"Pokémon talk"

"Normal speech"

'thoughts'

"Pokémon moves"

When Ash Ketchum returned home from the Kalos league, the last thing he expected was to find most of his friends and rivals waiting for him in his living room. He had never received visitors after any of his other journeys, and couldn't think as to why they suddenly wanted to meet up with him now. Besides, didn't they have their own journeys to worry about? It was all extremely confusing, and it was made even more so by the fact that all of them were wearing expressions ranging from anger to boredom, to discomfort.

'Did I just walk into the middle of some big fight or something?' Ash wondered to himself. Then, out loud, he said, "Hey, guys. What are you all doing here?"

Misty, as usual, was the first to speak. "Guys, let me handle this. I can give it to him good," she said, narrowing her eyes at the raven-haired boy.

"Why does that sound like an innuendo?" Ash heard May whisper to Dawn.

"What's an innuendo?" Ash asked curiously.

May just shook her head. "Not now, Ash. Misty has something she wants to say to you."

Misty nodded in thanks to the brown-haired girl before turning to face Ash again. "Right. So, Ash, we've been talking and we decided that it's time for you to give up on your dream of becoming a Pokémon master," she ranted. "You've been at it for, what, six years now? Yeah, six years, and you still haven't won a single league! I mean, I get that winning a league isn't a walk in the park, but shouldn't you have won something by now? And no, the Orange Islands league doesn't count because you only had one league fight there. You don't even evolve most of your Pokémon, and every good trainer knows that's something you're supposed to do. If you can't even follow the basics, you have no chance of ever becoming a Pokémon master."

"Yeah, and you've been holding us all back," May added. "I could have become a top coordinator if it wasn't for you." Ash then shot her a look of confusion, but secretly had a look of being pissed behind it.

"And that's not even counting all the danger you've dragged us into," Cilan spoke up. "We could have all died thanks to you."

Throughout their tirade, Ash found himself growing hungry and wandered off into the kitchen to get something to eat. After searching for a few moments, he finally settled on a banana and went back to the living room. When he returned, he found Misty fuming silently, while the rest of them stared at him with expressions of shock, annoyance, and, in some cases, amusement, Dawn most of all.

"Sorry, I wasn't listening to anything you said. Do you mind repeating it?" Ash asked casually, tearing off a small piece of banana and giving it to Pikachu.

Misty clenched her fists. "Ash, you are such a–a–oh, forget it!" she raged. Still fuming, she turned to face the rest of his friends. "Anyone who agrees with what I just said, come with me."

She turned and stormed out of the house, followed closely by May, Max, Morrison, Cilan, Trip, Cameron, and Trevor. Ash stared after them in confusion, wondering what it was that Misty had planned on calling him.

"I'm such a what? You didn't finish!" he yelled after her. Shrugging, and after flipping Misty and the others that walked out with her in his head, Ash turned back to the rest of the group. Ash then said, "So, what brings you all here? Not that I'm not glad to see you, of course. I just didn't really expect any visitors."

The rest of his friends stared at him. "Um...Ash? Are you feeling okay?" Dawn asked finally.

Ash rose his eyebrows. "Yeah, I'm feeling great. Why wouldn't I be?" he asked in confusion.

"Well, you did kind of just lose about half your friends in five minutes," Iris said slowly. "Not to mention Misty, your supposed best friend, just told you that you should give up on your dream."

"Oh, that's what she was talking about," Ash exclaimed. "I thought I heard her say something about a Pokémon master's dream, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out the rest of it."

"Yeah, that's usually the best tactic for dealing with Misty's rants," Pikachu snickered. As Pikachu snickered, the Pokéballs on Ash's belt were shaking, as though their occupants were laughing along with Pikachu.

"So what are you going to do now, Ash? I mean, you've got to prove them wrong," Serena insisted, speaking up for the first time.

"We could train on Mount Silver. That's always a good place for some hard training," Brock suggested.

Ash rolled his eyes. "Brock, I'm sure it's a great place to train, but I'm pretty sure there are ways to make my Pokémon stronger without giving myself frostbite or pneumonia," he said, half-amused, half-exasperated. "Besides, you remember that one champion? What was his name again? Ah, who cares! The point is, there was some champion who decided to run away to Mount Silver, all because he couldn't handle losing to one trainer. Heaven forbid if I let myself be grouped into the same category as that guy."

"What will you do, then?" Paul asked.

"I don't know. Probably travel around a bit until I hear of another tournament I could participate in," the raven-haired teen replied. "It would be a good experience for the rest of my Pokémon too. Besides Pikachu and Charizard, most of them haven't seen much of the world outside of Kanto and their own home regions."

Alain's eyes widened slightly. "Wait, you have a Charizard too?" he asked.

Ash nodded. "Yeah, he's probably waiting for me along with the rest of my old Pokémon," he informed the older trainer. "Which reminds me, I'm supposed to go visit them next. If you want to come to meet them, now's your chance."

He turned around and walked out of the house towards Professor Oak's lab, followed quickly by the rest of his friends and rivals. When he arrived at the lab, as usual, the first greeting he received was a trampling from his Tauros herd.

"Ash! Are you okay?" Dawn exclaimed.

"Ugg. For once...can I not get run over every time I set foot in here?" Ash groaned, struggling to his feet.

He moved over to greet the rest of his Pokémon, who were all clamoring excitedly at seeing him for the first time in over a year. The smaller Pokémon like Totodile, Gible, and Quilava were attempting to climb up his leg, while the larger ones such as Sceptile, Charizard, and Infernape stood farther back, although no less pleased to see him.

"Hey, guys. It's good to see you again," the raven-haired trainer chuckled.

"Wow, Ash. I didn't know you had a Sceptile too," Sawyer exclaimed, staring wide-eyed at the large gecko Pokémon.

"Ash, who's the green boy?" Sceptile asked, staring down at the notebook-toting trainer.

"Sceptile, this is Sawyer. He's a friend of mine from Kalos," Ash introduced the pair.

"Ash's Sceptile beat a Darkrai," Dawn informed Sawyer, whose eyes widened even further at that revelation.

"No way, really?" he asked, turning to Ash for confirmation. When Ash nodded, he looked as though he might faint from shock and admiration. "And that was without mega evolution too?"

"Yep," Ash answered, unable to keep a note of pride out of his voice.

Sceptile was looking at him curiously. "What's mega evolution?"

"We'll explain once we've gotten to where we need to go, Sceptile," Ash told his Hoenn starter. "Which reminds me, as much as I'd love for us all to have a nice, happy reunion, there are some things we need to take care of. I'm going to go talk to Professor Oak. In the meantime, all of you feel free to get to know my friends. And Charizard, no burning anyone with your Flamethrower."

With that, he quickly released his Kalos Pokémon from their Pokéballs before turning and walking inside the lab to talk to Professor Oak.

Meanwhile back at the Ketchum residence, Delia had just finished folding the last of her laundry and was about to bake some cookies for Ash and his friends. When she returned to her living room, however, she was surprised to find her house deserted.

"Oh, I wonder where they went?" she mused in confusion. "I guess they must have gotten busy with something. Oh well, looks like we'll have more cookies for ourselves, Mimey." Delia then walked into her kitchen and started rummaging around for her mixing bowl. Mimey just stared after his caretaker, shaking his head in amusement. Sometimes, it was hard to figure out how Ash Ketchum could be so dense–that is until you met his mother.