Chapter 20 is here now! Can you believe that I originally was going to end this at 7? Not the Chapter 7 you all got, mind you, but I had thought of ending it such a long time ago. I'm glad I've taken the story as far as I have. I hope you all like this chapter.
The clock ticked down to eleven, and sure enough, Jessie and James knocked on the door. The two were dressed in street clothes, leaving their Rocket uniforms hidden at an undisclosed location. Jessie wore a pink, long sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of grey aerobic pants. James wore a button up shirt and tie, with navy blue pants completing his official look. Meowth had decided not to join them, rather, the scratch cat Pokémon preferred to sleep during the night, a contradiction of his specie's nocturnal nature. Ash and May made sure Corphish and Squirtle were feeling alright, and then went out to face the Rockets in this practice battle.
"Thank you guys for coming to help with our training," Ash told the Rockets as they prepared for battle outside of Cyndi's house.
"We'll be glad to beat you, twerp!" Jessie smirked.
"Well, we're not gonna make it easy for you!" May chimed in.
"With all the ice cream you've been eating, you're gonna need to work off those calories," James taunted May.
"I am not getting fat!" May roared. The shout echoed thought the quiet city.
"Alright, this practice battle will have no limits on either side for Pokémon or time," Raine declared. "Let the battle begin!"
"Corphish, I choose you!' Ash tossed the Pokéball.
"Squirtle, take the stage!" May threw hers as well.
"Dustox, go!" Jessie threw her ball.
"Cacnea, let's go!" James added his to the mix.
Corphish once again tried to do the flip Drew recommended, but ended up on his face again. Squirtle preformed his trademark entry easily. James' Cacnea leaped back to hug him, but the Rocket Trainer pulled his Grass-type off of his face and sent her into battle. Jessie's Pokéball revealed a Bug-and-Poison-type moth Pokémon. Her yellow compound eyes matched her yellow antennae, her large purple body and green wings intimidated the smaller Pokémon near her.
"Cor…" the water-type rubbed his face.
"Squirtle!" May's Pokémon cheered, ready for battle!
"Cacnea!" The cheery cactus Pokémon smiled at her opponents.
"Dustox!" The Bug-and-Poison type introduced herself.
"Corphish, get in there with Bubblebeam!" Ash ordered.
"Squirtle, add your bubbles!" May told her Pokémon.
"Cacnea, pop those bubbles with Pin Missle!" James commanded.
"Dustox, help Cacnea with Poison Sting!" Jessie added.
As Corphish and Squirtle let the bubbles fly from their claws and mouth respectively, Cacnea and Dustox began shooting them down with the pins. The combination attacks collided with each other, with neither side taking any damage.
"Corphish, Vicegrip Dustox!" Ash ordered. Corphish began to charge at Dustox
"Dustox, knock it away with Psybeam!" Jessie ordered. A psychic energy grew between Dustox's antennae and fired as a beam at Corphish.
"Corphish, break off the attack!" Ash ordered his retreat. The Water-type leapt out of the way of the attack, causing it to hit the ground harmlessly.
"Ash," Raine interrupted, "one of the things you've got to do in a contest is use your attacks to be a defense."
"How would I do that, with stuff other than Harden?" Ash gritted his teeth to the battle.
"Maybe deflecting attacks with Crabhammer," Raine tried to come up with something.
"Oh!" Cyndi chimed in, walking out the door with Max following closely behind, "Like earlier today when you used Vicegrip to grab Absol's Iron Tail!"
"Hmm…" Ash thought for a moment.
"Cacnea, use Pin Missile on that Corphish!" James ordered the assault on the unwary Pokémon.
"Squirtle, use Rapid Spin to block the Pin Missiles and then take the fight to Cacnea!" May said. She looked to Raine, hoping she was following the advice the older coordinator had given Ash.
Squirtle leapt in between Corphish and Cacnea, and began to spin. The spinning motion deflected Cacnea's pins and Squirtle continued to approach Cacnea while spinning. The tiny turtle Pokémon scored a hit on Cacnea, knocking the Grass-Type over.
"Great work, May!" Raine congratulated her.
"Thanks, Raine!" May smiled back.
That didn't look too hard, Ash thought to himself. "Alright Corphish, attack Dustox with Bubblebeam!" he ordered.
Corphish fired the rainbow stream of bubbles at Jessie's Dustox. The bubbles knocked the Bug-and-Poison type to the ground. "Get in there and Vicegrip her!" Ash orderd.
"Stop Corphish with Poison Sting!" Jessie told her Pokémon.
"Use Crabhammer as a shield!" Ash told his water-type. Corphish held his glowing, blue claw in front of him. The poison darts shot from Dustox bounced off the claw. Corphish grabbed the moth Pokémon with his claw and threw it at Cacnea.
