"I still don't really know what this one means," Ash said, on their way south from Cerulean.
The reason they were in Kanto might have been the Battle Frontier, but May had Contests as her own thing to work on, and there was a Contest Hall in Saffron so that was where they were going next.
"Maybe it means you've got a second type?" Koraidon suggested. "I've got two types, Fighting and Dragon, right?"
"Yeah, that is possible," Ash said, frowning.
He floated two Badges out of his case, then put them on his ring one at a time next to the Knowledge Symbol. The first one made him change to Water-type, but the second didn't result in any further changes – at least, until he removed the first one, then he switched to Fire-type.
"I don't think so, Koraidon," he decided. "It was a good idea though!"
"Oh well," Koraidon shrugged. "Well, it said something, didn't it? So it's not nothing, but maybe you'll find out later."
"I guess it's going to be a mystery until then," Ash agreed, putting the Badges back so he was in Normal-type mode. "Koraidon, are there any moves you want to work on?"
"Hmmm…" Koraidon frowned, thinking. "Maybe I should have a better Fighting type move than Rock Smash? It's good, but Miraidon's got two Electrical moves, and they've got a Dragon move too…"
Ash nodded. "Got it, then that's what we'll work on with you next… actually, come to think of it, we are going to Saffron City, so that could be pretty helpful actually."
"Huh?" Koraidon asked.
"Yeah, I second that huh," Pikachu said. "What are you thinking, Ash? You can't mean Sabrina."
"No, I don't mean Sabrina," Ash said. "Well, unless she's causing problems again, but I've got Absol now so that should be much easier. I actually mean Primeape!"
"Oh, yeah, good point," Pikachu nodded. "He was pretty happy with Anthony, but we could always ask for him to give Koraidon some tips."
A pause. "Only… what do you mean, Saffron? That's Celadon, Ash."
"Is it?" Ash said. "...huh."
He shook his head. "Well, uh… now I come to think of it, I said goodbye to a lot of my Pokémon from Kanto, huh? Pidgeot, though we got in touch again… Charizard's the same… Squirtle's off training to be a firefighter… Butterfree, not far from here…"
Koraidon put a paw on Ash's shoulder. "Are you okay? You sound sad."
"I am, a bit," Ash replied. "It's just… thinking about how many friends I didn't get a chance to properly talk to yet."
He frowned. "Uh. Butterfree did leave around here, right? After the Celadon thing, I'm worried…"
"And, sew that there…" May said. "See where it's folded up like that? You take in a bit of the slack with each stitch. That way it doesn't bunch up at one side, it's all even."
Pikachu nodded, watching May sew, then repeated it on her own piece.
"Why are you making two identical pointy hats, anyway?" Max asked. "If Pikachu needs a costume, isn't one going to be enough?"
"That's it, we don't know if two hats are going to be enough," May explained. "Those bits of costume that were just lying around, they didn't work, but is it enough that the costume's been made for Pikachu or does she have to do all of it herself?"
She shrugged. "Or it could be that neither of those is how it works. But it's a good enough reason to try."
"Makes sense," Max decided. "So, how is sewing going, Pikachu?"
May's Pikachu muttered something as she sewed. "Pikka-pi…"
"Right," Max nodded. "So… hard, but rewarding. Kind of like training, then."
"Pipipi," Pikachu nodded.
"I so envy you being able to do that," May said, chuckling. "Still, at least Miraidon's most of the way through teaching Pikachu Thunderbolt, I… think. So we should be good for an Appeal."
As they headed down towards Saffron, the friends ran into a reminder of the first Pokémon Ash had ever caught.
Specifically, a Caterpie, along with a trainer.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" the trainer asked.
"Being increasingly amazed how often we run into trainers who aren't old enough to be allowed Pokémon yet," Max replied.
The trainer looked very confused. "But… but you've got a Swablu on your head."
