Creation began on 07-06-22

Creation ended on 07-15-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Tama Pāru

A/N: Palkia did say that it needed an identity of its own.

Five days. That was how long it took to replace and repair the equipment damaged by the phantom Groudon that attacked Palkia, and it was a long and agonizing period of patience and restraint. Not just for the teens that would be continuing the assistance in the project, but the adults that saw potential in the discovery of opening doorways to new worlds. Progress always carried risks, but the ability to demonstrate patience brought about the rewards of the end result, even if it was not what was directly desired.

"So, I heard they'll be ready for us when we go over there after school lets out," said Toji to Hikari as they and the others sat on the rooftop of the school building during lunchtime.

"Yeah," she replied, swallowing a piece of her dumpling. "I also checked on the news. Just moments before the phantom Pokémon disappeared after the equipment was shutdown, there were reports of at least three of them physically interacting with our world. A Snorlax left a footprint, a Pidgey left some droppings, and a Ratatta nabbed some cheese."

"But nobody was hurt?" Asuka questions.

"No. But now the places where these took place are getting some notoriety; the local deli where the Ratatta made off with the piece of cheese, the preschool where the Snorlax was seen leaving its footprint, and the salon where the Pidgey did its business on the glass door."

"They're gonna want to put those in a museum and say whatever they can about them," Kensuke stated, cleaning his Machamp's Poké Ball.

"Maybe," went Rei, "but they won't mean too much without more remnants of the Pokémon's interaction in our world. A Porygon or Porygon2 showing up on computer screens and tablets won't be enough to satisfy the people that become obsessed with wanting to catch more than a mere glimpse of the creatures that were possible to be seen by the people that stumbled onto them through an accident that became more."

"We may not see more phantom Pokémon now, but I do look forward to seeing Shinji again," Asuka expressed.

-x-

Ritsuko found the chemical composition for the Hyper Potion Kensuke gave her to research unlike what she had anticipated when she saw Shinji use it once on his Gyarados. Sitting at her desk in NERV HQ, she found the compositional elements of the Hyper Potion to be exactly like what one would find in artificially-derived adrenaline or steroidal solutions, only…more concentrated and streamlined. She suspected that just a liter or two of this Hyper Potion would be equal to more than a hundred liters of adrenaline followed by a liter of ibuprofen to numb the body of pain and nausea. Of course, that was in a human body; something like this could probably be used to advance medical science by several years if they had just a little more of it.

Pokémon, she thought as charted down her notes on a pad. They truly are a magnificent menagerie of creatures that have been around for a long time.

The theory of there being multiple universes that housed many different creatures that were beyond what they could understand, and the Pokémon world was just one example, with this world that Hanmyo was from, this Toward Stars Era, being another example.

"I pray the next Angel doesn't come at all," she sighs.

"Doctor Akagi," she turned away from her computer and saw Maya at her door. "They're waiting for us to show up."

Ritsuko saved what she was researching on her computer and turned it off. There would be plenty of time to see if these Pokémon medicines had any applications for human use later on.

"Let's head to the Pokémon world," she told her.

-x-

It wasn't just the fact that people did this to individuate specific animals, but the fact that doing so added more to their very identities when bestowed upon them these chosen measure of letters to make up their designations or names. And Palkia was no different from any of them to desire their own identity from others of its own kind.

"…How do people that spend their lives around Pokémon make nicknaming them seem like second nature?" Antonio wondered; Palkia may have desired a nickname of its own, but not one that was common like certain names were, and it shot down the seven Antonio thought of that sounded unique…if not half-hearted attempts to sound impressive.

"Electrode!" Electrode went, bouncing near the control console where Antonio sat. "Trode."

"I'm…thinking about this too deeply?" He asked the Ball Pokémon, and it bounced up and down in response; just three days ago, they came to an arrangement where, in order to understand what Electrode was saying to them whenever Palkia couldn't translate on their behalf, the Ball Pokémon would bounce if its response was positive and roll around if its response was negative, helping in their understanding of its speech. "Yeah. But you should know, it's not as easy as others make it seem, giving Pokémon nicknames to individuate them from other Pokémon."