"Squirtle, freeze Dustox into a block of ice!" May ordered her small Pokémon.
Squirtle took in a deep breath and shot the ice beam at Dustox. The beam came into contact with the Pokémon, trapping her in a large ice crystal. Cacnea tried to break the ice with her glowing Needle Arm, but her arm couldn't quite break the ice. The frozen Pokémon knocked Cacnea off her feet and onto the ground.
"You guys!" Brock ran into the clearing. He looked over at the sides in the battle. "Team Rocket! Are you trying to steal Pikachu again?" The breeder reached for a Pokéball at his belt.
"No, you've got it all wrong!" James tried to stop him.
"He's right, Brock," Ash turned to his friend. "Team Rocket owes us, and they're helping us train for the coming battle with Misty and Harley."
"What? How do they owe you?" Brock asked, confused now.
"It's a long story," Jessie sighed, "we'll let the twerps give you the details latter." The Rocket gritted her teeth and growled at Ash and May. "Are we gonna continue the battle, or can James and I leave?"
"We're gonna keep on battlin', of course!" Ash smiled. "Just as soon as you get your Pokémon back in battling condition, we'll keep going, right May?" He looked at her, a spark in his eyes. He was fully enjoying himself in the battle with May as his partner.
May looked back at him, her fire also reignited. From having lost the Grand Festival, she no longer had a goal. Having the battle to look forward to, she nodded to her tag partner. "Yeah. We're not gonna take a break until we're done!"
"That's the spirit!" Cyndi cheered them on.
"I know you two'll be able to beat Harley and Misty!" Max assured them.
The two trainers turned to Jessie and James. The Rockets stood ready to continue. "Given all the times you've sent us blasting off, I know you'll be able to win," Jessie looked at them.
"She's right. Your Pikachu might be rare and powerful, but without a great trainer like you, he would've never gotten as powerful as he is now." James smiled at the trainers.
"Team Rocket…" Ash was surprised at them. "Alright! Let's get started again! I won't let you all down. Together, May and I will bring Misty back to her senses and defeat Harley." He motivated all of the Pokémon and the trainers present.
"Go!" the battlers shouted, their recovered Pokémon again leaping into battle. This battle would continue throughout the night into the early hours of the morning, with attacks flying from both sides.
It was about 2:00 a.m. when the battlers decided to call it quits. Squirtle and Corphish stood fatigued at their end of the field, while Cacnea and Wobbuffet stood, waiting for the next move. Jessie had already had to recall Dustox and Seviper by this time, embarrassing her that she's been the only one requiring a Pokémon substitution. Corphish tumbled over on to his side, to worn out to continue. Squirtle had fallen asleep several times during the battle, but was woken up by May's calling or an attack from the Rocket Pokémon. May asked Ash if he thought it was time to call it a night, and after the trainer saw how tired Corphish was, he agreed. They thanked the Rockets, who bowed respectfully and turned to go back to where they were staying.
"You'll all be able to stay in here," Raine explained, leading them back into the living room. Cyndi's snoring from the upper floor could be heard clearly.
"I take it most of us are going to have to sleep on the floor?" Brock asked.
"Not at all," Raine told him. She turned to the couch and pulled it out, changing it into a bed.
Ash sighed. "I wish I had known that last night," he sulked.
"If you all four sleep tightly together, you should be able to fit," Raine said.
"I think we can make it work," Brock said, surveying the couch-turned-bed. "Thank you for keeping us here," he added as Raine walked up the stairs.
"Think nothing of it, Brock," she smiled at him. She looked to the rest of the children in her living room, nodded them all a good night, and proceeded up the stairs to sleep, herself.
Brock used his sleeping bag to make a blanket for the group. The breeder chose to lay on one of the ends, with his long time traveling partner next to him. The youngest child took the opposite end of the folded out bed, and his sister took a place between her mentor and her brother. All of them had taken their shoes off, but laid there looking at the roof, fully clothed with the exception of sweatshirts, hats, glasses and gloves.
"I talked to Misty," Brock said after a while of everyone being silent. "She won't even take my word that May's not been doing anything wrong."
"I wonder why she doesn't believe us," Ash thought out loud.
"It may be because you never told her about your injury," Brock explained.
Max's interest was peaked. "Injury?" the boy sat up. He looked over at Ash. "What injury?" he asked.
"Show him, Ash," Brock told him.
"Alright," Ash submitted. He sat up, and began to pull his black shirt off. He felt his face flush slightly at the thought of May seeing him remove his shirt. He was glad that only the moonlight and the dim LCD from the VCR were the only things lighting the room.
