About ten minutes later, the group had settled themselves in the clearing. Swift had volunteered to help explain to the five Squirtle what exactly they were getting themselves into, at least in part to avoid having to help set up for camping. After a moment's thought, Ashley had recommended telling the female Squirtle about the eggs as well, even though she was going to be on Misty's team, since she was still part of the Squirtle Squad, and Ashley didn't want to force the other Squirtle to keep it a secret from her.

Plus Ashley had the sneaking suspicion she'd need to tell them about the Legendary situation soon anyway. Probably because of Mew deciding to make a random unscheduled appearance and blowing their cover, since that's what she did.

Swift had taken to the edge of the clearing with the five Squirtle, while the remains of the teams had been sent off to help organise for the clearing to be used overnight. Ashley had made another hole in the ground, this time a much deeper one, which Misty's Starmie had promptly filled with water so that Goldeen could use it to sit in with the group. The fish Pokemon had thanked her happily, before promptly going onto working on his Aura again- he was determined to get it right so he could talk to his trainer, which Ashley found promising.

A campfire pit was promptly set up, this time without having Ashley dig a hole in the ground for it, and the group settled down to wait out Brock's cooking, splitting into groups and chatting away.

The lead Squirtle of the squad came over to her while she spoke to Misty, and politely waited for a word.

'Your life is weird.' He said bluntly, when she'd excused herself to go talk to him. She laughed.

"Yeah, it is. Fun, though." Zy, in her hair, shuffled slightly, as if it was laughing, and she grinned. "Made you change your mind?"

'Not a chance.' He smirked. 'Weird as it is, it sounds exciting. I'm still in, and so are the others.'

"Good to know." Ashley replied. "I'll get everyone together after dinner. Make a decision on whether or not you want to learn Aura, I'll start everyone who does then."

'Wouldn't you want to catch us first?'

"It's easier to do it now, since when I do catch you four, you'd all be sent to the Professor's lab back in Pallet Town." She explained. "It's easier to teach Aura when you're right there- not to mention impossible to unlock Aura without an Adept- so I'll start things off tonight, officially catch you after, then the four of you go back to the lab. The girl going with Misty's gonna end up staying here, probably for a while, but I'll make sure to rotate the team around so I can be with all of you a fair bit."

'That makes sense, I guess.' He nodded. 'Is there anything else?'

"Nah, nothing that won't be brought up afterwards." She said. Squirtle thanked her, then wandered off back to his group to pose the question about Aura that she'd given them, letting her go back to talking with Misty.

"Anything wrong?" The redhead asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, just curiosity. I'm stealing your team after dinner, though, is that alright?"

"Sure, no problem. Something to do with Aura?"

"Yeah, just want to make sure everyone's on the same page." Ashley sighed, before dropping back. "This is weird."

"What is?"

"All this." She waved absently around the clearing, where a number of their Pokemon were practising Aura, either together or separately. "When I started out on my journey last month, I expected it to just be me and my Pokemon, all of us working on Aura stuff alone in the middle of nowhere every chance we got. I've been hiding my Aura stuff for so long now, only my aunt and the Professor ever knew, and I'd honestly never expected to actually be teaching people."

"You expected it to always be a secret?" Misty queried, disbelieving. Ashley shook her head.

"I expected that I'd tell more people about it someday; maybe Gary, if he lost the attitude, and maybe talk to my cousins and Crysta in person to tell them too. But, no offense, even after I started travelling with the two of you I never thought you'd be on that list." She smiled. "I don't think I'd change it, though."

"No offense taken, and thanks." Misty grinned in return, looking around the clearing at all of their Pokemon mixing together. "I'm glad we've ended up travelling together."

"Me too." The two of them sat in silence for a little while, just watching and listening to their Pokemon interacting, until getting up to help Brock with the food.

After, the three of them sat and talked as they ate, planning out their route for the future now that there'd been so many new points to take into account.

Just under half an hour later, dinner had been eaten by the humans and Pokemon alike and Ashley was standing with all three of the Pokemon teams, along with the as-of-yet uncaught Squirtle Squad.

'What's up, Ashley?' Swift asked, landing beside Volta.

