"Ah!" The street, which had moments ago been filled with heated argument, plunged into an eerie silence at Taichi's anguished, tearful cry.
"Why can't you just let me make my own decisions!"
The young boy had finally hit his limit — the resentment and anger he had suppressed for so long burst through the walls of his endurance.
Of course, a large part of the reason was that Ash had stepped up and held his three older brothers at bay.
That's just how kids are.
When someone is hurting and feeling wronged, the thing they want most in the world is for someone on their side to stand up for them.
And yet, in moments of conflict and confrontation, so many people shrink back — they end up abandoning the very person they should be standing beside.
...That kind of thing tends to become a psychological burden that weighs on a person for the rest of their life.
...Trying to make peace with your past self afterward is incredibly difficult. It can easily push someone's personality toward extremes.
This is true even for adults.
For children, it cuts even deeper.
After hurling those words at his three older brothers, Taichi swiped roughly at the tears threatening to spill over, clutched his Eevee tightly to his chest, and bolted toward the far end of the street without once looking back.
"Eee..." The Eevee cradled in his arms stretched out its tongue and licked him gently under the chin.
That small figure, cast long by the setting sun, was filled with absolute resolve — and heartbreak.
...In a sense, his emotions had reached rock bottom and were now beginning to rebound.
Reizou, Mizuki, and Achi clearly hadn't expected their always-timid little brother to suddenly explode like that.
All three stood frozen on the spot.
Across their faces flashed a sequence of emotions — shock, irritation, and a trace of flustered unease that was easy to miss.
...Perhaps they hadn't even noticed that last part themselves.
After all, they had long since grown accustomed to their little brother simply obeying their orders.
"Hmph! Worthless little wretch!" Reizou was the first to recover, his complexion darkening like iron.
He redirected his gaze to Ash, and the momentary ripple caused by his brother's defiance was swiftly swallowed up by his habitual arrogance.
"Outsider Trainer — since you insist on meddling in our family affairs here in Stonetown, then settle it with a battle!"
Reizou raised his hand and pointed toward the most magnificent and imposing stone manor at the center of the town — the ancestral property of the Eevee family, the symbol of power and wealth in Stonetown.
"Tomorrow morning — at our family's battle ground!"
"If you lose, you'll not only apologize for your insolence today, but you'll also acknowledge that evolution is the one and only righteous path for Eevee!"
"Let's go!"
With that, Reizou said nothing more. He led Mizuki and Achi, along with their various Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon, and walked toward the manor at a pace that was just slightly too quick — as if he needed to escape the discomfort of his little brother's defiance as fast as possible.
What had happened today had genuinely slipped beyond their control.
The street fell completely quiet.
Misty watched the three brothers walk away, then turned to Ash with a somewhat worried look. "Ash, are we really going tomorrow?"
"It feels like those guys... aren't really the reasonable type."
That said, there wasn't really any need to worry about things taking a truly bad turn.
This was the era of the League — not the old era that belonged to those entrenched power figures of the past.
In the League era, if you didn't want to be brought to heel by the League, you played by the League's rules — plain and simple.
Which meant: settle all disputes through Pokémon battles.
The more legitimate and official the battle, the more the League would back you up.
Try any dirty tricks, and the League would not come to your aid.
Brock crossed his arms, a slight frown creasing his brow. "Judging by the size of that manor, they must have significant local influence."
"Even if we win the battle in a direct confrontation, there could still be trouble afterward."
If he had the choice, Brock would rather not resort to anything too heavy-handed.
Doing things properly and by the book — that was something Brock also knew how to do.
A good person can choose not to do evil things.
But a good person absolutely must know what an evil person would do.
Guard against others without harboring malice toward them.
A truly good person has to be shrewder than the bad ones.
Ash's gaze, however, remained perfectly calm.
He looked out at that manor looming like a castle, his fingers idly tracing across his chin.
The light in his eyes was not the grave intensity of someone facing a powerful enemy — it was the glimmer of someone who had spotted an intriguing puzzle.
...To be honest, those guys really weren't that strong.
...Ash hadn't sensed any danger from them at all.
...These people couldn't really be judged as villains.
