As they rested in Ilex Forest, Misty tapped the end of a pencil against her cheek.
"This was a lot easier when I just had Staryu, Starmie and Goldeen," she said. "But now I'm up to eight Pokémon, and I have to keep track of who's getting training and who needs work."
She chuckled. "I guess it's going to be much harder when I'm back at Cerulean Gym, isn't it?"
"Probably," Brock agreed. "Though you've got your sisters to help share the load, and at the gym you can have everyone at once. Forrest liked to help me out, the last few years, but running the whole Pewter Gym could get a bit tricky."
"Is it a coincidence that the Pokémon you used for Ash's battle were the same ones you brought with you?" Misty asked. "I know Onix is your starter Pokémon."
"I use Onix a lot because he's more of a tough Pokémon than a strong Pokémon, at least when he's not being attacked by an incognito Mew," Brock told her.
He stroked Eevee's fur, absently, and the Normal-type leaned into his hand. "That means that for newer trainers I can give them a kind of challenge, see if they can wear him down. But your idea for a Contest battle was a great one, it works to the strengths all of the gym Pokémon will have now after their time with your sisters."
Misty nodded. "Right… so, anyway, you could help me with this actually."
She turned her sheet around. "I think the gym Pokémon will be good for most low to mid level challengers, you know, first four or five badges. And if someone's relying on power moves the Contest battle thing will be great, but what I think I really need to work on is technical skill for a high level battle… and you're a specialist at raising Pokémon, so what do you think?"
"I wouldn't change what your Starmie does," Brock decided, immediately. "Maybe get them another move or two, but they're already good. For Staryu you need to decide if they'll be another Starmie or not."
Misty nodded seriously.
"Squirtle… I think Squirtle is at the point where you need to talk about if he's going to evolve," Brock said. "And whether he'll stop at Wartortle, if he does."
"Right," Misty agreed. "Squirtle is best for a fast and evasive Pokémon, like what Ash does with Pikachu, but Wartortle and Blastoise are both different. I'll try and get hold of Ash to talk about it with him… and…"
"Pri Priiii!" Togepi called.
"Well, that's me," Misty said, recognizing Togepi's name for her. "I'd better go see what she wants… no, sweetie, put that down, it's Ash's Mega Ring..."
"To-ge-to-ge?" Togepi began.
Misty waved her finger. "No Metronome, young lady!"
Brock decided to take a photo of Misty's notes, just in case a Metronome happened.
"Hmm…" Ash said, thinking about their latest problem. "So… you want to work with Farfetch'd to make charcoal, but Farfetch'd is having trouble doing it?"
He turned from Sylvester to Farfetch'd. "Is it trouble using the attack, or just trouble with understanding what Sylvester wants you to do?"
"How would you feel if you had to work for someone who didn't even know the basics?" Farfetch'd demanded, waving at Sylvester. "He calls it Cutting Attack, not Cut!"
Ash frowned. "Hmm. I guess that's kind of a problem if it has to be one specific attack, but I usually say that kind of thing because I trust the Pokémon to know what I mean…"
"And I know he's not doing that," Farfetch'd insisted. "He's just not willing to learn!"
"Hey, do you mind if I ask something?" Pikachu checked. "Obviously you do know Cut, right?"
Farfetch'd looked at him like he was simple. "Of course I do!"
"And how long did it take you to learn it?" Pikachu went on. "Or whatever other moves you know? Because sometimes you learn a move after just one day, and sometimes it takes hard practice to get it right."
"It does?" Ash said, frowning as he tried to think of an example.
"When Mew isn't involved," Pikachu clarified.
"Farfetch'd?" Sylvester said, crouching down. "Listen… I know I'm not very good. But I'm not very good yet. I want to be a good partner for you – I want to make you proud, and to make my dad proud too. And maybe that won't work out, but…"
He wiped at the corner of his eyes. "Don't give up on me because of a few mistakes, okay? Sure, if I get something wrong, make sure I know, but I'll try my hardest. That's a promise."
Farfetch'd looked at his leek, then at Sylvester, then nodded – a trifle reluctantly.
"All right, let's try this," Sylvester added. "Farfetch'd, use Cut!"
The Flying-type swiped at the nearest tree. It promptly fell over, and a Pineco fell off.
Brock caught it in his arms, and it looked at him before Selfdestructing with a loud wham.
"Now, that's just rude," Pikachu said, as Brock coughed out smoke.
"Hey!" Pineco complained. "That's just how I show affection!"
"Huh, I didn't know Pokémon did that," Ash admitted. "I guess it's like how Pikachu shocks me sometimes. Pineco must like you!"
