Huh? What's that? You guys were expecting 'Showdown in Pewter City'?

NOPE! XD

Sorry, but we're taking a detour : )

Hey readers, as you might have guessed from the chapter title, we're taking our first big deviation from the canon timeline, and venturing into the unknown territory of my first completely original 'episode' in this story : ) I do have several of these special 'episodes' planned, and they're generally going to be reserved for something important in regards to Nolan and his Pokemon Team : )

Anyway, before we get into the chapter, let's talk about the winner of last week's voting topic. I'm very pleased to say that the winner was... Aerodactyl! Honestly, I was kind of hoping for this one, since in terms of storytelling, I REALLY like the idea of Nolan being able to fly around on a prehistoric Pokemon someday, plus Aerodactyl is just such a cool Pokemon in opinion : )

Beyond that, I'd just like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone that has reviewed, favourited and followed this story. I really appreciate all the support that has been shown to this story, so thank you all so much : )

Finally, please remember that Pokemon is not mine, only my OCs are.

I hope you enjoy this chapter : )

Operation Iris

Operation Iris - Part 1

Sometimes in life, you were met with crossroads.

This was an undeniable fact that nothing and no one could escape from. Everyone at least at one point in their life, was met with a basic choice, a decision that would effect the future outcome of the days to come. For most people, the choice was something tiny, something seemingly insignificant. Stop off at a coffee shop on the way to work, or get in early and make one in the canteen. Which of two job interviews to attend when they're both at the exact same time. Set off early to visit your mother at her home in the countryside, or have that lovely extra hour in bed. Tiny little things that, purely by rational thinking, you just wouldn't think would have any impact on anything at all.

Most people end up finding themselves quite surprised indeed.

You see, skipping the coffee shop in favour of the office canteen might please the boss, but it also cost you the chance to meet that special someone that one day you'd marry and share the rest of your life with. Attending the seemingly better job interview ends in disaster, whilst the other one leads to a career you love. And that extra hour in bed proves to be a real killer, because it ensures that your car is at that junction just in time to have that double decker bus plough straight into you. Everything is essence comes down to choice, but it's fate that creates those choices in the first place.

Such is the fickle nature of destiny after all.

And for a lot of people, the crossroads are merely metaphorical, but as an example, they could also be taken as the literal pivotal moment in one's history. Turning left at the crossroads for instance, could throw you into a whole new adventure, one filled with mystery and excitement, where new friendships are established and cherished for a lifetime afterwards. But turn right at the crossroads, and you'd miss that adventure entirely, proceeding through life without ever being even aware of the events that had taken place. Never knowing of the beautiful friendship you might have had, and now never one.

It was why so many people chose not to reflect too heavily upon destiny.

The ripple effects that such instances can cause on your life can be downright frightening to think about, so people try to ignore it, and instead are content with the life they have. There was nothing wrong with that line of thinking, but some people might consider it a somewhat narrow minded view. But the irrefutable fact of the matter is simple. Everyone at one point or another is faced with such a choice.

And for one particular group of young Pokemon Trainers currently making their way through the Viridian Forest on their way to Pewter City, the time to face such a decision was now.

A heavy frown that signalled the presence of deep thoughts was playing across Nolan's face as the young boy glanced to the left, then to the right, then back again. The new Pokemon Trainer and his friends had carefully been following the instructions that the Samurai had kindly written down for them for the last few days now, and they were certain that they would reach their destination of Pewter City by that very same afternoon, should they all remain on track that was. Unfortunately however, it seemed that fate was attempting to throw a spanner in the works for the weary group of travellers. They had reached a fork in the forest trail, and were now quite literally stood at one of life's crossroads, trying desperately hard to decide which way to go, not knowing what challenges or wonders each path might bring them.

Since he had been the one that the Samurai had entrusted the directions too, the others all seemed to defer themselves to his leadership. Now Nolan was trying to make the decision on which was the best route to take. Flanking him on either side was Ash and Misty, and both of they were watching their golden haired friend closely, clearly awaiting his judgement on the matter they found themselves faced with. Pikachu was riding on Ash's shoulder, whilst Meadow had taken up her favourite residence in Nolan's arms. Both of the Pokemon were being especially quiet as they awaited the final verdict.

"Hmmm" Nolan rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he continued turning his icy blue eyes down each path in turn.

Ash and Misty both turned to look at him curiously, though Ash's expression also contained a hint of impatience.

"Well?" the raven haired boy questioned when Nolan had been silent for a moment too long, "Which way should we go?"

