"Young man – are you all right?"

"Huh?" Ash asked, blinking a few times. "What happened? I was leaving Pallet for my new journey…"

He rolled over, looking up. "Where am I?"

"Hisui," the man standing over him replied. "I don't think I've heard of Pallet…"

"Well, I'm Ash Ketchum, and I'm from Pallet!" Ash declared, then frowned. "Hisui? I think I've heard of that place… isn't that ancient Sinnoh?"

"Sinnoh?" the man asked, as Ash got to his feet. "Isn't that the god that the Clans worship?"

He looked up, and Ash followed his gaze.

"Oh, right," Ash said, spotting the distortion at the top of Mount Coronet, and putting two and two together. "I get it! I'm in the past! Not the first time, huh, Pikachu?"

Silence answered him.

"Pikachu?" Ash asked, worried, then raised his voice. "Pikachu!"

"Ash, what are you doing?" the man asked. "Do you want to get the attention of a wild Pokémon?"

"No, just Pikachu's attention," Ash replied. "He's my best friend! But, uh… if he isn't around here, then…"

He scratched his head. "I guess maybe he's got amnesia, that happens sometimes… if he has, then Team Rocket might have got their hands on him! I'd have to rescue him, then."

"...amnesia?" the man repeated. "Ash, you… seem to be a very strange person."

"Huh?" Ash asked, with a frown. "Why do you think that?"

He reached for his belt, ready to send out one of his Pokémon to help him look, and found no Pokéballs there.

"...okay, this is getting weird," he decided. "Rotom? Do you have any ideas?"

When Ash brought out his phone, though, there was no sign of Rotom.

Instead, his phone had changed, bright white with gold spikes on it, and there was a message visible on the screen.

SEEK OUT ALL POKÉMON.

"Well, uh… I guess I could do that?" Ash said. "I wonder why my phone looks like Arceus…"

"I have so many questions," the man admitted, then shook his head a little and introduced himself. "Right, sorry… my name is Professor Laventon. And I have to admit that I'm not sure if you're crazy or not."

"Huh," Ash said. "I think Iris said that, once."

The next day, in Jubilife Village, Ash had a fuller sense of the problems facing him.

"People here are scared of Pokémon?" he repeated. "But… why? They're Pokémon!"

"Pokémon are dangerous," Rei said. "You need to have a good understanding of a specific Pokémon before you can be sure that they're safe to be around."

He indicated the Pokéball on his belt. "My Pikachu is… well, I'm confident that he's safe, but that's because I've worked with him for long enough to be sure about that. Other people haven't."

"But… but…" Ash began, shaking his head as he tried to put it into words. "It's… okay, you need to respect Pokémon, and not annoy them, and if you go out into the wilderness then sometimes you're going to be barging into where Pokémon live so it's best not to annoy them. But most Pokémon are nice! So many of the Pokémon I have on my team are friends who I didn't even battle to have join my team, and most of the rest agreed to a battle to join me!"

He pointed at Professor Laventon, who was checking in on an Oshawott, a Rowlet and a Cyndaquil that Ash had helped retrieve. "You don't think any of those Pokémon are dangerous, do you?"

"Ash, it's… not about that," Laventon said, trying to explain. "Here and now, we consider Pokémon dangerous unless there's a good reason to think otherwise."

"But there always is," Ash replied. "They're… Pokémon!"

Rei stifled a laugh.

"I guess things are just different in the future, right?" he asked.

"Not just then, in the past, too," Ash said. "When I went back to Ancient Forina they had loads of Pokémon working with them there, only, that was so far back they didn't call them Pokémon because Pokéballs didn't exist yet."

"...I'm starting to understand why you're so all right with being in such a strange situation," Laventon conceded. "All right… well, Ash, what are you going to do now?"

"He could ask Cyllage if he can stay here," Rei suggested. "You know, on a long term basis. Joining the survey team, maybe. I'm pretty sure she'd be okay with it, since Ash is so fearless with Pokémon… or if that doesn't work, maybe he could try the clans."

"The clans, now there's something I hadn't considered," Laventon admitted. "You know, Ash, their attitude to Pokémon is a bit closer to yours… and, now I think about it, if you have come here for a reason, maybe it's related to the clans. There have been strange bursts of lightning striking down from the sky, driving the Noble Pokémon into rages-"

Laventon's explanation was cut off as Ash's phone went ding.

Then, as he was rummaging in his pocket, it went ding again.

"What is that, anyway?" Laventon asked, curiously, as the phone emerged.

"It's a phone," Ash replied. "This one looks kind of like Arceus, I'm not really sure why, it didn't look that way before."

I GIVE, the first message said, just above the second. COME AND PICK UP YOUR POKÉMON AND TELL THEM TO STOP.

"Huh?" Ash asked.

Ding

PIKACHU IS ELECTROCUTING ME HOW CAN HE EVEN DO THAT

AN:

Ash can roll with this kind of thing, in the short term.

Pikachu… can be a bit more proactive.