Chloe stood at the bus stop near her school, holding Eevee to her chest. She was breathing deeply. 'I'm so nervous…' She was dressed in the pink top and jeans Ash had said 'suited' her a few days ago, with her yellow jacket tied around her waist in case it got particularly cold but mostly because she liked the look of it. On her shoulder she carried a handbag shaped like a cherry blossom flower, though it was mostly empty since she could carry her wallet and Eevee's Poké Ball in her pockets. She had even given herself a spritz of the Roselia perfume that Chrysa had shown her all those weeks ago. She took a deep breath and her grip on Eevee tightened.

"Vui…" Eevee repeated, that nervousness being felt in stereo.

'It's not a date or anything. It's just the two of us going to the museum together. And maybe a few other things. But it's not a date…!'

In her chest and against her wishes, her heart pounded, betraying her true thoughts to herself. "As soon as Ash gets here, I'll relax… I know it."

Taking out her phone, she looked at the time. It was only a little past noon now. Well within the window of arrival. 'I guess I don't know how punctual he is or not… There's so much I don't know…'

Eevee's ears twitched, as though she heard something, and she turned to look in the direction of the laboratory. Running down the sidewalk with Pikachu on his shoulder was Ash, but Chloe had to do a double take to make sure it was him. He was dressed like he normally was, except his cap was on Pikachu's head, and his hair…

'His hair…'

Ash's hair was not it's typical messy self. It looked like someone had been trying to comb it - 'probably Goh,' Chloe thought - and gave up halfway before relying on hair gel for the rest of it. It was angular, pointing down, and looked like a mess. 'But it means that he at least tried to look a bit fancier for this…' Her heart skipped. 'Does he think this is a date?'

Ash came to a stop right in front of her. "Sorry! Gettin' ready took a bit longer than normal," he said, hand shyly behind his head.

She shook her head. "Hey, you're fine, Ash. It's not like you're an hour late or anything," she said, smiling. "Why don't we get going?"

He nodded. She noticed his eyes dart to the Eevee in her arms, and she could tell that he relaxed a bit. "Heh, I guess I shoulda figured that you'd have Eevee with ya, huh?"

She giggled, amused. "Why would I not have Eevee with me?" she asked rhetorically. "It's not like you'd go anywhere without Pikachu."

Ash chuckled, his wide smile beaming at her. "You understand," he said. "Goh said y' might be by yourself, though."

'Of course he would,' she thought. 'He's thinking this is a date.'

Ash reached out and scratched Eevee's head. "I think it's good t' have a Pokémon with ya, though. It's like always havin' someone with you so you never get lonely." As Eevee cooed gently under his touch, he turned to Pikachu. "Right, buddy?"

"Pikapika," he agreed.

Ash's stomach then grumbled loud enough to startle Eevee and Chloe both. The two of them stepped back and Ash looked very embarrassed once again. "S-Sorry! I took so long gettin' ready… I guess I missed breakfast."

"Pikapi…" Pikachu shrugged, shifting the hat so that he could give Chloe an apologetic look.

She shrugged, smiling. "You wouldn't be Ash if you weren't hungry, would you?" she asked. "Luckily I know a great little cafe near the school that my friends and I go to sometimes. We can get something to eat there before we head more towards the museum."

He nodded. "Thanks…"

As the two of them turned and began walking down the sidewalk together, Chloe shot a glance at Ash's hands. 'If this were a date, I guess we'd hold hands, right?' She felt Eevee's fur under her fingertips. As long as she carried the Evolution Pokémon like this, there wouldn't be any hand holding.

Looking at Ash, though, his other hand was holding his Rotomphone, and he was peering at the screen with an intense look. Pikachu was leaning over, also looking at the screen. Ash's eyes wandered and noticed Chloe staring at him. He immediately jammed the phone into his pocket. "Eheh…," he chuckled, stepping ahead of Chloe. "C-C'mon, I'm starving!"

She frowned. "Ash is acting pretty weird… What's gotten into him…?" she asked.

"Eievui…?" Eevee asked.