...If anything, it was more of a rather peculiar family conflict.
...After all, those three older brothers did actually care about their little brother — it was just that this kind of caring had completely overlooked what their little brother actually felt.
"Just barging in and steamrolling them in a battle — that's obviously the simplest solution," Ash said, the corner of his mouth curling into a meaningful smile.
"But if we do that, maybe Eevee gets to skip evolving for now — yet that kid's knot stays untied. He'd still be living in the shadow of his brothers."
"Rather than winning a battle for him, what I really want to see... is him breaking these chains with his own two hands."
Since Ash had already decided to get involved, he figured he might as well go all the way and actually resolve things properly.
Misty and Brock exchanged a glance, and each could see the understanding in the other's eyes.
"Ash, what you mean is...?" Brock asked, probing carefully.
Ash smiled faintly, then reached over and patted Misdreavus — who had been drifting at his side this whole time, looking a little bored after sitting through what amounted to a family drama.
——Ash: (□)
"Tonight, I'm afraid we're going to need to put our Mengmeng to work," Ash said with evident interest.
——Misdreavus: -_-
"Meee?!" Misdreavus's previously languid expression froze instantly, and her large eyes filled to the brim with the unmistakable look of "you want me to do overtime again?"
She drifted sulkily to hover right in front of Ash, letting out a stream of protesting "Mee-mee-mee-mee~" sounds.
Misty couldn't help laughing out loud. "Looks like Miss Misdreavus isn't exactly thrilled."
Brock nodded, catching on immediately. "I understand."
"Misdreavus's Hypnosis and her ability to conjure illusions within dreams — those really are the best tools for this job."
"Slipping into someone's dream and planting a seed... that's more powerful than any lecture or speech from the outside world."
Some problems are simply too hard to solve with outside help alone.
The best approach is to let the person at the center of it reason things through for themselves.
And compared to pulling off something like this in the real world — which requires all kinds of preparation and is still prone to things going sideways — having someone live through it all inside a dream is obviously far more convenient.
Ash gave Misdreavus a soothing pat on the head.
"Please, Mengmeng~"
"Go help that kid — let him see... what it is he truly longs for, deep in his own heart."
Feeling her Trainer's sincerity.
Misdreavus was still pouting — but in the end, she gave a reluctant, begrudging little nod.
Her body dissolved like ink dropped into water, soundlessly dispersing into the air, leaving behind only the faintest wisp of a haunting fragrance.
Before making her move, she needed to scout the area first.
Little Miss Misdreavus was nothing if not crafty.
——
The night deepened.
It was as if someone had poured thick, dense ink across the sky above Stonetown.
The great manor of the four Eevee brothers crouched at the center of town like a silent giant.
Only a sparse handful of windows still glowed with light; most of the vast structure had sunk into slumber.
For Misdreavus — a Ghost-type Pokémon through and through — thick stone walls and tightly shut doors and windows were nothing more than decoration.
She was, in the truest sense, a ghost.
Slipping through the cracks of shadows, Misdreavus glided effortlessly into this manor that appeared heavily fortified, yet was utterly helpless against anything incorporeal.
She drifted past the occasional yawning guard clutching a Poké Ball on patrol.
The guards' Poochyena and Zubat companions didn't even register the faintest ripple of anomalous energy.
Are Ghost-type Pokémon powerful or what?
In any situation outside of a head-on battle, Ghost-type Pokémon are on an entirely different level!
The ability to phase through walls and melt into shadows alone puts them leagues ahead of any assassin, ninja, or thief you care to name.
Defend against them? How exactly do you even try?
What do you think you are — a Psychic-type Pokémon?
And even Psychic-types couldn't guarantee they'd keep their guard up every single second.
There's an old saying: a thief can strike a thousand days, but no one can guard against a thief for a thousand days.
Having already scouted the location, Misdreavus found Taichi's bedroom without the slightest difficulty.
Inside the room.
Even in sleep, the young boy's brow was tightly furrowed.
He still clutched his ordinary little Eevee against his chest.
Taichi's sleep was far from peaceful — every so often he let out soft, indistinct murmurs of sleep-talking, as if struggling against something in his dream.
