Ash was up before everyone.
That was unusual. He and Misty had fallen into a rhythm where they woke at roughly the same time, and he'd call out to her as part of the morning routine. Today he was gone from his bunk before she stirred, and the silence was what woke her.
She changed, walked into the living room, and stopped.
The smell hit her before she reached the kitchen. Something rich and deep and so intensely fragrant it cut through the fog of sleep like a blade. Her mind went from groggy to sharp in a single breath.
"What did Auntie Delia make today?" she murmured, following the scent.
She found Ash at the stove.
"You're cooking?"
"Couldn't sleep. Wanted to try something." He glanced over his shoulder with a grin. "Almost done. Give me a minute."
Pikachu stood on the kitchen table, paws rubbing together, nose twitching. Whatever was simmering in that pot smelled better than anything it had encountered in its entire life.
Pikachu had long stopped questioning how Ash woke up knowing things he hadn't known the night before. It happened too often to be coincidence and too consistently to be luck. The electric mouse had a private theory that Ash studied in his dreams.
Didn't matter. Breakfast mattered.
Misty stayed. She held Togepi against her chest and watched Ash work. There wasn't much left to do. By the time she'd woken, the prep was finished. The seafood porridge just needed time to simmer.
Brock and Delia returned from the market a few minutes later. They'd woken early too, but Ash had claimed the kitchen with enough confidence that they'd left him to it and gone to buy groceries. Brock had also picked up supplies for the Orange Islands trip.
The front door opened. The fragrance hit them like a wall.
"What did you put in that?" Brock's voice climbed half an octave. His nose was better than most people's, trained by years of cooking, and what he was smelling didn't match any spice or technique in his mental catalogue.
"Ash, is that the seafood porridge? It smells like something else entirely."
Ash didn't answer. He picked up a damp kitchen cloth, walked to the clay pot, and lifted the lid.
Golden light erupted from the pot.
The kitchen blazed. A warm, shimmering radiance poured upward from the porridge and filled the room, bright enough to make everyone throw their hands over their eyes. Pikachu's cheeks sparked on reflex. Togepi squeaked.
For two full seconds, Ash's kitchen looked like someone had set off a flare inside a soup pot.
The light faded. Hands came down. And the fragrance that followed was so far beyond what they'd been smelling that the previous aroma felt like a rough draft.
"What just happened?!" Brock shouldered past Misty and stuck his face over the pot. His nose confirmed what his brain refused to accept: this was seafood porridge. The base notes were right. Shellfish, brine, grain. But layered on top was something he couldn't identify, something that elevated the entire dish past any seasoning he knew.
"This is my Clam-Wave Golden Porridge." Ash carried the pot to the table with both hands. "Try it."
The porridge was gold. Not pale yellow, not amber. True, vivid, luminous gold, the same colour as the light that had burst from the lid.
"How?" Misty stared into the pot.
"Golden millet base," Brock said, his analytical mind already dissecting the dish. "Sesame oil for richness. Crab roe folded into the stock for colour and depth. That gets you deep yellow. But this shade of gold..." He shook his head. "And that light. Ash, what was the light?"
"Special effects." Ash ladled porridge into bowls. "Don't worry about the light. Just eat."
He didn't have a better explanation. The Chat Group's Glowing Cuisine skill produced the glow when cooking reached a certain threshold of perfection. The mechanics behind it were unclear even to Chef Ash. The result was what mattered.
Four bowls hit the table. Four spoons lifted in unison.
The porridge base was thick as cloud, and it dissolved the instant it touched the tongue. Crab claw sweetness. Shrimp with a clean, springy bite. Millet carrying a deep, waxy warmth underneath everything.
The flavours didn't compete. They layered, each one arriving in sequence, building toward a finish that slid down the throat and settled in the stomach like a warm hand pressed against the chest.
Everyone shuddered at the same time.
"This is..." Misty set her spoon down, eyes wide. "Ash, my whole body feels like it's being massaged from the inside. What is this?"
It wasn't just flavour. The porridge was doing something physical. Warmth radiated outward from her stomach, spreading through her limbs, reaching her fingertips.
The January cold that had turned her hands red and stiff faded as if someone had wrapped her in a heated blanket. The dull aches from weeks of sleeping in bags on hard ground, the stiffness in her neck, the lingering fatigue of constant travel, all of it dissolved.
One bowl of porridge.
