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Leon, Champion of Galar, World Monarch, and man with simultaneously too much and too little going on in his life at all times, did not make a habit of paying attention to interregional League news.
This, it turned out, was the root of the issue when it came to talented young trainer Ash Ketchum, who was from... well Leon had never actually bothered figuring out where Pallet Town was. He wasn't from Galar, anyhow. Had come by to watch the World Coronation Series finals, accidentally Gigantamax his pikachu, and leave, by any estimation.
Memorable, but not exactly noteworthy.
So Leon wasn’t surprised to swoop down and find Ash from Pallet Town facing off against a rampaging Gigantamaxed centiscorch. Alarmed, sure. Baffled, maybe. Exasperated, perhaps. But he’d met the kid in what was essentially the same situation, except with more League staff present and less need for random trainer involvement, so he couldn’t exactly muster surprise.
“Please, Leon! Let us help you!”
“I’m glad you want to help, but-”
“Please!”
Even Leon wasn’t so proud he couldn’t admit when, Undefeated Champion or not, a second pair of eyes and hands could save a lot of grief by the end of the day.
“Very well. But we’re leaving right away!”
“Great!”
Ash’s eyes gleamed.
As they swooped up into the air, Leon leading the way on Charizard, low and slow until he was sure Ash, Pikachu, and Riolu on Dragonite would be able to keep up, Leon plotted out their next moves.
Ash had demonstrated some skill at corralling and containing aggressive Max pokemon, both today and on their first meeting. If Leon could convince him to play support, distracting, directing, and keeping any unlucky civilians out of the way, it would leave Leon free to focus on pure, Dynamax-busting firepower.
He glanced backwards. Ash was on his phone, gesticulating wildly. Seemed to be with that chatty friend of his, Goh, was it? And was that Sonia’s name he’d just heard? A whole string of coincidences. He’d ask after.
First priority: getting his priorities sorted. Second priority: getting his priorities through Ash’s brash, battle-hungry, willing-to-confront-Max-pokemon-with-a-pikachu-and-a-riolu head. Hopefully that would ease the incoming battles a little, let them save their strength in increments for the rest of what was shaping up to be a long, exhausting day.
And it would also keep Ash and his team a little safer. A little more out of harm’s way.
It was the least Leon could do.
Gigantamax Kingler roared, beard dripping with suds, as a foamy blue light grew between the tines of its massive pincer.
“Watch out!” said Leon, zipping past Ash’s clifftop vantage, “that’s G-Max Foam Burst! It does massive damage and sharply lowers the speed of anything it hits!”
“Got it!” said Ash. “We can’t let that happen to us, right, Pikachu? Use Electroweb!”
Leon directed Charizard right across Kingler’s field of vision, catching its attention again as the Electroweb hit target, entangling the pincer in arcing electricity and muddling up the dangerous G-Max Move into more of a sad, drippy Bubblebeam.
“Thunderpunch,” Leon told Charizard, and they swept into a dive, static bundling around Charizard’s right fist.
Kingler shook off the Electroweb, but not fast enough. Pikachu had done its job well: immobilizing Kingler long enough for Charizard’s Thunderpunch to hit a super-effective crackle. The last of the Dynamax energy left Kingler in an empty fwoosh, and the pokemon itself disappeared back into the surf.
Leon and Charizard banked to check on the scattered beachgoers; Ash, at the corner of his eye, had already called Dragonite back out from its pokeball rest and rushed back down the cliff to check in on Kingler.
One more rampaging Max pokemon down. Who knew how many to go.
“Leon,” said Ash, as they sped over neat little farms and classic Galarian towns, wind rushing in their ears. So really more like shouted Ash. “Can I ask you a question?”
Now what was this about? “Go ahead,” shouted Leon magnanimously.
“When you first made Champion. What was it like?” shouted Ash. Charizard angled itself so Leon could hear more clearly, veering close enough to brush wings with Dragonite. “That happened a pretty long time ago, right?”
Leon had a stock answer to that on his tongue, a great honor, a massive victory, everything he’d dreamed of, but Ash was looking at him oddly. A little hungrily, maybe. A way that made Leon reach for something more honest, more rarely-said.
“It was… overwhelming,” he admitted. Charizard rumbled sympathetically beneath him. Ash tilted his head to the side. “I was your age, or so, and suddenly everyone knew me. I’d transformed overnight from a hotshot rookie to someone people expected things from; I had to keep winning, but winning didn’t mean anything anymore. I’d reached my goal. I didn’t know what was next, and everyone was looking at me.”
Ash bit his lip. Pikachu, insistently out of its pokeball, had its claws dug into his shoulder to stay on. He said, “Yeah.”