...The experiences of these recent days had been genuinely a lot for a little boy to process.
...The pressure really was something.
Misdreavus floated to Taichi's bedside, and an uncanny light began to shimmer and stir within her violet eyes.
She softly began to hum — a requiem that no living ear could comprehend, the secret song of the Ghost-type — and invisible mental waves spread out like delicate strands of gossamer, slowly, gently enveloping Taichi's consciousness.
Hypnosis — activate!
The dream began.
In the dream.
Taichi was no longer that pitiful boy who could only cower in a corner, clutching his Eevee and trembling.
He dreamed that he stood tall for the very first time — facing the relentless reproach of all three older brothers at once — and shouted back:
"Eevee doesn't want to evolve!"
"And I'm not going to force it!"
"Our path — we decide it ourselves!"
Taichi dreamed that he no longer clung desperately to joining the "E-Rock Knights" — the order that required a Trainer's Pokémon to have evolved in order to gain entry.
He and Eevee ran freely across the meadows outside of town, training together, discovering a battle style that was entirely their own — unique to no one but them.
The Shadow Ball and Quick Attack that Eevee unleashed blazed with a distinctive aura of energy — the energy of Eevee's own inherent nature.
Faint, yes — but brimming with boundless, infinite possibility.
And at last, after all their long time together, Eevee evolved into the form that Eevee itself had always wanted.
In one dream, it became Sylveon.
In another, it became Espeon.
In another, it became Umbreon.
In another, it became —
—For an Eevee, if a Trainer truly wants it to never evolve at all, it must hold an Everstone.
—After all, Eevee's cellular structure is extraordinarily unstable.
——The moment its strength grows and surpasses a certain threshold, evolution will happen naturally.
——This is different from Pikachu and Misdreavus — those two require a Thunder Stone and a Dusk Stone respectively to evolve.
——But Eevee is not like them.
Taichi dreamed of the other children in town — children who also had Pokémon of their own, yet who were equally trapped by the tradition that insisted a Pokémon "must evolve."
The children gathered around him.
They looked at him and at his "heretical" yet happy, powerful Eevee, and something that had gone dark in their eyes began to glow again — the light of hope.
——Fighting to win everyone the right to choose for themselves.
——Whether to evolve or not.
——Whatever type the evolution might be.
——The choice belongs to yourself.
Taichi even dreamed of standing before the clan's great council hall, facing all the stubborn elders, and stating clearly and resolutely the endless possibilities of Eevee's many evolutionary paths — and the importance of respecting each Pokémon's own wishes.
His voice still carried the softness of childhood — but the force within those words was enough to send some of the elders sinking into deep, silent thought.
One by one, the dream-scenes cycled through Taichi's mind like a spinning lantern.
Every act of defiance, every moment of holding firm, every small and quiet victory — each one like a pebble cast into the still lake of his heart, sending ripples spreading wider and wider.
The longing, the courage, and the capacity for independent thought that he had buried and suppressed deep within himself — all of it was magnified and brought into blazing clarity within the dreamscape Misdreavus had woven.
...As for where exactly Misdreavus had cribbed the scripts for all these dream-scenes from?
...Why, she had adapted them from Ash's own personality and the way he typically talked and acted, naturally.
...Little Miss Misdreavus only plays cute and acts ditzy — she's not actually dim.
...As an elite who had come up through the ranks alongside the Thousand-Year Gastly, she was sharp as a tack.
Of course, Misdreavus couldn't achieve total control over a dream — that level of difficulty was simply too high.
But what she could do was establish a rough script and set various conditions in place.
Set only some of the key elements, then let Taichi's own dreaming mind fill in the rest.
This approach was actually far harder to detect.
This was what it meant to truly operate and apply a skill with mastery~~
Miss Misdreavus: practical application of techniques — MAX.
This was something that a mere skill level number could never hope to capture.
The raw strength of the skill might not be exceptional — but she could make it bloom into something extraordinary.
——
"Haah——!"
Taichi shot bolt upright in bed.
He gasped for breath in great heaving gulps, his forehead beaded with a fine sweat.
