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Temporal War

"So… right," Ash said, looking awkwardly at the young man who had to be his own past self (and that was a weird sentence to think under any circumstances), surprised to note that he was actually at least a head taller than his past self. "Uh… sorry about this?"

"Sorry about- who are you?" the younger Ash looked at him in indignation. "Is this some weird Team Rocket thing?"

"Team Rocket?" Ash repeated, looking incredulously at his past self. "Firstly, there's too many of us, and secondly, why would they dress up as you to fool you?"

"They dressed up as us that time-" Clemont began.

"That was to fool the town, they weren't trying to trick us," Ash corrected his newer Gym Leader friend before he looked back at his first two travelling companions. "Oh, sorry guys; these are my new friends, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie; you already know Pikachu, Bonnie's carrying Dedenne, and that's Goodra."

"Hi-" Clemont began, before Brock rushed past the two Ashes to stand in front of Serena.

"Hell-lo there," Brock said, in the rushed and eager tone of voice that was disturbingly familiar to Ash even after almost two years since he last saw his oldest friend. "As Ash just mentioned, my name's Brock, and I take it that you are Serena? Please tell me what such a beautiful young woman such as yourself does while accompanying our mutual friend on his great journey through life?"

"Uh… I'm a Pokemon Performer?" Serena said, shooting a bemused glance at Ash as Clemont, Bonnie, Dedenne and Goodra looked at Brock in bemusement.

"A Pokemon Performer?" Brock repeated with his usual enthusiastic grin. "How fascinating? What does that involve? And may I assume that a ravishing beauty such as yourself is particularly-?"

"OK!" Misty cut in, stepping forward to grab Brock's ear and pull him away from Serena. "Let's just stop things right there before you embarrass us any further…"

She paused to glare over at Ash (and what did it say about how much he missed Misty that he realised he'd even missed her glaring at him like that?). "You really should have thought about how Brock would react to her; if you're really… well, you from the future, haven't you learned anything about him yet?"

"It's generally been easier for me to let Max or Croagunk handle that, and in my defence, he never did that to May and Dawn," Ash pointed out with an awkward shrug, suddenly wondering why Brock had never reacted that way to May and Dawn and briefly wondering what the breeder-turned-doctor would have thought of Iris, before he glanced down and noticed Bonnie looking at Misty with a familiar eager smile. "Oh Arceus…"

"You're a-!" Bonnie began, trying to push past Ash to kneel in front of Misty, only for Ash to grab her by her backpack and haul her back before she could actually get into position.

"Please don't do that," he hissed, urgently crouching down in front of Bonnie, not sure why he was reacting like this to something that normally made him smile. "It's just… Misty is…"

"Oh," Bonnie said, giving him a teasing smile before she nodded and looked back at Misty. "Sorry; forget I said anything!"

"Uh… sure," Misty nodded uncertainly at the little girl.

"Pika?" two voices said simultaneously. Looking down, Ash wasn't sure how to feel when he saw Pikachu looking at his past self, the younger Pikachu slightly shorter and the older one with brighter fur as they walked curiously around each other.

"Pikachu?" the younger Ash said, looking uncertainly between his older self and the two Pikachu. "Is he… they… I mean, are they?"

"Pikapi?" the younger Pikachu said, looking back at his trainer for a moment before jumping onto the shoulder of his trainer's future self, nuzzling his cheek with an approving "Chaaa!"

"Hey, buddy," Ash smiled at the younger Pikachu before he turned back to his past self. "Uh… hope this sorts that out."

"You mean…" young-Ash stared at the other him in shock. "You're really me?"

"Yeah," Ash nodded. "And believe me, I did not plan to come here."

"You don't remember this?" Brock and Clemont said simultaneously as they looked anxiously at the older Ash.

"Pika," the older Pikachu put in from the ground, holding up a paw and shaking his head as though to confirm he didn't remember this either.

"Uh… is that important?" Serena asked. "I mean, maybe it just means-"

"Serena, I might be an idiot at times, but this isn't forgetting that I've seen Pokemon from space more than once; this is meeting myself," Ash turned to look impatiently at her. "If this happened to me before, I would remember it!"