"There's no way, right? He's acting nervous, not… y'know…"

"Vui…"

She shook her head and caught up with him. He was once again studying his phone.

"O-Oh! Uh," Ash stammered, putting his phone away. "I like your clothes! Very… uh… you! Y'know?"

"Ash, that sounds like an insult," Chloe replied as she glared at him. "Or a very back-handed compliment."

He held up his hands. "N-No! That's not what I meant! I mean they suit you an' they look comfortable an' stuff!"

"They are, thank you," she said, frowning. 'A compliment doesn't work if you say it in an awful way… but why's he acting so weird…?'

The cafe Chloe knew about was Sully's Coffee, a chain that had locations from Hoenn to Sinnoh as she understood it. They served coffee beverages among others, and for Ash's sake, they had a fairly robust lunch menu. As they approached the door, Ash stepped up front and grabbed the door, holding it open for her. Chloe blinked and felt her cheeks sting with that familiar warmth of her blush. "T-Thanks, Ash," she said, stepping inside.

Ash looked at her, confused. "You're welcome," he said with a shrug.

Chloe stepped up to the counter and looked to place her order, but before she could, Ash stepped in front. "Don't worry 'bout payin'," he said. "I've got this,"

"Oh," she said, shrugging. "Yeah I guess you do owe me for Sugiya the other day, huh?"

"Y-Yeah, I mean-no! Heheh, I uh…" he was a stammering wreck. "I just thought it'd be something I should do y'know…?"

'The longer this goes on, the more I'm pretty sure I know what's happening,' she thought.

She ordered a boba tea and half a sandwich. Ash ordered at least two pasta dishes, though Chloe wasn't sure if that was just for him or for Pikachu as well.

When she moved to pick up the tray with their food, Ash once again interceded. "Uh, n-no! I've got it!" He almost bumped her out of the way and took the tray. "No need t' worry! I've got it!" Chloe shrugged and let him do it, but as they approached the table he began to look frantic. "W-Wait! Hold it! Gimme a sec!"

"O-Okay…?" Chloe said, stopping in her tracks.

"Vui?" Eevee asked from her perch atop Chloe's head, confused.

Ash quickly set the table they were sitting at, putting Chloe's sandwich and tea on one side and his food on the other. Then, he pulled out the chair near Chloe's items. "H-Here!" he said.

Chloe frowned. "Thanks," she said as she sat down. As sweet as the gesture was (and there was definitely a part of her that appreciated it), Chloe had seen enough as Ash sat down in front of her.

"Time t' eat…!" he said quietly to himself as he sat down, Pikachu hopping off his shoulder next to him. Taking the fork, he was about to bite into the pasta when Chloe coughed, drawing his attention to her. He looked at her, the nervousness still very evident in his brown eyes. "Y-Yeah, Chloe? What's up?"

She frowned at him. "Ash, you've been acting weird ever since you showed up today," she said as Eevee hopped onto the table where she began mimicking Pikachu and shoving her face into his pasta. "What's wrong? You're not acting like yourself at all."

Ash laughed and looked away. "W-What'd ya mean?" he asked, trying to avoid the obvious.

"Your hair looks like a mess," she said bluntly. "You've been trying to act like…" 'a gentleman', the phrase completed in her mind. "...someone you're not," she settled on. "I mean, I appreciate you holding the door and pulling out my chair and stuff but that's not the Ash I expected."

Ash's nervous evasion melted into a guilty look on his face as his shoulders slumped. "S-sorry…"

"Goh told you to do this stuff, didn't he?"

Ash sat up and his eyes widened in surprise. "W-wait, how'd you know?"

"I didn't," she admitted. "Until you confirmed it just now." 'Goh, you meddler…' she silently cursed him. 'You wanted to set this up so it would be like a date.'

Ash's expression dropped and he had a guilty look on his face. "Sorry, Chloe," he said. "When I told Goh where I was goin' today, he said there was lotsa stuff I had to t' be nice an' thank you for goin' with me." he said. "I was trying to do what he said. Goh said it was super important that I did all this stuff."

