The twerps help a disobedient little shit do something dangerous
Gave it a miss this week
It's okay to do something forbidden if you REALLY wanted to do it!
Today finds the twerps and Alexa at a Pokémon Center at one of the Decolore Islands, where Alexa is taking photos for an article on the latest Pokémon Treatment Machine. This one is supposedly able to work at double the speed of the previous model, which is great for Joy because it gives her more time to stand around without any other function in life. Alexa apologises to the twerps for the rather dry subject matter, but since they're all huge Pokémon nerds they insist they're excited at the chance to look at a motionless machine that looks exactly the same as the old one. They were meaning to get all their Pokémon checked up on anyway, so all their Pokéballs are wheeled in for treatment while Alexa decides to work a little on her article while they wait for the next ship to come in. The twerps say they'll hang out and wait for the treatment/check-ups to be over, so Alexa asks if they'll be dears and go and check on her Gogoat for her. They agree happily, and head outside to see...
Outside, they find Gogoat drinking from a fountain, or checking out its reflection maybe. They explain that Alexa is inside working on her article and wants it to wait, and the patient Pokémon agrees amicably enough. Alone with the Pokémon for the first time, the twerps are kind of fascinated, it's such a well behaved Pokémon and it's from a region none of them have been to before. Ash wants to have a battle against it, but Iris points out that he can't have a battle without Alexa there. Ash agrees reluctantly, then begs Gogoat to show him just ooooooonnnneeeee little move. Gogoat doesn't give that shit away for free though, and is too disciplined to let rip with anything unless Alexa is there to give the okay, so it just clops away with dignity. Ash sighs and the others tell him to calm the fuck down and just wait for Alexa to finish up, then he can get what he wants. He agrees, and takes to just running around like an idiot chasing a giggling Pikachu and Axew. They leap gleefully into some bushes and he loses his balance and goes headfirst in, leaving only his lower half sticking out. Iris casts a critical gaze over his presented ass and sighs, not impressed at all.
Cilan laughs and checks on Gogoat, which is grazing quietly from some nearby grass. But after looking away, he fails to see a small boy approach to say hello to the great big ol' Pokémon. Gogoat takes an instant liking to him, nuzzling his face, and when the boy takes hold of one horn an odd telepathic link seems to be generated. Gogoat hears the boy's thoughts, he wants to go somewhere important but his mother won't let him. So Gogoat gets up and indicates to the boy that it will take him where he wants to go, and the little boy eagerly gets up on Gogoat's back and off they go!
Cilan notices at last that Gogoat is gone and jumps up in alarm, joined by the others. They rush out to the grass where they last saw it and look around, hoping that maybe it's just standing at a weird angle or something. With no idea where it could have gone, Cilan decides they should go look in the city and Iris says she'll let Alexa know what is going on. Ash and Cilan quickly exhaust searching the immediate area (it must be a small "city") but the skidding of car tires quickly gets their attention. They spot Officer Jenny talking with a distraught woman in the street, and decide to interrupt the clearly upset woman because they're trying to find a Pokémon and what could be more important than that? Well it turns out the woman's child Tony is missing, leaving Ash and Cilan quietly horrified as their "problem" starts to feel a little unimportant. Officer Jenny is intrigued though, because she recently heard a report of a boy matching Tony's description being seen with a rare Pokémon. Apparently that description didn't capture her imagination when she was "only" looking for Tony, but add in the words "with a Pokémon" to the description,"A boy who looks exactly like the missing child you're searching for" and suddenly Sherlock Jenny is making deductions!
