Another update? Yep! But it's not the one I promised. I WILL have my Brock and Delia one up soon, but I was just too inspired to not write this one first. I read a fic a few days ago where the author injected herself into her own shipping fic (terrible idea, by the way), and this idea instantly came to mind. So please enjoy this Marishipping fic! It's not very creepy, but it's unbelievably unlikely.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the office at the end of the darkened hallway. What I saw made me gasp…but before I go further, maybe I should go backward (or de-further).

A few weeks ago, I was busy lifting weights, as per usual, when the mailman stopped by.

"Hey Jeff," I greeted, ruggedly curling the dumbbell and showing off my toned…something or other. "What's up?"

"Um, my name's Cindy, for starters," Jeff informed me, brushing his red bangs from his forehead.

"Ooooh. Tranny, huh?"

"No. Who are you?"

"The name's TexasLonghorn. You can call me TL." I gave him a sly wink. I don't roll that way, but I thought it would make him feel better about his life choice. "Anyway, what's in the mail today?" I guffawed at my inadvertent poetry. I then wondered what a guffaw was.

He started moving his lips, but I was too busy thinking if guffaw was a type of rabbit or stew to notice his exact words. No doubt he, like everyone I met, was talking about my good looks though.

"So yeah, anyway," I said, un-rudely interrupting him, "I gotta get back to my guns now. I'm thinking about eating some guffaw for lunch." The expression on his face helped me realize that guffaw was, indeed, a rabbit.

"Uh, why are you curling a carrot?"

"Gonna feed it to my guffaw later."

"Are you high?"

"On your face, maybe. Boo-yah!"

I held my hand up for a high-five, but he just walked away. Somehow, almost all my conversations wind up like that.

Anyway, I checked to see what Jeffy had left in the box. Opening it, I instantly threw all letters that didn't have the words "me" or "awesome" on the envelope. That left only one, which was indeed addressed to "me", from the Pokémon Company. Opening it, I was surprised to find it just had a ticket to Tokyo and a letter about twenty pages long describing why I was receiving the ticket. Being too awesome for reading (and, consequently, literacy), I simply threw the letter in the gutter, got in my truck, and drove to the airport. Being half-drunk, I only knocked over half as many lawn ornaments as I usually do, but that's beside the point.

I flew to Tokyo which, as I didn't imagine, took pretty friggin' long. On the globe it looks so close to Texas…but I may have mistaken Japan for Arkansas.

Anyway, I eventually stumbled through the doors of the Pokémon Company, now only a quarter drunk after the flight stewardess refused my demands for a bottle of gin. Not quite as drunkenly as I would've liked, I stumbled towards the desk and asked the kind receptionist where I was supposed to go, in what I assume was Japanese.

"I-o would-o like-o to-o know-o where-o to-o go-o."

"You must be Texas Longhorn," the woman replied. I was amazed at how quickly I'd picked up her native language. "Mr. Tonito is waiting on the fourth floor, at the end of the hallway."

"Gracias, bonjour," I muttered, no longer needing her. I walked confidently to the elevator and pushed the button. It took a while, but that's okay.

So that's how I got to that hallway, opening the door and gasping.

"Why are you gasping?" Mr. Tonito asked. I understood his Japanese as well.

"You're bald!" I gasped again, which was pretty difficult to do after having just gasped a moment earlier. I was feeling lightheaded.

"What?"

I smacked my head. "Where's my cultural sensitivity? You're-o bald-o dojo."

He frowned, now understanding what I said. "Please, Mr. TexasLonghorn, sit down." He motioned to a chair in front of his desk, but I remained standing.

"It's against my American code of awesomeness to sit down with a Nazi."

"I'm not a Nazi!"

Without even knowing it, he passed my only test for good character. Chuckling to myself at my own intelligence, I took a seat.

"So what do you want Mr. Toronto?"

"Besides you not calling me Mr. Toronto, I believe you already know what I want." He gave me a mysterious look, and I instantly feared for my life.

"What're you talking about? I don't know anything about copyright infringement or evil worldwide syndicates!"

