One full week of hellish, high-intensity training, followed by two days of complete rest — it had left Ash feeling as though a coiled beast had taken up residence inside his body, crouched and ready to spring.
Strong. Strong. Strong.
So incredibly strong.
Every single muscle had memorized the ache and trembling of being pushed to its absolute limit — and after sufficient rest, had transmuted all that suffering into something denser and more reliable: raw power and razor-sharp reflexes.
Of course, reaching this level was only possible thanks to Ho-Oh's divine blessing.
Ordinary people simply couldn't push themselves beyond their limits like this. Exceeding the human body's threshold too drastically would cause it to break down — rhabdomyolysis being the most typical result.
So the capacity to push hard and survive it was, in its own way, a kind of talent.
Ash stood in front of the Pokémon Center mirror and squeezed his fist with force, feeling the vitality surging through his arms.
Muscle power — one hundred percent.
"Peak condition!" Ash announced, addressing both his reflection and the Pikachu sitting on his shoulder, who looked equally sharp and raring to go.
"Pika!" Pikachu's little paws gave Ash's cheek a firm pat, the pouches on his cheeks crackling with confident little sparks of electricity.
"Mai mai~" Misdreavus floated lazily nearby, blinking her large eyes as she curiously appraised the fully-equipped, ready-to-charge Ash.
But compared to Ash's superhuman physical state, Misty's situation was considerably more miserable.
Two days of rest, and she still hadn't recovered.
And Ho-Oh certainly wasn't going to risk exposing herself just to heal Misty's sore muscles — that was too small a thing to justify the risk.
So what the world was currently witnessing was: Sickly-Beauty Misty.
She looked a bit listless, to put it charitably.
Misty was rubbing her shoulder, which still ached with a dull, persistent soreness, muttering quietly to herself, "Finally going... I never want to set foot in a dojo like that again for the rest of my life..."
For all her complaints, though, the look she directed toward Ash carried nothing but encouragement.
She said she wanted to watch him make a fool of himself.
What she actually wanted was to watch him make it through.
Being too proud pushes people away. But being too spoiled? Never. That was the whole point of being a tsundere.
Brock was going through his small travel pack, double-checking its contents. It held a few basic emergency supplies.
He knew perfectly well that Ash would receive far more professional gear from the dojo and the registration staff. But he checked anyway, out of habit.
It was funny, really.
These past few days in Fuchsia City had been... unusually smooth.
Whether they were shopping for training supplies, having meals at a restaurant, or even asking for directions on the street — every single person they encountered had been impeccably polite and friendly, without so much as a hair out of place.
The streets were clean and orderly. They hadn't witnessed a single street argument the entire time.
...It was honestly too normal. Normal to the point of being abnormal.
By all reasonable expectations, Fuchsia City should have had its share of petty theft. Most people here wouldn't dare steal anything of real value — but casually lifting a bit of loose change or someone's lighter? That was entirely ordinary behavior.
Picking pockets was even an established part of ninja training, after all. As long as you didn't push it too far, no one really cared.
And yet — none of this had happened. Not once.
"Fuchsia City's urban management is genuinely impressive..." Misty had remarked at one point, sounding genuinely moved. "It's completely different from what I'd heard. Everyone here is so reasonable. The general quality of civility is actually really high."
Brock had nodded in agreement. "It really does give you a sense of ease and comfort."
"Worthy of a city with such a long and storied tradition."
"At this rate, it looks like Gym Leader Koga has managed the whole of Fuchsia City very well these past few years."
This was, of course, not the real reason.
A place steeped in ninja culture — how could it possibly have no petty crime?
"...Something feels a little off," Ash had murmured, sensing some faint wrongness with the instinct of someone who'd trained hard. But the week of brutal conditioning had left him with absolutely no energy to spare for worrying about minor details like this.
Besides — with Ho-Oh around during his downtime, there was genuinely no need to be on high alert.
So... they would never know that behind this picture-perfect "harmony," Aya and Janine had led a small army of ninja apprentices on a carpet-bombing campaign of "civilizational enforcement" through every single district the three of them were likely to pass through.
Like the most dedicated street-sweepers in history.
This had, naturally, given rise to an unpleasant rumor spreading across Fuchsia City — that Gym Leader Koga was about to be ousted, and that the League had finally moved in to crack down on the city.
This left Koga, Janine, and Aya collectively speechless — and so they cracked down even harder.
