As Pidgeot landed on the outskirts of the town that one of his oldest pokemon had resided in for years, Ash couldn't help but be grateful that it hadn't taken him too long to readjust to flying with her.
"Thanks girl. Want to stay out here while I go track down War- I mean, Blastoise?"
Getting a positive shriek in response, Ash chuckled before scratching Pikachu behind his ears and releasing Haunter from his pokeball. The ghost emerged with a hiss at the bright sun, and quickly ducked into Ash's shadow. Haunter wasn't exactly fond of being out in the daytime unless he didn't have to be in the sun. While Ash knew that the sun didn't really hurt Haunter in any quantifiable way, according to Sabrina it was just an odd quirk he had picked up from somewhere. Shaking his head, Ash hoped that messages from Sabrina wouldn't become a regular thing. He didn't mind casual contact, but he certainly didn't want her to bring up her warning again. All he wanted to do was put that out of his mind for now. And really, how did she even get his number!
As Ash was a little preoccupied, when the wayward trainer began to come close to the police station, Pikachu smacked the back of his head to get his attention.
"Oh, I guess we're there. Thanks Pikachu."
Entering the station, Ash blinked as he saw a group of wartortle and squirtle scrapping near the entrance. One of the wartortle apparently heard him come in, and barked something at the rest of the group before running off towards the back of the station. The rest of the squad then proceeded to stand before him and cross their arms, leaving him with the sight of one wartortle and two squirtle, all wearing very familiar circular glasses.
"Hey guys," Ash said upon recognizing the position of the pokemon. Been a while. Do you remember Pikachu?" Here Pikachu jumped to the ground, and walked up to the wartortle, who looked at Pikachu for a moment before holding out his fist for the mouse to bump. Pikachu bumped the pokemon's fist, before looking up as he caught the sound of a much larger creature coming out of the back of the station. Ash looked up as Pikachu ran off, although his partner didn't get far before he suddenly jumped up on top of a blastoise. It took a second, but Ash finally remembered that this was his blastoise! While happy to see Pikachu, who was now chattering happily atop Blastoise's head, Blastoise was even happier to see Ash, who was walking towards the turtle pokemon.
"Blastoise! You're so big now! I don't think that I could pick you up anymore."
As Ash said this last sentence, a smirk appeared on Blastoise's face, and the large pokemon sped up. While Pikachu figured out what the water-type was about to do pretty quickly, it took Ash a second or two longer, and he wasn't able to jump out of the way like his partner.
With a resounding crash, Ash was slammed to the floor by one, massive, turtle. Ash laid on the floor groaning in pain as Blastoise had his arms around his trainer. Since Ash didn't seem to be moving anytime soon, Blastoise took it upon himself to lift Ash up and put the teen on his feet, taking off his glasses in the same motion.
"Ow…" Ash groaned, slumping to the floor with his back against the receptionist's desk. This last crash had finally been enough to draw the attention of someone within the station, and an officer came out of the back.
"Ash! Glad to see you, and I guess Blastoise is to. Gonna be alright there?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine," Ash grunted, climbing to his feet. "Just caught me by surprise is all."
Patting Blastoise on the shoulder, as Pikachu had decided the larger pokemon's head made for an appropriate seat, Ash turned towards Jenny.
"This guy's gotten a lot bigger I see," Ash said as he looked Blastoise up and down, noting that the pokemon stood a few inches higher than Ash.
"Well you've grown a bit yourself! But yes, Blastoise seems to be a little above six feet tall, and while it's a little taller than average, it's not that much bigger. You just haven't seen him since he was a tiny squirtle."
"Ha, guess you're right. Well, Blastoise, do you want to say goodbye to everyone before we get on the road?" Ash returned the nod his pokemon gave him, and caught Pikachu with his left hand as he held his right out towards Jenny. "I have to thank you for caring for him for so many years. I know that he can be a bit of a handful sometimes, and I really do appreciate you helping me help him."
"It was no trouble! The rest of the squad was so much more effective with him at the helm, and I doubt they would have continued for even half as long without him here. Make sure he gives me a call every once in a while though? Been here for long enough that I'm a bit fond of the big guy."
"Don't worry, I will. And I'm gonna be in Pallet for the foreseeable future so it shouldn't be much of a problem at all. It's a little easier to call when I actually have access to a phone."
