The Abra Teleportations branch in Pallet Town sat three streets from the Ketchum house — a clean, modern building that looked slightly out of place among the older storefronts, with a sign that pulsed with faint psychic energy and an Abra dozing on a cushion in the window display.
Ash had walked past it a hundred times. He had never quite gotten used to it.
The technology was recent — a network of linked Psychic-type Pokémon connecting branches across every region, making what used to be a week's journey into something that happened between one breath and the next. It worked because Palkia was, for once, doing its job properly. The old stories said Palkia and Dialga used to clash constantly, warping space and time badly enough that long-distance psychic connections were impossible. Apparently that had changed. The world had gotten smaller.
'We didn't have this,' Ash thought, looking at the sign. 'Not like this.'
"Ash." Cynthia, beside him. Not a question.
"Coming," he said, and followed everyone inside.
The interior was bright and unhurried, with several teleportation platforms arranged in a row, each humming at a low frequency that Ash felt more in his chest than heard. An old gentleman with a neat white beard stood at the nearest one, an Abra settled on his shoulder with the peaceful detachment of something that has done this ten thousand times.
"Celadon City," May said, before he'd finished his greeting.
He nodded pleasantly, gestured toward the platform, and tapped something on a panel beside him.
They crowded on. Ash between X on his shoulder and Gible pressed against his ankle, Y on his other side. The platform hummed higher.
The old man gave a small wave.
Then Pallet Town was gone, and Celadon was there instead — same platform shape, same hum, different air. Celadon smelled like flowers and something sweet underneath, the city's gardens reaching even into its transit buildings. A different old man with a remarkably similar face stood at the panel.
'Same family,' Ash thought. 'Has to be.'
"Welcome to Celadon," the man said, with the same pleasant nod.
They stepped out onto the street.
Erika was waiting outside the Department Store.
She stood at the base of the steps with the particular stillness of someone who is comfortable being still — not impatient, not checking her phone, just present. Her dark hair was up. Her expression was the mild, composed kind that suggested she found most things gently interesting rather than urgently so.
She spotted the group and raised a hand in greeting.
"Sorry for the wait," Serena called.
"I haven't been here long," Erika said, which was probably true and also politely said regardless. Her eyes moved across the group and settled briefly on Ash. Something in her expression shifted — not dramatically, just a small adjustment, like a person recalibrating. "Ash."
"Hey," Ash said. "Good to see you."
"And you." She looked at his head. At the small bandage near his hairline. Back at his face. "...New Pokémon?"
"Three days ago."
"Gible," Gible announced, from beside his ankle, with the confidence of something introducing itself to royalty.
Erika looked down at it for a moment. "Charming," she said, with what might have been entirely sincere appreciation.
She opened a Pokéball without ceremony.
A Rotom emerged — not the standard angular form, but flattened and disk-shaped, hovering at waist height with a soft spatial hum around its edges. A faint dimensional shimmer played around its body.
"Carriage Rotom," Erika said. "It can carry bags — the storage works like a Pokéball's interior. Effectively unlimited."
A beat of silence.
Then Serena: "You had that this whole time?"
"I did mention I knew the city well."
"That's not the same as—"
"I need one," Misty said flatly.
"Limited edition," May said, with the specific grief of someone who has missed a drop.
Ash looked at the Rotom. At the bags the girls were already carrying. At the Department Store's six visible floors.
Something unclenched in his chest.
'Thank Arceus,' he thought.
"Well then," Dawn said, already moving toward the doors. "Let's go."
The clothing section occupied the entire second floor.
Ash had been inside for approximately four minutes before Serena appeared at his shoulder holding something.
"Try this," she said.
It was a shirt. Normal enough. He took it.
Two minutes later she reappeared with a jacket. Bright orange. Geometric patterns. The kind of thing that required commitment.
"Also this."
"Serena—"
"Just try it."
He tried it. He stood in front of the mirror in the bright orange jacket and looked at himself with the expression of a person who has accepted temporary suffering.
"Hmm," Serena said, tilting her head.
"It's very orange," May offered from behind him, diplomatically.
