Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

Temporal War

As he ran over the hill, Ash grinned in relief at the sight of Ecruteak City below him. It hadn't been the most interesting city he'd ever visited- even the encounter with Suicine had been too brief to make it stand out compared to some of the other places he'd spent time at while in Johto- but if his latest theory was correct, this was where he needed to be to get proof.

"Ash…" Misty said, looking at him in exasperation as she and the rest of his friends panted behind him. "How can… what are…?"

"Is there anywhere else someone could have gone if they took that blimp and needed to get somewhere specific?" Ash looked urgently at Brock and Clemont.

"Huh?"

"What are-?"

"If I'm right about this, I need to be sure; you're the ones who started worrying about future consequences if I let too much slip too soon, remember?" Ash looked pointedly at his friends. "Look, it's a simple question; if someone took the blimp with us, could they have gone somewhere else after we landed, or is Ecruteak the closest major location they could go to if they wanted to travel somewhere else?"

"Well…" Brock began, only for Clemont to pull out a small screen from his backpack and urgently study it.

"No," the young man said at last as he looked up at Ash. "If someone was on that blimp with us, no matter what path they took, if they were on foot then Ecruteak is the nearest place they could go to afterwards; they could catch a few major bus routes from here-"

"Bus routes?" Ash interjected. "As in there's a bus station here?"

"You didn't-?" Serena began.

"I like walking everywhere; why would I bother keeping track of where to go to catch a bus?" Ash pointed out, before turning back to Clemont. "Where is it?"

"Just… that way," Clemont said, glancing between the screen and the nearest street name. With that confirmation, Ash turned to run down the street, leaving the others to hurry after him once again.

"Why is… he so… eager?" Misty glanced over at Serena as the two girls ended up running alongside each other, the younger Ash just in front of them and Bonnie behind them.

"I don't… know," Serena said, looking apologetically at Misty as she shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, Ash is always focused, but this… he doesn't…"

Recognising that none of them had any clear idea what had sparked Ash's concerns about this situation, the two girls focused on running until the group finally reached the bus station. Ash came to a halt at the station's main entrance, waiting for the rest to arrive as he looked around at his friends.

"OK," he said, smiling uncertainly at his friends. "You wait here; I'm going to just… check if I'm right."

"Can't you-?" the young Ash asked.

"No," Ash said resolutely. "If I'm wrong, you knowing about this could screw things up later; if I'm right…"

"Yes?" Misty asked.

"Just pray that I'm not," Ash looked grimly back at the bus station. He was just about to walk in when a bus came out, the group only just managing to dive out of the way before it hit them. Looking up, Ash swore as he caught a glimpse of a blue-haired head in what looked like a tattered jacket, but quickly put that aside to run for the bus station ticket office.

"Can I-?" the woman on the other side began.

"Can you tell me where that bus that just left is going?" Ash asked, getting to the most urgent matter first.

"Ilex Forest," the woman replied, looking at Ash curiously. "Why do you ask?"

"Was there a passenger on that bus with blue hair wearing a black-and-white coat that looks like it's seen better days?"

"Yes, actually; he was one of the last to get a ticket." The woman looked curiously at Ash. "Why do you want to know that?"

"He's… my uncle," Ash replied, briefly feeling sick at the notion of even pretending that he was related to Cyrus. "He's not… I mean, he's not dangerous, but he's a bit… off; he's prone to just wandering off and doing things…"

"I see," the woman said, clearly understanding what Ash was trying to imply. "Well, obviously we can't exactly call the bus back, but if you want to go after him, the next bus to Ilex Forest isn't until tomorrow…"

"Thanks; I'll… think about that," Ash said. "I mean, it might be easier if we go after him ourselves… you're sure he's going to Ilex Forest?"

"He bought a one-way ticket and the bus doesn't stop anywhere else."

"Right…" Ash nodded tentatively, as he walked out of the office and back to his friends.

He might not have caught up with the former Team Galactic leader, but if he knew where the man was going, he might have a chance to work out what Cyrus was going to do now that they were both in the past…

"What was-?" past-Ash asked him as he returned to the rest of the group.

"We need to get to the Pokemon centre," Ash responded as he walked briskly past his friends.

"Excuse me?" Misty looked indignantly at Ash even as she and the others hurried after him. "You can't just-!"

"You're going to need to see proof before you'll believe what I'm about to tell you," Ash said simply.

"And what's that?" Serena asked.

"Potentially the end of the universe," Ash responded.

The stunned silence that settled on the group as they followed him to the Pokemon centre at least assured Ash that his friends were willing to hear him out, but he was suddenly torn between hoping his next act would justify their faith in him and praying that he was wrong.

"There," Ash said, indicating the screen of the Centre's computer to his friends and his younger self. It had taken a few minutes of searching, considering Ash's lack of knowledge of Cyrus's activities at this time, but he had finally found a relevant article, which included a photograph of a tall blue-haired man in a business suit standing in front of a museum that he'd just opened.

"'Noted philanthropist Cyrus Schemmel, seen dedicating the opening of the newest wing of the Pastoria City Museum'," Brock read, before looking at Ash curiously. "Why's that important?"

"Wait a minute… I heard that name…" Clemont looked uncertainly at the screen for a moment. "Cyrus… wasn't he the leader of some criminal gang in Sinnoh?"

