"So, where are we going?" Ash asked.

"A small hideout I know," Celera said while leading the way through the tunnels made by her Excadrill, which would occasionally turn back and collapse the way behind them so that they couldn't be followed. "We should be safe there."

Ash's mind was buzzing with questions. "You told me who you are, but not about… I mean, what was all this about kidnapping me?" Pikachu meanwhile was playing with the Crobat.

"I suppose I should start at the beginning, and then the middle, and then the end," Celera said. "Except that there really isn't an end, just a now. So, many years ago back when I was a little girl I watched my elder sister become one of the Elite Four. While I knew that was amazing, I never felt like I truly appreciated it until she vanished. Strangely though, once she had achieved full power, she grew quite distant from me and from our parents. Eventually, I moved on, and I made myself busy studying rocks in these mountains and their strange evolutionary properties. The messages from my sister became more scarce with time, and then one day when I had removed myself from one of my long retreats studying Leaf Stones, I found the region in chaos. When it calmed down slightly, I learned that the Elite Four had vanished and there was a full-fledged rebellion."

Ash tried to imagine what that must have felt like, and knew that he couldn't. He had never seen death and destruction he had seen in Galea even during his short stay, which was apparently a very peaceful period relatively speaking.

"As you can imagine, I refused to believe the stories," Celera said. "They said the Gym Leaders had defeated the Elite Four!" She turned around. "Can you imagine the absurdity? The Elite Four were more powerful than the Gym Leaders! They had the powers of all Eight Badges imbibed within their beings? How could they be defeated by those lesser to them?"

"I always thought about that too. I asked Marley and Thomdolt about it, but they both said they were forbidden to speak about some stuff related to the Elite Four's defeat," Ash said.

"There are only two possibilities, either they won in an honest battle, or trickery," Celera said. "They could not have possibly won in an honest battle, so that leaves only trickery as the answer. But what kind of trickery could have fell such titans? Anyway, I continued gathering intelligence and finally when I had heard all I could, I decided to act by avenging my sister and decided to begin by defeating these traitors. I gathered a small group of followers and challenged Freyja. She was no doubt surprised, as all eight had put measures in place to prevent challengers from appearing. I fought her, but was close to being defeated by her special strategy. I escaped, and have been on the run every since."

"What's her special strategy?" Ash asked.

"Have you heard of the move Skill Swap?" Celera asked.

"Maybe," Ash said. He had fought countless battles, but even he didn't know all the moves. "What does it do?"

"It swaps the Abilities of two Pokemon," Celera said. "What Freyja did was she challenged me to a Double Battle, and then sent out a Shedninja and a Sableye. She had the Shedninja use Skill Swap with her Sableye, so Sableye got the Wonder Guard ability. It-"

"Protects you from all attacks that aren't super effective attacks," Ash said. "Yeah, I've fought one."

"But Sableye is both Ghost and Dark type, making it weak to no attacks at all, except Fairy, and Fairy Pokemon are not native to Galea. The only ones we have were those imported long ago in times long since gone and perhaps a few people might have bred some, but they are so rare as to be almost nonexistant," Celera said. "So do you understand what I'm saying?"

Ash blinked as the gears in his head turned. "So, it is immune to all attacks except Fairy ones?" With a jolt, he realized that he didn't have a Fairy type Pokemon, or even a move that was Fairy type, and this all meant that it wasn't possible for him to deal any damage to a Sableye.

Celera nodded. "And so, despite my superior Pokemon, I was defeated and forced to flee with my Weezing. I've been in hiding ever since. Thankfully though Freyja seems uninterested in catching me and didn't think it was worth the effort hunting me down. That would be different, of course, for you. She won't stop until she's found you?"

"Wait, then how can she ever be defeated?" Ash asked. "And how come I've never heard of that strategy before?"

"Neither Shedninja nor Sabeleye can learn Skill Swap," Celera said. "She can only manage that using the Replay Badge, something she probably learned after winning thanks to her Shedninja the first time."

Ash fell silent. "You're telling me she can't be defeated without a Fairy Pokemon?"

"Nothing like that," Celera said. "It is possible, of course. I've had a long time to think of alternate ways to defeat her, but sadly the rules state that if I go to battle her again it will continue where I left off."

