Today marks three years of writing for this site as Acanthus Addams. It's amazing how the time has flown by, and though I don't upload as frequently as I used to, I'm still just as grateful to anyone who reads and enjoys my stories. Thank you all!

To anyone waiting for an update on Hidden Power: it's coming. I can't say when, but it's still in the works. If it takes me ten years to finish, I will not abandon that story.

Forged with Feeling

It wasn't often that Ash Ketchum felt genuinely intimidated by his best friend. Fighting, after all, had been the backbone of their relationship for the entire eight years it had lasted. But this was certainly one of those times.

There she was, pacing back and forth across the Cerulean gym's upstairs living room, her hands behind her back and her amber-hued ponytail whipping around with every swift turn of her heel. And as cosy of a prison as these environs may have been for him, a prison they nonetheless were – at least until she was through with him.

"So," Misty said after a good minute of tense silence, "do you know why you're here?"

Scratching the black hair beneath his cap, the eighteen-year-old inhaled nervously. "Uhhh…"

"Never mind," she waved off, her eyes closed, "I'll just come right out with it."

Her athletic body leant against the sofa directly opposite the one Ash was sitting on, poised in such a way that the young man couldn't help but grow a little hot in the face. As if he wasn't confused enough already…

"Ash," she began on a tart inhale, "why have you been forging my signature?"

An electric tingle ran up Ash's back, one that he tried his best to stifle lest he give himself away. This one would take some serious perverse psychology to get out of, that was for sure.

"Err…wh-what?" he chuckled, his eyes never meeting hers. "What, um, what do you mean?"

Misty stood up straight. "So that's how you're going to play this, hmm?" she grinned sourly. "That's okay; I figured as much."

As his captor began to pace again, Ash suddenly felt himself regretting this spontaneous decision to play dumb. What harm would there have been in just owning up to it? She didn't even know about the huge buneary hole this week had led him down yet! Well, he hoped she didn't, anyway.

"Let me show you something," she said, producing a clipboard with a small stack of paper clipped onto it. "Recognise this?"

He blinked. "It's, uhh…the sign-in page from the front desk?"

"Uh-huh," she answered. "Notice anything unusual about it?"

"Boy, this is gonna get old real fast," the pokémon trainer sighed internally. Still, uncharacteristic of him as it was to admit it, he'd kind of brought this on himself this time.

"No, why?"

Misty held the paper closer to his face. "Oh, so there's nothing weird about the fact I've somehow signed myself in every day for the next two weeks?"

"Maybe you were, I don't know, sleepwalking?" He could tell he was digging his own grave here, but in reality, Ash knew exactly how this had all started – and his thoughts back to that day a week ago were way ahead of him before he could stop them…

"Booooooooored," Ash yawned as he spun around like an infant on the Cerulean gym front desk's swivel chair. "Why'd Misty invite us here for the week if she's going to be busy with gym challengers the whole time?"

"Pika-chuu," shrugged Pikachu, the little Mouse Pokémon seemingly not sharing in his trainer's ennui.

"Wouldn't be so bad if we could actually watch the battles," he continued, "but ohhh no, apparently I 'put her off.' What, am I not supposed to shout advice down to her when she picks the wrong pokémon?! Talk about ungrateful!"

By this time, Pikachu had bounded off the desk and was dancing on the tiled floor for the amusement of Misty's baby azurill.

"Okay for some," Ash tutted, absentmindedly sketching a little pokéball on the corner of a clipboard in front of him. Only when he looked down at it did he take in what was actually on the sheet of paper: a myriad of squiggly signatures, neatly inked in alongside start and end times for each day of the week.

"This is Misty's signature?" he frowned at the loopy pattern occupying every space of the current month. "How does she even do that?"

Indeed, just by looking at it, it was hard to see where the image both began and ended. The only obvious letters visible were an 'M' for 'Misty' and a 'W' for 'Waterflower,' with the rest made up of heavily stylised swirls and lines. It must have taken a lot of practice…buy hey, if she could do it, so could he!

In the empty box below today's date, Ash slowly scrawled in a very crude and wobbly imitation of the autograph. Not his best work, he decided, and so, having nothing else to do, he tried again. And again. And again. And very soon, the young boy had all but forgotten about his boredom.

"Yeah, nice try, Ash," Misty snorted, all the while maintaining her cool demeanour. She was about to speak again, but a faint scratching at the door to her left threw her thought process momentarily off course.

"Pikachupi!" a muffled squeak sounded out from the other side. The gym leader sighed and turned to face the sound.

"I'm sorry, Pikachu, but I'm not letting him out until he starts acting like an adult. Won't be much longer, okay?" She turned back to Ash. "I'll make sure of it."

