"And, here we are!" Ash said. "Pallet Town!"

He looked at his friends. "Brock, I know you were here before, while I was training for the Indigo League, and again after the Orange Islands. But Max, May, I don't think you've ever been here?"

"It's new to us both," May confirmed.

"I still can't believe we're going to be able to visit Professor Oak's lab," Max said softly. "He's a legend in Pokémon science."

Ash chuckled. "Yeah, I met him when he was ten, once. He was a nice kid, too."

After a moment he realized that Max, May and Latias were all staring at him.

"You did what?" Max asked, for all of them.

"Yeah, that one was time travel," Brock provided. "Only… it was his, not ours."

"It's a long story," Ash said, shrugging it off. "That was back before I knew I was really a Pokémon… back when I was still human… however you say it. But, if you guys want to go and visit Professor Oak, you should go ahead. I've got something important to do first."

"What could-" Max began.

"Max!" May protested. "We're the guests here, let Ash do what he wants!"

Max's expression cleared. "...oh, right," he realized.

Brock volunteered to lead the others to Oak's Lab, in case it was at all possible that they'd get lost, and Ash sent out both Koraidon and Miraidon.

"Ooh," Koraidon said, walking in a circle around the other two as she examined the town. "It's very spread out. It reminds me a lot of the smaller towns, not the big cities."

She tilted her head a little. "Why are some places like this?"

"I don't really know," Ash said, frowning. "I guess… some places just end up with a lot of people coming to them, and then they have to end up less spread out or the people wouldn't fit?"

"That makes sense," Miraidon declared.

Ash started walking, trotting ahead of the others a little, and even though he was a different shape than almost every other time he'd taken this path it still felt natural to do. Up the road… turn one way, turn the other… and they were at the door to his house.

He hesitated, then remembered his mother's words, and knocked on the door.

After about ten seconds, it opened.

"Who is – oh, Ash!" Delia Ketchum said, her face lighting up at the sight of him. "I didn't know you were coming back today, I thought it would be tomorrow. It's wonderful to see you!"

She looked up to Koraidon and Miraidon. "And you mentioned these Pokémon, I remember them! Koraidon and… Miraidon, I think you said?"

Both nodded, and Koraidon waved. A moment later Miraidon copied her, not quite holding their paw right at first, and Delia stepped back to let the three quadrupeds – and Pikachu, and the invisible Latias – into the Ketchum household.

As soon as they were all in, Delia sat in a chair and held her arms out.

Ash did his best to hug her. It was a bit difficult, and they had to work around where his ring got in the way, but they managed to make do and Ash felt tension he hadn't known he had drain out of him.

"I'm so glad to see you again," she murmured, after most of a minute, then let go of the embrace and Ash staggered back far enough to land on all four hooves.

"I should have remembered to use my Flying-type badge," he said.

"Oh, yes, Professor Oak mentioned that," Delia said. "And I saw your Pokémon League battles – you did so well, Ash!"

"That was mostly my Pokémon," Ash replied, a bit embarrassed, then stepped back. "Uh… Mom, there's something important you should know."

Delia looked apprehensive. "There is?"

"Yeah," Ash replied. "I thought about it a lot after meeting Rayquaza, about what it means when Dad creates someone instead of… instead of, and I decided that…"

He swallowed down his nerves. "Mom, I'd like you to meet Koraidon and Miraidon. Koraidon is my daughter, and, Miraidon is my child but they don't prefer being male or female."

Delia considered that for several seconds.

"Ash Ketchum," she said. "How long, exactly, has it been since you realized that I had grandchildren?"

"I thought we should all be together when I told you!" Ash defended himself.

"Please don't be angry at Dad!" Koraidon pleaded. "He's still working all this out but I think he's doing really well at it."

"I don't think she can understand us," Miraidon pointed out. "Can she?"

"No, Mom can't understand you," Ash confirmed.

Then Mimey came through the door with a vacuum cleaner, and Koraidon jumped on the table.

"Why did you do that?" Mimey asked. "Now there's going to be pawprints on the table!"

"I… don't actually know," Koraidon said, sounding baffled.

Once Delia had come to terms with the sudden acquisition of a pair of grandchildren, and had held a conversation with them (through Ash's translation), she visibly thought to herself for a minute before nodding.

"I'm going to make something," she declared.

"Huh?" Ash asked. "You are?"

