Authors notes this is over 6540 words long, making it the longest chapter in this book. It took me a long time to write, I hope you all enjoy!

The new year special chapter!

I wish you all a happy 2019 now that the new year is round the corner and slowly...only a little bit each hour we experienced, creeping into our future!

Ash woke up, sweating. He could hear pikachu's shallow breathing from the window side; Pikachu must have fallen asleep there last night because it was to tired. It was shivering and Ash could hear its teeth chattering.

Ash gently carried it to a nearby desk and took out some spare sheets to cover it and make it a mattress so it won't feel so cold anymore and could sleep much more comfortably.

A few minutes later, pikachu stopped shivering and now had a smile on its face. Ash had sometimes wondered what it was dreaming about. He had sometimes wished that he was a pokemon and could live in peace and harmony with the nature and didn't have to experience such a haunted past.

All was peaceful and quiet now. Even Ash was now much more relaxed and he felt the beads of sweat on his back fade away. He sometimes wished that all the bad things, the haunting memories could face away and disappear along with the sweat as well. Yet they never did.

Ash opened the curtains and allowed the moonlight to flood in, slightly lighting the room. All the tension was over.

The moonlight slowly calmed Ash down. For the first time since he had been betrayed, he had never felt so peaceful.

"Betrayed....betrayed..."

Ash kept muttering. He had now had a much better knowledge of the past and future via his dreams including why Delia betrayed him. Yet the knowledge haunted him even more.

Ash looked up once more. He remembered when he was smaller, Delia, who was kind and loving back then, taught him all the constellations in the night sky and where to find them. Ash remembered how he used to like to sit down on a chair at night, sometimes with a telescope, sometimes without, and look up and the mysterious night sky. He wondered what secrets it held, what the twinkling stars were trying to tell him.

He could spot Leo the lion, brave and tall, joint by dozens of bright stars. It was always the one he saw first.

Then he saw orian. For once, the sight of the hunter in the skies no longer made him feel homesick. He remembered its story. When he was younger, he used to remember how Delia told him all the constellation's stories. There was always lessons to be learnt from the stories. For Orian, the hunter, he remembered it was something like: don't hunt so much or you will get killed by a rotten scorpion with a poisonous sting.

It was kind of obvious to him but he knew it probably had a much deeper meaning than what he thought. Ash smiled peacefully to himself. The stars kept glittering like diamonds from heaven and eventually faded into the night sky, they were constantly moving; Ash soon spotted more constellations. There was Virgo the virgin. He sometimes thought Delia as a virgin since his father never visited him when he was smaller. He wished that Delia was just as peaceful as the virgin in the skies. Than he saw scorpius the scorpion, one which supposedly killed Orian the hunter. This made Ash sigh in sadness. He used to enjoy these violent things but now that he had truly experienced violence, he wished that he had never enjoyed than. He had a dream that one day the world would live in peace and harmony with Pokemon and each other. It was a wished that he was constantly working for, Orian the hunter's sad story renewed his energy to fight once more for his goals, not to only be a pokemon master, but also allow the world to live in harmony and hopefully, no one would suffer the same fate as Orian the hunter and no one would be hunting harmless pokemon in the first place.

Then, the stars shifted and soon Taurus the grand bull was visible. It was a truly sad sight and bought tears to Ash's eyes. Taurus reminded Ash of his Pokemon; his thirty energetic Tauros, his squirtle, his bulbasaur which was now a venasaur. The pokemon he caught at MT Moon and hadn't even trained with them yet.

"Had my dreams gone too far?" Ash silently whispered. He now wished that he had also used his other pokemon more rather than his main six. He knew that in the finals he should use his most powerful pokemon, but the others also deserved a chance.

Eventually, Ash's tears felted away like thin ice from the warmth of hope. Dawn was slowly arriving. It was now 5'O'clock and dawn was in less than and hour. The winter's icy breath no longer tortured him, the boneless trees no longer seemed eerie.

Ash could hear Pikachu's faint snoring, the fearows' dancing in the trees. All was peaceful and well.

Or was it really that well? Ash now had to make a decision on wether to rescue Paul first or too follow the prophecy.

