Ash's POV – Early Morning, Washington, D.C.
The morning air was crisp as we touched down in front of the manor. Gardevoir's teleportation always came with that strange, momentary stillness—like the world had to realign itself around us.
The house in front of us wasn't massive, not in the Family estate sense of things, but it had charm. Sturdy brick walls, tall bay windows, a clean garden path with actual flowers—not weeds pretending to be flowers. It looked like the kind of place you could call home and actually mean it.
Gary's family had always had money, but they weren't snobs. His father, Dr. Samuel Ketchum, had once worked at Oscorp as a lead geneticist. I didn't know all the details, but there had been some ugly disagreements. Gary told me his father left after refusing to let the company weaponize a genome therapy protocol.
Now? He ran a smaller private research firm focused on curing genetic deformities in children. Still in the field. Just… his own way. It made sense. Gary was like that too. Arrogant, sure, but never heartless.
"Return," I whispered, tapping Gardevoir's Pokéball. A flash of light pulled her inside. No need to cause a scene on the front lawn. Besides, I was the only one with a Psychic-type that wore a literal shawl of elegance like a queen at a garden party.
I walked up the steps, Pikachu hopping alongside me with a quiet yawn, and knocked.
The door opened almost immediately.
"Ashy-boy!"
Before I could react, I was pulled into a warm hug by Aunt Sara. Gary's mom always had this way of making you feel like you were still eight, no matter how many monsters you'd fought since.
"Hey, Aunt Sara," I mumbled through her sweater. "Still squeezing the air out of people, I see."
She laughed, ruffling my hair as she stepped back. "You get taller every time. But no matter how tall you grow, I'm still pinching your cheeks next time."
"Can't wait," I said dryly, brushing my hoodie straight. "Gary home?"
She nodded and tilted her head toward the stairs. "Upstairs. He and Iris have been in that room since seven, talking strategy and nonsense. You know how they are."
"Unfortunately," I muttered with a smile.
Pikachu gave her a friendly "Pika!" as we moved past. She waved back, already heading toward the kitchen to "accidentally" make too many pancakes.
The manor was quiet aside from distant humming electronics and the light clack of shoes upstairs. It smelled like citrus floor polish and nostalgia. On our way to Gary's room, we passed his Blastoise lounging near the sunroom—shell glinting in the soft morning light.
"Yo, Shell-Head," I said, giving a two-finger salute.
Blastoise opened one eye lazily and gave a grunt of acknowledgment before going back to soaking up sunbeams like a lizard with a cannon complex.
Gary's room was at the end of the hallway—door open, faint laughter coming from inside.
I gave the wood a soft knock, then stepped in.
"Miss me yet?"
The door creaked open, and a blur of lavender and energy came flying toward me.
"Ash!" Iris beamed, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
I chuckled as I returned the hug, steadying myself. "Still strong enough to knock out a Hitmonlee, huh?"
She let go, grinning. "I missed your smug face, that's all."
Before I could respond, a firm hand clapped into mine in that classic cousin dap.
"Glad you're still alive, city boy," Gary said with that trademark Ketchum smirk.
I returned it, shaking his hand. "Please. You're the one locked in your lab like a Beldum in a magnet field."
"I've been busy," he said with mock defensiveness, motioning around the room, which was already scattered with screens, books, and half-soldered electronics. "Also, city girls exist. Your argument is invalid."
Iris rolled her eyes. "You two are exhausting."
I looked around casually. "Blastoise still guarding the hallway like a bouncer?"
"Yeah," Gary grinned. "He likes intimidating people."
A low rumble echoed from the other room. Pikachu gave a friendly chirp as he passed the big guy. Some things never changed.
After a few more jabs and casual talk, Gary's face shifted. A subtle change, like flipping a switch.
"Alright," he said, standing straighter. "Come with me."
We followed him down the familiar wooden steps to the basement—a place the rest of the house barely acknowledged, but one I knew better than my own room back at Freya's.
The lights flickered on automatically. Cold. Sterile. The lab smelled faintly of solder, cooled metal, and ambition.
