Ash's Story (Part 6: Unova)

Chapter 1: A Flight Toward Thunder

Alice, Golly, and I were already wearing our new clothes when we left the upstairs hallway and started down the stairs. The fabric still felt too clean, like it belonged to people who were supposed to be excited about a new region instead of people walking through a house that had forgotten how to breathe.

Pikachu walked beside my foot without making his usual cheerful sparks. Absol stayed close to Alice, his horn angled toward the front door as if danger could step through at any second. Neither of them needed me to explain why the house felt wrong. They had been there when everything broke.

Pikachu's meaning reached me in a low, careful pulse. "We are still going forward, but I do not want you to walk like you are already gone."

I looked down at him, but my throat closed before I could answer. He was trying to keep me with him. That was what Pikachu always did, even when I made it hard.

Alice noticed the silence and moved closer without touching me first. She had learned that there were moments when I needed her hand, and moments when I needed to remember I could still choose to take it. When I reached for her, she took my fingers immediately.

Golly came down two steps behind us, one hand on the strap of her travel bag and the other on the Poké Ball at her belt. She had checked that bag three times already, and I knew she would check it again before we left Pallet Town.

At the bottom of the stairs, Professor Oak and Eve were waiting for us. Eve looked ready for a mission, not a vacation. Professor Oak looked like he had lost a fight with a gift shop, because his shirt was covered with bright yellow Pinap Berries.

Alice blinked at him for a second. "Professor, why did you dress like that?"

Professor Oak smiled in that way adults sometimes used when they wanted children to remember how laughing worked. "This? I thought it might put everyone in a traveling mood. It has been years since I last visited the Unova Region."

Eve folded her arms with a sigh. "Professor, this is still work-related."

Professor Oak adjusted his collar as if the Pinap Berries were formal research wear. "Research, conferences, and regional coordination can still happen between good meals and new scenery. When there is time between conferences, I intend to enjoy it."

Golly looked at the shirt, then at the bags beside the door. Her mouth tightened before she spoke. "Then why does it feel wrong to call it a vacation?"

Nobody answered right away. The morning light came through the window behind Professor Oak, but it did not make the room feel warmer. It only showed the empty spaces where Mom should have been moving around, asking if we had packed everything.

Alice's fingers tightened around mine. "Maybe because none of us can move on from your mother's death."

The word death hit harder inside our house than it had anywhere else. I had heard police officers say it. I had heard reporters whisper it. I had heard people outside the lab call Mom the Kanto Champion, the former head of the International Police, the woman who had survived Team Rocket when no one else could.

Inside our house, she was still Mom.

Eve looked down, and her voice went quieter. "Who could move on from that? Delia was the Kanto Champion, and before that she carried enough secrets to make half the world afraid of her. To the public, this is a political murder. To us, it is worse."

Golly's eyes sharpened. "That is why we need proof handled correctly. Anger is not evidence. Grief is not jurisdiction. If we move wrong, whoever arranged this gets to turn our pain into a mistake."

I hated how calm she sounded. I also knew she was trying not to break in front of us. Golly protected people by building fences around disaster and naming every lock.