A/N: I'm sorry… I just had to… lol you'll see what I mean!

Chapter Twenty Six

"Gina!" Emma called as she walked into Regina's house with Henry after school Monday afternoon. "Gina! Where are you?"

Regina came around the corner, looking at Emma in confusion. "Emma. I didn't expect you today."

Emma shrugged. "Mommy had to stay late at work. She said I could walk here with Henry," she explained, as Henry said a quick hello to Regina and took off up the stairs to his room. "Gina, do you have a phone?"

"Yes…" Regina replied, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Emma.

"Like… a cell phone?"

"Yes, Emma. Why?"

"Can I borrow it?"

"Why, Emma?"

"I just want to see it," Emma insisted.

Regina frowned as she headed to the living room, Emma right behind her. She grabbed her BlackBerry from the coffee table, and handed it to Emma. "You're not planning on making any long distance calls to the other side of the country, are you?"

Emma ignored the question as she scrunched up her face in confusion at the phone. "What is this?"

"It's my cell phone, Emma."

Emma shook her head. "No, this isn't right. It doesn't look right," she said, pressing buttons and frowning at the screen. "It's not on here."

"What's not on there?"

"Nevermind," said Emma, handing the phone back to Regina before taking off up the stairs to Henry's room.

"Henry!"

Henry glanced up from his own phone that he was busy texting on. "What, Emma?"

"Can I borrow your phone?"

"No. I'm kind of using it at the moment," Henry said, holding up the phone in his hand for emphasis.

"But I need a phone! And Gina's is… I don't know what Gina's is but it's not right."

"Emma, what are you talking about?"

Emma let out an exasperated sigh. She hated that she didn't understand cell phones or any of the newer technology that hadn't been around when she was actually nine. She didn't like to admit that she really had no idea what she was talking about. "I need… a phone… that is a rectangle and white and it has a circle button on the bottom."

"You need an iPhone?"

"Yes?" Emma replied, hopefully. "I think so?"

"Why?"

"Well… there's this game…"

Henry let out a laugh as he rolled his eyes. "You want to play Pokemon?"

"Everybody else is! And they all have eye phones!"

"Well, you're not having my phone. I'm using it," Henry repeated. "But…. well, maybe I shouldn't tell you this…"

"What?! Tell me what, Henry?"

"You kinda do already have your own phone… from before."

"Really? Where is it? At Mommy's house? Can you take me there?!"

Henry laughed and shook his head. "Slow down, Emma. It's not at the loft. It's actually here, in a box with some of your old stuff." Henry placed his phone on the bed before getting up and heading to his closet. He reached for a box on the top shelf simply labelled "MOM", careful to turn it so Emma didn't read the word on it.

"Why do you have some of my stuff?" Emma asked, as she dropped to her knees in front of the box as Henry set it on the ground, anxious to see what was in there.

Henry shrugged. "I just do."

Henry lifted the lid, and the first thing Emma spotted was a red leather jacket. "That's mine?"

"Yep," Henry said, nodding as he picked up the carefully folded jacket and set it beside the box.

"So that's why Gina dressed in a red jacket to be me on Halloween."

"Yep," Henry agreed, as he dug through various items of Emma's he'd kept, until he found her phone.

"That's it!" Emma declared. "That's the phone I need!"

"Right. But we gotta charge it, though. It hasn't been used in months."

Emma pouted as Henry plugged the phone into the wall outlet near his bed, and then hopped back onto his bed and grabbed his own phone to continue his text conversation.

"How long?" Emma whined, still sitting on the floor.

"It hasn't even been a minute. It takes a while. Go do some homework or something."

Emma frowned as she got up and headed out of the room. She didn't particularly want to do homework, but she had promised her mother she would do it before she left Regina's that evening, and she supposed it was as good a way as any to pass the time waiting for her phone to charge.

It felt like an eternity had passed before Henry finally came down the stairs with her phone in hand. "Here, kid," Henry said with a wink, handing Emma the phone with the game already up. "I made you an account and everything."

"SheriffSwan?" Emma asked, scrunching up her nose at the screenname Henry had selected.

"Yeah… 'cause you're the Sheriff. Or, you were… and I guess you will be… whatever… do you want me to teach you how to play or not?"

Emma nodded quickly. The screenname wasn't that important, she guessed, though she'd thought of calling herself something like 'EmmaSoftPaws' or 'EmmaGina', she guessed 'SheriffSwan' would have to do.

After a five minute crash course, Emma was off, phone in hand, on a hunt around Regina's house. She'd selected the turtle - who Henry had quickly informed her was named Squirtle - as her first Pokemon, and she was determined to find more, even if she still didn't quite understand what they were for.

"Oh! A rat!" Emma announced, creeping up at the Rattata that appeared near the bottom of the stairs.

"Throw your pokeball!" Henry encouraged her.

"Got him!" Emma cried, after only three attempts.

"What on earth are you two doing?" Regina asked, coming into the room after hearing the commotion.

Emma spun around to face Regina, holding her phone up as she felt it vibrate again. "Oh, Gina, don't move," Emma said, seriously, her eyes wide. "There's a guy on your head!"

"There's a… what?

"I don't know what but he looks like a cannon ball with eyes and there's smoke all around him! Don't worry, I'll catch him!"

