I would like to thank SighDuck for helping me with this chapter and checking/fixing the errors I missed.

Yo everyone! Here's the latest installation for A Different Journey its not entirely finished yet, but I figured that I should post this much at least as I'm starting a new job today and I'll be busier than ever for the next few weeks.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter 3: A Meeting and A Decision

Ash ran down the streets of Viridian City, quickly making his way to the Pokémon Center. After a solid two hours of running he'd finally made it to the city. Ash could only thank Arceus for the long hours he'd spent running through the forest surrounding his hometown when he was younger. It had made him as fit as he was now, and only that and his determination to help his Pokémon had enabled him to make the long journey.

Ash's leg muscles ached from overuse and his lungs screamed for air, but he knew he couldn't stop to catch his breath. Deino was counting on him to make it to the Pokémon center as soon as possible. Ash knew that should he fail then Deino's condition would worsen and the Pokémon could possibly die from the amount of injuries the crooks had inflicted upon it. That was not something he would let happen and his pace did not let up as he sped through the streets, nearly knocking over several bystanders as he did so.

Rounding a corner, Ash finally spotted the large building of the Poke-center and quickly made his way inside. Bursting through the doors, he skid to a halt in front of the desk, behind which sat the town's resident Nurse Joy.

Ash was panting up a storm, hunched over and leaning heavily on the desk in an attempt to catch his breath. Despite this, he thrust the Pokeball in his hand into the bewildered nurse's face before she even had a chance to voice any questions.

"Poachers….Pokémon….hurt badly….please…help it." He managed through large gasps of air.

Nurse Joy's eyes widened drastically when she heard this and she immediately sprang into action. Taking the ball out of Ash's outstretched hand, Joy quickly called for several of her helpers, which turned out to be a few Chansey.

"We'll do our best," she assured him, rushing into what Ash assumed to be the operating room with the Chansey. His assumption was proven correct when the red light above the door came to life not a second after they had entered.

Still panting from his long run, Ash turned and made his way over one of the nearby tables to wait for word on Deino's condition. He decided- with no small amount of regret- that Gible and Pikachu could wait to be looked after until Deino was in a more stable condition. They were in better shape and would need very little healing in comparison.

Groaning as he sat down at the table, Ash stretched his sore limbs out and gave a pleasant sigh when he felt several of his joints pop.

A yawn escaped his lips as he rested his head on the table. Now that Deino was being looked after he decided to get some rest himself. All that running had tired him out quite a bit and the cushioned seat of his chair was starting to feel mighty comfortable right then; it didn't take long before Ash found himself surrendering to the blissful unconsciousness that was sleep.

xXx

"Excuse me, sir?" a voice asked as Ash felt himself being shaken awake.

It only felt like a few minutes had passed between when he had first closed his eyes and now, as he blearily looked up to see someone shaking his shoulder. Yawning tiredly, Ash peered up into the smiling face of the Center's Nurse Joy.

"Yes?" he asked, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

"I'm sorry for waking you, sir. But you'll be happy to know that we've taken good care of your Deino and it's now well on its way to recovery," Nurse Joy said, causing him to smile slightly.

"Thank you," Ash replied, bowing his head in gratitude.

Nurse Joy waved it off. "No thanks needed. It's what I'm here for, after all," she said with a grin in place, turning to leave. Before she could, Ash stopped her by calling out.

"Excuse me, Nurse Joy?"

She turned to face him again. "Yes? Something else?"

Sighing, Ash unclipped Gible and Pikachu's Pokeballs from his belt and held them out to her. "If you could also take a look at these two I'd appreciate it," he said, grimacing. "When I came in I was so set on getting Deino to help that I almost forgot about them."

The nurse nodded in understanding before taking the balls out of his hand. "Understandable, all things considering. Just give me a small bit of time and they'll be back in fighting shape." She paused and took in his exhausted appearance. "If you want, we have rooms available for trainers who wish to stay someplace warm for the night," Joy informed him.

"That would be great, thanks," Ash told her as he once again felt his exhaustion catching up to him. Nurse Joy smiled again at him and fished a Key out of the pocket of her pink dress.

"Not a problem and here's the key to your room. Your Pokémon should be ready for you to pick up in the morning and Deino should be ready to leave by then as well."

