In the Black World—
The scene on the black screen ended with Black World Ash watching Mewtwo leave.
At this point, the Black and White worlds were basically completely different universes.
Black World Ash had actually caught Mewtwo. If they hadn't just watched it happen with their own eyes, nobody would have believed it.
[Giovanni: No! My Mewtwo! How could Black World Ash have captured him?! That's a weapon created by Team Rocket!]
[Ash: Mewtwo isn't a weapon! He's a living being—a Pokémon of this world! Using a living creature as a tool is disgusting. Your whole Team Rocket thing is disgusting!]
[Giovanni: You sharp-tongued brat… You're just like that black brat—only good at running your mouth! Mewtwo got "seduced" by your sweet talk!]
[Mewtwo: And the "weapon" talk you poured into my head wasn't sweet talk?]
[Mewtwo: Just like Black World Ash said—Pokémon are like blank sheets of paper. What they become depends entirely on their Trainer's character.]
[Mewtwo: Right now I'm grateful you created me and let me see this brilliant, colorful world… but I also hate that my first Trainer was you.]
[Lance: Exactly. With a slimeball like Giovanni, it's already a miracle Mewtwo turned out basically decent. Add in Ash talking him down and he finally turned around.]
[Giovanni: You know nothing! I never did anything wrong!]
[Cynthia: Ah yes, you did nothing wrong… and yet Mewtwo chose to follow Black World Ash instead of you. Truly mysterious.]
[Giovanni: ...]
Traitor!!
Both versions of Mewtwo turned out to be back-stabbers!
He'd spent an absurd amount of money and effort to finally create Mewtwo… and then what?
The guy worked for him for how long? Forgot every bit of "kindness" he'd received, erased Giovanni's memories, then emotionally imprinted on some brat instead.
The ultimate traitor.
[Flint: There's really nothing to talk about with a guy like Giovanni. Trash is trash. Black World Giovanni at least battles decently when he uses Beedrill.]
[Drasna: Half a dozen of one, six of the other. Black World Giovanni still used Mewtwo against Gary. A Trainer like that doesn't believe in his own Pokémon—only borrowed power. That's laughable.]
[Bea: Giovanni over there also said Black World Ash had "picked up a life"… but what if Black World Ash had just jumped in and beaten him into the floor instead?]
[Professor Oak: Well… probably not? Black World Ash said the reason he fought Mewtwo himself was because Mewtwo claimed to be a Trainer too, so he treated it as Trainer vs. Trainer.]
[Raihan: Yeah—Trainer vs. Trainer. Totally "reasonable".]
[Steven: Is it, though…? Have all of you lost your minds?]
[Leon: If you look at it from a Pokémon perspective, Black World Ash is basically Fighting-type and Mewtwo is Psychic. If their strength is similar, it should be hard for Ash to win, right?]
[Caitlin: Depends how you fight… Even setting aside that Mewtwo hadn't fully mastered his power, a Psychic-type fighting a Fighting-type up close is just asking to lose. If Mewtwo chooses to brawl instead of play to his strengths, he deserves it.]
[Ash: Hey—why am I suddenly a Fighting-type?! I'm not a Pokémon, I'm a Trainer!]
[Sabrina: The real strength of Psychic-types is in the weirdness of their abilities—telekinesis, teleportation, swapping positions and so on. Mewtwo choosing to slug it out with a "Fighting-type" Ash is just bad tactics.]
[Ash: ...]
So he was just being ignored, huh?
When did everyone collectively decide he was a Pokémon?
Even if they were talking about Black World Ash… that guy was still him. Treating Black World Ash as a Pokémon basically meant treating him as a Pokémon.
What the heck! He was clearly a Trainer!
Still…
Watching Black World Ash trading blows bare-handed with Pokémon like that made him feel weirdly jealous.
If time hadn't frozen right now—if even their physical condition wasn't frozen—he would've started training immediately.
He'd already tried. In the current stopped-time state, no matter how much he moved, he neither tired nor improved. His stamina never dropped, but his body never got stronger either.
So his plan of secretly grinding physical training during time-stop had crashed halfway.
While everyone was arguing, the white screen began to play its images again.
In the White World—
Ash and his friends had also gone through the Mewtwo's Counterattack incident… but they remembered nothing. Their memories had been erased.
There was now only one month left before the Quartz Conference.
At this time, they heard that Elite Four Bruno was training on Mt. Hideaway.
So they rushed over to find him, hoping to become his disciples.
In the end, after seeing Bruno up close, Ash's mental image of the Elite Four was somewhat shattered.
