The power inside Charizard, beyond its own strength, was the inheritance from Ho-Oh. The Rainbow Feather still resided within Charizard's body.
This wasn't a casually shed plume. It was a condensed fragment of Ho-Oh's power, exactly the kind of artefact the Chat Group called a Legendary medium. The same category as Rayquaza's Jade Orb or the Adamant and Lustrous Orbs of the Temporal and Spatial gods. If it fell into the wrong hands and the right scientist, a control device for Ho-Oh was within the realm of possibility.
Ash had never told anyone outside his inner circle that he possessed it. That secret stayed locked.
Now Mewtwo was telling him the GS Ball carried that same energy signature. A Poké Ball infused with Ho-Oh's power? Created by Ho-Oh itself?
The questions multiplied faster than the answers. For now, the GS Ball would go to Professor Ivy on Valencia Island. Let the experts work on it.
Ash pocketed the ball, said his goodbyes to Professor Oak, and the three of them set off for Viridian City.
Pallet Town to Viridian was a day's walk. Too slow. The morning airship wouldn't wait. Outside Pallet's borders, Ash released Pidgeot and the three of them climbed on. Charizard could carry passengers too, but its build maxed out at two riders. Anyone extra had to dangle from its claws. For group transport, Pidgeot was the clear choice.
Ash's active roster for the Orange Islands was lean by design: Charizard, Pidgeot, Pikachu, Gardevoir, Mewtwo, and Lugia Jr.
Six Pokémon, each carried for a specific reason. Charizard and Pidgeot served as emergency transport. Pikachu was non-negotiable. Gardevoir refused to be separated from him. Mewtwo and Lugia Jr. couldn't be left at Oak's Laboratory for obvious reasons.
The seventh licence slot Ash had applied for existed to carry Mewtwo. Leaving it behind would defeat the purpose.
Ash had a feeling this trip wouldn't be the vacation it was dressed up as. His gacha history had established a pattern: every "carry ticket" he'd pulled had been needed almost immediately after he received it. The Jade Orb would follow the same trajectory. Somewhere on the Orange Islands, he'd face something that required backup beyond what his own team could handle.
Better to have Mewtwo and not need it than the reverse.
Misty carried four: Seadra, Dragonair, Psyduck, and Togepi. She'd sent Starmie, her ace, back to Cerulean. The reason was practical and painful.
Since the Silver Conference reforms had been announced, every Gym in every region had been flooded with challengers. Badges from other regions now counted toward Silver Conference eligibility, and trainers were pouring across borders to collect them. Pewter Gym was swamped. Cerulean Gym was drowning.
At Pewter, Brock's father Flint was unreliable as a person but competent enough as a battler. With the Pokémon Brock had left behind, they could manage.
Cerulean had no such safety net. Of Misty's three sisters, only Daisy could handle a real battle. The other two held their positions because Misty's Pokémon were strong and because nobody else was available.
Misty should have gone home already. She knew it. But when Daisy learned that her little sister had a boyfriend, and that the boyfriend was the Indigo Plateau Conference Champion, she'd told Misty not to rush back. For her sister's happiness, Daisy would carry the Gym alone.
How long she could sustain that was an open question. Once the challenger volume exceeded what Daisy could handle, Misty would go home regardless of whether anyone asked. She was the Cerulean Gym Leader. That responsibility didn't pause for romance.
Brock had brought only Onix and Golbat, leaving the rest at Pewter for Gym duty.
Ten minutes of flight. That was all it took. A full day's walk compressed into the time it took to eat breakfast. Ash understood the efficiency, but he'd never liked relying on Pokémon for every leg of a journey.
Flying was fast. It was also empty. The scenery blurred into nothing, and the entire point of travelling on foot, the encounters, the discoveries, the slow accumulation of experience, vanished.
Viridian City looked the same as their last visit. Third time here for Ash and Misty. The Viridian Gym was closed, its doors shuttered. Word was that a new Gym Leader would be installed soon. Nobody knew who, or what type they'd specialise in. It wouldn't be Ground. That much was certain.
Giovanni was still missing. The Team Rocket situation had gone quiet in the strangest way. Bound by rules Ash didn't fully understand, Giovanni had been forced to dismantle half the organisation.
But the cuts had triggered a cascade. When the boss starts closing bases and firing people without explanation, loyalty evaporates. Executives fled. Grunts deserted. Rival villain groups from other regions moved in to poach members and resources.
