Repairing Broken Bonds (Collab with Ray Chiu)

Chapter 5: Ash's Birthday

A few days after Ash reunited with his siblings, it was now his birthday, Delia decided to have Ash become the Champion of Sevestar as well. Of course Ash was a bit hesitant, but after encouragement from the others, he also accepted the offer.

Now onto his birthday, he went downstairs to see his friends and family waiting for him.

"Happy Birthday Ash!" Everyone cheered out as Pikachu rushed over and nuzzled Ash, while Ash himself was in happy tears.

"Guys, you...aww guys..."Ash couldn't finish his response before hugging all of them the best he could.

"So Ash, we wanted to know if you'd like to go to Silkan City with us." Mark stated, "We wanted to spend some time with you and show you around."

"Y-yeah...we'd love to hang out with you again Ash..." Golly said, however she seemed a bit worried.

"Golly? What's the matter?" Ash questioned though concern for his sister, "Why...why aren't you being your normal cheery self?"

"Oh, yeah we didn't tell you about that..." Insey sighed, catching Ash and all of his friends' attention, "You see, when she was killed, Mother restored her to normal, but there was a massive problem that's still present..."

"Hold on, there's a what now?!" Pikachu gasped, "What's the problem? What happened?"

"Golly...originally I was trying to keep her spirit freely roaming, however, a greedy Spiritomb came around one day and snatched up her soul, and forced her to commit many atrocious acts for a whole year before I managed to track down the Spiritomb thanks to Giratina." Delia explained, "This was before I decided to revive her still, and the next thing I chose to do was to limit her spirit to stay inside the castle, even if no one else was in with her. However, I stopped that only after a few days after we heard Golly crying in her ghost sleep, the pain she endured still haunts me to this day..."

"I'll take it from here..." Golly sighed, as the others let her explain the rest, "All I could do was watch as everyone played outside, I even watched people play sports, go on picnics, and whenever the others went shopping. I had no company even though Mother told me I could telepathically talk to them at any time. Eventually for a time it felt like I had lost the ability to love entirely...even after getting a new body, the only thing that snapped me out of it was when I met Dusknior as a Duskull, she helped me find the ability to love again after so long." Ash hugged his sister, wanting comfort her, and everyone began to smile after that.

"That must've been very hard for you, I'm sorry I wasn't there to comfort you sis..." Ash cried a bit as Golly says she's alright but thanks Ash.

After that emotional chat, the gang starts to head to Silkan City. The only one who wasn't in the best mood was Lillie. Partly because Minami decided to put a pink little collar and ribbon bow on her, and while Lillie knew it was with good intentions, Lillie thought it looked very stupid on herself. She kept it on however because Minami said she worked really hard to make them, and Lillie didn't want to hurt her feelings, and it wasn't that bad. The main reason however is due to the fact Ash hadn't spoken a word to her for the past couple of days, and the fact she found out Ash had deleted all the pictures with her from Ash's phone. Still, he's a kind and caring person! He never would do that to torture hurt her feelings.

Anyways, eventually they stopped at the mall in Silkan City, the RPA Department Store (normally it's Ash's company but I decided to change it to Delia's for the sake of this story), as Delia decided to offer something to Ash and his siblings.

"Hey, I got an idea, how about since Ash is the World Champion now, you all can try your skills against his team?" Delia suggested to Ash's siblings, which everyone, including the ones who didn't feel like battling, agreed with the idea, they eventually decided on one versus one, with Ash using, his team from the Masters 8 minus Pikachu against Mark's Lucario, Insey's Scizor, Golly's Dusknior, Trevor's Mudstale, and Minami's (Shiny) Sylveon, effectively Ash's Latest full team minus Pikachu against his siblings' Ace Pokémon. The reason why Pikachu was going to sit out was due to the fact Pikachu himself pointed out that him facing them at all would be insanely unfair to anyone. The rounds were decided: Ash's Lucario vs Golly's Dusknior, Ash's Sirfetch'd vs Minami's Sylveon, Ash's Dragonite vs Insey's Scizor, Ash's Gengar vs Trenor's Mudstale, and Ash's Dracovish vs Mark's Lucario. And one battle gimmick per match.