"Cycling Road," Max said, checking the Pokénav. "I've heard about it, but I've never seen it before."
"...actually, how are we going to go down it?" Brock asked. "I know we planned it, but…"
He waved at the four of them, vaguely.
"Koraidon and Miraidon are close enough, right?" Ash asked. "That's two… then the other two of us can fly alongside. I can fly, and Pidgeot or Latias can give someone a lift."
Brock nodded. "That makes sense!" he said. "And, it keeps actual bicycles as far away from Pikachu as possible!"
May giggled. "I heard about that," she said. "I think my bike got off easy…"
"Though… now I think about it, isn't the Cycling Road over the sea?" Max checked. "I didn't know we were so close to the sea already… I'd have expected us to reach Fuchsia City first."
"That's because there isn't only one Cycling Road," Brock explained. "Because…"
He trailed off.
"Do you not know?" May asked.
"What?" Brock said. "No, it's because there's more than one road built for cycling! The one over the sea is more famous, but there are several of them. There's one in Sinnoh, actually."
Ash tilted his head, thinking.
"I wonder if they'd let me canter along?" he asked. "Koraidon and Miraidon would have to run slow to let me keep up, but that might be nice."
"We probably need to ask them," Brock decided, then they rounded a corner and saw the actual Road itself.
Which was closed.
"Oh," Max said. "Well, so much for that, then… I guess we're walking to Fuchsia?"
"Now I think about it…" Brock began. "Maybe we don't actually have to. This is a brand new road, and it's very nice, but the old route that was here before is probably still okay for Koraidon and Miraidon – if they're okay giving us a lift. And Pidgeot's obviously very fast…"
They didn't actually need Pidgeot at all, because Koraidon could carry both Max and May, but they hadn't gone more than a mile down the old path before they ran into someone.
Fortunately, Miraidon had reacted fast enough that that wasn't literally.
"Whoa!" the young woman said, staring. "Uh… wait, those do look vaguely familiar…"
She turned her attention to Ash. "Oh, yeah, now I remember – there was a bulletin about you. Hold on a sec."
"A… bulletin?" Ash repeated. "What's one of those?"
"Ranger bulletins," she told him, fiddling with something on her wrist.
"She's a Pokémon Ranger!" a Plusle told them. "I'm her partner Pokémon!"
"A Pokémon Ranger, huh," Ash said. "I met some of you guys up near Mount Silver, you don't catch any Pokémon but you get them to help you out in the wild, right?"
"That's right," she confirmed. "Aha, there we go… Ash Ketchum, Pokémon who is also a trainer… has Legendary Pokémon. Neat!"
Ash looked interested. "You send out bulletins about things like that?"
"It's one of the ways to make sure the Rangers don't try and rescue Pokémon from trainers who aren't actually a problem," she said. "Oh, yeah, I should introduce myself. I'm Solana!"
"Brock!" Brock said. "Your name's as beautiful as mrffph-"
"Is this right?" Koraidon asked, her paw over Brock's face. "Usually Max does this bit."
Ash laughed. "I think that was fine, Koraidon."
They went through the rest of the introductions, then Solana got down to business.
"I'm actually in the area to try and work out what's going on with the Cycling Road," she said. "There's a thicket of vines across the whole central area, and that's got to be because of a Pokémon – and if there's trouble being caused by a scared Pokémon, it's a Ranger who sorts it out!"
"Huh!" Ash said. "That's neat, it's good to know things like that get handled when we're not around. Right, guys?"
Solana looked a bit nonplussed. "...that makes it sound like dealing with it is normally your job."
"We do do that kind of thing sometimes," May admitted, thinking about it. "But Ash speaks Pokémon, so how do you do it?"
"Thanks to this!" Solana told her, revealing her Capture Styler. "This is a Ranger-exclusive bit of advanced technology which conveys the conviction of the Ranger to help out Pokémon – not to capture them."
"Oh, I get it," Ash realized. "That's why Plusle is your partner, not your Pokémon. If you caught him with a Pokéball, you couldn't honestly say you never caught Pokémon."
Solana snapped her fingers. "Right, you catch on fast! Now… it actually would help to have someone who can translate Pokémon along, and since you guys are here already, mind giving me a hand?"
"Sure!" May said, for all of them. "Let's clear the Cycling Road!"
Solana led them ahead for about five minutes, and they came to a mess of vines.
