Ash, Misty, and Tracey had no idea what was happening on Pinkan Island. They knew even less that Officer Jenny, the park ranger, was going berserk at that very moment, frantically rushing around the island in search of a "poacher" and "illegal harvester" who had long since left. In any case, after leaving Pinkan Island, the three of them had boarded Lapras and were sailing east.
As it turned out...
The next day, they unexpectedly ran into an old acquaintance at sea?
It was a fleet of two speedboats that had nearly collided with them as they leisurely rode Lapras across the ocean. The fleet's leader wasn't just anyone—it was none other than Joy, who ran the family business that monopolized Pokémon Centers all over the world, that worldwide public institution!
And here was the thing: the woman was Joy herself, not some distant relative, like the cousin of the younger sister of an older aunt's daughter or something?
Besides Joy herself, there was also a television station's interview team and a professional archaeological excavation team. Naturally, they were all with Joy, and they were there to study an ancient Pokémon called Kabuto!
Curious, Ash, Tracey, and Misty followed them to the unnamed island.
They said that the fossils of Kabuto, an ancient crustacean Pokémon and ancestor of the crab Pokémon, as well as the turtle-like Pokémon, had come from that island—and were more than ten thousand years old?
Not long ago, a fisherman from the Orange Islands had accidentally hauled up a Kabuto fossil. After experts examined it and traced its origins, they determined it must have come from this unnamed island north of Little Orange Island and east of Pinkan Island—the so-called Kabuto Island!
And so!
To study the secrets of the extinct Pokémon Kabuto, and to uncover