"I just wanted a quick word with everyone about Aura practise, before everyone went off to actually do any." Chuckling at the way that made everyone perk up and give her their full attention, she continued, "I'm starting off the Squirtle Squad on Aura tonight, before we catch the five of them, since four of them are gonna end up being sent to spend some time with Professor Oak. I'm also going to be working with Starmie a lot in the future, simply because what I'm doing with them is breaking a number of the assumed rules of Aura."

'That makes sense.' Onix agreed. 'It's a good idea to know what you're doing, especially with something risky. I saw how much it exploded yesterday.'

"Yeah, that's basically why." She nodded. "I'm also going to work a lot with Nova, just because he's struggling, and with Brock and Misty, because they're learning Aura differently to you guys. That said, feel free to ask me if you're having trouble, or if you're the same type you can try asking each other and working together to try and figure out what's going wrong if you're struggling."

'No problem.' Goldeen rumbled. 'We're going to be working together a lot anyway, since our trainers are travelling with you, so we might as well get used to working with each other and helping each other.'

"Thanks, Goldeen." Ashley nodded. "Anyway, standing plan for Aura practise; get your Typed Aura stable, call me over and we work on figuring out a good way to drain the type out of it, then I have the plan of trying to figure out how to get Pokemon using Aura of other types. Between that, the plan's to teach you to use Typed Aura to boost your moves, learn things like Aura Sphere or Force Palm, and then at some point we can work on basically making your own moves using your Aura- Typed or pure, either's fine- to give you options that no-one'll expect." She listed. "For now, just get things stable."

'Ai ai, Adept!' Volta saluted, making the group- excluding the Squirtle and Nova, who all seemed a bit too nervous to do so- burst into giggles. Ashley just rolled her eyes at him.

"Get a move on, folks. You five, come here." The Pokemon dispersed into little groups, with Abi and Volta dragging Nova with them, while the five Squirtle followed her back towards Misty and Brock. "Alright, there's a couple of other things for you five, mostly to do with being caught by us."

"Since there's five of you, and aside from your leader there you all look basically the same, Ashley and I came up with a couple of ideas for differentiating you." Misty took over. "Mostly for Ashley's sake, since she'll have four of you, three of which she's gonna be using in battle."

"So far, all of my team have nicknames- well, except for Ves and Abi, they were named by their parents, but I gave everyone else one." Ashley continued. "So we figured all of you having a nickname might help, especially when you're with the Professor back in Pallet Town, since you'd just need to respond to your new name when he calls you if I'm mixing my team around."

"The other idea we had was giving you all a differently coloured scarf, but that would probably need to wait until we got to Vermillion or something, so we could go shopping." The other girl added. "Or we can do both."

'Nicknames sound like fun, and I kinda like the idea of a scarf too.' The female said. 'I think it'd be fun, at least to me.'

'I wouldn't mind it either.' The leader agreed. 'Any of you three have an objection?'

'No.'

'Nope.'

'Not really.'

With five yeses, Ashley smiled and followed on, "It might be a little while, maybe tomorrow, before you all have nicknames, but I'll be thinking about it for the rest of the night and try and make sure you have one before the four of you end up back in the ranch."

"I've... actually kinda already thought of a name for mine." Misty admitted, a little awkwardly. "I was hoping you'd say yes, or at least she would, and I thought it'd be a nice way to keep you all separate anyway."

'That's ok.' Misty's newest Pokemon told her. 'What is it?'

"I thought of maybe calling you Wave?" She replied, after a quiet translation. "Since it's to do with water movements, and I'm a Water type trainer."

'Wave.' She mouthed. 'Wave, Wave, Wave... I like it, actually.' Wave nodded. 'Hey, maybe that could be our theme!'

'Theme?' The shy Squirtle asked her.

'Yeah, theme! Since we're a team, and you four are still gonna be working with the same trainer, we could all have names in a similar theme so we still kinda feel like a team!' She explained enthusiastically.

"That could be fun." Ashley agreed. "It also makes it an easier job for me, just think of nicknames with a similar theme."

"Now all we'd need to do is figure out what colour scarf to get for which of the Squirtle." Misty sighed, having figured out the gist of the conversation from Ashley's comment.

