Disclaimer: I do not own any character in this fic. They belong to someone in China or Japan. This fic was inspired by a similar fiction called "Hidden Secrets" by Tinanit Enozym
The Ashy Merman
The sunlight beat down harshly on the trio as they trudged through the Merilblue Forrest and each were dealing with it in their own way.
Brock had taken his shirt off and was using it as a wipe rag to clear his face of sweat. This was working rather poorly as he just kept sweating and his shirt was now sopping wet, causing him to actually be putting wetness onto himself instead of taking it off.
Misty had insisted a stop in the bushes and had changed into her bikini top and an amazingly short skirt that really accented how long her legs really were.
Ash seemed to be dealing the worst with the unexpected heat. Oddly enough, he wasn't sweating at all, but he was turning redder as every hour passed. He had taken off his jacket, gloves, and hat, but that had only helped for a few hours. He had long finished his own water and was now finishing off Brocks'.
"Are we almost to the river yet?" he asked, gulping down the last swallow of water in the canister.
"Another half a mile," Brock replied with a bored tone. He'd been counting down the half miles for three miles now.
Ash sped up his walking pace, making the other two jog to keep up.
"You're just gonna wear yourself down Ash," Misty called to him.
"The sooner we get there the sooner we can go swimming in the river," Ash responded. Somehow the way he said river brought to mind cooling waters and crystalline streams.
Misty had to concede that point but she still managed to grumble the entire remaining half mile.
Brock wisely made no comment on either side.
When they rounded the last bend in the path and saw the river, it was almost a godsend. (Both from the heat and from the bickering.)
While Misty went into the bushes to change her skirt and panties into the bottom half of her bikini, and while Brock was leaning down and refilling his canteen to have a big gulp of the refreshing liquid, Ash took the easy way out; stripping off his shoes, socks, pokeball belt, and shirt, he dove headfirst into the river in a matter of seconds.
He was submerged long enough for his two companions to actually begin to become afraid when he surfaced with a mighty sigh of pleasure.
Misty, annoyed that he had actually made her worry about him, threw a rock that bounced off the top of Ash's head.
"Oooww! What was that for!" he exclaimed, rubbing the abused spot with his hand.
"That was for making us worry you big oaf! We thought you drowned!" Misty hollered back as she stepped out from the bushes and made her way into the water.
It was warmer than it normally would be this time of year because of the heat wave that had settled over Johto. While the water would have normally held a cold chill, it was instead almost perfect. Warm enough to swim in for extended periods of time, yet cold enough to cool you down without giving you chills.
Brock even joined them for a swim before he decided to cook dinner for the group. He switched between the two while the three were in the river as both Misty and Ash didn't do anything in the water together. Brock sniggered quietly when neither of them noticed him. They were so in love with each other, it was comical how they acted.
Brock exited the water first as he did have dinner to make, although he was able to extend his time in the water by fishing for dinner rather than preparing canned goods for the meal. He made sure to only catch non-pokemon fish, like salmon and trout.
The next to leave was Misty. While the water was nearly perfect, it was still victim to the temperature changes of the day. As the sun slid lower in the sky, the water became cooler until it was uncomfortable to be in.
The two kept each other company while the fish were cooking over the fire on a spit Brock had made himself.
Ash came trudging up to their camp still soaking, but wearing his shirt and gloves and carrying his shoes and socks.
"Took you long enough," Misty called to him as he walked up to the fire. While her words were slightly scolding, she was still smiling as she handed him a cooked fish with a stick stuck through it.
Ash took it from her with a quick 'thank you' as he plopped himself down beside her, taking a big bite of food.
Misty rolled her eyes, but said nothing on his table manners because she knew he would just respond that they weren't at a table.
The meal went as countless had before: the group reminiscing on past adventures, particularly about their Team Rocket's antics. Over the years, Jessie, James, and Meowth had become commonly referred to as their Team Rocket as they had so many run-ins with them, sometimes on a daily basis. Still, while their Team Rocket professed to be bad, they had a definite kindness to them, which sometimes lead Ash to wonder how many capers he had foiled because of his own skill, or because deep down, their Team Rocket weren't really bad people and didn't want to do bad things.