(time skip 3 hours later)

Everybody had woken up. They had gotten dressed as well and ate breakfast. Clemont noticed something wrong with Ash, the way he seemed to be deciding something, like a really difficult choice but from the looks Ash was giving him, he could tell that he didn't wanted to talked about it so Clemont kept quiet.

After breakfast, Ash pulled everybody into his room, this time in a much more jolly mood.

"Clemont, Bonnie, I think it would be much more suited for you to go south first as the prophecy says" Then Ash explained the prophecy and what he thought it meant to them. "I will stay behind...erghhhhh because I have this other thing to do... I mean have to do....erghhhhhhhhh anyway, you get the idea" Ash was worried that Clemont or Bonnie would ask him what he wanted to do and stay behind or would want to stay behind with him, but to his complete surprise, they obeyed!

Once Bonnie and Clemont packed and left, Ash himself decided to get to action and rescue Paul.

"So, pikachu and Genesect, you two will hide near the front door"

"Greninja, Buzzwole, you two lay here and rescue Paul while me and Charizard along with some other pokemon, the ones I caught on MT Moon and stuff distract the traitors." Ash said as he pointed to a certain area on a map which he had drawn.

(Time skip 3 hours later)

Ash had packed all sorts of stuff they might need for a rescue mission ten escapee ropes and smoke grenades. The only thing that the dream failed to tell Ash was when the traitors were going to do the execution. Ash knew that he had to be as quick as possible. The quicker the better!

After a long track made short by Ash's great enthusiasm, they arrived and Genesect disarmed the locked door with a powerful techno blast to brake the electrical currents inside. Then pikachu used a powerful combination of electro ball and iron tail to disarm a Gyrados guarding the front entranced. Then Ash had Pikachu to paralyse it with thunder. Ash sent Infernape and Sceptile to guard the now weak Gyrados!

The dull brick walls made Ash feel disgusted and he nearly vomited. This wasn't the first time, but the second or third time he had to enter it. Ash let out some other pokemon that he had caught such as shuckle and Venusaur to help distract the traitors who were now flooding out as an alarm had start to ring as loud a group of busy, buzzing bees!

"Ash, you little bustard, wanna fight?" Said Brock as he charged towards Ash, only to be taken out unconscious by a powerful bug buzz by both buzzwole and Genesect!

He fell down limp.

"Dam it" muttered May

"Go seaking " Misty said as she let out a shadow seaking.

"So your pokemon evolved," thought Ash..."or rather you forced it to..."

"Aqua Jet" Misty commanded as Seaking covered itself with shadowy water and charged towards Ash mercilessly.

"As you see, Ash, you stand no chance! We have been growing our foundation and finding more shadow machines than ever! So, we will have the knowledge to make these pokemon become impossible to purify by using our machine by full force!" Jeered Misty

"Yeah, go Slaking, kill Ash for me!" Norman chipped in!

"Yeah father, average Max" muttered May.

Ash could see that his forces were over whelmed at least ten to 1 and each shadow pokemon could take out at least ten of his pokemon. This meant that it was like as if he was out numbered one to a hundred!

As seaking came closer, Ash could see the pain of its face as it tried to resist the power of the shadow machine.

Ash knew that these pokemon were bent t their power and will and was forced to do the traitors' evil bidding. Due to this, he knew it was better to capture than to harm.

"Shuckle, sticky web" Ash felt a little worried that Shuckle won't listen to him as he had never actually battled with it.

To his surprise, Shuckle did as it was told and launched an extra strong sticky web at seaking. Seaking was immediately stuck in its tracks and captured by sticky web. Ash knew that sticky web wasn't going to hold forever; its string were a thing a silk compared to shadow seaking's aqua jet!

"Charizard, toss it back!"

Charizard used a weaker version of seismic toss with such a great aim that when it tossed seaking back, seaking landed on Misty's face.

"Gahhhhhhh, mouthwash, mouthwash!" Cursed Misty though it only sounded like"sdfg34trhjymnbdgvsrntgtjndfjgnerfgjrnjern" due to seaking blocking its mouth.