Every shade of unsavory element across the entire city was swept up in one pass.
The cooperative ones got a firm talking-to and sent on their way. The uncooperative ones got hauled off to the station.
Any potential spark of conflict, any visually displeasing element of instability — all of it had been pre-emptively addressed before Ash's group even arrived, under such impeccable pretexts as "fire safety inspection," "sanitation check," and "security audit."
The scale of it was so sweeping that several gangs who made a habit of petty theft became convinced that the rumor was true — the League had launched a serious crackdown.
And so they packed their bags overnight and quietly fled Fuchsia City.
...All one could say was: the situation was genuinely hilarious.
All of this — every bit of it — was done solely to ensure that a certain magnificent being, currently disguised as a Golden Pidgeot, would experience nothing but pleasant serenity and zero disturbance during her stay in Fuchsia City.
Faith was a strange thing. Abstract, almost intangible — something you could seemingly dismiss without consequence.
But truly, completely dismissing it? That was near-impossible.
The most accurate thing one could say was: as long as there was no fundamental, decisive conflict of interests, most people believed — at least a little.
It wasn't the subjective kind of belief, the kind you consciously chose. It was the kind woven into the fabric of a culture. And those who grew up breathing that culture would always care, at least a little.
---
The day itself was perfect. Warm sun, a gentle breeze that didn't irritate.
Ash, Misty, and Brock finally arrived at the base of Mount Fuchsia.
The mountain had no particularly grand name of its own — it was simply called Mount Fuchsia because Fuchsia City was here and the Fuchsia Gym sat upon it. The reason was that simple.
Tilting their heads back to take it in, the mountain was not as steep or jagged as they'd imagined. It had a sense of rolling, continuous elevation about it.
Amid dense, verdant woodland, it breathed an atmosphere of quiet depth — something unreadable and still.
The mountain's face was clearly divided into distinct zones, and even from this distance, one could faintly detect the signs of deliberate human modification woven into its structure.
Having pre-registered online, the group followed the guidance system to the correct entrance — a gate marked with a large, bold "5."
A sign posted beside it laid out the details clearly: the entire Mount Fuchsia course was divided into eight challenge zones, corresponding to challengers who held between one and eight Badges respectively.
The more Badges a challenger held, the more experienced and capable they were presumed to be — and therefore, the difficulty of the mountain path scaled upward in geometric progression.
...The Fuchsia Gym might not be the hardest Gym in existence, but it was absolutely the most time-consuming.
Honestly, most of Kanto's eight mainstream Gyms were pretty bizarre when you thought about it.
As things stood:
The Pewter Gym and Celadon Gym were the only ones that played by normal rules.
The Cerulean Gym had terrain restrictions and type-based entry filters.
The Vermilion Gym depended entirely on Lt. Surge's mood on any given day.
The Saffron Gym had Gym Trainers and Pokémon with built-in psychic communication — and you also had to navigate a maze while solving math problems.
The Fuchsia Gym gated entry with a full personal-capability assessment on the Trainer themselves, then threw them headfirst into a ninja warrior obstacle course.
...None of them were straightforward. Not even a little.
Gate Five was prepared specifically for Trainers like Ash — those who had already collected five Badges — and was dubbed the "Trial Path."
The entrance was a modest wooden structure with a distinctly Japanese aesthetic, serving simultaneously as the registration point and as something that felt unmistakably like the threshold of a ritual.
A neatly dressed staff member was already waiting.
He carefully inspected the five Badges Ash presented — Boulder Badge gray, Cascade Badge blue, Rainbow Badge, Marsh Badge gold, Soul Badge orange — verified each one on his device, then reached under the counter and produced three sets of documents, which he slid across to Ash.
"Challenger Ash, please read this carefully and sign the 'Accident Risk Notification and Liability Waiver Agreement,'" the staff member said, his voice steady and entirely without inflection.
He did this every day. He had absolutely no feelings about it anymore.
Ash took the document and glanced down — and the corner of his mouth gave an involuntary twitch.
Right beneath the document title, in bold, attention-grabbing font, were three words:
LIFE AND DEATH PACT.
The contents proceeded to itemize, in considerable detail, every category of danger one might encounter during the ascent, including but not limited to: physical injury from traps, falls, drowning, poisoning, getting lost, and various accidents resulting from personal misjudgment. The document explicitly stated that while the Gym had taken every possible safety precaution, it could not completely eliminate the risk of death, and that the challenger accepted full personal responsibility for all consequences.