"Henry?" Regina asked, looking to her son for answers but only receiving laughter in response.

"Got him!" Emma declared, proudly holding up her phone to show Regina. "Ghastly. I don't know the names 'til I catch 'em."

"Pokemon wasn't out when she was actually nine," Henry explained.

"Oh. I think I remember you playing with those Pokey-men when you were younger," Regina said, nodding as she finally figured out Emma was playing a game.

Henry rolled his eyes. "You're too much. Both of you. Seriously."

"Where did she get that phone?"

"It's hers," Henry said with a shrug. "She wanted to play the game and I wasn't giving her mine, and your phone is basically ancient, so…"

Regina nodded as Emma ran off to chase another Pokemon. "Are you sure that's a good idea, Henry? What if she reads something on there from before?"

"Like a text or something?" Henry asked. "I don't know. I hadn't thought about that."

"There's only so much she knows, and she's too young to get bogged down with everything."

"Yeah. I know," Henry agreed. "She doesn't know how to work the phone though. Maybe we can just not let her have it when she's not playing the game?"

Regina nodded, though she was already well aware how determined Emma could be when she wanted something, and now that she knew this phone exists and it was hers, Regina was sure taking it from her, even temporarily, was going to be a battle.

Henry had only been back up in his room for about twenty minutes when Emma returned, flopping herself down on his bed in a huff.

"What now?" Henry asked, raising an eyebrow as he watched Emma toss the phone on the bed in front of her.

"There's no more Pokemon here," she said with a sigh. "Now what am I gonna do? All the other kids have lots of them and I only caught three."

Henry fought the urge to remind Emma that it was just a game. "What if I take you to the park after dinner tonight? I bet there's tons at the park."

Emma grinned as she grabbed her phone back again. "Yeah! Then you can get the game too and we can hunt together!"

"Sure," Henry agreed with a nod.

"Henry… who's this with you?"

Henry glanced over at Emma's phone, where the lock screen now showed a picture of them taken about a year ago.

"That's…. You."

Emma looked up in surprise. "Really? Gina said I used to be older but I've never seen a picture." Emma turned her attention back to the phone, studying the picture intensely. "How come it's me and you? Are we friends when I'm an adult?"

Henry let out a small laugh. "Something like that."

"Oh, that's good. 'Cause I like you."

"Well, that's good to know."

"Are you gonna miss me when I'm old again?" Emma asked, looking at Henry seriously.

"Are you planning on going somewhere?"

"No! I just mean, will you miss me as a kid?"

Henry sighed. "It's fun knowing you like this, Emma, but I miss you as an adult."

"Why?"

"I just… do. Come on, let's both get our homework finished so we can go to the park later, alright?"

"Fine." Emma hopped up from Henry's bed and headed back into her own room again, forgoing her homework in favour of sitting down in front of the cat bed, where Kitty Softpaws laid with her kittens.

"Guys, you all need new names" Emma said, looking at the kittens, before picking the orange one up. "You're still the best one, and Henry says the best Pokemon is Pikachu, so I'm calling you Pikachu."

Emma put the kitten back and frowned at the other two. "I don't have anymore names yet, so you two have to wait. But I'll think of good ones and then we'll find you good homes. Gina says Ruby's having a party soon, and I get to go. Maybe it's her birthday and one of you can go live with her as a present?"

For their part, the kittens didn't seem to care one way or the other, and Emma just shrugged it off, getting up only to flop down on her own bed with her phone.

"I wonder how this works," she said to herself, looking at the various apps on the screen. "Messages?" Emma asked, aloud, pressing the button to open the messaging app. "Oh, a message from Ruby? 'Emma, I have something important to tell you!'"

Emma scrunched her face in confusion. "How does Ruby even know I have a phone?" she asked herself, quickly finding the reply button, and typing 'What?'

Emma stared at the screen in anticipation, and giggled to herself when the phone dinged a moment later and a message from Ruby appeared: 'Emma?'

'You have something important to tell me?'

'Emma… that message was from like half a year ago…'

'Well I didn't know I had a phone til today and I only learned to read a couple months ago! So tell me now'

'Emma, you're so cute. What I was going to tell you then was that I started dating Belle in secret. Secret's out since your birthday party, but you would have been the first to know…'

Emma frowned. She was expecting to be let in on something important, not something she already knew. Before she could even reply, Ruby sent another message.

'Do your parents know you have your old phone back?'

'No. Henry and Gina do.'

'Okay. Don't read back through our old messages, k? They're not all age-appropriate and I don't want your parents to kill me, k?'

'K'

Emma sighed and put the phone down again. She didn't particularly care what was in any of her old messages anyway, since she didn't remember that life. She supposed she would remember as she got older, but she still had a while before then, and more important things on her mind like catching Pokemon and naming kittens and finding them homes.

An idea struck Emma then, and she turned to look back at the kittens, only one of whom was still awake. "You know, I'm not so sure I'm gonna be the Sheriff when I grow up," she said, thoughtfully, though she knew the kitten didn't understand or care. "Daddy's already the Sheriff, and this is my second chance. I can be whatever I want to be."

The kitten simply yawned in response, but Emma didn't care. With her new resolve, she got up and grabbed a notebook, opening it to a blank page, and began writing:

Official Application for Kitten Adoption

To be continued….