Cross posting sucks. Here's to hoping I'll get used to it soon. By the way, I asked over on AO3, and I'll ask here too: do you prefer the shorter chapters with more frequent updates, or the longer chapters that take more time? Anyways, please enjoy the last calm chapter in a while, and brace yourselves. Starting at chapter 10, this story really takes off. And sorry about the short chapter, but dont worry, the next one is... much longer.
Well, he'd been wrong. Very, very wrong. Gary punched him in the face once he told the other boys the truth. Both Gary and Paul screamed so loud that his ears were still ringing an hour later.
The other three had been devastated once he showed them exactly what he and Ace had been up to, but only Wally seemed able to keep a cool head.
"Why didn't you tell us earlier?" Wally had asked.
Ash didn't have a good excuse. Sure, he'd been overly tired, shocked, and horrified himself, but they were a team, and that meant making sure they were always able to trust the others.
Eventually, when they calmed down, Ash told them the rest, about his quest to find answers about his missing brother and father, the dream he had, and what he knew to be true. That messed them up even more, especially when he described the tanks and the... things inside. He told them how he saw his what looked to be his dad, dead mid transformation, and how much pain he had been in. He told them of his brother's Pokémon like body, how it looked like less of a person and more of a chimera. The more he spoke, the more upset the others got, until finally, Gary hit him again, calling him a moron for believing a dream, then storming out of the room.
It hurt, oh it hurt, that he wasn't believed. But it was his fault. The dream alone should have been impossible, and his story, how his brother and dad went missing, seemed to be right out of a mystery novel.
Neither Wally or Paul believed him, but that was... okay. He didn't need them to, he just needed them to know.
He watched as they both pulled up the same numbers as he had earlier, not believing anything he said, even when it had to do with the SS Alice. But, as he watched the color drain from their faces, he wasn't lying.
Just 112 people were still alive, and no one really knew why they were dying so quickly.
The professor and his mom did know about the threat, and didn't say anything.
Paul's brother and Wally's neighbor probably did too.
Gary had lost not only his grandfather, but his grand uncle, and sister in one fowl swoop.
And Ash? He knew that there was something else going on, something that the general public had no idea about yet. He knew that this was bigger than him, and that he could very well die if he tried to solve the puzzle.
He looked down at his plate, now cold and abandoned, before standing up and heading to the kitchen. His eye ached, but he figured he deserved it for waiting so long.
Honestly, this whole 'people' thing just made life more difficult. Maybe he was better off on his own.
He groaned to himself, heading over to the Professor's computer. Sighing to himself, since he knew he'd need help, he sent out Ace as well. That done, he finally pulled up his moms file.
As expected, her Pokémon were pretty much everywhere. There were a lot, more than he could deal with alone. Ace was, frankly, an Arceus sent, because the Pokémon was able to stay perfectly cool and calm even in the face of an overwhelming list. By himself, it would take days, but together? Well, he was curious.
They started at the beginning, alphabetically speaking: Abra, thirteen years old, caught in the Rock Tunnel by Delia Ketchum. He looked at it, then shook his head. No, she deserved better than him.
Absol, female, twelve years old, caught in Johto.
Aipom: male, eleven years old.
So on and so on it went.
There were only three he marked to keep, outside of the few that couldn't be released for medical reasons, two from his dad, a Rhyhorn egg that hatched just over a year ago, and a Bellsprout that was about two months old, bred naturally, of course, and one from his mom, being Frigibax. That meant he had a team of ten, once he gathered up the other three.
His mom had caught, including her starter and main team, 127 Pokémon, but all together, including the eggs that her Pokémon had, she was registered with 163 total Pokémon. His dads was similar, but worse, catching 248 and ending up with 315, the youngest of which hatched just a few weeks prior.
It was disturbing to look at the list and know that he was only keeping three. He'd never, ever, let himself catch anything else unless he had to. His ten would be plenty, and he just...
He felt nauseous, disgusted. Between his parents, there were 38 Pokémon tagged with a do not release note. 478 Pokémon had their lives displaced once already, and now, 425 would have to learn how to be wild again.
Why would anyone want that many Pokémon, he wondered with a flame of loathing towards his parents stupidity. It was perfectly legal, but that kind of behavior made him want to turn in his license.
He'd never let that be him. His Pokémon would never know the Ranch like his parents did. They would, instead, know him. It would have to be enough.
A few quick commands later, and he got a notification that the transfer would begin momentarily. Technically speaking, he shouldn't be able to do this by himself. It should require an access code and two different trainer ids, but he and Ace were nothing but thorough. They could work around it, even if it wasn't particularly legal.
Once they were in his name, he could go gather them up, with the Pokéballs that would be released to him, from their separate areas. One was in Building I, section 3, one was in corral M, and the third was somewhere in Greenhouse X.
