DISCLAIMER: I do not own Pokémon.

Speak

Iris and Cilan had rarely seen Ash in such a talkative mood. Granted, his victory at the Nimbasa City gym earlier that day had been quite the spectacle, a battle worthy of a lively discussion, but that topic had slipped out of the conversation some time ago, and now it seemed that all their hyperactive companion was doing was rambling nonsensically to anyone too polite to turn him down. Iris, being as candid as she was, had had no problem with that.

"Is he still going?" she whispered to Cilan as the trio stepped through the automatic doors of the Nimbasa pokémon centre.

"I'll admit, this kind of vocal stamina is impressive, even for Ash," the pokémon connoisseur remarked. "Maybe I ought to dial back the sugar content the next time I attempt to make homemade Casteliacones."

Iris smirked. "He's such a kid."

"Ax!" agreed Axew from within her voluminous purple hair.

But as much of a kid the 20-year-old pokémon trainer appeared to be, the real reason for his energy could not solely be attributed to a sugar rush this time. His Unovan friends' confusion was understandable, as he had yet to make his intentions known to them, but Ash was simply too excited to wait any longer, for tonight was the night of his monthly phone call with Misty.

He kept in touch with all of his friends, of course, writing to them religiously no matter where he was (or, indeed, where they were), but only Misty Waterflower held the title of best friend, and their regular videophone conversations had become something of a tradition ever since she left the group all those years ago. The fifteenth of every month was Misty Day, as he dubbed it – or, at least, every month where access to a phone was available. Ash's constant travelling made it hard to keep up this ritual as time went on, leading to many regrettably long periods of no face-to-face contact; yet, the letters still flowed, and something about the often lengthy stint between their calls only made the two estranged friends treasure them more when they finally came around.

Just as the group approached the front desk, Ash spun around on his heel to face his two travelling companions, who were forced to stop to avoid bumping into him.

"You guys go ahead," he said. "I've, er, got a call to make. Won't be too long."

Looking left and right along the rows of videophones on either side of the reception desk, he walked to the middle of the right-hand row and sat himself down at the only available seat. He supposed that it made sense for everyone to want to call their loved ones on a Friday night, and considering that he was also about to do just that, he could not exactly complain. Despite this, Pikachu seemed unsettled by the rather cramped conditions and hopped off Ash's shoulder in the direction that Iris and Cilan had headed in.

"Oh, hey, Pikachu," Iris chirped as the yellow mouse bounded up to her. Something about his entrance halted the aspiring dragon master's ascent up the stairs, and she skipped back down to ground level to peer around the corner at Ash on the phone.

"Er, Iris, what are you doing?" Cilan asked from further up the steps.

"I wanna know who Ash is calling," she whispered furtively.

"Pikachupi!" Pikachu tried to answer, but when their inevitable looks of confusion travelled over to him, the unimpressed pokémon redirected his attention to beckoning Axew out of Iris's hair and initiating a game of chase.

Cilan made his way back down the stairs, a concerned look on his face. "Now, Iris, I'm not sure that's really any of our business. Don't you think it's rude to eavesdrop like this?"

"I'm not eavesdropping, I can barely hear myself think in here," she explained. "All I want to do is see who it is."

"Well…it still doesn't seem proper to intrude upon his private conversation," the ever-gentlemanly gym leader stated.

Iris groaned. "Look, he's done this a couple of times now, acted all jumpy and hyper then blown us off to call some mystery person in Kanto. Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"

By the time she turned around, her changeable friend had donned a peaked brown hat and was holding a magnifying glass up to his piercing green eye.

"A mystery, you say?" he inquired dramatically. "Well, look no further, for there is no better mystery solver than I, De-"

"Yeah, yeah, Detective Cilan, great," Iris humoured him before returning to her position with a small smile on her face. "Now stay focused, I think it's starting."

