Considering I'm doing National Novel Writing Month, you can rest assured that this will not affect my work output at all.
After all, I am a WRITING GOD as you all know.
Fun
She hadn't enjoyed her bike ride. She had signed in and barely grunted when Surge tossed out some vague insult and called her a weedle again. Her mind whirled with the idea that maybe, just maybe, Ash had already forgotten their deal, or that it had all been a very strange nightmare and when she went to tutor him he would go back to complaining and her world would continue on with its fairly mundane pattern. It so filled her mind she nearly hit two people, and hit a patch of ice that sent her skidding into a building, scraping the back of her hand.
Misty cursed and leapt off her bike, rubbing snow on the back of her hand to clean it and to numb it, before swinging back on and heading back to the shop, signing out a little earlier than normal, and racing out before Surge had a chance to start a conversation. She pedaled hard and fast, so, despite the chill, she had worked up sweat. The bike nearly crashed into the rack, and she nervously tied it up before rushing inside, all the while hoping and praying to Moltres that Ash had forgotten or had fallen asleep or something, and she could simply leave.
He wasn't. In fact, he was anything but. She walked in on him playing a surprisingly violent shooter, which was weird. Ash had a game system or two stashed in his room, but whenever she came in, he was always playing something that had magic and leveling up, whereas this game involved making weapons out of whatever was on hand and fighting a zombie horde. She tried to back out, but was surprised to see him pause the level and swivel to look at her.
"No way, Misty, we had a deal," he said firmly. "Hold on, I'm just getting to the next save point, and then we're going to do something awesome."
"Like fighting a zombie apocalypse?"
He laughed and shook his head. "Nah, this is just as stress reliever. Nothing better than making a zombie's head explode to make you forget all your problems."
She opened her mouth, about to ask rather rudely about what problems he could possibly have, then thought that was probably a subject better left and untouched. She spoke, trying to sound cheery about the whole thing, and explained, "I managed to talk all your teachers into giving me your winter homework early. We can get it done in no time, I bet. It's not too hard, and it's really not busywork either so it's not eight hours of multiplication tables."
He frowned, and unpaused the game, immediately plunging them into the pounding sounds of zombie survival. It appeared a member of Ash's party had set off some kind of car alarm, and now he was stuck fighting his way to the nearest safe house, shooting zombies out of the way and running them over with the small car they had broken into. She thought that he didn't want to talk about school, but instead heard him mutter, "You got all of it? You didn't have to get all of it."
"You wanted to do some of it by yourself?" she asked, surprised Ash was finally taking an interest in his school work. She brightened at that, thinking that, maybe, if he kept this interest up, he wouldn't need a tutor anymore. "If your promise to get it done and let me look over it when I get back you can do some of your better subjects on your own, but you'd better get it done. I don't want to get in trouble-"
There was a freeze frame of the car slamming into a mall, sending glass flying everywhere, and the game asked him if he would like to save. He clicked yes, but paused on the screen that asked him about continuing. He turned and looked depressingly at the books she was pulling out of her bag. "I've missed homework before without you getting into trouble. I wasn't going to do all of it this time either."
She stopped in her unpacking and went stiff. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Whenever the homework looked too hard I just don't tell you about it."
"Ash!"
The girl was clearly furious, as she jumped to her feet so violently she knocked over the stack of books with her hand, and immediately went into a swearing fit as her scratched hand began to throb again. Ash winced and clicked that no, he would not like to continue, and shut off the game. He was quiet for a while, walking around and putting his game system somewhere safe while Misty held her hand tightly between her thighs and continued to swear.
Once she calmed down, he sighed, "So I guess that's bad too?"
"Yes, Ash, that's really, really bad!" she gasped. "I could have gotten in big trouble for that."
"I would have explained it was my fault and you would have been off the hook." She glared at him briefly before returning to her wounded hand, blowing on it softly, and wanting to lick it, but feeling a bit embarrassed to do that in front of Ash. He, in return, went to his fridge in the corner and grabbed a bottle of water, unscrewing it quickly and wetting a paper towel. He handed it to her, muttering, "I promise I won't do it again. Much, but, so, I hear you're headed to Gary's place. I live in Pallet too."
Her shoulders had been slouching with relief at the cool cloth on her hand, and the ache was fading rapidly, only to have it replaced with horror and she stared up at him, realizing that, yes, she and Ash would still be in the same town. Her mind stuttered for a way around it, remembering that towns, especially rural towns, could be really big. She gulped, and asked, "Not close to the lab. Not, like, driving distance, right?"
"If I get my homework done I get to go home too. Talk about your lose-lose situations." He smirked. "But, we're not going to worry about it right now. Because we're going to have fun and not talk about homework or school today."
"Why does this even matter to you?" she moaned.
