Hey, guys, it's The Happy Pen! I know that some of you guys are waiting for Water Burning to update (or maybe you're not…I don't know…) but actually, I've kind of hit a writer's block… but I'm not discontinuing it! It will probably just be a really short hiatus—or very long in the worst case scenario, but I doubt that will be happening—and hopefully I'll find some inspiration in this place during the summer! I'm working on different ways to make it look right, like, now. But you guys probably won't be seeing an update until either the end of July or mid-way through August.
So that is why, I decided, to content the pokeshippers who are reading Water Burning for Ash and Misty, I shall make this little one shot! It's not my best piece of work, I admit, and probably quite boring, too. I thought of this on the plane (I would love them if they didn't make me so sick!) so I think it's kind of a given it's a bit mind-numbing. But of course, it's up to all of you guys to decide whether you want to read this or not!
Btw, Ash and Misty might be a bit OOC. Just warning you! My apologies, guys, really!
Anyway, that's a good-enough intro, right? Sit back, relax, and enjoy/hate! (And I'm just going to say this because I'm an irritant: please do the former, please do the former, please do the former—not meaning to sound desperate, but please do the former!)
Disclaimer: I do not own anything other than the plot and the story.
Looking Up - Part I
When she looked above, all she ever saw were arrows flying down on her. During the summer, they were set ablaze and burned her skin, blending in with the sweltering air instead of cooling the heat. During the winter, they were coated in ice and pierced her flesh, the bitter wind lending a helping hand in its kill as it was armed with sharp fangs and cutting daggers. Spring and autumn were alright, she supposed, but it was such a tedious and monotonous life to only ever witness a crying sky. Don't misunderstand—she loved water, and dancing in the rain was a great way to pass the time. Splashing and bouncing in puddles was fun while it lasted, too. However, such activities do become quite boring as one grows older, especially if done too often, and then the rain appears to be more a curse than nature's blessing.
Sighing, Misty Waterflower threw her hood over her head and continued to walk home. If she stayed out any longer, her sisters would nag her for bringing their honey too late, and so would follow their inevitable complaints about the risk of blemishes on their fair skin. Honestly! She really didn't understand why she had to go about doing errands for them when they never showed a single gesture of gratitude towards her. If only her mother hadn't gone and abandoned them—they could have been the perfect real life example of a Cinderella story!
"Um, excuse me?" came a voice—low and lively with a childish tinge—when she suddenly felt a long, creepy finger hopping on her shoulder like a tarantula about to envenomate.
Her heart jolting in fear and alarm at the touch of such a terrifying insect, her arm swung her bag with a force so powerful a wrestler would have bowed down to her, viridian orbs afire as she spun around. Now, when you were raised amongst the most alluring and beautiful ladies in the city, wouldn't you feel compelled to be a bit rough and alert when somebody lays their hand upon you? Someone had to be strong in a family with only elegance and liveliness as their virtues!
Much to her surprise, her almighty attack had failed to land on her assaulter, who had ducked beneath the incoming jars of honey with a startled yelp and clumsy footwork. A hand clasped her own like a biting reptile, and her frantic mind lost its power to comprehend—the world before her tumbled and the ground below her quaked and a fusillade of raindrops pelted her eyes and face, noise so deafening she couldn't discern any of the sounds battering her eardrums. An agonised scream she couldn't hear escaped her lips when a sudden shock struck her skull and shot down her spine, all sense of feeling surrendering to the pain.
Then she heard the same voice again, resonating in her ears like static as he yelled the same word over and over again, with enough repetition that it had returned her ability to think. Oh, did she swear so much in her thoughts, a chain of curses running a million miles a minute through her head as she felt the most pleasurable desire to kill whoever had tugged her—
"Hey, are you okay?!"
He was asking if she was okay? Dear God, bless the fool, he was asking a girl who he had just pushed to the ground whether she was okay! Her head was throbbing, her back was blazing like hell, and for heaven's sake, she fell onto freaking concrete! If her brain wasn't so tied up at that moment by all her blood vessels, she could have screamed every swear word under the sun that he would have ever heard in a single sentence.
"Can you hear me?! Hey!"
Oh, for crying out loud, she could hear him just—
Misty's heart all but ceased to beat.
