"All right, everyone," Kukui announced, the next morning. "Today, we've got a special guest in to give you a demonstration."
"So… not Ash," Sophocles checked, to confirm. "Even though he's here?"
"That's right," Kukui confirmed. "Ash is actually here for several reasons. Firstly, because I think he'd be interested as well. Secondly, because of who the special guest is, and thirdly, because it's going to be quite useful to have his perspective on the demonstration."
"Are those really three separate things?" Lana asked.
"Sounds like it to me!" Ash said, then the door opened and the special guest walked in.
Snowy immediately growled, and Faba looked extremely nervous.
Lillie looked both nervous and impressed. "Snowy, I didn't know you could growl!"
"It's quite easy, apparently," Snowy said.
Faba had his hands up. "I… look, I understand why you're upset… and so is my boss. In fact, she's more cross than you'd believe."
He rubbed his forehead. "She made so many comments about me being The Hood, you would not believe… but, well, I'm getting treatment for my bad case of Mad Science now, and I'm here to show off one of the more productive bits of research I've been working on."
"That's actually part of why I'm here," Ash volunteered. "So are Zacian, Aten, and some of my other Pokémon."
"Treatment?" Kiawe repeated. "Mad science is an illness?"
"It's a mental problem," Kukui informed them. "It's related to megalomania and manic episodes. Faba here was diagnosed with it after the incident, and as he says, he's been getting treatment."
"Alakazam makes sure I don't forget a session," Faba said. "Anyway, ah… that demonstration. Well, I'll begin by outlining the concept?"
He put a Pokéball down. "Has anyone ever thought about how amazing a Pokéball is?"
"They're not all they're cracked up to be," Pikachu said.
"I know you don't like yours, but most Pokémon are okay with them," Ash shrugged. "That doesn't mean any of you are wrong, it just means your preferences are different to theirs."
"That's probably the best way to put it," Pikachu conceded.
"Yes, well, what's amazing about them is not just that they can contain any Pokémon, but they can do this," Faba said, touching the button on the front of the Pokéball, and it shrank down. "Pokéballs are an excellent example of matter compression and storage devices, and while it's particularly easy with Pokémon for… poorly understood reasons related to their nature… what I've been researching is a way of expanding that to everything! Or, not expanding it, if you see what I mean."
Lillie stroked along Snowy's back, keeping the Vulpix calm. "So… sort of like a shrink ray?"
"Exactly like a shrink ray!" Faba confirmed. "I'm still working on the details of how to store objects without needing the shrink ray itself to be along, but there's all sorts of uses for it – imagine if a firefighter could start out firefighting by taking a capsule and sending out a hundred tons of water on the top floor of the building!"
"Um," Mallow said. "Wouldn't that mean the building was suddenly dealing with an extra hundred tons of weight, and it might collapse?"
Faba looked embarrassed, then got out a notebook and wrote that down. "Thank you, yes, that's a good point… but, well, there's lots of other uses anyway. Like moving house."
"Oh, right!" Sophocles said. "So you could, literally, just… move house."
"Exactly!" Faba agreed. "Or bringing lots of shopping home from the shops… well, that one would still require the shrink and growth rays, so not that one. Still, shipping food around would be easier anyway."
"That does sound useful," Mallow decided.
"Now that I've explained the concept, we can move on to the demonstration!" Faba told them, and went back outside.
Everyone was a bit confused, until Faba began carefully wheeling a complicated piece of equipment into the classroom.
"This… is my prototype shrink ray," he said, proudly, as he moved it to the centre of the room. "You see, it's got a series of amplifiers, and it's got a projection system…"
"Why is there a Pokéball in the middle?" Sophocles asked.
"Well, a Pokéball already has some of the important parts, it was quicker to use one than to order one from the Pokéball Factory or their suppliers," Faba explained, pointing the machine at the blackboard. "And… here we go!"
He hit one of the controls, but nothing happened.
"Er," Kiawe said. "Should that have worked?"
"It should have shrunk the blackboard," Faba frowned. "Hmm…"
"Is it plugged in?" Ash asked. "If you've done all your tests in the lab, you had it plugged in, right? So you're used to it being plugged in without checking."
"That… is a good point," Faba admitted. "Hmm."
He got the power cord out and plugged it into the wall, tested it again, then fiddled with the controls and tested it again.
"There's definitely something wrong with it," he decided. "I wonder what's wrong…"
"You could reboot it," Kukui said. "Since you had the power switch on when it plugged into the wall, it might not have booted up properly."
"Oh, good point," Faba decided. "Thank you…"
He hit the reboot switch, waited patiently as the machine slowly booted up again, then adjusted it and hit the activation control.
The machine activated properly, this time, and shrunk the blackboard. It also skidded backwards on its wheeled cart from the recoil of firing, bumped into Faba's foot, and fell over. Two more beams flashed out, one hitting Ash and the other hitting Sophocles, then Zacian appeared out of the illusion she'd been hiding in and sliced the power cord in half with her Sacred Sword.
"Oh, no!" Faba wailed. "How am I going to fix any of this?"
