The Status Quo

ASH KETCHUM had always been too busy traveling on the road to pay much attention to those in his circle of friends and acquaintances. He always remembers a face when he'd see them again but in transit it was always what was in front of him or a second step ahead that mattered – long term plans were kept vague and that's how he liked it. "Day by day" in his words.

As he aged, however, that philosophy began to get challenged. It was after Alola when he took notice. Ash hadn't paid attention to the social media accounts that Bonnie had made him set up, so one day when he went to Kalos for Professor Cerise, he had a huge shock when he noticed a ring on Clemont's finger.

"Hey, Clemont, what's that about?" he asked eventually has they conversed over tea and cake.

"Oh, didn't you see, Ash?" replied Clemont. "I proposed and got married to Serena two years ago. The wedding was eight months ago. She and I posted about it on InstaShoot."

The black-haired boy blinked in shock. Had he really not noticed, he thought. Strange…

"Er – yeah, I-I must've forgotten about it! Haha!"

Clemont cocked his head to one side. "Yeah. I-it's okay." Something in his voice told Ash it wasn't though…

Stranger things happened still. Soon he found out Bonnie and Max had crossed paths somehow and were now dating; Kiawe got engaged to Mallow (he'd been apparently developing feelings for her the whole time when they were in school together. Ash seriously questioned how he hadn't noticed before. Wouldn't that have been obvious?); Brock got engaged to Lucy; May and Drew got married and already have a kid on the way.

The then 24-year-old was incredibly confused and wondered: had he never really noticed any of these relationship signs? It seemed odd to Ash…and the worst part was learning all of this either on his new social media accounts or by directly encountering those friends and apparently being the only one not to know.

Worse was to come. He returned home to Pallet Town a few days after learning about Kiawe and Mallow's engagement to each other. He wasn't physically or psychologically tired from the journey as Goh and Professor Cerise suspected but he took the vacation regardless because he needed a break from all the shocking news he was enduring.

"Ah, Pallet Town," sighed Ash when he saw it once he ascended to the top of the hill. "Doesn't look like much has changed." Ash huffed with content; it was a line he uttered every time he saw the place. Then has grew closer and closer he heard an orchestra of familiar sounds, sounds that didn't belong to Pallet Town. "Er…"

Past the thick tree lines that filled his right vision stood familiar yet alien buildings. There stood several new suburb blocks with several more under construction nearby. "Um, no one mentioned those last time we talked…" Ash groaned.

As he entered town, the changes hit him in his heart more. Now there were shopping strips, more than ever before, the once quaint and quiet town now a hustling bustling place. A whole crowd of elementary students rushed by him from a café he usually only saw in the big cities – the sight of it in his hometown hurt his head. He sought out his family home, yet once again, it hit him like a bullet train to the solar-plexus, and that hurt. "Oh, what in the hell is this?" asked Ash Ketchum.

Now his house was replaced with a bigger one, the material the same, now with more storage rooms and a bigger kitchen, dining, and living room. Ash slept that night, not feeling at home at all.

The next day he found his Mom already out of the house. Not thinking this strange, Ash went about his breakfast before he headed for Professor Oak's Laboratory. His time in the company of his Pokémon at the corral went by peacefully. Professor Oak and Tracey were as cordial as ever with him and nothing seemed amiss to Ash in comparison to the shock he had had for a homecoming yesterday.

Delia Ketchum was noticeably tired when Ash returned home late in the afternoon, but she hadn't given him any reason to be concerned.

The next morning saw her absent from the house yet again. Ash was unconcerned and once more set off to the Oak Corral. It was at the lab where Ash wondered if something was up, because he found the Professor and Tracey both absent.

"Huh… Strange."

He headed for a convenience store and was in the middle of walking back to his family house when he saw Gary leaving the local church. Ash froze up where he stood adjacent to the doors. "U-uh…" Ash was without words. Gary was in a tuxedo, a girl with long brown hair he didn't recognize in a wedding dress, her left arm hooked with his, Professor Oak walking nearby and his Mom in a fancy dress right behind.

"Oh, hey, Ashy-boy," said Gary as soon as he noticed him.

Ash recovered and tried not to show how stunned he was. "Hey, Gar-bear. You're…you're married – er – that's amazing!"

"Yeah, it is." Gary paused and looked at Ash. Ash's lips trembled slightly.

"So, um, no one said anything…"

"Sorry about that," said Gary awkwardly. "It was RSVP, and when I talked to your Mom, we weren't sure how available you'd be to come."

Ash's heart sank.

"I'm sorry, dear," his Mother added solemnly. "You just seemed like you really needed a rest so I didn't want you to worry about attending."

"I totally get how busy it can be as a Research Buddy so I just assumed things were busy with ya. It was a surprise to hear you came home, but like I said…"

"That and the church does get upset with last-minute arrivals," said 'Leaf'.

"Well, it's not like we were that crowded," said Gary suddenly. "A few people couldn't make it anyway. Your Mom probably prepared too much food for the reception anyway, so come with us."

"Well, um…"

"Good idea! Ash, you do have some fancy clothes for parties, right?"

"Well, yeah, I-"

"Good! Put them on and head for 720 Purwey Street. No, on second thought I'll come with you to make sure they're on right," said Delia as she ran up as fast as she could – or as fast as a woman could in heels – to him.

"Y-yeah…thanks." Ash sighed inwardly. Now all he'd done was waste his money buying some hundreds yen worth of food in the plastic bag he was carrying.

"Oh, hurry, hurry," fussed Delia as she knotted his tie on his dress shirt.