"Well, here we go," she said. "Activating the scanner for nearby Pokémon to get help from…"
Ash lifted up Absol's Pokéball, and sent him out.
"Hmm," Absol said, tilting his head. "I can't pick up any signs of incipient disaster."
"So, what's new?" Pikachu asked.
"Absol can cut through the vines for us," Ash pointed out, then frowned.
Stepped closer to one of the vines, and sniffed.
Latias noticed his gesture. "What's up, Ash?"
"I can smell diamonds again," Ash explained. "Which… based on the last few times, means that there's something to do with time involved, right?"
Solana looked completely lost. "...what?"
Absol used Night Slash and cut a vine.
"I really hope the other Rangers don't hear about this," Solana decided. "It may solve the problem, but having someone else's Pokémon do it instead of recruiting wild ones to help feels wrong."
"False Swipe," Absol declared, slashing through the latest set of vines.
"How exactly is that a false swipe?" Latias asked, curious. "I know it's one of those attacks that's carefully measured, but you keep using it to do, uh… proper swipes?"
"That certainly sounds like it's not living up to the description, which makes it false," Absol said.
Max sniggered.
"Can you understand Pokémon as well?" Solana said.
"Not directly, but Ralts is giving me translation," Max explained. "Absol was saying that his False Swipe doing proper swipes made sense because it was false at being false."
Solana frowned.
"I… think I get that," she said, eventually. "I wonder how much further there is to go through this to get to the source…"
"Well, I can speed things up," Absol suggested, and tossed his head. Wind coiled around him, then slashed forwards as he used Razor Wind, and vines fell away on both sides of a neat corridor sliced into the thicket.
"So, why didn't you do that before, exactly?" Pikachu asked.
Absol shrugged. "Good question," he replied. "I suppose doing this isn't a disaster and so I had no idea if it was going to happen."
Pikachu snorted unwillingly, and Ash trotted forwards – then blinked in surprise as a Pokémon appeared from out of the vines.
A Celebi.
"Whoa," Solana said softly. "I've vaguely heard of one of those?"
"So you're why I was smelling time travel!" Ash said, glad to have that answered. "Is something wrong?"
"Well, wrong… not wrong… it depends on your perspective!" Celebi replied. "So I got hurt stopping these vines from being on fire, and I went back in time a day or two to heal and made these vines to make sure I'd be safe while I did."
Latias raised a claw, then lowered it again.
"Um," she began. "I think I follow that?"
"So there's going to be a fire?" Ash asked, worried. "I should get Marshtomp ready to help-"
"No, that's the perspective thing!" Celebi said. "See, now the fire never happened because you helped out and stopped it in the first place, and then the people who would have caused the problem that caused the fire stopped showing up I think, but the vines still happened and apparently if I try to make the vines stop happening then there's a problem. So… no problem except the vines."
"So there's not going to be a fire?" Ash checked.
"Yeah!" Celebi confirmed. "Though there might have been if you hadn't showed up? I think? I'll be honest, I've got a lot of advice from myself about this one but I've only actually done it once. Hold on, I'll be showing up in a moment and I want to let myself know about it."
Celebi flew up into the rapidly greying sky, meeting up with another Celebi, then the other Celebi vanished in a flash.
"All done!" Celebi said, glowing green, and the vines ungrew. "Sorry about the problem there!"
"Huh," Pikachu frowned. "Is it me, or is it about to rain?"
"Yeah, that's what stopped the fire the first time through," Celebi said. "I… think? There's a bit of a telephone problem going on here, I've done my best to tell myself what I remember being told and hopefully it should be stable by now."
Rain was now pattering down around them, and Celebi nodded to themselves in satisfaction before vanishing.
Pidgeot sent herself out, perching on Ash's back and spreading her wings as an umbrella, and everyone hurried to hide underneath them.
"We should take cover under a tree until this rain blows over," Brock suggested. "And then Ash can tell us what just happened, because we missed almost that whole conversation."
"It doesn't make much more sense with translation," Max volunteered.
"Over there?" Ash suggested, pointing to a tree with his hoof.
As he did, though, he caught sight of a purple-maned blue shape in the trees – Suicune – but the Water-type ran off before he could say hello.
"I… guess that's where the rain came from?" he said. "I just saw Suicune."
"Of course you did," Solana sighed, trying not to laugh.
