"Sorry, Dad," Max said, shaking his head.
"Max, I'm not angry," Norman replied, on the other side of the phone call. "I'm not even disappointed. It's actually kind of funny."
"I… well," Max began, looking conflicted. "I don't want you to have been upset, or anything, but it's more like…"
He shook his head. "I like you, Dad. And you're a Normal type trainer, and you've always been really firm on how diverse the Normal type is, and… it feels weird that now I've pretty much found out that I'm psychic, and also Swablu evolved into Altaria."
He patted the Dragon-type, who cooed.
"I think I get it," Ash volunteered. "It's… you'd thought of yourself as something, and now it turns out that something about you isn't the same. And that's going to be weird because what's changed is how you think about yourself."
"...yeah," Max agreed. "That's… about right, yeah. I'd ask how you knew, but then I'd…"
He waved vaguely in Ash's direction. "Sound silly."
Norman chuckled.
"Well, I'm sure there's something you can do about it," he said. "For example, what about if you picked up a nice, Normal-type Pokémon? Like a Stantler, or a Girafarig?"
"Or a Zorua like Ash has," Max suggested, relaxing a little. "Normal and Ghost."
"I'm still amazed by that," Norman said. "But do you feel a bit better now, Max?"
"A bit, yeah," Max agreed. "Oh, though… Ash wanted to talk to you as well?"
"That would be fine, Max," Norman agreed. "Pass me over?"
Max held up the phone, and Ash took it with Confusion.
"Hi, Mr. Maple," he said. "You know how you helped me out with finding out how my types work?"
"I remember it well, Ash," Norman said, and Ash heard the Petalburg Gym Leader picking something up with a rustle of paper. "Is there something else you've found out?"
"Well, uh, it's something Unown said earlier," Ash explained. "I don't remember if you heard about the time that Unown and I destroyed this fake Groudon thing that was draining energy from Forina, but, when we were helping Deoxys earlier Unown said that I should use a Water type Judgement. And – so, I guess now I know that that really powerful attack is called Judgement."
He glanced to the side. "It… makes sense? Because when I used it before Unown asked if it was my judgement that I wanted to destroy something. But, uh, I didn't know until now that it had different Types. And… I wanted to ask what you thought I should do."
Norman made an affirmative sound, then went silent for a long moment as he thought.
"I think… it really depends on if the move can be used safely," he said. "If it's something that you can do without hurting anyone, then you can find somewhere nice and open and practice. It doesn't have to be any time soon, either, and you don't have to be as rigorous as we were."
"Right," Ash said, nodding to himself. "So… so far the attacks have been really powerful, so I guess I'd better be careful. That's the main thing about it, right?"
"That's a good rule, Ash," Norman concurred.
"Hmm…" Ash frowned, the next day.
"You're still thinking about Judgement, right?" Brock said.
Ash nodded. "Yeah," he confirmed. "And, more… I don't know if it's safe to use or not, on anything. I guess it only destroyed the Fake Groudon, and the explosion from the Meteorite was probably just the energy inside it, but it's such a strong move…"
He shook his head. "And on the other hand… other hoof?"
Momentarily distracted, Ash looked down at his hooves. "Should I say other hoof now?"
Pikachu sniggered.
"Anyway, uh," Ash resumed. "On the other hand, I'm never going to get used to the move if I don't practice it somehow. So I should do that some time… it's just hard to work out how."
He looked down at his saddlebags, then over at Koraidon. "Would a Normal Judgement hurt Zorua, or a Dragon Judgement hurt Ralts? I guess maybe a Psychic Judgement on Absol wouldn't hurt him much, or if it was going to he'd at least know to get out of the way… right?"
"I'm not convinced by that," Pikachu said. "But it probably is the best way to check, short of using a Pokémon with Sturdy."
"That might work," Ash agreed, thinking. "Uh, that is, if Judgement doesn't bypass things like that. I know some abilities can."
He shook his head. "This is harder than it looks…"
"I know I'm not volunteering to test an Electric Judgement," Geodude said. "Not after what happened to me at Pewter."