Ash grimaced and kept his thought about how they wouldn't be in a hurry if he had just known about the event that morning to himself.

The reception went by with Ash not knowing how to feel. He felt happy for Gary but he also felt an icy loneliness. He didn't know this 'Leaf' girl, never knew she existed, and couldn't shake the feeling he was a spare brought to eat the food that some five absentees left behind.

"Why wasn't I told?" he muttered to himself as he swallowed his second glass of white wine. No one heard him, though, and he preferred it to stay that way. His Mother happily conversed with some of the local ladies in attendance while Ash was left alone – he figured his own feelings didn't need to be known, the loud music and clicking of shoes on the dance floor drowned him from sight…

He felt hurt and unsure of himself. It seemed like pointless bureaucracy to think about the logistics of letting him know of the festivities. He had been around Professor Oak's practically all day yesterday, why not inform him of Gary's special day.

Delia now placed more focus than ever before into the family business left to her by his Grandmother. It turned out that the expansion to their house was necessary to allow his Mom to host cooking lessons that she started offering. Ash kindly offered to move out to leave space, his Mother gave her blessing. In truth, Ash only agreed to it because it hurt too much to feel so out of touch with everything around him.

He was glad when he was able to go back to work soon after. The problem, however, was that he soon became too engrossed to work. Months passed by, and he was forced to take an even longer Professor Cerise and Goh again.

Ash tried to spend his free time not obsessing with what else was happening, but he couldn't escape it. Tracey and Daisy had twins before his break; May had given birth while he had been researching in Hoenn and he had not been invited to say 'hello'; and Lana had recently become a CEO of a now global-expanding Riding Pokémon Training and Education Company.

"Ugh…and Lana really asked Brock and Professor Cerise to help with setting that up before asking me?" Ash hated trying to make it about him, but something stung about not being trusted enough to help with those ventures.

"Everybody…has so much going on, buddy," Ash said to Pikachu early one morning on the second-floor balcony. There hadn't really been a point to sleeping in as he'd have liked, everyone he knew was either out of town or preoccupied with other things, so he couldn't have a nightlife (not in a small town like Pallet) and doing it of his own accord wasn't really his style anyway. "They're all doing things I wouldn't have expected, or are deep in their relationships…"

Even Paul had gotten a girlfriend recently and that weirded Ash out just because his image of him was a surly one. Maybe he'd been wrong about Paul the whole time…

Still, things could be more shocking, Dawn was currently juggling two relationships at once after deciding she indeed has bisexual leanings. Then again, he isn't an expert in romance so maybe it made sense Dawn never confided this to him. Then there was Ritchie, who changed careers entirely and now is a building engineer; both Violet and Shauna separately went from fashion models and influencers into real estate and restoring national heritage sites; but perhaps worse of all was how he could see and read about pretty much everyone he knew but Misty.

He'd never been able to get an answer, not even a word. Her sisters always picked up her phone, apparently busy with meetings with the League – none of his and her mutual friends really knew either and social media was of no help. Ash sighed and drank his milked-down coffee, he had a feeling he knew what was going on, or at least an inkling. His heart ached as all of that weighed down on his mind.

"Y'know what, though?" he said to Pikachu, continuing his out loud wonderings. "There's no point in dwelling on 'ifs.' We're here, and we're now. Not like there's anything else to do, Mom's running the restaurant. Let's just go for a ride."

"Pika-chu!" said Pikachu in agreement.

Ash hurriedly got his bike out the door and after collecting a random assortment of his Pokémon friends to bring along, began his journey.

"Anywhere you really want to be, Pikachu?"

"Chu. Pika!"

"You don't have an idea either? Seems we're in agreement – anywhere we please!"

Ash biked along aimlessly. He breezed through Viridian Forest and past the city and out into the unknown, biking without awareness. He peddled through fields of flowers, past lonely farms and rice paddies, rumbled past bridges that were above rivers or dips in the grasslands, plunged into naturally formed rocky caves turned tunnels and ones purposefully built, he'd tread and weave through towns and cities, climbed up winding roads, and crested a hill and took in the sea breeze as he passed by the ocean from atop a cliff.

He took it all in, not really caring for where he was or how much time had gone. His only stop was a ramen cart at the border of some town somewhere along the way.

He didn't keep up where he was going because he didn't want to think. Thinking, he realized, only brought him pain and regret. Traveling was in his heart; he loved adventure and that was where he felt truly at ease.

Yet he couldn't escape his anxieties. Alone in the open country with only the sound of bike gears winding alongside only the occasional Pokémon cry left his brain to go back to speculation.

Had Misty found a boyfriend or girlfriend by now? Was she pregnant? Running a business or had she taken over from somebody – followed in Violet's footsteps? Perhaps all his calls in the past few months fell on deaf ears because she was preparing for her wedding? Ash shook his head, trying to will the bad thoughts away but he just couldn't. Out of everyone whose lives were changing without him knowing, it was Misty's that strangely irritated him the most. The idea of yet having to have another major epiphany of events beyond his control was too much to bear. He never noticed that he was suddenly going uphill.

Atop the slope lay a four-way crossroad. Ash in his state climbed it without a problem and when the gradient flattened, he had no way of slowing down as a stopped bike with someone on top came into view!

"Whoa! Look ou—"

With a resounding crunch, metal met metal and Ash was hurled into the dirt path.

"Ow…! Damn it. Hey, are you all right…Misty?"

Perhaps it was his last thoughts making him think it was Misty. There was no way such a coincidence as the very person he was thinking of would be there when he needed them was. No way her hair was still as short as the last time he saw her.

"Ash, is that you?"

It was her.