Thanks Dredd for all the talking with me you did to help me figure out how to go about this.

Spoiler:

After the group split, Joseph continued hunting down the art thief. After what they had experienced in the town, Joseph wasn’t quite the same. His anger seemed even worse than before, and he was plagued by nightmares. He continued tracking like the group had previously, but was constantly hitting dead ends. It was as if the fake Joseph knew exactly when he would show up and left just before he could get there.

After a month longer of hunting, He finally managed to catch the fake Joseph and the girl who was said to be travelling with him. It was dusk, nearby a gallery one of his stolen art pieces was in. Joseph confronted them and began demanding an explanation. The fake Joseph said he would explain himself if Joseph could beat him in a Pokemon battle. He told Joseph to meet him in the forest nearby town at midnight. Joseph continued yelling for a while before finally agreeing.

At midnight he showed up and saw that the fake Joseph already had his first Pokemon out. It was a Raichu. Joseph sent out his Combusken first. It was a close fight, but the Raichu still came out on top. He sent out his Mightyena to finish the job.

What came next was a complete surprise. The fake Joseph began to shift and change. He began to shrink down, losing his color, and turning a purplish pink color. He was a Ditto. He only stayed in his original form for a moment before transforming to match the Mightyena. A tough fight ensued, where it seemed neither Pokemon was stronger than the other. Eventually the girl, who was watching from a short distance away, yelled at them to stop, and that she had seen enough.

The girl began transforming too. Not into a Ditto though. This time, something bigger. She began to turn red and white, completely changing her shape. She was Latias. She began to explain to Joseph that she had been testing him for something, but would not tell him exactly what. Him tracking her down was all part of the test. She needed to take his artwork to get his attention. She said she had one final test for him. She wanted him to go down into a nearby cave and sketch an Aggron that lived there without angering it.

Without even waiting until day, Joseph began descending into the cave. When he reached the aggron, it was sleeping. He sat down in the corner of the room and got to work. He was almost done when it woke up, but it hadn’t seen him yet. Joseph crept back up to a higher area of the cave and finished the picture by memory before returning to the surface. At the exit to the cave he found a note. The note read, “You passed. You will be seeing me again in the future. Until then, good luck.” Next to the note was a bag containing all of Joseph’s artwork.

From there Joseph returned home. He stayed there with his mom and dad for two months. He began having strong regrets about the group splitting. He kept Lucian in his thoughts often, and never stopped thinking about Colden. He was completely convinced that Colden was still alive somewhere, and he knew that someday the group would come back together.

After a while, he left and decided to start training again. He planned to get back into the Pokemon league. He trained hard, working both his Pokemon and himself. In the meantime, he made it a side goal to try and track down the rest of the group, but didn’t actually pursue this goal very much until the fifth month of their separation. Also during the fifth month of their separation, he received coordinates from someone claiming to be Dr. Sarin. Checking a map, he saw that the coordinates were a cave in west Hoenn. He immediately began heading to the coordinates. His hope was that the others had received the coordinates too, and that they would be there when he got there.