And they learned Bruno wasn't on Mt. Hideaway for some special training regimen—he was tracking a giant Onix.
Supposedly it was several times larger than a normal Onix.
Ash and the others accompanied Bruno to find it and watched the entire process of Bruno subduing the Onix with his bare hands.
Ash had been stunned by the scene.
This kind of martial skill wasn't just beyond ordinary humans—it rivaled many Pokémon.
"It really is Master Bruno, who's trained his body to the absolute limit…"
[Bruno: Stop, stop—please don't say it! Anyone can call me physically strong except Ash. I can't accept it from him!!]
[Lance: It is a bit hard to swallow. Bruno's feats can still barely be called the "limit of humanity." What are we supposed to call Ash's? Punching straight through Mewtwo's barrier… that's not human at all.]
[Cynthia: Be fair, Ash didn't know all that at the time. His memories were wiped.]
[Korrina: Honestly, even if his memories weren't wiped, he'd probably still be saying the same amazed lines. He has no idea how strong he actually is…]
[Bea: Aura powers… I'm so jealous…]
[Raihan: Careful, Bea, I can feel your envy leaking out of the screen.]
[Ash: Uh… don't say that. I can't use Aura right now! Just body-wise, I'm probably only about even with Master Bruno at best.]
[Bruno: Ah yes, yes… you, a kid who's never trained, are "about even" with me, a man who's trained for decades. Be a person, would you?!]
Bruno was honestly emotional.
If monsters really exist in this world, Ash was one.
Bruno's physical gifts were already considered genius-level.
But Ash?
Ash was a monster of a genius. A freak. Completely outside normal understanding.
In the White World—
After Bruno finally caught the giant Onix, he said goodbye to Ash and left.
Later, Ash and the others dug up a golden relic—and met a young archaeologist named Eve.
She told them the golden artifact was a super-ancient relic, and she herself was a researcher specializing in such things.
Soon after, Team Rocket showed up and caused trouble, accidentally releasing a super-ancient Gengar.
Because of Gengar's appearance, its ancient rival Alakazam also emerged from another artifact.
The two enormous super-ancient Pokémon battled fiercely, wreaking havoc on the area.At one point, they were even about to carry their fight all the way toward Pallet Town.
In the end, thanks to the Jigglypuff that had been following Ash's group and constantly singing at them, a super-ancient Jigglypuff was awakened.
Only that giant Jigglypuff's song was strong enough to calm the other two.
When Ash and the others woke up, the three super-ancient Pokémon had vanished, presumably returning to their relics.
Eve decided to let the three ancient artifacts continue to sleep undisturbed—otherwise mankind might bring disaster upon itself.
[Lance: So adding in the super-giant Dragonite that Black and White Ash saw before, we've already seen four super-ancient Pokémon, right?]
[Cynthia: There are still so many unsolved mysteries in this world… they're really fascinating.]
[Cynthia: But the most interesting one is Ash. No matter where there's a crisis, he shows up sooner or later.]
[Cynthia: Even Mewtwo's incident and the super-ancient Pokémon—those were indirectly resolved because of Ash, saving Kanto and maybe the whole world. If Mewtwo had gone berserk and the super-ancient Pokémon had rampaged unchecked, things would've ended in tragedy.]
[Cynthia: Even if we could eventually stop them, by the time Champions or Elite Four arrived, the damage would already be irreparable…]
[Melody: Of course. Ash is the Chosen of the Sea Guardian. He'll be saving the world again in the future.]
[Bianca: Yeah, Ash also came to the Water Capital and saved Alto Mare… it's not really a surprise anymore.]
[Ash: Whoa, Bianca, you're chatting too?!]
[Bianca: Don't act so surprised. I'm recognized by the Latios–Latias siblings, you know~ If you round it up, that makes me a top-tier Trainer too!]
[Serena: …Ash-kun, it sounds like there are millions of girls you know.]
[Misty: Oh, these are just the ones you've seen. You don't know how many girls this guy met on the road.]
[Serena: Misty, don't say it! I don't want to hear it—I definitely don't want to watch it!!]
Serena felt like her brain was short-circuiting.
Thanks to the livestream, she'd finally confirmed that this boy was the one who helped her when they were little, and they'd even sorted out that old misunderstanding.
So why—why did that boy, who started traveling at ten, end up with a whole harem of "special encounters" along the way?
He was only ten!
Did Ash come with some kind of "romcom protagonist" halo?
Meanwhile, Ash was still mostly confused.