For once, Ash appeared not to have noticed Pikachu's sudden absence. He reached into his pocket for the money he had set aside specifically for this, feeding each coin carefully into the slot and pressing the bright green receiver to the side of his head. The ringing sound whirred in his ear for several seconds before being replaced by a sweet voice that caused his heart to leap in excitement.

"Y-Yeah…Cerulean gym?"

Ash suppressed a light chuckle. Usually, his friend's greeting was a lot more long-winded and courteous, her intonations rising and falling in a well-rehearsed, business-like sort of way. Then again, though, it had to be after midnight in Kanto by now, and with a pang of guilt, he realised that he may very well have got her out of bed just for this.

"Is that any way to greet your best friend?" he said with a smirk.

As soon as the words left his mouth, a familiar sight of the Cerulean gym's front desk appeared on the screen in front of him, at the centre of which was the very person he wanted to see. Though her fiery red hair and blue-green eyes were precisely how he remembered them, her facial expression was not what he had expected to be met with at all.

"Oh, so now you remember I'm your best friend?!" she snapped, her tone both serious and sarcastic. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since you last called? Four months. Four goddamn months! And don't give me that 'I couldn't get to a phone' crap, because your mom told me you called her the other day! With friends like that, who needs enemies, huh?!"

Shaking off his initial shock, Ash released a frustrated sigh. It was clear from Misty's tone that she was very tired, and therefore more cantankerous than usual, but as her words sunk in, he knew that she had a point.

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a minute," he stuttered. "I still wrote, didn't I? I was on the road for ages before I got here, so how was I going to call you? Stop looking at me like that; it's true! And I only didn't call you at the same time as Mom because I wanted to wait until our day, you know? The one we agreed on?"

He stopped to draw in a breath, leaning slightly closer to the screen. "Misty, I'm sorry I didn't call for so long – it's not like I didn't want to – but hey, I'm calling you now, right? Surely that's got to count for something."

Once he finished his piece, the disgruntled redhead unfolded her arms and looked sheepishly back over at the videophone screen.

"Well, I suppose it's better than nothing," she eventually said, though the smirk playing at the corners of her mouth betrayed her attempts to look annoyed. "So, how've you been doing?"

From the sidelines, Iris squinted her eyes to get a better look at the orangey yellow blob on Ash's screen.

"It's a girl," she murmured to herself, her eyelids lowering and her mouth stretching into a wicked smile. "A pretty girl. Oh, Ash, you sly dog, you."

Cilan overheard her muttering and poked his grassy head out from behind the pillar at the foot of the stairs.

"Ah, so this was the reason for his strange behaviour. A classic but oh-so-pleasing combination of flavours," he declared in the manner only he knew how.

"Looks like that's our mystery wrapped up." Iris shrugged as she stretched out her back. "Guess he's not such a kid after all," she finished with a devious laugh.

"On the contrary!" Cilan suddenly proclaimed, nearly causing her to jump. "The mystery's only just beginning! It seems to me like…" he paused to shed his detective gear, "it's evaluating time!"

He then leant around the pillar as far as he could go, stroking his chin as the wheels in his connoisseur's mind began to turn. Iris simply shook her head, grinning impotently.

"Oh boy, what have I started here?"

"And hey, get this…" Ash grinned as his friend stooped forwards for the climax of his story. "The gym had an actual rollercoaster in it!"

"No way!" came her astonished response. "That's so cool! My sisters have met Elesa before, I think; probably during one of their fashion shows. Never mentioned anything about going to the Nimbasa gym though."

"Hey, you ought to put in a kind of log flume or something at your gym. Ooh, or a water slide! Man, I'd come to visit all the time if it was like that!"

"Oh, well I'm very sorry my home bores you so much!" Misty huffed, though still in good fun. "But now you mention it, we are planning a kind of remodelling of the gym soon. Well, the Pokémon League is, more like. I don't think we get much of a say in it."