"Psyyy?" came a disjunct squawk from the opposite end of the room.

"Do I have to put you outside too?" snapped Misty at the dopey duck pokémon. Psyduck stared forward for a second, then toppled sideways with a pudgy little plop.

"Ugh." She shook her head. It went against her fiery nature, for sure, but over the years, Misty Waterflower had come to notice that dealing with things in a stern, frosty, and eerily calm manner yielded better results than the vicious vocal explosions of her youth. She certainly enjoyed the power it gave her over her dizzy older sisters too. But with Ash, this finely tuned act didn't seem to bring the quiet satisfaction that it normally did. Was it nostalgia talking, she wondered, or was the only way to get through to her dense best friend to blow her top like she used to? Deep down, a part of her may even have hoped it was.

"Well, anyway, Ash, I didn't expect you to 'fess up straight away," she resumed. "Which is fine by me, because I'm just getting started."

The redhead took in a measured breath, and in doing so, a brief memory of that very morning skipped by her racing mind…

"Good morning, Misty!" a cheerful old man in reddish overalls beamed as he approached the doors to the gym.

"Morning, Herb!" Misty smiled back. "Have anything for me today?"

The postman's hand dove deep into the satchel around his neck. "Ah, here we are," he said. "It seems your sisters are as popular as ever, eh? And I believe that's a letter from the Pokémon League on top there."

Though she politely accepted the wad of letters, her face remained fixed on the bag. "Is that it?" she asked puzzledly. "No packages?"

He quickly checked through the satchel again. "Hmm, I'm afraid not, Misty," he sombrely answered. "Were you expecting something?"

"Yeah, a whole bunch of things. They all should have arrived by now. Are you sure they're not back at the post office?"

"I checked all the pidgey holes just before I left," Herb shrugged in concern. "But if you like, I can give you this delivery record here. Perhaps the items you ordered were left with someone else."

He shakily clicked a few buttons on his handheld device, tearing off the long sliver of paper that curled out from the end thereafter and handing it to the confused Misty.

"Well, I'd better get going," the amicable man remarked. "I'll let you know if I hear anything, Misty!"

The glass doors shing'ed shut behind him, leaving Misty alone in the foyer to scan the receipt she'd just been given. Sure enough, all of her outstanding orders were marked as delivered, which confused the girl even more…until her eyes flicked over to the recipient.

"Looks like this is it, then," she exhaled, the paper crumpling in her clenched fist, "today, I finally kill that boy."

"When I asked you to visit for the week, I told you this year was a busy time for gym challengers, didn't I?" she said upon recomposing herself.

"You can say that again," Ash groaned, without completely thinking it through.

Misty hid her reaction to his indignance behind closed eyes. "And while I was battling, did you answer the door to any mailmen this week? With that new forging skill of yours, I'm sure you could sign for whatever packages they gave you."

Ash's eye twitched. "M-Misty, what are you trying to say here?"

"Still playing this game, then," she nodded to herself. "Okay, guess we'll have to go through the whole list. Stop me if any of these rings a bell, hmm?"

There was definitely pleasure to be had in this little interrogation she was conducting. With someone as slow-witted as Ash especially, the poor guy was practically putty in her hands. But even with that in mind, there remained something about him that vexed her more profoundly than anyone else ever could. Only he could tease out her rawest innermost feelings – in so many more ways than one. However, now was absolutely not the time for that train of thought.

She took out a number of receipts, all of which looked to have been previously crumpled up into a ball. "One fireproof clay feeding pot, about yay big." Her arms stretched out to around twice the width of her body. "Any ideas?"

Ash remained silent.

"Oh well," she shrugged, "I guess Gyarados will just have to go hungry this week." Out of the corner of her eye, Misty took a wicked delight in seeing her friend stiffen in his seat.

"Moving on…one plastic prop crown, to be used in my sisters' water show next weekend." Once again, Ash had naught to say. "Nope? Well, that's fine; I'm sure my sisters will understand when I tell them their princess won't have a crown because my idiot friend is prancing around Sinnoh wearing it. Ahh, that'll be a fun conversation."

"Should I tell her?" Ash was beginning to ask himself. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't dense enough to not know soul-crushing sarcasm when he heard it – especially when it came from Misty. But no. He had to hold out for just a little longer. He had to. The payoff at the end was just too great to pass up.

"A set of deluxe jewellery cleaning cloths, which I really hope you're putting to good use, wherever they are, because my poor Staryu and Starmie have been looking so sad for days."

The thought of these faceless pokémon caused Ash to raise an eyebrow. "How…how can you tell?"

