Oak navigated back through the lab's obstacle course of accumulated research and opened a cabinet in the corner — slightly dusty, slightly yellowed at the edges — and produced an incubator.
Inside it sat an egg.
Cream-coloured. Faint orange markings across the shell. About the size of both of Ash's hands cupped together.
Oak looked at it with the fond, faintly guilty expression of a man who had just been reminded he'd forgotten something important for two years.
"Why haven't you hatched yet, little one," he murmured, more to himself than anyone. "Your brother just made his entrance. You don't want to be left out, do you?"
"Can I hold it?" Ash asked.
"Carefully," Oak said, and lifted the egg free of the incubator.
He placed it in Ash's hands.
It was warm. Smoother than Ash expected. And the moment his fingers closed around it—
It glowed.
Not brightly. Not dramatically. Just a quiet, steady pulse of golden light from somewhere inside the shell, like a heartbeat that had been waiting to be found.
Ash went very still.
The Charmander in his lap tilted its head.
"Char?"
"Grandpa," Daisy said slowly. "Is that—"
"The egg," May finished, her voice entirely different from its usual tone. Quieter. "It's hatching."
"My word," Oak said, leaning forward.
What none of them knew — what none of them could have seen — was what was happening inside the shell.
The egg had been struggling for two years.
Its life force was weak. Not broken — just barely enough. A small flame in a large wind, holding on without knowing what it was holding on for.
And then Ash's hands had closed around it.
Ash, who carried without knowing it a thread of something that ran all the way back to the Hall of Origin — the quiet mark of a god who had spent centuries arranging one specific life and had not finished arranging it yet.
The moment that energy made contact with the egg, the small flame steadied.
Then grew.
Then, for the first time in two years, found enough warmth to do what it had always been trying to do.
The cracks started small.
Hairline fractures spreading from a single point at the top of the shell, branching outward like the lines of a leaf. The sound was almost inaudible at first — a soft, dry creak — and then it grew, filling the quiet lab, until with a burst of warm light that made everyone flinch—
The shell broke open.
A Charmander blinked up at them from Ash's hands.
Small. Slightly damp. A fragment of shell still sitting on its head at a precarious angle, like a hat it hadn't chosen but had decided to commit to.
It blinked once.
Looked around the lab — the papers, the ramen containers, the equipment, the four humans staring at it.
Then looked at Ash.
And without any further consideration, climbed directly up his front and pressed its face into his collarbone.
"Char," it said, firmly and with great conviction, as if this settled the matter entirely.
The first Charmander leaned over from Ash's lap and sniffed at the newcomer with cautious curiosity.
The newcomer ignored this assessment and stayed exactly where it was.
Oak let out a laugh — warm and genuine, the kind that filled a room. "Well, look at that! Recognises you already, my boy! You'll have your hands full with two of them!"
"Two," Ash said, somewhat faintly.
He looked down at the Charmander on his lap.
Then at the one attached to his front.
Both of them looked back at him with the patient, expectant expression of Pokémon who have decided something and are waiting for the human to catch up.
'I came in here for one Pokémon,' he thought. 'I'm leaving with two. This is fine. This is completely fine.'
May crouched down to look at them both. "What are you going to call them? You can't just call both of them Charmander."
"That would get confusing fast," Daisy agreed.
Ash looked between the two of them.
The first one — older, calmer, watching everything with those steady, curious eyes. The second — new to the world, currently using him as a climbing frame, tail flame flickering with the energy of something that had been waiting a long time to start.
"X," he said, nodding at the newly hatched one. "And Y." He nodded at the first.
May stared at him.
"X and Y," she repeated.
"Yes."
"Those aren't names. Those are letters."
"They're names."
"They're letters, Ash."
"They suit them."
May opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at Daisy.
Daisy was trying not to smile. "You know what, it does somehow suit them."
"Thank you," Ash said.
'And one day,' he thought privately, looking down at the two small orange lizards currently competing for space in his lap, 'I'll have Charizardite X and Charizardite Y. Two Mega Charizards. Nobody will know what hit them.'
He reached for the Pokéball Oak was holding out for X, and the door of the lab crashed open.
"Hey, Ashy-boy!"
Everyone turned.
Standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, sporting a jacket that cost more than most people's monthly groceries and an expression of aggressive self-satisfaction, was Gary Oak.
He scanned the room with the particular smug efficiency of someone who had walked into many rooms expecting to be the most interesting thing in them and had rarely been disappointed.
His eyes landed on Ash.
Then on the two Charmanders in Ash's lap.
His expression shifted — fractionally, briefly — before snapping back to smug.
"Finally crawled to my gramps for a Pokémon, huh, Ashy-boy?" he said.
'Gary,' Ash thought, with the weight of someone who has not thought about a specific person in years and is now remembering exactly why.
Every race. Every taunt. Every Ashy-boy deployed with surgical precision at the exact moment best designed to get under his skin. The whole accumulated history of their rivalry rising up like a wave.
'Of course he's here. Of course.'
And then — a half-second behind — the other thought.
'He's Daisy's brother.
'Which makes him my brother-in-law.'
'This is going to be interesting.'
Gary's eyes had moved to the two Charmanders with the evaluating look of someone who was already calculating how to make this into a competition.
"Two Charmanders," he said. "Gramps just giving them out now, is he?"
"Gary," Oak said, with the tired patience of a man who loves his grandson and has also known him for his entire life. "What are you doing here?"
"Came to see if you'd finally give me a starter," Gary said, not looking at his grandfather. Still looking at Ash. "Looks like someone beat me to it."
"You were never getting a starter from me," Oak said mildly. "You already have Eevee."
"Eevee was a gift. That's different."
"It really isn't."
Gary finally looked away from Ash and at the professor, pivoting smoothly into his second most-used expression: charming and entirely aware of it.
"Come on, Gramps—"
"Gary."
"Just one—"
"Gary."
Gary closed his mouth.
Opened it again.
"Fine," he said. He looked back at Ash. Crossed his arms. "So. Two Charmanders."
"Yes," Ash said.
"Named?"
"X and Y."
Gary stared at him.
"Those are letters," he said.
"So I've been told," Ash said.
A beat.
Something moved across Gary's expression — not quite respect, not quite interest, but something adjacent to both. The flicker of someone recalibrating.
Then the smirk came back, familiar and sharp.
"Don't think having two Pokémon makes you special, Ashy-boy," he said. "When I start my journey, I'll have a team that'll wipe the floor with yours before you even know what hit you."
'I know,' Ash thought. 'I remember. And this time I'll be ready for it.'
"Sure," he said mildly.
Gary blinked. He'd clearly expected more reaction than that.
Ash scratched X behind the ears. X made a small pleased sound.
Gary looked between the Charmanders, then at Ash, then at Daisy, who was watching her brother with the expression of someone entirely used to this and choosing her battles.
"I'm going to the kitchen," Gary announced to no one in particular, and left.
The door did not slam. Which somehow felt like a statement.
Oak watched him go. Sighed. Looked at Ash. "Don't let him get to you."
"I never do," Ash said.
'Anymore,' he added silently.
Y climbed up to his shoulder and sat there, tail flame burning steady.
X was already asleep in his lap.
Ash looked at them both and felt something settle in his chest — solid and certain and exactly right.
'Okay,' he thought. 'Now we start.'