"What? No, I'm not talking about that."

I slumped back in my chair, relaxing a little.

"Didn't you read the letter we sent you?"

"Oh, that thing? Nah. The TL doesn't read." Referring to myself in the third-person sounded a lot cooler in my head than it turned out to be in real life. I made a vow then and there to only do it a thousand more times.

Rolling his eyes, apparently from his awe of me, he cleared his throat. "Mr. TL, the reason we have contacted you is because we hear that you are one of the up-and-coming Pokémon authors in the world of fanfiction. To be specific, your story 'A New Journey' is quite the popular romance story amongst Pokémon fanfic lovers."

I tried to think of what he was talking about. Suddenly, I remembered. "Oh yeah! I remember that story! I outsourced it to a guy in India for twenty cents a month like a year ago. Is he still working on it?"

"I see you are a funny man, Mr. TL," Canada guy responded.

"Sure, whatever," I mumbled. I was too concerned about the two dollars and forty cents I apparently now owed the Indian guy to care about whatever he was saying.

"Anyway, since you apparently have skill in bringing together people of Pokémon, we decided that you would be the perfect beta tester for our latest invention. It literally brings you into the world of the anime and allows you to intervene in the storyline. Our studies show that kids would react positively to a certain couple, but unfortunately our writers are unable to develop a way in which these two characters would ever meet and fall in love, so we need you to do that for us."

"Who's the couple?" I asked, already grabbing his collar and sprawled across his desk in excitement while trying to retain my air of cool superiority and uninterestedness.

"May and Ritchie. I believe the small group already favoring the couple call themselves Marishippers."

"I can do it," I guaranteed. "I just have one question."

"Yes?"

"Who the crap is Ritchie?"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

After I was clear on all the details, and after a certain high-speed chase which will almost certainly go down in Tokyo history as the most awesome thing to ever happen, I was ready to go. Mr. Toons or whatever hooked me up to a weird helmet which had goggles covering my eyes. He also had me sign some papers, which he cautioned I should read carefully before signing…yeah, right.

"Are you ready, Mr. TL?"

"Ready like a fox." I gave a thumbs-up, but quickly put it back down. I forgot I don't live in the eighties.

"That doesn't make sense, but whatever," he replied. I heard the sound of a switch flipping, and suddenly I saw a bright light.

Blinking rapidly, I quickly made out that I was looking directly at the sun. "Ouch." I then quit looking at the sun. It seemed like the obvious choice, in retrospect.

Looking around, I realized that I was in the middle of some hilly valley. There was a gentle breeze swaying alongside the bright luminescence of the sun, and I could almost taste the happiness in the air. It was kind of like that time I went to Six Flags.

Anyway, I decided I'd better start looking around. So that's what I did. Yeah…it took a while actually. I could talk about all the looking around I did, but it'd actually be pretty boring, so I won't. The only thing I'll say is that you should never cuss out a Spearow. Seriously, those things will mess you up.

Moving on, though, I eventually saw something interesting. It was a guy who looked like Ash, but had brown hair and a dorkier outfit. I immediately recognized Ritchie, and tried to resist the instant urge to kick him in the gut for looking like such a dork. He was apparently fighting some wild Caterpie with his Charmeleon. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Huh?" he asked.

"'Huh' isn't a question."

"Who are you?"

"I'm TL from Texas, and I'm here to-"

"You wanna battle?" he asked excitedly, his freaky red lizard taking notice.

I stared at the ugly version of Charmander before shaking my head. "Nah, I'm good. I just am here to hook you up with this chick I know."

"You mean a Torchic? I don't need one. I already have a fire type on my team."

I almost smacked myself in the face, but then decided against it. Instead, I smacked him in the face. "No, moron, I'm here to hook you up with May."

"What's a May? Is it a new Pokémon in the Isshu region?"

"There's an Isshu region now?" I couldn't believe it. "Great, there goes that story my Indian guy's-I mean, I've been working so hard on. Screw it. Anyway, no, May's not a Pokémon. She's arguably the prettiest girl Ash ever travelled with, though I probably sound like a perv stating that."