"Team Galactic," Ash nodded at Clemont. "I encountered them when I was travelling through Sinnoh."

"So… are Team Galactic anything like Team Rocket?" Ash's younger self asked.

"Only in the sense that they were both thieves," Ash replied, tone grim as he reflected on that oh-so-close-call in Sinnoh so many years ago. "I don't know how he got to that point, but Cyrus's public identity is all just a cover for a twisted psychopath who convinced himself that the world didn't deserve to exist because human emotion made it a chaotic mess."

"What?" Ash's friends and his younger self looked incredulously at him.

"Hold on, Ash; you can't just-" Brock began.

"Brock," Ash held up a hand to stop his old friend. "Before you say anything about future consequences, I promise you that if I wasn't sure I saw Cyrus here, I wouldn't have told you a thing and I'd have let history play out like it did before, but Cyrus is too distinctive for me to have mistaken anyone else for him, and there's literally no way this could have been him from this time."

"You're sure?" Brock asked uncertainly as he looked at the photo on the screen. "I mean, if this article's right, he looks like he'd be rich enough to get here quickly enough-"

"And he attended this opening just a couple of hours ago," Clemont cut in, reading the article further down the page before he looked back at Brock. "Granted, this wasn't uploaded that recently, but it was still uploaded today, so there's literally no way a man can get from Sinnoh to hear in that time frame, especially if we accept Ash's word that he saw Cyrus on the blimp when we disembarked."

"Which means this can only be the Cyrus I knew in my time, which means this is extremely dangerous."

"But… how can he be here?" Misty asked, looking uncertainly at Ash. "I mean, this is just… you had to run into a Celebi at just the right moment to come here; what are the odds that the same thing would happen to Cyrus?"

"I… well, I don't know for sure, but I have an idea," Ash explained, his tone awkward but solemn as he looked around at his friends. "When I last faced Cyrus, he was trying to use Dialga and Palkia, legendary Pokemon from Sinnoh who could control time and space respectively, to… well, he somehow had them work together to create a new dimension that he could use to replace our world."

"Replace it?" Bonnie asked, hugging her brother's leg as she looked anxiously at Ash. "How could he-?"

"Like I said, I don't know for sure, but I… well, I can guess how it all comes together," Ash continued. "Like I said, Cyrus was trying to control Dialga and Palkia by controlling this other trio of legendary Pokemon from key lakes in Sinnoh, using some meteorites he'd stolen earlier to somehow control them directly…"

"You don't know how he did it?" Clemont asked.

"It's been a couple of years and I was more focused on stopping the bastard destroying the universe than keeping track of how he was going to do it, OK!" Ash looked indignantly at his friend before he shook his head and sighed. "Sorry; it's… well, it was a pretty close call, as you can guess."

"Right…" Brock nodded at his friend, clearly lost for how to respond to a revelation like this. "So… how do you think he got here?"

"Basically, when I last saw him, Cyrus was diving into a portal leading to the new dimension Dialga and Palkia had created for him just before Brock, Dawn and I were able to free the other trio from his control," Ash explained.

"We freed them?" Brock asked.

"Long story," Ash waved his hand before he continued his story. "The point is that everyone else who saw what happened were certain that Cyrus would have been killed when Dialga and Palkia stopped doing anything to maintain the new dimension they were making for him, but maybe he… fell out of reality somehow and managed to drag himself back into it when that Celebi dragged us through time?"

"Uh…" Misty looked uncertainly at Ash for a moment before she smiled awkwardly at him. "OK, I don't know if I'm more surprised at how bizarre that situation is, or how that description actually makes a weird kind of sense?"

"Is that a-?" Ash's past self began.

"Not important right now," Ash said, before he turned to address his friends. "What is important is that we know what we're dealing with right now; if Cyrus knew enough about legendary Pokemon to work out how he could control Dialga and Palkia, I think we can safely assume he has some idea of Celebi's existence, so if I'm right and the Cyrus here is the one that I fought in Sonnoh, he's probably going to do the same thing that we were going to do."

"Find a Celebi to get home?" Serena asked.

"Or maybe even try to get one to take him back to the point before everything he was planning went wrong," Ash said grimly.

"He'd do that?" the younger Ash asked.

"When someone's willing to destroy the universe, I think we can safely assume he doesn't care about things like the stability of the timeline so long as he gets what he's after," Ash observed grimly. "The woman at the bus station said that the bus he was on goes straight to Ilex Forest; there's a shrine to Celebi there, right?"

"Yeah…" Brock nodded in grim understanding. "You think Cyrus is going there to try and get Celebi to send him back so he can try his plan all over again?"

"At least," Ash nodded grimly.

"You think he'd try to call himself in this time to get help?" Bonnie asked.

The growing horror on the faces of the rest of the group made it clear that the very suggestion terrified them all, even if the horror was more obvious on the older Ash and Clemont as they had a better understanding of the likely consequences of that action.

"Right," Ash said resolutely, turning his hat around as he turned to face his younger self while indicating the Centre's video phone. "It's time to rally the troops."

"Rally the troops?" the younger Ash repeated.

"Our first step is to get our best available hitters back on your team, and I have a couple of ideas for who you should send to Professor Oak," Ash explained to his younger self with a slight smile. "And after that, we just have to pray to Arceus that my memory and my logs are as good as I hope they are…"