Hey guys! Happy Blade-a-Blaze here!
As I just stated, I am ecstatic about all the positive feedback I am getting for this story! Honestly, I didn't think that my story would work at all, with English not being my first language and all that, but it apparently doesn't matter! I'm really thankful to all of you guys for the favorites, reviews, and follows. It is what that motivates me to write.
I know that this took forever to get out, and I don't really have any excuse other than some cold-hearted laziness taking control of my inspiration. So you might notice that this chapter is meh. I don't know, I really wasn't feeling it. Hopefully I'm disciplined enough to be able to update this story somewhat regularly and not every *cough* 4 months *cough*.
Never thought I'd be able to say this, but, time to answer some reviews.
Aria: Thanks for taking the time to answer all my questions! The reason the first and second chapters were shorter than what I aim for is that they serve more as mood-setters, therefore, they are shorter. As for pairings, they're not for a pretty long time. I just want a general idea of who the people want as their main pairing, so I can plan my story better. About Pika violence, don't stress. It's just that Pikachu is a bit more aggressive, and he used to use Ash as his personal punching bag, but it's all good now. And about Ash's abilities, I'll just say that this is just chapter 3, and I love to make my main characters shine.
MossDeepThinker: Thank you for answering the questions! It really means a lot. Also thank you for the kind words. I can see your reasoning behind your choice to vote Dawn, and I'll keep that in mind. However, the poll is going to decide who wins, and that's going to stay for a while. (I might change my mind and decide whom I pair Ash with or decide to just don't do pairings at all)
Before we go on to this next chapter, I want to remind you to, like always, notify me if you see any type of mistake, I'll do my best to correct them as fast as possible.
Chapter 3, I choose you!
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Chapter 3
Previously…
"This is your student id. It is used to access the different buildings of the school. Mr. Oak here will show you around. If you ever have any questions, you can always come here. This office is open from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. If you are to lose this card, you must immediately contact me. The new card will be delivered to you in the next hour," she robotically explained, contrasting her previous demeanour.
What's with that?
I left the weird secretary's office and turned to Gary, giving him a look that all but screamed: what, now?
He smirked. "Come, I'll introduce you to the gang."
This sure bound to be interesting.
I raised my eyebrows, noticing an insignificant detail.
"Yeah, sure, no problem. Just, is there a time where I can drop these off?" I asked, gesturing to my bags.
He sighed, his good mood visibly deflating. "Right, I forgot."
"What's with the long face? We can go after if it bothers you so much…"
Instead of answering me, he just hopelessly muttered: "Why do the dorms have to be so far? They know that the students need to register in the main building, why make us walk all the way to the end of the campus? This is so useless…"
"Uh," I exclaimed, raising a single eyebrow. "Never knew you were such a lazy ass, Gary."
"Oh, shut it, you."
I chuckled and followed him to the dorm building.
Actually, Gary was right. The building was a painstakingly long way from the main building. After ten minutes of walking, albeit at a slow place, we weren't even halfway there. 25 minutes later, we finally made it to the biggest building I've seen yet. Actually, it was two buildings, standing next to each other, only connected by bridges that joined the buildings every two floor, it seemed. However, there was a single entrance hall that touched the two sides.
"Alright," Gary started explaining as I let out an appreciating whistle. "This is where you'll be sleeping. The right side is the boys' dorm, and the left one is the girls'. We can go in their area during the day and vice-versa, but we can't stay later in the other's dorm building later than 11 which is the curfew. A shame, really."
Ignoring is last comment, I brushed past him and entered the colossal structure.
The entrance hall looked like every 5-star hotel's. Marble floor? Checked. Aquariums? Checked. Fake plants? Checked. Expansive-looking chandelier? Che- this is going to get old really fast. There was a desk where a single clerk with pink hair was working. Her tag read: Joy. I cleared my throat, gaining her attention.
"Hello young man! How may I help you today?"
Her energetic and bubbly tone catching me off-guard, I took a moment to ask myself, what I was supposed to say.
"I am-"
"He's a new student. He's looking for access to his room."
"Hello to you too, Mr. Oak," she said, her gaze suddenly becoming very stern. "I hope you haven't got yourself in trouble."
