"I know you're a tough Pokémon, Swellow," Ash said. "I know it, you know it… you don't need to prove it to us. And I'm sorry if you got that idea from somewhere."
"I know I don't need to prove it to you!" Swellow replied. "I just don't want to lose, that's completely different!"
"Swellow-" Ash began, then bit his words off, and was silent for a long moment as he tried to work out what to say.
"...I don't know how I can help," Miraidon admitted, looking back at Swellow perched on their back. "And I feel like I should be able to help. Is that wrong?"
"I think it's okay to not know what to say or how to help," Ash assured them. "It's not… it''s not an easy topic, because if it was then I think we'd already have worked out how to do it. But… Swellow, there's different kinds of battle, okay?"
He waved back in the vague direction of the Battle Arena. "And, I don't know. Maybe you're so dedicated that you don't want to lose any battle. I guess I could see the idea behind that, you've got a strong drive to win. But, even if some battles are worth hurting yourself over, not all of them are. And… I'd hate how I'd feel if you hurt yourself by straining too hard. Let your teammates handle it too, right?"
"But-" Swellow began, then it was his turn to stop and think.
"I… guess I get the idea," he said, a little reluctantly. "There are some things where it's okay to not really push yourself to the limit."
"It depends what going to the limit means for you," Ash replied. "It's like, uh… if you were trying to run a race, then you could sprint as fast as you wanted towards the finishing line, but if the finishing line is to reach a wall, it's faster to just slam straight into the wall at full speed. It's just not… healthy, I guess?"
Ash, Pikachu, Latias, Miraidon and Swellow all considered that.
"What about if I crashed through the wall?" Latias asked.
"I don't think that's the point of the idea," Pikachu sniggered. "It's more like… it's to do with how bad it would be if you didn't succeed, right?"
"Yeah!" Ash agreed. "It's about that. Koraidon was still there to help out even once you switched out, but even if she hadn't been – what's the worst that could happen?"
Ash kept going before Swellow could answer. "The worst that could happen is that I lose, and I have to come back and try again later. And… I don't know, maybe if it was a really important battle like in the League, or if someone was trying to kidnap Koraidon or Miraidon or – or any of my Pokémon, then fighting that hard would make sense. But I'd like to know that so I can make that decision, okay?"
Swellow huffed, then flipped his wings in a shrug. "I guess."
"Thanks, Swellow," Ash told him. "That's all I really want to ask… make sure I can make the decision myself, so I don't have to guess. Now, uh… I did have this idea to give you a better Flying-type attack. How does Aerial Ace sound?"
"It sounds-" Swellow began, then there was an explosion from up ahead.
He took off immediately, oriented himself on the problem, then darted ahead.
"We'd better see what's going on," Ash decided, and broke into a canter.
By the time they'd got there, fortunately, the situation had been defused. Or disarmed.
Or whatever the right word was for when Voltorb weren't exploding any more.
It turned out the road they'd been taking went right by a farm, and the farm was defended by several Voltorb and a girl with a Vileplume, but the girl was also an aspiring Coordinator and had quickly recognized May from her Saffron Contest win.
Then one thing led to another, and the friends were invited to the farm, and Nicolette – that was her name – introduced her parents Christopher and Jeannie to the group and vice versa.
"It's an honour to have guests like you around," Christopher said. "Though I never thought I'd have quite so many Pokémon around the table at once."
He nodded at Ash. "Especially not one who's a trainer."
"By now I'm used to it," Ash replied, with a kind of shrug. "It's funny how quickly you get used to things sometimes. I guess if it was always annoying, or if it started out not feeling right, that might last longer, but for me it was… mostly just kinda inconvenient at times, and I've worked out how to deal with most of that now."
"That's wonderful to hear," Jeannie said.
"So, what kinds of things do you grow on your farm?" Brock asked. "We didn't see any fields."