As Jenny chuckled at his rather poor joke, Ash looked over towards Blastoise, who seemed to be in the middle of a rather complicated handshake that involved both wartortles, one of the squirtles, and for some reason, a bowling ball. All of this while comforting the other squirtle, who didn't seem to be pleased with Blastoise's decision to leave, and was gripped onto the larger pokemon's leg. As Blastoise gently tugged the squirtle off and handed him to the wartortles, he turned back towards Ash.
"Ready to go back to Pallet bud?"
"Toise, Blastoise!" The shell pokemon cried while flashing Ash a thumbs up and putting his sunglasses back on.
"Good. And you might be surprised to find that there's another pokemon back at the ranch who likes sunglasses just as much as you do." As Blastoise's jaw dropped at this new piece of information, Ash recalled him while laughing and waving to Jenny and the Squirtle Squad as he left the station, eager to return to Pallet Town.
"Hey Tracey," Ash said while walking in through the side door of Oak's Lab, causing the Pokemon Watcher to jump and spin around.
"Ash! Arceus, I thought I told you not to do that! And you could have given us some warning on when you were planning on coming back." Tracey said, holding a hand over his heart.
"Eh, where's the fun in that? Besides, I'm telling you now, rather than just letting you get all worked up over why my pokemon are acting weird."
"Speaking of your pokemon, these came for you," he said, grabbing two pokeballs from a nearby table. As Ash reached out for them however, Tracey pulled back with a frown. "But you could have told us that Charizard was coming in. He was quite annoyed when he realized you weren't here."
"Well," Ash laughed nervously, "I told Bulbasaur, and that's sort of the same thing, right?" Quickly grabbing the pokeballs from Tracey's hands, Ash took off towards the fields, calling back to the assistant, "sorry Tracey! I'd say that I'd try harder in the future but we both know that would be a lie!"
Reaching an area which he knew Bulbasaur liked to spend his time in, Ash took a deep breath before calling out to his oldest grass-type. Only a minute after his call, Bulbasaur came trotting over and Ash smiled.
"Hey bud, could you call everyone over? Wait a minute though, I need to prep these two." At Bulbasaur's nod, Ash smiled and opened the two pokeballs in his hand, releasing Goodra and Greninja.
Upon seeing Ash, Goodra let out a loud, excited cry and immediately scooped his trainer up for a slimy hug. Ash happily wrapped his arms around the pokemon in response, and let out his own laugh. Looking over Goodra's shoulder, he saw Greninja give him a nod. Smiling, Ash held up a hand, and felt his face stretch even wider when Greninja responded with a high-five. Patting Goodra on the back in quick succession, the dragon-type squeezed him harder for a moment before easing off, allowing Ash to catch his breath.
"Hey guys, I'm glad to see you too. I know neither of you have been here before, so I wanted to let you out before Bulbasaur," here Ash pointed at the much smaller pokemon, who growled a friendly greeting at the two, "called everyone over. Speaking of that, Bulbasaur?"
The quadruped growled at Ash before charging up and firing a quick solarbeam into the air. "Thanks. Greninja could you wash me off really quick?" Greninja fired a quick water gun at Ash, who gratefully nodded at the pokemon while running his hands through his hair.
"Oops, almost forgot," Ash said to himself, reaching down to his belt and releasing the pokemon trapped inside. Pidgeot, Primeape, Haunter, and Blastoise materialized, all looking around in excitement. Luckily they had all become acquainted over the last couple of days, so Ash didn't have to worry about more introductions right now. Before he could introduce his old pokemon to the (once again) new additions from Kalos, he heard loud stomps coming from his right, and remembering what happened last week, Ash stepped behind Goodra as his tauros stampeded past, bellowing as they went.
Ash sighed in relief, only to promptly be tackled from behind with a cry of "Bay!"
"Oof! Hi Bayleef." Ash didn't even have a chance to properly greet his pokemon or get up before he was smashed even further into the ground by the rest of his pokemon, who were quite excited to see him, even though it had only been a week since he left.
Finally extracting himself from the poke-pile, Ash breathed a sigh of relief before looking up into the face of one of his more temperamental pokemon.
"Hey Charizard," he said, laughing nervously as he took a couple steps away from the lizard, who looked as though he had grown another half a foot since Ash saw him after Unova. "I uh, didn't think you would get here so fast, or I would have asked Liza to wait a couple days before telling you to come."
This was apparently not the correct answer to Charizard's unspoken question, as the fire-type huffed in Ash's general direction before opening his mouth and engulfing Ash in a cone of flame. It was only years of exposure that kept Ash from panicking, although even those years didn't keep the fire from hurting.