Suddenly she found a pair of dark russet orbs gazing into her own, large and glowing with a light so captivating she nearly lost herself within them. All of the curses spinning around her mind vanished in one moment, and even the sickening sensation of water soaking her skin no longer felt like slime sliding down her face, but instead like the gift it was from the gods. The little pearls of aqua drenching his worried countenance, dripping down his glistening dark locks was a sight so alluring that her every breath was stolen from her lungs. As even the earth and time stopped to stare at his most charming face, with all that moved was the enchanting rain, she herself almost forgot where she laid.
Almost.
Then the realisation smacked her mind: this man was right on top of her.
Heat surging through her veins and burning her cheeks a too-conspicuous shade of red, she bent her knee back and drilled her foot into his stomach, pushing him off her with such force he almost flew back into one of the lampposts. Willing strength into her legs, she rose to her feet as she watched him rolling and writhing on the ground whilst clutching his abdomen. Had she not been nearly as tired or livid or embarrassed as she was, she would have certainly laughed at his pathetic state, for his twisted expression looked like he was constipated.
"What the hell was that for?!" he groaned, his brows crunching into a resentful scowl. "I was trying to help you!"
"Help me?" Oh, how her fists were begging to pound his nose into his face! "You pushed me down because of your own clumsiness, and yet you say you were trying to help me?!"
"You're the one who started it! Who in the right mind suddenly tries to whack somebody across the head?!"
"That's because you touched me!"
"Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?!" he yelled. "Gah, that hurts!"
"My head hurts ten times more, so you have no right to complain! Man up a bit, will you!" she shouted, subtle hisses of discomfort leaking into her tone as she roughly pressed her aching temples and the back of her head. However handsome were his appearances, his brain was certainly too dull—and his body far too weak, for him to be moaning because of a small kick—to be able to make her heart stop. Yes, his natural sun-kissed complexion was one any girl would have slaughtered the world for, and that charm was indeed an elusive trait in many of the men from their city, and those eyes were the brightest and most beautiful she had seen for such a common colour—however, she bore no interest towards immature men such as he.
She grabbed her plastic bags and checked inside whether the honey and all other of her sisters' demanded items were still intact. Heaving a soft sigh of relief to find that none of them had smashed from the impact, she turned on her heels and readied to leave. Quite an abrupt and rude retreat, yes, but there were more important affairs she had to attend to than argue with that weakling—for example, accommodating her sisters' irksome needs and creating schedules for the young athletes at her family's sports club.
"Whoa, wait!"
Her blood seething beneath her flesh when she felt the same hand wrap around her wrist, she shot the man a lour so terrifying a pack of enraged wolves would have whimpered and fallen to their knees. He was still holding onto his stomach, but somehow he had managed to pick himself up after all the suffering done to his guts. Perhaps he was slightly stronger than she had initially thought, but he was annoyingly persistent—and annoying in general, she decided.
"What do you want now?!" Misty bellowed, gathering power in her legs in case he needed a proper beating.
"Can you show me the way to the town hospital?"
"Ask somebody else!"
"You're the only one out here!" the stranger whined. "Come on, please?! I promised my mom that I would visit her today!"
She had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. How many times had she heard that sort of nonsense being fed to others' ears? It was becoming a righteous pain having to listen to such blatant bull. "If you're about to make up a stupid sob story, I'm leaving!"
"I'm not! My mom is seriously ill! If you just show me where the hospital is, I'll treat you to something later!"
"No need!" she humphed, putting her foot forward—when she realised she actually couldn't move because of the vice grip on her wrist.
"Come on, I'm begging you!"
"Let go of me first!"
"Will you show me then?" he sniffled. Not because he was about to cry, but because the rain was beginning to take its toll on him. Of course he was going to be affected—if he wasn't a resident of their city, then he wouldn't be nearly as adapted to the weather as she was. Mild viruses were very unlikely to hack into her system as it would in most others.
But for goodness sake, she wasn't about to take responsibility for this man catching a cold! The longer they stayed out there, the more likely she would have to deal with her sisters' maddening protests, and she wasn't going to tolerate that! Besides—this man wasn't going to admit defeat anytime soon, so why carry on their pointless argument? If he was lying, then she could just kick him where it hurt, beat him to the pulp, and skip back home—a flawless plan, wasn't it?
