What a
Guardian Angel!
by Liv Valle and Joshua Falken
Thanks to BenRG for beta read this fic
Author's notes: The following story is of the Humor genre. Although it deals with religious concepts (such as angels and the spirit realm) it does not represent a serious commentary on religion or on the beings that may inhabit the spirit realm. It is intended only to be a comedy, no more. If you are easily offended by stories with a religious aspect or that treat religious concepts irreverently, you are strongly advised NOT TO READ THIS STORY. Joshua Falken, Liv Valle and Ben Russell-Gough cannot accept any liability for distress or offence that this story may cause.
Chapter 5
by Joshua Falken
Two weeks after they left Pallet Town, Ash, Misty, Brock, Giselle and Gary (the latter much to Ash's dismay) finally reached Saffron City. Misty and Brock were visibly nervous with their friend's choice of destination.
"But, Ash... why Saffron?" Misty asked quietly.
"Because I want to challenge Sabrina again. And I don't understand why you are so afraid of her! I mean, for League's Gym Leaders Meetings, you should know that she had changed!"
"Even so..." Brock said, uncertain.
Giselle was lagging a little behind the others, so she took the opportunity to telepathically query Light Hope. Do they mean the Sabrina that I am thinking of?
Yes, The Pokémon-Angel answered seriously. Sabrina Valerie Dominique Bowman, leader of the Saffron City's Marsh Gym. The Supreme Authority gifted her with powers that go far beyond what most mortals could even imagine... Unfortunately, due to the rather... er... extreme prejudice against telepsychic powers most people have, Ms. Bowman was driven mad with loneliness. Ultimately, she came very close to becoming the Darkness' most powerful ally.
But she changed, just as Ash said? Giselle had heard that some mortals called the young telepath 'The female Darth Vader', a pop-culture reference that she didn't really understand herself.
Giselle felt her partner smile. Yes, she changed, Light Hope said. All thanks to that young man in the rather tatty League cap a few paces ahead of you. Giselle smiled. She should have guessed who had performed such a miracle...
Meanwhile, Ash was saying: "... besides, I need to have more experience in battle against psychic-types."
"Just with psychic-type Pokémon, Ash?" Gary interrupted with an ironic smile.
"What do you mean by that?" Ash asked, a vein jumping on his forehead.
Meanwhile, about half a mile behind the travellers, and 200 feet in the air, a hot-air balloon shaped like a Meowth's head was following them eastward. "So, what's happening now, James?" Jessie asked in a bored tone of voice. They had been following the twerps for one week, now. The monotony was threatening to drive all three of them crazy. Well, crazier than usual, that is.
"Well... now the usual twerp has begun to fight with the new twerp." James was watching the action through a pair of binoculars and was telling Jessie and Meowth what was happening as if he were a radio commentator at a boxing match. "And now, the girl with the Eevee is trying separate them. And now, the new twerp is holding her hands, with hearts in his eyes. The pathetic lovebird twerp is upset with this and now he wants to fight with the new twerp. And the scrawny brat is pulling the ears of the two twerps..." The same story had repeated over and over for the last week. 'I hope that, when we arrive in Saffron, we'll be able to get on to something new...' James thought. Much more of this and he would blast himself off, saving the twerp and his Pikachu the time and effort. "I hope that Jessie's plan works," he thought to himself. "Otherwise, that number of twerps will make our lives very difficult."
***
Later, the group from Pallet Town knocked doors of the Marsh Gym. A pretty brunette woman with blue eyes came to the door. "Welcome to the Saffron City Marsh Gym."
"Hello, Mrs. Bowman," the three friends said simultaneously.
"Ash! Misty! Brock!" Sabrina's mother remembered them and she smiled. Gary Oak was surprised at the way the woman hugged them as if she were greeting long-lost children. Giselle just smiled, basking in the positive emotions that the woman radiated. "It's nice see you again! How are you going?"
Ash introduced his new companions and, after catching up on recent events, Mrs. Bowman asked what they were doing in the city. " I want to challenge your daughter for a Pokémon battle!" Ash explained. "With everything that happened the last time we visited, I didn't really get the chance to properly battle for the Marsh Badge."