"Yeah!" Max agreed. "And she's officially my dad's Pokémon! I'd be less annoyed if Caterpie there was officially someone else's Pokémon, but still, you have no idea how often we've run into trainers who have Pokémon when they really shouldn't have them!"
May giggled. "Sore point?"
"We met a Mightyena with a nice trainer back in Hoenn, so I'm back on this one!" Max insisted.
"What's your name?" Brock asked.
"Oh – I'm Zander," the Caterpie's trainer introduced himself.
"And why did you ask us what we're doing here?" Ash added. "This is the road to Saffron, isn't it?"
"...no?" Zander replied. "You must have taken a wrong turn ages ago. We are near Saffron, but this is not the main road."
Pikachu looked amused. "Isn't Brock the one with the map?"
Ash nodded. "Yeah, he is! So Brock got us lost!"
"I'm blaming Ash for this one," Brock said.
"Ash?" Zander repeated, then gasped. "Wait, you mean that's the Ash? I thought that Pokémon had to be another one of the same species!"
"You did?" May blinked. "...why?"
"I don't know how common or rare that Pokémon is!" Zander defended himself. "Anyway, uh… I guess if you were here to threaten him he'd already have… look, Doctor Gordon's lab is near here, and I'm keeping it safe!"
Max frowned. "Hmm… did he ask you to?"
"Well, no… but it's still important!" Zander defended himself.
Ash smiled. "Hey, it's a good instinct, it's just… maybe not great to jump out at people going past and accuse them of something."
Zander looked troubled. "I… guess so."
"He's usually better than this," Caterpie volunteered. "The Doctor's been working on a lot of amazing inventions, though."
"Amazing inventions?" Ash repeated.
"What did Caterpie say?" Zander asked. "If it's about Doctor Gordon, then, yeah, he has been working on some amazing inventions-"
At that point, Doctor Gordon showed off one of his amazing inventions.
By flying past on a jetpack, steering with a pair of wings, before slowing down and descending next to them.
"Gym Leader," he said, nodding to Brock. "Is there a problem?"
"Doctor!" Zander complained in a strangled voice. "Aren't your inventions meant to be secret?"
"Oh?" Doctor Gordon asked, then looked at the jetpack he was wearing. "Oh. Well, yes, but this man is a Gym Leader, I'm sure we'll be fine. Would you like to see what I've been working on?"
Zander looked faintly scandalized by how casual the Doctor was being, but let it go.
True to form, Doctor Gordon did have some amazing inventions to show off. As well as the jetpack, based on a Zubat, he also had a microphone that could imitate the Sing move of a Jigglypuff, a Machoke suit that could give a wearer ten times their normal strength, and a helmet that could read telepathic waves.
"...so, you're basically a superhero, right?" May asked, as Doctor Gordon fiddled with the settings on the helmet. "You've got all the gear you need for it?"
"Oh, all of my research is purely scientific," Doctor Gordon replied. "Hmm, let's see… beginning brainwave scan… that's odd, all I'm getting is giggling."
Latias decloaked, waving, and Doctor Gordon sighed in relief.
"That's good," he said. "I was worried that the machine had gone wrong, it was just picking up a powerful Psychic-type."
As he muttered something about filtering out frequencies, Ash tilted his head, then sniffed.
"There's a weird smell," he said. "Do any of you guys smell that?"
"Smell… no," Brock replied, shaking his head.
"I can't smell anything either, Ash," May said. "What kind of smell is it?"
"It's a bit like that time Brock made curry last week," Ash answered. "But, not quite the same… weirdly spicy, and like… outer space, almost?"
He trotted around the lab, then pointed. "It seems to be coming from there."
"Oh, these!" Doctor Gordon said, picking up the box and turning around with it. "Well, there isn't any curry or, ah, space included in them, though there is a little bit of mushroom. These aren't actually an attempt to recreate any Pokémon powers, they're an experimental version of Rare Candy."
"I've never heard of Rare Candy," Latias said.
"Nor have I," Pikachu told her. "Ash?"
