He hit the air and became a problem.
Garchomp's launch had been precise — angle calibrated, force exact, the product of three years of training together until the gaps between thought and execution had closed to almost nothing. Ash went up through the canopy gap like something fired, arms loose, eyes already on X.
X had heard him coming. Of course it had — X always heard things coming, that was the point of X, the restless antenna of its attention always sweeping for the next incoming thing. It reacted on pure instinct: wings snapping wide, body twisting into a sharp climb, trying to use the altitude before the human could close the gap.
Ash was faster.
He focused — not on speed, exactly, but on the bond. Three years of daily work, shared losses and shared wins and the particular early-morning stubbornness of training in bad weather because the weather didn't care and neither did they. He sent something along that connection: not words, not commands, just a feeling. A brief, deliberate pressure. Pause. Just for a second. Sorry.
X's movements went thick.
Not stopped — not controlled, nothing like that. Just slowed, the body responding to a familiar presence pushing against its momentum at the deepest level. Like moving through resistance that wasn't quite air.
"ROAR—"
The sound that came out of X was outrage in its purest form. Ash caught its neck. His grip was firm, calibrated — strong enough to hold, careful enough not to hurt. He swung himself onto its back, low near the shoulders, and held on.
X tilted its enormous head and looked at him sideways with the expression of a Pokémon who has just had something done to it that it did not consent to and has not yet decided how to process.
"Gotcha," Ash said.
"Roar." The sound conveyed: that was dirty, you cheated, I am furious, explain yourself.
Ash held on and didn't fall off, which took some doing. "Everything's fair in love and war."
X's head tilted further. Smoke came from its nostrils in the specific way that meant that sentence did not resolve my confusion.
"Life is a war," Ash continued, patiently, the tone of someone who has made this argument before. "Against your own limits. Against whoever's faster than you today. Sometimes a friendly contest with someone who knows all your moves." He patted the thick neck. "You've got to learn the rules of that game."
X processed this.
Made a sound that was, roughly: I don't like the rules of that game.
"I know," Ash said. "Get faster."
Below, Garchomp had already moved on.
The Dragon Breath had been the distraction — aimed at Y while Ash went for X, designed to push Y wide, disrupt whatever route it had planned toward the clearing. It had connected close enough to do the job, and Y had twisted clear but lost altitude doing it, and now Garchomp watched the big Charizard recalculate with the calm attention of a Pokémon deciding its next move.
Y was smart. Y didn't fight dirty, didn't test limits, didn't push and push the way X did. It found the cleanest line to the objective and took it. Which meant right now it was mapping the fastest route to the clearing that kept maximum distance between itself and the oversized land shark standing on the forest floor watching it.
Fair enough, Garchomp thought, with the specific satisfaction of a Pokémon that has already decided what it's going to do. Go ahead. Find your route.
Y found it. Wings adjusted, body angle corrected, the big orange shape beginning its run for the clearing — clean, purposeful, confident.
Garchomp jumped.
Not a small jump. Not something that could be described as an attempt. A full committed launch upward, claws catching a branch, swinging, another branch, gaining height with the cheerful disregard of a Pokémon that had spent three years hearing the phrase everything's fair in love and war and had decided to take it as personal philosophy.
Y's tail was right there.
Garchomp grabbed it.
The sound Y made was not dignified. It bounced off every tree in the immediate vicinity.
"RAWWWR — let go — you are a Ground-type — stay on the ground where you belong—"
Garchomp's grip tightened. Its voice, muffled around a mouthful of Charizard tail, conveyed something approximately like: Who decided that? Seems like an arbitrary rule.
"I will bite you," Y announced, wings beating furiously, clawing at the air for purchase that wasn't there.
"Grrm," Garchomp said, which meant: you're welcome to try, here is the ground.
And pulled.
Y came down with a crash that scattered leaves in a ten-foot radius, landed heavily beside X, and lay for a moment with the expression of a Pokémon that has made peace with the unfairness of the universe and is currently reviewing its life choices.
Garchomp landed beside them. Let go of the tail. Stepped back. Stood very straight with its chest out and its eyes bright and radiated the specific energy of a Pokémon who has won something and intends for everyone to know it.
Ash slid off X's back.
He looked at X — still shaking its head, trying to clear the lingering sensation of the bond-push. At Y — checking its tail with the focused intensity of someone conducting a damage assessment. At Garchomp — already looking at him for approval and receiving it.
"Good work," he said to Garchomp, scratching under the fin.
Garchomp made a sound of deep contentment.
He looked at X and Y.
