Super effective!

Author's note: I never believed May was ten, not even in the anime (or maybe the one drawing her had a dirty mind), I mean look at her feminine body... :P I don't know what age to assign to her, so you just all give her the age you want, same with everyone else and let's all be happy! Now go and enjoy!

As our heroes continue their way to…oh, sorry! Not this time. This time it's only one young hero, actually. She looks real pretty, she's just passed through the X-rays at the airport of Hoenn and she made the alarm go off for some reason, just like every other girl every single time. Her name is May and there's a Skitty sitting on her head, muttering the usual "nya, nya!" under it's nose. Disconcerted and feeling like a drug dealer, May stands still with her arms slightly raised, trying not to laugh as the police lady examined her briefly. For some reason she was awfully ticklish lately.

"Well, Skitty," she said, "off we go now!"

"Nya, nyaaa!"

A few months ago May has been travelling with a group of friends and her little brother trough the region of Hoenn, participating in battles, contests and adventures. When their ways parted, she stayed home and tried to focus on some studying, thus doing her best to forget the infatuation she had for a fellow coordinator named Drew. Honestly, which girl doesn't enjoy receiving roses and roses?

"Yes, thank you so much, sir, you're most kind." With a polite smile, May gave her suitcase to a man who offered to help her storing it in the compartment over their heads. Then the young lady frowned at her boarding pass and ran her glance trough the crowded airplane, in search of her seat.

Where is she flying anyway? Oh, right! To Johto, that's what it says on her ticket.

"No, Skitty, stop that! That's not a toy, it's that lady's hat! Sorry, I'm sorry…"

And why is she flying to Johto? True, that's not written on her ticket, but it sure lays deep within her light blue eyes, on her blushing cheeks and her bosom, vibrating from the way her heart is thumping. Oh, there's her seat! Finally… I'm sorry, sir, sorry, kindly excuse me – thank you! She breathed out a shaky flow of air and pressed her palms against her chest to calm down a little.

"…There are eight emergency exists…"

Skitty jumped into May's lap and curled up into it's typical sleeping position. Keeping her eyes closed, May began to gently stroke the tip of its tail.

So why is she travelling to Johto again? Well, lately, based on the frequency with which she dropped food from the fork, stared into nothingness and sniffed she roses dad gave to mom, she could but conclude that what she fell into with Drew was more than just an infatuation. And because our May has always been a woman in action, she didn't hesitate, twisted the telephone cable around her index finger and called…

"...We recommend to keep your safety belts fastened during the whole flight."

…her best, best friend Alba, who always understood her and would never hang up, not even if May repeated thirty six times how cute Drew's chin was. Alba didn't disappoint, she told May that she should immediately go where Drew was and tell him that she wanted more roses and a voucher to all her favorite clothing trademarks, before it would be too late! And May didn't disappoint either, as she right then and there said: "Yes! That's what I'm going to do!" And thus, lying to her parents and brother about wanting to win some more contests and missing the freedom from her life, she booked the closest flight to Johto, she got on the plane and this is where we catch up with her.

"…And finally, we remind you that all our flights are non-smoking."

May gobbled up a sweetie, Skitty a piece of May's purple surprise (Skitty flinched and couldn't move) and off they took.

May was lucky to sit next to the window, otherwise she wouldn't get even the single pleasure a flight could give her. She didn't really like to fly, that is. Nevertheless, she didn't have much time to think about this, as she had to do her best to breathe normally. She received so many roses from Drew, Alba's words made her a confident young woman (so confident that she grabbed a pack of contraceptive stickers before leaving), but her hands were still cold and sweaty, which is probably the worst combination you can imagine.

She thought if she asked the stewardess for wine it'd make her chill out, but she didn't get one, because she still wasn't eighteen. At least my teeth will remain white, she thought, as she started to tremble again, because she spotted the shores of the Johto region. She produced a mysterious hiccup, which shook Skitty awake. To punish its careless trainer, the kitten double-slapped her cheek with its tail, but stopped at the thought that it might earn it another block of May's purple surprise.