Nolan scratched his head, a look of uncertainty flashing across his face.

"I'm not really sure" the blonde haired boy admitted after a second.

"Well please can you hurry up and figure it out" Misty urged him, though she was careful to keep her tone calm as she warily looked about the forest that was beginning to feel like it was closing in on them from all sides, "I'm sick of being in this forest now, worried that a bug might jump out at me every moment of the day. The sooner we get out of here and back to civilisation, the happier I'll be".

"Me too!" Ash cheered in agreement with his friend, who stared at him, a little perplexed as to why he was in such a rush to leave the forest too. After all, the raven haired boy had made no secret of the fact that he liked being there. Once he noticed the strange look he was on the receiving end of, he elaborated, "When we get to Pewter City, I can finally challenge the gym leader there, and hopefully earn my first badge. That'll be a big step towards entering the Indigo League, right Pikachu?"

"Pikachu!" Pikachu nodded his head, smiling at his beloved partner's enthusiasm.

Ash beamed at him, before he turned his attention to his best friend's own Pokemon partner.

"What about you Meadow?" Ash asked the little Grass Type Pokemon kindly, prompting her to blink up at him from her spot in Nolan's arms, "Aren't you excited to battle for Nolan, and hopefully win his first badge too?"

"Saur! Bulba!" Meadow nodded eagerly, knowing that that was what Nolan wanted, that it was important to her human, which naturally made it important to her as well.

Nolan couldn't help but allow a soft sigh to pass his lips as everyone's desires to get to Pewter City quickly met his ears. He knew it wasn't their intention at all, but their words were starting to make him feel like a failure when it came to being the group's navigator.

"I'm really sorry guys" he apologised, wishing that he had some better news to tell them, "But I haven't got a clue which way we're supposed to turn now".

The others looked at him in shock, each of them aghast by the words he had spoken.

"What do you mean you don't know which way we're supposed to go?!" Misty cried, an element of fear creeping into her tone, which was slowly rising, "I thought that the Samurai gave you step-by-step instructions on how to get us out of this forest!"

Nolan weakly met her stern gaze, his expression utterly apologetic.

"He did" the golden haired boy confirmed what Misty had claimed, "But there's nothing in them about any forks in the road!"

"Are you sure about that?" Ash drawled, his tone and expression both highly skeptical, "Because I know from past experience that you don't always have the best sense of direction Nolan, no offence".

The golden haired boy couldn't help but scowl upon hearing that remark.

"Plenty taken" he shot back at his raven haired best friend sarcastically as he could feel his own frustrations starting to boil over, "And just because I'm not the best navigator in the world doesn't mean that I've lost the ability to read! I'm telling you, there's nothing in those instructions that mentions a fork in the trail!"

"Well perhaps you should take another look at them" Misty suggested in a placating manner, not wishing to upset the boy that she knew was only trying his best, but also wanting to get this sorted out as quickly as possible, "Maybe we did something wrong a couple of steps back and we're only just noticing it now".

Nolan grumbled, irked by the lack of faith that his friends were showing in him, but he could begrudgingly admit that she might have a point.

The golden haired boy rummaged around in his pockets for a few moments, before he withdrew several crumpled pieces of paper. Upon them, the untidy scrawl of the Samurai could be seen. He quickly began flicking through the scribbled down notes, comparing them to the steps that their group had taken whilst traversing the forest. To Nolan's utter confusion, not to mention frustration, everything seemed to be lining up. A heavy frown tugged at his lips as he turned his gaze back up to the others.

"I just don't understand it" the golden haired boy muttered under his breath in annoyance, "As far as I can tell, we've followed every step perfectly!"

At the boy's side, Ash throw him an irritated look.

"Well obviously not" he grunted, before his aggravation started to get the better of him. He just wanted to get to Pewter City so he could have his gym battle, and Nolan was holding them all up. It was time to put an end to those shenanigans right now, "Give me those notes! I bet that you've read them wrong!"

The raven haired boy reached out and began trying to tug the papers out of Nolan's hand. The boy in question couldn't help but scowl in response.

"Knock it off Ash!" Nolan snapped back angrily, trying to keep his grip on the papers that he had been reading, "I'm reading them just fine, so quit it!"

Off to the sidelines; Misty, Meadow and Pikachu all looked on nervously, not liking the look of where this brewing situation was headed. All three sets of their eyes darted back and forth as they observed the makeshift tug-a-war that had broken out between the two best friends.