"That's right," Delia confirmed. "I've been learning how to cut and sew fabric, so I'm going to make something for Koraidon and Miraidon to wear."

She gave the two of them an apologetic look. "I'm still at the point where I'm doing scarves. I hope that's okay?"

"What is a scarf?" Miraidion asked, turning to their sister. "Do you know?"

"I haven't heard of a scarf," Koraidion replied.

"It's… sort of a long strip of fabric," Ash said, then brightened. "Oh, I can go and get mine from-"

He stopped. "No, I can't, because I don't really fit. Not well. Um… Latias, can you get my scarf from my room? It should be, I think, in the cupboard on the left, near the top?"

Latias vanished upstairs, which was different to how she normally vanished, and there was a long moment of quiet.

"What was Rayquaza like?" Delia asked. "By the sounds of it, he's the only one of your… half-siblings? That you've actually talked to."

"I scared Groudon and Kyogre off when they were arguing, but… yeah," Ash agreed. "And he was… nice. Thinking back, he didn't know what to think any more than I did when we first met, but the second time… it was nice, talking to him."

He shook his head. "We sort of… understand where the other one's coming from? A bit? Not completely, but… enough."

Delia nodded, then Latias returned with the scarf.

"Squirtles?" Pikachu asked, looking at it.

"Yeah, that was before I met you," Ash agreed. "You know, now I think of it, the thing with how Oak met me when he was younger must have really confused him when I turned out to be a Pokémon…"

About half an hour later, Ash left with Pikachu and Latias on an important mission.

"Excuse me?" he called, in the woods just outside Pallet Town. "Is anyone here a Pidgey or do they know a Pidgey?"

"This isn't what I was expecting," Latias admitted.

"Yeah…" Ash replied. "But if I tried to go back to where I left her I'd get lost. And she wouldn't recognize me from a distance any more."

"Who do you mean?" a Pidgey asked, curiously. "And why are you speaking like a human when you're a Pokémon?"

"I'm Ash Ketchum!" Ash introduced himself. "I used to be human, it's complicated, I still haven't worked out the best way to say it! But I wanted to say hi to the Pidgeot I released a while ago."

"Pidgeot?" the Pidgey said. "You mean – wait, Ash Ketchum? So you're the trainer who Pidgeot talks about?"

He tilted his head. "I don't see it myself."

"Hey, Ash is too a good trainer!" Latias said, appearing, and Pidgey jumped.

Since he was a bird, this just meant taking off, at least once he remembered to flap.

"What Pokémon are you?" he asked. "Any of you? Except the Pikachu, that is."

"I'm an Arceus," Ash said. "Latias is, uh, a Latias."

Pidgey hovered there for several seconds.

"Is something wrong?" Pikachu asked.

"So there aren't any other invisible Pokémon here?" Pidgey checked.

"Don't think so, unless Noctowl followed us," Ash frowned.

Pidgey gave them directions, which got them moving in the vague right direction, and about ten minutes later Latias pointed up.

"I can see something," she said. "That looks like a Pidgeot!"

"Yeah, I see it too," Ash agreed, opening his badge case and attaching Winona's one to his ring. "I guess we should go and find out if that's the same one!"

He took off, then frowned. "Wait, Pidgeot are really fast… Latias, can you go and get their attention and see if they're the right Pidgeot?"

"Sure!" Latias agreed, shooting upwards, and Ash tracked her as she flew into the air.

He was slower, but he could follow her up… but as she got close to the Pidgeot, the Flying-type swerved wildly and began accelerating away from her.

"Um, Ash?" Pikachu said. "I know I only thought of it now, but… you realize that as far as Pidgeot would be concerned, Latias is a random invisible Pokémon flying straight at her, right?"

"...oh, yeah," Ash realized. "That is a good point… what would she recognize?"

"Your hat? Your voice? Me?" Pikachu listed off. "All of which mean getting closer."

"Well, I guess there's not anything to crash into in the sky," Ash said, and tried to use Extremespeed.

Maybe he wasn't quite ready for it, yet, but he didn't get the same massive burst of flight speed that Swellow could.

"I think it's because you don't have anything to push off?" Pikachu suggested.

"Yeah, the only thing up here is air," Ash admitted, then frowned. "But… you can push off air, right? That's how birds fly, they flap their wings to push against the air."

He tried again, and this time his hooves pulsed with the pale bluish-purple light they'd taken on thanks to the Feather Badge. The air whooshed around them as well as Ash managed to kick off from the air itself, and Pikachu yelped.

