(A/N: Okay, a few things for this start.
This story came to my mind as I began to wonder what if Ash had a little sister? And what if this was almost like Bonnie in nature? And what would happen if this one heard of Ash's Kalos adventure and especially Serena? And so, the idea for this story was born.
It is perhaps worth mentioning how old Ash and his sister are in this. Ash is 13 or 14, whichever. Amber, yes, that's what I named this little sister, is about 6, a little younger than Bonnie.
And Amber's father is the same as Ash's. I don't tell directly who he is, but there are little.. hints.. from which you can maybe guess who he is.
Oh, and Ash isn't so dense here. At least he understands what "girlfriend" means ;)
But now to the one shot.
-
It was a peaceful and calm summer evening in Pallet Town in Kanto as a boy wearing a blue-white, short-sleeved jacket and black jeans walked along a sandy road. He had a red cap on his head, red sneakers on his feet, a backpack on his back, and a yellow electric mouse named Pikachu on his shoulder. The boy's name was Ash Ketchum and he was on his way home from his adventure in Kalos.
Ash glanced at the bright moon and starry sky in the sky and smiled slightly. It was fun for him to tour different places, but it was always nice to come home. He picked up his cap and then said to his best friend, "You know, Pikachu, it's been a long time since we were here last time. Mom and Amber will be glad to see me again."
"Pikachu," Pikachu said, nodding at it and rubbing his head against Ash's head. Ash laughed and scratched Pikachu behind his ear. What would he do without his yellow friend?
Ash walked for another moment until he finally noticed a familiar blue wooden house visible in front of him. There was still light in the windows of the house and Ash grinned. It felt good to see that familiar house again.
He took the last steps along the road until he arrived at his home. He opened the gate of the white fence around it and stepped across the yard to the door. He opened it and stepped inside.
"Mom! Amber! I'm home!" he exclaimed as he closed the door and Pikachu jumped off his shoulder. Soon he heard running footsteps from the living room, and then a little girl with as dark raven-black hair as her big brother rushed up to them, shouting, "Mommy! Mommy! Ash came! Ash is home again!"
The girl ran the last steps until she reached Ash and Pikachu and then hugged her big brother tightly. Ash laughed when he saw his little sister again for a long time and said, "Hi Amber. Was it fun to be with Mom for two?"
"No! I missed you!" Amber mumbled in Ash's jacket and Ash chuckled. Amber reminded him of two of his very close friends from Kalos and he wondered what it would be like if Amber traveled with him from one region to another. At least he would always have a company.
Amber, like Ash, had dark, raven-black hair, but unlike Ash's, Amber's was put on two pretty ponytails. Amber's eyes were redder than Ash's and some said they were almost completely red. She didn't have the same lightning-shaped birthmarks on her cheeks as Ash, but she had freckles on her cheeks and nose. She was wearing a yellow T-shirt with a picture of Sunflora, red leggings, a white skirt and white socks on her feet.
Ash's thoughts were interrupted when Pikachu also decided to greet Amber. It jumped on the girl's shoulder and rubbed his head against the girl's cheek. Amber giggled and said happily, "Hi Pikachu. Nice to see you too. Was it nice in Kalos?"
"Chu," Pikachu said, nodding and climbing over Amber's head. Amber giggled and her giggles reminded Ash of another giggler with whom he had also traveled in Kalos. But instead of dark hair and almost red eyes, this second giggler had had honey-blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. And the beautiful smile Ash found he missed.
Amber noticed that Ash had suddenly gone pretty quiet, but she didn't think about it any bigger. Maybe big brother was just tired of his journey. Instead, Amber took Pikachu from her head in her arms and turned to look at her mother, who had just come from the kitchen to them with a smile.
Delia Ketchum had heard that her son had come home, but decided to let Amber greet her big brother first. After hearing a few days ago that Ash was coming home soon, Amber had just hung in the window and waited for Ash to arrive. And now that that had finally happened, Delia hadn't wanted to stop it right away.
But now she decided it was time for her too to greet her son, whom she had not seen in a long time. She walked over to her two children and watched with a smile as Amber giggled Pikachu over her head. When she noticed her mother, Amber exclaimed happily, "Mom, look! Ash came home!"
"I notice it," Delia said with a smile and bowed to hug her son. Ash looked as if he had just noticed the whole thing and said with a laugh, "Mom, stop! You're strangling me!"
Delia laughed and pulled away from the hug. She looked at her son as he put his cap back in a better position and noticed that Ash had grown up while in Kalos. Delia smiled. How tall would Ash become?
"Well, Ash. Was it fun in Kalos?" Delia finally asked her son after he had gotten his cap and hair laid out somehow back in place. "You must have had a lot of different adventures, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Ash said, yawning a little. He had suddenly started to get terribly tired and Delia noticed it.