"Maybe I can put a word in for you once I become a pokémon master." He grinned cockily, a look that earned him a tut of disapproval. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me, we were just walking down the road the other day, and I kid you not, I genuinely thought I saw…er, Misty? Hello? Misty?"

The pokémon trainer's little anecdote was brought to an abrupt end when he noticed his redheaded friend acting rather peculiarly. Her mouth was moving, but no words were coming out, and by the looks of her frantic arm movements, she seemed to be furiously prodding at all of the buttons on her console. It took a shamefully long time for Ash to put two and two together.

"Argh, you've got to be kidding me," he groaned as he also began to hammer the controls of the videophone. He considered whacking the thing, but remembering that he was in plain view of the Nurse Joy at the desk, he reluctantly opted to go and ask her instead.

"Something seems amiss," Cilan pondered. "I think something unwelcome has just been added to the broth."

Iris grabbed him by the collar. "He's coming this way. Quick, get down!"

Ash's companions squashed themselves down underneath the curved staircase, successfully evading the man in question on his short journey to the reception desk. After explaining the situation to Nurse Joy, the benevolent, pink-haired woman followed Ash back to his seat.

"Oh dear, not this again." She sighed when she reached over his shoulder to inspect the videophone. "We've been having problems with this unit all week. For some reason, the audio just cuts out several minutes into every call, and we haven't been able to figure out why. There's nothing wrong from your, er, girlfriend's end, though, so you may want to…"

"Oh n-no, she's, er, not my girlfriend." He tried to laugh it off, despite the pinkness that reached his cheeks. Misty temporarily took a break from bashing her phone with her mallet to look up, whereupon Ash and a slightly nervous Nurse Joy were staring back at her. She quickly disposed of the weapon and scratched her head embarrassedly.

"I apologise that we're so busy tonight," Joy spoke up, "but if you'd like to try again on another unit later on, I'll make sure the money from this call carries over. Otherwise, I'd be happy to offer you a full refund."

Ash took a moment to weigh his options. Frankly, neither seemed particularly appealing right off the bat. Calling from Unova had proven more difficult than any of the other regions he had been to, as he had never had to worry about things like time zones and overseas charges until now. Option A was all but out of the question, as it was the middle of the night already in Cerulean City, and he could not exactly ask her to stay up all night for him when she had a gym to run. As for Option B, while a refund would definitely be welcome – the prices over here were, after all, nothing short of extortionate – Ash knew that they were heading back out tomorrow morning, meaning that this was pretty much the only opportunity he and Misty had to talk, and, sound or no sound, what was more important here?

"You know what?" he finally said. "That's okay. I think we can manage."

Nurse Joy was, understandably, utterly perplexed. "But…are you sure?"

Confidently, he nodded, and with a rather amused smile, the young woman stepped lightly back over to her place behind the reception desk. Ash's eyes settled back on the videophone screen, grinning when he saw his friend stare blankly back at him. He had saved the world a dozen times; fought off every evil his journey had thrown at him and not even broken a sweat. Getting through a phone call without being able to speak a single word? Now there was a challenge worthy of the Chosen One.

With a few in-and-out twirls of his index finger, Ash attempted to pose the question of "should we carry on?" to the bemused Misty. She seemed to catch on quickly, her expression halfway between incredulity and relief, and with a gleeful nod of her head, she rooted around on her desk for one of her teardrop-shaped Cascade Badges to hold up to the screen, presumably to remind him of what they were talking about earlier.

Hehe, this is gonna be fun, he told himself fondly, reaching into his bag for his badge case and placing it beside the phone. The four gleaming objects shone brightly up at him, and he carefully picked up the first of his collection, the bowtie-like Trio Badge, brandishing it proudly for his friend to see.

Misty watched his every move with great interest. Were they really going to do this? The thought of having a conversation purely via props and arm movements was one she was still getting used to, one she did not quite know how to negotiate, but Ash always managed to find such new and unorthodox ways to surprise her, and, given that this was partially why she had followed him in the first place, she could never truly be mad at him for that.

