Chapter 21: Serena Graces Us All

(A/N: For the new character that joins in this chapter, I've decided to use the name from the show but mix her characteristics a bit from the manga and the show as I think they aren't mutually exclusive parts of her character. On a totally unrelated note, my favorite esports org, Team Liquid had a rough day in LCS playoffs today so I'm not feeling the best but hopefully the chapter helps with that. Back to the story, I do know where I ultimately want to take the story, but the adventure and duration to get to that ending could be quite the long story depending on how it form in my mind. That is to say, the story will probably be around for quite a good while longer unless I lose motivation or I think there isn't any meaningful story left to write. Hope y'all enjoy as always.)

General

The girl who called to Red and Blue was wearing a black top, a high waisted red skirt with black thigh highs and a pink hat with white sunglasses perched on top of them.

She looked quite peeved at Blue, but both Red and Blue looked very confused that this girl knew Red's name.

If this was back in Kanto, at least there'd be the explanation that they recognized the region's most famous champion.

However, this was clearly Kalos, and Red had very little exposure in the region as far as the average person was concerned.

"Um, who are you? And how do you know Red's name?" A clearly annoyed Blue asked the new threa – girl.

"Red should know who I am, after all, I'm the one that he promised to marry someday." The new girl said with a confident smile.

She gave an expecting look towards Red, awaiting his affirmation of her claim, but instead she was met with a blank look from the boy in question.

"Sorry, not to offend you but have we met before?" Red asked in genuine confusion as he racked his brain for any memories of meeting such a cute and confident looking girl

"Hmph, I see we're playing hard to get nowadays Red, maybe this will jog your memory." And with that, the girl uttered just three words. "Pokemon. Summer. Camp"

Blue judged these words as nonsense but she was shocked when she looked to her left and saw Red with eyes widened.

"Serena?" Red asked in slight disbelief.

"Bingo!" Serena looked overjoyed by Red's revelation.

"I'm so glad I could see you again Red, I've been looking forward to seeing you again ever since we met at that camp." She continued on with a large smile.

"Wow, what a coincidence that we met all the way here in Shalour City. What are the chances of that?" Red remarked while completely unaware of the implications of Serena's declaration of her desire to see him for over a decade.

Blue, was not born yesterday, so she immediately understood the implication of Serena's words and felt a headache building up as she sized up her new competition.

Serena had long legs and a nice hourglass figure complimented by the kind of good fashion sense that Lumiose City in Kalos was known for. She also had an attractive feminine face and voice that triggered Blue's future love rival radar like no other.

Then a thought occurred to Blue and she had to find the answer to as the dread began to rise up for her.

"Wait, when you mention Pokemon Summer Camp, when did this happen?" Blue asked with apprehension in her voice.

"Oh, I think we were around five when this happened." Serena said nonchalantly.

However, this simple sentence absolutely destroyed Blue's confidence in a single moment.

The reason was because quite simply, Blue's confidence in Red's team largely stemmed from the fact that she had known Red the longest. But now, instead of meeting at the age of ten, here comes another S-class girl who had met him five years before him.

"Well… at least she just happened to meet him here, it's not like she'll be around for too long…" Blue tried to reassure herself mentally.

"Also Red, it's not a coincidence we met here! I'm here to join your team on your mission to defeat Team Neo at Professor Oak's request. Although, I would have come anyway if I had known that you had a problem you needed help with." Serena then proceeded to drop another bombshell on Red, and more importantly on Blue.

This was the final blow for Blue's fragile sense of self and her face started to resemble Ditty.

"Oh that's great, I'm happy to hear that you ended up pursuing pokemon training!" Red was clearly still oblivious to the source of Blue's distress and proceeded to welcome the new member to his team.

Red did happen to see the Ditty-like face Blue was making and with a concerned face he asked "Is everything alright Blue? You don't look so great right now."

Blue just nodded weakly and said, I think we should probably end this date right now and meet with the rest of the group.

Before Red had a chance to agree, Serena cut in "Date? Red is this girl your girlfriend?" Now it was Serena's turn to show a look of panic.

"I don't have a girlfriend, we were just going on a date so I could get to know her better personally." Red said innocuously without a single hint of sarcasm.

This confused Serena further … "Wait so do you … like her at least?" She asked apprehensively.

