Unbroken Disguise

With all of the excitement that had been going on recently, N found it relaxing to explore the forests of route 203 on his own. Of course, he wasn’t really on his own. Mimikyu and the rest of his current travelling companions were in a clearing nearby, practicing their moves. Ash had said something about teaching Starly to use Aerial Ace and Mimikyu had managed to rope Pikachu into more lessons. Hopefully things would work out better for his friend this time, but the only certainty you could have when it came to the little fairy was that you were in for a surprise.

But now wasn’t the time to be worrying about them. This was his element, almost a home away from home, and he would not squander the opportunity to be with the sounds of nature instead of a language as confusing as the League’s. He thought he was picking up on it rather quickly, but it still caused many headaches…

Quietly making his way through the underbrush, he tried to keep both an eye and an ear out for Pokemon that were slowly becoming familiar to him. Hanging from various tree branches, teal pokemon with piercing red eyes stared down at him. Pineco, he had learned from Brock, was a Bug type Pokemon with a penchant for using the moves Self-Destruct and Explosion. The extra shine he spotted on a particularly large specimen was apparently a good indicator of a fast approaching evolution into the Bug and Steel type Forretress. As much as he wanted to befriend one, or even all of them, accidentally setting one off and causing an explosion would only serve to scare off any other potential friends in the area. He would have to save them for after he had scouted out the blast radius.

N carefully avoided the trees that he could see them hanging from, wandering a bit further away from his group. He could faintly hear the splintering of trees in the distance, no doubt a result of their training, and knew that wild Pokemon who weren’t keen on battling would be avoiding the area. He passed by plenty of Bidoof scurrying around on the forest floor, but his experience with Mimikyu had proven to be a good sample of the rest of the population. They just didn’t have the mental capacity to hold proper conversations, and he wasn’t looking to become a trainer who could bring them up to that level.

What did catch his attention was when he stumbled into a swarm of unfamiliar brown Pokemon carrying bones around. He stayed just outside of the clearing to observe them, the foliage hiding him from the group for now. One stood out from the others, standing at more than double the height of the rest and the shape of the head differing by quite a bit. It looked older too, much older, and covered in battle scars. Likely a higher stage in the evolution line, but making assumptions like that could be dangerous. He wondered how similar they were to the bone related Pokemon back home. Vullaby and Mandibuzz would wear the bones of their prey, even going so far as to construct their entire nests out of bones.

The way that the smaller Pokemon were all quietly sobbing made him disregard the comparison. The Dark types he was familiar with took pleasure in what they did, while this group seemed distraught. A sudden rhythmic thwack thwack thwack drew his attention, and he watched as the disorganized group moved. The smaller Pokemon formed a circle around the larger one, which was the source of the noise, banging its bone against a rock.

“Weak. All of you.” A surprisingly deep voice echoed out from beneath the skull that the larger one wore. Or maybe it was actually fused to its head upon evolution? It certainly seemed much more snug at least. “Standing here sobbing, wallowing in your loneliness, thinking of naught but your fallen families.”

The tears started to come down harder, the wails from the smaller Pokemon growing in volume until the larger threw a bone at one of them. It bounced right off, and back into the hand of the leader, the loud thwack of the impact silencing them once more.

“Will pitying yourselves bring those taken from us back? Will wasting the days away, staining their skulls with your tears allow them to embrace you once more?” When it looked like the cries of despair might start up again, he smacked the rock another time, the sound ringing out.

“It will not! The only path forward is to hone that pain, that sorrow, and turn it into righteous fury! Into viciousness and ferocity! To decide that while the past may be one filled with regrets, the future is your own to make, and that you will use the future to claim vengeance!”

The smaller Pokemon were listening raptly, some of them squeezing their bones so hard that they audibly cracked.

“Do you know what the humans call your kind? How they refer to Cubones everywhere? The Lonely Pokemon. That is all that they think of you, and they’re right!”

Cubone? Learning the name was certainly helpful, but now he was worried. This other Pokemon was clearly one that had experience in the human world, and he’d seen cases in the past of released, or sometimes even escaped, Pokemon tainting their wild brethren with the cruelties of humanity. Too much time spent as mere tools for a human warped their minds, turning them into mere extensions of the problem.

“But I have cast that aside. I am not Marowak, the lonely little loser. I am Marowak, the Bone Keeper Pokemon. I trained, gathered my strength, and slew the beast who thought my mother to be easy pickings.”