Outside the window, the moonlight was thick and rich — cold silver radiance sifted in through the latticed frame and pooled across the floor.
But the look in his eyes now was nothing like the blankness and timidity of the day before. Instead, it held a brightness and steadiness that looked as though it had been forged in fire.
The scenes of the dream were so vivid, so real.
The exhilarating rush that had followed each act of defiance, the electrifying thrill of holding his own destiny in his hands — it was all still surging and pounding fiercely in his chest.
"That's the life I want."
"I... I understand now..."
Taichi murmured to himself, gripping his hands into tight fists.
Just then, from the shadows at the edge of his bed, Misdreavus slowly materialized.
She hovered in midair, her violet eyes gleaming in the darkness like two pure, flawless gemstones, silently watching him.
Misdreavus: Not bad at all — a script designed to Ash's spec really does deliver.
Misdreavus: The effect is just too good~
Misdreavus: My Trainer is the absolute best~ □□
Misdreavus: ...Normally speaking.
Taichi would, under ordinary circumstances, probably have screamed in terror at the sight of a Ghost-type Pokémon appearing like this.
After all, Ghost-type Pokémon had a reputation that, on the whole, wasn't exactly stellar.
Even setting aside how the Litwick line literally consumed souls.
Certain other Ghost-type Pokémon harbored their own particular hungers — for negative energy and dark emotions.
Misdreavus herself, for instance, would play pranks to harvest the negative energy of fear, storing it within the gems at her throat.
But right now — perhaps it was the courage carried over from the dream, or perhaps sheer instinct told him that this small creature before him meant no harm — Taichi felt no fear at all. Instead, there was a strangely fitting sense of "ah, so it was you."
Misdreavus drifted in the direction of the door, then looked back at Taichi — the meaning was unmistakable: follow me.
Taichi barely hesitated.
He climbed quietly out of bed and glanced at the Eevee still sleeping peacefully beside him.
Perhaps it was some form of profound mutual understanding — but Eevee, too, had woken up.
Taichi and Eevee looked at each other for a moment, and then he gathered Eevee into his arms.
And then, as if drawn by some invisible enchantment, he followed Misdreavus out of the room.
The hallway was utterly silent.
Taichi was astonished to find that the guards who should have been at their posts were now slumped against the walls or leaning on their spears, sunk in a deep and heavy sleep — some even emitting soft snores.
Their Pokémon partners were curled up right beside them, sleeping just as soundly.
After thoroughly scouting the location and making all her preparations in advance, the power that Misdreavus could unleash all at once was genuinely terrifying.
This was the true might of a Ghost-type Pokémon —
The Ghost-type's "intangibility" freed them from countless physical laws.
They could pass through walls, sink into shadows, and slip into the spirit realm.
Their attacks acted directly upon the soul, or upon the very source of life itself.
A master of the Ghost-type could end you without you ever understanding how — because you might never lay a hand on their physical body, while they had already made all their preparations from within your own shadow.
Little Miss Misdreavus's greatest strength had never once been direct, face-to-face combat.
After all, it was the Thousand-Year Gastly himself who had once enshrouded an entire region within his illusions.
Sending Misdreavus to fight in a Gym battle was like taking a top-ranked mage — one who specializes in crowd control and area denial — and telling her to go play as a basic-attack champion instead.
Not impossible — but a little abstract.
Taichi felt a chill of genuine awe settle into his heart.
His understanding of this Misdreavus's capabilities had deepened considerably.
Ghost-type Pokémon — on an open battlefield, they might be held back by type matchups and counters.
But on a night like this, carrying out an infiltration, performing Hypnosis, and guiding others through the unseen — they were the silent trump card, the phantom that walked the border between dream and reality.
...Every type of Pokémon had its own domain in which it excelled.
Following Misdreavus, Taichi passed through the manor as though drifting through a sleeping castle — bypassing every "obstacle" with effortless ease — until he arrived outside the main gate.
The cool night breeze brushed against his face, carrying the clean, fresh scent of grass and trees.
Taichi drew in a deep breath, and looked up.
And then his breath caught.
