A Moment of Clarity

Chapter 9

-Ash-

Groaning, Ash blinked awake, rubble shifting around him as he worked to sit up. The sky as far as he could see was a chaotic swirling mixture of purples, blues, and shades of black. Tiny dots of light like stars drifting through the chaotic void. Platforms of black stone stood out as small islands in the unnatural sea of light. Floating along unseen currents he could see the same Pokémon from the tiles that had brought them here, filling the air by the thousands if not millions.

"You're awake!" blinking to clear his vision, Ash saw the blonde girl from the garden, Lily, hurry over frantically. He noted a chunk of her dress had been torn away and felt the makeshift bandages around his torso.

"What…what happened?" Ash groaned, Lily helping him sit up. Nearby he could see Pikachu laying on a rock, unconscious but thankfully breathing. His electric starter had bandages on too but clearly not as well done as his own, but he wasn't sure why.

"We got…wherever here is." Lily nervously answered even as she pointedly looked at the ground. He assumed she wasn't looking at him because of his bare torso covered only in the makeshift bandages but given her flinch every time the one of the floating Pokémon made a sound was starting to worry him, "But when the tile exploded Mr. Hale and my mother were sent one direction and the rest of us this way. You…you protected me when we crashed." Well, that explained the bandages "While Janine protected Molly. They landed up there though." Lily pointed to yet another floating platform of stone above their heads.

"We'd better regroup then." Ash grunted as he forced himself to his feet, his ribs thankfully feeling better than they should have from taking the brunt of that fall. Whatever medicine Lily had used on him was working wonders, "I can get out my Fearow and have him fly us-"

"No!" Lily recoiled, eyes wide as he blinked in surprise from the intensity of the rejection, Pikachu jolting awake from the volume.

"Lily, what's wrong?" Ash kept his voice gentle as Lily blushed and looked off to the side, seemingly embarrassed by her own reaction.

"I…can't touch Pokémon." Lily held her arms close together, her voice filled with shame and self-loathing, "When I was little, a Pokémon attacked me and drug me away. My big brother helped save me but ever since then I haven't been able to get close to or touch a Pokémon without…without feeling…"

"Weak." Ash's voice was gentle as he put a shirt back on, "You felt weak."

"How did you-?" Lily turned to him wide eyed.

"I felt useless after the first time I ran into Team Rocket." Ash grimaced at the memory of how he'd been and acting not all that long ago, "I survived, I kept Pikachu, out of sheer dumb luck. If I hadn't been lucky then I would have been dead, or without my Pokémon, or hurt so bad I couldn't have continued my journey. I felt weak, I felt stupid, and I felt useless."

"How did you make it stop?" Lily asked, sounding timid but hopeful as he rummaged through his bag, finding the secured pouches where he kept potions as he began to spray Pikachu's injuries.

"I had a moment of clarity." Ash admitted easily, "I realized I didn't like how that felt so I started thinking how to change rather than thinking about how weak I felt. Started looking forward rather than back. I don't know if it will help you with your situation, but all I can do is suggest you just take things one step at a time."

"R-right." Lily seemed disappointed that he didn't have a magical instant fix answer but was not surprised. Returning the reluctant Pikachu back to his pokeball to rest, and to give Lily some space, Ash then scooped up the blonde Alolan who let out a startled eep as he held her in a princess carry.

"Come on." Ash held her easily, barely even feeling the weight as he judged the distance to the next closest stone platform.

"Wait, wait, waaaaaaait!" Lily clutched him tight as he started running, leaping through the air as he landed on the platform where he kicked off right away, not wanting to lose momentum. With the help of the seemingly lower gravity in this strange place, he managed to get up to the platform Lily had pointed to as the place where Molly and Janine had crashed.

"Ash!" his godsister beamed when she saw him land on the stone, Lily shaking and holding him close, eyes clenched shut.

"You are unharmed." Janine let out a breath of relief even as she bound an injury on her leg using a bandage of Spinarak silk.

"Please let me down now." A still shaking Lily begged.

"Oh, right, sorry." Ash turned red as he carefully set Lily down, the blonde just as flushed as he was "We need to find Lily's mom and Uncle Spenser, fast." Ash decided to focus on the current situation rather than thinking about how he was just carrying a very pretty girl in his arms.

