The Orange Islands incident was over.
Lugia had fully purged the remaining dark power from its body and returned to its natural state. Once it had recovered enough to communicate, it expressed its gratitude to Ash and the others plainly and without ceremony. It was also honest about its own failure.
Being controlled by humans had not been something it had anticipated, and looking back, the reason was clear.
When the energy carrying Yveltal's dark-type signature had rushed toward it, Lugia had responded with Psychic by instinct. It had sensed the dark-type nature of what was coming and still reached for the one type of power that couldn't touch it.
Too many years of peace had let its combat instincts go soft, and it had paid the price for that.
The arrest of Charon and Mars became an immediate priority for the Alliance. These two had not only trapped Cynthia but had successfully seized and corrupted both the Legendary Birds and Lugia itself. That was something Team Rocket, with all of their history and resources, had never managed.
If Ash and Mewtwo hadn't been present, the outcome would have been catastrophic. Four God Domain holders falling under hostile control simultaneously would have sent ripples through every natural system connected to them. Ocean currents alone falling into chaos would have triggered disasters across the entire world with no clean path to reversal.
Calling what Ash did this time saving the world was not an exaggeration.
His role was kept out of the official record. Mewtwo's existence couldn't be public knowledge. On the surface, Lorelei and Cynthia had resolved the incident, which was accurate enough to hold up under scrutiny.
As for whether Charon or Mars would volunteer information about Mewtwo to anyone who asked, neither of them was going to discuss how thoroughly they had been defeated.
The submarine's technology provided genuine value to the Alliance's research and development teams, but Charon had anticipated capture at some point during the final exchange and had wiped everything stored inside it cleanly.
All records of other Team Galactic members, base locations, and any reference to their leader were gone and unrecoverable.
The Alliance attempted to work around this using Psychic-type hypnosis. It failed. Any attempt to access memories connected to Team Galactic triggered an automatic lockdown.
When Caitlin, the strongest Psychic-type user in the Unova Elite Four, applied forced hypnosis in combination with her Pokémon, the conclusion was unambiguous.
Forcing past the sealed memories would destroy the subject's mind entirely. Charon and Mars had accepted this as a condition of their role before they ever set foot in the Orange Islands.
Team Galactic was ruthless toward Pokémon, ruthless toward others, and absolutely ruthless toward themselves. The organization's leader remained completely unknown even after an entire branch had been captured and processed. Giovanni was a known quantity.
Whoever led Team Galactic operated at a level of secrecy that made Giovanni look transparent. The Alliance had nothing to work with and no thread to pull.
What they did know was that Team Galactic had now successfully targeted and temporarily controlled Legendary Pokémon, including a God Level Peak. Whatever they were building toward, the scale of ambition was clear.
On Ash's side, the mood was considerably lighter.
"Champion Ash gave the order, Mewtwo shattered Lugia's Aeroblast, then pulled the dark power out and brought Lugia back, then locked down Mars and Charon before they made it ten steps. It was genuinely something to watch. Champion Ash's Mewtwo is on a completely different level!"
Ash was giving the Chat Group the full account, vivid and enthusiastic. The other versions of himself in the group were an attentive audience. Events diverged between timelines, and what had happened here was unusual even by their standards.
"Breeder Ash: Honestly didn't expect your timeline to go this direction, newbie. Team Galactic showing up in the Orange Islands, converting the Legendary Birds, then using Yveltal's power to take Lugia. None of our timelines had anything close to that combination."
"Aura Hero Ash: More than unusual, it's practically a different category of problem. In most timelines we run into Lugia somewhere around this point and it ends up on our side.
You had to deal with corrupted Legendary Birds and a corrupted Lugia at the same time. If the Chat Group hadn't been around for this one, I'm genuinely not sure how it would have gone. This was a brutal draw."
"Tactical Master Ash: I remember meeting Lugia on Shamouti Island too, but in my timeline I was the one commanding Lugia against the Legendary Birds, and taking down those three was barely any effort.
If it had been the other way around, commanding the birds against Lugia, the odds of winning wouldn't even hit ten percent."
"Evolutionist Ash: The birds and Lugia simply aren't on the same level. Generally speaking, the ceiling a Legendary Bird can realistically reach is Initial God Level.
A Legendary Bird advancing to Intermediate God Level might not appear even once in a century. Lugia's strongest are at God Level Peak. The gap between Initial God Level and God Level Peak is wider than the gap between Elite Four level and God Level in the first place.