"That can wait until we get into Vermillion." Ashley waved off. "Right, next up, Aura!" The seven of them perked up, Brock having been sitting silently off to one side and just watching. "I'll start the five of you off, then you all can go find a corner somewhere and practise alone. I'll watch the two of you for a bit, Brock, Misty, then I'll go babysit Starmie's explosions and Nova."

Something went off. Ashley sighed, turning around to see Torna and Swift laughing at Ves. "Be careful, Ves!"

'I was, Ashley!' She sniped back, shaking her head. 'Why is this so damn unstable?!'

"Part of it's the emotional content, I think, and the other part's something to do with being Taught and not Adept." She told her. "I exploded things a lot as well, don't worry."

'Good to know.' Ves said. Ashley grinned, turned back to the five Squirtle, before offering her hand to the lead one.

"So, ready to go?"

He seemed somewhat reluctant to take her hand.

After walking the five through the early stages of Aura training, unlocking each of their Aura in turn, and helping to make sure they could do it again on their own without feeling hers first, she sent the group on their way and shifted to look at the other two trainers, who had been slowly working on bringing their own Aura to the surface and lowering it again.

"That's really good practise for you, actually." She commented, after watching them absorb the thin spires of Aura into their hands. "For Pokemon, it's more about control, since they naturally have the Aura reserves; all Pokemon use some Aura in their attacks, it's what fuels them. With people, though, it's more about building the ability to use Aura, and because we have so little we also tend to have pretty good control."

"For people that aren't Adept, you mean?" Brock asked.

"No, Adepts as well. We just have the ability to naturally access our Aura with ease, like Pokemon do, and I'd guess that we tend to get better way faster than any normal people would, probably have way bigger Aura reserves too, and a couple of other things like Aura bonds or a natural Aura sense- probably a couple of other things too, actually- but we still have pretty small reserves early on, until we start practising more and more." Ashley explained. "I had to do a lot of this sort of stuff too, which is why some of this won't be too hard to pass along, it'll just take longer than it did for me."

"Fair enough." Misty nodded, before forming another spike. "Could you use these things are throwing weapons, you think?"

"Probably, yeah." Ashley nodded. "You'd need to know how to form Aura that's detached from you, which is part of what the Aura Sphere training teaches, so I don't see why not. Lucario used to make swords and stuff too, actually." Focusing, and drawing her friend's attention to her, Ashley called her Aura forward and shaped it, giving it the shape of something like a knife. Carefully aiming, she threw it towards a tree, seeing it thud into the trunk before vanishing into a sort of mist. "...I have no idea how that worked. But ok."

"Hey, we know it works, though?"

"True that." Ashley shifted again, looking back to the two of them. "Alright, any questions you have for me, or should I just let you get on with it?"

"Go ahead and help Nova and Stamie, Ashley." Brock said. "We can shout if we need you, right?"

"Right." She bit her lip. "Be careful, ok? Overdraw isn't good for Pokemon or Adepts normally, I don't really want to find out what happens if a Taught person ended up with that happening."

"We'll be careful, Ashley." Misty promised. "We'll call if something goes wrong, and when we get tired we'll take a break for a while." Ashley nodded, then wandered away to go find Starmie.

She was careful to wait a few seconds to make sure they didn't have any Aura on their arm, before crouching down again. "Hey Starmie?"

Query.

"I was wondering how you were doing with your Aura practising."

Explanation.

"Oh, that's good. Want any help?"

Negative.

"Alright, then. Be careful, try not to hurt yourself or any of the others if things explode." There'd been a lot of explosions, after all, and she was almost certain that a number of them had come from Starmie.

Amusement. Information.

"Fair enough." Ashley shrugged, patted them on the head, and walked off to go and check on the rest of the group, asking if any of them needed her help. No-one did, until she got over to Nova at the very end of the group, who was struggling to make even a spark appear again. "Having trouble, Nova?"

'Sorry, Ashley.' He whispered, ducking his head. 'I just can't do it.'

"Hey, nothing to worry about." She said, dropping to sit next to him and running her hand over his head. She didn't mention that he flinched away slightly, just continuing, "Sometimes people and Pokemon just struggle with something, it's no big deal. We'll figure it out together, ok? I can walk you through bringing your Aura up again if you want."

'No!' He startled, looking upset. 'Could you... just sit there?'