So with an exasperated sigh, she screamed, "I'll show you, so for God's sake, let go!"
"Man, all this rain seriously sucks!" the man—who had introduced himself as Ash Ketchum—moaned, pulling his hood over his head. The irritating soul was beginning to grate on her nerves; words, words, and ten times more words just kept rolling from his tongue with such vigour she had to wonder whether this boy's throat was made of steel! She had never met one with as much loquacity as himself since her late father!
"How do you even live in this place?" he frowned, pushing his black sheeny hair back from his face. It amazed her that the rain could make a man with the most childish and stupid features look so entrancing, enough that she had to avert her eyes so she wouldn't be drawn by the sight.
Truth be told, Misty couldn't be bothered to keep up a conversation with him, and would have rather there been silence between them than any pointless chatter. But if that helped speed up the time, then it shouldn't have caused much harm.
"There's no other place for me to go," she sighed, tucking a bright, fiery orange lock of hair behind her ear. "I don't have the kind of money or leisure to go anywhere I want. Besides, there are people who need me here."
Ash whistled, "Why would they need you?"
She sighed again, this time more because of the pain in her head than her annoyance. "My family runs a club for aspiring athletes, but it's really just me who takes care of it. My dad died when I was six, my mum left us about two years ago, and my sisters are slave-drivers who care for nothing but trying to find a new boyfriend every week. Since nobody has the arse to take up the job, I try to make the place a little livelier with kids who want to become something big in the sports field when they grow up."
She instantly sensed the awkward shift in the atmosphere and that his mouth suddenly ceased to ramble, but she didn't care. Everybody always fell silent whenever she concisely narrated her story, with a slight sentiment of sympathy for the oh-so-pitiful little girl of the Waterflowers, but she never found a problem with it. That was her life, and all the idiots could go right ahead and delude themselves into thinking they were kind by feeling sad for her if that satisfied their ugly hearts. It was a natural and normal thing for her anyway—time wasn't going to wait for her, so she had to get over the past and get on with her life.
"Um…" She casted him a sidelong glance, starring blandly at the apologetic and regretful glint in his orbs, as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. Somehow it seemed slightly strange to not see a smile liven his expression. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"I would be very scared if you did." It wasn't a joke worth even a twitch of an animal's lips, but his own split into a radiant and jubilant grin nonetheless, one that made even the crisp and chilly air become tender against her skin.
Nervously scratching beneath her ear as a faint scarlet dusted her cheeks, Misty decided to take the initiative this time and raised a new topic. "If you don't mind me asking, what's wrong with your mother?"
"Hm?" He furrowed a puzzled brow—then it hit his face like a stick would a piñata. Misty regarded this man, who had just clicked his fingers as if he had thought up the most brilliant idea, with the not-so-sudden realisation that he truly was an idiot. "Oh, right! She suffered a head injury a couple of days back!"
Misty all but tripped over the stone tile of the pavement. "You told me she was seriously ill!"
"Well, yeah, she is!" Then he paused, ever-so-slight guilt and uncertainty worming into his expression in a manner so irksome, she felt like grabbing a car and smashing it on his head. "Okay, maybe it's not an 'illness', but she almost died!"
"What about the promise part?!"
Blinking stupidly, his lips tensed into an awkward and sheepish grin. "Well, it helped getting you to show me the way, right? So no harm done!" That grin of his relaxed into one brighter than a light bulb, as he leisurely stretched his arms above his head and skipped alongside her without the slightest care in the world. The thickness of his skin and head must have been a rare gift from the gods, because he didn't appear to have seen the fury colouring the redheaded beauty's face, nor did his ears seem to have caught the most pleasant sound of her cracking knuckles behind the thundering rain. Not only was he a dense and foolish weakling, he was also a happy-go-lucky lying jerk! Curse her benevolent soul; she should have doubted every word he blabbered and thrown him in front of a truck!
"Oh, which way now?" he asked, pointing to the fork in the road. Misty wondered how she had found anything about his features the least bit appealing, for all they did now was infuriate her to a point where even the rain couldn't chill the turbulent churning of her blood.
