Professor Oak's lab was exactly as chaotic as Ash remembered it.
Research papers on every surface. Equipment stacked in configurations that defied structural logic. Empty ramen containers forming a small tower in the corner that had somehow achieved architectural ambition. The smell of instant noodles and dried plant samples competing for dominance.
Oak himself was in his chair, a half-eaten bowl of ramen in one hand and a stack of papers balanced on his knee, turning to look at Ash with the warm, unhurried expression of a man who had been interrupted mid-thought and didn't particularly mind.
"Ash! What's up, my boy?"
"Grandpa." Ash stood in the middle of the lab and tried to look like someone who had arrived with a completely reasonable request. "I need to talk to you."
"Of course, of course. Sit down — move those papers, just put them anywhere—"
"Anywhere?" Daisy said from the doorway.
"On the floor is fine, Daisy."
"Nothing on the floor is fine, Grandpa."
"The floor is a perfectly valid—"
"Grandpa."
Oak set his ramen down with the slightly relieved expression of a man who has just been rescued from a familiar argument. "So! What did you want to talk about?"
Ash took a breath.
"I want a Pokémon," he said.
The lab went quiet.
May, leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed, made a small sound. Vindication, mostly.
"So that's why," she said.
'Don't look at her,' Ash told himself.
Oak's expression was thoughtful. Not surprised — more like a man running a quiet internal calculation.
"A Pokémon," he said.
"Yes."
"You said, the last time we spoke, that you wanted to wait. Earn the right properly."
"I changed my mind."
"What changed it?"
'I died, came back with ten years of memories, and I'm the only person I know without a Pokémon,' Ash thought.
"I just realised I was wrong to wait," he said. "I'm ready now."
Oak looked at him for a moment with those eyes that always seemed to be reading something further back than the surface of a conversation.
"You're not wrong that you're ready," he said. "You've always had good instincts with Pokémon."
Ash felt the shape of a but forming in the air.
"But?" he said.
"But there are rules," Oak said. Carefully. The way you say something you know won't land well. "And some of them have changed recently."
Ash waited.
Oak set his papers down. Folded his hands. Looked at Ash directly.
"The official trainer age," he said, "has been raised."
"Raised," Ash repeated.
"Yes."
"From ten."
"Yes."
"To what?"
A pause.
"Eighteen," Oak said.
The word landed.
Ash heard it.
'Eighteen,' his brain said.
'Eighteen,' it confirmed.
'You are eight years old. Eighteen minus eight is ten. You have ten years.'
The lab was very quiet.
"Eighteen," Ash said, out loud.
"I know it's—"
"Ten years."
"The policy was revised last—"
"I have to wait ten years."
"Ash—"
"That's an eternity!" Ash burst out, the steadiness cracking open all at once. He threw his arms wide. "What am I supposed to do for ten years?! Just sit here?! Watch everyone else battle?! I wanted to start my journey! I wanted to become a Pokémon Master! I had plans!"
May unfolded her arms. "That does seem excessive," she said, frowning. "What about all the kids who've been dreaming about starting at ten? That's basically pulling the rug out from under them."
"Exactly!" Ash pointed at her. Then remembered he was supposed to be making a calm, dignified case and lowered his arm.
Daisy had moved into the lab properly now, arms crossed, expression shifting from warm to serious. "Grandpa, why wasn't this announced earlier? This is going to devastate every kid in Pallet Town."
"Calm down, all of you." Oak raised both hands, patient and weary in equal measure. "It wasn't a decision made on a whim. The United Regions has been discussing this for quite some time."
"Discussing it quietly, apparently," May muttered.
Oak gave her a look. Then continued.
"There have been incidents. Younger trainers encountering situations they weren't equipped to handle — for their own safety and for the wellbeing of their Pokémon. Beyond that—" he paused, choosing his words carefully, "—Pokémon training dominates the professional world. It always has. The dream pulls in enormous numbers of young people, and the path to success is narrow. Many don't make it. And when they don't, they find themselves without the foundation to pursue anything else."
He looked between the three of them.
"The intent is that by eighteen, a person has had time to experience other things. Discover other interests. Make a more considered choice about whether this is truly the path they want — not just the dream they had at eight."
The lab was quiet again.
May was thinking. Ash could see it on her face — the reluctant acknowledgment that this actually made a kind of sense, wrestling with the part of her that still thought it was deeply unfair.
Daisy nodded slowly. "I can see the logic," she said. "It doesn't make it less of a shock. But I can see it."
Ash said nothing.
He was doing maths.
'Eight years old. Trainer age eighteen. Ten years.'
'In my previous life I was World Champion by now.'
'In this life I have ten years before I can even officially start.'
He stood very still with this for a moment.