Misty grabbed a nearby branch from a tall oak tree and smacked seaking till it flopped onto the ground. Now, normal seakings would have had trouble surviving on land but shadow seaking had a special ability, and that was to travel on land as easily as on water.

As nodded secretly at Greninja and buzzwole. They immediately went inside to rescue Paul as the plan had said whilst the other traitors were distracted and were swarming Misty to see what was happening.

At first Ash thought that the traitors had gone mad and were doing crazy dances but than noticed that they were attaching some cream to her face so that a big wound made by seaking's sharp horn that was also infected due to the traitors keeping their Pokemon under bad hygiene and well... you could guess what would happen if all sort of germs and digestion waste(by this I mean the things you have in your toilet)so that it wouldn't hurt as much!

Ash thought the battle was going in their favour when... BANG!

Ash could see Greninja and Buzzwole flying out, only to be caught by some sort of net.

"ASH,AS YOUB SEE WE HAVE BEEN EXPECTING THAT YOU WOULD SEND YOUR POKEMON INN, AFTER ALL YOU WEREN'T THE ONLY ONES WHO HAD DREAM ABOU THE FUTURE! NOW WE HAVE CAUGHT GRENINJA AND BUZZWOLE. IF YOU DONT HAND YOURSELF IN, THEY WILL IMMEDIATELY TURNED INTO SHADOW POKEMON, BUT IF YOU DO, WE SHALL ALSO TURN THEM INTO SHADOW POKEMON ALONG WITH YOUR OTHER POKEMON! BAHHHAAAAAAHAHAhAhaHA!" Ash recognised the voice of professor Oak speaking from a nearby speaker.

"So, you mean that if I don't hand myself in they will be turned into. shadow pokemon but if I do, same story except for all my pokemon." Said Ash.

"Yeah, exactly" professor Oak replied.

"Then why should I turn myself in then?" Asked Ash

"Because you will die if you don't!BAHAHAHAHA! Brock, show then what I mean!" Professor Oak replied once more before the speakers were turned off by a CLINK!

Only then had Ash noticed that Brook had woken up from fainting!

"Go Stakata!" Brock said as he let out a shadow pokemon that Ash didn't recognised!

Without buzzwole or any smart member of his pokemon having too tell him, he knew that it was a shadow ultra beast!

"How?" Ash said in surprise.

Charizard tried flamethrower, pikachu tried electro ball, but they all hardly did any damage.

"Merry Christmas" said Brock in a cruel posh accent as if it was the last time Ash was ever to hear that phrase.

Before he knew it, Stakata had used stone edge to damage Charizard and knock it out of the sky and heavy slam to completely knock out pikachu!

"See? This is how strong a shadow ultra beast can be! If you did this to Buzzwole, you would be invincible! You were yet stupid enough not to do that! Bah hahahahhaahha!" Said Brock.

"Seaking, lets join the fun! Mega Horn! Take revenge for me."

"Well, actually it was the one that slammed into your face, not me!"

"Bah humbug" Replied Misty.

Seaking's horn grew green it slowly started preparing for the move. It only took one second but that one second seemed to stretch 100000 second. Everything seemed to be in slow motion! The horn was pointing directly at Ash's head and Ash thought that it was going to piece his head.

Ash became vaguely aware that the other traitors were cheering and professor Oak along with Delia had came out and were cheering as well as if thinking Ash had no chance of escaping at all!

"I'll guess that I will have to let Misty finish him off them" muttered Brook as he and Stakata stepped aside.

Then seaking charged, surrounded with green aura. Ash covered his head with his hands, preparing for the worst and indeed it came, closer and closer seaking came until it was directly at Ash's head, just a millimetre away. BANG! Someone was just seriously injured. It wasn't Ash, but Misty! It turned out that in just a millisecond, seaking was able to charged back to Misty and now had its horn engraved in Misty's chest.

The traitors watching froze, then screams of terror escaped Misty's mouth and the traitors started trying to pull seaking and its horn out of Misty' chest which was now bleeding serious.

Misty's face was as white as fine snow and it looked like as if she had seen a ghost.

It seemed like even shadow seaking didn't like being beaten by a branch just because it crashed landed into Misty's face.