N had to hold back the urge to interrupt. He felt certain that humanity was to blame for the Marowak’s woes, but… These Pokemon were free. Liberated from their human captors, or perhaps not even caught at all in the case of the Cubone. Who was he, as a human, to judge what decisions they came to on their own? If he achieved his dream, and humans and Pokemon lived separately… would scenarios like this not play out all over the Pokemon world? How many times had he encountered Pokemon left with permanent scars, whether they be physical, psychological, or both, that were left by humans? Escaping the cruelness of humanity would take time. They would have to unlearn the abuse forced onto them.

“Who among you will join me?!” Marowak shouted out. “Who will accept the past as the past, and fight for a better tomorrow?”

His question was answered not with words, but with a battle cry. A single Cubone left the circle, charging at him while its bone glowed with power. A thwack sounded out when it met Marowak’s face.

That hit seemed to be the start of an all out free for all. The Cubones all charged in, swinging wildly, hitting anything they could in frustration. N watched, both slightly disturbed, but also intrigued, as these unfamiliar Pokemon engaged in an all out brawl, until a bright glow overtook the area. Cubone after Cubone, evolving all at once. So entranced in this strange ceremony, he barely noticed a lone Cubone fleeing the fight, running straight into his leg and surely bruising it with that hard skull.

When it looked up and saw him, the tears from before only doubled in quantity and size, but its cries could not be heard over the constant hits of bone on bone just a stone's throw away.

“Are you alright?” N asked as he knelt down. Even like this, he towered over the little Pokemon, but the difference wasn’t quite so great anymore.

The Cubone clung to him, wrapping its arms around his leg in a desperate hug as it cried.

“It will be alright.” He ran his hand over the skull, wondering if Cubone could feel his touch through it. He couldn’t bring himself to stop Marowak and the others if that was the path that they had chosen for themselves… but if one rejected that path, then perhaps…

“That’s not the only way to become strong, you know. I have many friends like you, who disliked the violence, and yet they were able to evolve in time.”

The tears slowed to an unsteady drip instead of the stream they had been. In a shy, soft, warbling voice that echoed from within the skull, the Cubone whispered out “...really?”

“Really.” His eyes drifted towards the group once more, now filled with more Marowak than Cubone, yet more glowing with the power of evolution. “What do you say we get out of here? This doesn’t really seem like your sort of crowd.”

The little Cubone nodded up at him, and he genty led it away.

It was a hard Truth to swallow, but creating an Ideal world was difficult. Until he obtained the power necessary to make changes from the top… he would have to settle for helping where he could, one Lonely Pokemon at a time.

“Let’s go find some more friends, shall we? I thought I saw a few Starly over this way…”

It was odd seeing Mimikyu away from N like this. The tiny ghost was trying to get some more training in with Pikachu at the moment, with his trainer nowhere to be seen. He understood that not everyone was as close to their Pokemon as he was, but… seeing those two together was like him being with Pikachu! It just felt… right in a way that was hard to describe.

But everyone goes about their journey differently, and N “isn’t really a trainer”, whatever that was supposed to mean. N could deny it all he wanted, but he’d said that he was friends with all Pokemon! Sure, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was close enough to his own dream that N was basically a Pokemon Master in the making as well. Even now, his new green haired companion was out becoming friends with the local Pokemon. Ash could respect that.

He should really save those worries for later though. Training required focus, even if he wasn’t the one doing the work.

Starly was struggling a bit, but Ash was certain that the little bird would be able to learn Aerial Ace soon! “Give it one more shot, Starly! You’ve got this!”

The bird came towards the tree at high speeds once more, the unstable Flying type energy visibly pouring off and blending together with the air being forced out of Starly’s path, creating a glow that followed behind his friend. Even if it was slightly unstable, Ash had a good feeling about this one. The lack of turbulence was a good sign, maybe this would be their first success?

But he had gotten his hopes up too soon. In just a moment, the whole thing destabilized and the move collapsed, sending Starly tumbling to the ground with an obvious injury to the leg.

“Starly, are you okay?!” Ash shouted out.

“Oh no!” Dawn cried.

“Mimikyu-kyu?”

“Pika-pi!”

Brock was quick to check it out and assess the damage. “I think Starly should be alright with just a potion and some bandages, give me just a moment.”