"A girl? You wanna hook me up with a girl?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Well, I dunno." He began to blush, and I smacked him again.

"Be a man," I consoled helpfully.

"Okay, but first I wanna battle, at least. If I win, you leave me alone. If you win, then I'll go with you and meet this May girl."

"Alright," I agreed, taking out my only pokéball. "Though let me just say the fact you don't wanna start dating a girl at your age, especially considering your usual social interactions consist of giving orders to small animals, is a little weird."

"Whaddya mean?" His Charmeleon awaited the flick of my wrist.

"I mean you're gay."

"What's that?"

"Forget it." I threw my pokéball into the air and my Pokémon instantly came into view.

"A Mew?" I swear he almost fell over from a heart attack. "How'd you get one of those?"

"Mew Glitch." I shrugged. "The same way every kid in the nineties got one. It's just a house cat. Why're you so impressed?"

He didn't respond, but instead gaped at my pet for a couple more minutes. I smacked him in the head again, and that seemed to catch his attention. "Are we gonna battle or what?"

"Oh yeah! Uh, Zippo, use-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I interrupted, holding my sides as the laughter wracked my body. "What did you just call that gecko?"

"Um, Zippo?"

"You're Charmeleon's name is Zippo? How does that make any sense? Is he fast? No. Does he look like a hippo? No. The only conclusion I can make is you're retarded." I informed him of all this in the most sympathetic voice I could muster, while still laughing maniacally.

"Whatever," he replied, apparently getting annoyed by my levels of awesomeness. "Zip, use Flamethrower!"

The fire Pokémon shot a great deal of fire at my cat, which instantly made me stop laughing. "Hello Kitty, use something!"

"Wait, you named your Mew Hello Kitty, and you're making fun of me?"

"Yeah. Because at least my nickname makes sense."

As we went back and forth on whether or not I was being a hypocritical jerk, Hello Kitty pretty much just floated in the air with a pink bubble around him, or her, while the stupid Zipper thing kept shooting fire at it.

"Wait a minute, I think we should finish the battle," Ritchie commented, obviously not wanting to argue anymore…because he was losing, I think.

"You're right. I need you to get over to May anyway. HK, blow his Charmeleon up!"

"What?" His eyes shot wide in panic as Hello Kitty's eyes glowed an eerie white, along with his Pokémon's entire body. "You can't blow up my Pokémon!"

"Crap, seriously? Because I already blew up like twenty Spearows earlier to make a feather pillow. I'm pretty sure Hello Kitty can blow up whatever she wants."

"Okay then, I fortfeit!" Ritchie screamed, falling to the ground.

I raised my eyebrows, wondering why he was being so dramatic. "Alrighty then. Quit blowing him up, HK." My Pokémon immediately returned to their playful self. "Get back in the ball." The Mew returned in a beam of red light.

"Remind me to poke some air holes in this thing later," I mentioned to Ritchie as he put away his Pokémon. "I'm pretty sure she'll die in there if I don't."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"So then I said, that's no elephant, that's my wife!"

"What does that have to with my question?" Ritchie asked as our train slowed to a stop outside the Littleroot train station.

"Wasn't your question whether or not I knew a wife joke?"

"No. It was why are we going here?"

I rolled my eyes. I'm pretty sure he didn't ask that. "Well, if you must know, I think May's gonna be here. The Japanese guy who sent me here said she was doing a contest in this city, so I thought we might as well see if that's the truth."

"What Japanese guy?"

"The same one who draws your show."

Ritchie gave me the same look of confusion and nausea that almost every woman has when they first meet me. "I don't even wanna know what you mean by that. Let's just meet this girl so you can leave me alone."

"I thought you were supposed to be, like, the nicest guy on the show?" I asked as we dismounted.

"What show?"

"Forget it." I then marched him out of the station and into the conveniently-located contest hall across the street. As soon as we walked in, I immediately noticed the May kid, so I grabbed Ritchie by the arm and dragged him to her.

"Quit acting like a sissy and pulling away," I mumbled, in more of a yell than a mumble. "Just do this so I can get paid."