"…Please remain seated until the plane has come to a complete stop."

"Careful, Skitty…oh, thank you, sir! You're so good." May grabbed her suitcase and strolled off to see whether she managed to book her room at the Pokémon Centre in the Goldenrod City correctly.

"The next contest? It's in one week's time exactly, in Ecruteak City. Do you know how to get there?"

"I guess I can do it if I find a map, thank you, Joy."

"Sure. There's a map on that wall…"

"Blastoise! Spin and use hydro pump! Glaceon! Jump on top of Blastoise and use frost breath! Yayyy, that's the spirit!"

Because May managed to send her suitcase directly to Ecruteak City by a ferry, she could walk with just a yellow backpack on. On her way she walked into a large park and a sudden impulse led her to decide for a lunch break, a bit of a rest and then training. After that she bought a magazine, because she was a woman in the first place, and women need gossips.

"Huh?!"

May was sitting on the grass along with her Poke pals, chewing the last cookie from a pack of exactly thirty six and sipping coffee, when she gave a closer look to the magazine she bought. Well, if it wasn't Drew right on the front page! "The secrets of a young idol", it says, so let's see those!

May almost choked on her cookie and spilled her coffee and tore up her magazine as she was searching for the interview. She was so into Drew's photos that she didn't notice that Skitty ran totally away and Beautifly stuck its proboscis into her coffee and immediately acquired a "hyperactive" nature.

Oh, this is him, and this too, oh! I must write to Alba how handsome he is just as I get to my computer! But…he's so famous, what if he already has a girlfriend? There must be so many girls crazy after him… Without having an actual reason, May got scared and jealous at the same time.

"Is this your Skitty, miss?" A woman was handing the small Pokémon to her.

"Nyyyya, nya!"

"Skitty! Yes, why, thank you! Where was she?"

"Over there, eating our food! Oh, never mind, but maybe you should consider feeding it…"

"Yes, thank you! Oh, Skitty..."

"Nya, nyaaa!"

The same night May was having dinner at a sushi bar in Ecruteak city. It was warm, the stars were bright and the moon was round – everything favored a session of really kitschy images inside May's head. She was eating a lot, partly because it was May and also because her temporary roommate, Catharina, invited her. She was carrying along her pride, a fancy Mawile. Catharina didn't want to talk about Drew, which earned her both love and hate from May. While the two of them were waiting for their food, Catharina managed to catch May's interest, which should have earned her a medal at those moments:

"Do you know what this is?"

"A gem?"

"A mega stone."

"It looks pretty."

"Yeah, it can do pretty unique stuff. You'll see at the contest."

"Wow, I sure am curious. Can I hold it?"

"Yeah, here. But be careful."

"Wooow…"

May took the round object, checked its weight, frowned upon its being so cold…

"…it warms up when it unleashes its energy."

"Oh my, you sure know how to get one thrilled. Can you unleash it here?"

"No, not here. We just wanna eat now, right, Mawile?"

"Ma-wile!"

"Eat? Oh, sure, you're right!"

Finally they brought them the ordered menu. Probably even being "Lost in Drew", May still cared about food more than about anything else. She gripped her chopsticks tenderly and stuck out the tip of her tongue to choose where to begin. When she lifted her gaze a bit, she noticed that Catharina's Mawile was watching her all the way. The little Pokémon's intense, ruby eyes and slow blinking made her unsure of herself, but making sure that she didn't have a dirty nose or anything, she just tried to eat, although she found it difficult with those hypnotic eyes on her all the time. The worst of it all was that Catharina really didn't seem to care or notice this, as she kept babbling about her one night stands all the time, gesturing expressively, preferably with one chopstick in each hand. When she finished her meal and May was still holding the same morsel of sushi, Catharina finally asked her what was wrong.