This meal routine was an old, well established one that had developed over years of meals shared over an open fire in the wilderness. It was comfortable, from the compliments paid to Brock over the deliciousness of the food, to the now near scripted fights Ash and Misty had over the leftovers.
So it was really no big change when they set up camp for the night, forgoing the tents for sleeping bags and putting out the fire before curling up to sleep.
It was the dead of night when Misty woke suddenly from her dreams, not quite sure what had woken her so abruptly from her sleep. Her hair was plastered onto her forehead as she swiped at her eyes to wipe the last traces of sleep away.
Brock lay dead to the world, his sleeping bag thrown halfway off from his chest, snoring loud enough to wake a snorlax.
Ash's sleeping bag was next to her own, but it was empty. Only Pikachu was laying on it, it's own snores mixing with the louder Brocks'.
Figuring Ash had only gone to use the little boy's bush, she roused herself for a midnight swim to cool herself from the sudden increase in temperature.
Still wearing her bikini, Misty silently snuck away from camp and toward the cul-de-sac of the river that formed a little lake not far away from their camp. Brock had mentioned it at dinner.
Misty located it without much trouble, slipping into the still warm water she pondered at the heat it still held. Swimming toward the warmth, she located a little jet stream underwater that poured forth heated water and in turn warmed the little lake.
A natural hot spring.
She found a rock near enough the vent to be in the warmed water and far enough away for the water to be cooling. She relaxed against the rock and luxuriated in the warm water that the vent provided.
It wasn't long though until it became too warm for her, so she went swimming deeper into the lake where the water wasn't as warm, but was still far from being too cool to swim in.
The cloudless night lit up the water of the lake so brightly that it almost looked like the water itself was glowing slightly.
Misty let herself float on her back in the water, just looking at the stars and the moon. It was so relaxing, but she still felt so awake. She had to tire herself so she could get herself back to sleep. So, she resorted to an old game she used to play with her sisters: Lake Bottom Exploration.
It had been years since she had last done it, with all the traveling, she didn't have a lot of time for recreation. On days like today, she didn't do it because Brock was a really terrible swimmer, and she never did a lot with Ash in the water, which was a pity because he was a really very good swimmer.
Turning her mind away from thoughts of Ash, she took a deep breath and dove under the pleasantly warm water. Kicking her feet vigorously, she swum all the way to the bottom of the lake.
It didn't have much in the way of seaweed, which was good because that stuff was easy to get tangled in. Instead there were various other water plants that waved gently in the flow of the water.
This was the reason she loved water pokemon, why she loved water, down here, away from all the noisy gadgets of mankind, it was like a whole other world. Completely separate from the world of man, still pristine and shining.
Kicking off from the bottom of the lake, she shot up to the surface to take a giant breathe of much needed oxygen. Quickly taking a second breath, she dove back under the water, back down to the bottom.
There were lots of flowering plants on the bottom of the lake, each swaying gently like lilies in the wind.
A few magicarp blinked stupidly at her. Misty waggled her fingers at them, startling them suddenly. They sped quickly away from her toward a patch of green plants, darting abruptly behind a figure that blended into the landscape so thoroughly, Misty would never have seen it had the Magicarp not dodged behind it. It looked frighteningly human shaped.
Misty blinked under the water, focusing her eyes on the figure.
Head, shoulders, arms…. Yes it was definitely a human!
She shot up to the lake surface, pausing only briefly to regather oxygen before diving back under and swimming determidly to the unmoving human shaped figure that lay on the bottom of the lake.
Reaching the bottom, she reoriented herself, saw the figure and swam towards it.
God, what could have happened? Maybe there was an accident. Or maybe it was an old mannequin that had been thrown away. Maybe it was just some old junk that happened to have settled in the semblance of a human form.
Nothing prepared her for what she saw.
The figure was alive. And green.
The skin was the palest shade of green she had ever seen, a whitish pastel green that blended almost perfectly with the light filtering through the greenish water. The hair floating around the figure's head was the same ghostly whitish-green, only half a shade darker. The ears were pointed at the ends and had little ridges running down the back of them, like they were little fins. The legs…
There were no legs. Just a long extravagant fin that was the same color as the hair. It was wrapped under the figure which was why Misty hadn't seen it immediately. The arms were lying curled by its face and were folded across a chest that had no bust whatsoever, but was instead slim and smooth. The fingers were almost delicate looking, and between each digit were an equally delicate looking lace work of webbing that connected each finger to the ones beside it.