"How could I? I just arrived 2 hours ago."
"Do I have to remind you of last year, Mr. Oak?"
He blushed and looked down, taking a sudden interest in the floor. Joy's sweet smile came back as she turned to me.
"So, you're a new student, then? May I have your student ID, please?"
I handed her the plastic card without questioning. She accepted it and punched some keys on her keyboard. After a few seconds, she scanned my card and handed it back to me.
"Looks like you'll be taking Mr. Alain's place in room 407. Enjoy your year at PokeSpe!"
The first part of her last statement immediately pulled Gary out of his sulking. His head snapped up, his eyes widened, then nothing. His face was back to his usual smug smirk. I decided not to comment about my friend's odd behavior as he took me towards room 407.
After a trip through the dorm building and up the elevator, we stopped before a door who sported golden digits that spelled 407. I was about to use my key card to unlock the door, but Gary was faster than me and used his. The lock flashed green and the characteristic click of an unlocking door was heard.
Wait, what?
Gary used his card, and it opened the door. That could only mean one thing. I let out a groan.
"Seriously?"
"What? You're not happy to room with the single, most awesome person on this planet? You should be thanking the Gods, you know?"
I ignored his comment, not because it was stupid or anything, but because my mouth wasn't functioning properly at the moment. As soon as I saw my "room", my jaw dropped for what felt like the millionth time that day.
You know these fancy hotels' presidential suites you see in some movies? Yeah, that was our room. I'd even go as far as to say that it was a bit more spacious. When you pass the door, you are greeted with what seems to be the entrance hall. Past that, there was a formidable living room, complete with two couches, a 60-inch flat screen, a stereo sound system, and basically everything that would make any teenager drool. Two corridors that each led to two bedrooms and a bathroom branched off from the two sides of the living room.
Basically, to say that I was ecstatic with my setting for hopefully what would be the next 3 years was the biggest understatement of the decade. The grin that I currently sported on my face threatened to touch both of my ears. I dropped my bags to the ground and rubbed my hands together in anticipation.
"So, where do I room?"
The room where I was taken to was pretty bare bones. It contained a bed, and since we were at the "Prestigious academy of PokeSpe", the bed was obviously queen-sized. Other than that, the room contained a closet, an armoire, and a night table next to the bed. I dropped my bags and left the room. I would unpack them now, but I had other things to do. And I was lazy. Mostly.
I went back to the living room, where I found Gary, waiting for me to finish visiting the place, watching TV. As soon as he noticed me, he turned off the monitor, jumped to his feet, and addressed me:
"Finally! I swear you took longer than Drew to visit. Come on, now!"
Gary took me out of the room and down the elevator to go outside. He was to give me my tour of the school's site, as it was the task that he was assigned with.
We walked around for a good hour, visiting the different parts of the humongous school. Here's a quick description: the buildings were disposed in a way that resembled the letter "v". The central building, the one that connected the two branches of building, was obviously the main building, where most classes would take place. It was also the place where all the teachers' offices was located. Basically the boring building.
Going down the left branch, we can see the arts and crafts building, the "scene" building, and the dorms building. The art and crafts building was, if you didn't guess, dedicated to art stuff. Music, dramatics, paintings, drawings, basically every artsy fartsy thing that you could think of had its place in this building.
The building behind the Arts building was what Gary called the "Scene Building". Its exterior design was based off some really known opera, and frankly, it looked pretty majestic. As the name might suggest, the place was mainly for holding shows for students that were in the music program. We did a quick tour of the interior, but it's nothing to go over in details, just picture a typical prestigious scene and you pretty much got it.
Lastly, there was the dorm building, but I already talked pretty extensively about that so we'll go right on to the right branch.
Going down the right branch this time, we can see the gym, the battling dome, and the recreational building. From now on, this will be dubbed by yours truly the "fun" branch. The gym building is pretty self-explanatory. It serves as a place to train anything that revolves around the concept of physical. Want to work out to train your body? Go to the Gym building. Want to train your Pokémon? Guess what? You go to the gym building. Want to take a swim? Gym. Want to train your Noryoku ability? You get the point.