"He looks like a Magmar," Misty said, not diplomatically.
"He does not look like a Magmar," Serena said.
"The colouring is—"
"The colouring is bold."
"Bold is a word for it," Misty said.
Ash took the jacket off with some relief and handed it back. Serena accepted it with the expression of someone who had not conceded anything.
"Black," Cynthia said, from where she was standing slightly apart from the group, not looking at any racks in particular. She said it without inflection, as if noting a weather condition.
Everyone looked at her.
"It suits him," she said. Simply. Then went back to whatever she'd been thinking about.
"Red," Misty said, because she wasn't going to let that stand without a counter.
"Black," Cynthia repeated, same tone.
Misty opened her mouth.
"Black," Erika said, quietly, from two racks over.
Misty closed her mouth.
Serena was already pulling things. She produced a dark jacket — structured, clean lines, the kind of thing that looked like it had been made with a specific purpose in mind rather than fashion for its own sake — and held it up.
Ash looked at it. Put it on.
In the mirror: him, the jacket, X on his shoulder looking critically at the reflection.
"Char," X said, with what sounded like approval.
"See," Serena said, satisfied.
"Even the Charmander agrees," May said.
Ash checked the price tag, calculated that he could justify it, and said fine.
Gible, who had been exploring the base of a nearby rack with investigative interest, chose this moment to bite the hem of a display scarf. The scarf came partially off its hook. Ash caught it before it hit the floor, rehung it with one hand, and didn't break his stride.
"Sorry," he said to nobody in particular.
"Gib," Gible said, wandering away.
Sporting goods was on the third floor.
Misty found her running shoes in three minutes and forty seconds. Ash counted. She knew exactly what she wanted, knew where it was, picked it up, confirmed the size, and put it in Carriage Rotom's storage field with the efficiency of someone who had done this exact errand in their head a hundred times.
"Done," she said.
"That's it?" May said.
"That's it."
"We've been in this section for four minutes."
"I told you I needed running shoes. I got running shoes."
Dawn was still holding two pairs of identical-looking trainers, one in each hand, turning them slowly.
"They're the same," Misty told her.
"They're not the same. This one has a slightly wider toe box."
"Dawn."
"It matters for contest footwork. If I'm performing and my toes are compressed—"
"They're the same shoe."
"They are not—"
Ash sat on a nearby bench. X climbed down from his shoulder and sat beside him. Y settled on his other side. Gible put its chin on his knee and looked up at him with enormous patient eyes.
"Yeah," Ash told it quietly. "Me too."
Lina appeared beside him and sat down. "How are you holding up."
"I'm fine."
"Your eye has been twitching since the jacket section."
"That's unrelated."
She handed him a bottle of water. He drank it.
Across the aisle, Dawn had progressed to holding both shoes at eye level and squinting. Misty had her arms crossed and her jaw set. Serena had produced her phone.
"The online specs are identical," Serena reported.
"The specs don't account for—"
"Dawn," Misty said. "Pick one."
Dawn looked at the shoes. Looked at Misty. Looked at the shoes again.
"The left one," she said.
"They're both for either foot."
"The one in my left hand."
Misty stared at her for a long moment. "Fine." She turned away. "Fine."
Dawn smiled and handed the chosen pair to Carriage Rotom.
Green vanished into the bookshop floor the moment the escalator doors opened.
Not gradually. Not with any announcement. One moment she was behind Ash on the escalator, and then the floor arrived and she was simply gone — swallowed by the stacks as if she'd been waiting for this specific floor the entire trip and had been merely tolerating everything before it.
"Should we—" May started.
"She'll find us," Misty said.
They browsed. Ash picked up a book on Pokémon type compatibility he'd been meaning to find for a while. Lina selected two novels from a table near the window. Serena lingered over a photography section. Dawn ran her hands along the spines in the art section with the slow reverence of someone who would have bought everything if she had infinite shelf space.
Erika had moved to the mythology section and was reading standing up, holding a slim volume carefully, her expression the focused one of someone who is not browsing but working.
Cynthia appeared beside her.
