The original storyline for cabolto involved ash. I wrote it when i was little, around 9 or 10 years old maybe younger, and i was a HUGE anime fan. I loved the anime, especially xyz and dp, and i wanted to write a story that was similar but edgier and darker because i was PAINFULLY edgy as a littlie — so i brought in my blorbo of the era and gave him MORE trauma, obviously.
Back then i wrote that he was taking the gym challence in cabolto before it suffered The Blast (a huge explosion caused by team rocket that decimated the majority of the region), and when communication and travel outside of the region was destroyed, he got stuck there.
He hadn't taken any old pokémon out of his pc, so he was stuck with pikachu and the three other pokémon he had caught by that point: accordiepig, fluppy and blankit. Those three didn't actually exist yet when i first wrote it, but i never elaborated on what he actually had, so later in my life i decided on those lol. He was hurt after being caught in the shockwave, but decided to continue moving until he got to some kind of still-functioning civilisation.
As he continued to travel and, rather than continue the badge quest, help the people of the region survive the new environment, he made some travel buddies who wanted to see how the rest of cabolto was doing.
He met a dragonite who became her own trainer, a boy stricken with grief as the sylveon part of his body tried to comfort him with its ribbons, a farmer who could now be differentiated from his twin by a pair of tauros horns, a gengar who was trapped possessing the body of its owner... and lots, LOTS of brand-new weird pokémon that had various unusual problems.
He also ran into his friend and rival Gary! He'd gotten stuck too while doing research. A pretty severe head injury post-blast had given him a cognitive processing disability, which made his work harder, but he refused to throw in the towel; he and ash teamed up to study what was going on and maybe find out how to fix it. They both remained stuck in cabolto for 5 years, until a plane crash and some new friends started a road towards hope and reconnection.
Ash is no longer canon to the main story of cabolto, but i still like to think about it from time to time. There's so much i never explored as a little kid, and I'd still like to fiddle with it — while obviously changing some aspects to be less,,,,,, stpuid
btw Egads! There he is! The sacred decade-old texts! Lol he looked so dumb back then