"Okay," he said, in the patient tone. "Lessons."
X made a sound.
"You're fast. You've always been fast. But fast isn't enough when someone knows your tells. I know your tells. Garchomp knows your tells. Anyone who spends enough time watching you will know your tells." He looked at X steadily. "You climb when you're surprised. Every time. Work on that."
X's jaw tightened. It looked away. Which meant it was listening.
"Y." He turned. "You found the cleanest route. Right call. But you forgot to account for Garchomp being willing to get airborne." He paused. "Check everything. Even the things that seem impossible."
Y stared at him. Then, slowly, looked at Garchomp.
Garchomp yawned.
Y looked back at Ash with an expression of profound betrayal.
"That's the point," Ash said. "Come on. Home."
He turned and walked. Behind him: two Charizards with varying degrees of injured dignity, and one Garchomp who had already moved past the victory and was now thinking about lunch.
The three years lived in his muscles and his reflexes and the quiet efficiency he'd developed for finding the best line through a problem.
Green had taught him biology — not because he'd asked, but because she had decided that an ignorant husband was not something she was prepared to accept. She had produced books and diagrams and asked questions until he gave correct answers, and somewhere in it he'd actually started to find it interesting, which was probably her plan all along and which he hadn't told her because it would have satisfied her too much.
May had teased him constantly and without mercy, which had trained him to think faster and respond drier and not take the bait and also sometimes take the bait in ways that made her laugh so hard she couldn't follow up, which was its own kind of win.
Misty had made him run. And swim. And do things with his arms that still occasionally hurt to think about. She had the specific fitness philosophy of someone who respected her own body enormously and extended that courtesy to the people around her in the form of very demanding expectations. He was fitter at eleven than he had any right to be.
The restaurant — Delia's kitchen, the endless daily operation of a house that functioned like a small and cheerful institution — had taught him patience and timing and the strange skill of reading a room, knowing what someone needed before they said it, which had turned out to be useful in more contexts than cooking.
He'd taken all of it seriously. Not because anyone had told him to. Because he had ten years and no journey yet and the choice was between filling them with something or not, and he had never been good at not.
'Guess they have a point,' he thought, coming out of the tree line onto the path. 'Everything fair in love and war.'
He'd said it to X as a lesson. He'd gotten it from the girls as a joke. It was both things.
Serena was in the doorway.
He could tell from twenty metres away that something had been forgotten.
She had her hands on her hips and her foot was doing the thing and her expression had the specific quality of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment and had fully prepared for it.
He cast his mind back over the morning.
Oak's summer camp.
"Ash Ketchum."
"I know," he said, before she got further.
"You forgot."
"I didn't forget, I—"
"You forgot."
He had forgotten. He let that land. "Okay. Yes."
"The camp started an hour ago. Professor Oak has already called me twice. The second call involved the phrase 'unreliable young assistants' which I'm choosing to believe was not directed at me specifically."
"It wasn't directed at you."
"I know it wasn't directed at me." She stepped back to let him in, looking him over with the practised eye of someone assessing damage. "You're covered in dirt, there are leaves in your hair, and I'm fairly sure that is Garchomp drool on your shoulder."
Behind him, Garchomp made an offended sound.
"It's not drool," Ash said.
"Go get cleaned up. Ten minutes." She turned. "I already told the others to head ahead. I stayed because I had a feeling."
"You had a feeling I'd forget."
"I had a certainty. I was being polite about it." She paused at the living room doorway. "Professor Oak mentioned hyperactive six-year-olds. I'd like to arrive before any of them end up in a tree."
"They're not going to end up in a tree."
"Last summer one of them challenged an Arcanine."
He considered this. "I'll be fast."
She disappeared into the living room. He headed for the stairs, peeling off the training jacket.
X, Y, and Garchomp had arranged themselves in the entrance hall with the patience of Pokémon who knew the routine.
"Rest," he told them. "You've earned it."
Garchomp was already looking at the kitchen.
"After lunch," he said.
Garchomp's expression shifted toward something more immediately satisfied.
He took the stairs two at a time, calculating: clean up, decent clothes, five minutes to Oak's lab on foot, arrive with a plausible excuse and Serena's slightly better excuse to supplement it.
7 years, he thought — not about Cynthia or waiting or the distance between now and the journey, just the plain fact of where he was. Eleven years old, Pallet Town, summer camp at Professor Oak's, the forest behind him and everything else ahead.
He had been a Pokémon Master once.
He was going to be one again.
The distance between now and then didn't feel like a wall anymore.
He grabbed a clean shirt and headed back downstairs.