About nine in the morning, Delia crept into her son's room.
The TV was still on, quietly talking about the news, but Ash was completely out cold – sprawled on his bed and cuddling a big lump underneath the blankets.
Delia didn't giggle, because she knew sometimes eight year old boys could get defensive about cuddling plushes. So she just patted her son's sleeping head, and crept right back out again to let him sleep in.
There were a lot of things in Ash's life which were kind of cool.
His Pokémon friends were cool, for example, even Hoopa who could get kind of annoying sometimes. And Professor Oak was cool, because Professor Oak knew so much about Pokémon that even the boring books in his lab were full of Pokémon with all kinds of cool abilities.
And Professor Oak running a summer camp was extra cool, because it had all the fun sides of camping out without the downside of having to sit in a car for hours or whatever to actually get to where you were going to camp.
The hailstorm that had swept over unexpectedly, though… that wasn't cool.
Except in a literal sense.
Ash had been out trying to finish an orienteering task, because he'd been way behind everyone else and had ended up going round them in the wrong order, and he'd only just found the last post – and stamped his sheet – when the hail had swept over. So he'd run for the nearest shelter, a section of tree canopy that was thick enough to keep the stones from hitting him or ruining his sheet, and just sort of sat under the tree waiting.
It wouldn't go on for that long, probably. And if it looked like it was going to take ages, he could always change his mind.
Ash had lost a precise track of how long he'd been waiting – it wasn't all that long, but it had been several minutes – when some movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
A shadowy, ethereal shape, half-buried in the ground and moving through it like it didn't actually know the ground was there, was heading through the undergrowth towards him.
It was quite big, and Ash moved to the side so there'd be room under the tree.
The shape slid into place next to him, and Ash tried to get a closer look without actually being rude and staring.
It had several gold rings around it, and a pair of shadowy wings. There were some glowing red eyes, as well, but Ash couldn't see any legs… but, then again, it was sort of half-buried into the ground.
Ash shrugged, and sat back against the tree.
"Pretty nasty weather, huh?" he asked.
The Pokémon replied with a rumbling sound, and Ash listened closely.
It was sort of like… actually, he was pretty sure that was a yes. It sounded like what Pokémon had said when they meant yes before.
"Are you a Ghost type?" he asked. "Or a Ground type? They're the two I can think of who could go through the ground like that."
The Pokémon said something else.
"The first one?"
"Yes."
Ash nodded, glad to have the mystery solved. "Thanks."
Ten minutes later, the hail had got worse rather than stopping.
"Oh, great," Ash said, shaking his head. "I can't stay here forever, and my sheet's going to get ruined when I go through this."
The Pokémon hiding under the tree next to him rumbled something, then the golden rings around it glowed.
A sort of gap appeared in the air, with a weird shadowy space behind it, and the Pokémon rose out of the ground – revealing itself to be bigger than Ash had expected, with six legs and a red-grey-and-black body – and walked inside.
Once it had, it changed shape, becoming a serpentine Pokémon without legs that floated instead, and it made a sort of inviting gesture from inside the hole in the air.
"You want me to come in?" Ash asked.
"Yes," the Pokémon said.
Ash peered through, then stepped inside, and looked around in awe. "Wow…"
There were trees and grasslands on this side of the hole as well, but they looked really different. The grass he was standing on was part of a space only about twenty feet across, and overhead there was a cube-shaped mass of land with trees on all six sides – each one a tall pine tree stretching out into the void.
It was beautiful and weird and amazing, and Ash said so in tones of wonder.
The Pokémon swept down next to him, then pointed off in a specific direction.
Ash looked, but he couldn't see anything. "What is it?"
The Pokémon tried again, hovering next to Ash, and Ash frowned.
"Umm…" he began, and the Pokémon rumbled something he didn't quite catch before drifting sideways and nosing at his orienteering map.
Ash unfolded it, and looked at the stamps. Then the Pokémon reached down with a shadowy wing-claw and gently touched the map.
"Oh, right!" Ash realized. "That's where we're all staying. You mean that way's home?"
"Yes," the Pokémon confirmed.
A few amazing minutes later – Ash had got to ride a Pokémon again, like Solgaleo, but this time the Pokémon could fly! - his latest friend deposited him gently on a section of weird ground, then put something in front of him.
It was a mirror.
"Is that for me?" Ash asked.
"Yes," the Pokémon said.
Ash picked it up, impressed by how it looked – it was sort of old, and made of polished metal, and the reflection wasn't very good, but at the same time when he looked at it he could see both his reflection and a sort of like-a-reflection image of where he and the other Summer Camp people were staying.
"Thanks!" he said, putting it in his pocket, and the Pokémon made another of those holes for him to go through.
It still meant a run through the hail, but it was a short run.
"Where were you, Ash?" Professor Oak asked. "Everyone else got back a long time ago. I was considering sending one of my Pokémon out to look for you."
"Mostly I was doing the orienteering challenge," Ash replied, bringing out the map paper. "It's really hard, Professor, but I wasn't going to give up until I'd finished!"
Professor Oak chuckled, shaking his head. "Oh, dear me, Ash.