"I saw that, there was a ripple below us!" he said, clinging on tight to Ash's ring and saddlebag strap.

Ash did it two more times, each time blurring closer to Latias and the Pidgeot, then raised his voice.

"HEY!" he shouted. "My name's Ash Ketchum!"

The Pidgeot stopped so suddenly that Latias crashed into them.

"...oops?"Ash said, wincing. "I… guess that means that's her?"

"What," Pidgeot said, not for the first or second time.

She flapped a wing at Ash. "Just. How?"

"It's actually because of my dad," Ash said. "Actually, come to think of it, now I've got a chance to try and explain the whole thing at once… I'll do my best to keep it straight, so…"

He tapped a hoof on the ground a few times. "Okay, so. In Johto we met a witch who makes magic potions and things, and we helped her make one that would let me understand Pokémon. And it did that, by turning me into this, which she found out was actually how I was born in the first place, or, how I always was, I was just turned into a human since birth."

Ash took a breath. "Then, when I was in Hoenn, I met Rayquaza, who's… my half brother? Or, I'm his brother, he's my half brother, because he was created directly by my dad, Arceus, who's the creator of the universe. And I've made two Pokémon myself, Koraidon who's my daughter and Miraidon who's my younger child and isn't a boy or a girl. And I can fly because I'm Flying-type now, but only because of a Flying-type badge."

He paused. "I… think that's everything?"

"What even happened to you after I left," Pidgeot said.

"Oh, boy, there's a lot," Pikachu contributed. "Did you know there's a prophecy about Ash down in the Orange Islands?"

Pidgeot blinked.

"What?"

"Yeah, it mentions him by name, and everything," Pikachu explained. "This was before he even turned out to be the literal youngest son of the creator of the universe."

Pidgeot had responsibilities, now, to her flock, so she wasn't going to come back and join Ash on a permanent basis.

That was something she'd made clear right from the beginning, and Ash was glad that she'd done that. It made it obvious what they were talking about and what the options were.

On the other hand, or hoof, or wing, she was interested in coming back and joining in for the occasional battle, because it was quite different to move away and to take a holiday, and Ash re-registered her to her old Pokéball with a grateful smile.

Then, because Delia was still working on the scarves, Ash got Unown out and the two of them went to Oak's Lab for some testing.

"Okay, so… what do I actually need to do to make this work?" Pikachu asked.

"That is not immediately apparent to me," Unown replied. "There are two known ways which the energy reservoir can be used."

"I mean more how to use it at all," Pikachu clarified. "I did it exactly once, and I don't know how."

"Then that will be a problem, because I do not know how to use the reservoir either," Unown said. "Perhaps you should recreate the situation where you accessed it the first time?"

"I don't think that's going to be possible without exhausting me," Pikachu said.

Ash frowned, thinking about it.

"I don't know how helpful this idea is, but… I think it happened when we were really in sync?" he tried. "Mr. Goodshow said it was a lot like Mega Evolution, in a rules sort of way, so it might be the same kind of thing here as well?"

"This is not how Noble Pokémon work in the information I do have available, but it is possible that this is how they learn," Unown evaluated.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Bulbasaur said. "Should I?"

"...maybe?" Ash said, thinking. "But I think I'd better explain it to everyone at once, when I get the chance. Or, most of my Pokémon. So I'm not spending a lot of time explaining it over and over."

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, and focused on Pikachu.

Not just the fact that Pikachu was there, but everything about the little Electric-type. His bravery, the way that the two of them were close friends… and all the closer because of how it had begun. They'd worked for that friendship, both of them together.

There was nothing Pikachu could do to break that bond… because a Pikachu who did wouldn't really be Pikachu any more.

"Thunderbolt!" Ash said, suddenly, and there was an explosion.

His eyes snapped open, and there was a big crater steaming in the grass. Bulbasaur had hid behind a rock, Latias had zipped around to hide behind him, and Unown was floating there with a surprising lack of concern.

And there was a faint golden glow around Pikachu.

"You're glowing," Ash told Pikachu, then updated himself a second later. "And it just stopped… does that help?"

"I… think maybe?" Pikachu answered, frowning. "I sort of felt something, there."

"Maybe you can ask Koraidon for help," Ash suggested. "Or Miraidon? They've both had to deal with learning how to use or not use an ability that's normally automatic, it could be the same thing."