There, at the center of the vast open plaza paved with white stone slabs that spread out before the manor —
A figure stood perfectly still with his back to the imposing manor, gazing quietly up at the sky.
His back was to Taichi, his face tilted toward the stars.
The pure, bright moonlight poured down like silver silk, tracing a soft, hazy, almost sacred halo of light around that upright silhouette.
The night wind stirred gently at the hem of his jacket, lending him an air that was difficult to put into words — as if he stood apart from the ordinary world.
It was the Trainer who had spoken up for him during the day.
Ash.
...Don't worry about why the timing was so perfect.
...Ash had been practicing this scene for quite a while — all for the sake of this exact pose.
...He had only struck the pose after Misdreavus sent word that her target was on his way.
...If the atmosphere had been even slightly less serious, he absolutely would have gone for a dramatic hair-flip right there.
As if hearing the footsteps behind him, Ash slowly turned around.
His face was rendered exceptionally clear and sharp in the moonlight.
Those eyes — always filled with unwavering resolve — were in this moment as deep and fathomless as the stars in the night sky, as if they could see straight through to the deepest hesitations and longings buried at the core of another person's heart.
Ash didn't speak immediately. He simply held Taichi — who had just stepped out of his "cage" — in that calm, piercing gaze.
This was the moment for setting the atmosphere.
Only once that atmosphere had built to its absolute peak would the time truly be right to begin.
The whole world seemed to go still — nothing remained but the sound of the wind, and the drumbeat of Taichi's own heart thundering in his ears.
Then Ash spoke.
His voice wasn't loud — yet it carried a peculiar resonance that seemed to strike directly at something deep in the soul. Every word, every sentence, landed squarely at the center of Taichi's chest:
"Waking up from a path that others laid out for you — what does it feel like?"
"To see, with your own eyes, the towering walls of 'what is possible' and 'what is not' — walls that were built by others and forced upon you..."
"To have lived through, inside a dream, the countless choices you made by your own will..."
"Tell me, Taichi."
Ash leaned forward slightly, and the moonlight refracted in his eyes into a light that seemed to perceive everything.
His voice carried the pull of something irresistible — the power of a guide calling out to the lost:
"Are you content to spend your whole life beneath the expectations and rules of others — playing the role of 'the obedient little brother,' 'the proper heir,' performing the script they wrote for you?"
"Or..."
He let the words hang, giving Taichi space to absorb and think — and then, as clear and final as the toll of a bell:
"Do you want... to change?"
"Not by relying on anyone else — but by relying on the strength you just found in that dream, on the shared will between you and Eevee —"
"From the inside out — to shatter the old and rusted cage that has bound you, that has bound all of Stonetown."
"You will no longer be the crawling larva."
"You will shed your cocoon."
"You will become the butterfly that spreads its wings and soars."
"You will go back to being yourself."
These words crashed through Taichi's mind like a thunderclap.
Silver moon. Star-filled sky. The stillness of the night. A slumbering manor. A Misdreavus appearing as if by magic. And standing before him — a Trainer who had stepped out of the moonlight itself, presenting him with questions that reached into the deepest chambers of his soul.
All of it formed a single, overwhelmingly vivid image that was burned deep into Taichi's heart — deep, and permanent.
——I...
——I want to be like you!
Taichi didn't know what "right" looked like in the abstract.
But the person standing in front of him right now — following someone like that couldn't possibly be wrong!
He felt his blood running hot.
The courage amassed in his dream and the longing ignited in reality intertwined, and together they forged a force within him that he had never felt before.
He looked at Ash.
Not as an outside helper who had come to his rescue — but as a guide who had pointed out the direction of the path ahead.
Taichi nodded — hard, with every last scrap of strength his body could muster.
His eyes had never been so unwavering.
"I want to — I want to change!"
"I'm going to become as strong as you!"
Whether he could actually pull it off someday was another question entirely — but right now, in this moment, that was what he truly felt.
...It was also quite possible he'd been thoroughly bamboozled by a junior fanboy's starstruck haze.
Ash's signature moves worked their magic even on Misty, who was far harder to fool — so a little kid like Taichi never stood a chance.
____
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