Team Rocket existed in name only.
The irony was bitter. With Team Rocket gone, Kanto was unprotected. The power vacuum was an open invitation, and criminal organisations from Johto, Hoenn, and beyond were circling.
Kanto's territory and the infrastructure Team Rocket had built over decades were prizes that could transform any mid-tier group into a major player overnight.
Kanto's surface calm was deceptive. The power vacuum left by Team Rocket's collapse had drawn every rival criminal organisation in the region, and they were fighting each other in the shadows over territory and resources.
The League's presence kept the peace, but it was a brittle peace. One spark and the whole region could ignite.
The most likely spark was Lugia.
Cynthia had gone to the Orange Islands to investigate during the Indigo Plateau Conference. Since then, silence. She and Ash had exchanged numbers, and under normal circumstances she would have called with updates. She hadn't. When Ash tried reaching her, the line went straight to voicemail.
That didn't mean something had gone wrong. Nobody conducting an undercover infiltration kept their phone on. More likely, Cynthia had reached a sensitive phase of her operation and couldn't risk contact. The full picture would have to wait until they reached the islands and found her.
The departure time arrived. Ash, Misty, and Brock boarded the airship to the Orange Islands.
The cabin was empty.
"Is nobody going to the Orange Islands anymore?" Ash looked around as they walked through economy. Two hundred seats, not a single passenger. First class had ten plush chairs. All vacant. "I thought this place was supposed to be a top resort destination."
"Please fasten your seat belts. The airship is about to depart." A cabin attendant approached, cap pulled low, face hidden behind a standard-issue mask. Gloved hands checked their restraints with practised efficiency.
Pikachu's nose twitched. Something in the attendant's scent was wrong. Familiar and foul, like a memory it couldn't place.
"Pika-pi..." Something's off, Ash.
"Yeah." Ash let a thread of Aura sweep the cabin. What it found made his eyes widen for a fraction of a second before he locked his expression down and forced neutral.
No way.
The Team Rocket Trio.
They'd identified his flight, replaced the real crew, and cleared every other passenger from the booking. The operational competence required to pull that off was genuinely staggering. If these three had ever applied their talents to something productive, they could have run a Fortune 500 company. Instead, they were using it to ambush a teenager for his Pikachu.
"Ash? You look pale." Misty leaned over and pressed her hand to his forehead.
"I'm fine. Just noticed some familiar faces."
"Familiar? But there's nobody else on..."
"Shh." He touched a finger to her lips. The gesture was gentle, casual, and it turned Misty's face the colour of a Tamato Berry. She pulled her hand back and stared out the window with sudden intense interest in cloud formations.
Brock watched the two of them from across the aisle and smiled the smile of a man whose ship had come in.
He also had a suspicion about the "familiar faces." If he was right, those three were terrifying in all the wrong ways.
The airship lifted off. Viridian City to the Orange Islands was a thirty-minute flight. First class came with unlimited snacks and beverages, though passengers had to call crew for service rather than move about the cabin.
Misty licked her dry lips and raised her hand to call an attendant.
Steel cuffs snapped around her wrists and locked them to the armrest.
Ash and Brock received the same treatment in the same instant. Hands and feet shackled. Insulated gloves grabbed Pikachu and wrenched it from Ash's arms before a spark could fly.
"Ha ha ha! You walked right into it, twerp!"
"Our flawless disguise fooled even your little sixth sense!"
"Pikachu is ours now, meowth!"
Two attendants ripped open their uniforms. White suits underneath. Red R on the chest. A talking Meowth dropped between them, landing on the armrest with a coin-shaped charm gleaming on its forehead.
Jessie. James. Meowth.
The Team Rocket Trio. Missing since the opening ceremony of the Indigo Plateau Conference. Ash had assumed they'd been blasted off for good after their last encounter. Instead, they'd been lying in wait for this exact moment.
How they'd learned his travel plans, infiltrated the airline, replaced the crew, and emptied an entire commercial flight remained a mystery that only these three could create.
"You know," Ash said, looking at the cuffs on his wrists, "with your level of talent, if you were on the right side, you could change the world. It's such a waste."
He flexed.
The steel cuff cracked down the middle and fell off his wrist in two pieces.
The trio stared.
"Wh... what?! Those are industrial-grade restraints! You can't just snap them like crackers!"