He started digging through his DVDs, pulling out one that had a case covered in sunset reds, oranges and yellows, though she couldn't make out much more than that. He slid it out of the case and put it into the DVD player, and as it began to load, he leapt onto the bed next to her and grinned. "All that matters is that I'm totally blackmailing you into this, so you have to do it, and we're watching The Lion King, one of the greatest movies of all time."
"Isn't it just Hamlet with lions instead of people?" she asked dryly.
"I dunno. I think it's based on that or something." He shrugged casually, and went to the options menu to take off subtitles and make sure he adjusted al the settings to the appropriate sound system. "You're the Shakespeare expert."
"Yeah, but I've never seen The Lion King."
Ash's jaw dropped. "You've never seen The Lion King?"
"No. My sisters always watched all those kinds of movies, and since I usually hated everything they liked, I never bothered seeing any of them. I usually went swimming or rode my bike. I didn't watch that much television or anything, so I don't really know a lot about the media from when we were growing up. Except for The Neverending Story, I loved that movie. I watched it all the time, and my sisters hated it." She paused, then crossed her arms. "Not that it's any of your business."
"I never said you had to tell me," he shot back, hitting play.
"Yeah, but-"
"Stop, the beginning is the best part!" Ash snapped, and she fell silent.
Later that night, after trying to talk to him several times, she discovered that, apparently, every part of the movie was the best part, because he constantly shushed her and told her so. She finally sighed and stretched out on his bed, careful not to touch him, as the movie rolled on, and found herself enjoying it. Certainly not as much as Ash, who sang all the songs and occasionally quoted lines from the movie, but enough that she thought she'd watch it again. The songs were certainly catchy, and the plot and characters were interesting.
Once it was done, he leaned his head back and beamed at her. "Did you enjoy it?"
"Are we done?" she countered dryly.
"That's a yes."
"It's not a yes, I want to go home," she snapped.
"That's is totally a yes."
"Bye, Ash," she growled, picking up her backpack and swinging it over her shoulder. She paused at the door, spinning to scold firmly, "I want to see a dent made in that homework the next time I stop by, and keep in mind that if your grades start dropping, I don't care what rumors your spread, we're not doing this anymore. Although I don't like tutoring you, I do like the other advantages that come with it, and no stupid rumor is going to keep me from that."
"You enjoyed it so hard," he said, bursting into a giggling fit. "Come on, just admit you loved the movie. Just say it."
"It was fine," she said furiously, then blushed when he laughed even harder. She stormed out, slamming the door hard behind her and storming into the snow, getting on her bike, and pedaling as quick as she could to the girls' dorm, skidding to a stop in the snow as she slammed on the brakes and sloppily tied her bike to the rack. She certainly hadn't enjoyed herself and she wanted to get home, and she didn't even bother undressing as she fell into bed.
And the sounds of I Just Can't Wait to be King rocked her to sleep, as much as she was loathe to admit it.
Ash did get all of his homework done, she made sure of that, and he, in turn, apparently decided to make the Wednesday a little more fun for her by putting on The Neverending Story, and the week after that taking her out to ride the ponyta, though he still refused to let her off the lead and she felt stupid having him jog alongside her while she rode. So the weeks up to the break were fine, they were fairly normal, her schedule wasn't that out of order.
Until Friday came along, and she knew that Saturday was the day she had to ride the train to Pallet, and she hid inside her closet with her still packed suitcase, glaring at it. She had to take that one, no doubt about it, she didn't have any other bags, but the point remained that it was still ridiculously packed. Her options were to take it as it was, fully packed and ridiculously heavy, or to simply unpack the things she wasn't planning on bringing.
The latter was logical. She sat there, hugging her knees tightly to her chest and fuming, wondering why it was so impossible to simply unzip the suitcase and put her clothes away. This was her home, after all. Even on a vacation one would unpack, getting themselves comfortable for the week, not washing their clothes and folding them up and putting them away again, absolutely refusing to fill up her drawers with anything other than school supplies.
"Moltres, your daughter asks you for strength," she mumbled softly, letting her head fall back against the wall. "Give me the fire to make the decision, the fire that drives all decisions that comes from you, dear Moltres. Moltres, your daughter asks you for strength."
There wasn't a response, but then, there never was. She didn't expect one. But, still, it felt nice to pray, and she let her head fall to her knees, muttering a few more traditional prayers that were lodged deep in her memory, that made her feel warm and fuzzy and she thought back to afternoons in the House of Moltres, somewhere in the center of the city, giggling at the priestesses and priests who shooed her and the other kids out onto the streets, saying, "Unless you plan to meditate with us," in that sneaky way adults do when they know the answer was no.
She missed running around in those streets. She missed getting scolded for always doing the wrong thing. She missed that warm feeling from the churches of the city, whether Moltes or Mew or Articuno, darting into those wonderful places where there were kind people who offered her shelter until the storm passed, and gave her warm hot chocolate or, in some, warm, watered down liquor and told her to drink it slow, and told her she could only have one cup.