"I… don't think I've heard of Rare Candy either," Ash frowned, thinking. "Is that because it's rare?"
"It's extremely difficult to make, and it takes a lot of it to raise a Pokémon to as close to its full potential as possible," Max told them. "Is this a stronger formula?"
"That's what it's meant to be!" Doctor Gordon said, pleased. "But I haven't actually tested it yet. I don't have a Pokémon available to do the test with."
Caterpie coughed. "What am I, exactly?"
"It sounds like Caterpie's interested!" Ash said.
"...oh, yes, of course!" Doctor Gordon realized. "Though, ah… depending on how strong it is, it might mean that Caterpie and Zander can't go on a Pokémon Journey in the normal way…"
It took several minutes of discussing it, but eventually Caterpie's willingness – and the fact that Zander said that Caterpie would be his friend either way – led to Doctor Gordon conceding.
"Now, normal Rare Candy might cause a Caterpie to evolve into a Metapod," he said. "Let's see what happens here…"
He took one of his stronger Rare Candies out of their case, which made Ash realize that he'd actually been smelling it through the case, then Caterpie ate it.
And promptly grew to bigger than Brock.
"Whoa!" Ash said, skipping backwards a few steps. "What just happened? Is that like what happened to Treecko?"
"What happened to Treecko?" Caterpie asked, nervously.
"There was this thing with some Gulpin," Ash told him. "Professor Jacuzzi in Hoenn used a shrink ray, and it went wrong – but if it is the same thing, then evolving seemed to cure it."
"Jacuzzi did something like this first?" Doctor Gordon asked. "I must have missed that issue of Spectacular Science Journal, now he's going to call my work derivative."
That sounded like he felt it was worse than having a giant Caterpie in his lab… which was fortunate, because when Caterpie evolved a moment later it meant that Doctor Gordon's worst problem didn't become any worse.
When Metapod evolved again thirty seconds after that, though, it did cause a problem. Mostly because the newly-evolved Butterfree was absolutely enormous, which meant that he took the top off the lab by evolving, and he didn't even look like a regular Butterfree any more.
"What happened to him?" Zander asked, staring up at his partner Pokémon.
His wings had turned shades of bright and dark green, patterned with white, and there was a swirling red cloud around his antennae.
"Uh," Ash said, frowning. "Latias, can you get close enough that Butterfree can hear, and ask him to be calm?"
"Sure!" Latias agreed, taking off.
"I recognize this!" Brock said. "That's Gigantamax, I looked it up after Unown mentioned it! But it's supposed to only be possible in Galar, like normal Dynamax, so… maybe that's what Doctor Gordon's Rare Candy did."
"I feel weird," Butterfree announced, then hiccuped. Hiccuped again, and shrank with a flash of reddish energy that boiled off into the air.
Doctor Gordon said he was going to have to be very careful with his enhanced Rare Candies, and also replace the roof of the lab with the help of his Machoke Suit, but he assured the newly-evolved and newly-shrunk but still-oddly-shaped Butterfree that neither he nor anyone else blamed him for what had happened.
If even Doctor Gordon himself hadn't known what the candy would do, he said, how was Butterfree supposed to tell?
Thanks to Ash's translation, Butterfree and Zander assured one another they'd be going travelling together one day soon no matter what, then as they left Ash got contemplative.
"I wonder if you could do something like that," he mused, to Pikachu. "Didn't Unown say something about Pikachu having a… what was it, Gigantamax Factor?"
"That's what they said, all right," Latias confirmed.
"Dynamaxing is just growing larger, and any Pokémon can do it," Brock told them. "But Gigantamaxing is when a Pokémon takes on a special form when it happens. It's rare, but not unknown… but I don't think we have any plans to go to Galar any time soon."
"I guess we'll find out one day," Ash said. "Now, let's take the right road to Saffron this time!"
AN:
Sorry, not the same Butterfree.
Still, there you go.
Also, I've posted a set of Pokémon shorts that people might be interested in.