"That's because this is a Pokémon Nursery as much as anything," Christopher answered. "We deal with Pokémon eggs, keeping them in a safe environment for people who can't take their eggs with them or who want to put the eggs up for adoption."
Miraidon raised a paw.
"What is it, Miraidon?" Ash asked. "Something wrong?"
"I have heard of eggs, but I do not actually know what they are," Miraidon said. "Would you be able to explain?"
"...oh, right," Ash said. "Huh. Now I think about it, I don't think we've had an egg with the group since Koraidon was created, either… I'll have to get your sister so we can explain it to the two of you at the same time, okay?"
"That would be a good idea," Miraidon concurred.
"So… okay," Ash said, once Koraidon was there as well. "The way eggs work is that… so you two both didn't have any, because of how you were created, but what normally happens when a Pokémon is born is that they have two parents. That's a mom and a dad. And then they make an egg together."
Koraidon put her paw up.
"How?" she asked.
"I'm not sure of the details, because I haven't done that bit," Ash replied. "I know it's different to how it happens with humans, because humans don't work the same way, and that's… I think it's the main way humans are different from Pokémon? I don't actually know that bit, sorry, except that it's something to do with combining their energies somehow… and that what the Pokémon is is based off the mom, not the dad."
Brock looked like he had an answer, but he also looked like he very much did not want to answer.
"Anyway, an egg is… well, I guess if the people who live here are okay with it, we can see lots of them afterwards, but they're sort of shaped like Togepi with their spikes curled up together," Ash resumed. "Or like Phanpy or Cyndaquil when they're curled up, but without all the little bumpy bits, they're just smooth and not quite ball shaped."
Two attentive nods.
"And an egg is a sort of… halfway place before the Pokémon is born," Ash resumed. "I know an egg can see and hear things before it hatches, but I don't know quite how clear that is or if it works for the whole time before the egg hatches. And inside the Pokémon is growing up a little bit, and learning things, so that when it hatches out it knows some of how things work… but I've only been able to understand one newly hatched Pokémon so far, so I don't know if it's different for different ones."
"That would have made things a lot less confusing," Miraidon agreed. "If I had been able to listen to what was going on for ten to thirty days before I was required to take part in things, I would have been less confused."
"It's sometimes a lot longer than that," Ash told them. "But… yeah, sorry about that."
He scraped a hoof against the ground, nervously. "I… I'm sorry about how I did that, you know? It was an emergency, and I wanted Rayquaza to be okay, and – I don't regret that you both exist, but it would have been nice if I'd thought it through better or… something."
After a moment of silence, Ash shook his head. "Sorry about that… I should finish. So, um… okay, when the Pokémon is ready to hatch, the egg glows, and they come out of it. It's like how… oh, a good example is how Morrison's Girafarig evolved into a Farigiraf? They do that, but it's from the egg to whatever they hatch out into."
"So all Pokémon have evolved, at least that way," Koraidon said, thinking. "Or, almost all of them?"
She frowned. "Does that mean you evolved from a human?"
"I guess maybe it does," Ash laughed.
"I understood enough of that to know that you have a weird story for how you got those Pokémon," Christopher chuckled. "But I did hear the bit about showing what eggs are like, so let's go and have a look."
The egg shed was very neatly arranged, with shelves of the differently coloured eggs stored in racks, and Nicolette and her parents pointed out the different features.
"There's usually a couple of minutes of warning at least when an egg is about to hatch," Jeannie told them. "Since some Pokémon hatch out larger than others, there's a system that makes sure an egg that we don't manage to attend in time is lowered onto the floor, but we can identify most of the eggs by their patterns."
"I didn't know there were so many patterns," Koraidon breathed, looking at the eggs in their dozens. "These look like the Pokémon that will hatch, right? The… um, the first form, anyway. Not the one they evolve into."
Ash translated, and Nicolette nodded. "Yeah!" she said. "So this one with the green shell and the back band and spots, that's a Spinarak, that one is really easy. And that one with the black stripes on a yellow shell, that's Elekid… probably, anyway?"