As she tried to think of how to respond without the luxury of words, an idea eventually came to her, and she returned to her desk drawer once again, resurfacing soon after with a folded up square of glossy paper. The detailed map of the Unova region briefly obscured her from Ash's view as she stretched it out in full, but she managed to adjust her position by poking her head over the top and snaking her arms around the sides, the crumpled sheet pressed against her chest like an apron.

Here? her eyes seemed to say when her pointing finger landed on a randomly chosen city. Once the game became clear to him, Ash felt another boyish grin creep onto his lightly tanned face.

Left a bit, his hands dictated. No, my left! he quickly corrected. Misty's slender fingers slid along the page at his instruction.

Here? Her head cocked to the side in sync with her finger resting on another point of interest.

A bit further…

Okay…

Keep going…

Mhm…

Almost…wait, too far! Back a bit! There, stop, that's it!

As soon as Misty's hand grazed the little dot that was Striaton City, the two friends cheered silently, punching the air in a kind of sarcastic celebration.

"What the heck are they doing?" the enthralled Iris thought out loud.

"A wordless conversation…" Cilan postulated. "Never have I encountered such an intriguing mix of ingredients. They must be very close indeed."

Once Ash and Misty had calmed down, the two friends then repeated their quirky little activity with Ash's other three badges. First was the book-inspired Basic Badge; after that, the shimmering green Insect Badge; then, last but not least, the newest of his collection, the Bolt Badge in all its angular glory. At multiple points during this process, Ash found his attention shifting from his vague hand gestures to Misty herself, his eyes scanning every inch of her that was visible around the map she was holding. It was an involuntary action at first, purely instinctive, but even as he began to become aware of what he was doing, the young man found he neither wanted nor had the power to stop.

His best friend had not changed much over the ten years he had known her. Her hair was a little longer now, flowing down to just above her shoulders, and judging by the unfortunate bedhead she had going on, Ash guiltily deduced that he had most definitely woken her up. The light from a lamp off-screen brought out a pleasing pink tinge in her fair face and arms, a sight matched in splendour only by the captivating sparkle of her vibrant teal eyes. She was truly beautiful – after so many years, he had finally learned to admit that to himself – but that did not explain the other feeling he had when Misty was around. It seemed to go way beyond his simple attraction, penetrating through all of his defences and planting itself firmly at his core. Perhaps this was why the feeling was just as terrifying as it was enjoyable.

A waving hand taking up the whole of Misty's screen brought Ash back down to Earth, and he scratched at his charcoal hair in embarrassment.

Well? said the playful smirk on her face. After a second's confusion about where to go from here, Ash decided to move swiftly onto another of their popular over-the-phone activities; showing her the pokémon he had seen on his journey.

Unsheathing his sleek, black Unova pokédex from his jean pocket, he eagerly scrolled through his latest finds, picking out the particularly unusual-looking ones and holding them up to her screen. Though a couple of them provoked grins or small giggles from her, Ash could tell by her growing look of restlessness that it was the water pokémon she really wanted to see. With a flick of his wrist, he trawled through his roster of entries before landing on the first pokémon he saw in the Unova region, the palindromic Alomomola.

As he expected, Misty instantly lit up like a Christmas tree. The contortions of her mouth seemed to spell out something like, "Awwweeeeeeooooohh!", and her eyes glistened like stars at the sight of the symmetrical pink fish. What happened next, however, took Ash entirely by surprise.

First, she pointed directly at him, her expression both excited and oddly serious. Then came a bizarre 'diving' motion with her arm, ending with a splayed-fingered flutter that somewhat resembled a pokéball opening and closing. At the end, her pointing finger turned on herself, and she gazed across at Ash with a kind of hopeful look in her eyes.

The pokémon trainer wrestled with her weird signals for quite some time. Was she actually asking him to catch her an alomomola?

