They stayed keeping an eye on Zero until help arrived – specifically, Lucian of the Elite Four, a dignified trainer with a Psychic-type speciality who took over the task of ensuring Zero wouldn't get away.

Then they all went back into the Reverse world, thanks to Giratina this time, and Cynthia finally got a chance to properly interview Ash's sister – about her ancestor, about the past, about what the Reverse World was like, about everything she could think of as an increasingly bemused Giratina answered and Lucario translated.

While that was going on, Shaymin absorbed the clouds of corruption in the area and detonated a Seed Flare, forming a portal that shimmered before fading again, and Ash switched to his Rain Badge and climbed to the top of a waterfall.

The water didn't have any kind of source that he could see, flowing out of thin air to run along only a few feet before crashing down in a cascade that sent mist into the air, and Ash stood on the water to look out over Giratina's world.

"You all right?" Pikachu asked. "You don't seem very… energetic."

"I guess," Ash replied. "I'm just… dealing with how worried I am, over what happened to Giratina. How I should have done things differently – maybe if I'd used Judgement sooner Giratina wouldn't have been in so much risk…"

He shook his head. "But, uh, that's not the only thing. I was thinking about everything else, as well. About what it must have been like for Giratina, and how lonely she must be…"

"Maybe she's the sort of person who likes to be on her own," Pikachu suggested.

"Yeah, I guess," Ash agreed. "But even then, it'd be nice for her to have the option, right?"

He shrugged. "I was wondering if… I don't know, maybe I could show her where Pallet Town was, and then she'd be able to visit Mom. I'd have to tell Mom first though."

"That's true," Latias agreed. "It might be a bit confusing for her if Giratina appeared… especially if he appeared inside the fridge."

That startled a giggle out of Ash.

"Giratina's Dragon-type," he protested. "But that would be funny, yeah…"

Shaymin flew back down, and landed with a sigh.

"I'm bushed!" she said. "Ahem. Not… you know what I mean. But doing Seed Flare is actually tiring, it's not something I can do all the time."

"I was wondering about that," Ash admitted. "Thinking about if the Reverse World's corruption is a problem that we can fix… it's way too big for you to fix, I guess, Shaymin. Even if you wanted to spend all your time doing it, it's just too big a job."

"Yeah, I have to admit it," Shaymin said. "And, I don't mind helping out some, but… doing the whole thing? Way too much."

Ash nodded, but he was thinking hard.

There had to be some way to fix things for Giratina…

Once Cynthia had run out of questions, they went back to where the whole thing had started, because there was a big crashed ship – one that Zero had called the Megarig – to clear up and get back out of the Reverse World, and then dispose of properly.

That meant Cynthia was making some phone calls once they reached Ash's portal – still open – and Ash, Dawn and the Pokémon were looking over the Megarig to make sure there wasn't anything left in there that might be dangerous. Or any Magnemite stuck inside.

"It's a bit messed up," Ash said, floating downwards. "But I think this might be where the thing that caught you was coming from?"

He glanced up at Giratina. "Do you recognize it?"

"I was a bit distracted," she replied. "But… yes, I think so."

"Then we'd better make sure it doesn't work any more," Ash decided. "I guess Zero knows how it was built, or – however that works, but if we leave a working one then someone else could come along and copy it. Right?"

"Makes sense to me," Sandshrew said. "So… how do we make sure it doesn't work?"

"I hadn't thought that far," Ash admitted, embarrassed. "Maybe just look for anything that seems important and take it out? I'm kind of tired today, but I could probably destroy it tomorrow… the bits which are just, you know, metal and wires, they might not be important."

"How do you deal with it?" Giratina asked, suddenly.

"Huh?" Ash asked, looking up.

"How do you deal with not knowing your purpose?" she said. "I had to struggle with that myself, but you seem so… sure of yourself. Of who you are and what you're meant to do. And you have so many…"

"I guess… when I was young, I didn't know about being a Pokémon," Ash replied, and floated up a bit further so neither he nor Giratina had to crane their necks. "I was just a human, and I wanted to be a Pokémon master. Which, uh… started with winning gym battles and catching Pokémon, and I wasn't really sure where it was going to end?"

He shrugged. "I sort of decided I'd work that out when I got there. But then, when I found out who I really was – not just that I was a Pokémon, I mean… hang on, I need to go back a bit."

Ash frowned, trying to go back over those first few months.

"When I realized I was a Pokémon, but didn't know what Pokémon, at first I kind of tried to ignore it," he said. "Or, what it meant. I just tried to keep doing the same things I'd been doing as a human, and that was hard enough, and then I had to deal with having made Koraidon. But when I found out who my dad was and what kind of Pokémon I was, I couldn't ignore it any more. And since then I've been…"

Another long pause.

