AN: I think if you go back through this, there's some kind of baseball reference or metaphor in every chapter. I can't help myself.

I'm also finding that I'm writing Ash and Pikachu like Han and Chewbacca. That's not exactly true to their relationship in the canon, but I do kind of figure that after decades, they'd settle into something like that.

I don't know if flashback chapters are cliche and code for "I needed time to figure out what to do next," so thank you for bearing with me for that last one. It ended up being my favorite one to write so far.

Frustrating limitation of the medium: I've been watching the old episodes for research, one of the best things about Misty in the original anime was that the animators clearly had the most fun with her facial expressions; she gets all the best reaction shots. Can't really do that in text, though I try to allude to it from time to time.

Oh, if you're into any of this, or if you absolutely hate it and me, do consider leaving a review. Feedback is more important to me than sustenance.

Ash had half-expected it to still be gone. He imagined a scenario where he and Misty were out searching the southern seas for a week only to come back and learn this was all someone's terrible idea of a joke, and that Lorelai and Brock were both just on vacation. He'd be pissed for a week, Misty would be pissed for a month, and then they'd go on with their lives.

"There," Misty pointed. "Dead ahead, Ash."

He'd already noticed it: the enormous cliffs through which Sevault Canyon cut its craggy swath. The rocky shores. It wasn't the same - the topography had definitely been altered some. He could tell even from here. But this was Seven Island.

Though he wasn't usually prone to seasickness, Ash felt ill. It wasn't Samurott's fault. He noticed the buzzing in his spine first, and then the sensation of someone running their hand over his brain. It's not that it hurt - just that it was intolerable.

"Whatever those invitations told us we'd find here," Ash said, "I don't think we're going to."

"I don't suppose you'd tell me what yours said?" A few lengths away from him, Misty raised her eyebrows inquisitively. "Mine ended with a promise that I could fix what's broken."

"Gimme a freakin' break," Ash growled, tilting his head back in aggravation. "Whoever sent these things must love television. Or they don't actually talk to anyone enough to know how not to sound like a jerk."

"Well," said Misty, "there's the language spoken versus the language written."

"Don't tell me you're defending this clown," said Ash.

"I never said that! I just meant that writing with a sense of drama doesn't mean–you know, what? Forget it. I'm not doing this with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means forget it," she snarled. "I don't want to fight with you over pointless nonsense anymore."

"Who said it was pointless?" Ash waited for a response but instead just got a look. A nasty one. "Okay, fine. It's pointless. I've never known you to back down before."

"I don't need a reminder of what things used to be like, okay?"

It set in for Ash about now that he'd not slept in a very long time. All the aches he'd been ignoring gave a gentle knock on his door before letting themselves in one after another, until they were all there, crowding him out. He deflated.

"Yeah. Yeah, neither do I," he lied.

The one part of him that hadn't started to fail were his eyes, and Ash could have sworn he saw Misty blinking a couple tears back. He wondered how many there'd been before, during the time he'd spent away. Probably best not think about it. Not like that was about to stop him.

"Look, I don't know what this is," said Misty, waving towards the island, "or what we're getting ourselves into. But when we're back, you're going to tell me where you go next. I don't care if you leave again or if you're staying this time. I'm not spending another six months thinking you'd died before having to hear second-hand from Tracey, of all people, that you were just on a goddamn camping trip in Paldea with your phone turned off. What the hell, Ketchum?"

Tears or no tears, though, he was not letting this pass without incident.

"I was just making fun of this guy's prose! That's it! How did we get here?! I am so tired, and if you keep yelling at me about stuff I can't take back, I'm just going to keep telling you that I'm tired!"

He gave Samurott a quick nudge to go faster, which of course Misty noticed and of course she read into.

"Are you storming off?"

"Yeah? Yeah." He steeled his resolve. "Yeah, I am."

"We're on the water," Misty said, gripping her forehead with both palms. "There's no doorway for you to leave through."