"Guys, be careful!" Misty tried to interject, although sadly she was ignored as her male friends continued bickering, "Guys! Stop! Before you..."

RIP!

"... Tear the directions in half" Misty groaned as she finished the warning she had been trying to give them. A warning that she now realised had come far too late.

Truer words had never been spoken.

Ash had tried to wrestle the directions away from Nolan with such an intense amount of force, and Nolan had been so unwilling to surrender them, that the two boys had accidently torn the notes right down the middle, leaving them both standing there with half a page each. The other fragments of paper had all fallen out of their hands, and ended up landing in a thick puddle of mud at their feet. The pieces of paper immediately soaked up the dirt, rendering any ink that might have been on them previously completely unreadable.

Needless to say, their already less than ideal situation was now looking infinitely worse.

"Oh great, just great!" Nolan immediately fixed Ash with a death-glare, gesturing furiously with the one half a page he still had in his possession, "Now look what you've done! You've totally wrecked all the pages!"

Ash just fixed the golden haired boy with a hard glare of his own, less than impressed with the attitude that Nolan seemed to be sporting that day.

"Hey! You're as much to blame for that as me!" the raven haired boy heatedly protested, throwing down the half a page he had in his hand in his frustration, "If you had just given the pages to me to read, that wouldn't have happened!"

"I was in the middle of reading them, and you tried to snatch them off me!" Nolan reminded the other boy angrily.

"You were reading them wrong!" Ash shot back at his best friend in a tone that was borderline patronising, "That's why I wanted to read them! I was trying to fix your mistake!"

A very ugly look appeared on Nolan's face at those words.

"I did not make a mistake!" the golden haired boy stormed, clenching his fists so tightly that his knuckles began to turn a stark white, "I was reading them just fine before you sent them for a mud-bath!"

A cocky smirk that practically oozed with condescension flashed across Ash's face.

"Well clearly you weren't..." the raven haired boy taunted the other young Pokemon Trainer mockingly, "Otherwise we wouldn't still be lost, now would we?"

Nolan flushed a deep red colour, though whether the effect was due to pure outrage or sheer embarrassment, the rest of the little group couldn't be sure. What they could be sure of however, was that when Nolan opened his mouth to retort, the words on the tip of his tongue were no doubt downright cutting. And unfortunately for the irate blonde haired trainer, he never got the chance to utter them, regardless of how much he really wanted to in that moment, for at that exact second, Misty decided that it was time to break up their little spat.

"Alright you two, that's enough!" the orange haired girl chimed back into the conversation, looking at both of her friends in turn with a very stern look on her face, "The fact of the matter is we've got ourselves lost, and fighting about whose fault that is isn't going to help us, so just stop it!"

Both of the boys scowled, but they could also begrudgingly see her point. Eventually, the two of them left out deep sighs, suddenly feeling exhausted.

"You're right Misty" Nolan sighed again, before turning his attention back to the fork in the forest trail they were all standing at, "Well, now that we don't have anything to guide us anymore, I guess we're just going to have to pick a path and hope for the best".

The others all looked at him shrewdly as he made that observation.

"Yeah, I guess so" Ash mused aloud, rubbing the back of his head thoughtfully as he looked at the two alternative trails in turn, "But... which one should we take?"

Again, the group studied the two paths leading off into the forest in opposite directions. There was nothing much to differentiate them from each other, and both of them looked to be equally well-worn, indicating that both of them got a reasonable amount of foot traffic. It was their similarities that made it hard for the young trainers to choose between them.

"Any ideas?" Misty asked after they'd all had a moment to reflect on their dilemma.

"I mean... I guess we could flip a coin, because I'm seriously stuck here" Ash remarked, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.

"You wanna decide this with a coin toss?" Nolan gaped at him incredulously. He could scarcely believe that Ash was actually suggesting that they allow something as finicky as fate to hopefully guide them on their way.

"You got any better ideas?" the raven haired boy asked him flatly in response.

He didn't.

Sighing for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, Nolan finally gave in, and bowed his head out of submission. Ignoring the somewhat smug smirk that was gracing Ash's face as Nolan deferred to his suggestion, the golden haired boy rummaged around in his pockets for a moment, before he eventually found a stray penny. He placed it on top of his thumb, preparing to flick it into the air, before his icy blue eyes rose up to meet Ash's russet coloured ones.

"You call it" he commanded.

Ash nodded solemnly, and thought about it for a moment, before he eventually nodded his head and assigned each winding trail to a different side of the coin.