Rows of shelves were lined with databanks, plasma screens humming softly. In the center sat a cylindrical chamber, empty, but surrounded by cables, electrodes, and glowing indicators that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Whoa…" Iris murmured. "You've been busy."
Gary grinned but said nothing. He approached a console and pulled up a 3D diagram. It looked… almost like a Pokémon embryo—but translucent, humming with digital code.
"I've been researching Pokémon DNA," he started. "Mapping it. Not to alter or clone or anything stupid. I'm not trying to be some Bond villain. I just wanted to understand what makes them… alive."
I frowned slightly and crossed my arms. "You do know that experimenting on Pokémon is forbidden by the Family, right?"
He didn't flinch. "I'm not experimenting on any Pokémon."
There was a pause.
"I'm trying to create one."
Silence.
Iris blinked. "You… what?"
Gary turned to us fully now, eyes gleaming with excitement. "Not from scratch in the Frankenstein way. I mean—digitally. A Pokémon not born in the wild or bred in a lab, but created entirely out of data. Think about Rotom—how it merges with appliances, becomes part of them. What if that concept was the base for something entirely new? A Pokémon with a consciousness, a soul—but born in cyberspace."
My eyes widened. "You're talking about a digital Pokémon."
"Exactly," he said, tapping the diagram. "One that doesn't need Pokéballs. That moves through networks. That is a network. That can protect digital systems, fight cyber-warfare, interact with humans and Pokémon alike. An evolved form of both technology and nature."
"But how?" Iris asked, now leaning over his shoulder. "Even Rotom needs a physical form to jump into. What would this use as a body?"
"I've been building a data chamber," Gary said. "A hybrid environment designed to simulate biological responses through electric signals. But here's the thing—"
He looked at me.
"I can't power it alone. Not without causing a total burnout."
Then at Iris.
"And I need a way to give it a consciousness. A stable soul imprint. Something Pokémon recognize as real. Not a glorified Digimon."
"Hey," I muttered. "Watch your tone."
"That's where you come in," Gary said, ignoring me. "Ash—you've got a rare connection to dimensional energy. Arceus's gift. You can stabilize the connection between our world and the conceptual one. You're the bridge."
I paused, staring at the empty chamber.
He continued. "I need your aura—your energy—to form the link. Iris? Your understanding of Pokémon behavior, emotion, mental structure… It's going to give the creature something to be. Not just code—but empathy, instinct, heart."
I looked at him, the weight of the idea settling.
"A Pokémon born in the digital world…" I muttered. "One that walks between man and machine."
Gary nodded.
I slowly grinned. "I'm in."
Iris laughed, pumping her fist. "Obviously I'm in! This is insane! I love it!"
Gary crossed his arms, satisfied. "Then we're doing this. Together."
I looked between them. Two of the only people in the world I trusted with something like this. We'd trained together, fought together, lived lives few could imagine. The thought of building something like this—not just to exist, but to protect—it was exhilarating.
I rested my hand on the glowing cylinder's surface. It pulsed faintly beneath my fingers.
"Let's build the impossible."
And so we began.
***
The rest of the day went by in a blur of ideas, sketches, and heated debates. We commandeered every whiteboard, scrap of paper, and half-functioning holographic display in Gary's lab.
We argued over code structure, over whether the consciousness imprint should be emotional-first or logic-based. I insisted the soul came before the system—Gary said the opposite. Iris just told us we were both idiots before drawing a diagram that made us both shut up and listen.
By nightfall, the lab looked like a warzone of genius. Iris had to leave early—school work, she claimed, though I caught her yawning mid-sentence as she packed up her bag. She gave me a lazy wave before disappearing up the stairs.
That left just me and Gary.
I was about to call Gardevoir to teleport me out when he spoke up.
"Hey," he said, pulling open the drawer beneath his desk.
I turned.
He held up a small, black pendrive. "Got what you asked for."
I stepped closer. My eyes met his. "Everything on William Stryker?"