At God Level, jumping tiers doesn't happen easily. Initial to Peak is not an ambition, it's a fantasy."
"Unlucky Ash: Right. And even though your luck with encounters is usually solid, newbie, this one was genuinely awful. Without the Champion stepping in, you and everyone with you gets wiped out. Even if you'd somehow gotten out alive, Lugia would have been in Team Galactic's hands, and whatever comes after that doesn't bear thinking about."
"Ascender Ash: Yeah. This one was entirely on Champion Ash. I wouldn't have known where to start otherwise."
It was true. The one-time high-level assist had been the difference. God Level was the ceiling of the Pokémon world, and among the rare Pokémon that actually reached it, Ash had run into four at once in a single incident on the Orange Islands.
They hadn't all arrived together, which was fortunate. Mega Mewtwo could handle two. Three would have been a serious problem from the start. Four simultaneously would have required calling for help the moment the fight began.
Encountering four God Level Pokémon in a single incident was something most Trainers would never experience in an entire lifetime. Whether that counted as luck or its opposite was genuinely hard to say.
"Champion Ash: Don't give me too much credit. Even without my help, I believe the newbie would have found something. And to be honest, if the Chat Group hadn't shown up in the newbie's life, he wouldn't have confronted Giovanni so early, Team Rocket wouldn't have dissolved on that timeline, and Team Galactic would never have moved into the space that left open. This is a chain reaction."
"Champion Ash: The Chat Group gives the newbie power to grow faster, but it also compresses the timeline for the problems that growth creates. The two things come together."
Champion Ash's read was clear enough. The Team Galactic operating in this world felt unfamiliar to him.
In every other timeline he knew, including his own, Team Galactic's technology was formidable but not to this extent, and none of them had ever touched Yveltal's power.
Their focus had always been on the Time and Space Gods of the Sinnoh region. How they had come to possess Yveltal's power in this timeline remained an open question, and it was likely connected to the ripple effects of Ash's accelerated path. From this point forward, this timeline was genuinely its own branch.
"Unlucky Ash: The Champion's right, this is butterfly effect territory. Team Galactic in my timeline, or anyone else's, was never this capable. Anyway, you saved Lugia. Did it leave you anything? Legendary Pokémon that owe a debt tend to remember it."
"Ascender Ash: It did. Lugia left Lucia Jr. with me, and also gave me a Silver Feather. According to Lugia, the feather works as a standing invitation to challenge it in the future. When I need it to act, I inject Aura into the feather and it senses it and comes. That part alone is something."
"Ascender Ash: Beyond that, if the feather is placed on a Flying-type or Psychic-type Pokémon, it accelerates how quickly they develop sensitivity to those attribute energies, which lets them learn skills connected to both types faster.
It also gives a general boost to the rate of their own growth, and the output of Flying and Psychic type moves gets increased by roughly thirty to forty percent."
The group went quiet for a moment.
"Unlucky Ash: ..."
"Breeder Ash: ..."
"Evolutionist Ash: ..."
Everyone except Champion Ash sat with that for a second. One feather. It reduced the difficulty of learning new moves, boosted the output of two whole attribute types, and came with a standing challenge to eventually bring Lugia onto the team.
The challenge itself didn't require defeating Lugia. Bringing down a God Level Peak opponent would take a full day even with an equivalent Pokémon on hand, and a decisive result wasn't guaranteed even then. The point of the challenge wasn't victory. It was recognition.
If Ash could earn Lugia's recognition during that battle, Lugia would become his Pokémon regardless of the outcome on the scoreboard.
And the backup function.
Carrying the Silver Feather was effectively having a God Level Peak Pokémon on call. Lugia's travel speed meant that even from across half the world, three minutes of holding on was probably all it would take.
That wasn't as immediate as a high-level assist from the Chat Group, but the Chat Group's high-level assist was a finite resource. This was standing and repeatable.
There was also a cleaner feeling to it. Using an assist from the Chat Group to capture a Pokémon worked mechanically, but the power behind it wasn't Ash's. Using it for crises and fights that had to be won was one thing.
Building his team through someone else's strength was something else, and Ash had a quiet discomfort with that line that he hadn't needed to examine until now.
Lugia's Silver Feather solved that problem for the future. When the time came to go after something at God Level Peak, say Rayquaza, he would have a legitimate path to it that was actually his own.