"Get lost, you idiot!" she bellowed like a lion ready for war, thrusting forth her mighty fist with so much power the skin of the raven-haired imbecile's cheek almost tore off.
"OW! Wait, where are you going?!" he cried, his face falling as Misty stalked away from him.
"Home, where else?!"
"But what about the hospital?!"
"You can go find it by yourself!" she roared as she shot him a terrifying sidelong scowl, her veins popping out of her skull with so much visibility which made him cringe.
"No, don't go!" Ash wailed as he chased after her, much to her increasing vexation. "Are you mad because I lied?!"
"Very perceptive of you!"
"If I apologise, will you still show me?!"
"No!"
"Come on, plea—ACHOO!"
All of Misty's insides jerked like wobbly jelly when she heard what sounded uncannily like a wolf howling at the moon, loud and so abrupt that her feet nearly shot into the air from the fright. Good Lord, couldn't he blow a fine sneeze! Craning her neck to check if he was alright, her gut expectedly squirmed in a squeamish and disgusted manner to see the man bending over, with his back facing herself and his hands positioned in such a way it was too obvious what he was trying—and failing—to hide. Forcing the pool of sick rippling in her throat, she reached for the inside of her jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of tissues.
"Here." Trying to point her gaze away from the clear strings of snot hanging from his nostrils when he turned her way, she held out a dry and soft sheet of tissue, which he stared at as if she was offering him the bones of a dragon. "Go on, take it! Before it gets wet!"
As soon as she said so, Ash snatched the item off her hand, and she snapped her sight to a different field when he pressed it to his nose, disgust washing her voice box as the sickening sound of his mucus was trumpeted into the tissue. If only he was a little bit quieter!
With an irritated sigh, her gaze travelled around the surrounding scenery, as her mind pinpointed her location on the map. It wasn't much longer until they arrived at the hospital anyway. She might have had to endure his endless talking for a while, but if she ahead to be fairly honest with herself, she didn't think it was much bother listening. As long as she spoke, too, then perhaps she would find the time to be quite worthwhile.
Sighing again, now almost helplessly, she turned back to the sniffling imbecile, who was staring at her with a shining pair of big, hopeful brown eyes. Hands raising to her hips, she told him, "If you're done, then we're heading for the hospital!"
She couldn't believe the way his expression had lifted, and how so relieved and delighted and vividly winsome he appeared to be, as his lips spread into the broadest grin her eyes had ever fallen upon. "You're still taking me?"
"It's only for a couple of minutes! You better not bother me again, got it?"
He nodded vigorously, that charming grin only growing ever wider. "I got it! Thanks—I really owe you one!"
Heat rushing up to her face as her heart wildly thumped in her chest, Misty realised that she was right from the very beginning—the rain truly was a curse, for it was creating so many irksome illusions in her vision. Despite never having witnessed the beauty and light of the sun, still she found its soft, golden glow embracing his body, bringing a dazzling and captivating shine to the teardrops of the heavens that showered him in their glory. It was so clearly a trick of her mind, yet it made her heart flutter nonetheless.
How very annoying indeed.
My fudge, guys, I'm just too lazy, so I'm making this a two/threeshot. It's slightly—sorry, VERY—unnatural, especially since in a place like theirs, they should be suffering floods and stuff, but instead are perfectly intact. Their meeting was pretty odd as well, but… well, I'm stupid, so this is the best vomit my tongue, brain, and stomach could work together to spew out. And the dialogue was bad, too… so, so bad… oh, I need help…
My apologies, folks! Seriously!
And lemme see… Water Burning, as I said, is not discontinued, because I'm seriously very happy with the idea. I love all of my stories, no matter how bad, and I want to make them the best I can (~I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was! Duh-duh, dum-dum~ jokes!). I am, like, dead set on getting it done and finished, and I want to make it the highest quality of work I can for you guys. So please, I beg you, bear with me for a while!
You guys might be thinking the summary doesn't work with the story if her dad died and she's still never seen the sun, but trust me, I've got a plan! It's stupid and rubbish, but a plan nonetheless!
And that's me! Love, hate, smiles, frowns, and reviews are all adored and appreciated! Merci!
The Happy Pen