"OK, this is getting a bit confusing here," Misty cut in, looking uncertainly between the two Ashes. "I mean, I thought things were confusing enough when Sam dropped in with Celebi-"

"You've met Sam?" Ash looked sharply at Misty before he slapped his forehead. "Oh yeah, you mentioned that I'd have run into 'another' Celebi when you thought I was… well, the younger me…"

"Ash?" Misty looked at him in confusion as his voice trailed off, looking upwards with a growing smile. "What is it?"

"When all those other Celebi came to save the one we'd met…" Ash said, smiling as the pieces fell into place. "That's where I saw that portal before!"

"What?" Clemont looked at Ash in confusion.

"When I was travelling with Brock and Misty, we had an encounter with a Celebi where it was nearly killed before… well, it did something that brought in a bunch of other Celebi to help heal it," Ash explained.

"Other Celebi?" Serena looked at Ash in confusion. "I thought one of the reasons Legendary Pokemon were… well, Legendary was that there was only one of them?"

"That's a very common misconception about legendary Pokemon, actually; they're rare, but there are different examples of particular legendaries in each region, although they tend to stay in a particular area to limit contact between them," Brock put in. "I mean, there are rumours that certain legendary Pokemon are the most powerful of their species, like an 'Alpha' of their species, but for various reasons nobody's willing to test that theory even if we knew how we could do it safely."

"That… actually makes sense," Ash nodded thoughtfully at Brock. "I mean, I'm fairly sure I've encountered at least three different Articunos in different places-"

"Three?" young-Ash looked at his future self in surprise. "When was the third time?"

"Oh, that was when I was taking part in the Battle Frontier-" Ash began.

"Stop!" Brock yelled, looking urgently at Ash. "Don't tell us anything about the future!"

"Huh?" the two Ashes looked at Brock in surprise.

"We can't know anything about the future in case we end up changing it!" Brock said urgently. "Just the fact that Ash knows he's going to encounter another Celebi is bad enough; can you imagine what would happen if-?"

"Brock," Ash held up a hand to stop his old friend, "I appreciate you worrying about… well, our future, but like I said, I've already changed things by coming here when I don't remember this happening before-"

"But he's right," Clemont said, urgently looking between the two Ashes. "Your past self's already aware that he's going to be travelling with us in the future; if he learns anything else about-"

"Uh… Clemont?" Misty raised her hand. "I get why you're worried about Ash changing things, but… well, we've already established that Ash doesn't remember any of this happening in the first place, so if he's changing things just by being here, why hasn't his memory changed already?"

"That's…" Clemont began tentatively, before he signed in frustration. "I don't know."

"You don't?" Bonnie looked at her brother in surprise.

"There are ideas about how this might work, but there could be any number of explanations for it, really," Clemont said, a defensive edge to his voice. "Even with Pokemon like Dialga and Celebi, we simply don't know enough about how time travel works as a scientific concept to know how it can affect the world around us. It could be that just us being here has created some kind of alternate universe so our history is unchanged while this timeline is now on its own path, it could be some kind of side effect to do with how Celebi travels through time in the first place, or the fact that we're in the past is causing the changes to be suspended as far as we're concerned…"

"We'll… take your word for it," Serena nodded uncertainly at him.

"So… do we need to worry about him- me- you know what I mean- changing my history, or not?" the younger Ash looked urgently at Clemont.

"I… don't know," Clemont shook his head apologetically.

"Well, we can't just stay here and hope we'll get home on our own, can we?" Bonnie put in. "We already know Ash; Misty and Brock have to be nice too, right?"

"It's not a question of them being nice, it's-" Clemont began.

"Look," Ash cut in as he looked at the Lumiose Gym Leader, "I get that you're worried about changing history or something like that, but Bonnie's right that we need help if we're going to get home; we might as well stick with… me… and Misty and Brock until we get to the next town…"

He sharply turned to look at his past self as the thought came to him. "Where are we anyway?"

"What?" his past self asked.