Later that night, when everyone else in camp was asleep, Brock's newest Pokémon exited her Pokéball.
"Oh crap oh crap oh crap," she murmured, looked around, then turned into Mew and vanished.
A few hours later, dawn was just starting to lighten the sky as a very angry and soot-covered Mew crossed her arms.
"I'm glad you're getting into the role!" she yelled squeakily up at a tree. "But stop with the blowing up until after I've got you set up in the Pokéball!"
"All right!" Ash announced, holding up his Pokéball. "I got a Totodile!"
"Congratulations!" Misty said. "That means you've caught your first Water type."
Ash lowered the Pokéball. "Huh? What about-"
"You didn't catch Suicune, you caught Raikou," Misty replied. "She and Entei were just a package deal with Raikou. And Lapras wasn't really Lapras at all."
"He was still Water type at the time," Ash said, a bit grumpily, then sent out Totodile again. "It's great to have you."
"Thanks!" Totodile said, bouncing from one foot to another. "Hey, did she say you had a Suicune? What's one of those?"
"Well, Suicune herself is pretty nice," Ash explained. "She and her brother and sister go back and forth watching out for people and Pokémon in trouble. She can walk across water like it's solid ground."
"Cool!" Totodile beamed. "I wonder if I can do that?"
"I wouldn't say no," Ash told him. "Though you can also swim."
"Oh, yeah!" the little Water-type agreed. "That's fun, too."
He did a little twirl. "What other Pokémon do you have? I've seen your Pikachu, who else is there?"
"Well, uh… this might take a while," Ash admitted. "I can get more than halfway to the end by saying I've got lots of Dratini and four Dragonair, though."
"Ooh!" Totodile gasped. "What are they like?"
"...quick question, Totodile," Pikachu said. "What Pokémon do you actually know about?"
"Lots!" Totodile answered firmly. "I know about Caterpie, and Metapod, and Weedle and Kakuna… oh, at least twenty different Pokémon! There's so many kinds of them!"
Ash gave Totodile a grin. "I bet you're going to love meeting all the Pokémon you haven't met yet, then," he said. "There's hundreds!"
"Hundreds!" Totodile repeated, sounding awed.
And there's lots of different moves they all know, too! Mew said, zipping out of Ash's backpack. I could even teach you anything with the word dance in the name! I've been brushing up on Lunar Dance especially because it's a self-sacrifice move, like Explosion and Misty Explosion!
"Isn't Misty Explosion when Misty gets really angry at someone?" Ash said. "Wait, how come you're brushing up on those?"
...no reason, Mew said, rubbing his paws together nervously. Especially no reason that's anything to do with desperately needing to come up with a bribe.
He spun around to Totodile. Let's start with… ooh, Dragon Dance! You can practice with a Dratini, and you'll get to meet one of them too! I'm not sure who they picked this time but they're all nice.
"That's great, Articuno!" Ash called. "Okay, let's see it go flat again!"
He wound up and threw the GS Ball into the sky, and Articuno dove towards it.
"Psycho Cut!" she announced, spreading her wings and pushing herself into a psychic spin. The edge of her wing lit up with energy, and she hit the GS Ball right in the middle – launching it not up or down, but straight away from her.
Chikorita reached up with her vines and caught it, almost fumbling the catch but managing to get a grip.
"That's two in a row!" Ash told them both. "Let's see one more, okay? Aim for it to go up this time!"
This time, Articuno's wing whipped out just slightly later. Her attack still connected, but instead of driving the GS Ball away she drove it up as she hit the underneath of the ball.
"Change of plans, Chikorita!" Ash added. "Dratini, can you hit it with Hydro Pump?"
"I'll try!" Dratini said, using Hydro Pump as ordered, and a blast of water hit the ball. It carried it further away, into the trees, and Articuno swept after it.
"Was that okay?" the Dragon-type added. "I wasn't quite sure what you meant."
"Hitting it on short notice is pretty good," Ash said. "It would have been great if you could make it come back towards us – if you hit it on the underneath you kind of encourage it to roll back down the water beam, is a way of thinking about it – but we can practice that later."
"Why do you use a training target that's like a Pokéball, anyway?" Dratini added. "It must be really tough."
"It's the toughest thing any of us know about," Ash agreed. "I once got Mew to try blasting it open with the best move she could think of, but it didn't do anything. So Professor Oak told me to carry it around and, uh…"
He frowned, remembering the exact words. "Something about trying to see if my nonsense solved the problem?"
Articuno dropped the GS ball off, and Ash caught it. "Thanks!"
"It's as good a reason as any for a flight," Articuno told him. "Got to say, so far this Johto place has turned out to be mostly forests, though. It's a bit of a difference from the dales."
