A/N: Well, I think I've been gone long enough, don't you? Well over a year has got to be pretty up there as far as hiatuses go. Anywho, onto the update.

As of right now, I'm planning on doing a full rewrite of An Alternate Adventure. I loved what I did with the story, but I feel I wrote it with less skill than I could manage now. The past year has been... Trying for me, but I've learned quite a lot, and changed quite a bit as a person. With all that, it wouldn't feel right to come back and try to continue off where I was last time I updated this story. I can, and will, do much better.

With all that said, the rewrite won't go up for at least another week or two, most likely. Unless I get really into it or something, who knows?

With that said, I will give you what I did end up getting done before I abandoned writing this altogether, over a year ago. Please, enjoy.

An Alternate Adventure

Chapter Nine

The Shrouded Journey Begins

Giovanni was… Ecstatic, to say the least. Everything was going according to plan. Communications were cut with the eastern side of the Indigo League, and all of Goldenrod had fallen under his control. He'd even received word that the escapees that had been headed to Violet City had been captured, which only played even more into his hand.

The best part of the whole thing, however, was that the Elite Four's hands were tied. With Will's disappearance, they couldn't risk sending a small team into Goldenrod, regardless of what they suspected. They would need to gain more information before they could send a larger group into his city, which wouldn't be easy with his operatives across the region sabotaging Johto's ability to communicate with even itself, as well as the lack of any information escaping Goldenrod in the first place.

They would gather the information they needed to to make a move eventually, of course, but by then Giovanni would be more than ready. Yes, everything was going according to plan…

(-o-)

In Ilex Forest, well… things were not going according to plan. Ash and Co. were currently running for their lives, in fact. Behind them, a swarm of beedrill followed angrily. "Why would you do that!?" An angry voice, Lisa was her name if Ash remembered correctly, yelled out.

"How was I supposed to know there were beedrill?!" Jasmine, her sister, called out as they both ran in front of Ash. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because it was honey!?" Lisa did not appreciate her sister's question very much, it seems. Ash, as he ran, was looking for a straightforward path. He needed it to get them out of this.

Soon enough he found what he was looking for, and threw the pokeball he had had in his hand forward and over the heads of the two sisters, landing a good distance in front of them. "Run past her! Mareep use Thunder Wave!" Ash called out his instructions, and his companions followed, trusting in the boy for what must have been the thousandth time. As Ash ran past Mareep, he scooped up her pokeball. After he heard the telltale sound of electricity, he pointed the ball behind himself and pressed the button without stopping his run. "Keep running! Mareep slowed them down!"

Five long, tiring minutes of running later, the group was collapsed in a small clearing, hopefully far enough from the beedrill to be safe. After recovering his breath, Ash sent a weak glare at Jasmine. "Jasmine…"

The girl gave Ash a slightly embarrassed, but mostly tired look. "Yes…?"

"Leave the food to Teddiursa. We're not even that low yet…" With that said, Ash pulled out his pokedex and began to look through it. Over the past few days, the group had grown quite used to this. When Ash pulled the pokedex out, it generally meant they were done moving for the day. John, as he had for the past few days, was the first to get up and begin gathering wood. The sisters followed him to help out. None of them expected Ash to help out with this, his job was to guide them and keep them all alive, and as the incident with the beedrills had proved, he was certainly capable of it. Ash himself was looking into beedrills, to avoid another incident like the one they had just had.

Absentmindedly, Ash pressed the button on one of his pokeballs, releasing Teddiursa. Ash turned his attention to the little pokemon. "Hey buddy, I need you to get some berries for the group, okay?" The little bear pokemon gave Ash an annoyed look, before shaking his head. The boy had been having him do this every night this week. "Cmon, Teddiursa… I'll give you some honey later?" Teddiursa gave him a long look, before nodding and running off.

Ash let out a sigh and turned back to his pokedex. Hopefully Teddiursa didn't stay that standoffish forever…

(-o-)

The next day, around noon, they finally reached their destination: Azalea Town. "Well, we're here. You guys should be able to get some help at the pokemon center." Ash let out, facing his companions.

The group was quiet for awhile, before Lisa spoke up. "What about you? What are you going to do?"

"I need to see the gym leader. I gotta tell him what happened. Hopefully he knows what to do."

"So… This is goodbye?" This time, the response came from John. Ash looked up at the man, and gave a nod. "Well… Goodbye then!" Jasmine said, and was backed up by her sister Lisa. "Yeah, goodbye… And thank you, Ash." With that, the group went its separate ways. They hadn't really been close, but Ash was sad to see them go anyways. With a sigh, Ash turned and began to walk towards the pokemon gym.

When he arrived in the gym, he found himself rather impressed. The building was rather large, the largest in the town in fact, and housed what basically amounted to a miniature forest. To the left from the entryway was a field clearly set aside for battles, though it was curiously devoid of any stands or anything of the sort. Sitting on the ground against a tree was a boy about a year or two older than Ash was. Upon sight, Ash could almost immediately tell who this was: Bugsy, the youngest gym leader in history. The boy had finished his journey through Johto in just four months, and then proceeded to crush far more experienced trainers in the Indigo League tournament he had participated in. The boy had finished in fourth place, losing to an opponent that had multiple fire and flying type pokemon, his type's natural weakness. Afterwards, he had heard about his home's lack of a gym leader due to the previous one retiring, and went through the necessary qualifications to take the spot.

A/N: And that's all I had done, not a whole lot there is there? Unfortunately, that's all there's gonna be until I do the rewrite.

I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am.

Best Regards,

JokerInc