"I mean, you've already met Celebi and Sam, but what happened to you recently?" Ash explained. "I just… well, I get Brock's point about not wanting to change history, but if you want to help us, I'd like to be sure I'm not going to screw things up for myself, so I need to know what you've done already so I can work out what we need to worry about."

"Well… I just got the Mineral Badge from Jasmine…" Ash said uncertainly.

"OK, thanks," Ash said, taking a moment to think before he replied. "You haven't caught a blimp or got a call from Professor Oak yet, right?"

"Professor Oak?" the younger Ash looked at himself in surprise.

"OK, so you haven't yet," Ash nodded in understanding. "Right then, so if you just got the Mineral Badge but you haven't had that call from Professor Oak yet… we'd need to catch that blimp to get back to Ecruteak City if you want to get to Eggseter City…"

"To where?" the young Ash asked.

"Ash!" Brock and Clemont looked urgently at him.

"I'm not giving you details, Brock, I'm just saying when you all have to be somewhere," Ash corrected his old friend before he turned back to his younger self. "The point is that, if you want to help us try and get back, you've got a couple of weeks' leeway before you need to be somewhere by a specific time if you don't want to miss out on something important to your future, so if you want to help us… well, you've got the time to do it."

Ash just hoped he had his timeline straight in his mind; he'd need to double-check the diary on his Pokedex to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything else that had happened at this time, but after getting the Mineral Badge, he was fairly sure the next big event was him winning Phanpy's egg in that race against Gary. Professor Oak's lab should be able to last a few more days without Bulbasaur if he missed that particular call, Team Rocket's attempt to steal the various Eevee evolutions from Sakura and her sisters had fallen apart without him getting involved, and he didn't see how him not being there would have any impact on Team Rocket breaking that Crystal Bell and drawing in Suicine…

"Well…" the younger Ash looked uncertainly at his future self for a moment before he smiled in approval. "If you think we've got time… I mean, I can't exactly not help myself, can I?"

"Then again, can we ever stop helping anyone?" Ash smiled.

"Good point," Misty and Serena noted, looking at each other in surprise at their moment of synchronicity.

"But… do we have to go with you?" Clemont asked. "I mean, the risk of changing history; if you've already met a Celebi, couldn't we just go back to where you met that one and-?"

"I don't really think that Celebi's likely to have stayed around that forest after it nearly died," Brock noted grimly.

"And even if it's still there, do you really want to take a couple of months walking back to that forest on your own?" Misty put in. "And that's before you take Ash's usual incompetence with directions into account…"

"Hey!" Serena and the younger Ash looked at Misty.

"That's… a fair point," Ash nodded awkwardly at his old friend, wondering what it said about himself when he realised his younger self was looking incredulously at him. "Hey, we do tend to get lost…"

"Yeah, but-" Ash began.

"Ash," Brock looked at the younger Ash with familiar exasperation, "are you really about to argue with yourself?"

"…Good point," the younger Ash smiled awkwardly, before looking at his future self. "Uh… sorry?"

"Don't worry about it," Ash nodded reassuringly at his other self before turning to address the whole group. "OK, if we keep going, we should be able to catch a blimp that will take us to Ecruteak City quicker than we could have done on foot, and from there we can work out where we'd be likely to find a Celebi that could send us home."

"And then we... well, you go to Celebi and we continue as normal?" Ash's younger self asked him.

"Pretty much," Ash nodded.

They might be in the middle of a difficult situation, but it couldn't be that hard to find clues to a Celebi's presence when he'd already encountered three of them…

AN: To confirm the timing for young-Ash, Misty and Brock, this starts between 'Nerves of Steelix' and 'Bulbasaur… the Ambassador', so Ash's team at this point is just Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Bayleef, Cyndaquil, Totodile and Noctowl, Misty has Staryu, Goldeen, Psyduck, Togepi, Poliwhirl and Corsola, and Brock is travelling with Onix, Geodude, Crobat and Pineco.

AN 2: Regarding Ash noting that he's a bit taller than his younger self when he's never visibly grown in canon… I will be clarifying how that can be the case, I assure you.