"Shut up," she snapped, before quickly returning to her cold façade. "Moving on…"

She shuffled through the remaining receipts. "Ah, now this one I'm curious about: an industrial-grade sealant gun. Why you'd want that is beyond me, I've gotta say, but hey, just for the hell of it, do you wanna know what it was for?"

As predicted, he stayed quiet, but the intrigue in his deep brown eyes betrayed him. "I was going to use it to reinforce the upstairs fish tanks. Fish, Ash, not pokémon. The Cerulean gym is home to twenty-two different endangered species, and if those tanks were to crack, there's no way they'd survive. But never mind, I'll just tell the sweet old lady who runs the conservation project that all her babies are extinct, okay?"

Ash's forehead began to sweat. Misty sure had been practising this speech. By now, he even wished she would resort to yelling, just to spare him of this sadistic trap she was steadily luring him into.

"On the plus side," she added slyly, "one of the biggest tanks is right next to the guest room, so if it does break, I guess you'll be the first to know!"

"Misty, how long is this going to go on?" he suddenly interjected. "Can't you just get to the point?"

"Just a couple more," she smirked back. "Remember, you did this to yourself."

"Argh!" was the boy's screaming inner monologue from that point on. This had better be worth it…

"A whooooole box of rubber pool filters," Misty purposely exaggerated. Clearly, she was getting rather restless herself. "I don't even want to know what your interest in those is."

Ash just rolled his eyes.

"And finally, a set of acrylic paints for – wait for it – Tracey's birthday! Whatever you've got planned, Ash Ketchum, are one heartless piece of work."

Those few words were all it took for the shocked boy to change tack in a fraction of a second. There'd be no playing dumb from here on out.

"Okay, look, Misty," he said as he moved to stand, "if I can just show you—"

"You're not going anywhere Ketchum." As soon as she'd seen him move, Misty's defences were raised instantly. "Where are they."

Not one inflection of those words suggested there was a question in there somewhere. Little by little, the girl's icy performance was beginning to thaw.

"Just let me go!" Ash barked back. "There's something you need to—"

"Oh no you don't! Not until you tell me where my stuff is, Ash!" With that, she held up one last receipt and squashed it right into the unprepared pokémon trainer's face. "Or, should I say, COUSIN MIKEY?!"

Her voice was like razors slicing deeper with every syllable. But that last thing…yep, the gig was well and truly up now. In that moment, he was, peculiarly, hit by a wave of recollection; a callback to the moment this whole phenomenon was set in motion:

Shing!

Ash looked up from the clipboard to see a small man with a satchel full of letters step lightly through the sliding doors into the foyer.

"Morning!" the man said when he saw the boy behind the desk. "Package for Misty Waterflower?"

"Uh yeah, she's right through—"

He stopped himself, pen still in hand from his latest activity. "Actually, you know what? I can sign for those."

Swirling around the pen into a recently rehearsed shape, Ash then accepted two packages from the satisfied postman: one large, and one small. Oddly, the packaging was not the traditional brown paper, but tightly rolled bubble wrap. This made the items inside entirely visible, and as Ash set them down on the desk, something about their arrangement gave him pause. The smaller package contained a crown or tiara of sorts, while the larger one underneath held a huge pot made of clay. He looked, and looked, and an image formed in his head…which turned into a thought…which turned into a series of thoughts…which turned into an idea. And what an idea it was.

The next morning…

"Package for Misty Waterflower?"

"I'll get that," Ash smiled as he approached, pen at the ready. This postman was different to the one from the previous day, and when Ash laid down the neat scribble upon the page, his bespectacled eyes squinted in suspicion.

"And you are?" he probed.

"Umm…I-I'm…" Ash faltered. Quickly looking down at the unique autograph he'd just written, spontaneity overrode any sense of actual logic. "M-Mikey! Yep, that's me, Mikey Waterflower!"

The postman wasn't entirely convinced. "I haven't seen you here before, Mikey."

"Oh yeah, I'm, um, Misty's…cousin! From, er, out of town, ehehe. Who d'ya think she got her signature from, eh?"

Looking down at the writing, it was, indeed, nigh on impossible to distinguish between the names 'Misty' and 'Mikey.' For once, it seemed, Ash Ketchum had done something clever!

"Well, if you say so," the man shrugged. "Apologies, sir. Have a nice day!"

As soon as he was gone, Ash ripped open the paper-wrapped parcel and grinned to himself triumphantly. "Yes! This'll be perfect…"

The reverie turned out to be a short one, as a dainty fist was quick to knock the boy's head back down to earth.