"Um, hi," the brunette greeted awkwardly as Ritchie continued to try and pull away. I threatened to make Mew blow him up, and that seemed to quiet him down momentarily.

"Finally," I said under my breath. "Anyway, my name's TL and his name is Ritchie. He's a dorky fourteen year old boy who obviously has some sexual orientation stuff goin' on, but that's not important. All that's important is that you date him, marry him, and have like twenty kids with him, because there are five people in the world who think you guys look cute together."

I took the shocked expression on her face to mean "yes", so instead of waiting for a reply, I quickly turned around, punched Ritchie in the shoulder while calling him "slugger", and walked out of the contest hall to find some kind of bar where I could get a Bloody Mary at ten in the morning.

The end.

NOT!

I wish that was the end, because the rest of the story really just goes downhill from this point. First off, much to my surprise, Littleroot Town is a dry city. So instead of getting drunk and hitting on women, I just had to hit on women…which is not easy to do sober.

"Hi," I greeted cheerfully as I approached Nurse Joy's desk in the Pokécenter. "My name's TL. What's yours?"

"I'm-"

"That's nice. Anyway, you seem pretty hot. I can see why that guy with no eyes keeps hitting on you now. So how about me and you go somewhere quiet and you can give my Mew a check-up?"

"That's disgusting!" she cried, aghast.

"What are you talking about? I want you to check out my Mew for me." I opened the pokéball and allowed my only Pokémon to roam about the hospital. "Isn't that your job?"

"Oh my." She began to blush. "I'm so sorry for getting mad at you like that. I thought you may have been inferring that we do something sexual."

"Sexual? I don't even know your middle name!" I punched myself in the groin for using a Ke$ha reference. "What kind of filthy mind do you have?"

"I'm so sorry," she repeated, but I held my hand up to stop her.

"I don't need to take this," I replied in an unusually high-pitch. A tear rolled down my cheek…though that was probably because of my self-imposed groin punch. "I'm leaving." I threw the pokéball at Hello Kitty's head and walked out the door. And by "walked", I mean crawled.

Anyway, after a few minutes of weeping on a park bench, and having Hello Kitty blow up random Pidgey as they flew by, I began to feel better. However, that changed the instant I heard his voice again.

"It didn't work out."

"What?"

"I said it didn't work out. She already has a boyfriend."

"Who's saying that?" I twisted my head from side to side, panicking. "Grampa? Is-is that you?"

"No, it's me, Ritchie." A tap on my shoulder, and a punch to his groin later, I realized that it had been him talking to me the whole time. I gave a hearty chuckle as he laid on the ground in anguish.

"Sorry about that man. You really need to not sound like my dead grampa, though." I thought about giving him a hand, but then decided that if I helped him stand up, he'd never learn to do it on his own. "So what are you talking about?"

"She has some green-haired guy for a boyfriend already," he stated while crying baby-ishly.

This looks like a job for TL: Super Matchmaker.

"This looks like a job for TL: Supper Matchmaker."

"Supper Matchmaker? That doesn't even make sense."

"Sorry. That was a typo." I pointed to the italicized sentence above my actual sentence. "I was supposed to say 'Super Matchmaker'."

The kid just stared at me for a minute like I was insane. Shows what he knows though. My psychiatrist says insane doesn't begin to describe what I've got.

Anywho, I jerked him by the collar and dragged him back to the contest hall. When we got inside, I was surprised to find the lobby empty, and I instantly came to the conclusion that everyone except me and the little Ash clone had died.

"I'll take Kanto and Johto, and you can take whatever other places there are."

"What are you talking about now?"

"It looks like we're the last ones on earth. There's no one else in this building."

"How would you just come to a conclusion like that? They probably already went inside to watch the contest that was starting up." He pointed to a couple of large, closed doors, from behind which came a large amount of noise.

I shrugged. "Maybe you're right, maybe I'm right. I guess we'll never know." Then I continued to drag him through the doors. To my surprise, he'd actually been right, though I'd never admit it. There were, like, a thousand people in this dark room all packed together and looking down. The only place with any light in it was the center of this room, where two people stood on opposite sides of some dirt field.