He frowned. "Was Pikachu already Noble then or something?"
"A-ha-ha-ha!" a loudspeaker said.
Everyone looked to their left, and a moment later a giant Wobbuffet robot came crashing out of the trees.
The mouth opened, and Jessie and James struck poses.
"Prepare for trouble, of a retaliatory kind!" Jessie said.
"And make it double, with our polysyllabic find!" James agreed, holding up a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary.
There was a pause, as the two Rockets leafed frantically through the two books.
"Um," Pikachu began. "Are we going to…?"
"Wouldn't feel right, really," Brock's Geodude mumbled.
"To… defend the world from… massive craters!" Jessie said, eventually.
"And avoid big business for renovators!" James agreed.
Their giant mech saluted.
"To test out a system of enduring harm!" Jessie promulgated.
"And help avoid many a false alarm!" James expostulated.
They announced their names, in traditional style.
"Everyone's welcome to reform," Jessie said.
"But if you're Deoxys, stick to Defence Form!" James concluded.
"Meowth!" Meowth agreed. "Now, face da Wynaut Swarm!"
He hit a button, and more than a dozen Wynaut mechas marched out of the forest behind the Wobbuffet-mech and formed a neat line.
"You'll never be able to deal with these!" Jessie said. "They've got our special Counter Attack system! No matter how hard you hit them, they'll hit back twice as fast, unless they're completely destroyed in one attack!"
Max raised his hand. "What's Deoxys got to do with that?"
"You know, I'm pretty sure you're not a newcomer," James frowned, leaning forwards. "You should know this already, right?"
"...wait," Ash began, slowly. "Those Wynaut mechs… don't have anyone in them, right?"
"Completely remote controlled!" Jessie declared proudly. "You won't be able to disable them by removing anyone, because there isn't anyone in there in the first place!"
"This seems oddly convenient," Latias said.
"Yeah, but at this point I don't really want to ask questions," Ash replied. "Hey, Unown! I think we've got some experiments to do!"
More than a dozen large, elemental explosions later, the Wobbuffett-mecha had been Blasted Off by a combined Collision Course from Koraidon and Thunderbolt from Pikachu – which had worked fairly well – and Ash sat down, thinking.
"Okay," he said. "So… it wasn't as tiring that time, but it wasn't as strong either."
"I noticed that, yeah," Pikachu agreed. "When you hit the Fake Groudon you nearly collapsed, and the meteorite one seemed to tire you out a lot, but those ones were much easier."
"I wonder if that's something about-" Ash began, then stopped and looked at Unown. "Is it?" he asked. "I wasn't controlling how strong that was, not directly, but was I doing it anyway based on the target?"
"The requirement of the judgement expresses the power required," Unown stated.
"I did notice that the Dark one was the only one that didn't completely destroy the Wynaut bot," Max said. "Is there a reason for that?"
"Yeah," Ash agreed. "I was trying not to, and because I was Dark-type to do it the Mirror Coat didn't actually affect me."
"Smart," Zorua said, head pillowed on his paws, then sneezed and tumbled over backwards.
Koraidon caught him, then lifted him back up to his position on her crest. "Better?"
"Thank you," Zorua answered, walking around in a circle and settling down.
"So… like you guessed with the Deoxys thing, it is based on your Badges," Brock summarized. "And the Frontier Symbols don't actually do anything to it."
"Yeah, I'm not sure why not," Ash said. "They're… hmm. They're not based on Types, but they're definitely reacting to me. Or I'm reacting to them."
"We'll find it out," Pikachu assured him. "Not long until we complete the set, right?"
"Yeah!" Ash agreed. "Then, uh, maybe that'll do something… anyway, I guess it defaults to Normal type, because that was the same look and effect as the Balance Badge, only the Balance Badge one was a bit less tiring…"
He yawned, then shook his head. "Wow, I'm more tired than I thought."
Zorua giggled.
"We could stop here for a bit," Brock suggested. "Mulberry Town isn't far, so we'd still make it in good time for May's Contest there tomorrow."
AN:
Serendipity just kinda happens.