She looked at Christopher for confirmation, and he nodded. "That's right, that one's Elekid. It's a little tricky at times, but there's books of the common ones that day-care workers can check up on."
"I wonder what my egg would have looked like, if I'd had one," Koraidon said.
"I think it would have had something to do with your feathers!" Latias replied.
Koraidon's paw went unconsciously to her scarf. "I'd like to think that, that would be nice."
"So… I'm wondering," Max admitted. "How do eggs end up here? I guess most Pokémon eggs are in the wild, right? Or taken care of by their trainers?"
"That's true, well guessed," Christopher agreed. "Facilities like this are mostly to handle the kinds of eggs which don't have somewhere else to go, though that sounds much more cruel than the situation really is."
Ash had been worried, so it was good to hear that.
"We handle special cases," Jeannie said. "Sometimes eggs are found by themselves, and if they're not claimed by the trainer who finds them they're handed in to daycares like this. Sometimes it's the best way to make sure that the eggs have a good chance of finding a trainer who has a place on their team for them… and sometimes we place them elsewhere. With Gym Leaders, as starter Pokémon, even releasing them into the Safari Zone or other places for wild Pokémon. It all depends how it works out."
"Huh," Ash said. "So, when I got Phanpy, his egg was a prize for winning a race… and that was almost, to make sure that when the egg hatched they had a trainer?"
"That's right," Christopher confirmed. "Every egg is different, and we do our best to treat them all that way."
He frowned. "Hmm…"
"I know that hum," his wife said. "You're thinking of asking them if they'd like an egg or two, aren't you?"
"...well, way to be obvious about it," Nicolette's dad grumbled.
In the end, the offer was made to both Ash and May. Brock was asked as well, but he declined, saying that it was an honour but it really made more sense if the next person in his family to get an egg was one of his younger siblings like Yolanda or Salvadore instead.
May thought about it for a long minute, then asked her Pokémon to choose, and that led to a few more minutes of discussion before they picked out an egg with cream whirls on a brown base.
"I think I know what this one is, and I like the idea," Cosplay-Chu said. "It seems to fit."
As for Ash, he asked Koraidon and Miraidon if they had any thoughts, and Koraidon sat down in thought.
"Hmm," she said. "What egg has been here the longest?"
"What egg's been here the longest?" Ash translated.
"The longest?" Christopher repeated, which made Latias snigger because the same thing had been said three times in a row. "Hmm, I think we might need to check that…"
"No, we don't need to," Nicolette said. "I know already, I looked it up once."
She shuffled along the rows, to a pale almost-white egg with a little red swirl on the very top, and put her finger on it.
"This one," she told them all. "It's the last one left in the transfer you got back when you started."
"When we started?" Jeannie asked. "You're… no, I won't ask if you're sure. You must be. But… that was years ago."
"Do eggs not normally take that long?" Koraidon asked. "Is something wrong with them?"
None of the daycare workers may have spoken Pokémon, but they all understood Koraidon's tone of voice.
"It's extremely rare for an egg to just… never hatch," Christopher said. "But when that does happen, we can tell because something about the egg changes. And that hasn't happened with this one, so it should be able to hatch – it just hasn't, for whatever reason."
He nodded. "I'll get you sorted out with two egg cases and the things you'll need, then…"
"There's a lot about the world, isn't there?" Koraidon asked, the next morning, as they left. "Things that… I don't know how to say it but I know what I mean. It always feels like, if you look closer, there's more to see. If you look deeper."
She looked over at Ash. "Thank you for creating me, Dad… I know you're sorry you did it by mistake, but I'm still going to thank you!"
Ash blinked a few times to try and shed the wetness in his eyes. "That's great to hear, Koraidon."
AN:
The circumstances of one's birth may be irrelevant, but kids ask questions.