“Luckily, I was surrounded by people who could help,” continued Leon, automatically. “So we all shouldered it together. And now I’m having a Champion Time!”
Ash kept looking at him, frowning a little. Leon’s sudden burst of honesty felt dry in his throat.
They settled into a pattern. Leon’s initial ploy had worked, mostly: Ash, enraptured by Leon’s strength as any Galarian, seemed content to let him take point, and Dragonite, Gengar, and—surprisingly—Pikachu were a strong long-distance supportive trio, mixed in with some help from the cute little duo of Riolu and Farfetch’d when more close-range situations emerged.
Leon learned quickly that as long as he moved confidently, seemed to be handling the situation, and trusted Ash to do his part without fussing, Ash would indeed do his part. And well. He had a battle professional’s eye for field use and a crisis responder’s eye for the optimal path through a situation, and while his own eagerness to let his pokemon get a big hit in sometimes caused snags, he was quite adept at maneuvering the rampaging Max pokemon into position for Charizard and Dragapult’s aerial strikes as long as he stayed focused.
It was, to Leon’s surprise, rapidly becoming more of a relief than a worry to have him around.
And once the pokemon had been successfully calmed, there was a second pattern they fell into: Leon landed and spoke to concerned bystanders while Ash swooped down behind him and made sure the newly-small pokemon was doing alright.
He also handled any children who were too overawed by Leon to talk to him, which was a relief, frankly, and what he was doing now, Leon reassuring the majority of an unlucky camping group as Ash crouched by a kid who couldn’t’ve been more than five and her best friend, Free-Free the recently-Gigantamaxed butterfree.
“I had a butterfree once,” Ash was telling the kid. Leon’s attention drifted from the group in front of him, curiosity about his mystery tagalong kid getting the best of him. Everyone had their vices.
“Uh-huh?” she said. “Was it as pretty as Free-Free? Free-Free’s the prettiest butterfree in the world, you know.”
Ash chuckled. “I won’t argue with that. Butterfree was super strong, though! As strong as Free-Free, I’m sure. You sure gave us some trouble, Free-Free. So impressive! All that whoosh! Swoosh! G-Max Befuddle! Made me remember how much fun it was to battle with Butterfree back then!”
“Freeeeee,” sighed Free-Free.
“Uh-huh! You get a good sleep tonight, Free-Free.”
“I hope you see Butterfree again,” said the little kid.
“Yeah, me too,” answered Ash after a moment. “I miss Butterfree a lot. But it’s happy with its friends. Take good care of Free-Free for me, okay? And Free-Free, you take good care of your friend here too.”
“Okay!”
“Ee!”
Leon smiled to himself. He rescued his conversation with the rest of the campers and bid them good luck repairing their campsite, then hopped on Charizard, grabbing Ash’s attention. The kid folded himself up from his crouch, recalled and called back Riolu, Farfetch’d, and Pikachu from where they’d been indefatigably chasing each other around the unlit and half-destroyed campfire, and released Dragonite to a “Hope you got some rest, Dragonite. Up for another fly?”
And, on its assenting roar, jumped on.
“Um, Leon, d’you know what that sorta-shiny forest is?”
“No idea. Might be Glimwood Tangle? Hard to tell from this height. Your phone has GPS, right?”
“Oh, yeah! Hey Rotom-”
“Hold that thought! We’re hitting another storm!”
“Oh, wow, that sinistea is huge!”
“Hey,” said Leon, swinging his leg over Charizard’s back, newly-un-Gigantamaxed orbeetle trundling back to its swarm. “Talented young trainer like you. Why haven’t I seen you in the Galar League?” He leaned forward against Charizard’s neck, preparing to maximize aerodynamics and share heat against the swirling, howling sky. Turned his head to keep looking at Ash. “If it’s a sponsorship issue, that’s an easy fix. You’ve more than earned mine.”
Ash was experimenting with clinging to Gengar’s head-tufts as it floated to give Dragonite a rest. Leon thought the arrangement would probably last until their next stop and no longer- that couldn’t be comfortable, even with Gengar letting Ash brace himself by sticking feet and hands into its semi-translucent form. At least Gengar wasn’t a slow flier. By ghost-type standards, anyhow.
“Ah, that’s really nice of you, Leon!” said Ash, repositioning his arm. He made a face. “I can’t do the League, though, even though I’d wanna.”
“Pika pika,” sighed Pikachu, forlorn. Its claws were dug into Ash’s shoulder, already braced.
Huh. “And why would that be?”
A previous obligation, maybe. He or that chatty friend of his had mentioned something about a research fellowship, although it seemed to be a position with a lot of free time attached. And which provided either travel benefits or a long-term stay in Galar.
But Ash said, “A Champion can’t, right? Like, you couldn’t. Or Lance. Or Champion Cynthia.”
