After half an hour of running from The Tree, the duo finally gave in to their exhaustion. Slowly they caught their breath and turned around to look at The Tree once more. From this vantage point the dark storm clouds they had escaped could be seen to be localized to the vicinity of that massive rock formation. From here, the beams of light coming down from all directions looked like little more than thin pink lines – the resulting pressure waves arriving as little more than soft bmmm's. The older trainer caught his breath first. His foremost words to the younger boy were – perhaps justifiably, if still upsettingly – one of uncharacteristic anger.

*bmm* *bmmm*

"You…you…you idiot!"

*bmm* *bm* *bmmmm* *bm*

Gou flinched.

*bmm* *bm* *bmmmm*

"I told you, going there was a bad idea, but you didn't listen to me!"

The assignment had been to study the pokémon in the small kingdom of Rota. Ash had made protestations about traveling there again, but given his refusal to give a reason other than vague allusions about there being nothing worthwhile to see other than horrific danger, the young professor had waved the concerns off as being overly worried. And so to Rota they went. Not much time after they arrived, they had chased after the Team Rocket duo (plus their talking meowth) from just outside Cameron Castle after the criminals had captured Scorbunny. When his pokémon was recovered, before Pikachu had blasted them away, the blue haired man had loudly bragged - more theatrically than usual - that maybe they'd be back to grab the mew and all the other ancient pokémon in The Tree. Upon being asked, Ash had admitted that they were telling the truth about the mythical pokémon being there, and so Gou had decided he'd head out there to try and catch it, despite the veteran's insistence that they do otherwise.

*bmmmmm*

"Legendary pokémon are dangerous! They are - or control - the forces of nature. Some of them have jobs they have to do. You can't just go and mess with them or the places where they live,"

*bmm* *bmmmmm*

Ash pulled him by his shirt down a tunnel away from the blobs and grunts and destroyed machinery and some corpses of a kind of boneless pokémon neither of them had seen before - Pikachu breaking open cages and destroying machinery as they went - eventually reaching a crossroad. Pikachu looked down one of the paths, and ostensibly seeing someone, called out to them and gestured backwards with his head. By the time Gou (after a brief feeling of weight on his mind) looked down that path that Pikachu had noticed the other being in, the entity was gone – having seemingly traveled down a path parallel to them in the instructed direction. Given the sound he heard (both in his ears and directly in his mind) a minute later – a high pitched cry somewhere between a shriek, a squeak and something resembling a sob of grief which soon turned into a feline snarl - he didn't have a hard time figuring out what it was. The slight quaking of the ground and what sounded like an opening of heavenly floodgates seemed to back up his hypothesis. The rapid fire pink beams of light that emerged from the ceiling and started hitting machinery soon after all but confirmed it.

"You can get killed!"

They had finally made it out of The Tree into the pouring rain. A fleeing Team Rocket grunt had jumped from an opening above them, only to glow pink and be yanked back – whereupon a beam of light came down at an angle to envelop and vaporize him. Gou's panic then turned to terror.

"They aren't a joke! Every time someone messes with one of 'em something bad happens. And the more powerful they are, the worse the damage is. And usually me and my friends get stuck in the middle and have to be the ones to fix everything!"

Gou and Ash had explored the Tree for a while upon entering - the latter muttering all the time about the strange lack of 'Regis' guarding it. Once they had noticed Team Rocket grunts patrolling one area of the structure, the duo began sneaking around. Upon seeing one of the machines in the tree – with that presumably trademarked 'R' – attached to some cages filled with injured and deceased ancient pokémon (he thought most of them were all extinct except for those that had been de-fossilized!), Ash had whispered for Pikachu to use 'Iron Tail' to break the bars and use 'Volt Tail' (that's not a real move?!) on the machinery. Their few Super Potions had been applied to as many of the injured as possible. The rest, the two humans and the larger pokémon had worked together to carry away from the alcove.

"I'm sorry!" replied Gou.

"Especially here! I told you this place was dangerous!"

*bmmmm*

"What?"

"Every time I know of that people have entered this place, someone's died!"

*bmm*

Ash shook his head. "…Getting digested by those blobs kinda hurts."

The rookie raised his eyebrows.

*bmmm* *bmmmmmm*

"I still have no idea what exactly awakens them," the veteran admitted.

It was not long after they had begun carrying the wounded away that they had run into a patrol of grunts. The battle, Pikachu, Scorbunny and a native yanmega against a golbat, koffing and raticate, and had only just begun when a distant voice calling for activation was heard followed by the grinding of gears, sputtering of equipment and a small explosion. And then the crystals around the cavern changed into blobs of a different color. Ash had yelled out for him to drop the pokémon – The Tree will take care of them he had insisted – and RUN! Gou had been shocked at the young man's cowardice and the grunts had mocked him. He was even more shocked when he was grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled away while Pikachu and even the yanmega seemed to instruct Scorbunny to join the retreat. Team Rocket continued to laugh, mocking them for leaving a wild pokémon to fight them on its own. A single Thunderbolt attack from Pikachu which sent all the opposing pokémon into unconsciousness shut them up. Then they all watched a blob attack and consume one of the criminals. Thus began the screaming. As the blobs which had eaten the Team Rocket grunt sank into the ground, he left behind his pokéballs. This hardly relieved the remaining thugs, nor Gou. Soon all began to follow the Pallet native in flight, dodging the blobs as they went.