Alexa has arrived with a panting Iris (she has much shorter legs and prefers to swing through trees!) and tells them that Gogoat being such a rare Pokémon for this region probably made it stand out to the observers. Using her keen journalistic insight of knowing stuff about her own Pokémon, she tells them that Gogoat form a bond when their horns are touched (so Gogoat is a boy then!) and can sense the deepest desires of whoever touched them.... which is why Brock must have a restraining order from ever going near a Gogoat! So IF Tony met Gogoat and IF Tony touched Gogoat's horns and IF Gogoat sensed Tony's desires and IF it decided to help him meet them..... well that wild speculation is all the evidence that Officer Jenny needs! Tony's mother says this could only mean they're headed to the observatory, right up the top of the mountain where her husband works. It seems it is his birthday, and Tony was excited to give his dad a present till he learned that his father would be working an overnight shift and wouldn't be home till the next day. Tony ran out of the house in a rage, insisting he would get up to that observatory and give his dad his present, goddammit! Jenny is alarmed, the mountain can be dangerous and no place for children.... so she quickly agrees to stay behind and continue searching the city while three children and Alexa go up into the mountains to look! To be fair, she does seem shocked when Ash first makes the suggestion, but quickly warms to the idea of putting four children in danger as opposed to just one. Cilan gives the justification that they don't even know that Tony is really up there, which just makes it worse, because she's potentially sending three kids into danger for no reason whatsoever! She even insists that the mother return home in case Tony returns, meaning the only adult supervision is from Alexa, who wasn't even around to keep an eye on her Gogoat in the first place!
The twerps rush up to the foot of the mountain, but there are two paths that both lead to the observatory and no way of knowing which is the one Tony MIGHT have taken. They have no choice but to split up (or go back to the Pokémon Center and pick up their surely fully treated Pokémon!) and take both paths. Ash volunteers to go with Alexa, which must make Cilan and Iris feel like huge pieces of shit, and they head away down the different paths.
Ash is worried for the well-being of the kid he has never met before, but Alexa assures him he will be fine if he is with Gogoat (then why are they out searching for him?). Ash seems unconvinced so she explains to the seasoned world-traveller and constant world-saviour that she has been to more places than he can imagine and been in plenty of dangerous situations, and could always rely on Gogoat to get her through. Ash asks how they first met, and she explains in a flashback to a long time ago when she was apparently the same age she is now (is she ageless like Ash then?). She was sitting by a campfire in a forest when a Ducklett spotted her camera headset and decided that it wanted to have it, because what forest aquatic bird DOESN'T need a camera!?! Startled when it saw her watching it, it took off in a panic and caused her backpack and camera to fall down the side of a cliff. Needing her pack, she skidded down the cliff and was relieved to find the camera unbroken... but now she was stuck at the bottom of the cliff and no way to get back to her camp before it got dark. That was when Gogoat appeared, instantly friendly towards her and nuzzling her cleavage happily (like you wouldn't). Reaching out and grabbing it by the horns to get some leverage to get its snout out of her tits, they shared that brief moment of connection. Sensing she wanted to get back to her campsite (and not have wet animal snout in her boobs) it offered her its back to ride on. Racing up the cliff in a thrice, she hopped off of its back and thanked it, then unceremoniously asked if it would like to journey with her. It agreed happily and the two have had many adventures since then, such as traversing a desert where it dumped her in an oasis so it could have a drink, or moving through the snow and huddling together for warmth in a cave. Ash is pleased, and she says that he and Pikachu clearly have the same kind of bond, and they continue on their journey, none of them mentioning poor ol' Helioptile that is riding on her fanny pack and getting none of this,"Friends 2geva 4eva" stuff coming its way.
Elsewhere in the mountains, Gogoat leads them to a spring of water and Tony gets a good drink. Gogoat looks up at the sun and glows green, and the re-energising light seems to pass to Tony too, filling him with warmth and making him feel refreshed.
Iris is up in a tree trying to see if she can spot Tony from a higher point of view. She sees nothing, though, and Cilan suggests this means that Ash and Alexa took the correct path. Indeed they did, as Ash spots Tony and Gogoat on the path ahead and calls out to them, he and Alexa rushing up to see if this kid is the Tony they're looking for. Tony is upset when he learns that Ash is here on behalf of Tony's mother and insists he isn't going back, but then to his horror discovers that Gogoat won't continue any further. It lowers to its knees so Tony can get off, turned to greet Alexa who explains that Gogoat is her Pokémon. Tony is upset, saying he didn't know that Gogoat belonged to somebody (the saddlebags didn't give it away?), but she is understanding and tells him not to worry, it was Gogoat who made the decision to take him there. Tony thanks Gogoat for being so thoughtful, then with the carefree, unthinking nature of the very young he declares he'll just continue on without Gogoat and turns to leave!
