"Okay, Charizard, you know how this works!" Ash called, Key Stone shining. "Your job is to try and hit Clefairy with Dragon Breath! Clefairy, we're going to see how your new moves work out!"

"Oui, certainement," Clefairy confirmed, wings glowing in the light of a half-moon. "En avant!"

"I'm not sure what that means, but I can guess," Mega Charizard said, starting to orbit the camp.

"Remember, keep that Gravity tightly focused," Ash said, speaking now to Clefairy. "Charizard might notice if the gravity effect changes."

Clefairy took the instructions to heart, and looped around oddly through the air – adjusting her own personal gravity field, first so she didn't have to fight her own weight while going skywards and then changing it so that when she went towards Charizard she was getting the benefit of her own weight.

"Moonblast!" Ash called suddenly.

Clefairy snapped her fingers, and a burst of pink-and-blue light flashed out. It hit Mega Charizard on the wing, and he gave a slightly painful chuckle.

"Ouch," he said. "Okay, that was close enough to tag me and I didn't hear it, let's try that again."

"Just let me know if you're getting too tired, Charizard!" Ash called. "Clefairy, this time let's see Meteor Beam – from a distance, first, see how fast it moves!"

There was a kind of snap-wham as Meteor Beam hit home, knocking Mega Charizard through the air, and the Fire-type grunted before shaking his wings.

"Right!" he decided. "I've got a new idea."

His tail glowed silver.

Chikorita stared as her trainer apparently worked out what Charizard was doing in seconds. "That's a really good idea, Charizard – coil your tail a bit so you get an all-round look!"

She still wasn't quite sure what it was, at first, and watched as Charizard looked to the right for just a moment as he flew – then whirled and shot a blast of Dragonbreath almost directly at Clefairy, engulfing the Fairy-type halfway through preparing her next attack.

"Wow," she said. "I'm not really following. What just happened?"

"It's about reflections," said a Ghost-type, sitting next to her with a paper bag full of sweets.

Seeing Chikorita giving him a strange look, the Ghost offered her the bag. "Mint?"

Chikorita took one in her vines.

"I'm Marshadow, by the way," the Ghost introduced himself. "It's my job to rest in the Rainbow Hero's shadow and guide them to their sacred meeting with Lord Ho-Oh."

Unwrapping one of the mints for himself as Clefairy used Moonblast and Charizard swung up his Iron Tail to deflect it, Marshadow bit half of the sweet clean off. "Of course, normally I'm not meant to show myself, but this is much nicer. Anyway, I spend so much time thinking about shadows because I live there; reflections are the same sort of thing. You see, Charizard can't always see what's behind himself, but when he uses Iron Tail his tail becomes reflective."

Chikorita brightened. "Oh, I see! So all Charizard has to do is look at the tail?"

The Fighting-type nodded.

"Wow," Chikorita summarized. "I'm impressed you got that so quickly – and I'm amazed that Ash got that so quickly."

She sighed. "He's just… amazing, really. It's hard to put into words."

Absently, she ate the mint. Then, once it was gone, she realized something.

"Hold on… there's Pikachu there, and Charizard and Clefairy overhead. Silver is over there playing catch with Togepi, and then there's me, and that's Articuno… but aren't you one of Ash's Pokémon?"

Marshadow shook his head. "Just here for my job, really. Catering's good, though."

"Okay, Charla, this could be tricky," Liza said, as her Charizard built up speed.

There was another bright flare, and up ahead the Zapdos she'd seen flung a near-continuous stream of lightning at the Charizard it was fighting. Charizard roared back, and Zapdos fired again – rising higher, this time, and the Charizard's tail flashed over into Iron Tail.

"If that Charizard's still fighting, we just need to keep the Zapdos busy," Liza added. "Ready?"

Charla nodded firmly, then rose up out of the ground cover and fired a Flamethrower attack at Zapdos.

"Hey!" someone called. "You're meant to challenge a trainer to a battle, not just attack their Zapdos!"

The Zapdos screeched something in what sounded a little like agreement, and Liza looked down to where the voice had come from.