Ash used the moment of shock to rescue Greninja and Buzzwole. They would have also rescued Paul if it wasn't for shadow Stakata which was still trying to kill them with iron tail.

Ash carried unconscious pikachu and gives Charizard a hyper potion to make it a whole lot better than he returned all the other pokemon back to their Poke balls and flew to the nearest pokemon centre. Ash could have down more and perhaps taken down half of the evil traitors base but he felt like as if his pokemon needed to regroup as half of them were starving and tired. Also, pikachu was seriously injured and Greninja and Buzzwole also seemed a little hurt by the nets holding them.

After a while , they arrived at the pokemon centre. Ash deposited pikachu.It was already 8'O'clcok in the night and it was already dark. Ash had dinner with his Pokemon. He had completely missed lunch, yet he didn't care. After a while, nurse joy and her assistant audino wheeled out Pikachu which was already feeling a whole lot better. Than he gives Greninja and Buzzwole some hyper potions so they are also refreshed. He also gives Charizard a normal potion to fully restore its hp.

It was the end of Christmas Day and the next was Boxing Day. Ash was feeling a bit down that they won't able to rescue Paul but Greninja claimed it saw Paul was already dead. Ash didn't blame Greninja or Buzzwole for this incident and ate his dinner in silence.

It was heartbreaker news that one of his allies had just sacrificed himself for Ash's safely. Ash promised to average him.

It had started lightly raining.

(Time skip the next morning)

Ash decided to catch up with Clemont and Bonnie on their way to the south, only to discover that he didn't have to! It turned out that they decided to stay overnight as well because of news that there was a landslide halfway through an road that was only two minutes walk from their hotel and was south.

Serena was next but Ash knew that he had to rely on pikachu for that via dream message and pikachu seemed to want to go south anyways so Ash suspected team rocket's h.q. was up south!

Clemont had said how weird it was that there was no deserts, which were usually described as the land without rain, up south and in fact, the area up south was a place called Alola, where it was actually quiet tropical!

At first Ash thought that the prophecy might be wrong but when he discovered that ultra beasts and necrozma was connected to alola by ultra worm holes more than other regions, he decided that maybe the prophecy wasn't wrong after all. Perhaps it was leading Ash to where the ultra beast came from so Ash could have a better understanding of what was going on!

After breakfast, Clemont went to the nearby confident store to stock up on supplies whilst Bonnie decided to go out into the yard to play with dennene and squishy the zygarde core along with some of Ash's other pokemon.

Ash estimated that Alola's border were around 65 miles from which they were right now.

He planned to travel the first 30 by riding Charizard in a duration of around a days and hopefully be able to find somewhere to land in time of dinner. As for that nights sleep, Ash decided to carry some sleeping bags in case there was no resort available. After that , Ash planned to ride on his Genesect in its folded up form and travel another 20 miles, over the ocean. He could also have travelled on Charizard once mor but he decided that Charizard needed to rest and, due to the flat landscape after the 30 miles radius, Genesect was a more suitable option. Then he would walk the remaining 5 miles. This was Ash's plan, but would everything go as he had wanted?

Just as he finished planning, Clemont returned.

The day was as clear as ever and the sun shown brightly, made even brighter by the reflection of the rain drops that hadn't evaporated yet from yesterday's slight downpour.

Ash and his friends had started their travels on Charizard. Ash was still quiet tired, but he didn't show it. Unlike him, Charizard seemed quite refreshed and ready to fly despite the amount of energy lost in yesterday's fight.

At some points, maybe due to drifting a lot on Charizard back, Ash and his two companions fell asleep. For the first time he noticed that Bonnie and Clemont didn't seem as active and spoke a lot less than usual.

For the first time in two nights, Ash was no longer haunted by nightmares.

He was able to rest in peace, or at least for this moment.

(Time skip two hours laters)

Ash woke up. Or rather I should say Clemont woke him up. It was both. How was that possible? Answer: I don't know.

"Ash, Ash, watch out! We're crash landing" At first it was a nagging voice of Clemont in his head and then, he woke up.

He woke up and looked around.