On its' back was what looked like a large fin, the nearly white spines looking like ebony, with the same webbing trailing from the top to each of the successively smaller spines that ranged down the entirety of the back.
Misty moved closer to see the figures face. The eyebrows were delicately arched over closed eyes and were the darkest green she had seen on this body. The lips also had the same green coloring that the rest of the body had, the shade somewhere between the color of the eyebrows and the color of its' hair and fins.
But the face… It was one Misty would have recognized even if she were blind. She was so surprised that she yelled the name of its' owner even though she was still at the bottom of a rather deep lake.
"Ash!" the name came out garbled and in bubbles. This lead to a different problem as she now had no air in her lungs and was currently in danger of drowning.
The figure, Ash, jolted awake at the yell of his name and stared incredulously at Misty, who was now holding her hand over her mouth to keep the last of her air in her lungs.
"Misty!" he stated in a voice that was not quite a yell, but rather close to it, having no problem at all speaking underwater since he was breathing the lakewater through a second pair of lungs that all merfolk had, which they called their waterlungs.
Seeing her distress in a moment, Ash pushed off the lakebed and grabbed one of her wrists in his hand. He spread his back fins and allowed them to extend to full length, nearly double how tall he was in total from tip to tip. Pushing away from the lake bottom, his powerful tail propelled him forward, Misty still in tow, as his back fins undulated in a manner not unlike a rayfish's, propelling them even faster to the surface of the lake.
They broke the surface in a matter of seconds, Misty coughing loudly to expel the small amount of water that had managed to find its way into her lungs.
Supporting her through her coughing fit, Ash retracted his back fins to lay flat against his spine in a little ridge. He expelled the residual water from his secondary lungs in a sigh that emptied his waterlungs to help him keep afloat more easily.
Patting her on the back to help the last bit of water out of her lungs, Ash could not help but wonder how she had found him, and what this would do to their relationship. He wasn't so dumb as to think he didn't like her. He really did but he didn't know how she felt, so he had never risked voicing his feelings for her. But what would she think of him now?
Years ago, when Misty had been pressured into the mermaid role of her sisters' underwater act at the Cerulean City Gym, he had known he was in love. Swimming grace and style were big points in mer-society courtship, and seeing her with a fin –even a fake fin- swimming so easily through the water, her false tail flicking back and forth as she danced in the water with her pokemon, Ash had known he was doomed. He was in love with a human.
While this did happen occasionally in mer-society, especially now that they had adapted to spend much of their lives on land with humans, it usually didn't work out because humans were fundamentally land creatures, and merpeople were water creatures that spent time on land. Inside each human, was the yearning for the earth, while inside each merperson was the yearning for the deep waters of the lakes and seas. This difference normally proved too large a barrier between the two races and so relationships broke down.
Closing his eyes in resignation, Ash waited for the common reaction of disgust that most merpeople received when they were discovered.
"You've got a lot of explaining to do buster!" Misty said between residual coughs, actually poking him in the chest in accusation. "Why didn't you tell me about this little secret a few years ago?"
Considering the situation, Ash made a rather intelligent response to this inquiry. Blinking his eyes, staring in disbelief, he said, "Huh?"
Misty splashed him with water and laughed at his expression, then swam a slow circle around him, trailing her fingers down the ridges of his folded back fins. Ash couldn't help flicking his tail in delight at the pleasure that coursed through him from that action. Back fins were sensitive to the slightest pressure, her action was like itching a scratch that had been bothering him his entire life.
He looked her in the face and saw only his friend that he had traveled with for nearly four years. No disgust, no revulsion.
She was okay with it. With his differences from her, from humans. And somehow, Ash knew, his life had just gotten a little bit better.
A/N: I have a second chapter to this and I may even make a third, but it really depends on if I get any reviews. If I leave it as a one chapter, it stands alone fine. It really depends on the readers' opinions if I should leave it as is, or continue it.