Zhardan

When I talked to Ash he says that I didn't start with pikachu but I did start with piakchu idk what the problem is?

Hi while i was doing the ash hat quest I talked to ash and he said something like "I don't need your help anymore" and disappeared and now im confused on what to do. I still have the unkown hat on my mankey but i have no ash to talk to. (Also i picked pikachu as my starter) on another note a mod in the discord said that i need to beat ash in viridian which im sure i beat him but also don't remember because it was so many months ago. Can someone pls verify this cuz idk what to do anymore