"Not much further to Couriway, right?" Serena asked.
"Checking distance to Couriway," Arc answered. "Conclusion: Not much, on the scale of the universe, but quite a lot on the scale of a Joltik."
"What about on the scale of a human?" Clemont said.
"We should get there within the next couple of days," Arc replied. "I hope that my attempt to inject perspective was appreciated."
Serena hummed. "It is nice to be reminded that the human scale is only one of the scales out there, but then again it's also a bit confusing when, as humans, we're most likely to use the human scale."
"Understood," Arc accepted.
Sandile came out of his strange ball with a flash. "It's not quite right, anyway, we've got a detour to go on first."
"A detour?" Ash repeated. "Where to?"
"Well, if I've got this right, anyway," Sandile added, checking a sheaf of paper. "Hmm, hmm… let's see… you've got Squishy with you, right?"
He looked up, saw Zygarde, and tutted. "I don't know who wrote these notes but honestly that's kind of a gimme. Now… Litleo thing, that's done… ah, maybe we're not there yet. Something about nightmares? Has that happened?"
"There was apparently a Darkrai hanging around last night," Litleo volunteered. "But Cresselia showed up and read books at it in a passive but also aggressive way, and it left. Does that count?"
"Eh," Sandile decided. "I'm going to call it done. Now, come on, we need to head… left, that's right."
He looked puzzled. "Or do I mean right? That's right, because right is right, but surely you've gotta turn left sometimes, right?"
"Not to be too gauche, but could you be more adroit?" Chespin asked.
Sandile threw a pebble so it bounced off her forehead. "Hey, you need permission for a fancy multi-lingual pun like that, miss. Anyway, I may not know which way we turn at the next turning, but I know exactly where we need to go – and it's probably a good idea to have Grovyle, Torkoal, Zoroark and Frogadier along, too. We're visiting the Village Hidden in the Two Parter."
"What's a two parter?" Bonnie asked.
"Twice as long, three times as confusing, and prone to cliffhangers," Sandile replied, rolling up his notes. "Come on, it's on the other side of a transition."
"I guess we're here," Ash said, looking down from the top of a cliff. "That's a pretty cool place!"
A masked trainer and a Liepard appeared next to them.
"How did you get here?" the trainer demanded, adjusting her scarf. "None of the patrols saw you – did you teleport?"
"I don't think so," Serena said. "We were just following Sandile."
"This is a ninja village, right?" Ash asked. "You're wearing the same kind of outfit as Sanpei."
"You know Sanpei?" the trainer said, then frowned. "Hey! How do I know you're not working for Kagetomo? He'd love to attack the village, especially by sneaking infiltrators into the village before the main attack!"
Arc manifested.
"...yeah, honestly, Kagetomo isn't stupid enough to bother being sneaky if he had that much firepower," the ninja decided. "Hanzo can decide what to do with you, but I think it should be okay for you to come inside the village itself…"
The Ninja Village itself wasn't actually full of nothing but ninja, though there were a lot of ninja – and that was just the ones they could see, instead of the ones doing the ninja thing and hiding out of sight.
"Of course, we need to look underneath the simple explanation, and then underneath that," Grovyle commented. "Who's to say that these civilians aren't themselves secretly ninja in hiding?"
"Then maybe there aren't any ninja in hiding?" Zoroark replied. "That would be a great double-bluff, wouldn't it – having the ninja all being out in the open, so someone assumes the ninja village is stronger than it actually is. Then again, you could do a lot more too with Zorua or Zoroark support, right? Maybe some of those ninja aren't actually real, they're just illusions."
"Maybe some of them are actually civilians and it's a complicated triple bluff," Frogadier said.
"Maybe civilians can also use ninja techniques!" Torkoal suggested. "They could simply have put in the hard work!"
"I don't know which of those is right, but I do know that a couple of our guides are taking notes," Ash said.
Nihei hastily stowed away his notebook.
"Ahem," he said. "That is… ah, here we are. This is Hanzo, our main… something, I can't remember his official title."
"Chief is more than enough," Hanzo told him. "Greetings, Ash Ketchum, and to your friends as well. Welcome to the Ninja Village."
"Hidden village," Sandile corrected.
"It's not very hidden," Hanzo countered. "It's in a box canyon, yes, and the entrance is hidden, but someone flying over would see it. No, what's hidden from the air is that it's a ninja village."
He sighed. "Alas, my former student knows, and so we are in danger. But that is for another time – I have heard from Sanpei and Saizo of the great skill of your Pokémon in the ninja arts. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you give us all a demonstration?"
"Leaf Hot Wind!" Torkoal called, swinging around on one leg and blasting a Leaf Storm towards Grovyle.
"Is that a move?" Litleo asked. "I've not heard of it but the same's true of a lot of things I've seen."
Braixen shrugged, helplessly. "I've not heard of it either, but it seems to work?"
Indeed, even as they'd spoken, the Leaf Storm had caught fire – possibly just because Torkoal had used it – and the barrage of flaming leaves had hammered into Grovyle or gone flying just past him until he went poof and turned out to be a Substitute.
The real Grovyle dropped down from overhead, reading a notebook. "Hmm. So apparently it is a good idea to use a Zoroark's illusions, and they're going to do that…"
"Hey, wait – that's mine!" Nihei said.