There was a kid sitting on the back of- Liza did a double-take – an adorably small Lugia, with his arms crossed. Then the Lugia banked around a bit, and the kid's arms uncrossed hurriedly as he stopped himself from falling off.

"Pikaaaa, Pikapi," the kid's Pikachu said.

"Oh, yeah, that is a good point," the kid admitted. "Yeah, that was just training, Zapdos is trying to get her Thundershock Barrage working against a flying target. It's kind of tricky because each bolt has to be aimed differently and they have to come really close together!"

Charla had gone from an attack run into a hover, and asked a question.

"Well, yeah," Ash agreed, after a few seconds when nobody had said anything. "How else is he going to get better at resisting Electrical attacks?"

He scratched the back of his head. "I'm not really sure why Charizard didn't tell you that himself, though."

After Liza had shown them the Charcific Valley, and Ash (and Brock, and Misty) had been duly impressed by a whole colony of Charizard, Ash's first Fire-type sought out his trainer.

"I don't know what to do, Ash," he admitted. "I don't really know how to start with saying what I want to, and…"

He sighed. "I think I'm in love. But if staying here means leaving you-"

"It doesn't!" Ash interrupted. "Charizard, you're a great friend, and I'll be happy with what you decide no matter what you decide, and you can always come and visit… especially if you can get hold of Hoopa. But even if you can't, how far is it really to Pallet Town?"

"I don't know, an hour or two?" Charizard said, thinking. "I… guess that's a good point, yeah. But I still don't know if I can fit in here. All the Charizard here know each other, and the males are all big about being tough guys, and…"

He let out a long, rumbling sigh. "If none of them impress Charla, is she going to be impressed by me? Or does she want a sort of Pokémon I can't be?"

Ash had to think about that for a bit.

"It sounds kind of like there's two things there," he said. "There's whether you can impress the other Charizard and fit in in the first place, and then there's whether Charla's interested in you. So… I guess I don't know about the second one because I don't know her."

Pikachu was looking at his trainer as if Ash had turned out to be capable of reading a map.

"But about fitting in?" Ash went on. "Charizard, I think you're just a bit nervous. I know just how you can impress them."

"Well, I've been around Charizard for years and I've never seen that before," Liza admitted. "I'd have thought it wasn't physically possible for a Charizard to learn Dive."

"I hear variations of that a lot," Pikachu commented. "With different moves and Pokémon, generally."

"But are you sure you're okay with leaving your Charizard behind?" Liza added, as Ash's Pokémon landed next to them. "He's clearly strong, so you're raising him right… I just want to make sure, because you said you're doing the Johto gym challenge, and it's hard for a team to give up their strongest hitter."

Misty snorted. "That sentiment is very nice, and completely misaimed."

"Yeah, kind of," Ash said. "No offence, Charizard, but that would be if I was leaving Pikachu behind somewhere."

Charizard thought about that.

"Yeah, fair," he said. "But if you do have to say that in front of Charla, can I at least explain that I was hoping to work up from being zapped by Zapdos to dealing with Pikachu?"

As everyone said goodbye to Charizard, he put his claw on Silver's shoulder.

"Just so you know, kid," he said. "I won't be with the team from now on. So it'll be your job to be the tough guy."

Silver nodded, seriously. So I should learn to ignore attacks that should be highly effective against me?

"Well, that's just useful to learn," Charizard said, then frowned and clarified. "Seriously, though, work up to it. Don't try and deal with a Rock Wrecker tomorrow or whatever."

The next people they met posed Ash a bit of a puzzle.

"Why don't you just have a Pokémon use Sunny Day?" he asked. "To make sure the weather's going to be good, instead of predicting if it's going to be bad. Or just ask Ho-Oh for help, ending bad weather is pretty much his job."

It's dad's job too! Silver supplied. So they could just ask my dad for help, if they lived in the Orange Islands, which I guess they don't. Mom lives a bit closer though?

"There is a good reason why you wouldn't want to ask Tornadus for help, though," Ash mused. "He's kind of a jerk sometimes and he mostly deals with adding bad weather."

