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Temporal War

Sitting in a corner of the blimp's passenger area, Ash smiled wistfully as he stared out of the window at the landscape below him.

He enjoyed travelling around the world to see everything it had to offer, always looking for something new across the horizon, but for every Lavender Town or Trovita Island he wouldn't want to go back to, there were also those places like Celadon City or Cianwood City that he wished he'd been able to spend more time exploring before he had to move on to catch the next big event in time. He would never regret all the people he'd helped and the amazing friends he'd made, to say nothing of the wide range of Pokemon he'd met that had agreed to join him in his travels, but there was always a part of him that regretted how hard it was to keep in touch with everyone afterwards.

And what does it say about my life that I have to resort to time travel to re-tread old ground? Ash mused to himself, shaking his head as he glanced around the blimp. Brock, Clemont, Bonnie and his younger self were chatting in a table in the middle of the room, while Misty and Serena were sitting awkwardly on either side of a table in a corner, looking around at nothing in particular.

Ash briefly wondered what had prompted such unconventional behaviour from the two girls, but decided it wasn't worth thinking about too deeply as he turned his attention back to his own self-analysis.

He didn't know if it was some side-effect of the time travel, or if seeing himself was forcing him to think more about how he had or hadn't changed since these days, but either way, as he looked back on his life, he found himself stuck on the idea that he should have made more effort to keep in touch with his past. Even when he'd gone through Kanto again to compete in the Battle Frontier while May was competing in a new round of contests, he'd never actually gotten around to looking up old friends beyond Misty joining them for the first few days before her sisters called her back to Cerulean. May and Dawn had visited him after they parted company rather than him visiting them, he'd run into Todd, Cynthia and Clair by sheer chance on later journeys even if he'd been glad to catch up with them…

"Who's Dawn?"

"Dawn?" Ash looked up at Misty in confusion, her voice jolting him out of his train of thought as his oldest human friend sat down opposite him. "How do-?"

"Serena and Bonnie mentioned her when they asked me if I had a… Piplup?" Misty explained, looking uncertainly at this older version of the boy she'd met between Pallet and Viridian so long ago as she indicated the other young woman in the corner. "I just… I mean, I get why you can't tell… you about the future, but I was wondering…"

"I get it," Ash nodded at her in understanding before he glanced around the blimp's passenger area, confirming that Brock and his past self were off in another corner. Considering that Misty was never going to be in a position to meet Dawn before his past self was already travelling with her, so long as he made sure she understood not to tell his past self anything of what he was about to tell her right now, it couldn't be too much of a problem for him to answer that question. "Anyway, Dawn's a young Coordinator I travelled with… well, that I will travel with, I guess is the right term now… when I was in the Sinnoh Region."

"Coordinator?"

"It's… well, you know how some of the Orange Crew had me complete certain tasks with my team rather than just asking me to defeat them in a straightforward battle?" Ash explained. "Coordinators basically do that on a full-time basis in Pokemon contests; the first round consists of a range of Coordinators demonstrating a certain skill or talent that their Pokemon have beyond just their raw strength in a battle, and the second round sees the top… it's generally eight… coordinators actively battling against each other, but the goal is mainly to make their Pokemon look good rather than just to knock out the other guy."

"That's… interesting," Misty said, looking at Ash curiously. "Have you… taken part in many Contests?"

"Me?"

"Well, you've always gone in for every Pokemon-related competition we've found in the past, so I figured…"

"I've tried them once or twice," Ash shrugged. "You've got to keep in mind that most of the stuff I've taken part in when we've been travelling together are just local events with specific prizes; contests are part of a large-scale league, and I'm not that interested in being a coordinator full-time, so I just gave them a shot a few times when everything just felt right."

"Such as?"

"Well, one of the contests I took part in was an unofficial event before I ended my current journey, another time one of my current Pokemon expressed an interest in Contest battles and I thought I'd give Aipom a shot at it, and the third time just seemed like a good opportunity to test some new Water techniques."

"You competed in a contest to test your Water Pokemon?" Misty asked, a tentative smile on her face as though she wasn't sure how to feel about that revelation.

"It was this big contest event called the Wallace Cup that focused on Water Pokemon; Brock, Dawn, May and I met up with the organiser a couple of days before it took place and he convinced me to use the event to explore a few new techniques," Ash shrugged. "I didn't win it, but I got some more interesting ideas about how to use Buizel in later battles-"

"Hold on; Brock was with you?" Misty looked at Ash, her tentative smile replaced by a new intensity as she looked at him. "And who's May?"

"I… travelled with her when I went to the Hoenn region," Ash said, looking awkwardly around the blimp passenger area; he suddenly thought he saw the back of a familiar head-

"Hoenn," Misty said, drawing his attention back to her with the sheer weight she managed to put into that brief word. "And was Brock with you there too?"

"Well… we didn't go there together, but he followed me there shortly after I got there and-"

"Right," Misty said, standing up suddenly and walking away. "I get it."

"Misty, you don't-" Ash began as he stood up.