"Sure." She nodded. "We'll have to work on getting you used to doing it on your own, of course, you won't always have the time to sit around and focus and you won't always have me about to help you, but I don't want any of the Pokemon here trying to use Aura in battle until they're ready anyway, so you don't really need to worry about that. Just get used to being able to draw up your Aura, ok?"

'Ok.' He muttered, closing his eyes. She watched with one eye closed, using Aura Sight, as he drew Aura into his hand, and frowned at the slow progress.

Wow. She thought to herself, still carefully watching. That's... really bad, actually. If he ends up needing a support every time, he's never gonna be able to use it in battle. Even then, at the speed he's using it, it'd have to be double or triple battles to use it, so someone else was able to defend him. Stopping herself, she shook her head. That doesn't matter, though. We have time, like I keep saying. We can get through all these problems Nova's having with Aura, and it'll be fine.

Slowly a few glitters of red Aura appeared on his claws, and she nodded, carefully shuffling back a few steps. Nova didn't notice, and the Aura stayed where it was, growing brighter after a few seconds pause. "Nova?" He jumped nervously, and the Aura vanished. He sighed, and she cringed. "Try again, ok?" Taking a deep breath, he nodded and did.

Though she wasn't timing it, she was pretty sure the Aura appeared a little faster than the last attempt.

"Alright, Nova, just keep that up, ok? Work on getting it to come up faster, then we can work on more consistent, then we can work on power. We've got all the time in the world, pretty much."

'Ok. I can do that.' He still seemed incredibly nervous about it, but he managed to pull his Aura to the surface again, letting it go and repeating the cycle over like she'd asked. Shifting back a little more, Ashley scanned around the clearing with a smile, watching all of the Pokemon learning Aura.

This is nice. She decided, after a moment. Difficult, but nice. Pretty peaceful, too.

Something exploded.

Scratch that. Ashley snorted.

A few hours later, it was too dark to bother continuing with the practise, so Ashley headed over to Misty and Brock to poke them out of it before calling in their teams. As they started the ritual of drawing their Pokemon into Pokeballs, the five Squirtle hovered at the edge of the group, until Ashley waved them over to her.

'Yes?' The lead Squirtle asked.

"I spent a lot of the time while you were all practising thinking about nicknames." She told them, as Volta ran over and bounced onto her shoulder. "I was thinking Tsunami, Tide, Drift and Drizzle," As she spoke, she pointed to each of the Squirtle in turn; the leader, the one they'd first spoken to, the shy one, and the quiet, soft-spoken one. "That way, you all fit into the water theme Wave wanted, and they all sound like actual names, sort of." The four of them nodded, and the second one, Tide, spoke up.

'I like it.'

'I think all of us do.' Drizzle put in.

"Great!" Ashley grinned. "Means I don't need to think of any more names, too. Hey, do the four of you want to be caught now, or tomorrow morning?"

'Tonight is fine.' Tsunami said.

"Alright. The four of you are gonna end up back in Pallet Town, none of my other Pokemon are there at the moment though. Try and be careful practising Aura back there, since I won't be around to help out, but do your best to practise anyway. I'll give you a day or so to get settled, then I'll start cycling you out into the team so I can work with all of you. And Drift?" She waited for him to look up at her before continuing, "I'll still be calling you out and training with you, but unless you decide you want to battle for whatever reason I'll do my best to keep you out of fights."

'Thank you.' Drift smiled. 'I'll keep training just in case.'

"Thanks." Ashley returned the smile, then took out four Pokeballs. "Have a good time with the Professor, I'll see if I can call him in the morning to say hi." She paused. "Or, possibly, he'll call me in an attempt to figure out where the four Squirtle came from. Either way, I'll get to say hi."

"You have signal out here?" Misty asked, impressed.

"I seem to basically have signal everywhere." She shrugged. "Good luck, apparently. Or this region has way better cell signal than I expected."

"Huh, nice."

"Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow, you guys."

'Thank you, Ashley.' Tsunami waved, before she tapped each one of them on the head with a Pokeball. They quivered a few times, then clicked closed. All four quickly vanished, the built-in teleporter linked to her Pokedex doing its job and sending them to the lab.

Running her hand through her hair- careful to avoid knocking Zy at all- she sighed. "Well, that's that."