She sat in a closet, and she thought about those sweet moments, and, eventually, opened the door and gathered her bathroom supplies without a word, stuffing them into her suitcase without removing anything.
Misty knew that Gary was going to tease her about it, and that he was going to be a gentleman and try to take her bag from her, but she decided then and there that, no, it wasn't going to happen. The bag was hers and no one else's. She wouldn't let Gary touch it, she wouldn't let the conductor touch it, she was going to put it away from herself, and if anyone made a joke about her over packed suitcase she wouldn't dignify it with a response. That was what was going to happen.
Then, for the first time in a long time, Misty trudged into one of the woodier areas of campus and cleared the snow from the ground. There was a wide circle of dirt underneath, and she scuffed at the permafrost until she got to the softer soil underneath, then took an old newspaper and ripped it to shreds, puffing the shreds and then setting fire to them with a small lighter she had in her back pocket. She sat back, and watched it burn.
There were temples were people could set ceremonial fires around campus.
She felt that those seemed to miss the point of the ritual.
The next day she had her suitcase, thick and ridiculously packed with all her stuff, as she rolled it up to the train and hugged her friends goodbye. Gary offered to take her suitcase, and she declined, instead hauling it on herself, tucking it under a seat, and always keeping an eye out for Ash. She was sure he would be on the train, but despite how she constantly peaked over the top of her book, she never saw him, and had the extremely awkward moment of lying when Gary inquired, "Checking me out, Misty?"
She blushed and ducked down behind her book, and answered, "Long train ride." Gary never attempted to do more than that, never bothered her in her reading, simply continued doing his own thing, which consisted of reading science journals, magazines, and listening to his mp3 player just loud enough so she could hear that he was listening to classical music, and wondered if he was doing it just because he was trying to impress her.
Eventually, the train got to Pallet, and she stepped off, staring in wonder. It was flat as far as the eye could see, and though there was snow on the ground, it was nowhere near as cold as Cerulean, or even Goldenrod in the winter. The train stop was situated in a meadow, filled with tall, bent over grasses from constant trampling, and surrounded by thick trees that, the further south they went, seemed to multiply exponentially, so that she was sitting in a car and driving through what she thought was a forest.
Gary grinned at her. "Nice, isn't it? You should see the Viridian Forest."
She sat up straight, spinning back to him. "This isn't the Viridian Forest?"
"No, it's just green here," he laughed. "Once we get into the suburbs, it's pretty much a giant meadow. Grass, cornfields, you know the deal. It was fun to play in when we were little, me and some of the kids around town, I mean. Nowadays it just means that mowing the grass is really hard."
"It beautiful, though," she murmured, rolling down the window and looking outside, fascinated by the trees rushing by. "You're lucky to have grown up here, you know that? It's really, really incredible."
He shrugged. "I've always liked the city more, myself. You must have had fun, growing up in Cerulean City. You've got more places to hang out, right? Not jut fields."
"Well, my parents were busy, and my sisters and I never really got along, we never hung out. I would either go and swim in the river, or run around with some of the kids in the city. Some of them liked to beg for scraps, and the baker would give us the stuff that got messed up, or got burnt a little, so he couldn't sell them."
He nudged her gently. "See? That sounds like loads of fun. I would have loved to have something like that. The only thing we swim in here is the ocean, and you get covered in sand and the salt water makes you sticky. Fresh water is way nicer. Gramps had some lakes, but we were never allowed to swim in it, though we did sneak in a few times. Ash never wanted to go in the chlorinated pool if he could help it. It was so annoying."
"Ash?" she asked, blinking at him.
"We were close growing up. I hung out with him a lot more than anyone else." He grinned a little to himself. "You know how he wasn't ever bright, though? I used to trick him into doing some stuff. I'd try to get him to ride pidgeys or wrestle with a charmeleon or something like that. He never got really hurt, though. I swear, the kid could punch an ursaring in the face and the ursaring would apologize to him. The only pokémon I've ever seen him unable to manage was his Charizard."
"They're hard to handle," Misty said, crossing her arms and wondering why she'd bothered bringing up Ash in the first place.
"This one was abused, though, so that does help," Gary explained further. "He took it from this one jerk who-"
Her phone rang, and Misty answered it immediately, pausing only to apologize to Gary for the interruption, but gleeful for a chance to get away from talk of Ash. Unfortunately, picking up the phone entered her into a conversation with Dawn, who, despite the time difference in Sinnoh and the fact that it was surely four or five in the morning where she was, was eager and chirpy over the phone as she asked, "How was the train ride?"