"Electrode."

It was a few minutes later when the teens and NERV personnel that visited Shinji arrived.

"How goes the search for the perfect nickname for Palkia?" Hikari asked them.

"Terrible," one of the workers replied as they readjusted a camera on the ceiling. "Nicknames aren't my specialty. Do you know of any that will suffice for Palkia?"

"Sorry."

"We even tried Draco, but it shot that name down."

"Doesn't that mean 'dragon'?" Toji questioned. "It kinda defeats the purpose of the nickname's meaning if it's too obvious."

"What about 'Kami'?" Kensuke suggested.

"Un-uh. Nothing that's a reference to what has already been used in fiction, please." Asuka told them; she had read these comics that originated in Japan and spread across the world and the one that suggestion came from was clearly from the more popular franchises. "Originality is a must."

Misato went over to Palkia and asked how it was doing after the incident with the last Angel.

"Many praises to the people that developed the properties of the Full Restore medicine," it uttered. "It felt like what you humans refer to as a spa day, only brief and without error. However, it is not something I wish to experience again unless near death."

"Yeah, I figured as much," she replied; getting nearly dealt with by a phantom of a Groudon wasn't how she thought anyone, human or Pokémon, would be capable of going out like that, and it was hoped that it wouldn't echo itself again in the foreseeable future. "Have there been any signs of phantom Pokémon that we haven't seen or heard about since that day?"

"We've been tracking across the city and social media," Antonio stated, "and so far, nothing."

Rei came over to Palkia and examined its texture and size. As a being of almost five meters in height, greater than any human and most animals still alive in this world, not to mention being a creature associated with the myths and legends of old, Palkia was, without a doubt, a unprecedented beauty half the time…and a fearsome foe if engaged with hostility and it was forced to defend itself.

"Shinji," she remembers herself asking one time about Palkia to the Pokémon Trainer, "is there anything else about Palkia that you can tell us about that makes sense to those that believe in it in this world?"

"Besides being a spatial opposite to Dialga's temporal phenomena, there has been some controversy about their association with diamonds and pearls. Dialga having a diamond of some sort on its armored chest plate and Palkia having two pearls on its shoulders."

"Diamonds and pearls?"

"Yes. Well, diamond and pearl, to be exact, but same thing, just like how Pokémon are often associated with other things in the world, like colors or letters. Some Pokémon, depending on their popularity, are used as mascots, like Charizard, Blastoise, Venusaur, Lugia or Pikachu."

Rei then did something unprofessional and unexpected: She pressed her head against Palkia's right leg and rubbed her left cheek against its armored hide.

"Uh, why is Ms. Ayanami doing that to Palkia?" One of the female personnel asked Ritsuko and Maya as they brought in a box of saline solution.

"Um, maybe she was dared to do it by her friends," Ritsuko suggested; she didn't really know and was just guessing.

"Palkia," went Rei to the Pokémon, "what do you think of the nickname…Tama Pāru?"

"Tama Pāru? What does it mean?"

"It is comprised of two Japanese words: Tama, meaning 'gem' or 'jewel', and pāru, meaning 'pearl', like the two pearls you have in your shoulders. Tama Pāru, Gem Pearl."

"Tama Pāru… Tama Pāru… It's not a common nickname, is it?"

"No."

"Tama Pāru… It's growing on me now. Yeah. Yeah, I'll go with it. Tama Pāru. Thank you."

And with that, the search for the perfect nickname was concluded. The Pokémon known as Palkia…was now known as Tama Pāru.

-x-

Sitting, waiting, that was part of the life of anyone on the path to being a Pokémon Trainer…or simply traveling with Pokémon from place to place. As Shinji and Hanmyo sat against a tree in the forest on their way to Laverre City, they had to wait on their Pokémon as they were dealing with a matter that couldn't be ignored any further.