"Hello, anyone in there?" Misty growled. "I said where are they!"

Ash shook his smarting head and backed off a little. "Okay, Misty just slow down…"

"I'm not joking around anymore, Ash! Tell me what you're up to or I'll cram you into Pikachu's pokéball sideways!"

The vitriol of old was back – and secretly, Misty couldn't deny that it felt good. "I'm waiting!"

"Misty, I'm trying to tell you if you'd just—"

"Hell, I don't even care about you forging my signature – good on you for learning something, I say! But if you think I'm going to let you steal my stuff and sneak behind my back on THIS WEEK OF ALL WEEKS—"

"OKAY!"

The outburst was enough to cause silence to ring out for at least five seconds after. During the back-and-forth, the two friends had moved alarmingly close to one another – so close, in fact, that Ash could smell the chlorine in Misty's hair. It soothed him in a millisecond, and he didn't quite know why. But at least he could now make his intentions known.

"You're right," he finally said, to which the redhead's expression softened (not to mention reddened). "I have been forging your signature all week. I took your packages, and I told the mail guys I was your cousin so they'd let me have them. But I wasn't doing it for no reason."

Misty was intrigued, but still annoyed nonetheless. "And what reason could you possibly have for this, Ash Ketchum?"

Tentatively, the young boy moved towards the closed door. "Come with me," he almost whispered.

When Misty felt a warm, gloved hand slide into hers, a tickling shiver shot through every nerve in her body. She wanted to stay angry in this moment, despite how amazing this new feeling was. She was so wrapped up in said feeling, in fact, that Ash had led her to their 'destination' before she even realised they'd moved at all.

"You hid my mail in the store room?" she mumbled, frustrated and perplexed.

Ash scratched his head. "Not exactly. Take a look."

The suspense was killing her; she'd give him that, at least. Slowly, she pushed on the creaking wooden door, more afraid than curious by what she might see in there. The door opened wider, the light from the hallway spilled into the tiny room, and…

Her heart stopped.

It was Togepi.

Her Togepi.

In the mesmerising effigy were all of her missing items, dotted around and mingled together with a dedication she'd scarcely ever seen from anyone. The clay pot was the body. The crown, its spiked head. Fragments of silken cloth made up the eyes, mouth, and eggshell markings. For each appendage, a conical pool filter sat neatly in place. Great messy globs of sealant held everything together. And though streaked all over the table and up the adjacent wall, Tracey's birthday paints were the finishing touch that really brought this beautiful sculpture to life. For the first time in the whole night, Misty just didn't know what to say.

"I know why you invited me over this week, Mist," Ash smiled beside her. "Bet you thought I'd forget, huh? This is the second anniversary of when Togepi left for the Mirage Kingdom."

Tears were pooling at the redhead's eyes. Were she to look over at him now, she knew for certain they would spill over.

"You hide it well, but I can tell how much you're hurting right now," he continued, placing a hand on her shoulder. "And then when you were so busy battling all those trainers, I knew I couldn't keep you company as much as you needed me to."

A slight whimper came from Misty's direction as Pikachu scurried down the hall and jumped up into her limp arms.

"I'm real sorry I used all your important stuff this way," Ash said, genuine guilt hiding behind a lopsided grin, "but when I got the idea in my head, I knew I'd do anything to try and cheer you up. You're my best friend in the whole world, Misty, and, well," – he pulled his hat down over his crimson face – "I really hope you like it."

"Like it?" she repeated in her head. No one had ever given her a gift of this magnitude before. And from Ash of all people… "I love it," she beamed on the inside. "I love it." The thought was unending. "I love y—"

"NO!"

With a rude awakening back to reality, Misty gently let Pikachu to the ground, then lunged forward and scooped her beloved Togepi model right off the counter and into her arms. A swift heel kick sent her friend flying right to the back of the room, and without looking back, she slammed the door and turned the key as forcefully as she could.

"Misty?" Ash's voice could be heard from inside. "Misty, what the hell? Let me outta here, Misty! MISTY!"

She ignored him, however, her back peaceably to the door and her arms wound tightly around the treasured gift her friend had worked so hard on. This was when the tears finally fell, but tears of sadness they were not. For she had never been happier than in this very moment. She could easily stay here forever, bathing in this feeling of love and friendship for the rest of her…

"Psyyyy."

Misty's eyes shot open to see a wide, grinning bill and two gawking eyes pointed straight at her.

"Not a word," she snarled as she walked off down the hall with Ash's ill-gotten gift held firmly in her grasp.

She'd go back and thank 'Mikey' properly later on, of course. Maybe in an hour or two; that'd give him time to forge himself a decent apology letter…