“What a relief!” Ash liked to think that he had grown a lot in his time as a trainer, but truthfully he wasn’t sure what he would do if he lacked Brock’s expertise for an extended period of time. The Orange Islands had been kind of rough, and compared to a full on region…

It was as Brock was finishing Starly’s bandages that two bushes on opposite sides of the clearing started to rustle.

The one that Ash turned to first revealed a familiar hat capping off some green hair as N stepped out, rejoining the group. “Welcome back, N!” He greeted the older teen with a smile, but his eyes lit up in recognition as he realized N wasn’t alone.

“Woah, a Cubone! It’s been a while since I last saw one of those. Did you catch it?”

N frowned, and the little ground type huddled closer to his leg as Mimikyu climbed up onto his shoulder. “No. Cubone is just a new friend I made, I’m not sure how long he might stick around.”

“Oh.” Ash was a bit surprised, but it’s not like it's the first time he’d seen such a thing. Really, he did it pretty often himself now that he thought about it. “That’s cool too! It’s nice to meet you Cubone, I’m Ash!”

But getting to know the Kantonian Pokemon would have to wait, because a complete stranger had popped out of the other bush. With purple hair, clothes fit for a children’s camp, and a pair of binoculars in her hand, the stranger waved to them.

“Oh! Well, hi there! I didn’t expect to run into anyone in this part of the woods.”

Because his mother had raised him right, Ash led off the introductions for the group, and learned that the stranger’s name was Rosebay.

Unfortunately, N was subjected to his first instance of Brock’s… whatever you called this. Down on one knee in an instant, he had taken Rosebay’s hand and was professing his love to her as soon as he had gotten her name. He had long learned to just accept it as a part of the man, but the confused look on N’s face said that there would be questions later.

Crogunk released itself, taking care of the issue like Ash had come to expect of Brock’s Pokemon, and Rosebay continued on with a nonchalance that he could only respect.

“I’m out here observing and keeping track of the Pokemon living in the forest.” she explained to them.

That sounded like a blast in Ash’s book, and he made sure to tell her.

“I hope us being here isn’t getting in your way!” Dawn squeaked out, worried over nothing. For a girl who liked to say “no need to worry”, she sure did it an awful lot.

“Not at all! In fact…” Rosebay gave the group a once over, “if you’re interested, you could join me! I was just about to investigate some of the colonies in the area.”

“We would love to!” he and Dawn agreed.

N wasn’t sure why they’d agreed to shadow a random Pokemon… conservationist? Researcher? Out in the middle of a forest, but she at least seemed like a decent person. He didn’t see a single Pokeball on her belt, and ensuring that the local wild Pokemon was healthy gave her a good grade in his books.

He was definitely getting an explanation on Brock and Crogunk after she was gone though. How was he even standing? Wasn’t that a Poison Jab he took directly to the gut? He asked Mimikyu, who seemed to have taken it in stride.

“How should I know? I can barely use a single one of my own moves, I’m not the expert ya might think I am. For all I know, spendin’ all that time around Rock types has given ‘im a resistance to Poison types.”

Not the answer he was looking for, but fair enough.

His thoughts were taken off of that mystery and onto another as the group failed to locate a colony of Swablu. Searching the area pulled up no sign of them, and what Rosebay revealed to them next had dread pooling in his gut.

“Recently the number of Pokemon living in this area has dropped by a huge number. All sorts of colonies seem to have just vanished.”

“And you have no idea what’s going on?” Dawn asked.

“Well, that’s what I’m out here trying to learn. But with the forest being as big as it is, and me being a single person, it’s been slow going.”

“Then you should let all of us help out as well! If Pokemon need our help, we wanna be there!” Ash proclaimed.

Oh? Was Ash finally going to put some evidence behind all the claims he had been hearing about the boy? An attitude like that… if he could do more than talk the talk, then perhaps…

“Starly, why don’t you get a look from the air?” Ash continued.

“Woah there!” Mimikyu interrupted, waving his shadowy arms to draw their attention. He saw Rosebay and Dawn shudder out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t exactly blame them.

“Yer tellin’ me that the bird Pokemon in the area are all disappearin’, an’ ya wanna send yer own out ta find ‘em? Seems like an unnecessary risk ta me.”

That was a good point.

“Instead of sending your Starly to vanish with the others, why don’t we use some logical reasoning instead?” N suggested.

