After Twenty Minutes
Election Day's dead, but my pal Matt inspired me to do a new Pokemon fanfic. So I dug up this old draft I had saved on my computer, revised it a bit, and here it is! Bonus points to the first reviewer to identify what I'm parodying (title and author) .
"That crazy Ash…"
The shadowed figure of a young man stood next to a pile of rubble. It was his duty to wait. He owed it to his good friend to wait.
Suddenly, footsteps caught his attention. He turned his head, still retaining his calm nature. Was it him?
"A- Oh. Hello officer."
The shady figure struck a match and lit a cigar, illuminating his head in a dim light. His eyes were squinted, his hair pointy. The man seemed around twenty years old, give or take a year or two.
The police officer was a young woman with shoulder length teal hair. The squinting man felt the need to jump up and ask her to marry him, but he won the struggle against his instincts and calmed down.
"So, what are you doing here?" she asked.
"Well Officer Jenny," the figure began, "I had lunch with Ash Ketchum, a fine yet dim young lad—dumb as a stump, really, here twenty minutes ago at 'Fat Giovanni's Rocket Restaurant."
"Wait," Jenny interrupted, "they tore it down five minutes ago!"
"Yeah, we had to eat pretty darn fast. They were hardly waiting; the wrecking ball kept swinging into nearby customers. So we promised to meet here in twenty years, in case we ever lost contact with each other. He called me to meet him here in twenty minutes. Dim lad. He has a heart of gold, but… You get it. I was going to leave for Johto, as there are some girls there who hadn't rejected me. For all I know, I could've had a chance. But Ketchum wouldn't leave Kanto. Not without the gym badges; you'd think they're the only things in the world from the way he goes on and on about 'em. I guess I'm only still here 'cause of him."
"I see. Quite an interesting story."
The officer marched away, not looking back. Suddenly, the figure of a boy appeared in front of Brock. It had to be him.
"So Ash, you're late."
The man walked over to Ash, a teenage boy with spiky black hair. Ash was wearing his trademark Pokemon League cap and blue jacket with fingerless green gloves. The squinting man smacked him.
"I told you to meet me next to 'Fat Giovanni' Rocket's Restaurant in twenty years. You called me to meet you here in twenty minutes."
"Sorry Brock," Ash apologized gleefully, "I can't tell time."
"I know," sighed Brock, the squinting man. "That's why I told you to meet me here."
Brock chuckled to himself, then tossed a notebook at Ash. Ash thumbed through it to see pages upon pages of scripts for next year's upcoming episodes of the Pokemon anime.
"They're planning on making you dumber," Brock stated solemnly, "I don't know how the hell they possibly can, but just look at the scripts." Brock shook his head and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the night sky. "They've also made plans to replace Jennies and Joys with Johnnies and Jays. It ain't right. If they ever try something like that, I swear to God I'll quit."
"So why did you give me this!" asked Ash. "And if these were plans for next year's episodes, why did you want to wait until twenty years later?"
"So we can change it all!" Brock exclaimed. "We can rewrite the scripts our own way! And as for the twenty years part… eh heh, I guess I forgot to plan it very well. Glad you caught on; maybe there's still hope for you. Sorry about that; now that I think about it, I guess twenty minutes was right on time."
"I see," Ash said. "Oh yeah, Pikachu wants to see you to!"
Ash plucked a red-and-white orb from his belt and dropped it onto the ground. In a burst of red light, the yellow mouse appeared, a smile stretching across the red dots on his cheeks. It all seemed somewhat normal to the average bystander, but Brock's face wore a look of sheer horror.
"Wait one damned minute!" Brock exclaimed. "You're not Ash Ketchum!"
"What do you mean?" asked the boy, backing away.
"You never keep Pikachu in a Pokeball! Even if you can't tell time, you're a damned fraud!"
"Yeah, 'Shiny Flint'," the boy laughed. "I'm a fraud. In fact, I'm a midget plain-clothes officer for the Viridian PD."
"A midget!" exclaimed Brock. "Wait… Flint! No I'm not--"
"Save it for the jury," scoffed the officer, shoving a note into Brock's jacket pocket before clamping handcuffs to his wrists.
Struggling to retrieve whatever the cop slipped into his pocket with handcuffs on, Brock eventually succeeded in finding a note. Despite his perpetually closed eyes, he read it perfectly.
Dear Brock, I saw you today. You told me to meet you here in twenty years. Wow, it seemed just like only today that we were eating at Fat Giovanni's place. Yes, I was there. I was the officer Jenny. Yeah, I finally got the surgery I've always wanted, but it sure was slow. It took seven years! Although they tell me it was minutes, but I can't trust them. They were the same doctor's who said I had brain damage as a kid. I saw you on the poster. How dare you commit mob activity under your father's name! So I became one of the other Jennies, to stop the crime spree. See ya when you get out! Bye. Ash, AKA Jenny 306.
PS: If my grammar seems too good to be true, I'm dictating this to one of the other Jennies. Don't worry, I'm sure she completely wrote down the part about the dream I had about the Teletubbies.
"You're kidding me!" exclaimed Brock, dropping the note in disbelief. "I'm gonna go to jail just because my father's a mobster and my pals an Officer Jenny? This is… Wait, if one of the Jennies is a guy, maybe they all…"
Brock limply fell to the ground. Tears burst out of his hypothetical eyes, covering the ground. "Ash" dragged him into the police car as Brock just sat reflecting and trying to clear all the increasingly disgusting thoughts from his mind.
At last, they reached the police station, where the Ash imposter brought him into the cell. Kanto's judicial system was far behind those of other continents. Brock just glared his invisible glare at all the officers, not knowing which one of them was Ash.
"You're scum, Ash." Brock narrowed his eyebrows and clenched his fists. "You're a traitor! A dirty, rotten, illiterate traitor!"
A single officer walked up to Brock, then told him one thing.
"It's been several years since I've seen you last, Brock. Things change."
"IT WAS JUST A HALF-HOUR AGO!"
A half hour ago, Brock had eaten at the restaurant with Ash. Now he wished that Ash could have forgotten their appointment.