Ash pulls him back, telling him it is too dangerous to go alone (take this!), why can't he just wait till tomorrow and see his dad then? Tony takes a tube out and says he promised his dad a great present on his birthday and it just won't be the same any other day. Alexa has an idea that satisfies everybody though - why she'll just escort him up there! Everybody will love that, especially Tony's mother who has no idea if he is alive or dead or not! She justifies it by saying that somebody has probably called Tony's dad by now. Surely he's just casually waiting to see his son, and not at all in utter dread as he imagines the fruit of his loins lying dead and broken somewhere in the rocks, his body being eaten away by indifferent Pokémon.
They continue on, Ash asking to see what the present is but Tony giggling and rushing on ahead saying it is a secret. To their surprise find the path "blocked" by a large number of Foongus. Ash's Pokédex warns him that they like to lure people in close before releasing poison spores, so he of course moves on in close! He asks them to please move aside so they can continue on, and the Foongus let rip with a cloud of poison spores, with Ash and Pikachu barely leaping out of the way in time. It's too dangerous to approach, but they have to go that way to get to the observatory. Luckily, Alexa the responsible adult has a solution.... they'll just scale the ridiculously dangerous looking rock walls!
Soon they zooming up the side on Gogoat's back, terrifying a roosting Pidove along the way as Gogoat bounces easily from rock to rock and soon gets them up to the top. Ash jumps down to the ground and declares they'll be at the observatory in a flash, and Tony beams with delight. But the very next obstacle seems like a dealbreaker, as they reach a rickety old wooden bridge. Ash suggests they could swim across instead but Alexa takes one look at the swift current and for once makes a mature adult decision - fuck that! No no, she has a much better idea than something as crazy as swimming against a hard current... they'll just cut down that one tree on the other side of the bridge instead!
So how the fuck is that going to happen then? She has Gogoat use Vine Whip to lift Pikachu up and move him to the other side of the bridge. Pikachu then uses Iron Tail on the poor innocent tree, doing just enough damage to cause it to tip slightly towards the river. Alexa then has Gogoat use Vine Whip again, and she, Ash and Tony help it to haul back on the tree, slowly tipping it further and further until the trunk snap and it crashes down across the chasm, forming a slightly sturdier but still relatively unstable and dangerous bridge. Pikachu had been hanging off of Gogoat's Vine Whip rather dangerously in order to add more weight and tension on the tree, and yet somehow managed to land on top of the trunk when it hit the ground.
Ash is first over the trunk, balancing carefully and rushing over the last few feet once Pikachu is clear. Next is Gogoat, with Tony clinging tenaciously to its back and Alexa holding onto Gogoat's tail for support. Over the other side, they continue on and reach the observatory just as the sun is setting... and Iris and Cilan are already there. Tony's dad comes running up, frantic to see his son because the first he probably heard about this was when these two stranger kids showed up looking for "Tony's dad". They rush up to each other and Tony's dad hugs him, then tells him sternly he shouldn't have run away like that. Tony apologises but explains that he really wanted to give him his birthday present, and that makes it okay of course - if you're forbidden from doing something, it's okay to do it anyway if you REALLY wanted to!
He opens the tube and takes out a rolled piece of paper and gives it to his father and.... it's a fucking scrawled crayon drawing of a fucking Braviary. I mean, it's great from the sense of,"My son drew this for me and I love him," but it's sure as hell not the kind of thing that is worth risking life and limb for and making your mother's life a living hell! Of course he says he loves it, he had told Tony that his favourite constellation is the Braviary one, and Tony remembered and drew it for him so he's happy about that.
Iris mentions to Ash that he took so long to get there that she and Cilan were getting worried, and he laughs that it was no problem at all. That IMMEDIATELY gets her Iris-sense tingling and she demands to know what insanely dangerous and stupid thing he got up to this time. Ash is taken aback, knowing he's been rumbled, but is saved by Tony's childish logic that "it's a secret" and therefore cannot be shared!
That night, Tony is reunited with his parents somewhere presumably up near the observatory, even though the dad was supposed to be working! Officer Jenny is there too, hopefully to give him a speech about not being such a stupid, disobedient little shit in the future. The twerps look to the night sky and spot the Braviary constellation and... well... you know, you kind of have to use your imagination when it comes to constellations, and it's no exception in the Pokémon world!