"To sleep," she said and Ash nodded. Amber instead pouted. "But I wanted to hear what it was like in Kalos!" she sulked, but Delia was determined.
"Tomorrow. Ash needs a rest and so do you," she said as she noticed how Amber had also started yawning.
"But.. but..," Amber tried, but when her mother looked at her sharply, she sighed, said, "Fine," and left grumpily to her room.
Delia watched her go until she noticed that Ash and Pikachu were still in the hallway. "You two too," she said and Ash nodded yawning, and left to sleep in his room with Pikachu.
"Ash! Wake up! Breakfast's ready!" shouted Amber to Ash the next morning. She was holding a half-eaten waffle, wearing pink pajamas with pictures of Clefairy and her hair a little tangled. She had come to wake up her big brother because he hadn't done it himself yet, and she wanted to hear what it had been like in Kalos. "Mom made waffles, so start come!"
However, Ash just grunted and mumbled, "Not yet.. let me sleep..," He turned his side, pressed his pillow over his head, pulled the blanket to his ears, and at that moment looked very much like Ursaring in hibernation. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Pikachu sweatdropped on him.
Amber instead huffed her hands on her hips and then looked at Pikachu. "Pikachu, wake him up," she said briskly to Ash's yellow electric mouse, and this one nodded. "Pika!" it said resolutely and sent Thunderbolt towards the sleeping Ash.
It hit and sank and Ash once again had to experience a less pleasant way to wake up. "AAH!" he screamed when an electric shock from Pikachu hit him, and was finally left to smoke on his bed. He hated this Pikachu's way of waking him up.
"Chu," Pikachu said, nodding contentedly and jumped down from the bed. He had done his job and now he deserved a reward. And he knew exactly what he wanted. Luckily, there was always a big bottle of ketchup in Ketchum's fridge.
Amber watched as Pikachu jumped across the room and left her smoking big brother to his own worth. After Pikachu disappeared outside the room, Amber's gaze shifted around the Ash room and the items there.
Her gaze wandered through Ash's bunk bed all the way to the drawer next to the door, on which Ash had placed his Gym badge cases, his trophy for winning the Orange League, his Battle Frontier badges, and some other awards. As she watched them, she wondered what her own journey would be like and the thought made a smile rise to her face.
As she dreamed of her own future, her gaze moved to the floor and suddenly hit an object resting on it. She stuck the rest of her waffle in her mouth, squatted to see what the object was, and recognized it as Ash's backpack. The backpack laid in the spot where Ash had thrown it in yesterday night and its zipper was half open. And there seemed to be something peeking from it.
Amber's curiosity awoke. She knew that rummaging through other goods without permission was bad, but curiosity win. She looked at her big brother to make sure he didn't see, and to her relief, she noticed that he seemed to be staring at the opposite wall still half asleep.
A mischievous grin appeared on Amber's face, and then she slowly and gently opened the zipper of Ash's backpack a little more open and began to examine Ash's backpack more closely.
She first found clothes as well as some food. She moved them aside because they didn't really interest her at all. Then her hand hit something hard and square, and she curiously pulled the object out of the backpack.
It was Ash's Gym badge case. Amber looked in delight at all eight small metal signs that gleamed beautifully under the transparent cover of the case. She brushed the lid on her finger and thought the Kalos Gym badges were the prettiest signs she had ever seen. Especially that pink, which resembled a pair of wings, was especially pretty for her.
As Amber looked at the case in her hands, her gaze wandered to the backpack and found that something white and thin was peeking from the clothes. Curious, she moved the badge case aside and took the white thing in her hand among the clothes. She raised it to her face and realized it was a photograph depicting five people and a few Pokemon.
Amber became interested. She immediately recognized her big brother in the picture and Pikachu on his shoulder, but she didn't know the other people in the picture. She recognized the Pokemon next to the broadly smiling, blond-haired girl as Lucario, but she didn't recognize the Pokemon on the head of the little girl in the front row.
"Who are they?" Amber muttered aloud and looked at the people in the picture with Ash. However, she didn't know that her sentence had also caused Ash to wake up from his slumber, and he now turned his gaze to his little sister and asked, "What did you say, Amber?"
Amber looked up at the photo of her big brother, who looked at her curiously, and raised the image she found in Ash's backpack higher. "Who are they?" she asked again, pointing to the picture, not even trying to cover up the fact that she had rummaged for Ash's backpack.
Ash looked at the picture and a smile rose on his face as he recognized it. "Oh, that picture," he said and moved from the top of his bed to its stairs. "They're my friends from Kalos. I traveled with them while I was there. Or, well, Korrina wasn't with us all the time, as she's Gym Leader of Shalour City, but the others were with me almost all the time."