She sighed. "His heart's in the right place," Chloe said. "But you're not acting like yourself. You're all nervous and second guessing yourself. That's not you. You're always so sure of yourself and honest."

"Sorry…" he said again, his head drooping.

She reached over and pulled the hat off of Pikachu's head and put it on Ash's. "You don't have to apologize. You were just trying to be nice to me, and I appreciate that. But I wanted to hang out with you, so you should act like yourself."

Ash looked up, eyes wide. "Really? You won't get mad if I don't do all that stuff Goh said I should do?"

"I'll get mad if you keep doing it," she said. "Just… act like Ash. That's all I want." Chloe smiled at him, gently.

Ash adjusted his hat so that it was sitting on his head in that familiar way. "Thanks, Chloe."

"You're welcome."

And with that, Ash abandoned all matters of politeness and anything resembling table manners and threw himself into eating the meal placed in front of him. Chloe sat back and sipped her boba and watched him eat. 'Maybe he's not the most outwardly thoughtful or romantically minded guy,' she thought, 'but he's earnest, and that's cute in it's own way, right?'

Thinking of him as cute caused her cheeks to burn, but she dismissed it before splitting her sandwich with Eevee so that Pikachu could eat more of his pasta. If Ash noticed, he didn't say anything about it. Instead he slurped several noodles all at once. "Hey, since we've got th' rest of the day, why don't we do more stuff instead of just going to the museum?"

She blinked at him. "Aren't you excited to see the museum?"

"Yeah, totally!" he said, grinning widely in that way that was making her smile more and more. "But they're open for a while, so why don't we hang out and check out other stuff, too? I bet there's tons of fun stuff you know about in Vermilion City that Goh doesn't."

Giggling, she tapped a finger to her chin. "Well, there is this one place I had heard that was opening today," she said. "But I dunno if you really wanted to head there. There's an arcade opening a few streets over from here today."

"An arcade?" Ash repeated, face still splattered with some of the pasta sauce. "Like video games and stuff?"

"Yeah," she said. "It's n-"

"That sounds awesome! I never really get a chance to play that stuff, so I'd love t' check it out!"

Chloe frowned. 'It's not really my kind of place…' she was about to say, but Ash's excitement for the idea made it difficult to turn down. "W-Well, we don't know how busy the place will be on opening day… we can at least take a look, though."

"Thanks, Chloe! We better eat up to get there as fast as we can, right buddy?" He turned to Pikachu, who nodded, and the two of them began practically shoveling food into their mouths. Chloe lowered her head to try to avoid being seen by anyone sitting across from Ash and his Pokémon doing something embarrassing. Hopefully her luck would hold out as they headed to the arcade.

The Thunderbolt Arcade was located in what internet searching told Chloe used to be a two floor clothing store in the bottom of a much larger commercial building. There was a newly hung large sign over the door that made her cringe. 'Purple and yellow? Talk about an eyesore…'

Beside her, Ash was getting excited. "There it is, Pikachu! We're almost there!" he said, turning to the mouse on his shoulder.

"Piii-ka!" he cheered in response.

"Eiiie-vui!" cheered the Evolution Pokémon from Chloe's arms where she was held.

Ash chuckled. "Eevee's pretty pumped up, too!"

Chloe frowned at the betrayal dealt to her by the small, fluffy Normal-Type. "I'm sure she is…" she said coolly.

As they approached the front of the building, Chloe saw that there was a queue to enter the building. It seemed to be moving at a pretty decent rate, stopping as people were checked in and let into the arcade. "They look really busy, but I guess they aren't looking too bad…" she said.

"C'mon, let's get in line!" Ash said, grabbing her by the hand that wasn't bearing Eevee's load. He yanked her ahead, making her cheeks flare up and almost causing her to stumble, but she kept up with him as charged to the end of the line.

In the back of her mind, a fearful streak popped up, wondering if there were onlookers wondering if they were a couple on a date, but her more immediate thought was at how rough Ash's hand felt, holding onto hers. It felt different than she expected; much rougher and stronger than she thought a boy her age would have. 'Even Dad's hands don't feel like this…' she thought, her cheeks growing ever redder as Ash led her into the line where he thankfully released her hand.