Ash watched from the end of the aisle as the two of them stood side by side in the mythology section, both reading, neither speaking, and somehow managing to seem like they were having a conversation anyway. After a minute Cynthia said something quietly and Erika turned a page and replied something equally quiet and they both kept reading.
'Researchers,' Ash thought. 'Same kind of focused.'
Green reappeared forty-three minutes later carrying a stack that reached her chin. She set it on the counter, looked at the total on the register, and did not flinch.
"All of these?" the cashier confirmed.
"All of these," Green confirmed.
Carriage Rotom accepted the stack with a slight downward dip in its hover.
"I needed all of them," Green said, to no one who had asked.
"Obviously," Ash said.
She looked at him. He looked back. She picked up her receipt and walked toward the escalator without comment, which from Green was practically warmth.
"What even is a planner?" Ash said.
"It's a scheduling system," Dawn said, holding up a book roughly the size of a small Pokémon. "For organising your time. Look, each week gets a spread, and then there's a monthly overview at the front—"
"You have a phone."
"The phone is for quick notes. The planner is for structure."
"How is that different from a note app with—"
"Ash," Dawn said patiently, "do you want me to explain time management to you?"
He considered whether he wanted that.
"No," he said.
"Then trust me about the planner."
She turned to the display, which contained approximately thirty variants of the same concept — different sizes, covers, internal layouts, weekly versus monthly versus hybrid formats. She moved slowly along the row, pulling each one out slightly, examining the binding, flipping to the middle, testing the paper weight with her thumb.
Ash sat on the floor with his back against a shelf.
X sat on his knee. Y sat beside him. Gible had found something at the base of a nearby display and was investigating it nose-first.
"How long does this take?" Ash asked Serena, who had appeared beside him and slid down to sit against the same shelf.
"Last time? About forty minutes."
"There were thirty planners last time?"
"There were forty. She narrowed it to ten and then started over from the beginning."
Ash put his head back against the shelf and looked at the ceiling.
"Gib," Gible said, from somewhere to his left, in the tone of a Pokémon that has found something interesting.
"Don't bite it," Ash said, without looking.
A pause.
"Gib," Gible said, in the tone of a Pokémon that has already bitten it.
Ash got up.
The item in question was a novelty pen shaped like a Slowpoke. It had survived the bite intact — the rubber was tougher than it looked. The shop attendant nearby looked at Gible with the expression of someone who had no reaction left.
"Sorry," Ash said, producing his wallet. "I'll buy it."
"You really don't—"
"I'll buy it."
He bought the Slowpoke pen and pocketed it. Gible watched it disappear with satisfaction. The chewing had clearly been the point.
"You're not getting it back," Ash said.
"Gib," Gible said, and wandered back to Ash's ankle, entirely at peace.
Serena, from the floor, had watched all of this. "You know you just rewarded it for biting things."
"I know." He sat back down beside her. "I'm still keeping the pen."
On the other side of the display, Dawn had narrowed it down to three planners and was holding them in a fan.
"The teal one," May said, appearing from around the corner.
"I haven't decided yet."
"The teal one. It's you."
Dawn looked at the teal one. Looked at the other two. Looked at the teal one again.
"The teal one," she said.
May smiled. "Obviously."
Misty, who had been standing at the edge of the stationery section for twenty minutes with her arms crossed, uncrossed them. "Finally."
"You could have looked at things while you waited," Dawn said.
"I found everything I needed in sporting goods."
"There's nice stuff here—"
"Dawn." Misty was already walking toward the escalator. "Teal planner. Let's go."
The accessories floor had a particular quality by mid-afternoon — the light angling in through the high windows, the displays glittering. Serena moved through it with the focused pleasure of someone entirely in their element, pulling Dawn from case to case, holding things up to the light.
Misty worked through a rack of hair accessories methodically. Occasionally she kept one. She did this without commentary or apparent deliberation: decide fast, move on.
Erika was at a glass case near the far wall, looking at something small and delicate with the same careful attention she'd given the mythology books. Cynthia stood beside her, though she wasn't looking at the display. She was watching the room with the quiet peripheral awareness she carried everywhere — not surveillance, just presence.