May looked over to Ash's shoulders. Round scabs, about circumference of dimes appeared on the boy's shoulders. It was apparent he was healing, and the scabs showed no sign of infection. Yet even then, May couldn't stare at them too long. She blamed herself still for what happened to him that day. May turned her head to face Max.
"Oh, geez, Ash? What happened?" Max was full of questions. The boy reached to the coffee table and put on his glasses.
"When May and I where falling to the lake after we escaped the Weezing Air Mecha," Ash explained, "I used Swellow to slow our decent. He had to grip hard, though, so he ended up hurting me." Ash looked up at the ceiling, picturing his loyal Flying-type. May sat up next to him, looking at the boy's face for answers. "May and I owe Swellow our lives. So what if I got a little hurt? Without his help, May and I might not have survived the fall."
Max protectively grabbed onto his sister's arm. "You don't mean you could have..? You both could have…"
Ash turned to the boy and nodded. "Swellow saved us. I don't mind that he hurt me. I'd rather be alive and hurt, than not here at all. And besides, I know Swellow didn't mean to hurt me. He was just doing what I asked him to."
"Why don't we tell Misty that tomorrow?" May suggested. "We could get her to call off the battle, and we could all be friends again."
"By this point," Max said, "Misty'll probably think that you two are just coming up with a story to get out of battling."
"You're right about that, Max," Brock said, lying back down, "Misty's fueled by much more than concern over her friends."
"What do you mean?" Ash asked him.
Brock faced only the ceiling as he spoke. "Even though she wouldn't openly admit it, she's envious of May."
"What? Why me?" May asked, looking past the topless trainer to her wizened friend.
"Part of Misty still wants to travel," Brock explained. "She sees you living the life she once did, and she wants it back. She misses her friends a great deal. She sat over a picture of Ash, me, and her, and kept looking at it, as if she wanted to have that again."
"Well, Misty could travel with us if she wanted," Ash brought up. "I mean, couldn't her sisters take care of the Gym, now that their back?"
"That's only one part of it, Ash," Brock told him. "Misty's also jealous of the fact that you fell for May, even though Misty was with you for a very long time."
Ash felt his face flush. He sank beneath the covers, and hid his face from the girl next to him. He grumbled something to himself and turned to lie on his stomach.
"C'mon, Ash, tell us," Brock pleaded. "The reason that we're in this mess is because we wouldn't tell each other the full story."
Ash grudgingly flipped back over and stuck his head out from under the covers. "It's not my fault that I didn't start to notice girls until this long," he defended himself. "I guess I was always too focused on Pokémon to begin to notice."
"Then how did you fall for my sister?" Max asked him.
Ash cleared his mind and began to think. Having his crush out in the open allowed him to focus his energy on thinking about where it came from, rather than hiding it "When I met May, she knew almost nothing about Pokémon. I became her teacher that day. I took it upon myself to teach this girl how to be a trainer."
"So the formerly mutually exclusive concepts of Pokémon and girls came together when you met May, right?" Brock asked.
Ash looked up at May, who was staring at him with her deep, sapphire eyes. He turned back away from her. "Yeah, I guess that's how it happened. I mean, there used to be girls back in Pallet I thought were pretty cute until I started training to become a Pokémon Master. My dream became more important than any relationship. But when I met May, they weren't different anymore. I couldn't teach Misty anything, and normally when I tried to talk to her about something, she'd flip out and get mad at me. With May, I could teach her, and I became closer to her as we traveled more. I didn't know it was happening until it hit me: I had a crush on the girl I had been mentoring. It took me a while to come to grips with this. I had never felt this way before. It was the same feeling that I had when I would leave home to go to a new place. Part excitement, part nervousness. I was at the border into a broad new region, full of experiences that I had never thought of before." He sat up and faced May. "I'm sorry I never told you sooner," he said to her. "I didn't think that you'd ever stop traveling with me, just as long as we could keep on going to new places with new Gyms and Contest Halls. I kept putting it off. But when Pikachu told me that Drew had talked to you, I could feel in my gut that he was going to take you away. I had to act, even though I knew that I wasn't ready to say anything yet. I was just following the advice Misty gave me, to not let you get away if I could help it."
"I guess it's a good thing you did," Max laughed, "or you'd never have had the chance to save my sister like you did."
"Well, if he didn't, we also wouldn't have ended up in this situation with Misty," Brock added.
"I guess that's right," Max sighed.
"May, did I upset you?" Ash asked her. "You haven't said anything since I started to talk…"
"No, it's just," May slipped down into the covers and looked at the ceiling, "love is so complicated, yet powerful, ya know?"
Ash had a puzzled look on his face. "What do you mean?"
