Zacian closed her eyes, for a long moment, then nodded to herself.

This was good.

She had a feeling that the Darkest Day was… coming. Not here, not yet, but that worrisome event would be appearing before long, and it would be better for everyone if she and her brother had chosen their champions before then.

"Sword and shield," she said, then chuckled.

Zamazenta may have been content to wait for his champion to appear, being the shield, but she was the sword. She would seek out a worthy human.

And, now, she had found one.

He was kind, and persistent, and he paid attention to his Pokémon. He'd helped persuade his friend to take on a companion, a partner, and he and his friend had overcome a Dynamaxed Snorlax with skill and grace.

Perhaps it was too early for Zacian to make her decision just now, but she had a good feeling about this human. A little more observation, and she would be sure.

He and the other boy were heading back to the train station, and Zacian broke into a lope to follow them – at a sensible distance, of course.

She was no puppy to make such a simple mistake.

There was a convenient-looking bit of undergrowth, right where they would be passing, and Zacian darted into it-

-and collided with another Pokémon.

The two of them tumbled over and over in a pink-and-blue-and-white-and-blue tangle, rolling right across the path that the human was going to follow, then ended up dropping into a hollow in the woods on the other side of the path.

"What was that for?" demanded the Pokémon she'd hit.

A Suicune.

Zacian disentangled herself, flicking her braid out of the way from where it had become tangled in Suicune's ribbon, and shook herself out. "I could ask you the same bloody question."

"You jumped on me," Suicune complained.

"I didn't know you were there!" Zacian shot back. "How was I supposed to know you were there?"

"You weren't, I was hiding," Suicune said. "I was following the Chosen One, Ash Ketchum."

"Ash Ketchum," Zacian repeated. "...so, the one with the Scorbunny?"

"No, the one with the Pikachu – how do you not know that?" Suicune asked.

"It is the first time he's been to Galar," a Mew said.

Zacian and Suicune looked up, seeing the pink kitten floating overhead.

"What are you doing here?" Suicune asked. "I recognize you – aren't you from Rota?"

"Yeah," Mew agreed, twining his tail around his paws. "But I feel guilty about… all kinds of stuff… and I've been trying to work out how to apologize to him."

"His friend wants a Mew for a starter-"

"I said Ash, not Goh," Mew interrupted. "Come on, be serious. But I'm a bit indecisive, so-"

"Did you say Ash?" asked a new voice, squeaky and high and from a Pokémon Zacian didn't recognize off-paw.

All three of them turned, this time, and saw nothing.

Then a pink-and-white shape shimmered into visibility.

"You did, didn't you?" the Pokémon asked. "He… he saved my life, and this year I finally managed to get a Latios to take over Alto – that is, where I lived – so I wanted to come and say thank you to him, but it's so hard to find a good time to approach him!"

"You were invisible," Suicune said.

"That feels like cheating, is what it feels like," Zacian complained. "Look, I don't know about you lot but I'm not invisible, so I'm going to try and get out of the way before this Ash kid actually sees us."

She took three steps, and tripped over a tail.

The tail turned out to belong to a very large, predominantly white-coated feline Pokémon, who made a sort of grumbling noise.

"Aren't you that Solgaleo he raised?" Suicune asked, raising her paw and pointing. "Nebby, right? What are you doing here, aren't you from Alola?"

"I can travel through Ultra Space, thanks," Nebby replied. "What's wrong with me occasionally checking up on Dad? Have you any idea how much trouble he can get into?"

"Yes!" Suicune and Mew said, both at the same time.

"I don't," Zacian said. "Why did you call him dad?"

"Oh, he raised me," Nebby explained. "It's his first time away from Alola since I was born, and I'm sort of nervous that he'll get himself into trouble and I won't be there to help him."

"He already did, but he got himself out of it again," Mew said helpfully.

"How often can one kid get into trouble?" Zacian asked.

Three Pokémon all tried to answer at once, and two of them collided with one another in mid-air with an audible crash sound.

"What are you doing here?" a Lugia asked, picking himself up from a pile of broken branches.

"Me? What are you doing here?" a Zekrom retorted, extracting her turbine from a tree. "Aren't you from the Orange Islands?"