"So, how far are we from Laverre City?" Shinji asked Hanmyo as he looked to his left in the forest, keeping on the lookout for his Eevee.

"It should be about another day's walk," Hanmyo explained to him.

Suddenly, his Eevee came from out some bushes with her legs covered in dirt, followed by Hanmyo's Meowstic, who looked pristine as before.

Your Eevee is very hygienic when it comes to using the bathroom out in the wilderness, they both heard Kemi say to them as Shinji took out a wipe and cleaned Misato's paws.

"That's more or less my fault," he told them as he finished. "Pokémon generally do their business out in the wild, but it's always best to keep it out of sight and out of mind. So, she digs a hole before doing her business and then buries it so that nobody else steps in it."

"Eevo," Misato added.

What would your Eevee do without you? Mata questioned.

"I don't want to think about that ever happening."

With their Pokémon's business now settled, they resumed their trek to Laverre City and Shinji's sixth gym badge.

"Any ideas on how to face the Laverre City Gym Leader?" Hanmyo asked Shinji, changing the subject of what his Pokémon would do without him around to how he would face the next Pokémon Trainer for his next badge to gain entry into the Kalos League.

"The Gym Leader, Valerie, specializes in Fairy-Type Pokémon, so I'll need to have a strategy that involves Steel and Poison-Type Pokémon or moves or some kind of alternative to counter her Pokémon," he revealed his intel to her.

"What about the use of Fire-Type Pokémon?" She suggested.

"Fairies are naturally immune to fire, so Asuka and Leo can't really have much effect against them. Asuka can use Steel Wing, Misato knows Iron Tail and Komadori can learn Steel Wing, but it's anyone's guess as to how the future battle can go, and that's if it's a three-on-three battle. I looked up that Valerie usually battles with just two-on-two."

"So…Misato and Komadori?"

"Why them?"

"Because they're small and cute. If Fairy-Type Pokémon are often pretty, it should be a battle of the strongest pretty."

Shinji looked at his Eevee and gave a positive shrug at the point Hanmyo made.

"Are you up for a gym battle with Fairy-Type Pokémon, Misato?" He asked her.

"Eee," she responded with a positive nod.

-x-

"…Got him," one of the scientists informed as the monitors showed static images of Shinji and Hanmyo walking through a forest. "Connection's fuzzy, but that's to be expected from the repair work. Are they ready?"

"We're beginning sedative administration," a nurse replied as Asuka, Rei, Kensuke, Toji, Misato, Ritsuko, Maya, Hyuga, Shigeru and Pen-Pen were place into comas to send their consciousnesses into the Pokémon world to Shinji's current location. "Best of luck over there. There's a lot riding on this project getting further results from your time being there."

"The longer we're there," said Kensuke as he was feeling the drowsiness looming over his head, "the closer you get to opening an artificial doorway to a new world."

"Venturing to new worlds and mending this one."

-x-

"…Ahh," Hanmyo yawned as she and Shinji had reached their destination: Laverre City, two hours after the sun went down. "I'm about to drop to my knees and call it a day."

Shinji, knowing what she was getting at, knelt down and offered her a lift to the nearest rest stop for the night if they couldn't find a Pokémon Center.

"All aboard the Shinji Ikari Express," he told her, and she smiled and climbed onto his back.

"Thank you, Shinji."

You should count your good fortune for being a Good Samaritan, Ikari, he heard her cats say to him. Your kindness is among your greatest qualities.

"I'm just good with self-control over my emotional reactions," he responded.

It's more than just your emotional restraint, went Kemi. You have an aura to you that makes you unlike most other people Hanmyo has met in her life. Excluding this boy she met, you are…a very unusual person. You must be destined for greatness on the path you're on.

"Once upon a time, I had a terrible destiny due to my parents and what they were trying to do for years…but my being here has caused a division between the factors involved in fate and choice, both positive and negative. I'm not bound to my parents' ambitions…and I'm not going to let either one of them decide what I can and can't do, no matter what they think or feel towards my own desires."

And what is it that you desire? Mata asked him.