He double checked his setting as he waited, making sure that each and every one of his Pokémon would be available to him at all times, even if it was against the official rules. Fuck leaving them with someone else, the League didn't need to know. His team would either be in stasis storage, or with him, that was it.
He hated this, he hated gaining new team members without earning them. He hated that he had to have so many without a chance to deserve them in his mind. He hated...everything about his team sometimes, no matter how much he didn't want to.
There should be good memories of his Pokémon that were more powerful than the other thoughts, but there wasn't. The thought of being around Pokémon, even his right now, was enough to make his skin crawl.
He was drowning in a team he didn't want because he was too stubborn to leave well enough alone. He had to find out if the dream was true, just like he had to find out why those on board the SS Alice never said anything.
What was wrong with him, he asked himself, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood in hopes of forgetting about the burning in his eyes. He should be happy, excited even, to get new Pokémon, but he wasn't at all. He didn't feel anything positive towards the Pokémon, only confusion and dislike that wasn't fair.
They were good choices, Bellsprout was both a grass and a poison type. Seeing as it filled in not one, but two gaps in his team would make it even more important.
Frigibax was an ice and dragon type that may or may not be useful, seeing as Queen herself was a dragon, and King might grow up to be an ice type or a fairy type. But, it would grow into a powerful, fearsome warrior that was able to take on anything thrown at it.
Rhyhorn filled in two gaps, one of rock and one of ground, also would work as more of a tank than the rest of his team, especially while they were still young. If he trusted them, he absolutely won have grabbed his mom's Rhyhorn instead of this little one because it could already do so much damage. But, he knew it wouldn't respect him, just like all of the other more powerful Pokémon, and he knew that taking one of them was just asking to be slaughtered brutally in his sleep.
He was giving them a chance to be who they wanted, to see the world instead of just the Ranch. This would be good for them. All three of them would be both useful and powerful one day, so why was he so...
Arceus, he really, really didn't want to have even more Pokémon. He felt exhausted just thinking about trying to care for their needs. All he really wanted was King, and his tiny trio. Everything else was associated with death, no matter how much he liked them. Even King wasn't really exempt, since the day he'd gotten the Pokémon had been one of his moms last lucid days, and she'd been so excited. She told him about everything her Mr. Mime had been capable of, back in their battling days, and how feared his dad's Mr. Rime had been. King was the child of both, and thus a he had a legacy that needed to be surpassed or else Ash was just...a bad fit for the Pokémon.
He'd had to promise for hours that he'd both treat the Pokémon like the legacy it was, and push King to be better than his parents. At the time, Ash had been thinking more about the parallels between him and his starter than what she'd really meant.
Because Ash bring born had forced his mom to retire, despite being a powerful trainer herself. Before he'd disappeared, his dad was both well traveled, visiting every single region during his own journey, and intelligent enough to make the different Leagues fight over his abilities. He was the child of both, who had been expected to be better than both.
Was he really as smart as he thought he was? No. Clearly not. If he was, then maybe his friends wouldn't be so angry.
It didn't matter that he'd been trying to do the right thing by verifying as much as he could. He tried to be a friend, and, surprise, surprise, he failed.
Maybe, he thought to himself as he ground his teeth into his still bleeding lip, it was better for him to go alone, like he'd originally planned.
There was practically no way he could survive on his own, he knew it, but was it really worth being honest with people if they just discarded him when he didn't do what they wanted? He liked Paul, he liked Wally, he even liked Gary, even if he could be a jerk.
But they weren't the problem were they? No, they were fine without him, and he was just... wasting their time by trying to be something he wasn't.
He viciously smothered a sob, knowing that he had no reason to be upset when everything was all his fault anyways. Without him, they wouldn't have known about how their family and friends had willingly sacrificed themselves. The three of them wouldn't have any idea that it almost looked like the few survivors were being hunted down.
And that was a good thing, right? They'd be innocent of this, unknowing of the dangers that seemed to be around every corner.
He just didn't understand them.
Sure, he'd stumbled on the email to professor Oak accidently, but they had been here for days, and he'd never deleted it. Did they not want to know the truth? Sure, they said that they did, but their actions didn't seem to match up. By now, they could have finished sorting through the ranch, or almost finished maybe. They could have looked through the professor things, maybe on purpose, maybe accidentally, and found the same things he had. They could have started their own investigation into what happened and why. But they didn't.
Then again, he'd been trying to keep himself away on purpose so that he could process his own feelings about this disaster. Was it best to know, he wondered, or would the truth haunt him more than the questions already were? Was he better off not knowing?
Breath, he told himself harshly. He could only make bad choices when he was spiraling, and he couldn't afford to do so. People needed him, his team needed him. He had too much to do, not including welcoming three new Pokémon.
Just breath.
Every official decision could wait until tomorrow.