Chapter Text
"We should go!" Ash hears Mallow from inside the classroom. He walks in, tilting his head curiously, his Pokemon on his shoulder, in his bag, or walking behind him.
"Go where?" he asks the group crowded around Lillie's desk.
He joins the circle to look at Lillie's phone.
"Theres a butterfree migratio coming soon! We were planning to go," lillie tells him, shifting her attention to her phone, missing Ash's faraway look.
"Pikachu?" pikachu nudges Ash's cheek with its head shaking Ash out of his thoughts. Ash immediately brightens up.
"I'm coming with!" he chirps in a sudden movement, making a few sweatdrop at the sudden outburst, "when is it?"
"It's tomorrow," kiawe reads over Lillie's shoulder, "after school."
"Cool!" Ash grins brightly, practically vibrating in excitement.
"Alola class!" professor kukui breaks up the conversation, and the kids head to their seats, ready for class to start.
When Ash returned to the house, he immediately went to the loft. He dug through his bag, looking for a particular item, pikachu searching with him. Lycanrock and Torracat tilt their heads curiously as the two look around.
"Found it!" Ash cheers as he looks at the item, a Pokeball with a little green leaf on it.
Ash hops down the loft to the couch pikachu follows close by, he holds the Pokeball closely.
Ash brushes the dust off with his shirt, his smile diminishing.
"You think butterfree will be there?" Ash asks pikachu taking his eyes off the Pokeball for the first time since he found it.
"Pika!" pikachu says, waving a paw before jumping up Ash's arm to his shoulder ad curling around his neck.
"Yeah, I hope so too" Ash clutches the Pokeball tighter, his smile gaining a tint of bittersweet.
Ash's smile slowly starts to become more neutral as he looks at the Pokeball. Ash starts to zone out, nothing other than his thoughts concerning him.
That was until he saw an arm waving in front of his face making him blink out of it.
"Huh?" Ash says as he looks at where the hand is coming from, seeing professor kukui look at him in slight concern.
"Oh hey professor didnt hear you!" Ash says, his grin returning in a blink of an eye.
"We noticed we called your name six separate times," professor burnet snorts as she pets lycanrock and Munchlax.
"What were you thinking so hard about?" she asks him as she puts her work bag on the counter.
"Nothing much," he shrugs before hopping up to start on the Pokemon food.
"It's been a while since I've seen one of these" professor kukui says as he looks at the Pokeball on the couch, "they stopped making these a few years ago"
"Oh yeah! I only had a few before they started switching to the standard ones now." Ash says as he puts the bowls on the counter, his Pokemon and munchlax crowding around his legs.
"You picking up Pokeball collecting then?" Kukui asks as he picks up the Pokeball. They stopped producing the standard-type balls around six years ago, and you could only find them in stores if it was a specialized store not long after.
"Nope!" Ash starts to pour the pokefood into the bowls dropping a few pellets that lycanrock and munchlax fight for, only for rowlet to snipe it from underneath their noses, "I just found one of my old ones."
"Old one?" burnet asks, joining the conversation. Usually, trainers don't have old ones, either having it be used by a Pokemon in their team or sent to their professor.
"Yeah! Some of my Pokemon want to be released sometimes to go do other things, like my pidgeot to train up some of the pidgeottos and pidgys to protect their forest, or my lapras to return to its family, but i like to keep their pokeballs and a little photo, to rember them by." as tells the professors as he sets down the bowls which were immediately swarmed by a group of very hungry Pokemon.
Both the professors smile. That's wholesome and surprisingly mature for a kid to willingly release his Pokemon.
Ash rights himself and heads over to where the professors are standing, taking the Pokeball and pressing the button, making it open up.
"This was actually from the first Pokemon I ever caught" Both the professor's eyes widen. Everyone's first Pokemon is something they hold dear to their heart. It must have hurt a lot to let go of it.
Ash pulls out a small Polaroid film smiling softly as he looks at it before showing the professors.
They saw a much younger Ash, maybe just after he started his journey with a butterfree on his arm, both very happy, with Ash's large grin and butterfree's wide and emotion-filled eyes. Misty was in the background, blurry as she books it from something.
Professor Kukui softly takes the photo being handed to him as Ash clicks the Pokeball closed,
"A butterfree, huh?" brunet murmurs. It's one of the most standard Pokemon you could see a beginner trainer having or one of its pre-evolutions.
"Yup," Ash says, holding the pokeball close to his chest, pikachu jumping up Ash's back to his shoulder.
"What did you release it for?" professor kukui curiously questions before wincing. Ash probably doesn't want to talk about it.
"butterfree found a mate and joined the butterfree migration" Ash surprises Kukui with how willingly he's willing to talk about it. Then again, it is Ash, one of the most relaxed kids he's ever met.
"So that's what's got you thinking so hard," Brunet says as she ruffles Ash's head making his hat dip over one of his eyes as he laughs.
"Hm?" Kukui hums as he looks over at his wife.
"There's a butterfree migration heading over to Melemele island tomorrow," she informs him as Kukui hands back the photo, which Ash puts back in the pokeball.
"Yeah," Ash sheepishly admits rubbing the back of his head, pikachu mimicking him in a shockingly accurate way, "I know it's a pretty slim chance to see butterfree again, but I think about butterfree every time a migration occurs nearby."
Ash bounces back onto his heels, his smile returning just as quickly as it left, "either way its always fun to watch the migration!"
The professors smile as well, and once they all settle down with dinner and more comfortable clothes, they talk through the night, learning about some of Ash's Pokemon, with old pokeballs and Polaroid photos joining them.