Without hesitation Red said "Of course I like her, I like everyone in my team which is why I'm taking everyone of them on a date to get to know them better."

Of course, Red had proudly announced this plan not on the basis of trying to shamelessly form a harem, but because he thought that dates would be the best way to get to know the girls personally so he could figure out who the traitor was and potentially save them. If only Brock could have seen the chaos he had inadvertently sewn with his little prank about the definition of a "date".

Still, there was no way Serena would have known this was going through Red's head so...

Serena nearly fainted at hearing this.

"What happened to the cute and innocent Red I used to know?" Serena thought to herself.

After some lamenting over lost innocence, Serena came to a key realization.

"Wait, if I'm joining the team, that means I'll get a chance to go on a date with Red too!"

With that thought, Serena quickly rebounded from her sadness and her face returned to the original cheery expression she had a few moments before.

The makeshift group returned back to the gym where the rest of Red's team was waiting.

On the way there, Red used the light chit chat that was going on between him and Serena, and also him and Blue (there wasn't much chatter between the two girls to say the least), to collect his thoughts on how the date with Blue had gone.

It was clear that Blue was hiding something from him.

When he asked the very basic question about how she felt about him, she had very blatantly averted his gaze with her hands and even stated flat out that she couldn't tell him right now.

While it wasn't a confession of guilt, it was certainly suspicious. Red couldn't fathom what his old friend could be hiding from him if it wasn't something to do with her feeling guilty about the betrayal.

Red decided to keep that circumstantial evidence to himself for now and compare the interactions with the other girls later on to ultimately figure out if Blue was the culprit.

Deep down, he didn't want to believe that it could have been her, he had known Blue for so long and it wasn't a soothing thought for him to start suspecting her of something as heinous as betraying their longtime friendship. It just happened to be that he couldn't think of any other logical reason she'd be shying away from such a simple question.

Red's concentration was broken by the sound of two of his team members duking it out in the Shalour City Gym's practice lounge.

Sapphire and Platina were whiling away their boredom (and frustration in Platina's case for not being able to get the first date) through battling.

When Red entered, both Platina and Sapphire's final pokemon and aces were out on the field.

Empoleon vs. Mega Blaziken was raging wildly but despite the type advantage, Red had only managed to catch the end of the fight as Mega Blaziken finished off Empoleon with a HighJump Kick.

It would seem that while Mega Blaziken was weak to water, her fighting attribute and the power of mega evolution edged out Platina's Empoleon.

Instead of getting frustrated though, Platina just thanked Sapphire for the experience and motioned for Sapphire to join her in reconvening with Red now that he had finally returned from his date.

The obvious first question that arose was, who was the new girl (which was inevitably paired with the thought "Another one?")?

Serena seemed to read that this was the mood in the room and she took the initiative to introduce herself "Hi my name is Serena, and I'm the girl Red has known the longest here as well as the one he promised to marry!"

Jaws went slack in the room and even Blue, who had heard this before, was shocked once again as she could no longer even plausibly deny the claim of being Red's partner for life, as being something she had misheard.

Red noticed that everyone was giving him a mix of death glares and looks of disappointment he spoke out "Wait everyone, I think this did happen at some point… but we were both five!"

Serena heard this and made a subtle sad look on her face at the strong denial Red had came out with but bounced back with "Of course we were kidding at the time, but I am going to be joining your team everyone, so I look forward to going on a date with Red in the near future too."

Red had clearly only initiated the idea of the dates so he could sus out who the traitor was. Someone who had joined after the revelation from Professor Oak, couldn't possibly be the traitor as she wasn't even involved during the events in Hoenn.

He was about to mention that it wouldn't be necessary when he saw the expectations clear in Serena's eyes. He couldn't very well knock her hopes down just because he had work to do… was the conclusion he came to after seeing her expression.

"Alright everyone, Serena will be joining the team and of course, she will be participating in the Tower of Mastery trial with all of us!"

With that, Serena joined Red's ever growing team of "partners".

(A/N: I enjoyed writing about Serena and made the decision to give a connection to Red from the past, I think that it would be nice to spice things up with someone who has had a longstanding crush on him and also her backstory from the anime would just be a waste to ignore just because it was tied to anime Serena. My hands are starting to hurt from the typing so I'll bid y'all adieu here and see you in the next chapter. Looking forward to reading your reviews!)