Brock was staying. Ash and Misty respected the decision and didn't argue.
This was different from Brock's usual pattern. No instant confession, no grand declaration of eternal love. He'd chosen the slow approach: stay, be useful, let the relationship develop on its own terms.
For Brock, that was growth. And with his domestic capabilities, Professor Ivy's lab would be running like a five-star operation within a week.
Once the GS Ball analysis finished, Ash and Misty would move on to the other islands. Find Lugia. Take the vacation that was only half a vacation. And, if Ash was being honest with himself, Brock had been right about one thing. Without a third person in the group, he and Misty could stop pretending they weren't a couple in public.
They'd spent weeks reaching for each other's hands on the road, fingers brushing, then pulling apart because Brock was right there and showing affection in front of a single friend felt cruel. Now that particular barrier was gone.
The relief was real. So was the sadness.
Brock had been with them from the start. Every step across Kanto. The Indigo Plateau Conference. The battle against Mewtwo. Those experiences were carved into all three of them, permanent and shared.
"Hey." Brock's voice cut through the moment. "What's with the funeral faces? I'm leaving the group, not dying. We'll see each other again. Stop looking at me like I'm a memorial."
"Right. Sorry." Ash cleared his throat. "Professor Ivy, is the analysis done?"
"Should be. Let's check." Ivy stood and headed for the lab. Brock stayed behind to handle the dishes, already settled into the rhythm of his new role. Faith, Hope, and Grace stayed to help him. He was still a guest, and letting him cook and clean without assistance would have been poor hospitality.
The progress bar had completed. Ivy clicked through to the results, and dense columns of data filled the screen. Ash and Misty stared at it. Neither could read a word.
They turned to Ivy.
Her expression had changed. The casual warmth from lunch was gone, replaced by the focused intensity of a researcher confronting something that shouldn't exist.
"This ball contains the power of two Legendary Pokémon."
Misty's breath caught. "Two? Can you tell which ones?"
"The machine can identify elemental signatures, not species. One power carries Fire. The other carries Wind. Both signatures are consistent with Legendary Pokémon of the Fire and Flying types." Ivy paused, choosing her next words with care.
"The Legendary Birds are the obvious candidates, but these readings suggest something above that tier."
The machine couldn't name the source. It could detect that the energy inside the GS Ball was fundamentally different from normal Pokémon power, and that both signatures carried the weight of divine authority. Beyond that, identification was guesswork.
Ash already knew more than the machine could tell him.
The Fire-type signature was Ho-Oh. No question. The Rainbow Feather inside Charizard carried the same energy, and Mewtwo had confirmed the match before they'd left Pallet Town.
The second signature, Flying-type, equal in magnitude to Ho-Oh's, narrowed the candidates to a short list. Rayquaza. Yveltal. Lugia. All Tier 1 Legendaries. All carrying the Flying type.
But the GS Ball also contained the Power of Space and Time. Mewtwo had detected that too. Fusing two Legendary energies into a spacetime construct required either innate mastery of those forces or Psychic power strong enough to bridge the gap.
That pointed to one answer. Lugia. Psychic/Flying. The God of the Sea. Ho-Oh's counterpart in the Johto pantheon. Together, the Gold and Silver Twin Gods.
"The analysis also detected spacetime energy within the ball," Ivy continued. "The fusion of two divine-powers has generated a temporal lock on top of the ball's standard spatial containment. That's why it can't be opened. The interior exists outside normal time."
A standard Poké Ball used spatial compression to house a Pokémon. The GS Ball had layered temporal energy on top of that, sealing the contents in a state that couldn't be accessed through force or standard technology.
Only specific, unknown conditions would release the lock. Breaking it by brute force would destroy the ball and whatever was inside.
Ivy transferred the data to a drive and handed it to Ash alongside the GS Ball. "The machine couldn't determine how to open it. Only the structural analysis and energy readings. Take this back to Professor Oak. The rest is beyond what my equipment can do."
Ash pocketed both. He called Oak from the lab phone and gave a brief summary. Oak listened, asked two questions, then told Ash not to rush back. Finish the Orange Islands business first. The GS Ball had waited this long. It could wait a little longer.
Professor Ivy asked what else had brought him to the Orange Islands.
