she said. "Even Eevee's learned that you tend to bring pain with you."
Mika's bright expression faded and she pouted. "The only pain right now is the pain in my heart," she sighed.
"Even Jolt's gotta be cautious with you…" Deliah said, reaching for her Pichu. Much like how Deliah's hair was a mess, so too was her Pichu's, with tufts of hair poing off one of his ears. Goh had offered to cut the hair for her, but even Deliah mentioned how it would just grow back quickly.
"It'll be okay," Chloe said, patting her friend on the back. "I'm sure you'll get your own Pokémon some day. I mean not even Goh or I got our first Pokémon until pretty recently, right?"
Chloe's Eevee, her first Pokémon, rushed to her side and leapt to her shoulder, looking around Chloe's head to make sure it was the shoulder opposite the one Mika was near.
"Yeah but you've had Yamper for ages," Mika complained. "And Dii has her little Jolty…"
"Yamper isn't my Pokémon," Chloe corrected her. "And you know how Jolt became Deli's."
Even in the face of her insensitive complaining, Mika continued to act like a child.
Cinderace, Inteleon, and Grookey all approached Goh with an eye towards the blonde girl, but before Mika could make a move towards them, Goh took from his pockets two Poké Balls. He recalled Cinderace and Inteleon into them, and they disappeared in flashes of light. Grookey leapt to Goh's shoulder but much like Eevee, made sure he was on the opposite side as Mika.
"Not you, too, Eeveekins and Grookykins…" she groaned.
Chloe and Goh could only laugh somewhat awkwardly. There wasn't going to be any way of making Mika feel better that they could handle at the moment, so it was all they could really do to move things along and for everyone to head home.
When Goh and Chloe finally arrived at the large manor on the hill that served as the location for the laboratory that Goh was so eager to return to, they were greeted by another Pokémon, the Electric-type Yamper that belonged to Chloe's father, Professor Cerise. Since Mika and Deliah had long since split off from the group to head to their own homes, Eevee eagerly hopped off of Chloe's shoulder and began playing with Yamper, pawing at the puppy's back as he tried to leap over her and roll her over. With no prompting from Goh, Grookey hopped off his shoulder as well as joined the two of them, and soon the three were chasing each other around the yard in front of the laboratory.
"Pikapika!"
And then their group was joined by a fourth as an electric mouse Pokémon rushed from his own trainer's side to join them.
Seeing the direction Pikachu ran from, Goh and Chloe both saw Ash grinning at them. To Goh, this was a sight for sore eyes after being at school the entire day. Ash tugged on the bill of his cap and was dressed much more comfortably than Goh was in his school uniform.
"Welcome back!" he said to the two of them.
Goh immediately began loosening the tie that was part of the uniform. "It's good to be back," he said. "I can't wait to get changed back into something comfortable…"
"That uniform has never really fit you, though, has it?" Chloe said sardonically.
Goh flexed his arms. "Yeah, it could never contain my bulging muscles!"
Her eyes narrowed and she groaned. "I was speaking metaphorically."
"What's a meta for?" Ash asked.
"This exact thing."
Chloe sighed at Goh's attempt at humor. "You need to work on your double-act if you want to learn every joke in the world."
He laughed to himself, though Ash blinked somewhat confused in his direction. "Anyway, has Professor Cerise discovered anything yet?"
Ash shrugged. "Since you had to go to school, my hands were full takin' care of the Pokémon in the park. I haven't seen him since breakfast."
There was at that moment a loud growling that to Goh almost felt like the ground itself was shaking.
Ash smiled, embarrassed. "I uh… may have missed lunch, too."
Now it was time for Goh to groan, but he quickly hid it behind a laugh and a smile. "Well, let's check in with the Professor and then we'll get something to eat."
Ash nodded. "Sounds good!" He turned to the Pokémon who were still playing in the yard, playing some game that was known only to them. "C'mon, buddy! Let's go see the Professor!"
"Pikapi!" Pikachu chirped as he rushed over to Ash's side, leaping to his shoulder. Grookey, likewise, did the same as he rushed back over to Goh's shoulder. Eevee, though, stayed on the ground with Yamper, the two of them only walking up to Chloe's feet.
There was a familiar weight in the wooden doors as Goh pulled them open, stepping in first and holding it open for Ash, Chloe and the Pokémon, following behind them as they stepped down the hall and into the laboratory.
Inside the lab, seated on the couch in the corner of the laboratory, was the man Chloe called Dad with his greying maroon hair, scanning his green eyes through yet another book. Seated next to him were his two assistants; the blonde and messy Ren and the dark-haired, collected Chrysa. All three of them looked exhausted, but from what Goh could tell, the stack of books on the table was about the same height as it was before he had gone to school with Chloe that day.
Worry and bafflement mixed in equal measure on Chloe's face as she struggled to make sense of what she was looking at. "D...Dad? Are you okay?"