"Do they cook so badly here? Good, next time we'll go to a better place. Right, Mawile? Um…Mawile? What's up? Mawile! Are you frozen solid or what? Huh? …Aaaaaaw! Yeah, look, May, there's another Mawile sitting right over there and it looks like it'll be a male! Oh, isn't that cute! Heheh… go, sweetie. Why don't you go over and play?"

"Ma-ma-wile..!"

Phew…and I can finally eat… May sighed and surprisingly quickly recovered her appetite.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our lovely, young coordinator May puts down a remarkable combination of hydro pump and frost breath! Let's see what the judges have to say about it! …And…ladies and gentlemen, it's an incredible perfect score for May from Petalburg City! Give her a rooound applause!"

So that was how it went through the Ecruteak City contest. The crowd was cheering, May was waving at everyone and trying to maintain a smile on her face, although her lips already hurt. True, she was happy upon being given her ribbon at the end, truly happy, but…well, but. Simply "but". There was no Drew and that's that. May supposed that he had already won all five ribbons that you need to be able to enter the Grand Festival, but sometimes you just believe in miracles at least until you face the reality.

So there stood our princess from Hoenn, touchingly raising one hand to wave, gripping the ribbon in the other one and wiping her tears away – she hardly knew what was causing them.

"How touching, ladies and gentlemen! We can but wish this young lady good luck in the next contest!"

May just smiled, although when Vivian actually spoke out these words, she longed to shout out that she wasn't crying for having won her ribbon.

As soon as May got to her room at the Pokémon Centre, she wrote to Alba. She told her that she was losing hope – she would go to the end of the world for Drew, just to ask for roses and diamonds, and he doesn't even know that she came to Johto. Why can't he use telepathy or something?! He was supposed to be on that contest, cheering on her! He was supposed to ask to marry her at the end, in front of all those fangirls!

"Come on, May," Alba wrote, "You are way too impatient. This was your first contest. He was surely watching it. He'll find out about your presence and he'll contact you, trust me."

May trusted her, because she had no better option.

But she soon regretted it. The next contest came, it took place in Violet City. No Drew, no passionate declaration of love, May almost came to hate the ribbon she won. It was pink, with green dots.

While crossing the city centre to get to the Pokémon Centre, May's heart was about to go through a massive acid test. But she had no idea about it. The sun was setting. The sky was bright pink, the air was warm and in May's fantasy, all the clouds had the form of a heart, or at least a rose. Every youngster resembled Drew and smiled at her, the people were nice and she thought that maybe she'd find a rose perfume, like Alba advised her the previous night. "Drew'll love that," she assured May.

May liked to think of Drew and things related to him (=everything) in the future tense, because it felt just more real than the conditional. Alba had a talent to recognize these things without being told and that's why (at least now) she was May's best friend.

Suddenly, after crossing the road, in the garden of a nearby bar, May spotted a pair of white, fluttering wings and a long, green tail with red stripes. She focused her tired eyes and concluded that she's seeing a Flygon and a Masquerain. Next she saw…well, of course – she saw Drew! He was sitting there, laughing about something. May wanted to call at him, but held her breath the next moment, when a younger girl with red hair appeared, hugged Flygon with one arm and Drew with the other. May felt all the blood of her body rush right into her face. The last thing she saw was a thin, tall and purple-haired Harley standing up from the same table, probably to make sure if he was really seeing her. Before he had time to act in any way, May was gone, because she was a woman and we know well that women sometimes like to use their fantasy. Sometimes a bit too much, therefore:

"It must have been his girlfriend!" May typed to Alba, killing off the hearts of many Greenpeace members because of all the paper napkins she was using up.

"Come on!" her friend replied, "You have no idea who she was! And honestly, coming to such radical conclusions after so little time is rather childish."

Ouch! With that comment, Alba temporarily lost the title of a best friend, only to regain it the next time Drew appeared on the TV and May needing to tell someone how hot he looks.