You? his own finger double checked, to which she nodded happily.

Yet, despite the apparent seriousness of her request, Ash decided to approach it in his trademark obtuse manner. He grinned, waggling his finger back and forth like a metronome then curling it inwards to point at his chest. Nah… he teased her, Me.

What?! read Misty's aghast face, before she pointed to herself once again. No, me!

Uh-uh, me! he countered. And thus, the point-off commenced.

Me!

Me!

Me!

No, me!

ME!

ME!

ME, ME, ME, ME!

They could comfortably have gone on like this forever, Ash thought to himself, were his ribs not getting sore from poking them repeatedly. If nothing else, this was unquestionably the quietest argument the pair had ever had.

As if by fate, though, a dramatic arc of light surged out from Ash's backpack on the floor, promptly halting their silent quarrelling. On the desk in front of him materialised a small, blue and white pokémon, its stubby arms raised in excitement.

"Oshawott!" he exclaimed.

When Ash glanced expectedly over at Misty, the smile on her face was so wide that he wondered if she might tear herself in half.

Aww, hi there! She waved cutely over to him. As soon as Oshawott laid eyes on the water-loving gym leader, the vivacious little otter was instantly enamoured, and gawked over at her squealing visage with a streak of red across his face.

"Um, she can't hear you, buddy," Ash told him when he noticed the wannabe Casanova attempting to introduce himself to the screen.

But this did little to dampen his spirits, and he soon abandoned the talking in favour of dancing around and posing dramatically. He alternated between using his shell-like scalchop as a top hat and as his mighty weapon while he unapologetically showed off to his master's pretty human friend, from whom he received torrents of giggles and applause.

Ash, though entertained at first, gradually began to grow irritated with Oshawott's showboating. For a reason he could not quite work out, something about the scene rubbed him up entirely the wrong way. That, and he had pretty much lost ownership of the conversation at this point. He may have been a lover of all pokémon, but he would be damned if he was going to be upstaged by one.

Spontaneously, he began to perform his own rival dance next to Oshawott, making sure to match his energy and then trying to one-up him at every opportunity. His routine caused the bemused callers on either side of him to back away slightly, but Ash did not notice, too wrapped up in the competition of his own making. Misty had mostly stopped laughing, and now seemed more curious than amused. Iris, however, was in absolute stitches.

"H-He's so jealous!" she howled, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I can't b-believe they're actually competing for her attention!"

Cilan was just as mesmerised. "Such spice! Such zest! This display has all the makings of one utterly delectable dish!"

In their respective stupors, Ash and Oshawott did not immediately notice Misty's screen being suddenly taken up by a wide, beige-coloured bill, followed by two beady, expressionless eyes that simply stared forward.

This odd turn of events allowed Ash to regain his senses, and, deciding he won, he took this moment of inactivity to return the infatuated otter back to its pokéball. As the image pulled back a little bit at a time, the identity of the obstruction eventually became all too clear. The face he imagined Misty to be wearing at this moment made him chuckle in a kind of nostalgic way.

Sure enough, the predictably irked redhead reappeared seconds later, having shoved her dimwitted Psyduck a few inches off to the side. The yellow duck, as usual, appeared not to know what had just happened, or, indeed, where he even was, but, then again, Ash had never really nailed down what went on in the mind of Misty's supposed favourite pokémon.

He was just about to 'say' something else when another figure appeared from behind his best friend at the desk. She was dressed in a cream-coloured dressing gown, and her pink hair was wound tightly up in rollers. Ash soon recognised her as Misty's older sister, Lily, and was surprised to see that she apparently recognised him, too.

"Like, hi, Ash! Heyyya!" he managed to lip-read her saying. With her eyes still on Ash, Lily scooped up the rotund Psyduck and placed him on the floor out of view. She then turned to Misty, whom Ash guessed was informing her about the whole sound issue (and her tired expression suggested that it was taking quite some effort). After that, Lily shrugged, shooting a little smile over at the pokémon trainer and stepping daintily away from the camera.