"It's meant to be forecasting the weather," Mariah said, a bit huffily. "That means knowing what the weather will be without a Pokémon making it something."

"Oh, right," Ash said, brightening, as Brock looked up. "Why don't you just ask Celebi for help?"

Mariah looked like she couldn't believe what was going on.

"I'm surprised you didn't mention Rayquaza, Ash," Brock said.

Ash frowned. "Who?"

"That would be me," Rayquaza supplied, from overhead.

Brock pointed, just to be helpful.

Ash looked up. "Oh, hi! Nice to meet you – I didn't get your name last time, I was a bit busy."

"Wasn't that the time you were, literally, dead?" Pikachu asked.

"Only a bit," Ash protested.

"That looks pretty good," Ash said, a couple of days later as they approached a town. "How comfortable is that?"

Articuno looked down, which meant looking in the direction which would normally be up. "It's a bit awkward," she admitted. "Just going along in a straight line is fine, but I keep feeling like I'm going to twitch in the wrong direction and hit the ground."

"I guess that's the trick about flying psychically," Ash mused. "Your wings work one way, and your psychic powers work another way."

Then they all fell in a pit, except Articuno.

"That looked weird," she contributed.

"Ahahaha… ha?" Jessie tried, pulling a hose from out of the trees, then shook her head. "We're not even going to get to do the motto this time."

"Who knew pit traps wouldn't work when the Twerp's team can mostly fly?" James asked, without apparent irony.

"What I wanna know is why dat Flying-type is bein' a flying-upside-down-type," Meowth said.

"Fear not!" a voice called. "For Gligarman is here!"

After Team Rocket had been persuaded to exit stage top, Gligarman waited as Articuno helped her trainer and his friends out of the pit trap.

"You have good taste in Pokémon, young man," the costumed hero said. "And so large! Though it has quite an odd appearance."

Ash shook his head, clambering over the lip of the pit. "Actually, she's an Articuno."

"I should say so," Articuno confirmed.

Gligarman examined her, then frowned. "No, I'm quite sure that Articuno are blue."

"That's Ice type ones," Brock said. "She's a Psychic type one."

"Ah!" Gligarman said, impressed. "A Psychic type Gligar! No wonder she can fly!"

"...I have questions about our career path," James said, helping Meowth truss up a toy shop employee into a Metapod suit.

"To be honest, I'm not sure on this one either," Meowth agreed. "It kinda… don't make sense at this point, and I ain't sure where it started goin' off track."

"Come on!" Zorua begged.

"No chance," Zubat replied. "I work alone. And I'm not taking little kids into danger."

Zorua scowled. "I'm not a little kid – I'm a ninja!"

"If you get captured, I'm not going to save you," Zubat said.

Then paused.

"...any more than the other Pokémon presumably getting captured."

"Sure thing, Mr. Brock's Main," Zorua saluted.

"I'm not actually-" Zubat began, then stopped and clicked out a pulse of echolocation. "Okay, look. I'm okay with you coming with me. But that is where I draw the line!"

Zorua looked around, and saw Psyduck dressed in a purple domino mask, a hat, and a cape.

"…yeah, fair enough," the Dark-type admitted. "Now, come on, we've got to rescue Gligarman! Assuming that Ash's array of powerful Pokémon haven't already done that."

That evening, as the sun set over Johto, Jessie sat down in her chair with a sigh.

"At least we get a better rest after we blast off, these days," she admitted. "But did the plan actually work?"

"Work?" Meowth admitted, still drying his hair after a much-needed shower. "I didn't know there was enough of a plan for it ta work."

"Reassuring announcement: fortunately, there was a plan," Porygon told them. "Clarification: I have begun splicing the footage from today's events into a promotional video for the new Gligarman comic book series. Self-interested addendum: our cut is quite reasonable."

"You could'a told us we were acting!"

"Snide remark: I wanted it to be convincing."

AN:

The Rockets have a bit of a different experience these days.

Sure, they have to deal with a kid who's got enough Legendary Pokémon to need the collective noun for them, but they do have a flying fortress base with great amenities.

Which they are never getting anywhere close to where it could get damaged.