Delia didn't speak until she'd finished. She set down her bowl, closed her eyes, and sat in silence for a long moment. The expression on her face was beyond contentment. Years of housework had left their marks: chronic back pain, a stiff neck, shoulder tension that never went away no matter how she slept. The kind of accumulated damage that becomes background noise because it never stops.
It had stopped.
She opened her eyes and looked at her son as if seeing him for the first time in a while.
"When did you learn to cook like this? Did you attend a culinary school during your journey?"
"Mom, no culinary school teaches this." Ash scratched the back of his head. "I just... had a breakthrough. In my sleep. It's hard to explain."
It was a weak cover story and he knew it. But "I downloaded cooking skills from a parallel-universe chat group" wasn't an option, so enlightenment-while-napping would have to do.
Brock had stopped listening. He was on his third bowl. The taste alone justified the refill, but the real draw was the effect. Vitality he hadn't felt in weeks was flooding back into his body. Whatever this porridge was doing, it was working on a level that went beyond nutrition.
A chance like this didn't come twice. He planned to eat until the pot was empty.
Misty and Delia each took a second bowl. Neither of them ate much for breakfast under normal circumstances. But normal had left the building the moment the pot lid came off.
Ten minutes. The entire pot was gone.
Misty patted her stomach and felt the quiet war between satisfaction and regret. Worth it. Completely worth it. She'd figure out the consequences later.
"What a shame you're leaving today." Delia set down her bowl. "I won't get to eat like this again."
Ash pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "The recipe. Follow it to the letter and you should get about eighty percent of the result. The taste won't be identical, but it'll be close."
The recipe was the one thing he could offer. His cooking ability operated on instinct rather than memorised formulas. The moment he touched ingredients, combinations and proportions generated in his mind on their own, and perfect dishes followed.
Reverse-engineering a written recipe from the finished product was possible but slow. This porridge was the only one he'd documented so far.
Glowing Cuisine wasn't magic in the strictest sense. It was the result of pushing ingredient utilisation to the absolute limit: perfect ratios, perfect heat, perfect timing. In theory, anyone with sufficient skill could achieve it. In practice, it demanded the kind of precision that separated world-class cooks from everyone else.
Delia's decades of experience put her in that tier. She might not reach the glow, but eighty percent of the flavour and effect was within her range.
She took the paper from Ash's hand like it was a sacred text. Her eyes scanned the recipe with the intensity of a scholar reading a lost manuscript.
Ash smiled. If nothing else, this would keep her occupied while he was gone.
"I'll send you new recipes when I figure them out. Check your messages."
Phones had progressed to touchscreens, and images could be sent through text. The League was developing integrated software that combined calls, video, messaging, and photo sharing. If it launched, communication would take another leap forward.
Delia and Mr. Mime stood at the doorstep and waved until Ash's figure disappeared down the road. The smile on Delia's face held steady until he was out of sight, then softened into something more vulnerable.
"Be safe, Ash."
She wasn't fooled. The Orange Islands trip wasn't a vacation. Ash had been vague about the details, but a mother's instinct filled in the gaps. Danger was involved. She could feel it.
She didn't stop him. A young eagle had to fly. And Ash wasn't young anymore, not in the ways that mattered. An Indigo Plateau Conference Champion, ranked among the strongest trainers in Kanto, capable of things most adults couldn't dream of.
She would worry. She would pray. She would not hold him back.
At Oak's Laboratory, Ash collected the GS Ball.
It was distinctive: golden on top, white on the bottom, the letters "GS" engraved into its surface. Beautiful craftsmanship and a complete mystery.
Nobody knew how it had been made. Nobody knew how to open it. Throwing it at a Pokémon did nothing. Attempting to pry it apart did nothing. Brute force could destroy it, but destroying the unknown was the opposite of understanding it.
Professor Oak wanted it delivered to Professor Ivy in the Orange Islands for further study.
Ash turned the ball over in his hands. It was warm to the touch, which seemed wrong for metal.
This ball carries the power of time and space. Mewtwo's voice resonated in his mind the moment he picked it up.
Her perception operated on a different plane from human senses. Ordinary people felt nothing from the GS Ball. At God Domain level, the energy signature was impossible to miss.
"Time and space? Dialga and Palkia?"
No. The signatures don't match. Inside this ball, I can sense two distinct powers. One is the same energy your Charizard carries. The other is an equal and opposite force. The two are layered on top of each other, and the interaction between them created this object.
Ash's breath caught.
"Charizard's power. The Rainbow Feather."