He was just chatting with girls he already knew from Altomare and Shamouti—why were Misty and Serena reacting so intensely?
At the same time, Melody and Bianca seemed to have found a shared topic, chatting happily in the barrage.
Everyone else got spoiled a bit in the process.
Turns out that after the Kanto journey, in the Orange Islands and then Johto, Ash had done a lot of world-shaking things.
Cynthia felt more and more certain she was right.
However you looked at it, crises across the world kept ending with Ash, directly or indirectly, as the key.
Without Ash, the world probably wouldn't be as peaceful as it was now.
Whether it was Black World Ash or White World Ash…
Both of them seemed like gifts from the heavens to the Pokémon world.
No wonder this double-world livestream had chosen to broadcast Ash's story.
In the White World—
After the super-ancient incident, Ash finally arrived at the Quartz Conference and, by chance, became the Torch Bearer for the opening ceremony.
Once the conference began, Ash battled his way forward and successfully made it into the Top 16.
Along the way, his undersized Krabby evolved into a powerful Kingler and performed brilliantly.
Gary, on the other hand—who had always stayed a bit ahead of Ash—was knocked out right at the gate to the Top 16, stopping at the Top 32.
After reaching the Top 16, Ash met a new friend: Ritchie.
Ritchie was similar to Ash in many ways.
He had a Pikachu, a Butterfree, and a Charmander of his own…Meanwhile, Ash had already released his Butterfree, and his Charmander had evolved into a rebellious Charizard.
In short, the two boys who'd just met felt like old friends.
Even knowing they would face each other in the next round, they still sincerely wished one another luck—no matter who won, the other would cheer.
Then, of course, Team Rocket showed up and made trouble again.
They captured Pikachu, and Ash's Pokémon exhausted themselves rescuing him and making it back to the stadium.
By then, Ash didn't have much fighting power left.
Squirtle and Pikachu both fell to Ritchie's team, and in the end Ash could only send out Charizard.
Charizard, however, refused to battle seriously—resulting in Ash losing by technical knockout.
Ash's Quartz Conference journey ended in the Top 16.
[Ritchie: So Ash was being sabotaged by Team Rocket that whole time… Sorry. I pushed too hard.]
[Ash: Eh, what's there to apologize for? I still wasn't a strong enough Trainer then. If I'd been more mature, Charizard wouldn't have stopped listening to me—and I wouldn't have gambled on sending him out.]
Ash had thought many times:
If Charizard had obeyed him, could he have gone further at Quartz?
But that kind of thinking was ultimately pointless.
If you're not strong enough, you're not strong enough. It wasn't anyone else's fault—not even Charizard's.
[Lance: Even so… Charizard went way too far, didn't he? Ash literally saved its life.]
[Blaine: Yeah, I remember how disobedient that Charizard was back during the Quartz Conference.]
[Paul: Why keep that kind of Pokémon? Just release it and be done. Honestly, at that time you were so weak that it's debatable who was abandoning who.]
[Reggie: Paul, that's rude.]
[Ash: Don't talk about my Charizard like that! He's not weak! I'm the weak one… I'll make him strong.]
[Paul: Big talk from someone who doesn't even train properly. I at least respect Black World Ash. You—the White World version—are just an immature kid. You've done nothing truly meaningful for your Pokémon; that's why you stopped in the Top 16.]
[Paul: Except for Charizard, your Pokémon are obviously talented. But you wasted the genius partners in your hands. A guy like that reaching the Top 16 is just luck.]
[Ash: What did you say?! Who even are you?! I don't know you at all!]
Ash was furious and confused.
Who was this guy?
Where did he come from, and why was he chewing him out the moment he appeared?
The worst part was: a lot of what Paul said… wasn't completely wrong. Ash had wasted a lot of his partners' potential.
But training isn't everything.
Emotionally, his bond with his Pokémon was stronger than most Trainers' could ever dream of.
So… who was this Shinji, this "Paul," anyway?
Reggie, sitting at home, was surprised too.
His younger brother had once watched him lose to Brandon when he'd just become a rookie Trainer, then watched Reggie become a full-time breeder instead.
That defeat had wounded Paul deeply.
Since then, Paul had cared only about raw power, treating Pokémon with extreme strictness and being very cold to everything around him.
Only truly strong Trainers caught his interest.
But now… his little brother seemed to have developed some special feelings about Ash.
Normally Paul was polite enough to strangers, if distant.
This time, though, he'd outright mocked and insulted Ash. That was very unlike him.
Was it Ash's gentle way of treating Pokémon that got under his skin?
Or… was it something else entirely…
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