"I accept your challenge." A calm voice answered. Everybody turned as a tall young woman entered the living room. She had long dark-green hair and brilliant blue eyes. Her smile was somewhat narrow and forced. She dressed in a red coat and high-pipe black boots. Sabrina Bowman, large as life, entered the room and looked around her at Ash's new companions.
Ash introduced Gary and Giselle to the Gym Leader. Giselle and Sabrina looked each other for a long, silent moment. Both felt that there was something very powerful, something special about the other. Ash held his breath. What was going to happen? He worried about what might happen when the world's most powerful psychic met the universe's most clumsy angel... Perhaps his fears were groundless, because they just smiled at one another and shook hands.
***
The battles took place soon after that meeting. Ash won his battle, largely due to the efforts of Heracross, who (as a bug-type) had a lot of resistance to psychic attacks. Gary and Brock both drew with the Gym Leader and Misty won, largely due to Psyduck. The headache-prone water-type popped out of his Pokéball when Misty was about to send our her Starmie and beat Sabrina's Haunter with a powerful Psychic attack.
That evening, Ash's guardian angel was sitting in the gardens outside the Marsh Gym, talking with Light Hope, who had taken to sitting on top of her head. "Light Hope, I know what to do to get Brock off of my back!"
"How?" The Pokémon-angel asked, concerned. He had already figured the odds and he knew that Giselle's ideas had about a 95% of chance of going wrong...
"I'm going to make Brock fall in love with Sabrina!"
The angelic Eevee's jaw dropped open. "WHAT??????"
"Light Hope! Didn't you notice that she has a little crush on him?!"
Light Hope had his doubts, so he telepathically examined the telepsychic woman's thoughts as she worked in her small office. Much to his surprise, he saw that Sabrina really did have affectionate thoughts towards the Boulder Gym Leader! However, it would take more than those feelings to make Giselle's plan work... A sweatdrop appeared beside his face when he saw the expression on the young angel's face; he could see the gears whirling inside her head. When she looked like this, a wise being made preparations for the worst...
Suddenly, both Giselle and Light Hope 'felt' something was going wrong. Then two voices were heard, two voices that Ash, Misty and Brock found depressingly familiar. "Prepare for trouble because we are trying something new!"
"And make it double because stealing is what we do!"
Suddenly, a net sprang from under their feet, capturing Ash, Misty and Giselle. Everyone looked up to see two people, a redheaded woman and a man with blue-grey hair, both standing on a platform hanging underneath a hot air balloon. "To protect the world from the devastation!"
"To unite all people within our nation!"
"To denounce the evils of truth and love!"
"To extend our reach to the stars and above!"
"Jessie!"
"James!"
"Team Rocket blasting off at the speed of light!"
"Surrender now or be ready to fight!"
There was a 'pop-flash' sound and a blue-grey gumdrop-shaped Pokémon materialised in between the two villains. "WOOOH-BUFFETT!"
Another Pokémon, this one like a cream-furred cat, dropped down and knocked the Wobbuffet flat. "Meowth! That's right!"
"Team Rocket!" The ensnared humans exclaimed. Giselle knew about James Northridge Morgan and Jessica Morrigan Gibson, of course. Their files were in her briefing about Ash. The two White Rockets that had been stalking Ash since the beginning of his Journey. She could not stop feeling pity for them. After all she could see as how what they did actually hurt their hearts, even if they would never admit it... This wasn't what they wanted to be, after all. Jessie once already wanted to be a nurse!
"Hey! Where is Pikachu?" Jessie snapped, searching the net frantically.
Jessie and James suddenly figured out that neither Ash nor Misty had their Pokmon and started dancing with rage. Both trainers' Pokémon were in the City's Pokémon Center, so that they could recover from their respective battles. "Your cheaters!" Jessie exclaimed. "You should have brought your Pokémon! Damn it! We finally manage to catch you and you don't have anything worth the stealing!" The redheaded woman burst into tears, collapsed to the ground and began beating her fists on the pavement in an excess of disappointment.
Ash, Misty and Giselle changed confused looks at such "accusation"...