Chloe scraped her own fingers against her palm, and they felt so soft in comparison to Ash's. Eevee was busy cheering at the rush of speed she just experienced. Looking around, more people were already beginning to queue up behind the two of them, and Chloe began ducking down.

"What are you doing?" Ash asked, tilting his head as Pikachu mirrored the movement.

"I-uh… N-nothing!" She lied. 'I can't tell him I'm expecting Mika to be around here somewhere… I don't need more people telling me this is what it very clearly isn't.'

Ash saw the gears turning in her head, but he didn't seem to be able to put it together. "Alright. It's our turn, soon! I'm so psyched!"

"It is?!" Chloe looked up, somewhat shocked. Sure enough, the next few people were moving in ahead of them and it was time for Ash and Chloe to enter. The bored looking man with wavy brown hair down to his ears wearing a purple and yellow 'Thunderbolt Arcade' themed t-shirt looked down at Ash and nodded before motioning to let him in.

And as Ash strode through the door, lights and sirens began flashing. Several party poppers also sprayed confetti in his face as Chloe watched from behind.

"Congratulations!" the bored looking man, now strangely energetic, said cheerfully. "You're our 250th guest here on our opening day!"

Ash scratched behind his head, looking at the man before his surprised mouth widened into a grin. "Oh, awesome! Thank you!"

"As a prize," the man continued, "here is a special prize that people can win from our wonderful prize wall by exchanging tickets won from some of our arcade games!" He reached behind the podium he had been sitting at and took out a small plush Pikachu doll. "Here you go, sir!"

"Aww, it's cute! Thanks!" Ash said, handing it to Pikachu, who squeezed the smaller Pikachu closely. Beyond that, he didn't seem to give it any mind as he walked in, Chloe quickly following behind him.

"Wow, that's really lucky, Ash!" Chloe said as Eevee began raising her paws up and reaching for the toy.

"You think so?" Ash said, grinning. "I mean, I guess. But I'm more excited about all the fun we're gonna have here, y'know?"

She nodded somewhat hesitantly. "R-Right…! What do you wanna try first?"

Any hesitation was lost on Ash. "Let's find something that'll blow us away like pow!"

"Pi-ka!"

"Ei-vui!"

Once again, she was out-voted. Sighing, she took out her wallet from her pocket. "You got lunch, so let me get this, okay? I'll go get us some tokens so we can play."

"Got it! I'll find us something fun!"

The two of them split up, with Chloe turning towards the machine to take money and give tokens they could insert into the machines. As she pulled out her yellow-and-green wallet with yellow hearts that reminded her of Yamper, her attention was drawn to a bright machine in the far corner of the floor.

It was bright blue and large, with four places for players to sit. From this distance, she could read several signs posted on it: "History", "Science", "Music", "Entertainment", "Pokémon", and "Geography".

"I think that's a quiz game…" she said. Even from back here, she could see a crowd gathered around it, and there was a part of her that wanted to play it as the tokens jingled out of the machine in exchange for the bill she inserted. Sighing, she scooped the coins into a nearby cup from a stack the arcade had placed there for just that purpose.

'There's zero chance Ash would want to do a quiz game like that. You know he's bad at that stuff, so why would you want him to have a bad time?'

Grumbling, she turned and began looking for Ash. The trainer was gawking at a machine advertising a huge spaceship on the side. Pikachu was standing on the back of the seat, still holding the Pikachu plushie.

"This one looks awesome! Look, two seats! It's even two players!" Ash said, slapping the back of the seats.

'It feels like he's trying to sell me this thing… but what harm could it be?' she thought. "Alright," she said. "Let's play, then."

She sat Eevee on the back of the machine next to Pikachu and then took her seat. Ash sat down roughly, bouncing into the plastic chair next to her. Chloe slipped the tokens into the machine and took the controls into her hands.

In the game itself, players would aim their guns at the screen, which made the aiming cursor move. Pulling the trigger fired a laser to shoot enemy ships and counter their attacks, while both players firing with overlapped cursors would cause their guns to fire a more powerful laser, incentivizing people to play together to make the game easier, and thus absorb more tokens and money for the arcade.

