#lokoko

Everyone blinked.

“Huh?” Ash asked. “Who said that? That sounded kind of familiar…”

He looked around, alert, then one of the nearby trees shimmered slightly and a Ninetales faded into visibility.

“...okay, I’ve rehearsed this a lot of times, but it really doesn’t feel right to actually be doing it,” she said.

Ash frowned.

“Hey, aren’t you… that Ninetales we met in Johto?”

“You’ve been to Johto?” Iris asked. “Did you meet Clair? She’s part of the dragon clan at Blackthorn!”

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi pika chu!” Pikachu said, brightly.

“Yeah, I beat her in a gym battle,” Ash confirmed. “It was great to use my Charizard for that, I miss him but I know he’s better where he is.”

Iris boggled.

“...you have a Charizard?” she asked. “Really?”

“Yeah!” Ash agreed.

The Ninetales had been patiently waiting for her turn, and coughed as demurely as possible.

“Yes,” she said. “I am the Ninetales you met in Johto, the one who hid behind the identity of Lokoko… and, ah… how to put this…”

“Kachuu, pika kachuu,” Pikachu volunteered.

“I suppose,” the Fire-type said. “So… after the battle, and after you freed Brock, I was… interested in following you. In seeing what adventure was like, after so many decades stuck in the same mansion. But I did not want to seem like I was still stalking Brock, so revealing myself to you while Brock was still among your companions was a bad idea.”

Ash nodded slightly, following that.

“I guess,” he said. “But what about after Brock and Misty went home at the end of the Silver Conference?”

“Am I missing something?” Iris asked. “Who’s Brock?”

Cilan shrugged.

“I’m sure we’ll find out at some point,” he said, cheerfully.

“I considered it,” Lokoko told Ash. “But at that point I was still… nervous. Awkward.”

She looked down at herself. “More than I am now, that is… I didn’t want to talk to you, in case it went wrong. I didn’t know what to say. So I followed you to Hoenn, but before long you’d met Brock again! And at that point it would have been too awkward – it would have looked like I’d stalked Brock to a different region, which would be even worse.”

“So…” Ash began, and Pikachu started giggling.

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi, Pika ka kachuu pi!” he said, then shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ka chuu pi…”

“...oh, yeah,” Ash realized. “So the same thing happened again with Sinnoh?”

“How many places have you been, Ash?” Iris asked.

“That’s mostly the list, yeah,” Ash said, counting. “Uh… I know I mentioned I was from Kanto to Trip, did I mention that to you? Then I went to the Orange Islands, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh and now here!”

He frowned. “Wait, doesn’t Sinnoh in the past count as different? And I swear we got really lost when we were helping Jirachi, because we were driving for days to reach Forina… actually, uh, Lokoko, did you come along with all of those weird things too?”

“...yes,” Lokoko admitted, her ears going flat with embarrassment. “I certainly saw a lot of excitement. And before you ask, I don’t know if Rota counts as a different place, or if it counts as different for Sinnoh if you do it in the past.”

She laid out her tails. “Remember, I may be hundreds of years old but I spent most of that time in an abandoned mansion. If you want berries cultivated in bonsai pots that are still fully nutritious, I am the Pokémon you want to call upon. Illusions of near-perfect quality, I have spent hundreds of years working on. Speech, your choices are me, Manaphy or Meowth for the most part. And I read every book in the mansion’s library end to end about six times, but that mostly means that I can tell you every detail of a hundred trashy romance novels. I am not wise. I merely have a lot of experience at one thing.”

“Huh,” Ash said. “I guess I can see why following me around is helpful… so why did you show who you were now?”

“Because this is the most confident I’ve ever been that Brock isn’t going to try and join you,” Lokoko said, waving a tail at Cilan. “You’ve got someone in the Brock position on your team who isn’t actually Brock.”

“Ah, I see!” Cilan declared, clapping his hands. “So you’re normally faced with a main course, which would be Ash, and an accompanying side dish and a drink! And you’re teetotal and a recovering alcoholic, so you need to be careful, but this is the first time you’ve been given the opportunity of a drink that isn’t wine and so this is the first time you’re happy with the set menu!”

Lokoko blinked, her head tilting to the side.

“What do you mean, side dish?” Iris asked.

“There’s nothing wrong with a side dish!” Cilan replied. “They compliment the flavour profile and provide a useful supplement, plus of course they are part of the set menu and so you couldn’t do without them! But Ash is clearly the main meal here, from sheer scale! After all, most of his team is Unovan and yet he’s been to five other regions – these Pokémon are not his first!”

“Do any of my Pokémon know about you, actually?” Ash asked Lokoko.

“Noctowl, but she never said anything,” Lokoko replied. “Gliscor crashed into me once but I don’t know if he noticed. And Brock’s Crobat noticed me immediately, because I hadn’t thought to extend my illusions into the high ultrasonic… he just never said anything either.”

Ash nodded, thinking.

“So, what do you want to do?” he asked. “Travel with us? I guess you’ve been doing that already, but we could make it official… though I guess that depends what Iris and Cilan think.”

“That would be nice,” Lokoko said, nodding slowly, then turned her attention to the other two. “Please? It would… mean a lot to me.”

“...I’d feel bad about saying no,” Iris admitted. “The whole, following Ash around for years, thing is… a bit weird? But… yeah, sure.”

“I’d be fine with it as well!” Cilan asked. “Though I do wonder how you’d fit into the menu!”

Lokoko blinked.

“I was… well, I suppose my position would be like Max’s, in Hoenn and Kanto,” she said. “Following along without any Pokémon of my own, but quite good at communicating with other Pokémon?”

“Ah!” Cilan nodded. “The sauce! Yes, sauce is always a benefit!”

“Pika chuu,” Pikachu said.