"I guess Goldenrod City is going to be a bit more built up," Ash answered. "But yeah, there's a lot of forests so far, especially Ilex Forest."
He frowned, tossing the GS Ball up and down. "There was this idea I had for training your Psycho Cut on deflecting attacks, though – what do you think of that?"
"I think I'd rather learn it now than try doing it for the first time in a battle," Articuno mused, furling her wings – which looked quite dramatic, since she was still several feet in the air. "And I know you'd ask me to do it in a battle at some point…"
"Great!" Ash decided. "It's kind of a simple idea, really – the idea is, Misty has her Pokémon shooting attacks up at you, and you use Psycho Cut on the edge of your wing to cut the attack in half. That way it should go either side of your wing, and miss you."
Ash waved his hands slightly as he explained. "We know it'll work with a Water attack, so you can start with those, but if it works with an Ice attack that's really good! You might need to use Steel Wing at the same time, though…"
"Okay, Staryu, have a rest," Misty said. "Squirtle, you take over."
Her Squirtle nodded, jumping up onto the rock they were using as a reference point, and used Water Gun.
Overhead, Articuno swiped her wing at the attack, and – unlike for the first hour or so – got the division right, spraying water out either side of her wing blade.
"Again?" Misty asked, and got the same result. "Okay, that means we're going to start trying to get an attack past your wing to reach you!"
The Psychic-type overhead didn't seem too upset with the idea, and Misty frowned.
"Squirtle, I'm going to want you to fire either Water Gun or Ice Beam depending on what I signal," she said, more quietly. "Left hand is Ice Beam, right hand is Water Gun. Right?"
Squirtle nodded.
"Okay, here goes!" Misty announced, and signalled with her left hand.
The Ice Beam flashed up, and Articuno blocked – using Steel Wing, splitting the attack so it went away from her without touching anything other than the blade of her wing.
Misty signalled with her right hand, then, and Squirtle used Water Gun.
Left, right, right, left, right, attacks went flicking up and Articuno parried them one after another.
"Hey, Misty?" Brock called. "How does curry sound tonight?"
"Good!" Misty replied, giving him a thumbs-up, then there was a musical krish sound from overhead and she looked up in surprise.
A splash of ice had formed on Articuno's wing, and she was shaking it in confusion.
"What just happened…" Misty began, then thought about what she'd just done. "Squirtle, did you just get confused between Water Gun and Ice Beam?"
Squirtle nodded, looking nervous.
"…if I wasn't travelling with Ash, that would just have been an attack that went wrong," Misty said. "But instead, I think we just invented the opposite of Scald?"
She rubbed her temples. "I'm somehow annoyed."
"I wonder if someone has a list of all the colours Pokémon go when they're shiny," Ash said, thinking about the Noctowl they'd seen a couple of times that day. "I've seen some of them, but I just realized I don't know what a shiny Articuno looks like. Or Zapdos."
"Can Mew do shiny Pokémon?" Pikachu asked. "Can Zorua, actually? Wait, that second one's a bad question, Zorua can do a lot of things but he's got a bit of an attention span problem."
"The Pokémon on Valencia island have different colours, which aren't the usual Shiny Pokémon colours," Brock volunteered. "That's one of the reasons why there's a lab there. But I think that's based on the normal Shiny Pokémon colours that have been recorded… so there must be some database, of everything we know at least."
Ash nodded, then looked around at a whisper of sound.
And a yip.
The shiny Noctowl was flying through the trees towards them, banking between tree trunks, and Zorua was sitting on its back.
"Hi, guys!" he said, waving. "I spoke to Noctowl about how much fun it'd be to confuse people about how you were confusing them about what Pokémon you have, and he's all kinds of interested!"
"That's right," Noctowl agreed, flaring his wings and alighting on a branch, and Zorua fell off with an annoyed yip that ended in bouncing off the ground.
"Oww…" the Dark-type grumbled.
"Well, I'm glad to have another team member!" Ash said, expanding out a Pokéball. "Great to have you, Noctowl!"
He threw the Pokéball, and it bounced off with a fizz and a puff of smoke.
When it faded, Zorua was standing on tiptoe on the branch instead, and promptly fell off to land on top of himself.
"Perching is hard," the top Zorua sighed.
"Wait, if that was Zorua, who's Zorua?" Brock asked.
The bottom Zorua turned into Mew with a flash, and giggled before shoving Zorua off.
"...so if that's Zorua, and that's Mew, where's Noctowl?" Ash said. "Back where we saw him?"
"These are the oddest donuts I've ever seen," Noctowl chirped, from inside Ash's bag. "Who makes donuts with rice?"
AN:
Never go full Pineco.