"Don't," Misty interjected, looking firmly at him. "We have to worry about the whole 'don't change history' thing, remember?"

As Misty walked off to another corner of the passenger deck, Ash noticed his younger self look up from his talk with Brock and Clemont to look uncertainly between Misty and himself, but was grateful beyond words when the younger him stayed in his seat, even as he looked after Misty with a saddened expression.

Our relationship all over, Ash sighed at the fresh reminder of how complicated things had been back when he'd travelled with her. I never liked it when I hurt her, but we argued so much that it was always so easy for us to screw things up…

And why does that hurt so much?

He'd never bothered to compare any of his friends to each other, particularly when they had so many different strengths and interests, but even if he'd never say it to anyone else, there was always something about Misty that just…

Scanning the small passenger area to take his mind off that particular thought, Ash wondered if it had been this busy last time he'd caught this flight. It was a relatively short trip, and the flight was mainly intended to be a cargo run to the ranch rather than taking passengers as its main business, but he'd decided to catch a rest on the original trip when he found himself reminiscing about his time with Bulbasaur, and it had been a long time for him-

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he spotted someone sitting in the corner of the passenger area, the man's face turned away and his shoulders hunched so that the only thing visible was the top of his blue hair and the back of a long black jacket that gave the impression that it was rather old, as though the man had been wearing it for a long time-

"Why don't you ever talk about them?"

"Huh?" His attention drawn back to his own part of the passenger deck, Ash was surprised to find himself disappointed as Serena sat down opposite him, the aspiring Performer looking at him with new curiosity.

"Misty and Brock," Serena clarified, recognising that he wasn't going to answer her question. "Why didn't you mention them before now?"

"I didn't?" Ash was genuinely surprised at that.

"I… You know, you've never even really talked about anyone you've travelled with before now," Serena said, hesitation soon replaced by an intense glare he wasn't used to seeing from the normally light-hearted girl he'd met at Oak's Summer Camp so long ago. "I mean, you told us a little about Dawn after we visited the Ambrette Aquarium, but you didn't really tell us much apart from that she had a Piplup as her starter, and now-"

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings," Ash cut her off, looking at her apologetically before his shoulders slumped and he sighed. "It's just… it's hard, you know?"

"Travelling with people?"

"Remembering the people who aren't travelling with me any more," Ash clarified, swallowing slightly as he turned to look at Brock, wondering how the aspiring Pokemon doctor was coming along with his studies back in the present. "I mean, it's always an amicable split- we just reach a point where we'll have better luck achieving our dreams if we're not travelling together any more- and I'd never want to hold them back from doing what they love, but it's…"

He sighed. "Just because I understand that moving on doesn't mean they don't care about me doesn't stop me from feeling bad that I'm not enough for them any more."

"Oh Ash…" Serena looked at him with growing sympathy, reaching over to squeeze his hand. "And it's… it's harder for Misty, right?"

"How-?"

"It's the way you look at her when you think nobody's looking at you," Serena clarified with a soft little smile. "She was… important?"

"She was the first person I met on my journey after I got Pikachu, and the first person who started travelling with me afterwards," Ash said, feeling the inadequacy of that description but somehow unwilling to tell Serena any more right now. "Misty… her leaving hurt, but that was mainly because she's the only one who didn't want to leave."

"She wasn't?" Serena sat back, looking at him in surprise.

"You've seen that she specialises in Water Pokemon, right?" Ash explained. "Well, that interest goes a bit beyond it just being Misty's personal favourite type; her family are the leaders of the Cerulean City Gym back in Kanto."

"They are?" Serena looked over at Misty with a new expression of awe before she turned back to Ash. "You've travelled with two Gym Leaders?"

"Well, five if you want to get technical; Cilan was one of the Gym Leaders in Unova with his brothers, May's dad was a Gym Leader in Hoenn, and Iris was being considered as a successor to another Unovan Gym Leader even if she wanted to focus on her journey right… then…" Ash shrugged uncertainly, only to be left feeling even more uncomfortable as he took in Serena's expression.

"You've known that many Gym Leaders that personally?" she looked at him with a new sense of sorrow. "I thought… well, I thought we were-"

"Hey," Ash cut her off, surprising himself with his sudden knowledge of what she was about to say. "I may have… well, I'm not saying there aren't some people who stand out more than others, but I've never thought of any of the people who've travelled with me as… I mean, May and Dawn were both coordinators, but I never even thought about treating Dawn like she was a substitute for May or something like that! You're all important to me because you're my closest friends; I'd never choose between you all!"

Serena looked probingly at him for a moment, but finally sat back and nodded at him, a tentative smile on her face as though she was trying to understand something she didn't want to face. Ash would have continued his explanation about why Misty's departure had been difficult for him, but faced with Serena's pained expression, he suddenly felt as though saying more would have been trying too hard to justify his feelings where Misty was concerned, and he was suddenly sure that he didn't want to put himself in that kind of position.