"Crash landing?" Asked Ash "CRASH LANDING?"

There was no reply, only deadly silence, too dead.

Then Ash noticed that Clemont and Bonnie weren't there anymore.

He saw pikachu. Ash noticed that it didn't seem to hear him shout and didn't even seem to move

"Pikachu, Where's Clemont and Bonnie?" Ash asked pikachu.

"Pipipikapipipikkakakapi(I don't know, they were there seconds ago and then I looked away.. they weren't there any more." Pikachu replied.

"Yes, but you heard me shout crash landing right? And are we crash landing?"

"Pipikapipipopopopi?(what? What do you mean)?"

Ash stood up and noticed that they won't even anywhere near their resort. No, in fact they had flown in just mere hours, over 100 miles! How did Ash know that? Well, Ash seemed to have a strange sense about it and was sure that he was right. Perhaps this was Arceus trying to help him, perhaps not.

They were already in Alola and judging by the position of the sun, it had only been 2 hours or so!

Ash spotted a tall pillar in the distance and told Charizard to land there.

Charizard slowly started circling the pillar to slow down until it was at a slow speed; slow enough to land.

The view around was amazing, Ash could see that he was on a island, and there was three other smaller islands around him. He could even see the ocean! For once, Ash could feel the clean, fresh air in his nostrils. Ash took several deep breaths and decided to scout the area.

Ash remembered how when he was way younger, professor Oak's cousin, a professor from Alola, a friend of professor Kukui, another professor of the region, came to visit. He remembered how interested he was to find that normal Kanto Pokemon may look different and have different typing in Alola due to the different weather conditions and area habitats! He had also heard about totem pokemon, pokemon that guard certain areas and is much more powerful than normal Pokemon. Ash was very interested and decided he wanted to catch one.

Indeed, like Clemont said, it was very tropical and not 'the land without rain' at all!

Ash was hungry and unfortunately, all the supplies Clemont and Bonnie bought seemed to disappear with them! All he had left was his pokemon and his sleeping bag.

Ash had no choice but to journey down along to find some food. He climbed onto Charizard and flew down the pillar and started to search for a local village with convenient stores or something where he could buy food from.

Luckily, there was a village that wasn't far and Ash directed Charizard to land there. Ash couldn't help but to challenge some local trainers as well!

In his first battle, he fought and person who didn't tell him his name but had a really powerful Pokemon which was from the Alola region called sillvary

It was one of the most exciting battles that he had ever had and certainly one of the most difficult challenges.

The trainer requested Ash for an one pokemon vs one pokemon battle after he heard Ash came from a different region . Each trainer would only be able to use one pokemon. Ash could tell that he was very excited to test his skills against him. It basically went like this:

As Ash's opponent sent out a ferocious type of Pokemon called silvary. Ash had only knew the Pokemon's name after his opponent commanded it. Ash could tell it wasn't a nickname because normally you won't nickname your Pokemon silvary.

"Go Greninja" Ash commanded. He knew that his loyal ninja pokemon would never let him down.

Ash saw that his opponent attach something like a USB drive into the Pokemon's body.

"Now, multi attack electric!" His opponent respond.

Ash could tell that his opponent's pokemon was well trained and that from hearing the world electric, Ash doubted that his opponent knew Greninja was a water type and was going for an type advantage.

"Respond with surf!" Ash commanded, knowing that getting hit by his opponents powerful attack would really hurt Greninja a lot.

Though Ash was able to cancel out his opponents attack by using surf, Ash could tell it was going to be a tough battle.

"Thunder fang!"

"Water shrunken"

Since both were equally powered, it resulted in black smoke!

When the smoke cleared, Ash was surprised to see Silvary charging towards Ash will Ariel ace.

Ash was too late to react and Greninja was hit. It was lucky it wasn't a electric type move or Greninja might have been knocked out!

Ash decided to use ice beam to hopefully freeze silvary.

"Fire fang!"

Ash's opponent ordered silvary to use fire fang so that the ice melted the moment it touched it.

Ash silently cursed. This battle was going to be harder than he thought.