Misty shook her head at him, the little roll of her eyes conveying something of an apology for both Psyduck's and her sister's dizziness. Reaching for her map again, she appeared to have another question to ask, but just as she began to unfold it, Ash noticed Lily reappear around the corner, tiptoeing in so as not to alert Misty to her presence.

She was holding a large sheet of paper – a banner, of sorts – on which were three blocky words marked in bold black ink. The dim lamplight made them difficult to read, something not helped at all by her cheerleader-like dancing, but Ash eventually managed to catch a glimpse of the message during a second of stillness, and his face turned so red that Misty might have assumed he had burst into flames:

Ask her out!

Try as he might, he could not fully contain his swell of emotion, and as well as his sweltering cheeks, Misty quickly caught onto his eyes wandering behind her. Lily noticed this also, and began to edge slowly backwards in preparation for the big blow-up.

To Ash's relief, it seemed that his friend had not seen what was written on the sign. Whether she had or not, though, it was, at least, satisfying to see her silently scream at her sister and chase her away with the threat of a lethal mallet treatment.

"She's so violent…I love it!" Iris giggled from her hidey-hole. "I'm going over."

As she began to move, her less impulsive companion raised an eyebrow. "Iris, I'm not sure that's a good idea…"

"I just want to say hi! Come on!"

Needless to say, Ash and Misty had come to a kind of impasse after Lily's brief cameo appearance. While Misty was embarrassed in an angry sort of fashion, Ash's quietness was, uncharacteristically, of the more introspective variety. Why would Lily have wanted him to do something like that? And, perhaps more worryingly, why was he lingering on this instead of just dismissing it like he normally did?

Thankfully, the boy was rescued from his thoughts by the arrival of Iris and Cilan, the former grinning excitedly.

"Hey, guys," he greeted, his voice coming out a little shaky for some reason.

"Hey," Iris said. "We just thought we'd better let you know that we're in room 138 when you're done here."

Cilan shot the dragon trainer a sceptical look, but remained silent.

"Ah, o-okay…thanks," Ash acknowledged.

"So, who's your friend?" she chirped, not skipping a beat.

"Oh, er, this is M-"

But Iris did not wait for him to answer, leaping into view of the camera and waving amicably. Cilan followed suit, giving a small bow in his signature noble fashion. The sudden crowd distracted Misty from her grumbling, and she rapidly found herself flattered by the attention of whom she guessed to be Ash's new friends.

Like Lily, they opted for the more conventional method of communication, writing their names down on scraps of paper and presenting them to the waving Waterflower before them (Misty was particularly impressed by the green-haired one's stylised, curly handwriting). She returned the favour, scribbling the word 'Misty' on a post-it note and sticking it to the palm of her raised hand. It was a pretty bare-bones interaction, but without the power of speech, there was little else that could be said.

As quickly as they had appeared, Iris and Cilan announced that they would be going back up to the room (or, more accurately, their original vantage point, but Ash did not need to know that). They wrote Misty a joint message of 'Nice to meet you!' which she swiftly reciprocated, before scuttling hurriedly off around the corner.

At last, it was just the two of them again. It had only been a few minutes, but it seemed like forever since they had spoken without any interruptions, and now Ash realised that he had no idea what to say or do. Luckily, Misty picked up where she had left off almost straight away, collecting her map from off the ground and moulding it to the shape of her torso for the second time (this time, though, the action caused a little redness to spread across the bridge of Ash's nose).

Starting at Nimbasa City, her finger twirled around in multiple directions, all leading up the paths away from the little purple dot. With a click of his own fingers, Ash gathered that she had to be asking where he was going next, and in doing so, a rather humorous idea came to him, one he was sure she would find just as funny.