"Looks like it." Misty smiled. "Thanks, Ashley. Both for the help with Aura, and also thanks for the chance to catch a Squirtle. I've always wanted one, but I never thought I'd be able to get one."

"No problem, Misty." Ashley replied. "It's actually pretty fun, and helping someone else learn Aura is probably gonna help me as well." Lifting Zy from her head, she carried it in her hand over to her tent, ducking down into it. "Goodnight, all."

"Goodnight, Ashley!" The other two chorused, making her grin.

'Night, Ashley.' Volta said, curling up into a ball on the pillow she'd left out for him. Zy flashed a few times at her, then waited for her to put it down before crawling over to Volta and lying beside him.

The group's early morning packing was interrupted by Ashley's X-transceiver going off.

"That'd be the Professor." She stated, pausing in her packing up of her tent. Leaving it as it was, half disassembled, she lifted it up to answer the call with a smile. "Hi, Professor Oak."

"Ashley, where did you manage to find four Squirtle?" He immediately asked, ignoring her hello entirely. She laughed.

"We're still on the way to Vermillion, Professor." She told him. "Apparently the five of them have been causing trouble around here for a while. We had a couple of encounters with them, then ended up catching them. The fifth one's with Misty, since she wanted a Squirtle too. They all agreed."

"Oh. Alright, then." He nodded. "And hello, my apologies."

"No problem, Professor." She laughed. "I know what you can get like with rare Pokemon." Like Zy, or Suicune, or Raikou, or Entei, or Mew, or the two eggs given to one of your trainers by Ho-oh herself... Oak also chuckled, clearly recognising what she was hinting at.

"As you say. All four of them are here, I'm pretty sure they want to talk to you."

"Hi you four!" She called, as the Professor tilted the camera down so she could see the four of them.

"Tell, Squir tel!"

Ashley paused.

"Huh. Aura doesn't translate from across a camera, only in person. Good to know." She hummed. "Anyway, hi guys!" Instead of speaking, they all just waved at her. "You four should probably go and get used to the ranch on the lab. Make sure you listen if the Professor calls for you, ok?" Tsunami said something, which sounded vaguely like agreement, before the four of them made their way out of the open door and into the ranch. "The one with the different glasses is Tsunami, he's the leader of their little group. The other three are Tide, Drift and Drizzle, and Misty's named hers Wave- they decided they wanted a theme for their nicknames. We're still working on a way to differentiate the other four, probably using scarves in a bunch of different colours for them."

"That sounds like it would be a good idea, Ashley." Oak agreed, shifting the camera back. "I can already foresee you having some difficulties with the three of them, being basically identical."

"I actually think it might be possible to do something involving Aura to fix that." She mentioned. "Maybe some kind of marking with Aura that lets me figure out who's who."

"Is that possible, Ashley?" Misty asked, coming over to help pack up her tent while she spoke.

"I have no idea, but it'd be cool to try." She shrugged. "I'll have to figure out a good way to do it, and it'd be fun to try and experiment with a way of tagging people and Pokemon's Auras, but I've got no idea if it'd actually work."

"Well, good luck with that." Oak said. "It does sound like something that would be useful, depending on the situation. And how is Zy doing, by the way?"

"It's doing ok." She smiled, reaching up and taking it from her hair. It flashed a few times in a sort of greeting, sitting up to peer at the X-transceiver screen. "Remember the Professor, Zy?" It nodded. "I've asked Mya to come down when she's got a moment to pick it up and take it back to Kalos with her. She's planning on trying to meet us in Vermillion, then she'll make her way back to Kalos with it on her own."

"Well, that's certainly one way to make sure Zy gets back ok." He nodded. "Say, I've just had a thought! If you're still on the way to Vermillion, perhaps you could drop in on an old acquaintance of mine. His name's Bill, and he was one of the ones involved in the Pokemon transfer project when we first started it a number of years ago. He might well have something you'd be interested in."

"That could be interesting." Ashley hummed. "It'll probably take about another day or so to get to Vermillion, we'd still be camping out tonight whether we do it or not… guys?"

"I'm fine with it." Misty told her, shoving the tent into its bag. "Brock?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Excellent!" Oak grinned. "You'll be looking for a lighthouse on the beach, that's where his lab is set up. Say hello to Bill for me, please? And enjoy your trip!"