Ash decided that if far range is too hard to land hits, close range might be better therefore he ordered Greninja to use Ariel Ace. Just as expected, his opponent responded with a powerful thunder fang.

"Now, night slash." Just as silvary bit down, Greninja formed blades of darkness and jabbed it into silvary's mouth. Silvary screamed in pain.

Now, silvary was powerful, but it couldn't use its mouth, feet, and hands at the same time. Greninja could and this was Greninja's advantage.

First, Ash ordered Greninja to fire ice beam to freeze Silvary before a powerful Ariel ace from Greninja's legs sent silvary flying 20 yards off and directly into a street lamp.

It landed with a THUMP.

Ash let out a sigh of relief, expecting to have won it. To his surprise, silvary managed to stand. It was clearly too tired to fight though, it's armour was still iced from Greninja's ice beam and its mouth was still hurt from night slash.

Ash saw his opponent rush to its side and made sure it was alright.

Ash secretly smiled.

"Just like what I would do if pikachu was hurt" Ash muttered silently.

After a few minutes, Silvary was able to stand with his trainer's support.

Ash could see that his opponents had intentions of forfeiting but before he had the opportunity to accept, Silvary roared, as loud as the engine of a rocket, telling its trainer that it was still able to battle. Ash had to admit that Silvary was perhaps, nearly in Greninja's league.

It shook itself to clear the frost on its armour and prepared to pounce.

"Multi attack"

"Surf"

Both attacks met and this time, multi attack was able to power through surf.

Ash gritted his teeth as Greninja was sent flying by the powerful hit.

Ash's opponent, expecting to have won, rushed over to congratulate his Pokemon... but little did he know that Greninja and Ash was about to take this battle to a new standard.

Greninja managed to stand up. Ash could feel that the ninja frog pokemon was as determined as ever to finish this battle. Ash knew that it had the same sort of idea as Ash had: something the world don't normally see was able to able.. something special.

"Let's end this, thunder fang!"

This was the moment. His opponent had chose close range combat again, which gives Greninja a great advantage...

"Night slash"

"Now multi attack close range"

Ash suddenly realised that he had been tricked. His eyes opened up wide before he realised that this battle might not end the way he planned. His opponent knew Ash would respond once more with night slash so he deliberately used thunder fang to lure Greninja into a position where he was vulnerable and couldn't defend itself.

There was only one hope of winning the battle... one which was risky... very risky.

It was one which had to be set up quickly, or else it would end badly. For extra speed and power boost, Ash knew he had to shock all the local people an pokemon watching along with his opponent his true power, one which he can only activated with Greninja by using their bonds. Ash hasn't done it in a long time. Since the legends league had temporary been paused, he hasn't used this form yet and he was a bit worried that it wouldn't work. Luckily it did. Ash felt the powerful and emotions of Greninja, all its desires and all its knowledge flood into his mind like a tsunami.

Greninja was suddenly surrounded with a veil of water. The veil shield Greninja from multi attack and left his opponent mouth open as Greninja jabbed night slash into silvary at such speed with such force that it even made some legendary Pokemon's signature moves looked like weak moves such as quick attack!

BANG! Silvary slammed into a tree, completely knocking the tree over. Then dust surrounded it and it was impossible to know what had become of it. Ash tensed. He wasn't going to let his guard down and therefore still stood tense, Greninja mimicked his position.

Suddenly, he could the watery veil slowly started to form into a ninja star, or rather he felt it, for he and Greninja's bonds were so advanced that they could feel each other is feelings, emotions, gushing through their body each second! His vision was now switching rapidly between his and Greninja's. He could feel his heart beat racing faster and faster than ever.

Suddenly, he saw that Silvary was still conscious via Greninja's super vision and it had stood up and was preparing a multi attack. Ash couldn't see it from his vision at his angle but Greninja could at its angle.

Without even commanding, Ash-Greninja already sensed what to do next via Ash's thoughts and just as the smoke cleared and silvary was about to fire multi attack with its final breath, Ash and Greninja jumped together. Ash didn't go very high but Greninja went up at least 24 feet. Multi attack completely missed it! Then Greninja slammed down with night slash right onto Silvary's head, landing a direct hit. Silvary was clearly unable to battle.