"I…I want to be a hero in my world if Pokémon do eventually become common there and it's healed from its environmental devastations. I don't want people that choose to see Pokémon as a commodity or expendable to abuse or tarnish the belief that Pokémon are not going to do anything to respond to signs of abuse when they can."

"You treat a Pokémon bad enough, they'll do wrong as a consequence," went Hanmyo. "That probably explains why that talking Meowth is such a problem for some."

"But not the Pokémon that can be tricky and violent to people without any indication of being abused by people in any way. Remember that Ursaring I mentioned to you?"

"You…may end up being able to become that hero if you try your best."

Shinji stopped in front of a rustic bridge and saw some familiar faces.

"How long have y'all been here in Laverre City?" He asked them.

"Less than ten minutes," Asuka answered him. "Sorry we took so long to come back."

"I'd love to hear why…but we should get inside the Pokémon Center if they don't have a curfew first. It's cold out here."

How much like Shinji was it to say something like that at a time like this? To be willing to hear something, but to wait until something else was done before setting up for what could've been a while to hear? Still, it was nice of him to be so tolerating.

The Pokémon Center was fortunate to not have a curfew, so getting in was simple enough, and Hanmyo dozed off with her cats.

"…So…phantom Pokémon were becoming progressive around the city?" Shinji made sure he was hearing properly.

"Yeah," Kensuke explained, "and one of them managed to hurt Tama Pāru before Mr. Giovanni had to cut off the machines that enabled the ability to travel subconsciously between here and our world. It was a Groudon. Very violent."

"It's why we were unable to come back for five days," Hikari added as she had Pen-Pen on her lap. "Everything that got broken needed to be repaired or replaced. That and the Angel that showed up a few days later."

"Who's Tama Pāru?"

"Palkia," went Rei. "We gave it a nickname to individuate it."

"Tama Pāru? Yeah, that nickname works. Is it alright?"

"We were fortunate that Kensuke had the medicine you supplied him with in case y'all got separated," said Toji to him. "He used a Full Restore on it, and it was good as new."

"The items work over there like they do here?" Shinji asked them.

"Yeah," expressed Misato. "Even one of the TMs you gave Kensuke worked out for Tama Pāru. Hyper Beam. It really helped us all out when we had that new Angel to deal with."

"I'm glad y'all were able to deal with it without much difficulty. Any chance any of those items might be mass produced in case of future problems over there?"

"I hope so," said Ritsuko. "I was studying the composition of one of the Hyper Potions. Could any of these have any use on humans, not just Pokémon?"

"Maybe, but I've never heard of people using them on other people. I know there are certain plants that work on both people and Pokémon, but healing remedies designed for Pokémon being used on people? That's above my current well of knowledge. Still, if they have some benefits to people, why deny the people if they can work for them like they do on Pokémon?"

"Say, Shinji," went Hyuga as he looked at his Eevee lapping up some warm milk in a bowl nearby, "did you ever think you'd get this far in the Kalos League? To have five badges out of the eight you need to enter?"

"Always progressing," he replied. "No commitment, no progression. But to answer your question, no, I didn't think we'd get this far. Not without some issues that needed to be worked over and resolved."

When his Eevee finished her milk, she hopped onto the bunk Shinji was using and laid on the pillow, going out like a rock.

"You faced a robot Gym Leader and avoided Leo being aggressive with you after you won your fifth badge," Shigeru told him. "You literally stand up to fierce creatures every time and you manage to overcome them."

Shinji then yawned and cracked his neck.

"We should see the Gym Leader of Laverre City tomorrow to see how she is before the goal to challenge her for my sixth badge comes to mind," he suggested; since they had only arrived less than four hours ago, there was plenty of time to just chat and take in the sights before the next match. "See y'all tomorrow."

"Good night," Misato told him as he laid down beside his Eevee and was out just like her.

-x-

"…Those twerps," fumed Jessie as she, James and Meowth were in their hot air balloon in the sky, upset over the fact that they had been beaten yet again by Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu and those allies of theirs.

