Ash had been running through candidates in his mind. Xerneas, the God of Life. Yveltal, the God of Death. Kyogre, Ruler of the Seas. Groudon, Ruler of the Earth. Ho-Oh. Even Kyurem, rumored to carry the fused power of multiple divine beasts within it. Any of those felt like reasonable guesses.
Champion Ash had said it was Pikachu.
Ash sat with that for a moment.
He had always known Pikachu's potential ran deep. Reaching God Level had always felt like a matter of when, not whether. That strange power of reincarnation that expanded Pikachu's ceiling with every new region was something no divine beast he knew of possessed.
If any of the Legendary Pokémon had carried that ability from the start, their upper limits would have reached Arceus's level long before now.
The reason it worked for Pikachu specifically was probably that Pikachu started from the bottom. Give that ability to a Salamence, a Charizard, any Pokémon with a strong natural growth curve, and the ceiling would shoot past God Level Peak almost immediately. The world had a way of not allowing that kind of combination.
Pikachu had undergone two rebirths now. Its current growth limit was approaching Champion level. If Charizard had been given the same ability, it would probably be sitting at God Level Peak by this point. The power and the starting point couldn't both be extreme. That was the balance.
Still, knowing all of that, Ash had never imagined Pikachu growing to stand at the same level as Arceus. Ever since he'd learned Arceus existed, he had assumed that level was simply unreachable by anyone else.
Hearing that Champion Ash had gone to challenge Arceus directly, and that a chance of winning actually existed under the right conditions, had already been surprising enough.
Learning that Pikachu was one of two Pokémon Arceus itself had identified as having that potential was something else entirely.
Champion Ash: "Right now I am the strongest Trainer in the entire Pokémon world, and I still feel powerless in front of Arceus. But I'm still young, and there's still distance left to close.
Currently, Pikachu and I are working as teachers in the Paldea region. Part of it is to understand what it feels like to nurture others, and part of it is to explore everything the region has to offer."
Champion Ash: "Once I've finished with the Paldea region and Pikachu reaches the next tier, I'll challenge Arceus again."
A second challenge against Arceus. That was what the world's strongest sounded like. Ash felt a pull of envy that he didn't try to suppress, and alongside it something sharper and more useful.
He had just experienced a battle at God Level Peak from inside it, and based on everything he now understood about the levels above him, he was nowhere near the end of his road. Champion Ash wasn't at the end either. There was no reason to slow down.
Champion Ash: "Keep at it, rookie. I'll be waiting for the day you reach this level. Hopefully by then we can compare notes on fighting Arceus."
Ascender Ash: "You've got it. That day is coming. I'm heading back to Pallet Town first."
Champion Ash: "Go ahead."
The morning after the Orange Islands incident, Lorelei and Cynthia said their goodbyes.
Lorelei had a report to file with the League. Cynthia needed to escort the captured Team Galactic members and executives back to Sinnoh, where they fell under that region's jurisdiction and would be detained and processed accordingly.
Before leaving, both of them asked Ash about Mewtwo. They had some sense of Mewtwo's capabilities going into the incident.
What they had actually watched during the battle was beyond anything they had prepared for. Mewtwo had faced Shadow Lugia at God Level Peak and hadn't been suppressed at all.
She had pressed Lugia into the sea, absorbed multiple exchanges without losing ground, and then, after the form change, shattered the dark corruption off Lugia's body in a handful of strikes.
Three months ago, Mewtwo's level had been Initial God Level. The math didn't work.
Mewtwo, for her part, said nothing to either of them and returned to her Poké Ball without comment, leaving the explanation entirely to Ash.
She had fought, she had enjoyed it thoroughly, and she considered that sufficient. Where the sudden surge of power had come from was something she didn't fully understand herself, but Ash had always produced strange things when they were needed.
She had known that since their first meeting, when a Lucario she hadn't taken remotely seriously had evolved into something that could crush her. Then there had been the fight on New Island, where Ash himself had surprised her in a different way.
Today had been her turn to be surprised by what she was capable of.
And beyond the battle, something had stayed. When the borrowed power receded after the fight, Mewtwo noticed it hadn't left entirely. A portion had remained, and it was settling into her.
Her own base strength had already been on the edge of breaking through to mid God Level before any of this happened. The consecutive battles had pushed her through that threshold. Mid God Level now, and with the energy still being absorbed and integrated, there was a real possibility of High God Level beyond that.
That kind of progression in four months was something that would take an ordinary God Level Pokémon five to ten years under normal conditions.
