"I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into," Dawn told Pichu. "I know you said you were from our time, but that could mean you were from a few hundred years ago at least when Pokéballs became common, or it could mean you were from hundreds of years in the future."

"Yeah, that is true," Pichu agreed, twitching her ear. "But I do know about Contests, and if it helps I haven't heard of you guys… beyond, you know, that Legendaries exist. None of the humans, and so on."

"Including Ash?" Whitney checked.

"Including Ash," Pichu confirmed.

"In that case, she's probably from around now," Whitney said. "Are you sure you want to be a Contest Pokémon? I'd gladly have you on my team if Dawn doesn't."

"I think I'd appreciate the different sort of expectations," Pichu told her. "I'm grateful for the offer – really grateful, thank you so much for it! - but Contests and Contest training is more the sort of thing I'm after at the moment."

She sighed. "Quite apart from anything else, having to come up with different things to do is going to really help me acclimatize to not being in a time loop."

"What made that happen, actually?" Ash checked.

"I think the best answer I can give is that Dialga or Celebi were involved in doing it," Pichu admitted. "I know they were around at the time, so… one of them might have done it? But I don't know more details than that."

"Well, we're glad to have you," Pachirisu said. "Especially because I think we're not far off having the ability to put together a full team of Electric types."

She counted off on her paws. "Pichu, Pachirisu, Shinx, Plusle, Nickit…"

"Plusle and Nickit?" Pichu asked. "I must have missed meeting Plusle."

"No, that's actually me," Dawn said. "There's this potion… anyway, the basic summary is that I can be a Plusle if I want to, just by having some of that. Ash can be an Absol, and Whitney can be a Snom."

"Maybe I'm not from the time period I thought I was," Pichu speculated. "And Nickit?"

"She just needs a donor Pokémon," Buneary clarified, in that way that didn't actually clarify.

A few days later, Jupiter contacted her boss.

"It worked," she said, without preamble. "The Shellos was dropped not far away from them, and they got some flying Pokémon out… they're taking it back to where it originally came from."

"Good," Cyrus replied, over the phone. "So that means you can complete your mission?"

"Assuming they don't come back," Jupiter hedged. "But with the direction they've been heading, it'll be quicker for them to just keep going there after dropping Shellos off."

She shrugged. "I can't make any guarantees, sir. But it's working so far."

"Keep me updated," Cyrus requested. "If you need to evacuate, evacuate first and then update me, though… don't wait around and get in trouble. We need to avoid getting his attention, until our plans are completed."

Back at Twinleaf Town, the Twinleaf Festival was about to begin, and since Dawn's mom had been elected as chairperson the friends all stopped by to take part.

"So what normally happens at the Twinleaf Festival?" Ash asked, glancing over at Dawn.

"It's different every year, so there isn't really a normally," Dawn replied. "But it's a few days long, and there's things for Pokémon trainers as well as things where you don't need to be a Pokémon trainer. I'm not sure what mom's planning, not all of it – she wants it to be a surprise – but I had fun before."

"It sounds like it will be an interesting look at modern human customs," Stantler observed, flickering into visibility.

"I was meaning to ask about that, actually," Pikachu said, grateful for the reminder. "Why do you talk about modern human customs, instead of human customs?"

"I mostly want to be specific," Stantler explained, then vanished again.

"I sometimes wonder if I should get him a small camera, or something," Whitney said. "You know, put it between his antlers… that way he'd have a record of all the things he's seeing, that he can go back and refer to later!"

"I'm not really sure I see the need," Stantler replied.

"That's fine, it's all up to you," Whitney assured him.

There were plenty of amusement-park type things to be set up on at the Twinleaf Festival, from stalls to rides to the arena for a Pokémon battle, but the first real headline event was a special lecture by none other than Professor Oak.

"I'm glad I managed to book him," Johanna said. "I don't think I'd have been able to, he said he was quite busy, but I mentioned that my daughter was one of Ash's friends and that really seemed to convince him… I'm not sure if that's leaning on a connection and a bit wrong, but it's what I did."

"That's probably okay," Ash guessed. "Professor Oak is okay to say no about that kind of thing, but I bet he's got a lot to say!"

"Wait, hold on," asked someone who looked a lot like Dawn's childhood friend Barry. "You booked Professor Oak? But I booked Professor Oak!"

"That would explain why he was busy, perhaps?" Johanna wondered. "Would it? I'm not sure… well, all's well that ends well, I suppose?"