"Better those twerps than that Ikari," muttered James, receiving an update on his small tablet. "According to the Kalos League database for gym match updates, he recently won his fifth badge in Lumiose City…with a male Pyroar."

"Aah!" Meowth gasped; just the mere thought of having to face a trained Pyroar sent shivers down his spine. "Please, tell me that there's no picture of the Pyroar."

James looked at him and his left eye twitched.

"Okay, I won't tell you," he uttered; he had seen the picture of the Pyroar owned by Shinji and knew that they were no match for it, even if they had all of their Pokémon from the other regions back, not against any Pokémon like the ones owned by this teen that turned from mediocre weaklings to major combatants. "I ever see him, I run as fast as my feet will take me."

"You couldn't get away from me, even if you did run," they all heard Shinji, who appeared in the hot air balloon with them with his Eevee on his right shoulder, looking at them with a cold smile. "How's it going this evening?"

"Eevo!" His Eevee added.

"Aaaaahh!" The Team Rocket trio screamed, and the next thing they knew, they were waking up from a nightmare.

"That guy's our new worst nightmare!" Jessie panicked.

"If we see him again, it will be hard to ever sleep again," James confessed, and then got a whiff of something foul. "What is that smell?"

"Meowth," went Meowth; his fear of Shinji caused him to lose control of his bowels for a moment. "Does anyone have a litter box?"

-x-

"…Did y'all just hear something a moment ago?" Ash asked his friends as they sat around the campfire.

"Not me," went Serena. "Maybe you're just hearing things."

"Maybe."

"Pika," Pikachu expressed; tomorrow, they would reach Snowbelle City and go face the Gym Leader there for the eighth and final badge, and Ash needed to have his mind set on that goal and not what was becoming a distraction in the form of what the previous Gym Leader had informed them about this guy that they hadn't met yet.

"Someone powerful will arise to aid in the crisis up ahead," Olympia had informed them. "Someone that has been around for a few years, but has journeyed through trial and error to become the person they are right now. You will need their help above all else…and whatever fears drive you must be expelled before trust can be offered."

That was really all she could tell them when they met. If this had anything to do with this Shinji Ikari, then it was likely he would be their ally in the upcoming crises.

-x-

Gendo blamed Shinji for everything that was wrong with his current predicament. He was out of a job, out of influence over the First Child, under surveillance to make sure he stayed away from the research site where Palkia was housed and now his very Internet access was limited because of his social media responses to all things relating to Shinji Ikari, including Pokémon, because his responses were getting too negative than they were before the boy was displaced from this dimension.

"If you have nothing nice to say about this guy, then you shouldn't be talking about him at all," one of the social media posters had sent to him in response to the comment he had posted about Shinji simply wasting his time on an extended getaway instead of doing anything that actually mattered in the long run.

Every response to his responses had led most of the people on social media to deduce that Gendo, simply due to his dislike of his own son, was just a guy trying to create a bandwagon for others to join that hated Shinji for unjust reasons or just needed an excuse to keep badmouthing him for whatever reason they wanted to do so for.

"It's only because of your dislike towards him that you can't even go to where he is and speak with him," Fuyutsuki had told him. "You don't believe in him, not even a little bit, because you can't accept that he doesn't want to pilot the Eva any further and deal with the Angels, not if it means trading one cruel fate for another."

"He's not the least bit worried about never finding his way back to this world on the path he's taken," Ritsuko had told him. "He's committed to coming back once he finds and captures a Palkia and Dialga of his own…but it has to be on his own terms. Nobody, not Major Katsuragi, not the First or Second Children, not even you…can force him to put his passion for Pokémon on hold to get back into something that he has become aware of that is, more or less, detrimental to all the pilots. Plus, he's almost out of his teens over there; there's no guarantee that he'll be able to pilot the Eva like before, as we've never had any tests done on subjects older than any of the pilots or candidates…and we don't know what the long-term effects could be on the other pilots. All I have are my thought analysis on Shinji based off his absence from the Eva, and he's probably going to live a full life, seeing as he's been through other incidents that have either harmed him or should've killed him, before and after his displacement. He's been physically abused, emotionally abused, put under stress, burnt, electrocuted, fell into caves, poisoned, flew at heights where the altitude and temperature should've affected him, and the only thing he really suffered from due to his lack of knowledge about was…the flu. But he got vaccinated, knows better now, even takes time off from training Pokémon to relax due to extensive wanderlust. That was due to a subconscious sense of being rushed to return to this world like he was a tight schedule. But now he follows nobody's schedule but his own, and he's living. He's living…and he affects other people and makes them want to enjoy more out of life."

