"It's like a dream, the memories, hidden within the mists of a passing fog."
Score: 7/10
The heroes are heading to the Skyarrow Bridge, the last major obstacle before the plot advances. Just before they escape the filler, Ash stops at a pokemart by the bridge and runs into a woman named Sally.
In the mart, Ash exchanges Sewaddle for Pidove and is then flabbergasted to see Sally, whom almost ran into in front of the store as they both entered the store, in the store. She's looking at a few pictures of a ferry that used to run here before the bridge was built.
They take their leave of the character of the day, but suddenly, the area is foggy, so Officer Jenny appears and sends out a Swanna to use defog... but it doesn't work. Rather than deal with this problem, Officer Jenny instead prioritizes giving tickets to people who try to drive in the fog. I would call her the worst cop ever, but honestly, real cops love to park behind trees and wait for people to run stop signs instead of stopping murders and stuff, so yeah, this is pretty realistic.
Ash decides to just ignore the fog and cross the bridge anyway, but it just gets thicker as they go. A Gothitelle appears over the bridge and obstructs their passage, refusing to let them cross, so Ash attacks with Snivy. A leaf storm connects with a psybeam, plunging the heroes into another world. Yep. It’s that easy.
The heroes see that the bridge is still being built and a girl who looks exactly like a younger version of Sally is running a ferry across the river. She has a Gothitelle, so, seeing that this is where the plot is, the heroes board the ferry. The captain laments that his ferry will soon close with the bridge's completion, and it's Cilan who figures out that they've traveling "into another world" (not through time). Yes, Cilan, the guy who made a huge stink about science and reasonable explanations is the guy who talks about time travel and interdimensional movement here. When they reach the other side of the bridge, the heroes find they're on the same side of the bridge that they started on. Cilan realizes that they're stuck in a loop that will always result in them reaching this ferry because the writers had just finished watching Window of Opportunity before they made this episode.
The heroes watch Sally order her Gothitelle to help her get more supplies for the ferry, so she has it use psychic to open a door. No, literally, this happens. Amazing psychic powers from "the astral body pokemon" are used to open a door.
Cilan decides that Gothitelle might be the key to this, so they decide to ask about it. Sally explains that Gothitelle used to be wild, but one day decided to just help out and hang around - Gothitelle is extremely happy helping by opening doors and sweeping floors. Cilan now believes that Gothitelle can warp space and created a world made out of its memories of time spent with Sally, and Ash says that he doesn't think these memories are particularly special, what a dick.
They watch Gothitelle leave into the fog surrounding the area after it finishes helping for the day, and decide to follow it. It walks onto the bridge, and as soon as it's out of sight of Sally and her father, the heroes ask to be allowed to leave its memory world. Obviously, the most reasonable response is to attack, so Cilan decides that if they battle Gothitelle, they might learn something useful (spoilers: they don’t). Ash sends out Snivy, and during the battle, adult Sally appears and tells Gothitelle that she also got lost in this memory world.
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Started: July 6, 2005