"It's kind of funny he didn't notice that the two bookings were for the same place," Pikachu pondered. "But I suppose there's not much point worrying about it, like you said."

"Okay, I thought Barry was joking when he said he could understand your Pokémon," the man admitted. "How's that happening?"

"That's me, this time," Lokoko said. "It's something of a party trick, and I'll claim generalized copyright for whenever someone else does it too…"

The man chuckled. "That's fine by me, I think," he decided. "It's very impressive. My name's Palmer, by the way."

"Oh, you're the Tower Tycoon?" Ash asked. "I heard about you. Are you one of Barry's relatives?"

"I'm his father," Palmer confirmed. "He's a good kid… kind of excitable, but a good kid. And obviously you're Ash Ketchum!"

Then Professor Oak arrived.

So did a second Professor Oak, this one from Alola and called Samson not Samuel, who was immediately interested on hearing that Ash was present and wanted to see first-hand the kind of nonsense that his cousin had been talking about.

"Well, just stick around Ash for a day or two, and you'll get your fill," Samuel Oak said knowingly.

"That quick, huh?" Samson asked. "Well, I'll believe it when I see it, Samuel."

"What are you an expert on, Professor?" Whitney inquired. "Ash might have something to show off that he can do without needing to go anywhere!"

"I actually focus on Regional Pokémon forms," Samson said. "The Totem Pokémon on Alola are quite remarkable. They're otherwise normal, but much bigger than-"

Zacian jumped out of her Pokéball. "Were you about to say much bigger than other Pokémon of their species?" she said. "Because that happens a lot."

Samson did a double-take. "Is that a Legendary Pokémon?"

"It's like you haven't even been reading my articles," Samuel groused.

"I've got some unusual regional Pokémon," Ash said, getting Ibid out. "Let's see, uh… have you seen a Galarian Articuno before? Or, actually, what kind of Zapdos do they have in Alola, because it might be that the unusual one for you is my Kantonian Zapdos. Then there's a Shiny Galarian Moltres who looks a lot like a non-Galarian Moltres, and he's tiny… or if you're specially focused on big Pokémon I've got Cresselia, she's big…"

"Well, that was entertaining," Pikachu said, that evening.

He twitched his ears, shaking the water off them. "I think that one probably comes about three out of five, in terms of Pichu nonsense."

"Well, you've only just met me," Dawn's Pichu frowned. "Unless there's time shenanigans going on, but that's not likely anyway. So you mean that you've met those other two Pichu before?"

"All the time," Pikachu agreed.

"But why focus on them, when there were Legendary Pokémon involved?" Pichu checked. "There was that Keldeo, and there was the Moltres, and then there was that Lunala…"

"Yeah, this happens," Buneary told her, having finished towelling off. "Pikachu is very much the expert on this sort of thing, so if he says it rates three out of five then it's three out of five. I haven't had enough encounters with them to qualify."

She shrugged. "We've met the Keldeo before, but the combination of other Legendary Pokémon was new."

"Well, I think I see why you rescued me from the time loop so quickly," the Spiky-Eared Pichu said.

"You helped us out a lot, there, don't sell yourself short," Buneary advised.

"Hmm…" Ash said, inspecting a tent. "So, what's this one about? There isn't a label."

"It connects the past, the present and the future," explained the attendant, who was wearing a clown suit for some reason. "Your past, present and future."

"That seems very specific of it," Rayquaza noted, poking her head out of Ash's jacket. "How does it know? Or is it, um, what's the opposite of specific… generic?"

"I guess if it was about someone picking up their Pokémon, and their first gym battle, it'd do pretty well with the past," Ash said. "But I'm not sure how the future would work."

"Unless there was Celebi involved," Pikachu pointed out. "Or Dialga. Or both."

"Or both, yeah," Ash agreed. "Well, I guess we'll see what it's like!"

Two minutes later, after briefly meeting a Xatu, Ash was about four inches tall.

"Okay, that wasn't what I was expecting," Pikachu said, measuring himself compared to Ash. "Wow, I think at this scale I'm going to have to carry you instead of you carrying me… in fact…"

He stepped back to get a better view. "Compared to you now, Rayquaza is the size of Big Rayquaza."

"I don't think I like that much," Rayquaza admitted. "Is it okay if I go back in my Pokéball?"

"Sure," Ash agreed.

"And I'll replace her!" Zorua announced, jumping out of his own Pokéball. "So, the problem is, you're too small, right? And that's an easy one to fix. Step one is to have you turn into your Absol form, and step two is that you use Illusion to change your shape!"