Picking himself up from the ground, as the force of the flames had completely knocked him over, Ash rubbed some of the soot from his face as he looked at Charizard. "Do you have to do that every time you see me? You know you would have killed just about any other trainer with those by now."
Charizard's only response to this was to narrow one eye at Ash in amusement, and to snort hot air at his impertinent trainer.
"Asshole." Ash muttered fondly, seeing Charizard crack a toothy grin at his quip. "You'll be happy to know that I don't just plan on hanging out while I'm back." Seeing that Charizard was actually listening to him ramble, he smirked and continued. "You'll have to keep this a secret for a little bit, since only Pikachu knows and I haven't told everyone else yet, but I'm planning on having everyone do a lot more training while I'm here. Gonna try to get some others up to your level, and get some of the others closer to where they can at least try. Not starting until tomorrow though, so you'll have to be a little patient." Charizard had been getting more excited the more Ash spoke, but gave a small growl at this last sentence. "Oh don't give me that shit. I know that you have more than enough patience to wait a day or two if you get some good fights out of it, and you've also been with me long enough to know that if we stay in one place, it's much easier to train all of you." Seeing how this had mollified Charizard for a moment, Ash grinned before turning and stepping towards the large group of pokemon, who were mingling with each other after Ash had extracted himself from the pile. "Now come on, I've got to tell the others, and you can do me a favor by not telling them how serious some of this training is going to be. Hearing Charizard huff in amusement behind him, Ash walked towards the large gathering of pokemon, and was happy to see that the majority turned towards him when he got close.
"Hey guys, I've got something to talk to you about, so if you could listen for a minute that would be great." The group of pokemon somewhat quieted down, with the relative silence only occasionally interrupted by growls and grunts as the pokemon jostled for a better spot.
"Obviously, most of you have probably realized by now that we have quite a lot of new, and old faces. I won't bore you with a lecture on how to treat them, because that isn't what I want to talk about anyways. What I did want to tell all of you is that I'm going to be back here for quite a while. I don't know how long, and I might take short trips, but otherwise I'm gonna be spending most of my time here with you."
Once the cheering from his pokemon died down, Ash continued with a smile. And with me being back for longer, we're gonna do a lot more training." Here the trainer scratched his head in embarrassment. "Starting tomorrow, because I haven't actually made any plans yet and I'm pretty tired. Now, I'm gonna go back home to get a little sleep, but I'll be back bright and early to train tomorrow morning! First though, can I talk to all the Tauros over here," Ash motioned behind himself. "For the rest of you, good night and I'll see you tomorrow!
As his pokemon called out goodbyes, Pikachu ran up to Ash and leaped onto his shoulder, followed closely behind by what looked to be about the whole herd of Tauros. Scratching Pikachu behind the ears, Ash smiled at the bull pokemon and took a few steps backward, before stopping a little ways from the bigger group.
"Hey Tauros. I realized recently that even though I caught all of you, and you all live here, I only ever battled with a few of you." Saying this, Ash pointed at three tauros who were at the front of the herd: one with a reddish mane, one with a scar over its right eye, and one who looked to be over a foot taller than the rest of the tauros. "I know that you've been here for years by now, but I wanted to check if any of you wanted to return to the Safari Zone or be traded to someone who would use you in battles. I would make sure that whoever took you would take real good care of you if that was your choice. But don't feel like you have to do either of those if you would rather just stay here with the herd."
As Ash finished, rambling a bit by the end, he noticed that most of the tauros didn't seem inclined to go anywhere, and some were actively shaking their heads negatively. There were three tauros though, who seemed interested in his offer. Just as Ash saw this, the three tauros came up to him, and nodded their heads, mooing in unison.
"So you three would want to leave? Would you want to be traded or go to the Safari Zone? Um, moo once for the first one, and twice for the second."
The three tauros looked at each other for a minute before all mooing once, indicating that they wanted to be traded. "Alright, guess you weren't getting enough battling around here. It's gonna take a few days, but I'll get something set up soon, okay?" Receiving nods in response, Ash smiled and patted each of them on the side before walking over to the rest of the herd. Quickly, Ash swung himself up the side of one of his main tauros, whose mane was a darker color of red than most of the others'.
"Hey bud, mind taking me back to my house?" Although Tauros seemed a little perplexed by this, it did as Ash asked, and with a loud moo, took off charging towards Pallet Town, Ash clinging to its back and laughing all the while.