Her father put down the book and looked at the three of them, showing a shaky smile. "Oh, hi Chloe. Ash. Goh." His eyes were bloodshot and the bags under his eyes were dark. He looked completely exhausted, which told Goh why he didn't notice them when they entered.
Ren and Chrysa looked away from their books as well, their eyes matching the Professor's as they beheld Goh and the others.
"I guess you guys have really been hitting the books," Goh said, trying to ease the tension in the room with a joke.
Ash frowned. "From the looks of it, the books hit back," he said.
"Piiika."
Professor Cerise chuckled. "Well… when you have as inscrutable a subject as we're presented with here, there's not a lot you can do other than get to work." He gestured to the glass container in the middle of the books.
It was a special glass container with ends that could be twisted open. Goh was sent a box of these by Professor Amaranth once he truly became in the running to join Project Mew as a Chaser. Within the glass container was a single feather. The feather was the same crisp, bright white as freshly fallen snow, and it seemed to glow with an ethereal light. Goh, Ash, and Chloe had recovered the mysterious feather from a temple hidden in a far-off corner of the Kanto Region and now it was Goh's mission with Project Mew to uncover the purpose of this feather.
Given that his field was wanting to learn everything there was to know about Pokémon, it wasn't much of a surprise that Professor Cerise had thrown all his efforts into research on this mysterious feather. What did surprise Goh was how very little information there was on it. Though if Project Mew wasn't going to investigate it themselves and instead left it in his hands, it told him that they either felt like there was nothing to gain taking the feather for themselves, or that they were pinning their hopes on Goh to uncover what the truth was behind it.
Either option seemed to bestow their own amount of pressure onto his shoulders, but he did his best to stand tall despite the strain.
"We'll keep looking," Chrysa said, reaching a shaky hand towards a cup in the shape of her favorite Pokémon, a Psyduck. The dark liquid inside was most assuredly some coffee that had long since gone cold. Despite this, she took a shaky sip before setting the cup back down. "Where there's a will, there's a way. And we haven't even begun to tap into all the libraries we have access to."
Ren shot a glance at Chrysa and then Professor Cerise. "Well… at least those two have a positive attitude…" he muttered. "I'm starting to think it's just a weird feather with nothing special about it…"
Chrysa's gaze turned bitter and sharp, and her fangs were bared. "But you're going to keep looking."
It wasn't even a question, but the exhaustion in Chrysa's tone was enough to drill the point home. Ren nodded without the slightest hint of objection.
"Well, we'll leave you all to it," Chloe said, putting a hand each on Goh and Ash's shoulders. "Good luck, Dad. I'll be hanging out somewhere in the lab so let me know when it's time to go home." She gently pushed them to turn and then walk as they left the main laboratory room.
As soon as they stepped out, Chloe let them go and exhaled. "That was… something."
"I guess it's going to be a little while before we can follow up on this feather," Goh said. "At least we have the time to work on other things. Like I can catch a few more Pokémon and you can maybe rank up just a bit further, you know?"
Ash nodded, but the look on his face was sullen. "Well, yeah, but right now the only thing I wanna do is eat…" he grumbled. "Let's get Mr. Mime t' make us something…"
"Alright, alright," Goh chuckled. "I'm going to change out of this uniform first, though."
Ash chuckled. "Yeah, it's not really your color," he joked. "See you in a bit."
As Ash turned down the hallway and Goh walked towards the stairs, he heard Chloe call out to him.
"Hey… Goh?"
Goh stopped with one foot on the stairs and a hand on the handrail. "Hmm?"
Chloe looked at him and then averted her gaze. "Well… I mean, we have that test at the end of the week, right? Would it be alright if we studied a bit while you ate? After you changed, I mean."
He smirked confidently at her. "What, you won't force me to study like the other day?" he asked, his tone teasing.
But there was no tease reciprocated, only Chloe looking very thoughtfully down at her own hands. "Well, I mean… I still haven't properly thanked you for helping save Eevee and me back at that temple."
In his mind's eye, Goh saw Chloe bound by a thick metal cuff in the corner of the water-themed room of the temple they had explored. His planning had managed to save everyone from Team Rocket's greedy clutches, but there were a few moments he thought he was toast.
Chloe wanting to thank him shyly like this put Goh off-balance, but it wasn't something he could easily turn down without seeming rude, either. If Chloe wanted to study with him for this test, then the best thing he could do would be to let her.
"Sure," he said, as cool and calm as he could manage. "We can snack and see if Ash knows any answers while we do it," he said with a grin.
This caused Chloe to giggle as she balanced herself on the heels of her shoes. "That sounds like it could be fun. I'm sure he's got some funny stories to share with us."
Goh chuckled. "Yeah, Ash is really hilarious. I'm glad I have him as my friend."
To that, Chloe said nothing, but Goh could see from her face that she was very pleased, and so not wanting to say anything that would tilt the smile off her face, he excused himself and went to change out of his school clothes.