"Is this a dog fight arena?" I quickly reached for my wallet to make a bet. "I hope I can get Michael Vick's autograph!"

"No. This is a Pokémon Contest. That boy is the one who said he was her boyfriend." Ritchie directed my attention to some green-haired kid who was spinning a pokéball on one finger, as if waiting for something.

"That is so awesome! Do you think he could teach me to do that?" I took Hello Kitty's ball and tried spinning it, but instead it fell off my finger, hit the ground, and released my Pokémon. Expecting a battle, HK immediately vaporized everyone around him – or her -.

"Bad kitty," I reprimanded harshly while rubbing behind its ears. "The next time you do that, I'm not getting you ice cream." Fortunately, it had been a pretty quick attack, so no one seemed to notice the instant disappearance of over a hundred people…including Ritchie, who was staring over at May with a longing I'd never seen from him in the two hours we'd known each other.

This inspired me.

I began walking down towards the battlefield, determined. It didn't matter if this green-haired guy was really cool and could spin a pokéball on his finger. No one messed with my…um, acquaintance? Anyway, no one messed with his dream girl and got away with it. Once I reached the bottom, I tried to jump over the wall and onto the field, but I actually ended up just kind of leaping into the wall and falling on my back. I got up and went through the door instead.

"Stop! You guys have to stop this fighting!" I ran into the middle of the field, causing a large number of "boo"s to rain down upon me from the dogfight viewers. However, I've been booed many times before, normally while on dates, so I kind of have an immunity to things like that. "Don't you two see that you actually love each other?" I questioned bravely as someone threw a box of popcorn at my head.

"I know we do," the green-haired guy answered…he was so cool. "Me and May have been dating for over a year now."

"Oh! Oh, my bad." I blushed as a slushy hit my sneakers. "I didn't mean you guys. I meant her and my friend Ritchie." I pointed up in the stands to Ritchie, who was looking more awkward than me in Oklahoma.

The green-haired kid looked over at my wimpy acquaintance before glaring at me. "What're you talking about? We're together! We've been travelling for over a year now together!"

"That's right!" she agreed from the other side of the field. "I'm in love with Drew!"

Well, I have to admit that by now things weren't going like I'd expected. As a matter of fact, I hadn't really expected anything, but this situation exceeded even my own nonexistent expectations. How could I make her fall in love with Ritchie if they'd never met, and she was already in love with someone else? How was I going to get paid? How was I going to end this fic? I stood there, pondering these questions as snacks continued to hail upon me, kind of piling up at my feet now, until finally inspiration struck.

"HK, come here!" I remembered that there's one thing stronger than love…a kitten that can blow things up with her mind. "Lift them both in the air." Her - I decided it was a she because it became too much work writing "he or she" – body gave a blue aura as both of the lovers were instantly lifted into the air.

I smirked as the crowd began to gasp. At first I thought they were amazed at how good-looking I was, but I realized it might have something to do with my Mew. "Okay you guys. You have two choices. You can either let May fall in love with Ritchie, or I'll blow both of you up."

After a moment of stunned silence, May finally bowed her head. "Fine. I'll go on a date with that Ritchie guy."

"Thank you!"

A bright light suddenly shone around me, and I found myself back in the dimly lit room, reminding me of that really uncomfortable summer I spent at Uncle Al's.

"I-I don't think we can use that as an episode," Mr. Tito explained. He appeared to have been crying. There was a television screen on his desk, which I assume he used to watch what happened.

"But that was an awesome hook-up! You can't not use that!"

"No, no. I really don't think we can."

"Can I at least get paid?" I held out my hand.

"I'll pay you extra if you agree to never come back again," he stated, taking out a check.

I considered it for a moment. "Sorry man. No can do. My guffaw needs to eat."

He just stared at me again before breaking down into sobs. I, of course, gently lifted his spirits by stealing his wallet and walking out the office.

Mission accomplished.

See what I mean? What are the chances this fic will ever happen? Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and my little first-person narrative. Please leave me your thoughts in a review!