"Meowth! At least we can stole da goil's Eevee!"
Light Hope had no particular interest in being stolen by the three bumbling thieves. He focussed his thoughts and used a Swift attack to cut the net open. Then he bit James on the nose. The blue-haired man staggered back, screaming in panic until Jessie finally managed to pry the Eevee off. Then Light Hope used Tail Whip on Jessie, making her drop him and jump back in surprise.
There was a long pause as the combatants formed a triangle. Jessie and Arbok at one corner, James and Weezing at another (with Meowth hovering above him in the hot-air balloon) and Giselle and Light Hope on the last corner (with Ash and Misty under her arms).
Giselle looked at the two boiling-mad Rockets and grinned. "You lookin' for trouble strangers?" Giselle drawled like a gunslinger in a Western movie. "Well then." Jessie and James tensed. Suddenly, Giselle's voice went back to her normal tone. "Lucky for you, I'm not! Time to go!" Giselle materialised her roller-blades. "Bye-bye suckers!" she laughed in her normal tone and left at full speed back towards Marsh Gym. It took the three thieves a few seconds to realise that Ash's 'cousin' had tricked them. Then they ran off after their escaping victims.
"Hey! Come back!" Jessie shouted.
"Yeah! We're supposed to be the sneaky ones!" James added.
"I didn't know that you knew skate on roller-blades!" Misty commented to her "saviour".
"Skate, yes. Stop, no," Giselle said with a slightly silly smile.
"WHAT???" Ash and Misty exclaimed, unable to believe that they had just heard that. Then they looked up and saw that they were heading right for a lamppost. "AARGH! GISELLE, TURN!"
"I CAN'T!"
The angel struck the pole head-on. The couple that she had been carrying flew from her arms and fell in the fountain in front of the Gym. Giselle was still sitting at the base of the lamppost with her eyes comically crossed when she saw that two furious Rockets were standing either side of her, looking at her angrily.
"Ops... hi guys!"
"Right, you little...!" James began, but he didn't finish.
"LEAVE HER ALONE!" A voice yelled authoritatively. The three Rockets were immediately frozen in place, unable to so much as twitch a muscle. Ash turned around. He saw Sabrina, and her Alakazam (named Merlin), standing at the entrance of the Gym. Merlin's eyes were glowing with power as he used his Kinesis attack to hold the Rocket's immobile. Sabrina had 'felt' that something was wrong so she decided to check it out. Her prescient sense of trouble had been right, of course.
After Officer Jenny took the two thieves and their Pokémon to the jail, Ash and Misty changed into dry clothes. Then they, Brock, Gary and Giselle left in direction of Vermilion City. Just as they reached the city limits, they heard a familiar voice. "Hey! Wait!"
It was Sabrina. They were surprised when seeing her. She was wearing with a black jacket over a white T-shirt (with a daring waist cut-off, exposing her abdomen), blue denim shorts and thigh-length black boots. A backpack was on her right shoulder and Ash saw six Pokéballs attached to the woman's belt. "Can I... Can I go with you?" she asked shyly.
"Huh?!" Did they heard right? Giselle saw that Brock blushed when seeing Sabrina wearing such revealing clothes (although he was not very sure of why he was reacting this way)...
Sabrina decided to elaborate on her request. "It is that..." Sabrina had never found it easy to ask for things. "I... er... I wanted to accompany you in your Journey," she said. "I need to get out of Saffron for a while to think about some things. Would it be okay if I came with you?"
"Sure, Sabrina! You will be welcome!" Giselle said, putting her arms around the psychic woman's shoulders. "It is not a problem is it, Ash?" she asked her 'cousin', using her best 'winning smile' to make it hard for Ash to resist her request.
"Sure! No problem!" Ash said, mostly because he was too surprised at Sabrina's request to think too much about it. However, he did have enough presence of mind to think that, at its' current rate, their little group would be a soccer team by the time they reached the end of the road. He looked at Gary (who was staring at Giselle with hearts in his eyes) and the way that Sabrina was looking at Brock. 'This is going to be a long day,' he thought with a sigh.
"Pika!" Pikachu said, blowing out a little white cloud.
To be continued