As Ash looked over all of his pokemon gathered before him, he couldn't help but be proud of all that they had accomplished, and what they would accomplish in the future. While he didn't know what he was going to do about the tauros that wanted to be traded (and wasn't it weird to only have three tauros with the group instead of thirty), he was sure that Professor Oak could help him work something out. First though, he had to get everyone training before some of his more ornery mons decided to use him as target practice.
"Alright everyone!" Ash shouted out to his pokemon, who all focused in once they heard his voice. "Since there's so many of you now, I thought it would be easier to do most of our training in groups, although these groups are flexible, so many of you will probably move back and forth. The first group," and here Ash pointed off to his left, "is gonna be made up of Oshawott, Scraggy, Rowlet, Corphish, Torkoal, and Gible." Apart from Torkoal predictably bursting into tears upon hearing his name called, there didn't seem to be any problems with that group, so Ash continued, albeit certain that he'd have to wake Rowlet up to get him to participate.
"The next group is gonna be: Snivy, Pignite, Boldore, Buizel, Kingler, Totodile, Noctowl, Quilava, Unfezant, Leavanny, and Hawlucha." Ash would have to hope that Totodile's boundless energy, and he could already see the pokemon dancing with joy, would be tampered down slightly by Snivy and Noctowl. "Third is gonna be: Glalie, Bulbasaur, Palpitoad, Melmetal, Incineroar, Haunter, Torterra, Staraptor, Gliscor, Primeape, Bayleef, Muk, Noivern, Talonflame, Swellow, Donphan, and finally Tauros and Tauros." Here Ash pointed at his Tauros with the reddish mane and the Tauros with the small scar over its eye, leaving the largest Tauros still in the main group.
"Alright, almost done everybody, then we can get to training! Next is gonna be Krookodile, Goodra, Lycanroc, Infernape, Pidgeot, Tauros, Heracross, and Blastoise." Some of the remaining pokemon were getting antsy, so Ash quickly continued. "And finally we have Pikachu, Charizard, Sceptile, Greninja, and Snorlax. Now let's get to training everyone! Start with some light spars first, but I'm gonna come around and check in with everyone to give more instructions." The groups split up, each heading to a different part of the ranch without Ash's prompting, and while most of the groups would likely get along fine, he knew that there might be some problems in the last group, as Pikachu didn't exactly seem happy to be placed with Greninja, and Snorlax was hard to get to train if there wasn't an actual battle going on.
Putting this out of his mind for the time being, Ash looked to where the first group, that being made up of his least experienced pokemon, had gone. Much to his chagrin, they hadn't made it very far before problems emerged. Oshawott was posturing to no one in particular, Scraggy was trying to headbutt Rowlet, who was already asleep, Corphish was looking at Oshawott like he wanted to hit him with a crabhammer, and Torkoal was crying while Gible tried to eat him. Sighing, Ash walked over to the group, thankful that at least, problems with these mons would be less destructive than problems with his strongest group.
"Hey guys," Ash said, squatting down in front of his pokemon. "Can we focus up for a minute? And Gible, how about you bite Rowlet instead of Torkoal, maybe it'll actually wake him up." While most of the pokemon seemed to focus on Ash as he said this, Torkoal's sobs even slowing to a trickle, Gible seemed thrilled by this request, and released Torkoal to chomp down on Rowlet's head, causing the owl to screech in pain before blasting Gible off with a seed bomb, courtesy of his everstone. As the everstone bounced off Gible's head, Rowlet promptly swallowed it once more. Before Gible could try for some revenge however, Ash snapped his fingers, getting the attention of the remaining two pokemon.
"So for us to actually be training, all of you need to be able to work together, otherwise nothing will get done. I don't know when I'll start moving the groups around, so for the time being, you're all stuck together. For now, we're gonna start with some basic training; target practice and endurance. I'm going to pair you up, and you're going to practice shooting your long-range moves at each other while trying to dodge the moves coming from your partner. The idea is just to go until you get hit too many times to keep going, or until you're too tired to dodge or use your moves anymore. Got it?"
While this wasn't his smartest group of pokemon, there at least seemed to be a moderate amount of comprehension on most of his pokemon's faces. Apart from Gible, who was simply looking at Rowlet with annoyance and not a small amount of hunger.
"Good enough. Well let's pair Scraggy with Torkoal, Corphish with Oshawott, and Gible with Rowlet. Is everybody ready? Then go!" Ash quickly stepped out of the line of fire, and was glad he did so, as Gible and Rowlet had taken his instructions to heart, and were fervently attacking each other. Well Gible was attacking Rowlet at least. With his teeth. Ash shrugged; at least they were doing something productive. The rest of the group were more or less following his instructions, albeit a bit slowly.