The next building was the battling dome, where you put all that time in the gym building to use. Every kind of battle is presented in the battling dome, and it's apparently really appreciated by the students. I wonder why. When Gary told us about that building, Pikachu and I shared a smirk, because we both knew that this place was our place. We would be kings of the battling dome. We promised it.
Lastly, every student's favorite place in the whole campus, the recreational building. The place was stuffed with places like shops, dance floors, lounges, gaming rooms, and, praise Arceus, restaurants. I like food. This is where everybody went on their weekend, evenings, and free time. Frankly, really understandable.
Well, that's the gist of the campus. And that's also the end of my train of thoughts and my autonomy, as I suddenly realised that I don't have the slightest idea of what I was supposed to do. I turned to the only person present with me and, being a really interesting and active person, did absolutely nothing except staring expectantly at the brown-haired boy, lengthening the excruciatingly awkward silence.
"So," Gary said, clearing his throat, thankfully breaking the silence. "Wanna go and check if the rest of the peeps is there yet?"
Having really no reason not to, and really wanting to end that awkward moment, I followed the guy back to the other end of the campus, to the dorms building.
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During the hour that we toured the grounds, the campus got a lot livelier. Everywhere, you could see students reuniting with their friends after the ever-so appreciated summer break. People were catching up, laughing, crying, bickering, beating each other to a pulp… while laughing or crying… you know, the usual. We walked straight to the elevator upon entering the building, and we went straight up to the fourth floor, where our room was located.
It was pretty silent, as everyone was still on the first floor catching up with everyone, so I had to distract myself with the monotonous sound of our feet hitting the cushioned floor, and Pikachu's light snoring and warm breath. However, the closer we got to our room, voices gradually made their way to us. They were actually coming from inside our room, which meant that my other roommates finally arrived.
This time, I opened the door with my key, and as soon as the door closed behind me and Gary, the voices, who were obviously arguing, ceased.
"Oak! Get your smug ass back here and tell the grasshead prick that he's a tier whore," an angry voice sounded from the living room.
"Stuff it, Shinji. You're just mad 'cause you can't beat me," answered a voice that carried an arrogance that matched Gary's.
Gary snickered and just said: "From Diddy, to Sheik, to Rosa, to Bayo and back to Diddy? Pretty sure that makes you a tier whore, Hayden."
Recognising the terms, I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. We finally made our way to the living room, where two boys were sitting on the couch, GameCube controller in hand, playing a heated game of Super Smash Brothers for Wii U. We spectated the end of the match, and we witnessed the Diddy Kong player's victory.
A boy with green hair-interesting color- jumped and started dancing, while a plum headed boy grumbled in defeat, obviously annoyed, and handed the other boy Five PokeDollars. They finally noticed Gary and I standing behind them and gave us their full attention.
"Sup," Gary said while giving the two guys a handshake each.
"So, you're the new roommate, huh?" began the boy with chartreuse hair, before continuing "I'm Drew Hayden, and before anything else, Test of strength!"
With a shout, Drew clumsily launched himself at me in hope of taking me to the floor. A pitiful attempt, as I would have dodged the tackle even if I didn't have my ability. I easily sidestepped him and let him fall to the floor with a dull thud.
"I'm Ash Ketchum," I declared, holding back my laughter and extending my hand. "Pleased to meet you."
My laughter might not have been as concealed as I'd hoped, because the boy glanced at my hand and ignored it, standing up and brushing off imaginary dust off his shoulders. He opened his mouth to say something, but Gary beat him to it:
"I thought it had been established that you weren't to do the strength test, Hayden. You're weak. Sorry. Not really."
Drew just closed his mouth and "hmphed", flipping his hair out of his face in an extremely obnoxious way.
I turned to the other guy in the room, who had stayed silent during the whole exchange. He was a tall, rugged guy, who constantly had the facial expression of someone that just got his parking spot stolen. I could tell that he was sizing me up, looking for potential weaknesses. A fighter, then. This ought to be interesting. Once again, I extended my hand:
"Name's Ash. Ash Ketchum. Yours?" I tried with a friendly smile.
