It had almost been a week since Tiffany could recall seeing Nikki...well, anywhere.
The last time she could actively recall seeing the blunette nerd had been at one of their study sessions with Audrey at the Nutmeg Café, after she'd clocked out for the evening. Things had been going the same way they usually did: Tiffany dutifully trying to coach Audrey in whatever subject she was struggling with this week, the fashionista half paying attention while occasionally throwing edgeless barbs at Nikki, while the nerd typically worked on her laptop and occasionally offered corrections on info Tiffany get wrong (she was only human, it happened). As an aside, Tiffany was always a little jealous of Nikki's autodidactic mind: the girl seemed to retain information better than an entire reference library!
Anyway, things were as normal as normal got for the three of them. That was, until...Audrey asked a seemingly innocuous question.
"The fuck are you doing over there, Nerdzilla?"
To her credit, Nikki rarely rose to Audrey's barbs. "...just grinding my Machop until it evolves into a Machoke in Vietnamese Crystal. I still can't find a physical cartridge yet, so for now I'm using an emulator."
"..." She glanced over at Tiffany. "Did you understand a single word she just said? Cuz I sure as fuck didn't!"
Nikki chose to respond before Tiffany could. "It's Pokemon, you Neanderthal!" the blunette scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Even you have to know what Pokemon is, right?"
"Tch, of course I know what it is! It's that dumb kid's show with the boy that doesn't age, right?"
"It's not dumb! Sure, it's primarily marketed towards- ...wait, say that again?"
Audrey blinked a couple of times. "...um...it's a dumb kid's-"
"No no, the other part," Nikki interrupted. "The thing you said about Satoshi."
"...wasn't his name 'Ash'?" Tiff wondered.
"You mean that he doesn't age? Yeah, it's been fucking years and he still looks exactly the same, right?"
Nikki had been strangely somber for the rest of the evening, mostly leaving the other two girls to their own devices until they'd each gone their separate ways.
That had been on Monday evening.
It was Friday now, and neither Tiffany nor Audrey had heard hide nor hair of their nerdy friend since.
She'd apparently taken an "indefinite vacation" from the Café, so none of her coworkers knew what was going on either.
So that was how the two college students found themselves standing outside the door of Nikki's apartment, neither really eager to be the first one to knock (for different reasons).
"I still don't understand why I need to be here for this?" Audrey whined, casually tapping away at her smartphone, "I could be getting free drinks at Lusties right now instead of making a housecall to Nerd-a-tron."
"Because she's our friend, Audrey; wouldn't you want us to check up on you if suddenly disappeared for a week?"
"I mean… I guess…"
"See? We have to get to the bottom of this, for the sake of our friendship!"
"Don't you fucking put words in my mouth!"
"Audrey!"
"Ugh, fine! Let's just get this over with already!" She pounded an impatient fist on the door, then waited.
"You could be a little bit more-" Tiffany started to say when the door was suddenly yanked open, revealing Nikki Ann-Marie in an oversized Gears of War t-shirt and boxer shorts.
...which was the most normal thing about the blunette right now. The first thing about Nikki that hit both girls was the stench, causing them to recoil slightly; it was like she hadn't bathed in days! Her hair, normally in a tidy bob that crested her shoulders, looked closer to a bird's nest in the town boondocks that was 5 years past being condemned. ...after a tornado swept through. (There was also a wad of gum just above her left ear.) Her glasses, which were not crooked, were just barely hanging onto her nose, doing a poor job at hiding the dark rings around her eyes and bag underneath.
In short, she looked a right mess.
She also had a slight twitch in her right eye.
"Oh, it's you guys...I thought my pizza had arrived," she said. "Welp, it's been thirty minutes, that means it's free!"
"...Nikki?" Tiffany gaped.
"The fuck happened to you?" Audrey also gaped.