"Yeah, so? You're from Unova," Lugia replied.

"Wait, wait," Zacian said, looking between the two of them. "You two are following this Ash kid as well?"

"I thought I was the only one doing it," Lugia said. "I keep an eye on my Chosen One. I actually showed myself to him a week or so ago."

"That was – I thought that was a one-off!" Suicune groaned. "You mean you've been following him since… what? The Orange Islands? When did he go there?"

"Did you never ask his Pikachu anything?" Zekrom said. "We had a pretty long conversation once, granted it was mostly in electrospeak but surely you could have done something like that."

"What I want to know is what this one's doing here," Zacian interrupted, pointing her paw at the little green-and-black dog Pokémon next to her. "Because I'm pretty sure this one's bloody Kalosian and you know what they're like."

"I do not know what they are like," Zygarde replied, sitting on their haunches. "Elaborate, if you please."

"You know, all… Kalosian," Zacian said vaguely.

"Merde," Zygarde sighed, rolling their eyes. "But I am following Ash Ketchum so that I can find out a good time to let him know that I and his Greninja are done with our task, and to ask him when and where he would like Greninja to return to him. Of course I have been following him since his time in Kalos as I did not want to lose track of him."

"Did you follow him into Ultra Space?" Nebby asked. "Because that's something I did."

"You took him there," Suicune replied.

"And a good job he did of it, too," a yellow avian Pokémon said. "Nebby, did – holy batmom there's more Pokémon here than I thought there'd be."

"Yes, I found him, Uncle Tapu Koko," Nebby sighed. "Do you have to talk about my mother that way?"

"Didn't you call Ash your father?" Latias demanded, now totally lost. "Who's the mother?"

"It's weird," Nebby said. "I have a mother, that's Lunala, a father, that's Solgaleo, and a mom and dad, that's Lillie and Ash, because they helped raise me. They're not girl and boyfriend or anything though."

Latias seemed relieved from that, but Lugia was quicker off the mark to say something. "So why are you looking for my Chosen One?"

"He's not your Chosen One, he's the Chosen One," Zekrom corrected. "Also Hero of Ideals and Saviour of the Creator, among other things."

"The question remains," Lugia countered.

"Honestly, I mostly wanted to give him a Z-crystal he forgot back in Alola, but I took a lift along with Nebby," Tapu Koko said. "I've got a few more along too though because he's probably going to fulfil another challenge by accident or something."

"This is a lot more complicated than I was expecting," Zacian said.

"Hey, did you hear something?" asked a voice.

Not Ash's voice. Goh's voice.

"I think I heard a Pokémon over here!"

"We don't want to be found here," Suicune pointed out. "Quick!"

The Pokémon all ran for cover, with several collisions resulting as they tried running for cover in the same direction, and after a short period of chaos they all ended up packed – in some cases quite tightly – underneath an overhang that led down into a large lake.

None of them said anything for several seconds, until Zacian just had to ask.

"Where did you come from?" she said, pointing a paw at the slightly crumpled ball of feathers at the other end of the Legendary pile. "I didn't see you before!"

"I crashed into Ho-Oh when I was running for it," Zekrom admitted, putting her paw up. "My bad. Not an ideal move, and that's really embarrassing for me."

"It's understandable," said a rumbling voice that made the lake water tremble.

They all went still.

"Who was that?" Mew asked.

A strange, red-and-black-and-grey-and-gold shape leaned out of the mirror-like surface of the lake.

"Me," the Pokémon said.

"This is Giratina!" a blue spirit added, swooping out from behind Giratina's ear. "And I'm Azelf. He's keeping track of his father's favourite human and the person who saved his life, I'm keeping track of the Apex of Willpower, they're the same person, it's a natural fit."

"All right!" Zacian growled, eye twitching. "This is my bloody country, so I'm going to be the one to ask! If anyone else is following Ash Ketchum around and we haven't bumped into them yet, where, who, how and why?"

There was a long, silent pause.

Then an orange-and-yellow Pokémon with very large ears shimmered into visibility.

"Um," the Victini began. "So, funny story…"

AN:

There are a lot of Pokémon who have good reason to follow Ash around.

Early in Pokémon Journeys.