"You've been deciding what kind of person you want to be," Pikachu suggested.

"Yeah," Ash agreed. "I've been trying to decide what kind of person I want to be. To aim for being. And that's… helped, I guess. And I want to meet Dad, as well."

Giratina laughed.

"It's so strange to hear you talking about him like that," she said. "But… it's right, as well. I'm glad to have you for a brother, Ash."

Ash smiled, then looked to the side as Pikachu jumped down off his back.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"I thought I saw something," Pikachu explained. "I was looking down at the wreckage, and, uh… hang on…"

Pikachu used his tail to brush aside some debris, then pulled something out.

It was a little piece of five-sided red crystal, attached to a cut-off wire.

"Huh," Ash frowned. "What's that?"

"That feels like the Red Chain," Giratina said. "But… that's…"

She looked around. "Where's Dawn? I think I know what that is, but she would know for sure."

"Yeah, this is definitely a bit of the Origin Ball," Dawn agreed. "And if it's attached to a wire… if there was one bit of it here, there might be more."

She looked up at Giratina. "I'm sorry about this."

"Why be sorry about it?" Giratina asked. "My actions drove you to need it. And then you destroyed the ball again. You couldn't have known."

Ash passed that on, and Dawn nodded.

"But I'm still sorry," she reiterated. "And I mean that because… I wish you hadn't been hurt by this. Even if it is a good thing that we know how Zero trapped you… and if it needs these to do it, so long as we make sure we know where all of them have ended up, you'll be safe."

She frowned. "Actually, I hope it took all of the bits. That way, they're all here and we just need to find them…"

Despite their best efforts and a search that resumed the next day – as far as days existed in the Reverse World – they only managed to assemble about half of the old Origin Ball. It had shattered cleanly into fragments, either pentagons or hexagons, but some of them simply weren't in the wreckage of the Megarig.

The mystery of where it had come from was resolved a short while later, or at least part of the mystery, when one of the Magnemite from the Megarig explained that they knew Zero's mentor Newton Graceland had found the fragments somewhere – and that Zero had stolen them, along with the plans for the Megarig.

"Newton… hmm," Giratina said. "What did they look like?"

"Brown hair, male, red shirt," Magnemite replied. "More than that I don't know."

"I… might have seen him," the Ghost-type decided. "More than once, though I never paid him much attention. If he lives here by choice… I'm not sure how to think about that."

She made a kind of shrugging motion. "Though… I think if I see him again, I will approach. And see what he thinks."

"You'd probably make his whole year by doing that, if I know researchers," Cynthia said, once Lucario had translated. "And I do know researchers."

Riolu nodded. "Yeah, if he's someone who moved here – and he'd have to, I guess, he wouldn't be able to leave easily so he couldn't go back and forth – then he must love the Reverse World. And if Zero stole the bits of the Origin Ball from him, this Newton guy probably wouldn't be okay with what happened."

He blinked, head tilting a bit. "I think? It's all a guess, but, if the plans came from him then he'd have built one first otherwise, right?"

Ash had been halfway through saying goodbye to Giratina that morning before realizing that, actually, they could just go through the Reverse World to the next Pokémon Centre on their journey, and Shaymin had helped out enough to clear up the Reverse World on their route. It took a bit of trial and error, looking through each Reverse World portal Shaymin made before sealing it up again, but eventually they found the Pokémon Centre and Ash revealed why he'd wanted them to go there.

"Okay, you two," he said. "Remember what I explained about Giratina?"

Miraidon emerged from their Pokéball first.

"I remember," they confirmed, eyes blinking. "Hello, uncle."

Mew came out next, and floated up silently.

"It's nice to meet you," they told the Ghost-type. "Do… I didn't think to ask this before, but what was the original Mew like?"

"...flighty," Giratina said, which prompted a giggle from Koraidon. "Ash – these are the other two children you mentioned?"

"Yeah, Miraidon and Mew," Ash confirmed. "Koraidon was sort of an accident, like I said, Miraidon was on purpose for a specific reason but it's enough for them to just be, and Mew was… kind of a rescue mission. They were sort of a virtual Pokémon at first, made by a human, but the human didn't like them, and then I made them real."

"I don't like saying that Yung made me," Mew admitted. "I know he did, he was involved, but… Ash is my dad, and he did the important bit. And he cared. He still does."

Giratina bowed her head. "I see," she said. "It's been so long, I have trouble truly remembering how our father – your grandfather, Mew – was at first. I don't know how much of my memories are true and how much of them are poisoned by resentment."