“Oh.” Ash seemed a bit embarrassed once he caught on to the flaw in his plan, but N could respect his drive. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

“If it’s specifically the bird Pokemon that are disappearing, then we should consider the problems that they might run into that other Pokemon wouldn’t. Something that could snatch them out of the air, maybe?” It seemed like a long shot, but he couldn’t understand why it would only be the birds…

“Perhaps…” Rosebay started before pulling up her binoculars. “The valley path might be an area of interest.” She pointed out the gap between two cliff faces for them. “Because of the air currents at higher elevations, most of the bird Pokemon fly through there if they’re coming into or out of the area.”

“So if the disappearances are all being caused by one thing, that would be the ideal location for it with the high amount of traffic it would get.” Brock added on.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Dawn piped up. “Let’s check it out!”

And so the group trekked through the forest with Rosebay leading the way.

Mimikyu on his shoulder, a new friend tugging at his pant leg, working to investigate potential Pokemon in distress… this wasn’t so bad. Well, the Pokemon being in trouble was bad, but he enjoyed helping them. He wasn't looking forward to the upcoming Gym battle in Oreburgh, but if the rest of journeying with Ash’s group was like this…

But his good mood could never seem to last.

Exploring the valley had revealed… a strange building? Right in the middle of the valley, alongside a large hole with netting overtop it.

“I don’t remember that being here,” Rosebay told them, “and I went through the valley just a month ago! Something about this is off…”

“Keep yer guard up N. Appearances can be deceivin’ an’ all.” Mimikyu warned him.

The group clambered up to a higher ledge on the cliffside to get a better view of the new construction. But when the binoculars were pulled out, they were met with a strange sight.

“Are they… sunbathing?” Rosebay asked before handing the binoculars to Ash.

When Ash took a look, he saw the boy frown for the first time since they’d met. “Team Rocket.”

Brock and Dawn joined in his displeasure, but it seemed Rosebay was just as lost. Actually… hadn’t he heard that name before? It was on the tip of his tongue…

“Who is Team Rocket?” Rosebay questioned as Ash handed the binoculars off to him. Taking a gander himself, he spied a vaguely familiar red R… printed on some swimwear? Some very revealing swimwear actually…

“Team Rocket are a bunch of crooks who like to steal Pokemon.” Dawn explained.

“If they’re here, and that net is there… I have a feeling I know where all the missing Pokemon have gone.” Ash added on.

N’s first thought was to question why a criminal organization would provide their members with skimpy Team Rocket branded swimsuits. Very… distracting bikinis…

His second thought, after he forced himself to offer the binoculars back and chastised himself for letting his mind wander, was that he finally knew why the name sounded familiar.

He had been warned about Team Rocket. Largely successful in Kanto and Johto in the past, they had run almost every illegal activity that happened under Champion Lance’s nose. Until their work suddenly dried up, anyway. None of their investigators had been able to determine why the group suddenly went dark, but if they were in Sinnoh then it looked like they were simply trying to relocate rather than disbanding as some had suggested. This was valuable intel.

It also meant that a pair of the worst scum of humanity were right in front of him.

He had heard tales of what sort of things that Rockets got up to. From straight up abusing their stolen Pokemon, to running experiments on them, if a method existed to harm his friends then the Rockets had done it.

His thoughts went to a dark place as he considered this opportunity.

He could enact justice.

Perhaps he and Mimikyu could arrange for a little “accident” where they saw under his friend's disguise…

“Ya alright, N? Ya seem a bit out of it, there.” Mimikyu asked from his shoulder.

He was letting his mind wander too much. He could never ask Mimikyu to do such a thing, not really, even if these Rockets deserved it.

“I’m fine, Mimikyu.”

N took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. Ash and his friends seemed familiar with the group. They must have experience with them, especially with the two boys being from Kanto. He would let them take the lead.

This time.

Dawn didn’t like the fact that this was happening again. And with the looks on Ash and Brock’s faces… it was probably going to happen all the time. What was with these Rocket weirdos and chasing after Ash specifically?

The fact that her Pokemon were safe in their Pokeballs right now reassured her a bit… but then it made her feel guilty. She shouldn’t be happy just because something bad happened to someone else instead of her.

She watched as Pikachu saved a Pidgeot from getting captured, and then Ash suggested that the two Pokemon go back to the forest and gather all the Pokemon they could to help destroy the netting.