This was the kind of thing that defied easy commentary.
"Is... is this level of formality really necessary?" Ash scratched the back of his head, feeling like things were getting a little dramatic.
He'd faced plenty of dangerous situations on his journey so far. But signing a death pact was a first.
Honestly? A small, strange part of him found it kind of exciting.
The staff member raised an eyebrow, his tone unchanged: "Rules are rules."
"Even with a professional medical team and rescue Pokémon on standby — and the medications we provide are top-tier, high-efficacy formulas."
"But a mortality rate — even if you compress the probability to one in a hundred thousand — theoretically still exists."
"After all..." He paused, and then added, in the manner of someone simply stating a fact, "An ordinary person can choke to death on a glass of water."
That left Ash, Misty, and Brock with nothing to say.
Blunt? Yes. But also completely correct. And the fact that their safety protocol went this far actually highlighted the Fuchsia Gym's professionalism, if anything.
Brock and Misty were already privately debating whether to introduce something similar back in their own Gyms when they got home.
Probably wouldn't ever need it — but what if they did? Wouldn't that save an enormous amount of trouble?
The paper itself cost nothing. You could print as many as you liked.
Ash drew a deep breath, picked up the pen, and signed his name in the designated space.
The soft scratch of the pen across paper sounded, somehow, like the curtain being drawn on the adventure to come.
The moment the signature was complete, the staff member gave a nod, drew two Poké Balls from his side, and released them.
Two flashes of light.
A Volcarona appeared — its wings shimmering with the luminescent dust of its scales — and beside it, an Ariados, crouching low and still against the ground.
"These two Pokémon will accompany you throughout the entire challenge," the staff member explained.
"The Volcarona is proficient in Psychic-type techniques — in an emergency, it can forcibly extract a challenger from danger."
"The Ariados can detect minute vibrations, and the silk thread it produces is extraordinarily durable."
"They have both undergone specialized training. They will not respond to your commands — do not attempt to win them over."
"Both carry cameras that will record your run from start to finish. The moment you request their assistance, or they intervene because you are in danger, the challenge is considered failed."
The staff member handed Ash a device resembling a wristwatch, equipped with a button and a small screen — an emergency distress unit.
"Remember." His tone shifted, his voice taking on deliberate weight.
"Throughout the entire challenge, you may only rely on your own capabilities."
"If you release your own Pokémon to assist you at any point — for any reason whatsoever — the challenge is immediately forfeit."
"If you wish to give up, press the distress button. A rescue team will reach you quickly. But it will also mean this challenge attempt is over."
The rules were clear and uncompromising.
The staff member had also made no mention of what would happen if a challenger's method of cheating surpassed the monitoring system's ability to catch it.
If a deception exceeds the capacity to detect it — there is no deception.
A crime that is never discovered is not a crime.
A violation that is never caught is not a violation.
This is the way of the ninja.
Misty and Brock exchanged a glance, then each gave Ash a firm pat on the shoulder.
"We'll be waiting for you at the summit dojo, Ash!" Misty said, her tone carrying encouragement — and a thread of genuine worry beneath it.
This sounded considerably more dangerous than her own Cerulean Gym challenge, when she thought about it.
"Be careful, and trust your own judgment. Trust what you've trained these past weeks," Brock added. "We'll be at the finish line."
"Pika pika!" Pikachu leapt into Misty's arms and waved at Ash with a tiny paw.
Because of his deep dislike for being inside a Poké Ball, there was simply no way for him to accompany Ash through the challenge.
"Mai mai~" Misdreavus, though clearly conflicted about the separation, made the choice herself and retreated into her Poké Ball.
(σ≥∇)σ Misdreavus: I refuse to be apart from you~
Ash gave a firm nod, watching as Pikachu, Brock, and Misty boarded the clearly tourist-and-forfeit-friendly cable car on the other side and began their ascent.
He turned back toward the gate, which was slowly swinging open. Beyond it lay the Zone Five course.
Past the gate was a mountain path that wound into the shade of the trees — ordinary-looking on the surface, but radiating an invisible, almost palpable pressure.
Ash took one last look at the massive area map hanging on the nearby wall.
It was covered in a dense array of different colors and symbols:
After the starting point, the first section was the relatively basic trials — a narrow log bridge spanning a deep gorge, a sheer rock face that had to be climbed bare-handed, and an area marked "Mist Bamboo Grove," clearly designed to test concealment ability and directional sense.