In a nutshell, May concluded that she best went back home, retired to the countryside and lived the rest of her life as a hermit, without love or contact with other people. From one minute to another, all her desire to compete vanished to thin air. But only until Catharina entered their room last night, extended her hand with two papers and said:

"The next contest's in five days in Cianwood City. I have two tickets for a ship that'll take us there. You'll join me, won'cha? I may consider unleashing the superpower of Mawile's little jewel…"

Mawile stared at May in a way that assured her it wasn't a handsome fellow Mawile that caught the little Pokémon's attention the other day.

May closed her eyes and smiled for some mysterious reason. "Well then."

And so they took off to Cianwood City. They walked, went by train and by boat. Catharina and May spent many hours together and gradually got to know each other. With time, Catharina told May about her boyfriend and May told her about Drew. May was even gradually getting used to Mawile's penetrating and intense eyes, although there were times she really felt like going crazy, when the little creature gazed at her for what felt like hours and the worst thing was that Catharina still didn't seem to really care about this vice her Pokémon developed. May already tried some tricks like snapping at Mawile when her friend wasn't looking or throwing tiny paper balls…but nothing seemed to be helping.

Luckily, their journey wasn't long enough to drive May crazy. Soon their feet hit the ground of Cianwood City, located on an island nearby. And by then they had little time left to train before the contest.

Suddenly, May found herself facing off against her new friend. They were the last two coordinators left, the crowd was so silent you'd hear the echo of a needle falling on the floor and Mawile was standing in front of Catharina, piercing May with its rubies, like always. May was using Skitty this time. Once again, she was getting nervous, examining the audience roughly for some green hair, but no luck. After all, after her real-life encounter with Drew and his new girlfriend she gradually lost her hopes and decided to actually win the Ribbon Cup, or snatch it away from Drew, to be more accurate.

The clock started ticking.

"Go, Skitty!"

"Go, Mawile!"

May only saw the movement as Catharina flung the precious gem into the air, the flash that followed blinded her and her Pokémon, as well as the crowd that let out many shrieks of disbelief.

After a few moments the flash faded and the crowd started cheering. May's jaw dropped as she saw Mawile so different, yet the same in some way. "Ma-ha-ha-haaa," it laughed, snapping its double jaw threateningly, taking up an absolute fighting stance. If it weren't for the situation, May would even have thought it looked cute. But the time was flowing and Mawile's mega evolved jaws took a bite way too hungry from May's points.

"Uh…Skitty! Use assist!"

"Nyaaaa!"

"…Assist turned into vine whip! Careful, Skitty! Mawile's jaws look almost deadly! Will Skitty be able to escape their grip?"

"Mawile, jump and use fairy wind! Then spin and use shadow ball!"

"Magnificent! May's points sure are suffering!"

"Grrrr…Skitty! Jump on top of that shadow ball! And use assist again!"

It sure did take some time and nerves on both sides, but Skitty managed to use fire spin at some point and took Mawile out before the clock struck zero. May received yet another ribbon and was again waving and jumping and being happy and sad at the same time.

After she received all the applause, after they took about a million photos and asked her a million useless questions, she ran off to the dressing room and slipped down onto the bench next to her locker. Something felt uncomfortable though, so she reached under herself to see what she sat on.

Well, this time it was she who produced an exhausted shriek of disbelief, which gradually blended into a delightful "Hahahahahahaha!" She had to cover her mouth. Well, there it was! A rose! Just as red, with no thorns, as she remembered them. She smelled it. It was totally fresh, he must still be here! He's breathing the same air! Forgetting to change, May ran, not knowing where, completely overwhelmed with a lightness impossible to describe. "Dreeew! Dreeew! Where are you? Dreeew!"

"May? Are you okay?" Catharina seemed to have been waiting for her in the lobby.

"Cathy…oh, yes, yes. Where's Drew?! You must have seen him! He was here, just moments ago!"

"Drew? May, you're really tired, go and change and we'll go get some sleep. But hey, congrats! You are the best!"