“Actually,” N spoke up, making her flinch. She wasn’t afraid of him! Sure, he was much bigger than her, and he didn’t seem to like her very much…. But she wasn’t afraid! Really! “My new friend might be able to help with that.” He continued, gesturing to the Pokemon at his feet.

“The rocks here are pretty similar to what Marowak was using, aren’t they? Will they work, Cubone?”

The poor little thing teared up at the extra attention, but nodded yes. “Cu-cubone.” That was all the warning they got before it thwacked its bone against a boulder, the deep sound echoing out through the valley and probably far beyond it. Over and over, it smacked out that noise in a pattern, until they heard a similar, but definitely off by a bit, noise echo back.

“Mimikyu-kyu?” She couldn’t understand Mimikyu, not really, but she got the feeling that the creepy little thing was as confused as she was.

Was causing a racket and drawing attention to them supposed to help somehow?!

“I see,” Brock spoke up. “That’s not a bad idea! I thought the distance would be too much, but if you use the acoustics of the valley in your favor…”

“I don’t understand, what are they doing?” She asked Rosebay quietly, not wanting to look stupid in front of the group.

“I’ve heard of Marowak supposedly sending messages to each other like this, but I’ve never seen it in person…”

Sending messages? “But if Cubone is talking to the other Cubones in the forest, will that really be enough to help us out?”

N just smirked at her, apparently having heard her question. “I was gone for that long and you think I only made friends with a single Pokemon? This is just the one that became most attached to me.” He knelt down, affectionately stroking Cubone’s skull.

A glance down at Team Rocket showed that they were catching on as they stood up from their sunbathing, looking at the mouth of the valley. The echoing thwacks got louder and louder… but Cubone had already stopped. Where was the noise coming from then?

That was when she saw it. Dozens of bird Pokemon flying towards them all at once, each of them seemingly carrying another Pokemon with them.

That was admittedly an impressive number of Pokemon for N to have befriended while he was exploring on his own, but Dawn didn’t think it quite compared to Ash’s plan of gathering all the Pokemon they could.

“Wait… is that?” Brock spoke with a tone of disbelief.

Was she missing something again?

That Marowak must have been even older than he originally thought. For a war vet to be on their own out in the wild… it was strange, but not completely unheard of. Perhaps he had outlived his trainer. And Marowak must have been a war vet. None of the other Pokemon were old enough to have seen this sort of thing in action, and he highly doubted that any had read historical accounts of the war. He had never seen this strategy before in person, but his tactics lessons made it all too familiar, even if the Pokemon at play were different from the historical examples he was provided.

The Mistralton Air Bombers were a thing of legend among the vets back home. Flying types had been trained specifically to carry heavy loads from the day they hatched, and with how much a Gigalith or Ferrothorn weighed, they needed every bit of that training. The Pokemon earlier in those evolutionary lines worked as well, but they weren’t quite as… effective.

The idea behind it was simple. Have a Braviary, or whatever Flying type was available really, fly a Gigalith over enemy lines. Drop it over a strategic position. The Gigalith would use Explosion, wiping that location off the map if they couldn’t get it shielded in time. The success rate of the initial Explosion wasn’t really anything to write home about, but when a Gigalith, which is covered in quite a few smaller rocks, or a Ferrothorn, covered in its many spikes, used the move… well, the shrapnel often made up for it. A Gigalith’s crest moving at explosive propelled speed was enough to shatter a Protect from most Pokemon.

The Pokemon coming into the valley weren’t nearly as impressive, and wouldn’t do anywhere near the same level of damage, but it wasn’t going to be pretty for these Rockets either. A few Starly he had befriended at the front of the formation had Pineco in their grip. The group watched as most of the bugs were dropped on top of the netting, utterly obliterating it in the resulting explosion.

The Rockets quickly scrambled inside of their base as the remaining Pineco were dropping on top of them. The damage to the building wasn’t very impressive, but it made a statement. Perhaps the criminals would be sensible and turn themselves in before another show of force was necessary.

He almost hoped that they wouldn’t.

And his unspoken desire was granted almost immediately as the ground around the building cracked and fractured, and then…

“...what?” was all N could get out, completely bewildered.

Out of the ground, from beneath the building, a giant wooden mech appeared. The hole that it stepped out of looked to be filled with cages packed with bird Pokemon, but they would have to wait a moment until the threat was neutralized. Large nets jetted out from the wrists as it tried to capture his friends straight out of the air, but the contraption was too slow to do so effectively. He heard a voice come out from a speaker, but he was too flabbergasted to pay attention to the words.