"Heads we go left, tails we go right" he finally said in somewhat eager anticipation.

Nolan glanced over towards to where Misty was stood off to the side, arching an eyebrow at her curiously. The Water Type Pokemon Specialist merely shrugged her shoulders at him, understanding his wordless question perfectly. When it became clear that she had no better possible solutions to offer up, Nolan nodded again, before he swiftly got down to business. With one simple manoeuvre, he flicked the coin up into the air.

The three humans and their Pokemon all watched the glittering coin as it spun through the air, almost mesmerised by the graceful motion of the smooth piece of metal as it twinkled under the bright sunlight.

After what felt like an eternity to them, but in reality was only about five seconds, the coin descended again, and Nolan quickly caught it. Taking a deep breath, the golden haired boy then revealed the path that fate had decided for them.

The coin showed... heads.

Immediately, five sets of eyes all turned in almost perfect synchronisation to stare down the left trail. An uneasy air settled over the group for a moment. Whilst there was nothing strikingly obvious to put them off from going that way, it still didn't really sit well with any of them to go down that path simply because a coin toss of all things had told them to do it.

"Well... I guess we should get going then" Ash said, trying to sound bracing for his friends' benefit but not quite managing it. Now that he was faced with the reality of following his plan through, it suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. The raven haired boy quickly shook those unpleasant thoughts away however, and plastered a bright grin on his face, "Pewter City, here we come!"

"Pika Pika!" Pikachu cheered from his shoulder.

"I guess..." Misty swallowed hard, though she didn't sound nearly as convinced as Ash did.

Nevertheless, when the raven haired boy started walking confidently down the trail that led off to the left, the Water Type Pokemon Specialist didn't hesitate to follow him. Nolan couldn't help but swallow hard as he looked on as his friends walked off down the left trail. He still felt very uncomfortable about the way that this decision had been made, but he also knew that he had nothing better to counter it with. He debated for just a moment longer whether or not they should be doing this, but ultimately he decided to just go with the hand that fate had dealt them. Nolan quickly hurried off down the left-hand trail after his friends.

The golden haired boy had no idea of the events that had just been set in motion, nor how the significance of that choice had just changed his life... forever.

The group had gotten so caught up in their little dilemma that they hadn't noticed that anything was amiss when they'd been standing at the crossroads.

If only they had paid more attention to their surroundings, before choosing a path and walking down it, they might have noticed that not everything was quite as it seemed, that they weren't quite as alone in this part of the Viridian Forest as they first appeared to be...

From some bushes right at the point where the two trails separated, there suddenly came a low rustling sound, and a pair of scarlet eyes glowed with an ominous eery red light as they quickly honed in on their target.

A target that was none other than the three trainers themselves...

Three hours had passed before Nolan and the others finally admitted defeat.

Three whole hours, and they were still no closer to getting to Pewter City than they had been before they'd first set out on this trek through the woods. It was beginning to feel like they'd never find their way out of there, that they'd all be stuck in the forest for the rest of their lives. Each and every time that it looked like the trees were finally starting to thin out, and the group believed they were actually making some progress, they were sorely disappointed to find themselves in another forest clearing, rather than on the edge of the Viridian Forest which was what they actually wanted. Truly, the whole forest had become a labyrinth, one that Nolan was seriously beginning to fear they might never escape from.

"Urgh!" the golden haired boy complained as he sat down on a rotting old tree stump, having finally had a belly-full of all of this nonsense, "This is seriously not even funny anymore!"

The others all threw him a sharp look for his choice of words.

"It wasn't even funny to begin with" Ash folded his arms crossly. He was making no secret about the fact that he held Nolan entirely responsible for this whole situation.

"Yeah..." Misty grumbled, sitting down on the ground to give her aching feet a rest, "I bet you regret tearing up our directions right about now, right Ash?"

The raven haired boy immediately glowered at her in annoyance.

"We've already been through this, and that wasn't my fault!" he snapped back, before he amended that statement slightly, "Well, it wasn't just my fault!"

"Besides, weren't you the one that said that hashing through all that wasn't going to get us anywhere?" Nolan reminded her.

The golden haired boy immediately wished that he hadn't.

Misty rounded on him in an instant, and judging by the expression on her face, she was far from impressed. Her cheeks were flushed a dark red from anger, and her gaze became cool enough to ice over the entire forest as she responded to Nolan's ill-received remark.