Ash couldn't mention Lugia Jr. He needed a cover story that was close enough to the truth to be useful but vague enough to protect the details. What came out was:
"I'm looking for Lugia."
Ivy stared at him.
"The God of the Sea. I heard it might have been sighted in the Orange Archipelago, and I wanted to see a Legendary Pokémon in person." Ash dug through his vocabulary for something that sounded respectful and came up with: "To witness the majesty of a divine being firsthand."
What he meant, translated from Ash into plain language, was: I want to fight it.
And if the circumstances were different, if Team Galactic didn't exist and Lugia Jr. wasn't in the picture, that would have been his honest reason. Ash didn't look at power gaps and calculate whether a challenge was worth attempting.
If Lugia appeared in front of him tomorrow, he'd issue a challenge with nothing but an ordinary Pikachu and zero regrets.
Call it reckless. That was how he was built.
But the real mission was more layered. Find Lugia Jr.'s family. Locate Cynthia. And deal with whatever Team Galactic had built in the Orange Islands.
Cynthia's prolonged silence worried him. She was strong enough that most threats were irrelevant, but Team Galactic wasn't most threats. An organisation that could forcibly convert a Lugia descendant's typing and possessed a medium tied to Yveltal's power was capable of threatening even a Champion. One mistake, one ambush at the wrong moment, and strength alone wouldn't save you.
Ash's concern was justified.
Ivy absorbed the Lugia ambition without trying to talk him out of it. Instead, she thought for a moment and offered something practical.
"Head to Trovita Island. It's the main tourist hub in the archipelago. If information about Legendary sightings exists anywhere in the Orange Islands, it'll surface there. Find the Nurse Joy at the Pokémon Centre. She's the best intelligence source on any island. Whatever's been seen, reported, or rumoured, she'll know about it."
Solid advice. In every region Ash had visited, the local Nurse Joy operated as an informal information network. The Orange Islands would be no different.
They stayed at Ivy's lab for one more day.
The afternoon was spent on the beach, though "beach day" was generous. Navel Island's January temperature hovered around sixteen degrees. Warm enough to skip the heavy coat. Not warm enough for the ocean. Misty, despite her mermaid reputation, would have lasted five minutes in the water before hypothermia set in.
Ash could have managed. His body ran at a different operating temperature than normal humans. But swimming alone wasn't the point.
Trovita Island, they'd been told, was different. Over three hundred days of scorching sun per year. That was why it held the resort status and Navel Island didn't.
In the evening, Ash and Brock cooked together one last time. A final lesson. Without Ash guiding the proportions and timing, Brock wouldn't replicate today's level on his own. But his comprehension was sharp, and two sessions of cooking under Ash's direction had pushed his skills to a new tier. He wouldn't reach Glowing Cuisine, but his dishes would carry a faint lustre that signalled something above ordinary cooking.
Good enough to keep Professor Ivy eating real food instead of instant noodles. That was the baseline that mattered.
After dinner, Ash and Misty walked out alone. Pikachu stayed behind with Togepi. Brock stayed behind for a conversation with Ivy that, for once, had nothing to do with infatuation and everything to do with getting to know someone.
The beach was silver under the moonlight. The sand was soft. The waves were low and rhythmic. A salt breeze tugged at their clothes.
They walked side by side without saying much. Moments like this had been rare throughout the journey. The date at the Indigo Plateau festival was the only real precedent, and that had been a single evening. Now, with Brock settled in his new role, the dynamic had shifted. The sadness of a companion's departure existed alongside a quieter truth: the space his absence created belonged to them.
"It's just us now," Misty said.
"Just us." Ash reached over and took her hand. She let him.
Both their heartbeats climbed. Neither commented on it. The moment didn't need words.
Moonlight stretched their shadows long and thin across the sand, two figures side by side, hand in hand, drawn like brushstrokes on a pale canvas.
The next morning, after breakfast and goodbyes, Ash and Misty left Navel Island.
Brock stood at the lab entrance beside Professor Ivy and waved until they were out of sight. Faith, Hope, and Grace waved behind him.
Ash released Blastoise at the shoreline. The turtle Pokémon settled into the water with practised ease, broad shell serving as a stable platform for two riders and their gear.
Misty climbed on behind Ash, arms around his waist, Togepi secure in her lap.
Blastoise set course for Trovita Island.