Taking the key from her, Ash smiled gratefully to the nurse and they parted; Nurse Joy to heal up the exhausted Pokémon and Ash to a warm bed where he could rest comfortably, finally free from the worries that came with Deino's injuries.

Sighing as he used the key to open the matching door, Ash immediately headed for the bed at the far end and plopped onto it, only taking enough time to rid himself of his backpack and shoes. Almost instantly, he was fast asleep.

xXx

Around the same time as Ash was settling in for sleep, a screen came to life in a dark room. It showed a figure covered in shadows staring down at its audience of three.

"Jessie, James, Meowth. Report; what is the current situation on the package?"

Gulping, one of the figures took a step forward and bowed to the man on the screen. "Forgive us, sir. But the mission was a failure and the package managed to get away. We pursued it of course, and we were able to subdue it once more. However, a trainer was nearby and came across us just as we were to take possession of it again. We had a brief battle, but the trainer and his Pokémon, a Gible, managed to defeat us and got away with the package." The figure spoke in a feminine voice tinged with much regret and a small bit of fear.

All was silent as the man on the screen processed this, making all three figures nervous as what was visible of his face grew more and more angry by the second.

"So, the package managed to get away, did it?" he asked rhetorically, continuing on before they could reaffirm it. "That is totally unacceptable! Allowing such a rare creature such as that to escape, even with the help of a Gible and its trainer is inexcusable! I expected better from three of my top agents."

The three cowered under the anger of their leader and bowed deeply to him. One of them, the male of the group, spoke up, "That's the thing, sir! The Gible, it is far more powerful than what it logically should have been! The last attack it used, Dragon Rage, was by far the largest of its kind I have ever seen. It was three times bigger than average at the very least!"

This seemed to interest the leader for a moment before he spoke again. "Is that so? If that indeed is the case then I have another job for you three."

Three heads shot up at this.

"The three of you are to track the trainer down and bring me his Gible. If it is more powerful than average then I may very well have a use for it. At the very least I could make a profit out of it; the Gible line are not native to Kanto and hold a significant monetary value to the right people. Can I trust you three with this?"

"Yes sir!"

The man nodded, "Very well. I expect to hear of your success within a few weeks. And remember, Team Rocket does not tolerate failure and you are on very thin ice as it is. Do not fail again." Abruptly, the screen cut to black.

One of the figures, who were now revealed to have been the ones to have run into Ash and Gible earlier, turned to her teammate. "Do you know what this means, James? We have the chance to make up for our failure with that Deino!"

The man, now known as James, nodded to his female companion. "I do, Jessie. We had better not waste this opportunity. You know what happens when someone fails the boss."

Jessie shivered in fear. She'd heard stories of people who failed the boss being called to his office at HQ and never coming back out again. It was not a pleasant thought to occupy.

"Well, whatever the cost, we have to capture that twerp's Pokémon. With any luck he'll have that Deino with him too. Can you imagine the reward if we get both Gible and the Deino from him? The boss might just give us promotions!"

The voice that spoke up came not from any one of the two humans, but of the small cat like Pokémon standing behind them. Turning to Meowth, Jesse and James saw that he had a large grin on his face at the prospect- a smile they quickly mirrored.

"It's decided! We are capturing both Gible and Deino!" he exclaimed but thought, 'That'll show that arrogant Persian who the real top cat of Team Rocket is!'

xXx

"Alright you guys, come on out!"

The sound of three Poke-balls opening rang through the early morning air of Viridian City.

Ash smiled at the sight of his three Pokémon as they appeared in front of him in flashes of light.

Upon noticing she was out, Gible jumped up and bit onto her trainer's head with a happy cry, causing Ash to both laugh at her antics and wince slightlyHe still wasn't used to her bites.

However, while Gible was happy to see him, Pikachu and Deino were other stories.

Almost immediately after releasing him from his ball, Ash noticed that Deino was acting reserved in the way he reacted in his presence and stood on his short legs gingerly; Ash winced at the many bandages that littered the dragon type's body, especially the one wrapped around his head.

Meanwhile, Pikachu had locked a glare on Ash and had started to spark its cheeks at him. That had the raven haired boy worried as he was unsure of what he had done to earn the little mouse's ire.

Choosing to ignore his sole electric-type for right now, Ash turned his attention on to the one he'd rescued the previous day and knelt before him.