"If you think I'd let a detail like that stop me," said Ash, pointing back at her, "then you've forgotten that I'm Ash Ketchum from Pallet Town, and I don't sweat the details."

This time, Samurott got a more forceful squeeze, and the sea lion increased to almost full speed. Pikachu looked back at Misty, raising his paws in contrition on Ash's behalf: He's still stupid. Sorry.

The shore of Seven Island came up fast on Ash, but he was too high on thinking he'd gotten the better of that exchange to let the anxiety reach him.

At least, not until it was time to dismount Samurott. The blue Pokemon waded in the shallows for a bit while Ash looked at the shore. He could go no further. Something kept him in place. It was an hour past dawn, now; the skies were clear and the water calm. Nothing like his last memory of this place, but still he remained a dozen yards from the sand. He felt the chill of the wind as it kissed the sweat beading up on the back of his neck.

Misty caught up to him a moment later, but he'd forgotten all about their argument. So'd she. They floated there for a while, wordlessly, waiting for the next thing to happen. It didn't, so there came a silent understanding that one of them would need to say something.

"I don't see any signs of Lorelai," Misty finally announced. Ash could not have been more grateful.

"Maybe she's–" Ash stopped. He took a deep breath. "Maybe she's further inland."

Misty nodded, silently, and motioned Gyarados to lower her down to the beach. Once it had, she leapt from its back into the water - this distance from the shore, it came up to about her waist. She turned back to Ash, a worried expression about her face. He wondered who she worried for.

Ash recalled Samurott and let gravity do the rest of the work for him. The cold shot up through his legs as he plunged into the water - though it, too, only reached halfway up his body. He waded over to Misty, not yet ready to come ashore alone.

Once he got to her, she did something Ash did not expect: she offered him her hand. Forgetting what they'd been arguing about, Ash took it in his, and the two made the long, fifteen-foot journey to dry land. He breathed a sigh of relief once they arrived, and gently withdrew his hand. Misty held fast for a moment before letting go. Neither of them said anything, but words were not necessary right now.

Pikachu hopped down from Ash's shoulder and scampered off to go find a tall rock and get his bearings. The old mouse had barely slowed down since retiring a few years back, always still in the mix for an adventure. It had not been easy - the decision to stop battling. Ultimately, it had been a health decision: though Pikachu still had many years left, the enormous time he'd spent as Ash's ace had taken its toll on his little body - and it was only a matter of time, now, until he was injured in a way he'd not bounce back from. So, while he remained on Ash's shoulder, Pikachu was now more of an unofficial bench coach for the active team than a member of it.

"Pikapi!"

The mouse waved at Ash and Misty, excited by something. After a brief hesitation, they started walking up the beach to see what he'd found.

"I don't think I'm going to leave again," said Ash, apropos of nothing. Misty perked up. "After this, I mean. I need to figure out something else. I think everything I've done for the last five years has been a mistake."

"Yeah, Ash, it probably has," said Misty, after not even a moment's thought. She noticed Ash's bemused reaction and shrugged. "What? Self-pity never looked good on you. I'm certainly glad you understand how badly you messed up, but if your answer to this revelation is to just sit there and feel sorry for yourself, then I reserve the right to take you to task."

Ash had no rejoinder. Either he wasn't in the mood anymore, or there really just wasn't anything he could think to say. Well, there was one thing.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Looking away from him at the sand, she put her hand on his arm for a few seconds before letting it fall back to her side.

"I–I'm going to forgive you," Misty said, after a long silence. "For my own sake, I probably should. And for whatever reason, you being here after so long is making that seem like an easier thing to do."

He wasn't sure how to take that one, so instead, Ash turned his attention back to Pikachu. His friend had found an enormous boulder jutting up out of the ground, near where the sand gave way to reeds and grass.

Ash craned his neck to see what Pikachu could be gesturing to, but all he noticed was a small clearing, where a family of Buizels napped beneath a tree.

"Yeah, they're cute," said Ash, raising an eyebrow at Pikachu. "What's the big deal?"