Pikachu tried a few more times, but before he'd quite decided if he should continue until he got something working or if it was time to stop until he could get advice from Koraidon and Miraidon… both Dragon-types came loping up, then skidded to a halt in front of Ash.

"Look!" Koraidon said, raising a paw to show off a scarf wrapped several times around her neck. "It's red, and it's got a feather pattern added to it at the ends, and there's these tassels on it too!"

"That looks nice!" Ash told her. "It goes with your colours, too."

He looked a bit closer. "How… long is it?"

"...long?" Koraidon said. "Grandmother said that she wasn't sure how much of the silk she should use, so she used all of it. But it lies flat on itself very well and it's supposed to be easily washed… Miraidon, did you remember what she said about how to wash it?"

"She said that normally you have to wash silk in cold water with a bit of soap for not very long," Miraidon provided. "But that this one was made from Octillery thread, so it was very tough and waterproof. I did not know that Octillery could make silk."

"We'll have to make sure to say thank you later," Ash decided, examining Miraidon's scarf as well.

It was a deep purple, like the majority of Miraidon's body, and had little blue lightning bolts just above the tassels – like the white-and-blue feathers on Koraidon's one.

"Let's make sure they stay safe, okay?" Ash added. "But if Mom says that they're tougher than normal, it should be okay for you to wear them anywhere you want that's not a battle."

Miraidon made a pleased noise, eyes displaying a closed-pattern for a moment.

"Now, I wonder where Brock and the others are," Ash added, frowning slightly. "I wanted to check if we were going straight to the first Battle Facility from here or not…"

They weren't.

They were going to the Battle Factory quite soon, but not straight away, and Ash thought about it a bit before deciding that he was going to ask Pidgeot to join him for some training.

He was looking forward to using her again, but that was going to go a lot smoother if Ash had the first idea how she battled now.

But that was almost inconsequential by comparison to the other thing that happened, which was that May introduced them to her new friend.

"Professor Oak was studying her, but we really hit it off," May said. "I, uh… got to talking about the Grand festival, and she was interested."

The Pikachu twitched her ears, and rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment. "I… like that sort of thing. And I know May can't understand me directly, but she could tell I was interested, and then Professor Oak pointed out that she'd been going for half an hour."

"Is it actually tradition here or something?" Max asked. "Didn't Ash get a Pikachu here as well?"

"Ash was a special case," Oak said. "I actually knew he was going to have a Pikachu, or… I very strongly suspected. So I made sure to catch a Pikachu and I knew it was going to be the right one."

"That's sometimes weird to think about," Pikachu admitted, then gave Ash a pat on the back. "But, it brought us together so it must be a good outcome overall."

"Yeah, the best," Ash agreed, fervently.

"As for Pikachu here," Oak went on. "I actually got her passed on to me in connection with Contests, because she has some quite unusual talents, but Professor Birch is specialized into Pokémon habitats and Professor Rowan is focused on Pokémon Evolution. While for a Pokémon who's focused on Contests, my own speciality into the relationships between Pokémon and human was a natural fit… at least, that is, until you came along."

"Unusual talents?" Ash asked. "I don't think I was here if that got talked about before."

"I like costumes," the female Pikachu said. "And I once did… unusual things with a miniature lab coat. And they don't know if the heart on my tail is related to that or not."

"Unusual things?" Ash's Pikachu said. "What kind of unusual things?"

"She said before," Max provided. "She made a miniature lab coat costume, then suddenly she used Explosion by mistake and blew the costume to bits."

"I'm still so embarrassed," she mumbled. "One minute I was trying to show that I was interested in Contests, the next I was standing in a pile of fabric scraps and a big scorch mark and it turned out he already knew…"

"While Pikachu's enjoyment and happiness is the most important thing about this whole situation," Oak said, as if any of them had needed reminding, "I'm endlessly fascinated by the variation we find in Pokémon of all sorts. I'd appreciate it if both of you could let me know what your unusual Pikachu are able to achieve, as time goes on."

"That would be fine, right?" May asked, looking at Pikachu, then shook her head. "Sorry. Would that be all right?"

"That's fine," the Pikachu agreed. "I just hope that if this works with other costumes it doesn't involve explosions."

AN:

It's nice to meet relatives.

And May picks up a Kanto Starter at the Oak Labs, as per standard issue.

...what?