Then, he fought a trainer with a alolan form raticate. Ash was very excited the meet, for the first time, an raticate from the alolan region. This was manly due to raticates from alola have a different appearance. Ash was even more surprised when the opponent told him that raticates from the alola region were normal and dark types rather then normal types. This time, however, his opponent was also surprised, learning that raticates from Kanto and most other regions were only normal types.

"Go Sceptile"

"Go raticate"

After a rapid exchanging of leaf blade and hyper fangs, out pokemon were slowly starting to fire.

"Feint attack"

"Bullet seed"

Alolan raticate covered itself in a ghostly, dark aura that was so strong that it made Ash feel frightened an queasy or at the same time. Sceptile opened it mouth and let out dark green circular pieces of aura that was just as strong. Since both attack's were equal in power, it resulted in smoke as black as the moonless, starless night sky on a street with few, or none streetlights at all!

However, since Alolan Raticate was in the attack itself, it was thrown back and hurt by recoil.

"Quick attack"

Alolan Raticate started rampaging towards Sceptile So quick that Ash was completely unable to order Sceptile to defend itself before the attack hit.

Sceptile was knocked back a bit but otherwise seemed completely fine.

Ash knew he needed a plan. He could see that Sceptile manning had close range moves and therefore close range would be an advantage. Unfortunately, Alolan Raticate seemed just as good in close range.

The other two moves it had were frenzy plant and solar beam.

They were both long ranged attack.

"Perhaps, if short range attacks won't work, them long ranged would" Ash whispered to himself, forming a plan.

"Leaf blade, but this time jump up into the air!"

As predicted, raticate jumped up as well and used crunch to counter it.

"Keep you bite on its blades" Ash's opponent commanded.

"Spin" Ash muttered.

Sceptile started spinning as fast as light, or perhaps even faster, soon, it was nothing but a blur of green light.

Unfortunately, raticate had a strong grip and refused to let go no matter fast sceptile was spinning, however this wasn't Ash's intention.

"Now use solar beam whilst spinning."

Sceptile charged solar beam.

"Hyper beam"

Both attacks met in mid air. The attacks resulted in black smoke once more.

"Now frenzy plant"

Sceptile summoned the power of nature and soon plants started growing all the place. One vine grabbed raticate in the foot, another grabbed its claws.

(Time skip a few hours later)

After Ash battled for a few hours, he lost some and won most of them. Then he had snack at professor Kukui's research lab , the professor of the region, who had kindly invited him in.

After that, the professor kindly offered Ash to show him around and introduce him to several things he might be unsure about. Ash accepted.

First, the professor talked about the island trials, whilst introducing the islands. He was saying that there were four trials, each was lead by a trial captain. Each captain has a chosen type.

"The four islands are separately: melemele island, Alaka island, Ula ula island and poni island, with a small half man made, half natural island called aether paradise. Our island is called melemele. To complete a challenge, you must get through a series of small tasks, defeat the totem pokemon, then challenge the trial captain, also known as the kahuna, at a grand trial and win. Our kahuna, is a specialist at fighting types so psychic types are very valuable on our island due to their type advantage again the kahuna's pokemon."

Then he talked about the totem pokemon at Ash's request.

"Totem pokemon are often larger versions of Pokemon such as raticate etc that have a strange mysterious aura surrounding them. The aura makes them stronger. Our research are unable to prove how the mysterious aura is made though."

Then, professor kukui took Ash to see the local temples to praise the deity and guardian of there island, tapu koko.

"There are four main island, like I said before, each island has a guardian. Ours on melemele is tapu koko. Others being tapu fini, tapu bulu, and tapu lele. They have all one thing in common in typing and two things in common in movesets. The thing they have in typing is being part fairy and as for moveset, they could all learn withdraw and the power nature madness, a move exclusive to only the guardian deities."

Ash found this very interesting.

After this, Ash and his fellow pokemon went to the pokemon centre to book a room, only to discover that professor kukui had been kind enough to allow Ash to sleep in a spare room in his house. Ash was very grateful for that.