Pikachu used Thunderbolt on it at Ash’s command, but to little effect.

What in the world was going on?

How could Team Rocket afford to build a mech like this, especially if all they were using it for was capturing wild bird Pokemon? Who would think to do something like this? And perhaps most concerningly, why were the rest of his group acting like this was completely normal? Even Mimikyu was taking it in stride!

“Did those Pokemon just do a bombing run? What sorta friends did ya make out there, N?”

Mimikyu was definitely concerned about the wrong thing here!

Well, no, he was concerned about that as well. He had been concerned about Marowak passing on the cruelties of humanity onto the wild Pokemon before, but seeing them deploy war tactics was on a whole other level! Maybe they need to look into relocating him somewhere else when this was all said and done…

But as if he were summoned by N’s thoughts, the battle hardened Marowak dropped down between their group and the Rockets, dust and dirt sent flying as he impacted the ground.

“Thanks for the lift.” He said to the bird who had dropped him before taking in the situation before him.

“Rockets, eh? I don’t take kindly to your group.”

The ground shook… but only beneath the Rocket’s mech.

“That’s-!” Brock gasped. “That has to be the most impressive control of Earthquake I’ve seen since-”

Whatever else he had meant to say was cut off by the sound of the mech splintering into pieces in front of them. Team Rocket, apparently having changed into their uniforms, crawled out of the rubble alongside their personal Pokemon, and N prepared himself to deal with some truly monstrous people.

“Man, what was I thinkin’! I guess now we can make ourselves a big campfire!” the bipedal feline with them said. Something about it was wrong though. N had understood what the Pokemon said, yes, but hadn’t that been different from normal?

“And, it’s biodegradable!” The man added on.

“Will you two shut it?!” The women rebuked them.

…hold on a moment.

“Mimikyu, did they just understand that Pokemon?” He looked at his friend. Surely he was mistaken. There was no way that Rockets of all people had managed to understand Pokemon where so many Plasma members had failed.

“In a way. Can ya not tell the diff’rence ‘tween that and what you do though? It’s not that they speak Pokemon, it’s that Meowth is speakin’ League.” the ghost answered matter of factly.

N was too surprised to question it any further.

But then things got weirder.

The Rockets and their Meowth began to… recite poetry while posing?

Were these people really part of Team Rocket? Surely they had to be some freaks just using the name or something.

A battle broke out between N’s group and the “Rockets”, but every part of it just led to further confusion on N’s part.

First of all, if these people were criminals working to capture all of these bird Pokemon, then why did their Pokemon seem so supportive of them? It looked like the man had Grass types with him, and the woman’s Pokemon looked to be Poison types at first glance. He wasn’t sure about the blue one with them though… But regardless of that, they obeyed every order without question, charging at N’s group alongside their trainers. Marowak wasn’t involving himself in it, but N thought he had seen the Pokemon going into the hole full of cages, most likely to release all of the captured Pokemon.

And then Ash’s Starly evolved in the middle of the fight, using Aerial Ace to… send the entire criminal group flying off into the distance?

How was that possible? Forget the questions of how strange this group was, it shouldn’t be physically possible for a Pokemon as weak as Staravia to send them flying so far, especially with the lack of visible damage on the group.

It was then that he noticed a soft glow around the criminals as they flew off, and it was strongest around the eyes of the blue Pokemon…

Were they using a Psychic type to launch themselves away? A barrier just around their bodies would explain the lack of serious wounds, and the ability to fly off like that, but what was the point? If they had a Psychic type powerful enough and with the control necessary to pull that off, shouldn’t dealing with the Pokemon on N’s side of the field be a piece of cake?

“See, I told ya N!” Ash called out to him. N had no idea what the boy was referring to, and he really hoped that it would be some sort of explanation for… for… that mess.

“It’s only been a few days and you’ve already seen an evolution! Travelling with us is going to be great for your research with Professor Rowan!” the boy said with a wide smile.

“Mimikyu,” N whispered to the Pokemon on his shoulder, “has somebody drugged me? Am I under the spell of some unknown Pokemon? None of this makes any sense.”

“Yer right. None of it makes sense. Maybe that’s why all the documents on ‘im are classified. Must be like this all the time.”

All the time? This?

Travelling with Ash was either going to kill him or drive him insane.