Unfortunately, reminding himself of these chats didn't help Gendo due to the fact that he was drinking heavily to vent his frustrations since the source of his current problems was not in this world. And his sense of alcoholism was different from Misato Katsuragi's; while she demonstrated very little intoxication, regardless of how much she drank in the past, Gendo was less inhibited, and more inclined to lose his self-control…after four cans or so.

Damn you, Shinji, he thought as he popped his sixth can. You've taken control from me. You've taken NERV, my scenario, the future of the human race, everything I sacrificed for…just so you can delude people into thinking there's no such end of the world coming. You think you can do better than what Yui worked on her whole life? You're a fool! You're a worthless fool!

He imagined Shinji being praised by the masses…only to be assassinated by someone that wanted to see him die, watching the people, specifically those that were part of his son's social circle, feel like their great hero was not going to see the next day.

I will find a way to make you suffer for your treason, he swore, though this was just how he felt.

How could Shinji commit treason towards his parents…if he didn't know or understand what they were doing beforehand? How could Shinji betray them…when they had betrayed him first?

-x-

Shinji was stirred from slumber by someone shaking him, and he opened his eyes to see Asuka and Rei looking down at him.

"Ah…yeah?" He asked them.

"We need to talk," Asuka told him, and he got up and followed them to a bench outside the Pokémon Center. "Sit."

Shinji sat down and waited for one of them to speak up about whatever it was they needed to speak with him about.

"When we faced the latest Angel," went Rei, "it affected us…up here (she pointed to her head), made us see things."

"What did you see?" He asked them.

"I saw you," Asuka revealed, "walking away, like I was never going to see you again."

"I saw myself…standing alone in the darkness," Rei added.

"Me walking away…and isolation in the dark."

"Since you've been aided before by Psychic Pokémon, you probably know what they mean," Asuka suggested. "Do they make sense to you?"

"Not right now, but it helps if I were to understand what your exact emotions were during the time you saw these visions," he told the redhead. "What did you feel when you saw me…walking away from you?"

"Grief. Anger. Regret. It was like…something wrong happened…and I pushed you away because of it…and I didn't want to."

"Sadness," Rei clarified her emotions during what she saw, "emptiness…and loneliness. It was like…everyone that I knew, everyone that I had seen or spoken with…was no longer around to see or speak to. I called out to anyone that might be around…but received no response. It was…depressing."

"Did Kensuke receive a vision from the Angel, too?" Shinji asked them.

"Yeah," Asuka answered. "He saw his father standing in front of two graves; they were his own and his Machamp."

"Maybe it's all fear-related," Shinji suspected.

"Fear-related?" Rei questioned.

"The Angel targeted you based on what you're afraid of, represented by what you were shown by it. Rei, you fear being alone, so you see yourself in the darkness, cut off from everyone…and you don't want that to happen to yourself. You have come to enjoy the company of others, to enjoy living in the present, not walled off and an enigma to people like you were before. And Asuka, you probably fear loss, losing people, which was visualized in the form of me walking away from you."

"And Aida?" Rei asked.

"His father being left alone if something happened to him and Brute-Chan. Death, loss and loneliness. And the feelings revolving around those fears, they're all understandable."

"What do you fear?" Asuka asked him.