"Korrina?" said Amber curiously and moved closer to Ash. Ash nodded, smiling at the same time, and then pointed at the smiling, blonde girl next to Lucario.
"Yep. She's Korrina and that's her Lucario. They're really close, like siblings. This picture was actually taken while we were looking Megastone for them in Geosenge Town," Ash explained and Amber looked at him with round eyes.
"Megastone? What is it?" she asked in wonder and sat down next to Ash on the steps of this bunk bed. Ash looked at his little sister and then said, "It caused of Mega Evolution. And it, on the other hand, is a really cool thing that makes Pokemon stronger and makes them look different."
"Wow, sounds really exciting!" exclaimed Amber excitedly after hearing Ash's explanation and Ash giggled. "It is," he said with a smile to his little sister, but then Amber got a little serious and asked, "How does it work?"
Ash thought for a moment until he answered. "It takes Megastone, which comes to Pokemon, and Keystone, who comes to the trainer. And then there has to be a really strong bond between the Pokemon and the trainer. And if you want to do Mega Evolution, the trainer has to touch Keystone, and then Mega Evolution happens"
"Wow, can you Mega Evolve your Pokemon?" Amber asked, her eyes sparkling, but Ash shook his head. "No, because only some Pokemon can do it, and none of my Pokemon were like that. Admittedly, me and one of my Pokemon, Greninja, were able to do one other really cool thing, but.."
Ash abruptly ended his sentence in the middle and looked somehow sad. Amber noticed it and decided to change the subject. "Okay. But who are those other people? You haven't told it yet," she said quickly, tapping the photo with her finger, and Ash seemed to come back to his happy self.
"Oh yeah. I'm not," he said, then pointed to the boy in the blue overalls. "This is Clemont. He's also the Gym Leader, like Korrina, but not Shalour City but Lumiose City. He's also an inventor," he explained, but Amber looked confused.
"Then how could he go with you if he's the Gym Leader?" she asked, but Ash grinned. "He had made a robot called Clembot to do that job while he was away," he explained and Amber nodded to indicate she had understood.
"Oh, okay," she said, then pointed to a wide-smiling little girl with a Pokemon unknown to her on her head. "And who is she?" she asked and Ash grinned.
"She's Bonnie. She's Clemont's little sister. She had a special way to ask girls as the wife of her big brother," Ash said with a laugh. "She also thought that all Pokemon were really cute and she always wanted to take care of our Pokemon."
"Okay," Amber said, then pointed to the small, orange, mouse-like Pokemon on Bonnie's head. "What is that Pokemon? I've never seen one," she said and Ash smiled.
"It's Dedenne. Clemont caught it for Bonnie, because Bonnie herself is still too young to be a trainer," he explained and Amber nodded. However, her gaze had already shifted to the last person unknown to her, the honey-blond girl next to Ash, and she asked, pointing to this, "And who is she?"
"She's Serena," Ash said, and couldn't help that Serena's thinking made him remember what the girl had done at the airport. It, in turn, caused the heat to rise on his cheeks and on his lips suddenly felt a strange tingling sensation. "She's a Pokemon performer and really good at it. She's also a really awesome person by the way, because she knows how to bake really good macarons, she's kind, determined, nice, friendly, and she's.."
"Strangely close to you," Amber interrupted Ash's list and stared at the picture with her nose almost stuck in it. She looked at the picture for a moment, then glanced at her big brother to say something. But that glance turned into a stare, for Amber noticed that Ash's cheeks were somehow strangely red, and it didn't go unnoticed by Amber's sharp eyes. "Ash, why are you so red? Did you... blush?"
"What!? No!" exclaimed Ash, but blushed more. It made Amber giggle and she suddenly realized why Ash had blushed. "Yes, you blushed. And I know why! Because you like Serena!"
"Amber, what are you..", Ash began, but Amber had already jumped from the stairs to the floor, a photo in her hand, and jumped along with the room, shouting, "Ash likes Serena! Ash likes Serena!" Then she suddenly stopped and stepped up to her big brother with a mischievous grin on her face.
She leaned closer to Ash and asked, "Did you kiss her?" raising her eyebrows and smirking mischievously. The sentence made the red on Ash's cheeks deepen and the airport scene came to his mind again. Now he also remembered how Serena's lips had felt and he mumbled something like, "Umm..." That was enough for Amber.
"So you kissed!" she exclaimed and jumped along with the room. "Ash has a girlfriend! Ash has a girlfriiieeeend!" she shouted at the same time and Ash buried his red glowing face in his hands.
"Ash has a girlfriend! Ash has a girlfriend!" Amber sang happily and then suddenly seemed to get a great idea. "I'll tell Mom!" she exclaimed and then she rushed out of the room, shouting again, "Ash has a girlfriend!"