"I'll come back and check on your progress in a while," Ash called out to the battling pokemon, while beginning to walk in the direction that he had seen Snivy's group go. "Just keep it up until you're too tired. And no Rowlet," he shouted, seeing the owl pokemon try to lie down, "that doesn't mean go to sleep now."
Luckily for Ash, the next group that he was going to check on hadn't gone too far, but at least were performing in a reasonable approximation of sparring. While they were technically only the next level up from the previous group in terms of skill level, the general attitude of this group was at least much more focused.
As Ash approached the group, he noticed that they had split themselves more or less into pairs, except for Totodile, who seemed to just be dancing between and through each group, dodging attacks as he went. Ash stepped around the battling pairs, taking a second to jump over Boldore and Quilava, who seemed to be clashing with some variations of rollout that Ash hadn't seen them use before. Thinking on this for a second, he decided to deal with it later as he scooped up Totodile, who took a second to even notice that he wasn't on the group before he grinned up at As with a happy growl.
"Hey bud, it's good to see you too. Listen, I know you love dancing, but you've gotta do some training too. Why don't you try to incorporate your dancing into your battling more? There's moves like swords dance and dragon dance that you might be able to learn, and your dancing can make for great dodging." Totodile seemed to quite like this idea, and wiggled happily in Ash's arms for a moment, before stilling as Ash continued. "But first, you're gonna have to do some training, and then I promise I'll help you work on that stuff later. Okay?" Upon receiving a happy 'dile!' Ash laughed and walked over to where he saw Snivy and Buizel battling.
"Snivy, Buizel, can you both come here for a moment?"As he was expecting, two of the more seriously-minded pokemon had paired up to spar, Snivy's type-advantage being somewhat negated by Buizel's greater experience and strong determination. "Glad that you two have decided to work together for now. I don't think your group needs too much direct instruction right now, but I'll be sure to check in later to see how everyone is doing. Although make sure that everyone switches partners a few times to get a little more experience." Here Snivy and Buizel looked at each other for a moment before nodding. "Great. I'm gonna go ahead and name you two the unofficial leaders of this group for now. Your and Infernape's groups are probably going to be the easiest to deal with right now, so I'm going to spend a little more time with the groups that I think are going to have some problems at first, but I promise that I'll give your group some more specialized instructions later. And one last thing," Ash said, shaking Totodile to get the gator's attention. "I'm sure that you both know that Totodile has some problems focusing, so if you could incorporate him into your spar for now to get him interested I would really appreciate it. I think he should be okay after that, but he always did have some problems with starting training."
"Bui bui."
"Sni, vy."
"Thanks, I really appreciate it." Ash put Totodile on the ground next to the two, who promptly grabbed Totodile by his arms and dragged him away. All this seemed to do however, was make the pokemon think they were doing a new kind of dance, and he tried to help, which didn't work all too well. Laughing, Ash turned away from this group, and went to try to track down Infernape's group. Even though they hadn't stayed as close, Ash guessed that he could just follow the explosions and he would have a 50/50 shot of finding the right group.
Stepping up to the first group that had actually stopped to listen to him, Ash paused and looked over his pokemon before he began. It looked like, for now at least, Blastoise and Pidgeot had paired up, as had Goodra and Lycanroc, Heracross and Tauros, and Infernape and Krookodile. It wasn't much of a surprise that Krookodile had wanted to fight Infernape, nor that Blastoise would pair up with Pidgeot. After all, the two were old friends. Heracross and Tauros were actually a decent match for fighting, although both could use a little more variety in their fighting styles. That left Goodra and Lycanroc as the odd pair out, and while the two would get likely get along well outside of fights, Ash had a feeling that regularly matching the two up wouldn't work terribly well, as Lycanroc could be a bit… enthusiastic, and Goodra was pretty much just calm all the time.
"So I'll keep this short so all of you can get back to training, but I'm glad that everybody paired up so easily. For now, just keep doing what you're doing, but make sure that you switch partners every once in a while. You're the other group besides Snivy's that I'm not terribly worried about for the moment, so I'll leave you to it for now. I will make sure to come back later and give some more detailed instructions, but I want to deal with the groups that are a little more of a problem first. So keep sparring for now, and Infernape, you're in charge unless I say otherwise."
Getting a resounding set of cheers in response to his short speech, Ash smiled and waved at his pokemon before he began walking to where he saw the largest group was gathered. It seemed that while the group he was just leaving was already getting back to sparring, as Lycanroc lept at Goodra with a snarl, the group he was approaching had barely started doing anything at all.