"How though?" Molly asked sniffling, her excitement at his return tempered by fear of the situation and concern for her dad.

"We came from that direction." Janine pointed to where he could see the signs of their unintended flight. Floating purple clouds destroyed and flowing their path like a jet stream, smaller rocks pushed aside.

"So, if we follow that, then we could find where we arrived. Even if Uncle Spenser and Miss Lusamine aren't there then we can track where they landed." Ash's eyes lit up.

"This place has lower gravity than the real world." Janine jumped high to prove her point "Spinarak could make a silk tether for your Fearow to pull us!" he found she was a lot nicer to be around when she showed actual emotions. Moving quickly, Lily looking after Molly and as far from where Fearow was waiting as she could get, Ash and Janine worked with Spinarak to make a secure harness. Fearow was flaring their wings, eager to help be the lynch pin to saving the day. He was just wrapping up checking the makeshift harness to ensure that it was secure when he heard a terrified shriek from where Lily and Molly were.

Spinning around, he saw Lily had scrambled back, perilously close to falling off the edge, as Molly looked at one of the letter shaped Pokémon that had floated over to her. This one resembling the letter 'H'.

"Hi?" Molly gulped slightly as the small curious Pokémon floated around her, just as curious as the little girl was. The Unknown let out eager trills as it zoomed around Molly, Lily scrambling like a Crabby over to Ash who had started running when he heard her yell.

"It's…not attacking us." Janine blinked in confusion as Molly and the Unknown began to play, Fearow eyeing the new Pokémon closely.

"None of them have either." Ash frowned as he glanced up at the swarm of Unknown just drifting along though the sky, few even so much as glancing down at them.

"But…but they brought us here, didn't they?" Lily clutched at Ash's arm, shaking but at least doing better than she had earlier.

"I…I don't think they did." Ash glanced at his palm that the Tile had been stuck to. The skin was burnt and there was a distinctive scar burnt into the flesh now, reminiscent of one of the 'A' Unknown, "We got brought here by that Tile and it didn't react until I touched it."

"The energy in the tile came from you?" Lily looked confused, "Is that how you healed so quickly?"

"Healed quickly?" Janine's head snapped their direction, eyes narrowed in contemplation.

"I thought you just used some good medicine on me." Ash protested, just as confused now, hand rubbing the bandages through his shirt.

"Ash." Janine's voice was back to 'serious mode' "Shirt, off. Now."

"Janine!" Lily gasped scandalized; her face red even as Janine tugged Ash's shirt up when he wasn't moving fast enough. Once the shirt was off, she began undoing the makeshift bandages, revealing that the bruises he'd gotten when he landed were already fading, the cuts and scrapes having scabbed over.

"Those were bleeding when we landed though!" Lily gasped, "I had to tear off strips of my dress to stop them!"

"The tile…it was glowing blue, wasn't it?" Janine's narrowed eyes flit about and he could practically hear the gears turning in her head.

"Yeah, why?" Ash shared a confused glance with Lily, neither of them getting the importance of the glow's color.

"Because, that sounds like 'aura'. A power of the body comparable to how Psychics possess power of the mind." Janine pressed, Ash's eyes widening at that statement, "And it's absurdly rare, even more so than people with psychic ability."

"But…what's that mean?" Ash blushed as he now had Janine and Lily both intently studying his chest. He knew it was just them inspecting the injuries, but they were pretty girls looking at his abbs, he couldn't stop from turning red.

"I don't really know." Janine admitted even as she and Lily worked to wrap fresh bandages back around him just in case, "I've heard about aura through the ancient scrolls in my family's Dojo but nothing concrete. Let alone finding out about how your power could trigger…whatever this is." She waved at the chaotic dimension they'd found themselves in.

"Then why bring it up now?" Lily asked, her cheeks losing their flush once his shirt was back on.

"Because, if his power got us in here, then maybe it can get us out." Janine explained confidently, "But for now we need to find your mother and Mr. Hale. Fearow, are you ready?"

"Row!"

Unknown to the four of them however, further away in the Unknown realm things were starting to change. The multitude of Pokémon with power over creation, often referred to as 'the hands of Arceus', had sensed a burning desire. And this world was starting to shape around the desire, the memories, the pain, and the fear that they could taste in the air.