Higher up, difficulty escalated sharply into the "Dense Mechanism Zone." The diagram clearly illustrated walls lined with poison-dart launchers, arrays of stone spikes that alternately jutted out and retracted, and countless pressure plates that looked ordinary but would send a person plunging the moment they stepped on the wrong one.
And that was only the middle section.
Further up the map still, the labels read: "Underwater Climbing Zone," "Balance Bridge," "Rotating Log Array," "Tilting Platform," "Devil's Staircase" — names that made your scalp prickle just reading them.
Ash drew in a deep breath of crisp mountain air, folded the more detailed paper route map the staff had provided into a pocket close to his chest.
He gave a final glance at the distress device on his wrist and at the Volcarona and Ariados standing in silent readiness beside him.
"Let's move!" His voice was quiet, but absolutely steady.
Psychic power, Aura, and Ho-Oh's blessing.
It would be stranger if he couldn't get through.
In truth, a Martial Artist's skillset and a ninja's didn't overlap completely — but a Martial Artist's raw physical foundation tended to exceed a ninja's by a significant margin.
As someone who had taken his first real steps down the path of a Martial Artist, after cramming the specific techniques a ninja would use in emergencies... Ash felt that even if he wasn't a professional ninja himself, he could at minimum be an anti-ninja — someone who knew enough to counter one.
He didn't need to be good at it. He just needed to know how to neutralize it.
He stepped through the gate. Behind him, the entrance slowly swung shut, sealing off the world outside.
The light seemed to dim by a degree. The sound of wind through the trees and distant birdsong suddenly grew unnaturally clear, as if every sensation had been amplified — as if the forest itself were listening to every flutter of thought inside him.
Volcarona fanned its wings soundlessly, hovering at a slight angle behind and above Ash.
Ariados moved on all four of its legs — and yes, only four, which was genuinely peculiar for a spider; it had clearly had six before evolving — and followed silently on the other side.
Two silent guardians. Two silent monitors.
---
The opening stretch of the path was relatively flat — an ordinary mountain dirt trail, seemingly designed to put people at ease and lower their guard.
But Ash didn't let his guard drop for a moment. His time training at the Shadow Swiftness Dojo had taught him clearly: stillness was almost always the warning sign of a more violent storm to come.
Ninja might not be overwhelming in a direct frontal fight — but their variety of tricks was genuinely extensive. And they had a particular fondness for exploiting the automatic, instinctive reactions of human nature.
"Let me have a go at this the old-fashioned way first..." Ash chose not to activate his Aura sense or his Psychic abilities right out of the gate.
This was, after all, an excellent training opportunity. There was no reason to immediately rely on his advantages — even when those advantages were his own power.
Because what if, someday, his Psychic power and Aura were somehow disrupted or interfered with? Better to know he could manage without them.
Ash slowed his pace and drew on all of his senses.
His eyes swept sharply across the path ahead, the trees on either side, and the branches overhead.
His ears caught at every incongruous sound.
His nose gave a faint, deliberate twitch, alert for any unusual smell.
Sure enough — after he rounded a large boulder, the first obstacle appeared.
Three narrow log bridges ran parallel across a wide, deep gorge. The gorge below murmured with moving water; mist curled up from the darkness, obscuring any view of the bottom.
The bridges themselves looked weathered and battered — as if a single misstep could snap them in two.
But that was just the appearance of things.
Ash crouched and examined them closely.
The surface wood was old, yes — but the key load-bearing structural elements had clearly been reinforced.
The real danger was the gaps between the bridges, and the unpredictable, turbulent air currents that surged up from the gorge at irregular intervals — capable of throwing a person's balance completely off, or simply blowing them right over the edge.
Can't hesitate. Speed is important, but every step has to be planted.
The answer crystallized in Ash's mind almost instantly.
He suppressed the instinct to activate his Aura and began analyzing the three bridges through observation and reasoning alone.
He did not choose the center bridge, which looked the most stable at first glance. Instead, after careful observation, he chose the one on the left.
Because in the brief moment he'd been watching, he had noticed that the two bridges on the right exhibited extremely faint, out-of-sync vibrations when the air currents passed. The left bridge was comparatively isolated and affected less.
Calculating the exact numerical values for something as complex as fluid dynamics — the specific behavior of flowing air — would have required an enormous amount of processing. But simply identifying the relative differences? That was far simpler.