"We will, Professor." Ashley promised. "I'll call again when we reach Vermillion and pick up Misty's Pokedex."

"I'll be looking forward to it." He returned, before ending the call. Ashley placed Zy back on her head and closed the screen back into the X-transceiver, before turning to take her bag off of Misty.

"Thanks, Misty."

"No problem, Ashley." The redhead stretched, looking around the clearing. "Ready to go, Brock?"

"Just a minute." The older teen grunted, finishing shoving his own tent into his bag. Hauling it onto his back, he nodded. "Alright, where too?"

"Let's head out towards Vermillion City, then see if we can find the beach Professor Oak was talking about so we can drop in on this Bill person."

"Sounds like a plan to me." Misty agreed, as Brock pulled out the map. "Lead the way, Brock."

'Is that it?' Volta asked, pointing. Ashley looked, peered over Brock's shoulder to look at the map, and nodded.

"Looks like it." She said. "It didn't take too long, either."

"What now?"

"Spend some time at the beach, train our Pokemon a bit, then go in and see if we can talk to this Bill?" Ashley suggested. "I mean, we've got the time to do it."

"We might as well." Misty grinned, eyes lighting up. "C'mon, you two, let's go!"

"She's enthusiastic." Brock muttered to the Adept as they followed her.

"Well, she is a Water type trainer." Ashley replied lowly. "It's not too much of a surprise that she likes beaches. She's probably hoping for another Pokemon."

"What would you even find here?" He asked. "Magikarp?"

"Probably, maybe things like Krabby too." She shrugged. "There might be other things too, but I'm not really expecting them."

"Do you see anything?" The question made her pause, blinking, then close one eye to use Aura Sight while still looking around properly.

"I see a couple of pure Water Pokemon, I think that's a Tentacool... school? Is school the right word for Tentacool?"

"I think so?" Brock guessed. "It sounds right."

"School it is, then, until I have time to check... anyway, I can't actually tell what the pure Water types are, so for all I know it's a Wailmer out there."

"Wailmer?"

"Water types from Hoenn, there was a couple at the lab." Ashley explained, opening her eye as the blue glow faded. "Speaking of, I think I want to introduce Misty to a Surskit, see how she reacts."

'Why?'

"Surskit are Water-Bug types." She grinned. "Maybe I should contact the Professor, see if he has one."

Brock snorted. "It sounds like Misty would implode from not knowing how to react." A few seconds later, he frowned. "Wait, you can't actually tell what Pokemon you're looking at with your Aura Sight?"

"Nope." She shook her head. "I could probably guess based on how strong of an Aura the Pokemon has, but even then there's no way to be certain. I might be looking at a Krabby or a really strong Magikarp, for all I know. Lucario said that the more you get used to your Aura, the better you get at figuring out what Pokemon is what, but for the most part all I can get is the type, an idea of the strength, and a vague idea of size."

"Huh. I take it we wouldn't even get that for a while, given that it's taken you three years to get there?"

"It's not likely, no." Ashley sighed. "You might be able to manage it eventually, but it'd be a lot harder for you, I reckon."

"That's a shame." Brock grumbled. "Oh well."

"It's something to work towards, right?" She teased, nudging him. "Now come on, before Misty blows her top waiting for us to get down to the beach."

The Rock type trainer snorted, spotting Misty standing down on the sand and staring back at them, tapping her foot impatiently.

About half an hour and one mildly angry conversation with a redhead later, Ashley found a Krabby.

Well, more accurately, Volta found a Krabby, which he then promptly got into an argument with and fought. Ashley had basically left him to his own devices to deal with that one, since it was his own mess, and was too busy introducing the rest of her team to the concept of a beach day. For the most part, they were all just relaxing on the sand, since none of them really enjoyed the water much- either because it made flying hard or because they were a Fire type, and Abilene was mostly sunbathing out of solidarity to the group- and Ashley had positioned herself away from the five of them with a sketchbook out, having made the decision to draw her team, admittedly minus Volta, until he decided to go and sit with the others.

She was also intermittently checking on the battle behind her with Aura Sight, using it to make sure Volta wasn't having any trouble with it, given that he appeared to just be messing around for the most part.