"This from the guy who got us lost in the first place?!" she shrieked, and Nolan ducked his head slightly, "We've wasted an entire morning going round and round in circles! And we still have no idea of how to get to Pewter City, and out of this bug-infested forest!"

Nolan grimaced. He could feel just how tense and cranky they were all getting the longer this went on, fueled by their lack of progress, which made it feel like their endeavours were pointless. It took some effort on his part, but the golden haired boy bit back the sour retort that had been on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he tried to get their attention back to the problem at hand, feeling that that would be a better use of their time as opposed to bickering.

"I've been thinking about that actually" he said, and everyone turned their attention to him with an air of hope about them, "The way I see it, we have two ways out of this mess".

"Yeah, and what are those?" Ash asked his best friend curiously.

"Well, the first option is we turn back now, and try to retrace our steps until we get back to that fork in the road" Nolan explained, and the others all slumped. The prospect of heading back held little appeal to them considering that they had literally been walking for hours by this point, "Once we find it again, we could then try turning right instead of left".

A collection of groans met his words.

"We've been walking for so long though... I feel like my feet are gonna drop off" Misty whined unhappily, clearly not on board with that suggestion, "What was your other idea?"

"We let Welkin, Butterfree and Pidgeotto out of their pokeballs, and send them up into the sky" the golden haired boy explained his second plan of action, "From up there, one of them should be able to see Pewter City, then they could guide us too it and out of the forest".

Misty couldn't help but beam at the ingenuity of the idea.

"That's a great idea Nolan" the Water Type Pokemon Specialist cheered with much more enthusiasm this time around. It was a good idea though, yet so simple. She couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't thought to do that right from the very beginning, "That'll get us there in next to no time!"

Ash on the other hand wasn't convinced.

"I dunno..." the raven haired boy said slowly, a hint of skepticism in both his tone and his expression, "Following directions from a Pokemon doesn't sound too reliable a way to travel to me".

Nolan threw him an annoyed look in response to his negativity.

"Yes, because following directions from a coin toss has been working so well for us" the blonde Pokemon Trainer said dryly in response.

"Touche" Ash couldn't help but begrudgingly admit that his own idea had backfired on them all in a rather spectacular fashion.

Darkly satisfied that he had managed to stump his best friend in all their bickering for the first time since they'd resumed their journey that morning, Nolan sensed no further resistance from anyone else within the group. And when nobody offered up any alternative suggestions to get them out of this mess, the golden haired boy moved to put his latest plan into action. He reached down to pluck the pokeball containing Welkin off of his belt, but unfortunately for Nolan, he never got the chance to do so.

For quite suddenly and without any kind of warning whatsoever, Meadow abruptly leapt out of Nolan's arms, and proceeded to run away.

"What the...?!" Nolan could do little more than gape in utter disbelief as his beloved partner Pokemon, who had always been so loyal and faithful, disappeared into some bushes and out of sight, without so much as a by-your-leave, "Meadow! Where are you going?! Come back!"

"Saur! Bulbasaur!" he heard his Grass Type Pokemon call back to him.

Nolan just stood there with his jaw hanging wide open. He was scarcely able to believe what he had just witnessed. Meadow was always so fiercely protective, and seemed to genuinely enjoy being around him. It didn't make any sense. Around the stunned boy, his friends all had similar reactions, but Nolan honestly felt numb to the point that he couldn't even bring himself to acknowledge them right now.

The golden haired boy felt his stomach lurch unpleasantly and his blood turn icy in his veins as his partner quite literally ran away from him.

The insecure part of him, despite how well Nolan normally kept it hidden, raised its ugly head within the boy. Why would Meadow just take off like that? Was it because of him? Had he done, or not done, something which had upset her? He just didn't understand it, and he couldn't help but recoil at the idea of his partner being upset with him, of her not wanting to be by his side anymore.

Needless to say, Nolan had never felt more heartbroken as he did in that moment.

The worst part of this most unexpected situation was that he didn't even know what to do to put it right. He didn't even know if there even was something to put right as far as Meadow's feelings were concerned. Nolan had been totally unprepared for a situation like this cropping up out of nowhere, and he didn't like it one bit.

Fortunately, the golden haired boy wasn't going to have to stew in his uncertainty and misery for long.

Just as Meadow had done just seconds before - although it already felt like an eternity had passed for an extremely anxious Nolan - Pikachu suddenly hopped down from his spot on Ash's shoulder, and less than a split-second later, had darted off into the bushes as well, following Meadow's example and rapidly disappearing out of sight.