He shook my hand firmly, a tad bit too firmly, making me wince, and answering:
"Paul Shinji. Try to test my patience, I'll test the resistance of your bones."
What was I supposed to do with all that happiness? Something told me that this guy was going to be a taxi driver at least once in his life.
"Oh relax, Paul," Gary let out with an exasperated sigh. "The guy's okay, he won't bite. Besides, he plays smash, too."
Hearing that, Drew's eyes lightened up, looking at me with an interested glint in his emerald eyes.
"You do, huh? You any good?"
"I like to think so," I answered, raising a brow.
"Care to prove it?"
"Is that a challenge, Hayden?"
He waved a controller.
"Only if you take it, Ketchup."
"Ketchum."
"Whatever."
Knowing that Pikachu always liked to see himself in the game, I woke him up from his nap as gently as possible, trying as hard as humanly possible to get thunderbolt-ed. I don't know what I did today to deserve such grace, but my partner woke up with a light "chuuuu-" of delight, as opposed to the other times I forcefully woke him up from his nap, which ended with me lying on the ground, smelling like that chicken that I tried to cook once. Keyword being tried.
After shaking off every trace of sleep from his body, my buddy gave me an inquisitive look. I gestured to the TV, and he quickly understood. He climbed a top my head, eager to witness the match between me and the unknown boy with green hair. I took my place on the couch and grabbed my controller.
I selected my main, Pikachu, and he chose Diddy Kong. We exchanged a fist bump, and started the match.
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15 minutes later, Drew was slumped in the couch, grim expression on his face, witnessing the Pikachu winning result screen for the third time in a row. Paul and Gary were laughing uncontrollably at the whooping I just served Drew, who right now was running after Gary to strangle him. Paul turned to me and smirked.
"I guess I can tolerate you if it means you can shut that cocky prick's boasting. Good play, by the way."
"Thanks, I guess," I cleared my throat looking for some sort of conversation while the other two were busy killing each other. "So, you all knew each other before coming here, or were you put in the same room?"
"Believe me, if I had known these 2 pricks prior to coming here, I would have ditched them at the first opportunity. We just got put in the same room, along with Alain, who graduated last year."
With that, the other came back and joined the conversation.
"So, Ketchup, school starts tomorrow, you know?"
"Yep."
"You checked your schedule yet?"
My eyes widened at my stupidity. Looking at my schedule should have been the first thing done once I received it, yet here I was, nearly 5 hours after receiving it, going to sleep in a couple minutes, and I didn't even know what hour were my classes and what they were named.
I ran to my room to go fetch the piece of paper and brought it back to where we were chilling. I placed my schedule on the table and everyone looked over my shoulder to see what classes I got. I took a deep breath and read the paper.
From 9:25 to 10:25 : Linguistics with Steven Stone
From 10:30 to 11:30 : Algebra 2 with Norman Senri
From 11:35 to 12:35 : Physics and Science with Ember Blaine
From 12:35 to 2:00 : LUNCH BREAK
From 2:05 to 3:05 : Physical Education with Lieutenant Surge
From 3:10 to 4:10 : Pokémon and ability Training with Wataru Lance
I let out a groan.
"I'm already bored, guys."
Gary snickered.
"You have at least one of us in each of your classes, so you got that going for you. However, I wish you the greatest of luck in Mr. Blaine's class. He's a real pain, ask Paul.
Said boy just let out a slight shudder, and that terrified me beyond words.
If this teacher is so bad that he is able to make shudder someone who hasn't shown any expression other than boredom in the few hours that I have known him, I don't know how bad it will be for me.
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And Cut!
How was it? Good? Bad? Terrible? Tell me in a review!
I actually don't like this chapter as much, but I gave up after writing it thrice. This is the result, I just hope it's not too terrible. I'll probably come back at some point and edit it.
I'm sorry again for the extreme wait, I'll try my best to not let it happen again.
I haven't really proofread the chapter because it's is 3:30 as I am waiting, and I really just want to upload it and go to sleep. So if you spot any type of mistake, let me know in a review!
That is pretty much it guys, remember to vote on the poll!
Blade-A-Blaze, out.