"So what can you do?" Ash asked.

"Oh, lots of things," Celera said. "You could defeat her Shedninja before she gets a chance to Skill Swap. Aside from that, you could use a move like Sandstorm which would eventually defeat it despite Wonder Guard. Or, you could use Skill Swap on it again, or hit it with a move like Simple Beam or Worry Seed that would change its Ability. You could also alternately inflict it with a burn or poison it using a move like Toxic."

"Then why haven't you done that?" Ash asked.

"Because, thankfully for her, none of my Pokemon know those moves and she has destroyed all TMs that teach them," Celera said. "Do you have a Pokemon that knows those moves? Or perhaps something like Poison Gas?"

Ash shook his head. "My Grimer knows Sludge though."

"That won't work," Celera said. "Wonder Guard blocks all attacks that do damage directly."

"In that case though all I need to do is catch one of them," Ash said. "Problem solved."

"Freyja saw to that," Celera said. "She had all Pokemon capable of learning those moves hunted down to the last."

'Hunted down as in… killed?" Ash asked apprehensively. Pikachu stopped flitting about peacefully and turned to look at them.

"Yes. That's what 'hunted down' usually means," Celera said as if she thought Ash was remarkably slow at understanding things. "Does that mean something different from where you come from?"

"No," Ash said. "Wait- how do you know I'm not from Galea?"

"The same way I found you," Celera answered. "I was wandering around in one of the old mountain bases when the phone began to ring. I picked it up and I heard…" she faltered for a second, "I heard my sister's voice, only it wasn't really her. It sounded broken and like the voice was coming from somewhere far away. And then I heard the voices of the other Elite Four too. They said that both Marley and Thomdolt had been defeated by a champion who came from beyond Galea. And that person would be coming to challenge Freyja soon, and did not know about her secret strategy. So then, I came as fast as I could and found you."

"Oh," Ash said. "So what do we do now? I guess the only thing left to do is for me to go back to Cinnamon City or some other place where we can find Pokemon like that."

Celera looked at Ash oddly. "Do you not know? If a Gym Leader challenges another one, they cannot leave that one's domain until the match is over."

"Huh?" Ash asked, completely bewildered. "No one told me about that."

"Perhaps they didn't know, it is a bit of an esoteric rule, after all, or perhaps they thought that it didn't matter," Celera said. "Regardless, you can't leave. It's probably because having a Gym Leader challenge you is a big deal and a big stress, so one shouldn't be allowed to flee immediately after challenging one."

"Who makes these rules anyway?" Ash asked.

"I don't know," Celera said. "Perhaps only the Elite Four did. Perhaps they were the ones who made the rules in the first place."

It was then that Ash realized he was trapped. There were no Pokemon that he could catch to help him, and he couldn't leave either.

No wonder Lady Freyja had had such a triumphant smile on her face when Ash had challenged her.

A/N: Okay, to answer the reviews, thank you Julie Togepi and Fenrir's Phantom. So, congratulations to Fenrir's Phantom for guessing correctly (though I have to note that a Spiritomb would work as well).

In that vein though, I have an apology to make. You see, the idea for Freyja's strategy was thought up a long time back, and I don't remember Fairy Pokemon being there, or perhaps I didn't know of them. Fairy Pokemon are a rather new addition for me, and so when I thought of this, I assumed that Sableye had no weaknesses.

It was actually a strategy posted on a gaming forum and I thought, cool, so I tried it out in my Pokemon Pearl, only to realize that neither Shedninja nor Sableye could learn Skill Swap. So it was a cool strategy, but not a viable one. That's where the idea for the Replay Badge's power came from (Replay as in Action Replay, the cheating device), and I put it down as a perfect strategy. I did overlook the Fairy thing though, so if seems super convenient that there are no Fairy Pokemon in Galea except imported ones and slightly deus ex machina-ey (don't know if that's even a word), well, you know the reason now. Also, it does explain why a lot of the Pokemon are heavily drawn from the older generations in the fanfic, but I didn't want to completely exclude Fairy Pokemon and the new ones, eh, I think I've gone on long enough.

Thanks for reading, and do please review if you liked!