"Rayquaza said that dad was kind," Ash contributed. "I guess… a lot of this is that I want to find out what he's really like. All of what he's really like, the good bits and the bad bits… to make sure he knows about me, and about Miraidon, Koraidon and Mew. And about, well… Walking Wake and Iron Leaves, if they exist then yet."

Giratina blinked.

"That sounded a bit Dialga," she said, hesitantly.

"Walking Wake and Iron Leaves are two of Ash's created children who haven't actually been created yet, but they do time travel," Pikachu explained. "So they've been around before. They're actually why Dawn ended up in the past, or possibly why she got back to the present… might have been involved with her phone as well."

"Yeah, it's… well, it's kind of confusing, but that's more their thing, right?" Ash asked. "So I just kind of trust them to handle it… or I guess I will trust them? No, that doesn't work, I do trust them to have been good enough at it…"

"I think I'm remembering entirely different reasons why I don't normally seek out Dialga," Giratina said. "Though… after your advice, Ash, I will make time to visit the Lucario Kingdom. I remember their founder well, though it's only now that I know who their founder actually was…"

"I know that feeling," Samurott said, mostly to herself. "Perspective."

"...actually, I should do this before I forget," Ash decided suddenly. "I asked Unown about it before, but I was too tired for it then… Unown? Am I still too tired?"

"Determining subject from context," Unown replied. "You are not."

"Great!" Ash said.

"What is it you're going to do?" Cynthia said. "It sounds like it's something to do with Giratina, or the Reverse World?"

"Both," Ash explained. "And – this isn't quite goodbye, but I thought I'd help Giratina out with something because it's causing her problems, and because this way I don't risk forgetting it."

He paused. "But – I don't want to disappoint Giratina if it turns out that I can't manage it, so it's going to be a kind of surprise? Almost? But now I'm talking about it, so…"

Latias tried not to giggle.

"...it's not really a surprise except… anyway, uh," Ash said, took a few steps back and closed his eyes.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then his ring pulsed, and Unown transformed to Alphabet form.

Their letters shone with a golden outline, and Giratina shifted slightly in the air.

"That's… not something I ever thought I'd see from anyone who wasn't our father," she said, quietly.

"Mew, can you help?" Ash asked, most of his attention still on focusing. "You know Seed Flare like Shaymin does, right?"

"I can help too, if you need it!" Shaymin said, flying over – still in Sky Form because there was no sunset in the Reverse World – and Mew transformed into a copy of her.

"Great," Ash replied. "Both of you use it when Unown tells you-"

"It is the optimal time," Unown interrupted, and used Hyperspace Fury.

A lot.

So many times that it was hard to tell what was going on, then both Mew and Shaymin used Seed Flare, and a wave of green light pulsed out in all directions. And it lit up the world around them, as well, with the same intensity from every direction.

When it faded, Ash had nearly fallen over. Again. And Unown was back in Letter Form, drooping at his side before returning itself.

"Ash, did you really have to-" Pikachu protested, then sighed. "No, I know what you're going to say."

"I didn't have to, have to," Ash replied. "It's, uh, it's not something where everything would go wrong if I didn't. But it's… Giratina deserves to have nice things too, right?"

"I'm not sure I deserve you, brother," Giratina said, looking around. "The toxins in my world… they're gone. All of them. What did you do?"

"Unown's a Noble Pokémon, like you said," Ash explained. "And I tried to make them stronger, because one of their moves is Hyperspace Fury which is about connecting spaces, and I thought… maybe it would work like that, to let the Seed Flare reach out more. And then I just… decided it would be a good idea?"

"That's certainly one way to get around a short range move limitation," Cynthia said. "Most people would just use training to expand the range, but making the path to everywhere in the entire Reverse World short enough to be in range… it's got some utility, you can't deny it."

"Yeah," Ash replied. "But it really gave me a headache, like when I paused time once… I guess it's not really my speciality."

"It's more Palkia's thing," Giratina confirmed. "But… Ash, thank you. You're a good friend, and I'm proud to call you brother."

She hesitated, then focused. Something drifted out of one of the spots where her golden armour rested against the rest of her body, shaped like a teardrop, and Dawn inspected it before gasping.

"I recognize that!" she said. "Wasn't Volo wearing that, when-"

"Yes," Giratina nodded. "They gave it to me after the battle… and while it has meant a lot to me, Ash, I want you to have it now. It was given to me by a trainer, and now I will pass it on to another one."

Ash reached out a hoof, taking it, and his ring and gems went a bright, lurid pink.

"The rules of Time and Space change within the opposite world," he said, and Pikachu dove for the Pokédex.

"...interesting," Giratina said, sounding like she meant it. "I was honestly expecting that one to be Ghost, but I suppose it counts for that Type as well…"

AN:

Surprise Plate!

And it's good to clear the place up, of course.