Then something in him — the part that had spent ten years learning to take whatever the universe threw at him and keep moving — quietly stood up.
'Fine,' it said. 'Ten years. Use them.'
He dropped dramatically to the floor.
Flat on his back. Arms out. Legs straight. The specific posture of someone who has made a considered decision to be theatrical about something before accepting it.
"That's practically forever," he announced at the ceiling. "I'm going to be ancient. I'll be eighteen. I'll have grey hair."
"You won't have grey hair," Daisy said.
"I might."
"You won't."
"Ten years, Daisy."
May crouched down beside him. Patted him once on the shoulder. "Think about it this way," she said. "You'll know everything before you start. Every route, every gym, every type matchup. You could train for a decade before anyone else even gets their first Pokémon."
"That's assuming I get a Pokémon," Ash said at the ceiling.
"The trainer age governs journeys," Oak said from his chair. "Not companionship. There's nothing stopping you from having a Pokémon now."
Ash sat up.
Looked at Oak.
Then he did it. He deployed the expression — the wide eyes, the slightly tilted head, the clasped hands, the full sincere puppy-dog appeal of someone asking for something they very much want and are not above being endearing about.
"So, Gramps," he said, in a voice approximately thirty percent sweeter than his normal voice. "Since I have all this time to train now... could you maybe give me a Pokémon? Just one. To start building that incredible bond with—"
"Brat," Oak said, with great affection. "You know exactly how to act cute, don't you."
He chuckled, stood up, and began carefully navigating the disaster of his lab toward his desk — sidestepping a stack of field journals, narrowly avoiding a Pidgey feather that had somehow ended up on the floor.
"As it happens," he said, rummaging through several layers of accumulated research chaos, "I did prepare a Pokémon for you a while back. Let me just find—" muttering, shuffling, more muttering — "Ah."
He emerged with a single Pokéball, clean and pristine, from under a pile of what appeared to be fossilised leaves.
"Here," he said, crossing back to Ash. "Go ahead."
Ash took it.
His hands were, very slightly, not entirely steady.
He pressed the button.
The ball opened. Red light. And then — small, orange, flame-tipped tail burning bright — a Charmander blinked up at him from the floor of the lab.
"Char... charr..."
It looked around the cluttered lab with calm, curious eyes. Took in the papers, the equipment, the ramen containers, the humans. Then looked back at Ash.
Something settled in Ash's chest.
He'd had Pokémon before — many of them, over many years. He knew what a first meeting felt like, the particular quality of that moment before a bond had words for itself yet.
This felt like that.
'This one was waiting for me,' he thought, without entirely knowing why.
"Hey," he said quietly, and held out his hand.
Charmander looked at it. Then walked forward and pressed its head into his palm.
"Aww," May and Daisy said, in perfect unison.
Ash smiled.
Oak coughed lightly.
They all looked at him.
"Good thing you came today," he said. "I was about to give that one away. There are two boys who've been asking me for a starter Pokémon for quite some time. If you'd waited much longer—"
"Who?" Ash asked immediately.
"Hmm." Oak rubbed his chin. "One was called Damian, I believe. The other — Cross, perhaps? Two different families, both very persistent."
The names landed with the faint echo of something half-remembered. Ash searched his memory — from this life, from his previous one — but they stayed at the edges. Not quite reachable.
He filed them away.
'Remember those names,' he thought.
"Grandpa," Daisy said, suddenly. She had the expression of someone who has just remembered something and is not entirely pleased that they had to be the one to remember it. "The egg."
Oak blinked. "Egg?"
"The egg. From Father-in-law. For Ash's second birthday." She looked at him pointedly. "The one you've been keeping here for two years."
"Ah." Oak's expression shifted through several stages. "...That egg."
"Yes. That egg."
"It still hasn't hatched," he said, with the mild defensiveness of someone hoping this detail will redirect things.
It did not redirect things.
"You confirmed two years ago it wasn't a dud," Daisy said. "You used the scanner. You told me yourself."
"I did say that."
"So it exists, it hasn't hatched, and you forgot about it."
"I prefer the term deprioritised."
"Grandpa." Her voice was very even. "If it had hatched and you'd forgotten, you would have given it to one of those boys, wouldn't you."
A pause.
"...I might have done," Oak admitted.
"Grandpa."
"They were very persistent—"
"It was a birthday gift from his father!"
Ash, who had been listening to this with Charmander now sitting in his lap looking between the humans with the focused attention of a creature taking everything in, looked up.
"Another Charmander?" he said.
"Probably," Oak said. "Your father seemed to have a type."
Charmander looked up at Ash.
'A brother?' something in its expression seemed to wonder, tail flame flickering with a warmth that hadn't been there before.
Ash looked back down at it.
"Let's go find that egg," he said.