"Hey there little guy," he greeted with a kind grin. "I've held up my end of the bargain and got you all healed. Now, it's time for you to choose what you want to do from here. If you want you can stay with me, or you can go your own way. It's your choice and I'm not gonna force you to stay if you don't want to."

Deino stared at the ground; well, as far as Ash knew anyway because in reflection he wasn't sure if the Pokémon even had eyes.

From what Deino gathered, he had two choices. One, he could go with the human that had rescued him from those other humans who hurt him and train to get stronger so he could battle and win for his trainer. Or two, he could choose to go out on his own, in a strange land he knew next to nothing about, and risk coming across those crooks again.

{If it helps, Ash has been very considerate towards me. I'm sure that he'll be the same for you.} At this Deino looked up to 'see' that Gible had jumped down from Ash's head and was now standing before him.

{I know, and that's why I've chosen to stay,} he replied, smiling softly at his fellow dragon type before walking up to Ash and nuzzling his face against his hand when he reached out with it.

"De, no, Deino," he told the boy.

"I take it this means that you want to stay with me?" Ash asked him and had a feeling that whatever Gible had said had helped in the decision. Deino nodded without stopping his nuzzling.

Grinning happily at this, Ash patted the quadruped Pokémon on the head. "Welcome to the team Deino."

As the Pokémon nodded with a grin, Ash sighed and turned to face the third member of his group, who was still glaring at him.

"Now, what am I to do with you?"

xXx

Cynthia was no normal girl- at least by most people's standards- and she was well aware of this fact.

Even when she was a child it was clear to her that she wasn't like the other kids, and she had several reasons to confirm it, her love of strange ice-cream flavors aside. The first was that she had always had a strange ability to solve riddles with a relative sense of ease that even some of the adults she knew would have a large amount of difficulty solving. Second was that she found mythology and history extremely interesting, where many girls her age would find such subjects boring and unimportant. However, none of those were main reasons as to why Cynthia felt that she was not normal.

That reason was that there was a weird….pulling? Yes, pulling was the right word. Something was often pulling on her mind as of late. It was like it was trying to direct her somewhere, and she had a feeling that it wasn't anywhere near her home region of Sinnoh.

But despite all this, Cynthia had managed to live her life with a sense of normality and had recently turned the proper age to receive her starter and begin her own journey. She was excited to start her adventure with her new Pokémon, but its beginning hadn't been in the brightest of lights.

She'd gotten to Professor Rowan's lab late the day before and had only gotten there in time to see the last of the Pokémon being claimed. Cynthia had been told she'd have to wait a few days for a new set of beginner Pokémon to be ready, which was not want she wanted to hear. Just the prospect of having to postpone her journey had tossed Cynthia's mood into an all time low and she had been on te verge of begging the lab assistant speaking to her for any Pokémon available. At that point she wouldn't have cared what one she received, just as long as she got one.

Professor Rowan had come to her rescue just then in the form of a small shark-like Pokémon that had just been found close to the lab. He'd also said that he'd just helped one of his colleagues solve a similar problem to her own in one of the other regions. The professor cryptically told her that it was only fitting that he fix the problem in his own region with the same Pokémon.

Like any young teenager her age, Cynthia had eagerly accepted it without a second thought and had rushed out of the lab for her home to tell her grandmother the news.

So imagine her surprise when her grandmother told her that before she could start her journey, she'd be accompanying her to Viridian City somewhere in the region of Kanto to visit some friends, instantly increasing the tugging on her mind at the mention of the far off region. With this in mind, and even if she was relatively ticked that her journey really would be postponed, Cynthia had reluctantly agreed as she would get to spend time with both her grandmother and little sister, something she rarely got to do. Family came first after all, as much as it hurt to admit it. They were all Cynthia had after all.

Though, once she got to Kanto a small problem had presented itself to the girl. She didn't know what her Pokémon was capable of, and how was she to be expected to work with the little guy if she didn't know what he could do?

So here she was, approaching one of the many training areas in the city when she felt the tug on her mind once more flare up and a voice cry out.

"No, Pikachu, don't you dar-ZAPP-gahh!"

Eyes widening in worry, Cynthia hurried her pace towards the field,

Never noticing the shimmer in the air behind her as something invisible watched on...

And cut!

Once again I would like to thank SighDuck for editing this chapter.

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