"Sorry, did you say something?" Grovyle asked. "Oh, right, here you go."
He lobbed the notebook back to Nihei, who caught it, and Torkoal huffed.
"I will land a hit on you first, Grovyle!" he said. "My hip and cool rival! Or I will do a thousand push-ups!"
"Why, exactly?" Grovyle checked.
"So that I will be strong enough to keep up with you, of course!" Torkoal replied.
"No, I mean, would you not exercise if you hit me first?" Grovyle asked.
"Of course I would do the exercise anyway!" Torkoal said. "It is my fitness regime! And-"
Grovyle got hit by a barrage of flaming leaves.
"Oh, sorry!" Torkoal added. "I forgot to say Lock On earlier! That was terribly rude of me, and I will do five hundred sit-ups to make up for it!"
"So…" Nihei began. "If I've got this right, Zoroark's egg was given to you by a ninja who was actually a female Zoroark, who was actually a male Zorua, who was actually your Zorua having gone back in time, and you eventually met his mother before he evolved into Zoroark which is when…"
He shook his head. "No, sorry, I've gone cross-eyed again. How often do things like that happen to you?"
"I guess the answer to that depends on what you think of as things like that," Ash replied. "Because the exact situation only happened once, but then my friend May got her Manaphy who hatched from an egg months before we found the egg, and it then got taken back in time to be given to her in the first place… so more than once, I think?"
"This is completely-" Nihei said, but Ash's attention had already been drawn back to the demonstration battle going on.
"Greninja!" he called. "You've evolved!"
"I have indeed," Greninja confirmed.
"Then – hey, that might be cool," Ash realized. "If Zoroark did that thing he can do, then you two could practice messing around with typing because of Protean, right? Do you have Protean? I'm not sure."
"Neither am I," Greninja said.
Ash looked across at Zoroark, concentrating, and Zoroark changed into the strange Ash-Zoroark mode.
Greninja, meanwhile, changed into a kind of Ash-Greninja mode, with a glittering Water Shuriken resting on his back.
"Huh," he said. "Does anyone have a mirror?"
"Well, that was unexpected," Zoroark summarized. "Hey, wait, this means it isn't a me thing!"
He folded his arms. "On the other paw, it means it is an Ash thing, so maybe we should try this out with some of your other Pokémon?"
"That's…" Nihei said, astonished. "It's just like the stories."
"What stories?" Zoroark checked. "Hey, does that mean we're going to go back in time and inspire stories again? It's always fun when we get a chance to do that."
"I'm… quite sure that the stories weren't inspired by you and your team," Nihei said. "Well. Almost sure."
"What are these stories, then?" Ash asked.
"The story is that the village's ninjas fought amongst themselves, but the Pokémon defended the village, led by a Greninja," Nihei explained. "Who looked almost exactly like your Greninja… the picture we have is in black and white, so I don't know about the colouring, but aside from that there's no difference."
"Yeah, doesn't sound like Ash," Zoroark agreed. "Otherwise you'd have a legend about a Pikachu. Hey, Ash, let's see which other Pokémon can do that!"
"Hello?" Professor Sycamore said. "Ash? Is that you calling me?"
"Yeah, hold on," Ash replied, on the other end of the phone. "Hey, Arc, can you make this a video call?"
"Ash, I'm not on a video phone," Sycamore protested, but then an image appeared in the air in front of him anyway. "...oh. Well, I'm not going to complain… it's been a while, Ash, is something the matter?"
"Did I tell you about the weird thing Zoroark does where he changes colour and gets a new ability on top of Illusion?" Ash asked, before continuing over the top of Sycamore trying to answer. "Because I'm in this secret ninja village place that's somewhere or other, and my Frogadier just evolved to Greninja, and he did it too, and then we started doing experiments!"
Sycamore's mouth opened, then closed again, as Ash began rattling off the list of Pokémon who had undergone the strange, temporary synchronized evolution thing.
There was Silver, the young Lugia that Ash said he'd met back when he was about eight years old and Silver was less. There was King Dragonite, the leader of Ash's Dragonite and sundry other Dragon-type and dragon-associated Pokémon around the Oak Ranch.
There was a question-mark over Mew, because Mew had done it twice but looked different each time and Ash wasn't sure if Mew was just turning into an oddly coloured Mew-two to avoid feeling left out – whatever a Mew-two was. But there was no such uncertainty about Ash's Charizard, who had demonstrated that the whatever-it-was was an alternative to going into Mega form and that you couldn't do both at the same time.
Sycamore had to admit to himself he was a bit relieved about that.
"I don't really get what the connection is, and some of them it took more than one try so maybe there are others too?" Ash said, as he got to the end of the explanation. "But you do science and stuff, so I thought I should ask!"
Sycamore did his best to get his thoughts in order, for several seconds.
"Well-" he began, but then something moved in the background of the projected image.
"Ninja Corp, attack!" someone called.
"Uh oh, got to go!" Ash told Professor Sycamore. "I'll call later!"
Kagetomo and Heidyau's Ninja Corp had picked perhaps the worst time in the entirety of history to attack the village.
They found this out.
AN:
Nin-credibly bad timing.
And yes, of course I wasn't going to keep Bond Phenomenon to just one Pokémon...