Fortunately, from there heading to Fuchsia was an easy enough thing to do. Cycling Road was clear now, and they could actually do what they intended, and Ash had an enjoyable few hours cantering alongside Koraidon and Miraidon as they sped across southern Kanto.
When they reached Fuchsia, though, it was… sort of obvious why they hadn't come this way the first time they'd entered the city. It was a bit run down, and disappointing, though the signs to the nearby Pokémon Centre were clear enough so the friends headed over there and Ash gave both his elder kids a rest.
"I wonder who I should use against the… what was it, again?" Ash asked. "Battle Pike, I think?"
"That's the one," Max said. "It's the Luck Symbol, but I don't know what it means more than that."
"Well, so far I've used… Pidgeot, Koraidon, Kingler, Swellow, Pikachu and Miraidon," Ash recited, thinking out loud. "I should probably use someone else… maybe if it's luck then Absol would be good? Apart from that I'm not sure, but I should make sure I've got a good selection of Pokémon available… I'll need to talk to Professor Oak about it, before we go there."
"Is there a connection between Absol and luck?" Pikachu asked.
Absol huffed. "I could tell whoever I'm battling that they should be glad I'm doing it, would that count?"
"There's some Pokémon abilities that rely on making the Pokémon more lucky, like Serene Grace and Super Luck," Brock said. "They're both ones that the Togepi line can have, which is one reason they're sometimes considered to bring good luck. Chansey can have Serene Grace, as well."
"Neat!" Max said, then frowned. "...you know, by now usually May has at least had something to say."
He looked around. "Where is she?"
"I know she came into town with us," Ash replied, thinking. "Right, Latias?"
"Yeah, she got off Koraidon at the same time as Max did," Latias supplied. "Then… no, I don't remember what-"
Ash nearly fell over as the world did something weird.
It was like a lurch sideways, but in a direction Ash couldn't point in if he tried, and there was the sudden, momentary but overwhelming taste of diamonds. Then his ring lit up with a golden shimmer, and he caught himself, and suddenly everything was normal again.
"Uh," he said, blinking. "What happened?"
"Ash!" Latias gasped.
"Are you all right, my lord?" Absol asked. "You staggered, but I didn't see why. Are you well?"
"I… don't know what happened," Ash admitted. "I just felt really weird for a moment, then suddenly it was… normal… again?"
He started out the window.
There was a bustling community outside… which didn't look like it had when they'd arrived.
Or three minutes ago.
"Is something wrong?" an old woman asked. "Looking for May?"
"Yeah, but – huh?" Ash asked. "I'm really confused…"
"She'd better hurry, the egg's about to hatch," the woman said. "It's a terrible shame to miss the hatching of an egg you're looking after!"
Ash looked at the egg on its cushion, which was definitely the same one that May had been given, then took a deep breath to calm down.
"Latias, can you go look for May?" he asked. "Pikachu, I… have some questions…"
Pikachu was very confused about why Ash was suddenly asking who this woman was, but once he explained that the woman was Edna, a Pokémon paediatrician, and that they thought May's egg would hatch soon it sort of made sense… except why Ash didn't remember meeting her in the first place.
Then May came rushing in, just in time, and she crouched down to say hello as an Eevee hatched from the egg.
"Sorry I nearly didn't get here in time," she said, then chuckled, and stroked Eevee's fur.
"That's okay!" Eevee replied. "It's nice to meet you. You're May, right?"
"Yeah, that's May," Ash confirmed.
"That's me," May agreed, picking up the Normal-type and cuddling him. "Are they healthy?"
"Eevee seems to be fine to me," Edna replied. "I'd like to give him a more thorough check-up, but that can wait until you've introduced him."
Eevee's tail wagged a bit, and May turned to bring him over to the table with the others.
"...so, uh," she began, in a low voice. "You guys are not going to believe this, but I just went back in time and I think I changed history by getting Snorunt and Octillery to make it snow, and-"
"That's what happened!" Ash realized. "That's why I felt weird, time must have changed around me. I didn't know I could sense that."
He frowned. "Uh… I think I might remember both versions now? I'm not certain though."
"We should really start taking notes on how often this happens," Max sighed.
AN:
It's sort of appropriate for this one to come a day early.
Lots of time related shenanigans in this one, courtesy of two episodes in this part of the anime which both had it come up in a three week period.