"Here we go!" Ash said under his breath, steadied his breathing, and stepped onto the log bridge.
The instant his foot made contact with the wood, a suction force from below and a lateral gust from the side hit simultaneously — his body swayed.
Volcarona and Ariados tracked his movement, ready to intervene at a moment's notice. Psychic power and silk thread could haul a fallen challenger back up — these two had extensive experience with that particular drill.
In reality, challengers who cleared it on the first try were rare. Most people needed multiple attempts.
But who exactly was Ash?
Even without his Psychic power or Aura, his physical conditioning was frankly absurd.
His core engaged in an instant, his arms spreading slightly like wings, and he found his center of gravity again in a heartbeat.
He didn't pause. Drawing on the precise muscle control he'd developed at the Fighting Spirit Dojo, he moved forward in quick, light, springy steps — each one placed with deliberate care.
A solid lower body foundation — that was basic curriculum for any Martial Artist. What good was a fighter who couldn't keep his footing during high-speed movement?
Volcarona drifted silently above and slightly behind him, wings giving the faintest flutter as it monitored the shifting air currents.
Ariados stayed back on the bank, its compound eyes locked unblinkingly on Ash's every movement.
Then, midway across the bridge, a far more powerful gust of wind suddenly slammed in from the side.
The bridge groaned and lurched into violent motion.
Ash's center of gravity shifted dangerously. He was on the very edge of falling.
In that razor-thin instant, Ash dropped almost on instinct — one knee bending, lowering his center of gravity drastically, while his other foot clamped down on the bridge surface like it was rooted to the earth.
He didn't fight the wind. Instead, he moved with the motion of the swaying bridge, executing a small, controlled rotation to bleed off the force — like a willow branch in a gale.
The moment the gust broke, he surged forward again, a few rapid strides, and landed solidly on the far bank.
"Phew..." Ash let out a long breath and wiped his forehead — where there was, in fact, no cold sweat at all.
"That had a bit of difficulty to it. But only a bit."
"Though I still have to ask the obvious question..." he muttered. "Can most Trainers actually get through something like this?"
It was just an idle comment, though.
You didn't need to challenge the Fuchsia Gym specifically to qualify for the Indigo League, after all.
In fact, of all the Gyms Ash had challenged, the only ones that had large numbers of successful challengers were Pewter Gym, Cerulean Gym, and Celadon Gym.
Places like Vermilion Gym, Saffron Gym, and Fuchsia Gym had very low success rates. Especially as Badge counts went higher.
A significant portion of the trainers who competed in the Indigo League had earned their Badges from outside the eight mainstream Gyms.
Most of them only had their first two or three Badges from the mainstream Gyms.
Especially from Badge Five onward, the difficulty began spiking sharply — this was not a difficulty level designed for rookie Trainers anymore.
Ash remembered that the Saffron Gym even had spatial teleportation devices inside it.
He recalled something Alakazam had said to him:
— Alakazam: As a Trainer, your brain needs to actually work.
— Alakazam: The Saffron Gym's maze contains various teleportation devices. Calculate the correct route using the formulas provided, and you can exit.
As for the highest-tier, eight-Badge assessment that Saffron Gym offered... Ash had, at the time, idly glanced at some of those test questions — and his brain had nearly short-circuited on the spot.
What in the world was any of that?
Even with a reference book in hand, an open-book exam wouldn't guarantee passing.
— Ash: /□/∂□+∞-∞|A|A100
— Ash: Mr. Alakazam, why are there almost no actual numbers in the math formulas you gave me? It's all letters and symbols.
— Ash: What's this upside-down [A]?
— Alakazam: (◉▽◉) Idiot.
— Alakazam: Symbols and letters are the universal language of mathematics. They elevate the 'specificity' of individual numbers into the 'universality' of general rules — far more efficient and far more broadly applicable than working with concrete numbers.
— Alakazam: You pose no threat to me in academia. But you could absolutely make me lose face in the field of education.
— Ash: (ノ∀`) [picks nose]*
All one could say was — a Gym run by Team Rocket really was something else.
[Note: The final few lines of the source text are severely fragmented and garbled due to OCR corruption. The legible fragments appear to read roughly: "This time, using my own — / Under my nourishment, the greatest — / 'Cultivation Furnace' perhaps." This appears to be a corrupted system notification or author's comment fragment and cannot be translated with full fidelity. The chapter's substantive content concludes with the math-lesson flashback above.]
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