It was slowly edging towards night time. Ash had so much questions that professor Kukui himself found it hard to answer all of them in just a few hours. Each question he asked seemed to create more.

Finally, Ash asked:

"Do you know anything about ultra beasts.?"

"Yes" replied the professor, "why do you ask?"

"Oh, its just that I wanted to know more," Said Ash. He decided to avoid telling everyone about his ultra beats, he didn't plan to cause much of an attraction.

"Ultra beasts are creature, which, according to my research, appeared from things called ultra wormholes. These worm holes are things that warp time and space, allowing you to reach a huge distance in just milliseconds!"

Ash was hoping to know more things but professor kukui must have decided it was getting late. He kindly suggested Ash to go with him, back to his research lab to collect a few things before showing Ash his room.

He did add a phrase though, one which would impact Ash greatly and perhaps prove the outcome of the future...

Ash spent the following two days exploring the alolan region whilst challenging some local trainers and signing completing challenges for the melemele island grand trial. He was having so much fun that he had completely forgotten the prophecy, Serena, Bonnie, and Clemont!

He first decided to go to the local temples once more, this time to pay a proper respect to the guardians of alola, particularly tapu koko because it was the deity of their island. It was fashionable for newcomers to do so; it was like signing a contract : you have to respect the deities properly and make you sacrifices whilst they have to protect you from harm. That was the deal.

After that, Ash went to the town square to listen to an announcement that was being made.

"I have decided that this year the annual festival in honour of tapu koko, our guardian deity, should be held early due to the heatwave that is estimated to hit us during the summer and spring." Said a fat man with a hairyama standing behind him.

Then Ash lost focus. He normally put all his focus into anything about Pokemon battles, but this time he got distracted because he had heard someone in the crowd whisper to his pal: "no, it's because of the ultra beasts"

Then there was a bunch of whispering and people started arguing about what was the true reason it was held early. Some believed the announcer was correct, other had other opinions. Suddenly, the whole crowd was like a stampede of tauros, the noise was unbearable and some people had started fighting.

Just as Ash thought the noise was going to burst his eardrums and smash his brain, Ash noticed that the arguing had suddenly stopped. At first Ash was confused on why it was able to stop so quickly, then he noticed that everyone was staring into something that the announcer was holding up.

"Whoever wins this tournament will get this" he said as he held the object up high.

GASP! The whole audience gasped in surprise. Ash noticed that the thing was shaped like a diamond, a piece of precious jewellery! Now, Ash would have wanted the beautiful piece of jewellery, but he didn't understand why every body were so agitated about it.

By coincidence, the person beside him was also the person he battled a day or two ago. He was the one with the silvary, who put up a great fight against Ash's Greninja in Ash-Greninja form but eventually lost.

Seeing that Ash was confused, he whispered to him:

"The announcer is the kahuna of the island: Hala. He is also a member of the the elite four. The shiny thing he is holding up is the fightinium Z. This means that the person winning the tournament will also be passing the grand trial all at the same time!"

After that, signing up sheets were handed out, but due to the number of people wanting to enter, there will be a luck draw and only 15 people will enter.

The following day, Ash had visited the local beach and even did the sharpedo riding event they were holding their! The sky was blue, not even a faint glimpse of storm clouds could be seen. He suddenly remembered how professor Kukui had said that the weather growing hotter and there wasn't as much rain as there used to be. This meant that plants and vegetation won't grow as well as they usually do.

After building a few sand castles with pikachu, they decided to have lunch. Unfortunately, for some reason they didn't have any money with them and Ash checked his Pokemon bank account to find that it was empty. This was weird as he had check it before they left for Alola and he still had 10000! (Where did he get these money from?) This meant that he had no money to buy food!

Speaking of trouble, make it double.

The nearby bushes rustle and two familiar people and a Pokemon jump out.

"Prepare for trouble,

And make it double!

To protect the world from devastation,

To unite all people within our nation,

To denounce the evils of truth and love,

To extend our reaches to the stars above.

Jessie,

James.

Team rocket blasts of at the speed of light,

Surrender now or prepare to fight.

Meowth,

That's rights!"

Familiar voices say.