Green was standing near a keyring display, not looking at keyrings. Her arms were loosely crossed and her gaze was unfocused in the particular way of someone thinking about something that has nothing to do with their surroundings.
Lina had found a bracelet she liked and was at the counter paying for it, chatting easily with the attendant.
Ash was on the floor.
Not dramatically. There was a bench nearby but Carriage Rotom was parked beside it, and the floor was fine. He had his back against a pillar, legs stretched out. X had claimed his shoulder. Y was pressed against his left side. Gible had decided his shoe was an acceptable pillow and was gnawing on the lace at a low, contemplative intensity.
"You're not eating that," Ash said.
Gible paused. Reduced the intensity slightly. Did not stop.
Ash left it.
Across the floor, Serena had found earrings and was holding them up to Dawn's ears.
"These ones," Serena said.
"They're a bit long."
"They're elegant. There's a difference."
"For a contest, maybe. For everyday—"
"You could wear them to a contest and everyday. That's the whole point of a versatile piece."
"These feel more me," Dawn said, picking up a shorter pair.
Serena looked at them. Looked at the long ones. Looked at Dawn.
"...Fine," she said. "But you're trying the long ones on first."
"Serena—"
"Just try them."
Ash watched Dawn accept the earrings with the resigned expression of someone who has learned that resistance costs more energy than compliance.
He was about to close his eyes when Cynthia appeared, crossed the floor without hurry, and crouched in front of him. She looked at his face for a moment with the calm assessment of someone reading a situation.
"Rooftop," she said. "They have seating and vending machines. Come on."
He didn't argue.
The rooftop garden was quieter than anything below — a few low benches between planters of things in bloom, a row of vending machines along the far wall, the open sky overhead. The afternoon had gone golden, the sun starting its long lean toward evening. The city spread out below the railing in every direction, Celadon's greenery woven between the buildings.
There was nobody else on the rooftop.
Cynthia crossed to the vending machines. Ash found the nearest bench and sat down, and the three Pokémon arranged themselves — X back on his shoulder, Y at his feet, Gible pressing against his ankle and looking out over the railing at the city with what appeared to be sincere interest in the view.
Cynthia returned with two cans and a small paper bag. She handed him a can — lemonade, cold enough that condensation was already forming — and sat beside him.
He opened it and drank half without stopping.
"Thank you," he said.
She opened her own and said nothing. From the paper bag she produced three small cartons of Moomoo Milk and set them on the bench without comment. The three Pokémon descended on them with varying degrees of dignity — Y carefully, Gible immediately, X with the focused efficiency of something that has identified a resource and intends to secure it.
"You got those from the machine," Ash said. "While you were already up."
"Yes," she said. Simply. Not a big deal. It wasn't one.
He looked at her. She was watching the city, hands around her can, unhurried.
They sat without talking for a while. The city made its sounds below them. A Pidgey landed on the railing, looked at them, and left. The afternoon light moved.
Ash had been awake since Gible had removed that option by force. He had tried on jackets and sat on floors and navigated six floors and bought a pen he hadn't intended to buy and walked more than he'd walked in a week. The bench was very comfortable. The lemonade was cold. The rooftop was quiet.
He was, without quite deciding to be, exhausted.
Cynthia looked at him sideways.
"Lie down if you want," she said, matter-of-fact. "You look like you're about to fall asleep sitting up."
He looked at her.
She had shifted slightly on the bench, making space, her posture settling into something deliberate. Offering, clearly, without making it a thing.
"I'm fine," he said.
She said nothing. Waited.
He lasted about four seconds.
He lay down. His head found her lap with the slightly startled quality of something that happened before he fully processed it as a decision. The bench was just long enough. For a moment neither of them moved.
Then Cynthia's hand — still, for a moment — lifted and pushed the hair back from his forehead once, lightly. Then rested there, very quiet.
Neither of them said anything about any of this.
