Chapter 22: Strengthening the Team's Bonds
(A/N: Aight so my move date is 9/25, I'll be extra busy next weekend so I might be taking a break on the next chapter unless the proper creative flow hits me and I get it done early. In other news, I'm looking on trying to get a RTX 3080 sometime soon so that's pretty hype. Anyway y'all are here for pokemon stuff, so I'll get on w/ the chapter. Enjoy!)
General
Yellow thought to herself, "While it had been decided that Serena would be joining the team, everyone didn't really know her that well yet. Actually for that matter, there were quite a few new members to the team. Maybe it would be best if everyone spent some time together just to get to know each other."
Yellow scooched over to where Blue was standing (she was still shocked for some reason) and gave her a light shake on her left arm, jolting her out of her previous stupor over the revelations of Serena joining the team.
After composing herself for a bit (she still had her pride in being Yellow's mentor of sorts), she internalized the idea from Yellow and realized that Yellow was absolute right. Portions of the team had limited exposure to each other and the only thing that was mutually binding them was Red's attractivene – leadership…
While Blue knew that most of the girls were potential rivals, her sense of duty made her acknowledge that to accomplish their mission, there would need to be mutual teamwork with all of the teammates.
Which is how she came up with the idea of having some of their trial preparation take the form of team bonding.
Blue turned to the group and declared "Hey everyone, the thought just occurred to Yellow and I, we don't really know each other that well. Especially with Serena just joining us, I think this would be a great time for us to share stories about ourselves and generally get to know each other."
After a brief moment of sharing looks with each other, everyone on the team nodded in agreement.
It looked like there was a consensus that this was something the team was sorely lacking at this point.
White spoke up next, "Alright everyone, how about we spice things up. We can do this by having one person ask the question and then we can use a random name generator on our phones to decide who has to answer the question."
Once again, there didn't seem to be any objections to this one although if one looked closely, it was possible to notice that Serena was slightly miffed because she couldn't just ask questions about Red.
Everyone got in a circle and sat at the table in the Gym's conference room and Blue put her phone in the middle with the random name generator app open.
With that, Blue started up the bonding event with her first question "What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you at the start of your adventure?"
She then pressed the "go" button on the random name generator app on her phone and the name "Red" popped up.
Red's eyes widened when he heard this question.
Blue was looking at him expectantly and was a bit confused when he turned towards her and looked a bit sheepish.
She got impatient and pushed him to just tell the group whatever it was that was so embarrassing.
"Well… when I started out my adventure, I got it in my head that Blue had a crush on me and I ended up buying a bunch of boosting items from her. The thing is, she definitely was just playing me for a fool and the items were all fakes. Pika definitely got embarrassed in a fight soon after thanks to how dense I was back then. After I got my money back, Blue even took my gym badges afterward. I was definitely too naïve back then to think that a girl like Blue would like me so easily." Red admitted while blushing in embarrassment.
Blue froze up as she didn't expect that THIS story would be the one Red would bring up.
"Ahhh, now the other girls are going to think I'm a sneaky and scheming type of girl when I'm totally an angel these days" Blue thought to herself.
Little did Blue know, this event was one of the major traumas that caused Red to be mostly oblivious to love interest in him as he found it hard to bridge the gap between a girl being nice to him or respecting him and them showing affection.
Red noticed that Blue was looking slightly uncomfortable, so he quickly added "Of course there's no way someone of Blue's caliber would be into me so once again, it was just something I messed up on as a kid."
The other girls could barely suppress the urge to roll their eyes in unison. Clearly Blue was head over heels over Red now, but if anything, this might be a chance to get a leg up on Blue as she already blew her chances back then.
After the reactions to Red's comment died down a bit, Mei went next and asked "What's the biggest secret that you didn't want the team to know?"
The phone screen lit up with her name.
Mei looked surprised when her own name came up and she nervously looked around at the expecting looks of the group.
"W-well… don't take this the wrong way but before I was actually a part of … Team Plasma." She admitted honestly.
"It was in the past though! I am definitely dedicated to help beat all the parts of Team Neo including Team Neo Plasma!" She quickly added.
Everyone was shocked by this, but Red especially was shocked.
He had thought of Mei as a cute kouhai who he could get along with well and he had enjoyed their previous interactions.
He wanted to believe that she was wholly dedicated to helping the team beat the new team but at the same time, with the looming traitor problem hanging over his head, it was hard to see what she was admitting as anything but an admission of guilt.
He wracked his brain a bit and looked at Pika, who was sitting on his lap, for inspiration. Pika understood that Red was trying to deal with the traitor issue and Pika climbed onto Red's shoulder to pat him on the back while saying [Red you should trust Mei, she has been here for you since the moment you met her.]
Red understood the intent of Pika's message and sighed a bit to himself as he thought "That's true… I can't imagine she would just admit she was the traitor in our bonding activity. If anything, this probably clears her as being more trustworthy."
With this revelation passing by, White went next and asked the question that she had started this whole activity for. "Do you like someone romantically right now?"
The tension in the conference room rose to levels way higher than Mei's previous admission.
White pushed the button and … Red's name popped up again.
YES! Was a thought that reverberated through the heads of many of the participants in the room.
One of the people who was not thinking this was clearly Red.
He wasn't sure how he could give an exciting answer to this one when the answer was so clear.
