So not only was Jacob 99% sure that Jake was going to brutally murder him, but the "bright" side about that very awkward situation was that he hadn't even seen it coming. Like Melanie before him the last thing he thought would happen was that either of them would run straight into Bertha. In fact they hadn't even thought that she was already in Kanto, and regardless of that the odds of being at one spot at the exact same moment a certain person was there were never too high to begin with.
Even though Bertha was currently running towards them (as fast as a woman her age could run), with Melanie nervously following her as well as Bertha's Hippowdon, Jake was still looking at Jacob with such a glare that Jacob was starting to regret not being born as an Abra. Had he been born an Abra he would have been able to just teleport away to safety, even if he did know that it wouldn't have helped because Jake would have even wasted a Master Ball in order to get his hands on him.
Since Bertha couldn't run very fast it naturally wasn't very hard for Melanie or Hippowdon to keep up with her (despite the pokémon's size and weight and despite Melanie's lingering fear that Hippowdon might decide to eat her for breakfast). Jake kept his gaze fixed on Jacob the entire time, only looking at Bertha in the corner of his eye after she had arrived next to him and Jacob.
It has obviously been a long time since the last time Bertha had seen her niece's son. Regardless of that she had easily recognized him from a distance before coming over to where he was. Despite how happy she was to find out that he was alive she was also quite confused. Her nephew didn't seem as happy to see her as she was to see him. In fact there was something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel like she wasn't wanted there at all.
"I can't believe it's really you!" she eventually said despite her confusion. Her nephew continued to say nothing, and when she reached out with a hand to touch his face (as if to verify that he wasn't an illusion) he stopped her by grabbing her arm. In fact his hand was so quick in stopping hers that she didn't even notice what he was doing until he had fully wrapped his hand around her wrist. But he didn't just hold her by the wrist; he held her by the wrist with a very tight grip.
"Hey, there she is!"
The four trainers turned their heads in the direction of the voice, and what they saw was a horde of paparazzi photographers that was making its way towards them. They must have come there looking for Bertha, but she didn't have any idea how the media had found out that she was in Kanto to begin with. She hasn't told a single person where she was going, not even Cynthia or the other members of the Sinnoh Elite Four (even though she did trust them and considered them to be her closest friends), which was the main reason why she hadn't expected the media to find out that she was in Kanto that quickly.
Before any of them had enough time to realize what exactly was going on they were surrounded and blinded by the flashes of the cameras. Bertha couldn't see anything but soon the feeling of Jake's grip around her wrist disappeared and, after the flashes of the cameras became a little less frequent, she opened her eyes and saw that he was no longer there. He must have elbowed his way through the crowd of photographers and left. All the while the paparazzi kept asking her questions like "why are you here in Kanto?" or "was the boy you were talking to on the phone the other day telling the truth?"
Bertha was obviously quite shocked upon hearing the 2nd question, and a quick question on her part soon revealed that a paparazzi photographer just happened to be outside her window while she was talking to Jacob on the phone for the first time. This was obviously infuriating but there wasn't anything she could do about it now. It should have been mentioned earlier that Bertha detested paparazzi photographers in every possible way, and the fact that she was surrounded by a large group of them as they kept taking pictures and asking her questions she did not want to answer was obviously quite unnerving.
Hippowdon, sensing her trainer's distress, opened her mouth and let out a loud roar. This silenced the photographers as well as made them take a few steps backwards. After all Hippowdon was about 2 meters tall, and they didn't want to make a pokémon that was that big even angrier than it already was. There was a short silence but after a few moments the paparazzi photographers once again began asking their provoking questions; however this time they made sure to keep their distance from Bertha, Hippowdon and Hippowdon's large set of teeth.
Bertha eventually couldn't take it anymore, and she was about to just climb onto Hippowdon's back and ride as far away as she possible could when a different voice got everyone's attention. They all looked up and saw none other than Cynthia herself, who was sitting on top of her Togekiss. "Bertha, come quickly!" she said, looking as if something horrible had happened. "Flint and Aaron are completely drunk and they look like they're about to beat the living hell out of each other!"