Upon first glance, most of the pokemon in the third group were just lazing about and talking to one another, although Bulbasaur was trying to get everybody training. Worryingly, Primeape seemed to be going after Melmetal with fervor, likely because the steel-type was pretty much the biggest pokemon there. Unfortunately for Primeape though, all of his punches and kicks just seemed to slide off Melmetal, although his body was made out of an odd sort of liquid metal, and most physical attacks didn't exactly do much. The most that Primeape had managed to do to Melmetal was confuse them, although the larger pokemon didn't seem inclined to fight back at the moment.
Running his hand over his face, Ash approached the group with a groan. He had known that this group was going to be a bit problematic. Besides the large size of the group, there was a wide range of experience levels and power, and an even wider range of personalities. All he needed to do for now though, was get them all focused on one thing so that it would be easier to have them train later. Just then, an idea came to his mind and he grinned widely.
"Everyone listen up!"
Hearing this, all of his pokemon stopped what they were doing and turned to their trainer. Bulbasaur especially looked to sag with relief at not having to be in charge for any longer.
"I see that you're all having a bit of a hard time getting into training at the moment, so to start you off, we're gonna play a game. I'm going to have you all play a variation of tag." At his pokemon's confused expressions, Ash continued. "To start off the game, one pokemon will be 'it.' The pokemon who is 'it' has to make physical contact with another pokemon. Once physical contact is made with another pokemon, that pokemon is also 'it.' The goal of the game is to be the last mon who isn't 'it.' The only real rule is that you have to make physical contact with another pokemon to 'tag' them, but there are no rules in how you make this physical contact. Moves are allowed and encouraged, and you can even team up to avoid getting tagged if you want. By the end, almost everyone should be tagged, but the last one who isn't wins. Then they are the mon who is 'it' to start the next game. Everybody got that?"
Once a chorus of cheers rang out through the group, Ash grinned at his pokemon. "Alright then! The first pokemon to be 'it' will be…" Ash's hand moved around the group of pokemon, pointing at each in turn, before finally stopping on one in particular. "Glalie!" The floating head looked surprised for a moment, before his massive mouth widened in a grin, and he began to cackle. "The game will start in: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!"
Upon shouting 'go,' Ash slashed his hand downwards, and a flurry of motion began in the group. Donphan and Torterra were the first to get away, with Torterra's speed surprising some because of his bulk. Ash expected this though, as the pokemon had begun to use rock climb to make up for the speed that he lost in evolution. Donphan though, just sped away in a roll. Luckily for the stunned pokemon, Glalie still hadn't stopped laughing, which gave the rest of the pokemon a second to run, fly, glide, ooze, or otherwise move in every direction. This finally caused the ice-type to pay attention, and a frown fell over his massive face, before he realized that he could use ice beam to further slow down some of the already slow pokemon, and he began to laugh once more.
As Glalie floated off towards Palpitoad, who hadn't gotten terribly far due to his short legs, Ash smiled as he felt a chill go up his spine. Looking back towards his shadow, he was unsurprised to find Haunter residing there, a grin on the ghost-type's face. Once the ghost realized that his trainer had caught him, he raised a ghastly finger over his lips. Well, where they would be if a ghost had lips that is. Ash just laughed and turned back towards Glalie, who was quickly gaining ground on Palpitoad. "Don't worry, I won't tell. But I am going to be following the game, so don't blame me if you get yourself caught."
It almost felt like someone else was laughing inside his body as Haunter cackled, making Ash shiver in a way that wasn't directly caused by the ghost. That was definitely something that he would have to get used to. Just as he thought this, Ash was hit by an errant blast of water from Palpitoad, who had been trying to knock Glalie out of the sky. Unfortunately for the water-type, Glalie was more than adept at dodging such attacks, and the ice-type had quickly closed the distance and headbutted the smaller pokemon in the face.
Ash caught up to the two just as Palpitoad seemed to recover from the attack, and was frowning at Glalie. "Don't be mad Palpitoad, it's all part of the game. But I have a suggestion for the two of you, if you want it." The two pokemon, upon realizing they had to work together, quickly looked at Ash. "Palpitoad, you can spray water on the ground, and Glalie can freeze that water with an ice beam, making it a lot easier for the two of you to get around. Palpitoad, you don't have any way to shape the earth though, right?" At the pokemon's head shake, Ash continued, "that's alright, we'll just have to add a move to your repertoire soon enough. Try to go after a flying type or fast mon like Donphan soon, or you'll never be able to catch Noivern or Swellow. Now, go get everyone!"