"Of course not, on a macro level, I'm not an attractive enough person to warrant even considering liking someone." He stated bluntly as flashes of his previous trauma with Blue flared briefly in his subconscience.
A complicated feeling of relief and disappointment was shared on most of the girl's minds in attendance.
It would seem that Red hadn't even considered the fact that he was a very eligible bachelor, but it also meant that they all had a chance to win him over.
Crys coughed briefly and broke the silence with her question "What is your fondest childhood memory?"
Serena's name popped up and her eyes lit up immediately.
"Of course it would be the time Red helped me after a Poliwag startled me and made me fall over at the Pokemon Summer Camp in Pallet Town. He was such a gentleman, and his words of "Don't give up till it's over" have stuck with me to this day." Serena said with fondness.
Red suddenly looked up and brought out a pokeball, he let Poli out and said "Wait Serena, that same Poliwag is part of my team now."
Serena looked at Poli in surprise and came over to shake Poli's hands.
She wanted to show her gratitude to the pokemon that brought her and Red together, it must be fate that Red still had that Poliwag for all this time."
Poli was clearly confused but he did generally remember a girl who looked like Serena so he just let the hand shaking continue.
Sapphire went next and asked "If you could be any pokemon, which one would you be?"
Yellow's name popped up and she answered without hesitation "I would want to be a Pikachu! They're so cute and ChuChu is one of my cherished partners."
What she left out was the fact that she also envied how Pika always got to be close to Red and sleep with him… not that that was on the top of her mind!
She blushed at the thought of it but luckily no one seemed to have noticed and just accepted her seemingly innocuous answer.
Red went next and asked "What is the thing you currently regret the most at this moment."
Sapphire saw her name come up and with a sad look she said "The thing I regret the most right now is that I didn't make up with Ruby before I came on this huge mission. I haven't seen him in a while and… um how do I put this. I miss him a lot!"
Sapphire was very embarrassed to admit it and after a few supplementary explanations on who Ruby was, the follow up questions ended out of respect for Sapphire.
The other girls in the room also got some important information, Sapphire might have been one of the most formidable battlers in the room, but at least it didn't look like she was battling for Red's affections.
Serena's question was "Who is the person you want to have a pokemon battle the most with?"
Platina saw her name pop up and she without hesitation she declared "Red!"
She had thought this was a sufficient answer until she saw the looks of expectation from everyone in the room and she realized she was going to have to elaborate.
"Red is not only the most competent trainer I've met, I think he is also has some of the strongest bonds I've ever seen with his partners. I was hoping that by testing our battle skills against each other we could form similar bonds." She admitted abashedly.
Red was embarrassed as well and said "Platina you overestimate me, I just treat my partners as my close friends and they do a lot of the work in my battles."
Red had clearly understood the battle portion of Platina's statement, but had just as clearly missed that her other intention for battling with him was to get closer to him and form the same level of bonds he had with his pokemon.
Blue looked irked by all of this and wanted to change the flow of the conversation so she looked at Red and asked him to go ahead with his question.
Red asked "What is the thing that is bothering you the most right now?"
White took the cue from the phone and answered "Hmm, if I had to say, it would be between having to fight multinational criminal organization and trying to get the person I'm interested in to notice my feelings."
Red reacted by stating "Well whoever that guy is, I'm surprised he hasn't noticed someone as great as you White."
White blushed heavily in unison with the literal facepalming that Mei and Blue shared at that moment.
Even Crys and Serena, who had just joined the team recently were unable to suppress their eyes rolling at this point.
Yellow went next and asked "What was the hardest conflict you've ever had to resolve?"
Crys responded to the prompt with "One time, I had to help try to calm down Arceus, the god of all pokemon."
The trainers in the room who hadn't known about this event or who weren't there were taken aback.
That Arceus?
While every trainer there had dealt with their fair share of legendary pokemon, Arceus was certainly in a special league of unique interactions.
As the shock wore off, Platina finished off the bonding event with her question "On that note, if you could have any legendary/mythical pokemon on your team, who would it be?"
Platina's name popped back up on the phone and she answered "Well I guess I knew my answer from the beginning. It would be Shaymin or Shaymin's sky forme because they're both very cute pokemon that also double as strong battlers."
Platina was a bit surprised to see that the majority of her teammates were giving her surprised looks.
"I-Is it really that surprising that I love cute things?" Platina asked hesitantly.
"Well… I was under the impression you were a very serious kind of girl." Blue admitted.
"Haha, it's alright, I'm sorry if I come across like that. It's an old habit that has probably been coming up due to the gravity of our mission." She apologized and lightly bowed her head.
"No no, that's my bad for seeing it that way. It's reassuring to know you've also got those girly sides to you Platina." Blue said while getting nods of agreement from some of the other girls.
After everyone had gotten a chance to ask their questions, Blue looked at the time and realized that it was already getting late.
"Alright everyone, we should do this again another time, let's get some food and get some rest so we can be ready for trial preparation tomorrow." Blue guided the team with her suggestion.
With the team knowing a bit more about each other's habits and history, they went off to dinner and got ready for the upcoming days of preparation for their looming trial.
(A/N: Oh boy this chapter was really tough to write, lots of thought had to be put into each girl's personality. I hope y'all enjoyed my take on these characters, I try my best to add some depth to all of them so hopefully I'll find even more chances to include more moments like this chapter interwoven in future chapters. Have a good one and I look forward to reading your reviews, hope you enjoyed this one.)