Chloe glanced over at Ash. His brown eyes were focused and his eyebrows were furrowed as he looked at the screen. Even though this game was just something they were playing for fun in an afternoon, Ash was seemingly taking it incredibly seriously. And the way his lips curled into that confident grin made her heart skip, and she realized she was staring. Chloe looked away and began focusing on the game.

The controls felt a bit heavy in her hands, but they were simple enough to intuit. Soon she was blasting away at the ships flying past. 'I don't know if these are aliens or if this is a movie or what…' she thought.

Ash didn't seem to care one way or the other, just blasting to and fro, shouting as he did. Chloe did her best to fit in and play the game his way. 'It's not a date. We're just having fun. So I should try to have fun with him, right?'

Chloe focused on the game just long enough to see a missile shoot past her and 'hit' her, turning her half of the screen red and depleting some of the 'Shield' meter that she surmised represented her health in the game. She redoubled her efforts as the ship she and Ash were defending went into the trench on the moon they were attacking. The two of them aimed their shots on their sides of the screen, taking down the enemy ships and attacks as they came. Somehow, they came to the end and focused their lasers together to destroy the barrier at the end, clearing the first stage. 'I have no idea how I did that…'

"That was awesome, Chloe!" Ash said, beaming. "You were like blam, and then our lasers went shoop together! That was really cool!"

"Y-Yeah…! It really was…!" she replied, feigning understanding as the second stage started. Unfortunately this one didn't go as well for Chloe as the missiles that damaged the player came faster and more frequently. Despite her best efforts, she ended up defeated with a Continue prompt counting down on her side of the screen as Ash continued blasting a bit more before getting eliminated himself.

"Heh, yeah," he said. "That happens when you don't play much. But it was a lot of fun to try out, right?" He turned to Pikachu and Eevee, who were a short distance away, gently tossing the plush Pikachu between the two of them.

Pikachu caught the plush and turned to Ash with a "Pikachu!" in agreement.

"Why don't we look for something else?" Chloe said, standing up from the machine. "Let's find another game to play."

"You've got it!" Ash said as he began to look for another game to play, beginning to wander as Pikachu chased from behind.

Chloe took a moment to pick up Eevee. "Are you having fun?" she asked her Pokémon.

"Eievui!" came the excited response.

'At least one of us is…' she thought.

"Chloe, over here!"

Looking up, she saw Ash waving at her from a pair of machines that even Chloe recognized. They were the large cabinets for a dancing game where players stepped on buttons to match arrows in time with a chosen song. Ash had managed to find one of the few machines not populated with a couple. And Chloe did note that it looked largely like couples playing the machines in this area. 'It's just my overactive imagination,' she told herself. 'He doesn't really think…!'

Ash offered her a hand to help her get up on to the dancing stage, which she took, looking into his warm brown eyes as she did. Quietly, she hoped the dim lights of the arcade kept her blush hidden from him.

Ash quickly pivoted to just looking at the machine. "Okay, let's get started!" Chloe just looked at the side of his face, still somewhat lost before remembering and taking some tokens from the cup and putting enough credits in the machine for another two player game.

Chloe began bouncing on the buttons to choose a moderately easy difficulty, but she saw Ash ramping his difficulty all the way up to the max. She raised an eyebrow. "Ash, I didn't know you were good at this kind of game."

He laughed. "Well, I don't wanna brag, but I do like taking everything on at the hardest difficulty setting!"

Chloe ended up picking the setting in the middle. "I think I'll take it a bit easier than you…" she said. Bouncing on the buttons a bit more, she was deciding on a song. "Maybe… this one?"

The imagery associated with the song was of a girl wandering a large maze, with the song called, fittingly enough, 'The Labyrinth'.

"Alright!" Ash said, pumping his fists. "Let's try it!"

As the song started, it had a slow deliberate beat, but that was in contrast to the constant twisting steps that the arrows indicated, several times requiring her to jump and spin as she tried to keep up with a difficulty setting that was clearly beyond her.