There was a short moment of awkward silence after which Cynthia all of a sudden looked at all the paparazzi photographers with a surprised look on her face, as if only now noticing that they were there. "Oops! I probably shouldn't have said that!" she said with an innocent expression on her face. "I just hope that none of you will go to that bar all the way on the other side of the city and take embarrassing pictures!"
The paparazzi photographers looked at each other. Two Elite Four members drunk and beating each other up in the middle of the day (and not in their own region, too) sounded much more promising. It didn't take too long for all of them to run off away from the scene in order to probably search every single bar in existence within the territory of Pewter City. Cynthia watched them run off and, after they were all gone, began snickering and told her Togekiss to land. "Idiots." she said with another chuckle as she dismounted her Togekiss and returned the dual flying-normal-type into a pokéball.
She looked at Jacob and Melanie, who looked as if they had seen a ghost, before turning around and calling out. "Hey, you guys can come out now!"
Lucian, Aaron and Flint all came out from one of the alleyways. "That was a brilliant idea." said Flint. "No really! Like… totally on fire!"
"I can't believe they didn't realize you were faking it." said Aaron with a grin.
"I do." said Lucian with a bored expression. "If people like them read a good book every now and then they wouldn't fall for such trickery."
"You all came?" asked Bertha, a surprised look on her face. For obvious reasons seeing them there was the last thing she expected.
"Of course we did." said Cynthia with a look of genuine concern on her face.
"But… How did you know I was here?"
"I figured it out quite quickly." said Lucian before pointing at Jacob. "I knew that you talked to him since I was the one who gave you his number, so it wasn't that hard to realize that you came here."
"Oh, by the way," said Cynthia, placing a hand on Bertha's shoulder, "Dawn said that she's very sorry and that she couldn't come because Sinnoh League Tournament will start this evening, and she has to be there in order to take on the challenger who wins it once it's over."
"Oh, she's such a sweet girl…" said Bertha with a faint smile on her face, "It's okay, really. I should call her later and wish her good luck…" The smile soon disappeared from her face as she suddenly remembered what had happened just before all the photographers showed up. She just couldn't stop thinking about that cold stare he had given her, not to mention the way in which he had held her by the wrist. She hadn't said anything to him back then, but his grip was had actually hurt her arm a little.
"Is everything alright?" asked Aaron after a short silence. "You seem a little removed." He, Cynthia and the other Elite Four members knew more than well how uncomfortable Bertha could get around photographers, but she would normally return to her usual, cheery self after they were gone. So, naturally, he and the others were quite confused to see how upset she still was.
Well they were confused, but Jacob and Melanie knew exactly why she looked so distressed. However Jacob appeared to be the only one who was concerned by this; Melanie looked like she was about to explode from excitement about the fact that all of Sinnoh's Elite Four members and Sinnoh's former Pokémon League Champion were right in front of her eyes. Yes, this wasn't the best time to get into 'crazy fan girl mode', but like I mentioned before Melanie has always had a tendency to get sidetracked easily.
Bertha would have answered Aaron's question, but she was so busy trying to figure out what in the world was going on that she hadn't even heard him to begin with. Her nephew's reaction to seeing her was definitely not the one she had expected. "So, where's your nephew?" asked Flint, "Have you run into him yet?" Bertha continued to say nothing and, after a short silence, Cynthia, Aaron, Flint and Lucian all looked at Jacob and Melanie, obviously wanting an explanation.
Jacob sighed, realizing that there was no point in hiding any details regarding what had happened from them, and was about to begin explaining everything when Melanie finally lost control of herself. "Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!" Jacob sighed and facepalmed. One thing he did know: that it would be a good idea to not stay in the middle of the street. The paparazzi may have left, but it wouldn't take too long until attention was drawn to them again. Luckily Jacob knew that his father was out of town so he went ahead and asked them all to come to his house. At first they found the young trainer's offer to be quite pointless, but they were soon told why he had made that proposition and couldn't help but agree with him.