"What do you mean you were digested?! How are you still here?!"

*bmmmm* *bm*

"According to Meowth (Ash talks to Team Rocket!?), Pikachu convinced Mew to let us free. We think the blobs are the Tree's immune system."

"Talk to Meow – We could have asked Mew to let those bad guys go, and instead we're just letting it kill them!?"

*bmm* *bmm* *bmm*

Ash sighed. "Like I said, that's The Tree's immune system, and Mew turned it off and reversed what it had done. The Tree has some kind of – what was the word again? – symbiotic connection with Mew, turning it off and bring us back to life caused both Mew and the tree to start dying. You saw those big pictures of Sir Aaron and Lucario at the castle, right? When war damaged The Tree in their time, Sir Aaron had to give up all of his aura to heal it. When we went a couple of years ago, Lucario did the same thing. Like I said, I don't know what activates those blobs. Maybe the Tree doesn't like humans.

Fleeing had been difficult. The blobs were everywhere and attacked Gou and the criminals as they went. Repeatedly, Ash had to yank him out of the way. This did little to aid the grunts immediately behind them however and their numbers slowly whittled down to zero.

"As far as I know, there…there was nothing… nothing we could have done once we entered the Tree that would've let'm leave the tree alive. And since he was going with us to get back Pikachu and Meowth for his own reasons anyway, that means he… he was… he was going to.. to die from the moment I let him out of the staff. If we convinced Mew to let those bad guys go and bring the eaten ones back, it would have to be me this time (what?)."

*bm* *bmmmmm*

"Maybe it's selfish of me. But when I die for good (for good!?), if it's to save someone, I don't want it to be some really bad guys who'll immediately just go back and redo the same thing I had to save them from. I… I don't want Lucario's sacrifice to be for nothing."

"That doesn't seem selfish. Do you mean you'd let that meowth, the one you said you've talked to, die?"

"No. No! Not those three. They know better. Kinda. They've helped me out loads of times, risked their lives to save ours more than once. And I'd do the same. I think yesterday, they were trying to warn us about this. So we could save those pokémon. Without them getting in trouble."

The veteran took a deep breath. "Maybe…Maybe it was a good thing we went. If we hadn't,more of them could have gotten injured. And they could have ambushed Mew…I don't know. I'm sorry about yelling."

This time a single massive white beam came down upon the center of the tree – a sixth of the latter's diameter wide- for a few entire seconds. *buuuuuuuuummmmmmm* And then silence.

"I'm sorry about not believing you. … Is there nothing we can do?"

"I…I don't think so."

"You said you've been involved with stuff like this before. That you've...died before. How do you deal with it?"

"Experience, mostly. I've learned to just keep moving forward. There's always someone new to meet or place to see. And there isn't any reliable way to change the past. So I just look ahead, and remember the good. I'm sorry about yelling at you. I guess I'm just upset that we got stuck in the middle of people trying to mess with powerful pokémon and endangering lots of people, and then you want to try and catch Mew to be your friend and so I guess I just mix what you want with what they do. And well, yer the only one here to be mad at."

Gou stared at the ground. "Its okay. I get it. I think. "

The ace trainer shook his head again. "I don't think I've ever seen mew angry like that before. Normally it's pretty nice. If you met it some other time it would probably want to play with you", Pikachu snorted. "Things will probably be better next time you see it. Because with my luck you probably will."

"Really?"

"Yeah." said Ash Ketchum as he stood back up, "C'mon, Let's go home. Lava Cookies are on me."

And so they did. Yet at the back of Gou's mind, the distant sounds of the criminals' dying screams and pleas for mercy still echoed.

AN: I realize some of this may have been OOC, but I'm not sure by how much. The 'not wanting to save some everyone currently in danger thing' may make sense in context though, given that in this case in the best case scenario Ash would explicitly have to commit ritual suicide ("you know, For Kids!") and hope the people saved don't turn around and hurt the tree. Point is, Legendary Pokémon, especially the one Mewtwo is based off of, are dangerous. This features a headcanon I've developed over the past year while trying (and still failing) to write a longer Mew character piece: that the purpose of the Tree of Beginning is to be a sanctuary for Mew's favorite species of pokémon which no longer have or will soon not have any place in the world - mirroring Mewtwo's use of Mt Quena. (which means that yes, the unrecognizable corpses are prehistoric pokémon that the TR grunts just rendered extinct)

If someone else has a better idea for 'Ash and Gou in the Tree of Beginning and the aftermath thereof' (and which properly features them in the tree rather than flashbacks) I'd love to read it and take it as headcanon instead of this.