He pondered. "I wonder if there's a Gigantamax form for Ashbsol! We could find out!"

"What I want to know is where we are," Pikachu said. "Are you going to be okay without me? I'm going to do a bit of scouting."

Ash nodded, and Pikachu formed a water Surf-board before zipping up into the air to get a look at the lay of the land.

When he got back, Ash was already a still-tiny Ashbsol and Zorua was talking him through the next step.

"It's actually pretty simple to follow," he was saying. "Assuming you've got Illusion, anyway. So what you need to do is to visualize yourself, but way bigger. Like, um… well, it helps if you've seen an explicitly much bigger than normal version of what you're going for, because otherwise you have to invent the details – oh, hi Pikachu! What's up?"

"Well, don't quote me on this, but I think we're in some kind of vision of the past," Pikachu replied. "There was a thing back on the day Ash and I first met, I was still trying to cope with the idea of a human who could speak Pokémon and we got attacked by Spearow… it was weird, they're not normally that aggressive. Anyway-"

"I asked Mew about that, once," Ash volunteered. "He said it was a psychosomatic reaction to a Rage Candy Bar."

"Oh, that might make it make a bit more sense," Pikachu said to himself. "Anyway. I think that's where we are."

His cheeks sparked. "I'll be a moment, I'm about to repeat history."

"That's fine," Zorua said. "Okay, so, the way that Gigantamax works is… actually, I don't know how Gigantamax works. So try turning into a very big version of yourself, and also being Galarian."

Ash held up a paw. "Do you mean myself as in, an Absol, or myself as in, Ash?"

"If you can make either of them Gigantamax, I'll be very happy," Zorua said.

Ash didn't manage to find a Gigantamax version of himself, but after that vision of the past – Ash and Pikachu's shared past, specifically – they next got an image of the present.

That wasn't anything particularly unusual, just showing them all having lunch together. Based on what Dragonite was cooking, in fact, it was Tuesday morning which was as close to "present" as you could get without having to get hyper-specific.

"...in a way, it is nice to see us from the outside," Zorua said, slowly. "I don't see other Zorua much, at least other Zorua who look like me, because Aten is a Zorua but he doesn't look like me and Zoruatwo-onwards also look a bit different. And obviously most Zorua we meet don't look like Zorua."

"I haven't noticed," Pikachu admitted. "But then again, the point of Zorua is that I wouldn't…"

The scene changed again, and they saw a Zoroark, a Zorua and a Zorua egg all gathered together inside a clearing.

"Hey…" Ash said, loping forward a few paces. "That egg looks familiar."

"No, it probably isn't," Zorua replied, shaking his head. "You must be imagining things. Zorua eggs all look the same anyway, right?"

"I'm fairly sure that's your egg, Zorua," Ash declared, sounding more confident now. "It was the first Pokémon egg I ever got, so I tried to pay a lot of attention to all the specific details, beyond just the fact that it was black and red and stuff like that. Professor Oak always says you can learn a lot from observing a Pokémon as closely as possible in order to draw the right conclusions, so that's what I did."

"I'm sure he's proud of how far you've come," Pikachu said.

"I really hope so!" Ash agreed. "So, this must be another vision of the past, but it's out of order. We should be at the future parts, right?"

"Haha, magic," Zorua laughed. "It's like that, huh? How does it work, who knows? We should just accept this and never question or talk about it again."

There was a flash, and a Xatu appeared next to them.

"Okay, wow," the Psychic-type said, wincing. "Yeah, I can see why you lot aren't getting the usual effect from this. It's supposed to be a mystical vision quest thing where you understand your Pokémon better, but for you that's like trying to beat a world record… how exactly are you a Pokémon at the moment?"

"Magic!" Ash answered. "Like Zorua says, it's like that!"

"Look, just… there's a carnival game thing going on," Xatu said. "Hit the heads of that Exeggutor and you can leave."

He waved his wing, and an Exeggutor duly appeared.

Ash crouched down, jumped, and when he reached the apex of his jump summoned a Secret Sword. That gave him a pawhold to work from, and he jumped a second time before hitting the Exeggutor with three light Razor Winds.

The whole forest went white.

"So… you're telling me that going into that tent will turn me tiny, and I'll get to see scenes from the past, present and future?" Whitney asked.

"That's what it seems like!" Zorua agreed. "That is, um, we didn't get future, though."

"Right," Whitney said, and turned straight towards the tent. "This is going to be great!"

AN:

Samson was not ready for this, which seems like an oversight.