"Everything I could dig up without tripping government flags," he said. "This guy's not just military—he's black-ops buried in black-ops. Files nested behind firewalls like Russian dolls."
He extended the drive toward me…
Then pulled it back slightly before I could take it.
The room suddenly felt heavier.
"I'm not gonna ask what this is about," Gary said, voice quieter now. "Because I know you. And I know you wouldn't ask unless it mattered."
I met his gaze, serious now.
"But promise me something," he added. "Promise me you'll call if things go sideways. I don't care how bad it is. Don't ghost me like you always do."
I gave a small grin. "I don't always ghost you."
He raised an eyebrow.
"…Okay, maybe like half the time," I admitted, then looked at the drive. "But yeah. I promise. You'll be the first call."
Gary nodded, satisfied, and finally handed me the drive. "And one more thing."
I pocketed it. "Yeah?"
"Don't let your guard down," he said. "This guy—Stryker? He's not just some corrupt pencil-pusher. Everything I read about him… He hurts people, Ash. And he's methodical. Worse than nazis. He doesn't want power—he wants control."
I held his gaze for a moment, then gave him a firm dap.
"We're Ketchums, remember?" I said, smirking. "We don't go down easy."
He scoffed. "You better not. My Blastoise would be heartbroken."
At that, I turned, took a few steps back into the center of the room, and unclipped Gardevoir's Pokéball.
She appeared in a shimmer of light and bowed her head gently.
"Home?" she asked, her voice a soft whisper in my mind.
"Yeah," I said, glancing one last time at Gary. "Let's go."
And in a blink of light, the lab vanished.
***
The apartment was quiet.
Too quiet.
Only the soft hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of old pipes dared to interrupt the silence. Freya was asleep on the couch, a history book sprawled across her chest, half-finished glass of wine on the side table.
I sat cross-legged on the floor in my room, laptop open in front of me. The only light came from its screen, bathing me in a pale, cold glow. Pikachu lay curled beside me, asleep, tail twitching with static every few minutes.
I plugged in the pendrive.
Gary's custom interface loaded immediately—dark theme, secure encryption, voice recognition. Of course. The guy never did anything halfway.
A folder named "Project S: Scraped Intel" blinked on the screen.
My breath hitched slightly.
I clicked.
Dozens of files spilled out—some were PDFs, others encrypted archives, and a few were just strings of code that meant nothing without the right decryption key. Gary had annotated them in his usual overconfident style.
"Satellite snips of transport routes. Possibly connected."
"Probable cover orgs. Same funding shell as Weapon X."
"Do not open folder titled 'Abyss'. I mean it. I nearly cooked my processor."
I started reading.
One report described routine transport of sedated individuals—human, mutant, unknown classification. Another detailed a long list of shell facilities across North America. R&D centers, medical wings, rehabilitation units, containment pens… sanitized names for prisons, for labs, for hellholes.
I found images. Grainy surveillance stills. A mutant strapped to a chair—metal bands digging into scarred skin. A child in a glass tank.
I swallowed hard.
My fists clenched.
Stryker wasn't hiding.
He was everywhere.
But not a single clue on his exact location. Of course not. He was a ghost—like me.
I leaned back, eyes burning from the screen, and ran a hand through my hair. A quiet frustration bloomed inside my chest. There was so much. So many locations. So many people. Too many.
I could raid one… maybe two.
But they'd be fortified. Armed. Brutal. And I didn't know how many innocents were inside. I'd need to go fast. Hit hard. Make sure no one got hurt.
And truth was—I couldn't do this alone.
Not this time.
I sat still for a moment, breathing deeply, gaze falling to the small pendant Freya had given me. Even that seemed to weigh heavier tonight.
Then the thought hit me.
Simple. Clean. Dangerous.
"Time to get some help."
The words left my mouth barely above a whisper.
Pikachu's ears twitched. He stirred and looked up at me with curious eyes.
I wasn't just reacting anymore.
I was planning.
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A.N. A short chapter, but an important one nonetheless. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I'll see you all on Wednesday.
GIVE ME POWER STONES PLEASE!!!!!!