"Buizels aren't native to the Sevii Islands," said Misty. She'd just put something together. "Ash, someone brought them here."

The two of them sat with this for a bit before Ash decided it was time to ask the bigger, obvious question.

"How the hell do you raise an island from the sea? Who's capable of that?"

Misty didn't know, either. She went for a short little wander, putting both hands behind her head in an effort to clear it. Ash couldn't tell from looking if it worked, so he got to thinking up a few theories of his own.

First, the obvious: could a Pokemon do this? Maybe. Ash had certainly met a number of enormously powerful Pokemon in his travels, and it didn't seem like it was outside the realm of possibility…but Pokemon don't send cryptic invitations.

An organization like Team Rocket or Macro Cosmos? It was plausible, but he could only guess at the motivations behind an endeavor like this one. He wondered if even Macro Cosmos had the resources to do something like this - pulling a sunken island from the ocean seemed less a matter of "how much would this cost?" and more a matter of "is this even possible?" But apparently, it was.

Then his mind wandered to the least likely option: an individual. He could think of not a single trainer capable of this - not him, not Leon, not Cynthia - no-one. You could be the best Pokemon battler that the world's ever known, and it still wouldn't make you a god. This was a truth Ash had been forced to accept the last time he was here.

"I don't know," Misty said, hands on her hips and looking up at the canyon, "and I doubt anyone's going to come tell us. We're here to find Lorelai, anyway. And Brock, if he's here."

"Yeah," said Ash, snapping back into the moment with a quick shake of his head. "Yeah, you're right. Let's go."

Ash nodded at Pikachu, who jumped down from the rock and went running off to find a path into the canyon. He pointed in the direction his friend had chosen and started walking.

"Oh?" Misty grinned like the Cheshire Cat. She'd had a change of heart, apparently. "You're finally delegating navigation duties?"

"You are absolutely welcome to stay on the beach and fish while I do this alone," said Ash, having a hard time hiding how excited he was to be playing his favorite Misty game. "It's not like I need your help. I'm a Pokemon Master."

"Ooh," she trilled in a silly voice. "Look at my laurels! So comfy are they, and so old and tired am I! I simply must rest on them for a while! Oh no? Where am I?"

"Sorry, who is this fancyboy you're trying to roast?" asked Ash. "Because the last time I checked, I'm not the one hiding behind a tree at the sight of a harmless little Vivillon."

"Be careful with that quip, Ash, it's almost as ancient as you are."

"Don't think I didn't hear your knees creak on the way up the beach just now. Ancient. Gimme a break. You're three months older than me! "

"And you're imagining things."

"Pikapika!"

Pikachu turned around, eyes narrowed and hands clutching where Ash figured the mouse's temples were. He couldn't see them from where he stood, but he heard sparks.

"What?"

"Pi-pikachu! Pika pi pika!"

Misty turned her attention from Pikachu to Ash.

"So, uh…"

"Apparently he didn't miss any of this and has a headache now. I just think he needs a nap."

Ash didn't get a full-on Thunderbolt, but he did get a precision shock that knocked the hat off his head. He went to pick it up in as dignified a way as he could manage. Mixed success: he picked it up, but he didn't look dignified. Misty tried to contain her laughter, but her snorting was audible even from fifteen feet back where the hat landed.

He was about to go back to join Misty and Pikachu when Ash noticed something on the ground next to where his hat landed: a Pokeball with a lightning bolt pattern, lying there in the weeds. It didn't look like it had been there for very long - a week, maybe. Ash reached down to pick it up and found, to his surprise, that it was full.

"Hey, Misty," he called. "C'mere."

Wary that he might be trying to pull something, Misty approached with caution before noticing the Pokeball in Ash's hand. She frowned, confused.

"Hm? Is that yours?"

"No," he said, examining the ball. It had an unmistakable texture. "This is an Apricorn Pokeball. A Fast Ball. One of Kurt's, I think. Has to be old - he died years ago, and his granddaughter's don't look like this one."