Once they were there Jacob went ahead and gave Cynthia and Lucian a brief recap of Jake's behavior during the last couple of days as well as of his reaction when Bertha had approached him earlier that day. Bertha was currently sitting on the couch, deep in her own thoughts, and Flint and Aaron were busy keeping Melanie occupied. The energetic brunette was currently showing them her Metapod and Charmander, making sure to make many remarks on how cute they were and other things of the sort. It was a good thing that Melanie didn't have a psychic-type pokémon and a Gible in her party, because if she did then Jacob wouldn't have literally had anybody to talk to. In fact Melanie would have most likely also shown her Onix to Bertha if doing that didn't mean causing Jacob's house to collapse.
Of course, Lucian and Cynthia found Jacob's account to be quite peculiar and absurd. The way Jacob had described everything, it seemed like having Bertha there was pretty much the last thing her nephew wanted.
"That's ridiculous!" said Cynthia at one point. "Why on earth would he not be happy to see her if he hadn't seen her for 7 years?"
Jacob shook his head. "I don't have a single clue." he said, "Jake refused to tell me anything."
"Well, then I guess the only thing we can do is look for him and demand an answer." said Cynthia decisively after a short silence.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Lucian calmly. "If he hasn't said anything about this to his friend, what makes you think he'll tell you, me or anybody else he doesn't know?"
"I don't know." said Cynthia. "If you have a better suggestion I'll be happy to hear it."
Later, in the evening
"No way! Hey, Charmander, look at all these TMs!" said Jake, who was currently sitting in a coffee house and looking through a catalogue containing information about pretty much every Technical Machine in existence. "You can order almost all of them by phone call! Isn't that cool?" There were a few TMs which weren't purchasable through the store that had published the catalogue (one of them being the one that was given to him by Erika after their battle a few days ago), but there was still information about those TMs nonetheless.
Charmander made no response and continued staring down at her empty food plate. This has probably been the only time where she didn't care about the fact that Dratini had literally devoured her food, because like the 2 other fire-type pokémon in her trainer's party she wasn't in the mood to eat anything. It seemed very awkward to all 3 pokémon that their trainer was even able to think about Technical Machines at a time like this. "Hey, Vulpix," he said after a short silence, "apparently you're one of the very few non-legendary-fire-type pokémon that can learn a grass-type move that is called Energy Ball." The way Charmander saw it he was just trying to distract himself from thinking about what had happened earlier that day. On one hand (or paw or whatever it is a Charmander has) she couldn't blame him, but on the other she kept hoping that he will eventually deal with all of this.
Vulpix made no response but her trainer didn't seem to have noticed their gloomy expressions, or maybe he did notice and was just pretending because he knew what was on his pokémon's minds. After a while Jake's Xtransceiver then began ringing, causing him to close the catalogue with a groan of annoyance and throw it directly into the open trash can that stood in the corner of the coffee house. "Dammit! This is his entire fault!" He took in a deep breath to calm himself down before looking at the screen of his Xtransceiver, expecting to see Jacob's or Melanie's number displayed on it.
"Erika?" he asked quietly with a raised eyebrow as he realized that the grass-type Gym Leader was actually the one calling him. He plugged a set of earphones to the phone-watch (since he was, after all, sitting in the middle of a coffee house) before putting on the calmest facial expression he could and picking up the call. "Hello?"
"Hello? Jake? This is Erika." said the Gym Leader, who was wearing her usual kimono. From the looks of it she wasn't inside the Celadon Gym, seeing how there were no trees or flowers behind her, but that made sense because a Pokémon Gym probably closes for the night at a certain hour.
"Hey." said Jake, still trying to figure out why Erika had called him to begin with. Maybe she wanted to tell him something regarding all the stolen pokémon that had been retrieved from Team Plasma's base in Celadon City? "What's up?"