She wanted to ask Ash what had actually happened. But he hadn't explained it, which meant it was connected to something he was carrying privately.
Ash had a secret she couldn't see the bottom of, something that explained the rate at which his Pokémon grew, the temporary power surges, and, she had noticed during the fight, the feeling that the person commanding her had briefly become someone different.
The secrets behind that kind of power boost weren't simple, and Ash hadn't explained them, which meant the time for that explanation hadn't come yet. Mewtwo accepted that without difficulty. What Ash chose to share and when was his to decide.
As for how he would explain things to Lorelei and Cynthia, that was his problem.
Mewtwo retreating into her Poké Ball left Ash visibly caught off guard when the two women turned to him for answers. He put together an explanation that he himself probably knew was unconvincing.
The story was that Mewtwo's first Mega Evolution had temporarily stimulated the Mew genes within her, producing a power output beyond her normal level for a short window.
A one-time effect, now spent. Afterwards, Mewtwo had returned to her previous level, though the consecutive battles against God Level opponents had pushed her to mid God Level through natural progression.
Lorelei and Cynthia received this explanation with expressions that suggested they were choosing to accept it rather than fully believing it. Whether they actually believed any of it was something only they knew.
After the farewells, Ash's group stayed on Shamouti Island for a few more days to take in the local atmosphere without anything urgent pressing on them.
The Legendary Birds had all returned to their positions and the weather around the island had gone back to normal, the perpetual storms replaced by the kind of clear sky that made the Orange Islands worth visiting.
Lucia Jr. formally became Ash's Pokémon during this time. Team Galactic's intelligence had been accurate on that point. She was genuinely the child of Lugia, God of the Sea, and when Lugia saw her black-feathered form, his reaction was not anger but gratitude.
He understood better than anyone what enduring that dark power felt like and how difficult genuinely integrating it into one's body was. The fact that Lucia Jr. had no rejection reaction, that the power had become fully her own, was something she couldn't have managed alone. That was Ash's doing.
Lugia's own situation had been different. When the dark power had invaded him, the blackening on his surface had been suppression rather than merger.
His own power had been pushed down and held there. Without outside interference, he would have recovered naturally in about thirty minutes.
The question was what Team Galactic would have done with thirty minutes, and the answer to that was nothing good. Without Ash, both Lugia and Lucia Jr. would have ended up somewhere worse than a cage made of Palkia's spatial energy.
That was why Lugia had entrusted Lucia Jr. to Ash and given him the Silver Wing from his own body. A savior deserved that much.
Before they parted, Ash had asked Lugia about the GS Ball. The GS Ball was a Poké Ball created using the combined power of Ho-Oh and Lugia. Ho-Oh's location was unknown, but Lugia was standing right in front of him, which seemed like an opportunity.
Unfortunately, Lugia had no knowledge of it. The power had been drawn from both of them at some point, apparently without their awareness.
What Lugia could tell Ash, after examining the GS Ball directly, was its purpose. It was a containment device built around the Power of Space and Time, specifically designed to capture Pokémon that held that power within them.
Dialga and Palkia were the obvious candidates. One commanded time, the other space. But there was only one GS Ball, and it seemed unlikely that a single Poké Ball had been designed to capture two Pokémon. The trail ended there again.
Ash took it back and decided it would go to Professor Oak. There was nothing more to do with it here.
Before returning to Pallet Town, however, there was one more stop to make. Pummelo Island, home of Pummelo Stadium and the Orange Crew Head Trainer, Drake.
Under normal circumstances, challenging the Head Trainer required collecting enough Southern Cross Badges through the regular circuit. Ash had none of those.
The invitation had come through Lorelei anyway, passed along a chain that started with Drake, went through Lance, who happened to know Lorelei was traveling with Ash, and arrived on the morning after the incident concluded.
Drake had apparently learned Ash was in the Orange Islands and wanted a battle, but had no way to reach him directly.
The timing suited Ash well enough. He had been planning to head straight back to Pallet Town, but Pummelo Island wasn't far out of the way.
The group left Shamouti Island on the fourth day. Two of those days had been deliberate rest, the first real downtime since things had started moving, and nobody had objected to taking it. The ride to Pummelo Island on Lapras took half a day.
At the stadium, a guard stopped them at the entrance. Ash gave his name and asked the guard to find Drake, explaining they didn't have the Badges and would need the Head Trainer to confirm the arrangement in person.
Drake, it turned out, had left instructions that Ash's name should prompt an immediate notification. The wait was short. Before long, Drake came out to meet them himself.