Ash smiled once more as the two sped off, Palpitoad sliding on the ice making them move much faster than they would have otherwise. Much as Ash wanted to stay and watch the rest of this game, however, he knew that he needed to check on his strongest pokemon before they killed each other or blew up half the ranch. He'd been hearing the explosions and other blasts for nearly a quarter of an hour, and had been trying to ignore them by checking on the other groups. Steeling himself, Ash walked to where the remaining pokemon had stationed themselves; just by the small canyon to the east.
Getting close to the canyon, Ash's senses began to take a beating. Ozone and Sulfur hit his nose, and he could feel his body temperature drop from the sheer volume of water vapor in the air and ice coating the ground. Ash picked up the pace, realizing that it might not have been a great idea to leave those three alone for too long.
Once he was in view of the final group, Ash noticed that his suspicions had unfortunately been proven correct. Pikachu, Charizard, and Greninja were in the middle of what looked like an all-out war, with each firing blasts of elemental energy while dancing around the attacks of the others. There were no allies in this fight, although it did look like Pikachu wasn't making that much of an effort to target Charizard, though the dragon wasn't returning the favor. Off to the side of the fight, it appeared that Sceptile had unsuccessfully been attempting to wake Snorlax, who had ignored the relatively minor damage to his body to continue his nap. Quite frankly, Ash was surprised that the rest of the group had even managed to get the bear there in the first place.
Approaching Sceptile, Ash smiled grimly and put his hand on his pokemon's arm. "Hey bud. Let me guess. Pikachu was griping about being put in a group with Greninja, while Greninja pretended to not give a shit. Then Charizard jumped in, wanting to fight both of them, and Greninja just looked at him, before Pikachu tried to hit him with a thunderbolt." All Sceptile did in response to this was nod, although after years of experience, Ash could tell that the grass-type was at least somewhat surprised that the trainer had pinpointed the events so accurately. "Really, Ash chuckled, "it's not that impressive. Pikachu thinks I'm totally oblivious to the fact that he doesn't like Greninja very much, and Charizard just wants to fight everyone. Greninja pretends not to care, but he enjoys a good fight just as much as they do."
Sceptile nodded once more at this, and punctuated it with yet another jab at Snorlax, whose large stomach jiggled in response, but made no motion that he'd even noticed. "Yeah, I see him too. I have a way to motivate him to fight, but I'm gonna take a few to watch these guys fight. See if they can get a little more aggression out of their systems before I try to interrupt them."
With this, Ash turned back towards the still raging fight, as his powerful pokemon still raged. None of them had even noticed his presence. As blasts of fire, lightning, and ice clashed, Ash felt himself beginning to be unwillingly drawn back, far back, to the first prophecy about him that he discovered. Shamouti. The Birds. He hadn't thought about that event in years, but Sabrina's ominous words were bringing more of his clashes with legends back to mind. Ash couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he wasn't there that day, and if those events were the ultimate trigger for all of his interactions with legends to date. It seemed to Ash that there were legendaries, like the moltres he had fought with Fletchinder → Talonflame, and there were legends, like the Birds of Shamouti, and Ho-Oh, or Dialga and Palkia. He didn't quite know where the difference laid, but at the very least, there was a massive power imbalance. Thinking of those events however, sent a chill up his spine, and a strange feeling that he may still be connected to the legends in some way. Maybe not in any tangible way, but their touch hadn't fully left him.
Blinking rapidly, Ash shook his head and tried to put the legends out of his head. Apparently Sceptile had noticed something was wrong, as the lizard as looking at him with some concern, and had placed his clawed hand on Ash's arm. "I'm fine bud, don't worry about it." Turning back to the fight, Ash couldn't quite figure out what had caused those memories to pop up, but whatever it was seemed to be gone now, as looking at the fight only caused him to see his pokemon in a serious, but not quite deadly clash.