For a moment, the two temporally-displaced travelling companions sat in silence, staring at each other from across the table, until Serena stood up and walked back to the corner of the room she'd been sitting at originally. Ash briefly glanced around to try and find the blue-haired man he'd noticed earlier, but realising that the man had left the passenger area, he eventually turned to look out of the nearest window out of a lack of anything else to pay attention to.

"Pika?"

"Just… human stuff," Ash shrugged, looking down at Pikachu as his oldest friend squatted on his knee. "I never even realised how tricky my relationships were until now…"

"PikachuPi?"

"She's… part of it," Ash acknowledged, glancing over at where Misty sat in the corner, arms folded around Togepi as she pointedly looked anywhere in the room but at him. "I mean, I knew I missed her, but I just… I never realised how much I missed her until I saw her there, and then…"

Lost for words, he shook his head and smiled wistfully down at his starter. "I'm an idiot, huh?"

"PikaPi ka Pikachu," Pikachu said, hopping onto Ash's shoulder to affectionately nuzzle the side of Ash's face, as though reassuring Ash that, idiot though he might be, he was still Pikachu's idiot.

"Thanks, buddy," Ash said, reaching up to scratch Pikachu's chin gratefully before he settled back into his seat, letting his mind drift out of a lack of alternatives.

Thinking about how much he missed travelling with Misty in the present was something he would probably have had to face eventually, but this wasn't the time for that. Hopefully if he stayed away for the rest of the flight Misty would calm down enough to remind herself that the Ash she was travelling with hadn't done anything to her yet, and once they arrived at their destination, everything should go smoothly enough. Once they'd reached Ecruteak City, he, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie would work out where they should go if they wanted to find a Celebi, he and his friends from the future would go there, and his younger self could continue his journey relatively uninterrupted…

Arceus, let it all go smoothly.

Clemont and Brock were right; when you started thinking about it, time travel was really complicated; the sooner he could get back to his own time, the better.

Just like the last time he'd taken this particular trip, Ash wasn't surprised when he found himself waking up as the blimp came into land; the flight itself might not be long, but when he spent so much time walking it was a relief to be able to zone out for a while. Once he rejoined the rest of the group as the blimp went into land, Ash was relieved to see that Misty has being perfectly friendly to his younger self after their earlier talk, which at least meant that he shouldn't have anything to worry about in terms of Misty staying with himself (and that was a weird thing to have to worry about).

As they finished thanking Carter for recommending this lift once again, Ash turned around to look back at the blimp as the man drove off in his jeep, only to see the same blue-haired figure in the worn jacket that had attracted his interest in the passenger area of the blimp standing at the fence at the other side of the landing strip. For a moment Ash thought about going over to get a better look at the man, but as soon as the other man turned his head to face in Ash's direction, the time-traveller's blood ran cold.

It might have been well over two years since he last saw that man, but now that he could see the man's face directly, even at this distance there was no mistaking it; Ash just couldn't believe he hadn't realised the man's identity earlier.

After all, if it was hard to forget Pokemon who came from outer space, it was virtually impossible to forget the man who had tried to remake the world because he had some warped ideas about the value of human life.

"Cyrus…" he growled coldly, clenching his fists as he looked after the blue-haired man, the former (or was it future?) head of Team Galactic climbing neatly over the fence before walking away from the landing field.

Ash had no idea how the man could be here, but judging by the way the former leader of Galactic had looked back at him in that moment when their eyes met, he was sure of one thing.

Just like he recognised Cyrus, Cyrus recognised him.

Which meant that he wasn't just dealing with the version of Cyrus from this time; he had just seen the Cyrus who had nearly capture Dialga and Palkia…

"No…" Ash said, staring at the fence in cold rage.

"Ash?" he vaguely registered Misty and Serena say from behind him.

"NO!" Ash yelled, ignoring them as he broke into a run, heading towards the area of the fence that Cyrus had just climbed over. He pushed himself to a level he normally reserved for when he absolutely had to make it to his next Pokemon match, either because of a time limit or a determination to prove himself, but that effort proved futile when he reached the fence and found himself looking into a dark forest just a short distance from the field, the setting sun making it far too dark to see anything within it.

Even if I knew where he'd gone, I'd never be able to find him when I don't know for sure where he's going…

"Crap," Ash said, slamming his hands on the fence in frustration. "He got away."

"Who?" Misty's voice said, leaving Ash to turn around and look guiltily at his friends as he realised how his recent behaviour must have come across to them all.

"Ash," Brock looked at him in a particularly warning manner, "I thought we agreed that-"

"This isn't like that, Brock," Ash said, not in the mood to hear another lecture from Brock or Clemont about the risk of trying to change the future on purpose. "If I'm right, we could have a serious problem on our hands…"

The notion of any one of the villains he'd faced in the future managing to travel in time was a bad one, but when the villain was the man who'd tried to capture legendary Pokemon with the goal of basically unmaking the universe…

I have to be sure.

If he was going to do anything about this, he had to be absolutely sure he was right…