X looked down from the bench back at both of them with the expression of a Pokémon making a thorough note of proceedings. Y curled up by his feet. Gible had climbed onto the bench beside Cynthia and was sitting upright, staring out at the city like a small appointed guardian of the rooftop.
Ash looked at the sky. Blue and very open above the city.
"You're leaving at the end of the week," he said.
"Yes."
"Snowpoint first."
"There are ruins near the city. A dig site I've been trying to access for two years. The research team finally has space." A pause. "And then the League."
He turned this over. "You mentioned records. Documents."
"The Sinnoh Elite Four hold certain artefacts and texts that aren't publicly accessible. Ancient materials — things my family has been trying to study for generations." Her voice was even, but there was something underneath it, the weight of something that had been carried a long time. "The only way to get unrestricted access is to earn it. The Champion has rights that others don't."
"Become a Champion just to get into the archives," Ash said.
Something shifted in her expression — the edge of a laugh, contained. "It's the path that opened."
"It's a very Cynthia way of going about it."
"Is it."
"Most people would just ask."
"Most people don't need access to restricted pre-Arcean artefacts."
He was quiet for a moment. "What's in them?"
A pause — longer this time.
"I don't know yet," she said. "That's the point." Something in her voice had shifted, quieter. "There are things my family has believed for a very long time. About certain bloodlines. About the nature of Aura, and what it means when someone carries it in a particular way." She stopped. "I want to know whether any of it is actually true. Or whether it's just mythology. Stories people have been telling themselves for centuries because the story was useful."
Ash looked at the sky.
"And if it's true?"
"Then I'll know what I'm dealing with." Simply. "And if it isn't, I'll know that too."
He was quiet for a moment longer. Her hand was still resting lightly in his hair, not moving.
"You'll win," he said. Not encouragingly. Just as a fact.
She looked down at him. "You sound very certain."
"I've seen you battle." No ceremony to it. "You'll win."
She held his gaze for a moment. Then looked back at the horizon.
The afternoon light moved across the city below.
"The reason doesn't matter anyway," Ash said, after a while.
"What do you mean."
"Why you want it. The archives, the Championship, whatever is underneath all of it." He looked at the open sky. "I don't know why I want to be Pokémon Master. I've never been able to explain it cleanly. But I know I have to get there. That's the only part that actually matters." He paused. "Same for you. You want it. That's enough."
She was quiet for a long moment.
When she spoke her voice was softer than usual. Unguarded in a way that was different from sleep — a different kind of unguarded. Chosen.
"You really are something," she said.
He opened his mouth — some reflexive response, some protest—
She leaned down and kissed him.
Not tentative. Deliberate — her mouth against his, warm and certain, her hair falling forward slightly. Her free hand rested light against his jaw.
His mind went entirely still.
Then, without any decision being made about it, he kissed her back.
It lasted a few seconds. It felt longer than that, in the way moments do when everything around them stops.
She pulled back slowly. Her eyes stayed on his for a moment. A faint colour in her cheeks, carefully not acknowledged.
She straightened. Stood. Walked to the railing with her hands loose at her sides, the late afternoon light on her hair, the city spread out below her.
Ash sat up.
The rooftop air was clear and still.
"Take care of yourself," she said, without turning. "Ten years is a long time."
"It is," he said.
"I'll come back." A pause. The city. The light. "Don't let Gible bite anyone important."
She left him with that — her footsteps on the stairs, and then the sound of them fading, and then gone.
Ash sat on the bench.
X looked at him from the bench back. Y looked at him from his feet. Gible sat in the exact spot where Cynthia had been and looked at him with an expression that was, for a Pokémon four days old, deeply and unreasonably knowing.
"Don't," Ash said.
"Gib," Gible said, contentedly.
He touched his mouth. Once. Brief.
The city was very bright in the afternoon sun, and the bench still held the faint warmth of where she'd been sitting.
'Ten years,' he thought — and for the first time all week, the thought didn't feel like a wall. It felt like a road. Something with a specific end to it. Something waiting there.
He sat with that for a while.
Then he finished his lemonade, stood, and looked at his three Pokémon.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go find the others."