"Is everything… you know… alright?" she asked after a short silence, much to his surprise.
It was only then that he noticed that Erika had a trouble expression on her face, as if something was bothering her. "Uh… yeah, everything's fine. Why?" People usually didn't call and ask whether everything was fine unless they had a reason to, but he couldn't think of anything that might have given Erika a reason to believe that something was wrong (not that she was mistaken).
"Well…" she paused, not sure of how to say what she had to say, "You see… I got a call from Jasmine a few minutes ago and…"
"From Jasmine?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. With everything that's been going on around him lately he hadn't thought about her much. "Jasmine called you and asked about me?" For some reason this brought a smile to his face; he was quite glad to find out that she had called Erika in order to ask whether he was alright, but it still made him naturally confused. "Well, what made her and / or you think that anything's wrong?"
"Uh… How do I say this?" Erika paused and thought for a very long moment before sighing in defeat. "I guess I'll just repeat what she said to me…"
"And what did she say?"
"That you and your… supposed 'great-aunt' are on TV."
"…" Jake stared at Erika's image on the screen of his Xtransceiver for a long moment before raising an eyebrow. "What?"
"It's true." said Erika quietly. "The 'Pokémon Celebrities' channel is flooded with pictures of both of you. Apparently Bertha's in Pewter City, and some paparazzi photographers claim that the reason she is now there is because she believes that her niece's son is alive. Well… Everybody thinks it's you after seeing the two of you together."
Jake was quiet for a while until one of the waiters passed by his table. There was a TV in the coffee house so he asked the waiter to come over. "Can you please switch the channel to the 'Pokémon Celebrities' channel please?" The waiter nodded and left.
"Um…" said Erika, causing Jake to look back at the screen of his Xtransceiver, "Jasmine said that you looked quite upset in the pictures that they're showing there, so she wanted to know whether everything's fine."
Jake smiled a faint smile. "Tell her that I'm okay. Thanks for calling, both of you. I need to go."
"Wait!"
"What is it?"
"Is it true?" asked Erika, after a short moment of hesitation.
Jake sighed. "Yeah." She was about to say something else (probably to ask why he was so upset about something that should make him happy) but he stopped her. "I'd really rather not talk about it."
"Okay." said Erika, "I won't force you to talk."
"I really have to go. Thanks again for calling." After hanging up the call Jake frowned and looked at the TV. The waiter changed the channel like Jake had asked him to, and he soon saw that Erika and Jasmine were right. He quickly called one of the waiters again in order to pay for what he had ordered so that he could leave. However, when he finally received his change, he realized that every single person in the coffee house was looking at him because they had all spent the last half a minute looking at the 'Pokémon Celebrities' channel, which was still being displayed on the screen of the TV.
"Of course…" he said to himself with a sigh of annoyance as everyone began to crowd around him. It was obvious (with his luck) that something like this was going to happen after less than a minute of the TV being open.
A/N: Sorry for the delay on this chapter. ._.
I have something to say that will most likely make you all very ashamed in me… I began watching the 'Best Wishes' series of the Pokémon Anime. I guess it's mainly because I'm bored. I have a few things to say about it:
Oshawott and Axew are super cute and I now support any pairing between Oshawott and its evolutionary line to Snivy and its evolutionary line even more than I did before.
Iris disrespects Ash in every way so I like her.
Cilan amuses me.
Bianca amuses me even more.
Trip should die.
Ash is still an idiot.
This doesn't change what I said at the end of the first chapter; that this story will not have any anime characters or references other than references to the plot of the 2nd movie (unless I say otherwise, but I probably won't).
Don't think that this chapter came out a little late because I've been watching the anime though. I know that I had already finished with my exams but I didn't have much time to write for the past few days because of a personal reason.
BTW this story has more than 40 followers, which is really awesome! Thanks for reading and I'll be happy to see reviews from more of you. Also, if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them.