"My parents…wanting me to decide what happens to everyone else in existence using the Eva, something that I don't want to do…and something that has consequences for mostly everyone that had anything to do with the Eva," he revealed. "They literally threw everything away to devote themselves to that cybernetic nightmare, and it's a curse I didn't realize I had escaped until after I had Master, once he was able to trust me, unlock my traumatic memories that I had a hard time coping with. It's…hard to see them as my parents when they do something like this that hurts other people they don't even know. We don't even talk about any of it."

"It'd probably mean well if you three did," Asuka suspected.

"But that's where the difficulty lies. My father, he never really says anything that helps me to understand him…and my mother… If she let herself get absorbed into the Eva of her own volition, then it means she could return whenever she wanted to, whole, body and everything. The fact that she never did return means that she chose to stay inside the Eva, deliberately, purposely, that she chose to be absorbed into the Eva, deliberately, purposely. It's hard to talk about anything to my parents when I'm here, trying to enjoy my life while finding my way back at my own pace, and they're over there, either waiting for things to play out in a way that works for them…or trying to wrestle with the fact that they don't get what they desire when and how they desire it. This is just a sick game they want to win, and the only way their opposing adversaries can win or keep in a stalemate…is not to play with them…or make moves they can't predict or counter. Either way, I can't really talk to them right now."

"You'd rather inspire people to believe in what they're capable of achieving if they do their best within their own limitations," said Rei.

"There's nothing wrong with being a source of inspiration for people that don't have a goal yet or have motivation to pursue it. I mean, what do you want to do after the Angels are all gone? What do you both want to do?"

Asuka and Rei looked at each other and then back to Shinji.

"I want to be a Pokémon Trainer," they both responded, and he smiled.

-x-

"…These kids," went Antonio as he drank the last of his cup of coffee while he and Fuyutsuki were among the skeleton crew monitoring the data recording progress. "They have ambitions inspired by what has happened."

"They have lives to live," the elder expressed. "They have dreams that they want to see realized when this crisis with the Angels is over."

"They want to be Pokémon Trainers like Shinji. I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to be Pokémon Masters."

"But just what makes one a Pokémon Master? Even after more than four years, Shinji hasn't discovered the answer, but has progressed to becoming a skilled trainer at what he does."

"Catching Pokémon, facing Gym Leaders, competing in the Pokémon League of every region, becoming the Pokémon League Champion… Any of these and all of these could be what makes one a Pokémon Master."

"To become a Pokémon Master," went Tama Pāru to them, "in the case of humans, one should be able to do what is the most basic of what they do each day of their lives."

"And that would be?" Both men asked.

"Show merit," Tama Pāru expressed. "Demonstrate one's commitment to their ambition, build their reputation so that others will know who they are and what they're capable of. If Shinji has done these, he will get closer to reaching such a goal that others may seek."

-x-

The sight of the Laverre City Gym was a sight to the bunch as they stood in front of the massive tree the building had been built around.

"It's amazing," went Kensuke as he filmed building; during second extended stay in the Pokémon world alongside the others, Shinji had acquired a new camcorder for Kensuke to record whatever he could.

"Hard to fathom how a building like this could be built around a tree," Ritsuko expressed.

"Where there's a will, there's a way, Dr. Akagi," Maya replied.

"There's a fashion show going on today," said Shinji as he looked at a sign that showed a show would start ten minutes from now. "Let's see what's happening inside."

"Will do," Asuka responded as she led the way. "You never know, I may want something being displayed later on!"

"Is she for real?" Toji asked.

"Yep," answered Hikari.

"Eevo!" Shinji's Eevee chirped as she ran off ahead of them.

To be continued…

A/N: And now we have a Legendary Pokémon with an identity of its own. The conversation between Shinji, Asuka and Rei was bound to happen and relate to Arael, with Shinji being able to understand what the problem was due to his extended time in the Pokémon world and his aid of Psychic Pokémon to reduce the pain of recalling his past. The scene with Gendo reduced to drinking was somewhat expected; his anger brewing over what has happened to remove him from control has only gotten worse and he refuses to accept that he crossed the line. The next chapter will feature Shinji facing the Gym Leader.