"Fine. It didn't crash so it was just like always," Misty shrugged at Gary apologetically, who smiled her way and continued down the country roads, the trees beginning to thin into suburbs now. "You should see Pallet though. It's gorgeous! I never would have thought it, but it's so different from the city. The woods and the ocean and it's just this perfect little valley. It's right out of a fairy tale. You should see it."
"Yeah, yeah, but what did you do on the train?" Dawn asked, and she could practically see Dawn leaning forward, putting nearly no space between their faces as if that was somehow going to get Misty to confess any secrets she had.
"Was I supposed to do something on the train?" Misty asked. Gary raised an eyebrow at her, and she mouthed 'Dawn' at him, so he nodded and focused on driving once more, that being more than enough explanation for anything strange that may have come up. "I just ate crackers and apple juice, like always."
"You should have been making out!" The blue haired girl insisted furiously. "You were on a beautiful, romantic tra-"
"Hold on!" Misty held up her free hand, though Dawn couldn't see it, and the girl thankfully fell silent. "I'm telling you about beautiful, romantic, scenic Pallet Town and you want me to talk about making out?"
"It's not wrong," she retorted.
"Not, but it's like giving a nickel to a hobo. You could give less, but what the hell's he going to do with a nickel?"
"I have never thought of giving a nickel to a hobo as wrong."
"It's not wrong, but it isn't right."
"You don't make sense."
She sighed and put her head in her hand, trying to tune out the sound of Gary's snickers and trying not to blush at the fact that, maybe, if she hadn't been reading her book, Gary would have asked her to make out on the train, or, an even stranger thought, that he would think it was as not wrong and not right as she did. Finally, she managed to mutter through gritted teeth, "No, we didn't make out on the train."
"If we're not going to talk about that this conversation is over. And don't tell me about Pallet!" She could hear the smile and the wink in the girl's voice, sounding like pure exhilaration. "I want to see it for myself, okay?"
The rest of the ride was fairly boring. Gary turned on the radio, again with classical music, and Misty stared at the rolling landscape, enjoying watching it switch from the green and brown of forests, and the gold of cornfields, and the green of meadows, which then transitioned into a dirt road, which spun up dirt and dust behind them, covering the back of the car with brown that Gary must have to wash daily in order to keep it clean.
It wasn't really exciting until Gary pulled up to a mansion, with acres of clean cut grass and flowers on the perfectly groomed lawn, so that she had to stop and gawk at the size and splendor of it, and he blushed and unpacked the car while she gaped, doing everything he could to avoid her gaze. She only snapped out of it to grab her own suitcase, and follow him to the huge place, breathing, "You really live here?"
"Land in Pallet is cheaper than you think."
"It's not really the land I'm thinking about." She tilted her head back to catch a glimpse of the mansion one last time, before following him into beautiful tiled floors and a spectacular chandelier that made her stop and stare and drop her jaw in absolute wonder. "Gary, you have no idea how amazing your house is."
He groaned. "I'm really not trying to show off. I just wanted you to meet-"
"I know," Misty said, and kissed him gently on the cheek. "I know you're not showing off. You're lucky to live here, Gary, you shouldn't be ashamed of it anymore than someone who lives in a small house should. You were lucky to be born into this family. You should take advantage of everything it had to offer. It'd be stupid not to."
He smiled. "Thanks, Misty."
There was a clatter, and there was suddenly a woman who was thin and curvy, with long brown hair and bright green eyes and a face that even her sisters would be jealous of, who was able to run down the marble staircase in heels and fling her arms up around her taller brother with a laugh, crying, "You'll never believe it, Gary! I couldn't wait for you to come so I could tell you in person." Then stepped back to beam and declare, "Brendon and I are going to have a little girl in seven months."
He gawked and stared down at her stomach. "You're preg-"
"No," she said, smiling even wider. "We're adopting. You know how I always wanted to help out, and how I always volunteered everywhere and we're going to adopt! Can you believe it? Mom and Dad were ecstatic, they set it all up for us, even though, with Brendon being so big in contests and our family being, well, our family, there's a few press conferences, but they don't think the paparazzi will bother us at all after this."
"Congratulations, May," he said, hugging her lightly. Then stepped back and gestured at his girlfriend. "This is-"
"Misty of Cerulean City. Acting Gym Leader during summer breaks and candidate for Lorelei's replacement in the Elite Four. I know all about her." The woman held out her hand, and Misty nervously shook it, trying her best to smile. "Everyone is going to know all about you. We're the Oaks, Misty, if it has to do with pokémon, we know all about it. It's a bit unsettling at first, but you'll get used to it. Brendon sure did."
She winked at Gary. "So, I don't suppose this little lady needs her own room?"
"It's not like that May," he snapped. "It's serious."
She smiled slightly and nodded, seeming to lose a lot of her good humor. "Well, then. I guess I better go tell Darla to get a spare room ready."
Seriously though, WRITING GOD. The all caps is entirely necessary.