"Pikachu too?" Misty breathed in stunned disbelief.

Her softly spoken words were enough to jolt Ash out of the incredulous reverie that his own precious partner's actions had put him in. The young raven haired boy took a step forwards, a concerned expression tugging at his lips.

"Hey Pikachu! What's the matter?!" Ash called out, his russet coloured eyes shining with worry, "Come back here!"

Despite the concerned edge that had entered into Ash's tone, Nolan on the other hand couldn't help but feel a small surge of relief and hope course through his entire body as a realisation struck him. After all, it seemed very unlikely that both Meadow and Pikachu would be so ticked off with their respective human partners that they would both run away at the same time. Besides, Nolan was seriously struggling to think of anything, save for being lost, that might have upset his beloved partner.

No, the golden haired boy was now quietly confident that this was about something else entirely.

That was a major relief to the young boy, who mentally wiped his brow as he forced the unpleasant thoughts that had crept into his head out again. But what else this might be about, Nolan had no clue. It was obviously very important though if both Meadow and Pikachu thought that it, whatever it was, demanded their immediate attention.

"Why would Pikachu and Meadow just take off like that?" Ash mused aloud in a hurt tone, looking on the verge of tears, he was so distraught at the idea of Pikachu running away, "Did we do something wrong?"

"I... I don't know" an equally flummoxed Misty shrugged her shoulders helplessly in response, "I don't think so..."

"I don't think this has anything to do with us" Nolan chimed back into the conversation, and both of his human friends turned to him, surprise written across both of their faces, "I... well I'm not sure, but I'm beginning to think that maybe they wanted us to follow them".

It was the only thing that seemed logical to Nolan at this point.

His partner hadn't seemed angry or sad before she had leapt out of his arms after all. In fact, it had been such a random turn of events that it didn't seem like emotions had been driving her behaviour at all. All of which led Nolan to one simple conclusion.

There was something in this forest that Meadow felt needed their attention.

"You think they might have heard something and gone to check it out?" Misty asked the golden haired boy, catching his line of thought. Nolan just shrugged his shoulders at her.

"Perhaps" he nodded slowly, "Nothing else makes much sense. Meadow wouldn't just run off like that on a whim".

The boy was very adamant about that.

"Pikachu wouldn't either" Ash said as he thought about it some more, realising that Nolan was right, "I think you're right Nolan. Maybe there's something wrong and they want to fix it".

"Either way, we should hurry after them" Nolan suggested to his friends, starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, not to mention vulnerable, being apart from Meadow like this, "The last thing we need is to lose our Pokemon when we're already lost ourselves!"

Ash and Misty both nodded at him, and the decision was made. The group promptly set off running into the woods after their tearaway Pokemon. And as they raced through the forest, ducking under low hanging branches and following the muddy footsteps left behind by their beloved partners, Nolan found himself unable to keep one specific question from going around and around in the back of his mind.

Just what kind of trouble were they charging towards this time?

And that's the first chapter of my first original episode : )

Hopefully you guys enjoyed that little taste. I know I laid it on pretty thick with the whole turn right turn left thing, but since this is the first major divergence from the canon timeline, I wanted to really emphasise how Nolan's presence in the group has caused such an alteration. I feel like in canon, the events of this 'episode' could still have happened, but Ash and Misty might have missed this adventure by taking a different path through the forest. It's kind of fun playing into that idea here : )

And yes, I know it might seem kind of silly to include that part about Nolan being insecure about Meadow staying with him, since she absolutely adores him, but he is still a ten year old child, and children can have irrational fears from time to time, so I really wanted to stay true to that. Plus, she's never run off before, so it was a little scary for him. Hopefully it didn't seem too far out of character for him.

Now, let's move on to today's voting topic, and this time we're picking another Pokemon Evolution for the defeat of Blaine. Honestly, he really wasn't much to write home about, considering that I had Gyarados, Lapras and Poliwag and they quite literally sank his entire team XD Anyway, the evolution options are: - Welkin the Pidgey, Venonat, Meowth, Jigglypuff, Koffing, Poliwag, Electabuzz, Geodude, Kadabra and Voltorb.

And that's just about it I think. I really hope that you guys enjoyed the first chapter of this completely original 'episode', and are looking forward to seeing how it pans out in the next couple of chapters : ) Please also consider leaving a review on your way out as I'd love to hear your thoughts, or ideas for possible new future 'episodes' : )

Until the next time, keep on reading : )