Glancing behind herself again, she winced at the bright bolt of lightning he fired, knocking the Krabby away. It grumbled and scuttled off, and Volta took a moment to shake himself dry after being hit by an unlucky Bubble before running over and jumping onto her shoulder.

'What're you... ooh, that's cool.'

"Thanks, Volta." She smiled at him before going back to the outline of Torna she was working on. "Feel like going over there and completing the set?"

'Sure, I'll take Zy with me too.' The Pikachu reached up and took the Cell from her hair, and Ashley stifled a giggle as she watched him balance it on his head before running over to join the rest of the team.

Quickly she finished Torna's sketch, the last one in the group aside from Volta, and moved on to her starter and the strange other Pokemon, planning on only outlining the six- well, seven- of them and finishing the details some other time.

Soon managing to complete the image of her team, Ashley tapped the end of the pencil against her lips a few times before flipping back a page to the half finished, slightly inaccurate drawing of Suicune. It was harder than she'd expected, working from the hazy description Misty had given her rather than the image of Suicune that she knew so well, and it annoyed her a little to produce a drawing of her friend that wasn't quite right, but the Adept shoved it aside with a sigh and went to work on it again, trying to remember how Misty had described the Legendary Beast as she did.

"Hey Ashley!" Looking up and trying not to sigh again, she raised an eyebrow at the aforementioned redhead. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to see if I can finish this drawing of that Pokemon you said you saw last week." She told her, turning away again. Misty sat down next to her and glanced over her shoulder, then whistled.

"Wow, that's really good."

"Looks accurate?"

"Kinda, yeah." Misty nodded. "Considering that you didn't see it."

"Your description was pretty good as well, I'm just basing it off of that." And also my own knowledge of my friend. Ashley shrugged with a smile. "I think I might have an idea of what it was, though."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Ashley put the pencil down on the book and stretched. "I think it's a Suicune, a pure Water Legendary from Johto that's part of a trio. The other two are Raikou and Entei, and they're apparently related to Ho-oh in some way."

"Oh." Misty muttered, gaping. "That's... oh."

"Yeah, basically." Ashley grinned. "That's pretty cool, isn't it?"

"Just a bit, yeah." Misty said. "Suicune... wow." Ashley half-snorted, activating Aura Sight again for a moment just to look around, and paused, blinking.

"What on earth...?" She yelped. The group of Pokemon jumped, all turning to stare at her along with her two human friends, while Ashley herself closed her eyes and looked over at the lighthouse where Bill's lab apparently was.

'What's wrong, Ashley?' Torna asked, spreading her wings.

"I have no idea." She muttered, focusing. Her Aura Sight shifted slightly, going from the weird circle of vision to a straight line of sight, and she peered at the odd shape on the inside of the building. "That's… whoa."

"Ashley?" Brock pressed, making her crack open one eye again.

"There appears to be a person in a Kabuto suit in the lighthouse." She explained, dryly. "Pretty sure that that's Bill, considering what the Professor said about his lab, but what I'm curious about is the fact that the suit seems to have its own sort of Aura."

"O… kay?" Misty raised an eyebrow at her. "I take it machines don't normally have an Aura?"

"Nope." Ashley shook her head, relaxing her Aura Sight. "And I have no idea how you'd even give a machine an Aura."

'You want to go investigate?'

"Yeah, I do." She admitted. "I don't know how I'd ask about the Aura signature, but just getting a closer look might help."

"Well, now I'm interested too." Misty smiled. "Let me go get my team out of the water, then we'll make our way up and over there."

"Thanks, Misty." Ashley stood, recalling her own team and pausing to let Volta jump up onto her shoulder, then glanced curiously up at the lighthouse again. "Let's go see what this is."

AN: This chapter was a weird one. Originally it was two chapters, then I merged them into one because I didn't think it'd be long enough.

K: Then we realised that it'd be too long if they were merged.

P: So the episodes have started getting a bit weird and mixed now.

T: Oh well, who cares?

SV: Anyway, five new team members, split between Ashley and Misty. If you want to complain about her having four Squirtle-

P: Well, three. One of them isn't gonna battle, right?

SV: -Right. Anyway, I wanted to give her the four of them because I wanted to keep the team together, mostly, and what's Misty going to do with four Squirtle, aside from gym challenges?

K: Besides that, not much else here. Seeya next time!