“Not generally, no,” said Leon. “If League personnel want to show off, that’s what the Champion Cup stage of our League conference is for. And even then, all I do is battle the winner.”
Who was usually Raihan, anyway.
Ash shrugged. “Then I can’t, yeah.” Leon looked at him. He blinked back, then his eyes widened. “Oh, I forgot to mention again, didn’t I? Kiawe’s gonna be so mad at me. Incineroar’s gonna be so mad at me. I’m the Champion of Alola, see. So.” He extracted one of his arms from Gengar’s ghostly mass and grabbed at the back of his neck. “I can’t be in your League, I guess.”
“Piii-ka.”
“Gengar?” said Gengar. “Gengar gengar!”
Ash made a noise and got his arm wedged back into its form. “You knew that already, Gengar, don’t pretend you didn’t.”
Leon said, “Since when does Alola have a League?”
The kid didn’t seem like any Champion Leon'd ever heard of, but he’d shown enough skill and composure the past few hours that Leon wasn’t about to dismiss the claim outright. Besides, it was Leon’s grasp of League happenings that was generally in question, not the trustworthiness of mysterious pint-sized research fellows of uncertain origin.
“Since last year!” said Ash. Okay, at least Leon didn’t have to feel as bad about missing the news. “Professor Kukui set it up, it’s awesome. Uh, shouldn’t we get going?”
“Good point,” said Leon. A dangerous exhaustion pressed against the inside of his forehead. He dutifully ignored it, giving Charizard a little squeeze to prompt the resulting follow-through, and they lifted into the air.
He could find out more about Ash Ketchum, self-described Champion of Alola, when the present problem had been dealt with.
“Uh, Leon, where are we?”
“We’ve been heading northwest; we’ll hit the coast soon and have to turn east if we want to stay near populated areas.”
“You’d know better than me, but isn’t that the Slumbering Weald? Me an’ Goh were just there, is all. And that’s what Rotom’s saying.”
“How- That’s due south-”
“I was also pretty sure we were going north, yeah! So weird.”
“Must be all the Galar particles confusing our senses of direction.”
“Gotta be.”
“Pi-ka.”
Gigantamax Corviknight cut through the air. Leon’d hopped from Charizard to Dragapult to give the former a chance to maneuver without extra weight, and Ash, back to floating on Gengar, was directing Pikachu and Dragonite.
“Charizard, Flamethrower!”
Charizard charged in, head-on, breathing fire hot enough to cook a jellicent, Dragapult following hot on its heels and prepping its own Flamethrower for when Charizard banked down and out of the way. Keeping the pressure on while Ash tried to keep it distracted, keep it moving.
They’d drifted back from the lake they’d initially lured Corviknight over to above the town it’d Gigantamaxed in, which was, all things considered, not an ideal situation. Leon glanced down. One wrong move and someone was ending up impaled on some sort of gothic wrought iron spikes.
“Leon! Watch out!”
The warning hit his ears at the same time as G-Max Wind Rage. He was flung off Dragapult before he could speak, whirled head-over-heels until he was falling, face towards the sky.
“Pikachu! Your biggest Thunderbolt! We don’t have our z-ring but let’s do our best! Dragonite!”
Dragapult and Charizard had gotten thrown as well, were recovering their balance fast as expected but not fast enough to get to Leon.
Shouldn’t have tempted fate about the spikes, huh.
Pikachu jumped up from Dragonite, glowing with charge, unheeding of the drop. Dragonite dove.
A split second later, Dragonite was holding him in its arms just a floor’s height above the roof, tight enough to crack his ribs. And Pikachu was lighting the sky yellow.
The oppressive Max clouds felt appropriate, suddenly, for the massive Thunderbolt sending crackling static across Leon’s skin, searing at his retinas, draining the Max energy out of Corviknight until it tumbled, small and miserable, out of the sky. Dragonite passed him off to a worried Charizard, Dragapult’s Dreepy both nudging at his face; went to catch Corviknight before it ended up impaled either.
Gengar had drifted over to grab Pikachu out of the sky, Ash holding out his arms for it. Leon directed Charizard up to him.
“We both need a breather,” he announced when Charizard reached them, taking in Pikachu’s erratically sparking whiskers, Ash’s sudden pallor. His own heart, which hadn’t quite gotten the message to return to his chest. “Let’s get Corviknight back to its trainer, then I’ll buy you a treat and we’ll sit down for a few minutes.”
“And for my team, too? They also need treats!” said Ash, scratching Pikachu at the base of the tail.
“Yeah,” said Leon, suddenly more fond than he had any right to be. “Sure, kid. Whatever you want.”