"You love everyone one of your Pokémon, Ash, like they where your own brothers, sisters, and children. Your Pokémon respond to this love by battling with all of their heart. Yet, that's not the only kind of love," May explained to her traveling companion. "There's also the love you feel for your mother, and she shows back. A love that, even though you are separated by distance, is always strong. Your mother loves you very much, and that's why she allows you to travel, because she knows it's your dream." She blushed a little and continued to talk. "Then there's that special kind of love. The love that you have to share. You start to feel attached to a certain person, and you want to share that love with them. It's a special love that two people who never want to be separated share together. A love that often times starts as a friendship, then develops into something more."
"Did you hear that, Brock?" Max asked jokingly. "If you want to get a girl to like you, you should try to be their friend first, not trying to swoon them with some over-the-top appeal."
"Hey, girls have to give credit to a guy who shows a lot of guts, don't they?" Brock pouted. Ash, May and Max all had a laugh at their lovelorn friend. Brock curled up and grunted out a good night, returning to his world of dreams where he could get any girl he wanted.
"Ash, can I ask you something?" Max looked at the experienced trainer.
"What is it, Max?" Ash smiled. "You know you can ask me anything."
"Well, are you and May gonna start kissing each other?" Max was blunt in his question.
A myriad of emotions ran through Ash's head. At first, his subconscious clocked in with an 'I hope so.' Before this thought could reach his mouth, however, it had to pass though his conscious mind, which jumbled up the message into a kind of embarrassed babbling. Finally, his face, sensing the closeness of the issue and the in-route response, intensified blood-flow though the face. As the trainer began to make an excuse, this tongue got in the way of his lips and changed his excuse into a string of non-words.
May, ignoring the strangeness of her friend's behavior, turned to her brother, "Why would you ask something like that? I have a say, too."
"May, it's obvious you like Ash," Max said, again placing his glasses on the coffee table. "The way you manipulated him at the ice cream parlor was evidence enough."
And he doesn't even know I've done that to him before! A stunned expression flashed across the coordinator's face, quickly being replaced by one of angry denial. "I was just trying to convince him to get ice cream. You wanted some to!" she faced down her brother.
"Yeah, but you acted all cute around him," Max glared at the space to the left of his sister. His vision wasn't what it used to be, especially without his glasses on. "I thought I was gonna get sick, you were being so mushy. And then you tried to get him to kiss your nose!"
At that, Ash's brain finally snapped, and the trainer again fell to his back. A half smile appeared across his face, with his eyes twitching in an almost unnatural way. The amount of blood being used to tint his cheeks red was reaching an unhealthy level.
"I was not!" May denied to her brother. This wouldn't be the first time she tried to get Max to leave her alone by lying, but most of the time, Max would catch her lie and expose it.
This was one of those times. "Oh, come on! You could have easily used a napkin to wipe your nose off. If Pikachu didn't freak out and eat the fudge, I probably would have puked when Ash would've had to kiss you."
"Hey, Pikachu was getting Ash out of an embarrassing situation!" May defended the Electric-Type. She shocked herself with this knowledge, somehow understanding Pikachu's motive without being told. She looked around. "On that note, where is Pikachu?"
May looked over to Ash to see Pikachu leap on his trainer's stomach from his place near the door. Ash groaned loudly, snapping back into conscious thought. He sat up and picked up Pikachu and hugged him, thanking his friend for waking him up from the delirium he was experiencing.
"Oh, Ashy!" Max mimicked his sister's voice, "I want you to kiss me all night long!"
And Ash went down again. Pikachu tickled his trainer's nose with his tail in an attempt to wake his friend again.
"Cut it out, Max!" May blushed at her brother's taunting. "Why do you keep treating Ash and me like a couple?"
"I thought you where," Max said. "Aren't you?"
"No, I haven't chosen between Ash and Drew yet," May told him, her eyes looking down.
"From what I could tell, you have chosen," Max said, turning from his sister. "I'm going to sleep now, too. G'night."
May thought herself the only one left awake when Ash sneezed at Pikachu's attempt. The trainer sat up, again thanking Pikachu for his insistence to bring him back to reality. The Pokémon, knowing his services wouldn't be needed with Max asleep, returned to the floor to sleep near the door.
This chapter was overtaken by the conversation between the Advance Generation Cast. I like having discussions between characters. You can see them all lying there, trying to make sense of the situation they had been put in.
Plus, I like having all of them together like that.
Well, did you like this chapter? I know I kinda skipped out of the battle. If I showed too much training, then I reasonably couldn't surprise you with any tactics used in the coming battles.
As for remaining chapters, I'd put my money on this ending closer to chapter 31 through 36, depending on how much longer I begin to drag days out.
So, review if you want, comment if you can, and ask questions if you've got 'em