The Ketchum Family

A Roiling Sea of Rage and Fear

The main part of this story takes place roughly three months after the end of the previous chapter. There's some narration of events at the start. Ash and Serena receive an visitor from the docks to the south of Pallet Town. There's a problem on the seas and Ash's help is requested. Enjoy the story! If you have thoughts, please leave a comment.

Professor Oak stayed at the hospital for two more days and then returned to Pallet Town. The next few days were very intense for Ash and Serena. Ash moved out of his room and into an empty room in the lab. Serena moved into Ash's old room and began settling in at the Ketchum household. Professor Oak began showing Ash and Serena all of the responsibilities and tasks involved in taking care of the Pokémon. It was a massive amount of work but Ash was eager to take it on.

As they went around the different facilities, Professor Oak apologetically showed Ash that some parts of the lab buildings had started to degrade. With all the work he and Tracey had been doing, they hadn't been able to properly keep up with maintenance. Ash dismissed the Professor's guilt and said that he would get everything fixed up and make it even better than before.

After about a week of Ash and Serena learning the jobs on the property, a moving company arrived and started packing up all of Professor Oak's equipment and belongings. Ash felt some sadness at the reality of Professor Oak leaving, but he remained upbeat and helped get everything ready to move out.

The day finally arrived when all the equipment was gone and the last of Professor Oak's research material and personal items were packed and ready to go. All of Pallet Town turned out to hold a large goodbye celebration for Professor Oak. The Professor got a little choked up at the outpouring of affection and thanked everyone profusely. Ash, Serena and Delia then took Professor Oak and Tracey to the airport, and with that, the former lab was now in the hands of Ash and Serena.

That evening, when Ash and Serena stood in front of the main building, they finally felt the full weight of responsibility on them. Both of them wondered if they'd made the correct decision, but they reassured each other and set to work.

The first few days were chaotic. Serena would arrive in the morning from the Ketchum house and often find Ash attending to some crisis. The Pokémon were upset by the absence of Professor Oak and it took Ash almost two weeks before they started fully respecting and listening to him. He and Serena often worked through the day without stopping to eat. Come evening, they would drag themselves into the mostly empty main building and sit on the floor, leaning their backs against the walls because the building didn't have any furniture.

One evening, while they were seated on the floor eating a simple dinner, Serena starting laughing at the ridiculous situation and proposed that they need to get some kind of dining room set up. Over the next few days, Ash managed to scavenge up a few chairs and find an old, half-broken, table. The makeshift dining room wasn't pretty but it worked, and they both appreciated it.

Ash started moving a few Pokémon around and teaching them to take care of each other. His experience with training let him do things that Professor Oak had never considered. He managed to appoint several more responsible Pokémon to watch over the others and ensure the basic needs were taken care of. Thanks to this, the workload around the former lab began to lessen.

A month into the work, Ash finally decided to retitle the property. It wasn't a lab any longer, and so, after he and Serena thought about it and discussed it, they decided to call it the Pallet Town Pokémon Reserve. It was a happy and sad day when Ash took down the old sign of Professor Oak's lab and replaced it with the new one.

Roughly three months after Ash started running the reserve, things had settled down enough that he and Serena could start making progress on the various repair and upkeep work which needed to be done. Some of the jobs were easy, like washing the exteriors of the various buildings and repainting some of the older wood structures. More complicated work, like fixing some of the wiring inside the main building, which Rotom had fried, would have to wait until later.