Ash, on the other hand, looked up in horror as he heard it. "No way!" he exclaimed and rushed after his little sister. He saw this running towards the stairs and just before going down, showed Ash a tongue. Then she went down the stairs and shouted as she went, "Ash has a girlfriend! Ash has a girlfriiieeend!"
"You little..!" Ash exclaimed and rushed after his little sister, who laughed out loud, and started to chase her down the stairs downstairs. After the lowest step, Amber turned and sang, jumping on the floor, "Ash and Serena are sitting on a tree! K.I.S.S.I.N.G!" And just as Ash was about to catch her, she started to run again and ran towards the kitchen where their mother was.
Delia Ketchum had just baked all the waffles and was now sitting at the table, reading a newspaper and drinking her morning coffee from a big mug that read the big, black letters: "Best Mom of the Year" Next to her sat Pikachu on the table and beside him was half-empty ketchup bottle.
Delia wasn't disturbed even as her children rushed to the kitchen, Amber singing, "First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes baby, in the baby carriage!" and Ash after her, trying to grab his sister. Instead, she just sipped her coffee and thought that it is nice that Ash was again at home.
"Good morning Ash. Did you sleep well?" she asked, turning the next page of her newspaper as Ash and Amber circled around the kitchen table. "Mom, Ash has a girlfriend! Her name is Serena and she's that a red-skirt girl in this picture!" shouted Amber, putting the picture she had found in Ash's backpack in front of her mother on top of this newspaper and at that moment Ash got to grab her.
"Gotcha! I got you, you little Mankey!" he exclaimed with a grin and lifted his sister into the air. Amber screamed and laughed as Ash tickled her armpits, and in the meantime, their mother lifted the photo into the air and looked at it more closely.
"That's nice," she said cheerfully at Amber's announcement and took a closer look at the picture. A smile appeared on her face as she realized who the "red-skirt girl" in the picture was. "Oh, this girl," she said and smiled. Amber, on the other hand, stopped laughing and looked at her mother in amazement.
"You know her!? Why haven't I been told anything!?" she shouted and Ash replied, "Because you're a naughty little Mankey" Amber showed him her tongue.
"Ash, don't bully your sister," Delia scolded her son, still looking at the picture given by Amber. "And Amber, you were just a baby when Ash first met Serena, you couldn't remember it"
"What, has my big brother met his girlfriend before?!" Amber shouted and Ash said with a red face, "Serena is not my girlfriend!"
"But you'd like her to be! Besides, you've kissed her! Mom, did you know that Ash has kissed Serena!?" cried Amber, and Delia put the picture from her hand to the table and turned to look at her children.
"I didn't know, but I'd like to hear more about it now," she said with a smile and Amber also looked at her brother sharply. "Yeah, me too," she said sweetly and Ash sighed, his cheeks still shining bright red.
"Fine, she kissed me when she was going to the plane leaving for Hoenn. She..", Ash began, but Amber interrupted him by shouting, "Why was she leaving to Hoenn?!"
"Because she wants to become a better Pokemon performer and Hoenn has Pokemon contests where she can perform and develop her skills. That's why," Ash replied, looking at his little sister sharply, and Amber showed him her tongue again.
"Continue Ash," Delia said before the siblings started fighting again like two Primeapes, and Ash continued. "Well, when she was descending the escalator, she turned and said, 'Ash, there would have one more thing.' Then she turned and went running up the escalator and I was pretty confused then. And then when she got up, she kissed me. "
"And then what happened?" asked Delia and Ash continued, "The escalator took her away and she exclaimed, 'Thank you!'"
It was silent for a moment until Amber said, "And..?" and looked at Ash meaningfully. "And what?" Ash asked confused and Amber looked at him in disbelief.
"What did you do after that?!" she exclaimed and Ash looked a little embarrassed. "I... nothing," he confessed and Amber looked at him angrily.
"Jerk! The girl has just kissed you and you just stand still like an idiot!" she shouted and Ash looked at her a little offended.
"Well I couldn't know she would do that, so I was pretty shocked then!" he shouted back, but Amber disagreed.
"No! You're just a dense idiot who doesn't realize a girl likes you, even when this one is already kissing you!" she shouted and Ash shouted back, "I'm not a dense idiot!"
"Yes you are!"
"I'm not!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
And when the siblings were left arguing, as Delia tried to calm them down, Pikachu, who had followed the situation from the side, sighed heavily. It took a bottle of ketchup and one waffle baked by Delia and then jumped off the table.
As he ran towards the living room, it passed the amazed-looking Mimey, and when he finally reached the living room, he sat on the couch and squeezed ketchup on top of his waffle. Lots of ketchup. At the same time shook his head slightly.
This would be a long day.