Misty didn't need Ash to tell her what he was getting at. She motioned for Ash to give her the Fast Ball, and once he handed it to her, she took a deep breath.

"Do you think…?"

"There's only one way to find out."

She nodded, and wound up a throw.

"Go! My steady!"

Old habits, and all that.

The Fast Ball spun through the air, colliding with a tree trunk and bursting open in a flash of light. Ash and Misty both gasped as they saw their suspicions confirmed: Forretress. Brock's Forretress.

It had been a while since Ash had seen the bagworm - he and Brock rarely saw one another in a context that involved their Pokemon, these days. That being said, he remembered Forretress and its habits. He worried that he might be in for a face-full of Selfdestruct from the temperamental Pokemon, especially with Brock otherwise AWOL.

As Ash weighed what to do, Pikachu walked over to Forretress with an empathetic smile and a friendly chirp. Forretress, obviously on-edge, turned its attention to the mouse and relaxed just the smallest bit. Ash stopped bracing himself for the explosive anxiety episode he'd been expecting.

"Pi! Pi pika!"

"Fo!"

They carried on for a few minutes, with Ash catching every other sentence or so of the Pikachu's half. He was not exceptionally thrilled with what he heard.

"Care to translate?" Misty asked

"Forretress doesn't know much more than we do; it's spent much of the last couple weeks in its Pokeball," Ash explained. "I think Brock got the same invitation we did. He ran into someone once he got here, though, and they battled. It's hard to be sure, but I don't think it was a friendly one."

Misty licked her lips nervously. If she was running down worst case scenarios in her head, Ash didn't blame her - because that's exactly what he was doing. If there suddenly was some individual involved in all of this, then he didn't know what to think. He wished that Cilan or Goh were here. Goh might have figured something out by now. But he'd not seen Cilan since Iris' wedding, and Goh was off on some research trip in Guyana.

"So where does this leave us?" asked Misty. "Because I've only got more questions now."

"It doesn't change anything," said Ash. "We head north through the canyon and hope for more clues. What else can we do?"

They looked at one another, then down at the Pokemon, then north at the canyon before them. This whole thing still felt like a tour of a haunted house. The ghosts were more conceptual this time, and even with the island somehow teeming with life, Ash could not expel the horrible buzzing in his spine as he and Misty pushed through the tall grass on the canyon floor.

Forretress hopped along behind them, and they decided to let it roam free from its Pokeball for a while after having been cooped up for so long. Pikachu, ever the good friend, doubled back every now and again to check in on the anxious Pokemon.

Ahead of them, Sevault stretched out for miles, and as the morning turned to noon, the place began to bake with the heat from the afternoon sun reflecting off the canyon walls. In Kanto, it was winter, but they were far enough south now that it didn't matter.

Ash had not accounted for this when they'd left, and neither had Misty. Their clothes, once soaked through from the trip over, soon dried, and their heavy winter coats soon became intolerable burdens.

"This was expensive once," Misty complained, pulling an arm from her blue down coat. "I'm sending an invoice to whoever's sick idea of a game this all is."

Ash tried to care about the hole in Misty's pocket, but he was too distracted by her tank top for it to feel authentic. There was nothing about her that wasn't agonizingly sexy to him, and she knew this from way back. He pretended to struggle with his own coat in an attempt to look like he wasn't ogling her. It was impossible to know if he succeeded, or if she was doing the same to him. All he had to go on was the briefest moment of eye contact when his shirt caught on his coat and dragged up his torso.

Just then, they heard a sound from further down the canyon - a Pokemon, though Ash couldn't immediately tell what it was. The sound - an angry screeching - drew closer, and it occurred to Ash that he might draw a Pokeball about now.

Before he could, though, an enormous shadow passed over him. He turned to Misty, who'd been looking up at the sky. Her gaze was barely calm and impossibly urgent.

"Put the Pokeball away and run."