Pikachu was racing back and forth, intermittently using agility and quick attack to boost his speed to be able to hit Greninja. The mouse seemed to be working harder than Ash had seen him in a long time, using his more powerful attacks like volt tackle and even thunder to try to take down the other pokemon. Unfortunately for his partner, they hadn't trained quite as hard in Alola as they had in previous regions, and while he was keeping up for now, both Charizard and Greninja looked like they could go for much longer, while Pikachu was pretty winded. Greninja had apparently picked up ice beam somewhere, probably to take down some of the roots left from Lysandre's plan (Ash's fist tightened subconsciously at the thought of the man and how close his plan had come to succeeding. It was all he could do to keep from grinning at the man's ultimate fate). Greninja was using this to great effect, and skating across the ground while ducking into any shadows that he could find and reappearing elsewhere, only to chuck water shurikens at Pikachu and Charizard. Speaking of Charizard, Ash's powerhouse seemed to be doing what he was best at, and unleashing absolutely massive attacks of fire onto the ground-bound pokemon. Occasionally the dragon would swoop down to swipe at Pikachu or Greninja, but with how fast both were, the fire-type had apparently decided that the best overall strategy was to rid the two of anywhere to move. It was working fairly well, although he hadn't scored very many direct hits.
Deciding now was the best time to stop them, Ash shouted out to his pokemon. "Hey, cut it out for a moment! I need to talk to all of you!" Hearing this, the battling pokemon took a second to fire their remaining attacks, and all returned to the trainer's side, fighting halted for a bare moment.
"Thanks. I won't keep you long, as I doubt it would work. Just know that we're not going to be doing this every day for training, so you'd better get most of that aggression out of your systems now, or get real good at holding it in. This isn't the most effective way to train and all of you know it, but I'll let it slide for now because of what some of the other groups are doing."
As if on cue, Noivern tore overhead, closely pursued by Talonflame in the air and one of the Tauros on the ground. A few seconds after the duo had passed, a much slower Incineroar reached the small group, and leaned down for a moment, hands on his knees.
"Perfect example. Incineroar have you been caught?" The wrestler let out an unhappy yowl, but decided that his mood could be rectified with some affection from his trainer, and gripped Ash in a tight hug, fully lifting the trainer from the ground. "Alright buddy, love you too," Ash squeaked out, frantically patting the pokemon on the arm. Luckily for the trainer, this time Incineroar noticed Ash's efforts, and put him down before completely squeezing all the air out of him. "Thanks. Now how many are left to be caught?" Incineroar thought for a moment, before holding up five digits and nodding to himself. "Awesome, thanks for letting me know. Now go back and catch them! And don't be afraid to run on four legs if you're faster like that; you didn't evolve too long ago after all."
Letting out a sound that could almost be construed as a howl, albeit from a large cat, the fire-type ran off in the direction that Tauros and Talonflame had been pursuing Noivern. "Now that," Ash said, turning back towards the group. "Was a very well-timed example of what I'm having one of the groups do. They're playing a variation of tag that I came up with, since their group was having trouble getting started with their training. Maybe soon I'll have everyone participate in it, as that could be a lot of fun." This last part was said almost to himself, as Ash scratched his chin in thought. "But anyway, keep up your fighting today, but it will be different in the future," Ash said, his tone brokering no argument. "Good. Now get to it, but I am waking Snorlax up, and if he takes down Sceptile, then I expect all of you to put him back down for another nap, as he won't go back to sleep voluntarily after I get him up." All four of the currently awake pokemon sweatdropped at the nasty grin on Ash's face, and Charizard, Pikachu, and Greninja almost fled to get away from the trainer and resume their fight.
Looking nervously over at his trainer, Sceptile questioned whether or not he should just go try to join the others instead of dealing with however Ash was going to wake Snorlax up. Unfortunately for Sceptile, he wasn't quick enough in his decision making, and before he could ask his trainer to wait a moment, Ash was already by Snorlax's side.
"Hey Snorlax!" While the massive pokemon didn't move or otherwise respond to this, Ash didn't seem to be deterred. "If you don't wake up right now and fight Sceptile, I'll make sure that you only get half portions for the next two days." This was apparently the worst threat the pokemon could think of, and the perfect way to wake him up, as Snorlax moved faster than Sceptile had ever seen him move before, and quickly turned from a sleeping giant to a very much awake and angry one. After turning and growling at Ash for a moment, who didn't even blink in the face of the snarling snorlax, the bear turned his attention towards Sceptile, who was beginning to think this was an incredibly bad idea. As Snorlax rushed towards him, Sceptile just caught Ash's visage out of the corner of his eye. The trainer was smartly running away from the conflicts as fast as possible, but he shouted one last thing at his pokemon before he was out of earshot.
"Be careful what you wish for!"
Sceptile gulped.
A/N: Got another chapter for y'all! Sorry this one took a little while, but it's extra long, so I hope that makes up for it! Don't expect all of them to be this long, but frankly I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. Probably blew through about 5 thousand words today alone! Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!