"We're okay, don't worry!" Ash called. "Good quick thinking, Zacian!"
"Your Pokémon broke the power cord!" Faba protested.
"But the power cord can be fixed, right?" Ash replied. "Hey, Latios, can you give us a lift?"
Latios also turned out to have been in the classroom and invisible, and used Minimize to shrink down too before offering a lift to Sophocles and Ash.
"Now, we need to work out how to un-shrink them," Kukui pointed out. "Hopefully soon."
"I know, I know," Faba admitted. "Let's see, ah… well, I have some capsules… the idea is that the capsules act like Pokéballs and automatically unshrink something coming out of them, they're not finished but it's worth a try…"
He lifted the shrink ray upright again, winced as something fell off, then retrieved a small transparent capsule. It looked a lot like the Pokéball covers used to apply seals, rather than a Pokéball itself, and Ash leaned closer to have a look as Faba crouched down with them.
"Are you sure this is safe?" Zacian asked. "You were talking about doing this to inanimate objects, right?"
"It's meant to cancel out the shrink effect, rather than apply an alteration itself," Faba replied soothingly. "It's going to either work or not work."
"I'll give it a go!" Ash volunteered.
It turned out that the answer was "not work".
"Okay, we don't need to worry," Faba said, sounding like he was trying quite hard to convince himself. "I just need to fit a new cable onto the shrink ray, then check it over and re-add anything that fell off… test it on something inanimate, like the blackboard… then I can unshrink Ash and Sophocles."
"So… what should we do?" Lillie asked. "Should we help?
"I've got an idea, actually!" Ash said. "So I can talk a bit about how things work at different scales! You remember the lesson we did on momentum and inertia, it's sort of like that but not exactly!"
"You are just completely irrepressible, aren't you?" Kukui asked, honestly impressed.
"I feel like it'd be a waste of time to get worried," Ash answered, dropping down off Latios's back and leaving Sophocles there. "Sure, other people can think differently. Other people do think differently, and I don't mind that, but I guess I find it easy to cope with stuff so I just don't worry about it. Anyway, so, one of the first things about the difference between small and big Pokémon is that it's a lot easier to see bigger Pokémon – look how much easier it is to see Faba than it is to see us!"
He jumped. "Plus, because we're way lighter now, it's easier to jump higher than before, so small Pokémon have it much easier at dodging attacks because they have to move way less far to avoid a small attack and noticeably less far to avoid a big one. Actually, Zacian, can you help demonstrate? Show a thin beam of light, like a really narrow attack… and, Pikachu, you and Lokoko come over here… see how Pikachu has to move only a little way to get so the attack's going to miss, only a few inches, while Lokoko has to move more than a foot? It's that kind of thing…"
Ash's impromptu lesson on the differences between being small and being big roamed back and forth over several topics, while Faba reinstalled various missing bits on the shrink ray and reinstalled the plug.
Eventually, though, he frowned. "All right, I think that's in a good shape… let's see."
He fired it at the blackboard, and it expanded back to its original size.
"All right!" Kiawe cheered. "Now we can get Sophocles and Mr. Ketchum back to how they should be!"
"Yes, exactly," Faba confirmed. "Let's see, now… how tall are you normally? Do either of you know your height?"
"I thought this was supposed to be removing an effect, not adding one," Lokoko pointed out.
"That was the capsules," Faba said. "This is doing a growth effect that's the opposite of the shrink effect. They should cancel out, but if the expansion is too much or not enough it'll still result in the two of them being a different size – it'll just be a weak shrinking or growth effect."
"Easy!" Ash told them. "Hey, Latios, mind going and getting some of my spare clothes from Kukui's house? Same as the ones I'm wearing if possible!"
Latios shot out the window.
"Huh?" Sophocles asked, then got it. "Oh, that's clever!"
"Yeah, we just measure how big the clothes are compared to how big they are on me!" Ash agreed, crouching down and undoing a shoe.
"Got them," Latios reported.
It was a few minutes with a ruler, and then some careful calculations, but eventually Ash and Sophocles were zapped and returned to normal size.
"Excellent!" Faba decided. "Well, that was… ah… a more interactive demonstration than I was hoping for, but it worked out in the end!"
He put his elbow on the size ray projector, then jumped when it activated again and hit Zacian.
The ceiling and the railing went crunch as she leaped towards the beach, mostly getting there before the growth ray fully activated, and when it was done she was enormous.
Faba quailed as Zacian turned, crouching down to look him in the eye.
"Be. More. Careful," she insisted. "Also, you will be getting copyright notifications from a Galarian lawyer at some point… but, before you do revert me, I think I'm going to see what it's like being big."
Zacian straightened. "This may well be a unique opportunity, after all..."
AN:
Do you or others you know suffer from Mad Science? There is a cure.
Well, amelioration strategy.
I'm going to take the opportunity to say this – stop asking me about Ashes of the Past. People asking me about that, especially just in terms of "are you going to do it" or "when are you going back to it" makes it seem like they view me as a writing machine where they want to change the settings.