Eventually, Leon’s tired brain put the pieces together. The afternoon was drawing on towards sunset, and Dragonite and Charizard had both slowed from their previous breakneck pace, slow enough to talk, the persistent chaos of the day clawing from behind all of their eyes.
Ash tossed Leon his water bottle back. It was a clean throw despite the speed, although—Leon thought, catching it—it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d missed. The thing was empty. Pikachu’d taken the last sip, and was swiping at its slightly-wet whiskers with an irritated paw.
“So,” said Leon. “the Alolan Championship.”
“Uh-huh?” said Ash. “What about it?”
“Is it the normal deal? Win the conference, defeat the Elite Four, defeat the Champion, claim the title?”
Leon was aware enough of things that happened outside Galar to understand that his region’s lack of Elite Four in favor of the Champion Cup segment of the annual conference was unusual. But Paldea, he’d heard, didn’t even have a limit on Champions. Galar’s system was normal by comparison, and someday he’d finally get to battle Geeta and prove it.
“Yeah!” said Ash. “Well. Now it is. Everything got a little bit mixed around when Professor Kukui was getting it all put together, so I was already Champion once the Elite Four finally existed and I finally got to battle them.” He leaned over and provided the loudest whisper Leon’d ever heard. Pikachu yelped and scrabbled to stay on his shoulder. “We won, ‘course. Otherwise it’d be silly to keep calling myself the Champion!”
“Of course,” agreed Leon, mind whirling. The kid’d wanted to battle him the moment he saw him, had had a decent hand at Dynamax despite his newness to it, saw a crisis situation and stepped towards it. Not, as Leon had originally assumed, out of pure battle-hungry bravado, but because he had actually at some unknown pre-knowing-Leon point developed the skills and qualifications to be present in the fray.
“Any Champion would have done the same,” Leon’d said, earlier, after they first ran into each other, and had apparently been righter than he knew, had apparently caught on instinctively to what he had no way of knowing.
Brash, reckless kid. Battle-minded. Grinning. Victorious. Leon knocked his forehead against Charizard’s neck and got a sympathetic huff for his troubles.
He said, finally, “And that’s why you were asking about when I became Champion of Galar.”
“Yeah,” said Ash. He chewed on his lip for a moment. “It was kinda scary for me, when I realized what’d happened. What winning meant. I’d just wanted to win, and then actually winning turned everything around and made people see me completely different. People who didn’t know me, anyway. So mostly I don’t mention it. Makes people weird, if they know, especially outside Alola.”
Leon said, slowly, “Yeah. I understand.”
He didn’t, really. Everyone in Galar knew who he was, even if they couldn’t care less about the League. Millions across the world recognized his face on sight. And it’d been that way since almost the beginning.
Still.
“There’s something different between us, though,” said Ash. He put his head down on Dragonite’s neck, Pikachu huffing as it had to extract a foreleg from the pinch. “You get it, Pikachu. Leon’s called the Undefeated Champion, right?”
“Pika.”
“Right,” said Leon.
“Which is really cool! Makes me wanna battle you even more!” Ash met Leon’s eyes. Behind the exhaustion and the adrenaline of the day lurked something else, something Leon couldn’t quite recognize. “But me an’ Pikachu, we know all about losing. ‘S not fun, but we’ve done it a lot. And I think we’re gonna keep on doing it, keep on always losing sometimes. It’s kinda weird to say, I guess, but I don’t ever wanna stop. ‘S the best way to learn, sometimes, losing.” He craned his head around to look at Pikachu, eyes crinkling. “And plus, it’s what makes finally winning feel so good!”
Distant, unbidden longing tightened Leon’s throat.
Ash said, “But you’re so cool, I bet you never even had to think like that.”
Leon swallowed. Tried to, anyway.
“No,” he managed eventually. “No, I guess I haven’t.”
They flew in silence for awhile after that, wind rushing in their ears, conversation exhausted. Until another swirl of stormcloud called their attention to a Dynamax falinks hurtling through the countryside, orderly march all in disarray, and they had to summon all their remaining adrenaline back for the next round.
“Dragonite? Thanks for carrying me all day. You’re the best.”
“Draa!”
“You too, Charizard. Reliable partner.”
“Char char.”
“Charizard, you’re so cool! Leon, Charizard’s so cool!”
“Char.”
“Pika pikachu.”
“Obviously you’re the coolest, Pikachu. But I gotta be nice to other pokemon sometimes too!”
“Pika.”
“Draaaa!”
“You’re pretty cool too, Ash.”
“Wow! Pikachu, Dragonite, did you hear that? Leon thinks we’re cool!”
In the distance, Galar particles gathered into a whirling, howling storm.
“Ready?” said Leon.
Ash grinned and adjusted his cap. “Let’s go!”