And then she glanced over at Ash, missing every note.

Taking a moment to appraise what he was doing wrong, she was flabbergasted to watch his feet flailing all over the dance pad, only rarely hitting a direction and never in time with the song's requirements.

Turning away to not get mortified in embarrassment, she focused on doing her best with the song as it continued, realizing quickly that the only reason the song continued at all was because she was managing to keep up. But dancing wasn't something she was accustomed to, no matter how much she pretended to dance to music in her room by herself; she lacked the coordination to keep it up.

Barely, mercifully, the song came to an end, and Chloe leaned against the handrail, panting as the game deemed her performance worthy of a B grade. Ash's grade, given at the same time, was F, with somehow 0 points earned.

"A-Ash…," she spoke up, still not grasping what just happened. "If you're not good at this, why did you crank up the difficulty so high?"

Ash beamed his happy-go-lucky smile at her. "Because it's fun taking on hard challenges, you know? Even if it was hard, it was fun seeing how well I could do!"

'Or couldn't,' Chloe thought to herself, her irritation noted in the tone she took in her mind. "I'll be right back," she said, stepping away from the machine.

Ash blinked in confusion. "Huh? What's up?"

"I just need a moment…" she said. "I'll be right back." She pointed in the direction of the restrooms.

Thankfully, in this instance, Ash could take a hint. "Oh! Uh, right. We'll be here, right, buddy?"

Pikachu, who was a little better at picking up subtext than Ash, looked at Chloe apologetically. "Pikapi pikachu…" he said, as if he was saying 'Sorry that Ash is like this…'

"Right, come on, Eevee." Chloe turned on her heel and walked to the restroom, Eevee following her at her heels.

Entering the restroom, she approached the mirror. 'I just need a moment to compose myself,' she thought. She looked in the mirror and grimaced. The girl looking back at her looked exhausted, even though Chloe herself didn't feel tired, only stressed. Her hair was poking out of her braid at random intervals, and in general it looked messy. "I guess that game did more damage than I thought…" she said to herself.

More than that, though, she looked like she was hating being there.

"Why am I not having fun…?"

"Eievui…?"

Chloe unraveled her braid and began fixing it as quickly as she could. It wasn't something that she practiced without her mother to help very much, but she could make due in a pinch like this one. Looking at her messy hair, she was reminded of how Ash's hair looked earlier in the day before she put his hat back on him, returning him to some sense of normalcy. And the irony of the situation struck her.

"I'm such a hypocrite," she said to Eevee.

"Vui?" she asked back.

"I got on Ash's case about acting weird and now look at me. I got all dressed up and put on perfume. I'm acting like I should be scared that people will see me out with him, I'm getting dragged into stuff I don't think is any fun… I'm doing the exact thing I told Ash NOT to do. I'm not being myself."

She pulled her hair back, looking in the mirror. "I'm acting like this is a date when it isn't. I hardly know anything about Ash, when you get down to it." She watched the heat in her cheeks rise to the surface. "...maybe I like him. A bit. But is that the image of him I have in my head in the moonlight? Or is that really who he is, in the end? I don't know."

She began braiding the two parts of her long hair together. "I can't act boldly or just jump into things and say anything when I'm not sure. If I have feelings for Ash, I should know exactly what those feelings are before I tell him about them." She picked up her flower-shaped barrette and pulled it back towards her head, holding her braid together. "This is just one more thing. I'll take my time and decide, just like Eevee. No pressure."

Turning on the faucet, she splashed a little water in her face. "Alright. No more acting wishy-washy," she said, stealing her resolve. "Instead of worrying about what other people may think like Goh or Mika or anyone else, I should be wondering what I think. And what I think is…" She paused before reaching her conclusion.

"I think I'm going to just try to enjoy myself and be myself. No more of this overthinking stuff. I'm just going to be myself!"

"Eievui!" cheered the Pokémon from the floor. Whether she understood what Chloe was talking about or not was a mystery itself.

"C'mon, Eevee, let's go meet up with Ash and this time, we're going to do something that I want to do!"