"No one's heard from you all week," Tiffany added, "we were starting to get worried about you…"
"Really? But I've been right here the whole time! Anyway, never mind that, come on in, I think I've almost cracked it!" She stepped aside, allowing her friends entry into the apartment.
The episode of Hoarders™ the two women stepped into was only in a marginally better state than its tenant: empty soda cans strewn about, a couple of half-empty pizza box ignored on a foldout table in what was supposed to be a kitchenette (which also included more soda cans), and random articles of clothing flung this way and that with absolutely zero rhyme or reason.
Tiffany gingerly stepped over a pair of Naruto patterned underwear.
But the most jarring detail was the walls and ceiling. Or rather, the fact that every square inch of them was covered in pictures of Ash Ketchum (or Satoshi, whatever) from different points in the series and in different art styles, all connected with thumbtacks and red thread. If there was a pattern to how any of the photos were connected, neither Tiffany nor Audrey could fathom one.
"So, Nikki," Tiffany began, "um...how do I say this-"
"The fuck is all this shit?"
As annoying as Audrey's interruption was...Tiff honestly couldn't think of a better way to word the question she wanted to ask.
"I was thinking about what you said the other day, about how Satoshi doesn't seem to age?" she explained, "well, my first thought was 'how did I never notice that before?', as you might expect. So obviously, the first thing I did was hit up the message board to see if anyone else might have had some insight- oh, feel free to sit anywhere, just mind the diorama." She gestured to a diorama of a bunch of anime girls fighting(?) some monster, which took up half of the only couch in the room.
The other half had one of the aforementioned pizza boxes on it.
Both college students elected to keep standing.
"So anyway, no one online really had any answers, so I decided to go through the series to see if there were any clues to his immortality there- subs only, of course; I'm not a filthy heathen- that someone might have missed. Naturally, I started at the very beginning; gotta be thorough."
"...and how did that go?" Tiffany asked hesitantly.
"Dunno yet; I'm only about a quarter of the way through so far."
"And how long is the show?"
"Over 1000 episodes, not counting specials and the movies."
Had Audrey been drinking something at that moment, she would have done the spit take to end all spit takes. As such, she merely choked on her words for a moment.
For the record, neither she nor Tiffany noticed the video window open on Nikki's PC rig that had an episode of Pokémon playing in it.
"Anyway, while that's been going on, I started compiling everything we know about Satoshi in explicit terms-"
"Hey, Nikki?" Tiffany raised her hand like she was in grade school. "I'm sure this is fascinating and all, but how about you skip to the end, ok?"
"Satoshi's a Pokémon!" Nikki exclaimed, wearing a beaming smile, "That's the only way any of this makes sense! Think about it: Legendary Pokémon can exist for millennia, and even normal Pokémon had crazy long lifespans compared to normal humans! I still need to confirm a couple of the details, but this is the right track, I can feel it!"
That twitch in her eye happened again.
"...so Nikki, apropos of nothing particular...how much sleep have you had lately?"
The time for subtlety had clearly passed.
"I stopped caring about that after day 2. Why?"
*twitch, twitch*
Tiffany gave a resigned sigh. "...Audrey?"
"Yeah?"
"Do the thing?"
"...for real?"
Tiffany nodded.
"Alright, if you say so…"
"Wait," Nikki said, "what thing-?"
Out of nowhere, Audrey reached out and grabbed Nikki's shoulder just inside of the shoulder blade, squeezing lightly.
The nerdy blunette instantly crumpled to the floor, unconscious. A few seconds later her light snoring resonated through the cozy living space.
"Let's get her to bed," Tiffany said as she knelt down to hoist her friend up, "if this is anything like the 'how can Fluttershy break the forth wall?' incident, she'll start thinking clearly once she wakes back up tomorrow."
"Sure, whatever…" Audrey grabbed Nikki's legs. "But there's no fucking way I'm sticking around to clean this shit up; you wanna touch all this nerd garbage, be my fucking guest."
"It's fine, I know someone who can help get this place looking livable again…"
fin.