He signalled for her to give him a minute while he searched through his backpack for anything he could use in his little game. At the bottom, he came across a stale, rock-hard rice ball that had probably been there for at least a week or two. Also amongst his plunder was a black permanent marker, a red bottle cap that James from Team Rocket had pegged at him the other day, and an unripe oran berry, its purplish colour reminiscent of Iris's hair.

The young man chuckled to himself as he worked. The rice ball now had a crude drawn-on face and hair courtesy of the marker, and the bottle cap was stuck down atop its 'head' like a hat: a perfect little Mini-Ash.

Misty's instant spasm of laughter did not disappoint. She would have undoubtedly fallen off her seat were she not so determined to see where this was going. Ash matched her laughter with his own, but continued to work devotedly on his project. The oran berry represented Iris, of course, and, after a moment of brief indecision, he settled on the abandoned phone receiver as his effigy of Cilan (it was green, at least).

Bunching them together, Ash got out his own Unova map and began to 'walk' them along its narrow pathways, beginning at Nimbasa City and heading west towards the famous Driftveil Drawbridge. His animations were just as exaggerated as his creations, and the whole thing made the pair laugh like a couple of haunter.

It was certainly a long way to go just to answer a simple question, but somehow, this puppet show of sorts offered more detail, more meaning and, most importantly, more emotion than words alone ever could. Once the laughing faded out, Ash and Misty turned their attention back to their screens, their faces still a little flushed as they simply smiled over at one another. It had been so long since they had laughed together like this, and even longer since they had been able to meet up in person, that there was something almost bittersweet about how much they were enjoying themselves now. Ash could tell Misty felt the same way when he saw her smile had not quite reached her eyes.

Yet, the conversation was not over, and he had one last trick up his sleeve. Clearing the space in front of him of everything except his rice ball self, he delved once more into his backpack, this time into a secret side compartment where all of his 'key items', as he called them, were kept. He knew exactly where it was, so it took him no time at all to resurface above the counter and examine the familiar treasure in his hand.

The small piece of plastic smiled brightly up at him, and he smiled back. He briefly looked up at the real thing, who still had no idea, before uncurling his closed hand and placing his faithful Mini-Misty lure down on the desk, side by side with Rice Ash.

And Misty knew exactly what it meant. To the untrained eye, the action could have been easily misconstrued, with any number of both mild and extreme connotations; but she knew Ash, and she knew his friends were everything to him. Their eyes met over the touching scene – Ash's, warm and honest; Misty's, joyful and teary – conveying a message that had gone unsaid for so many years in such perfect, crystal-clear synchrony that the need to say it out loud had all but disappeared.

Of course they wanted to see each other. Of course they missed each other terribly. No matter how far afield Ash travelled, no matter how long it took for him to call, they would always be best friends, and nothing was going to change that. Ash's pokémon journey was his calling, and being a gym leader was Misty's, but the two young adults could both rest assured that, one day, somehow, they would find their way back to each other. Misty nodded to doubly confirm that she understood, while Ash merely smiled wider. He may not have been able to 'ask her out' in the traditional sense just yet, but maybe a silent, unspoken promise to visit as soon as he could was, for now, the next best thing.

They stayed like that for some time after, their eye contact only being broken by a sudden alert on Ash's videophone screen.

"Two minutes of call time remaining!" the cartoony audino in the bottom right-hand corner would have said, had the sound been working. Normally, Ash would have taken his chances, talking until the last second, but given that this was not exactly a normal phone call, he wanted to make sure it ended properly.

Gotta go, he mimed glumly with a tap of the imaginary watch on his wrist.

The redhead seemed somewhat saddened, but notably less so than usual. Ironically, without a single word being spoken, the pair had managed to say more in the last hour than they had the entire time they had known each other, and to claim that this softened the blow of parting ways for another month or three would be a gross understatement.

With a small but heartfelt wave each from the two friends, Ash moved his hand over the button to end the call, but was stopped by a second, more frantic wave from Misty to get his attention.

She suddenly appeared rather bashful, yet never took her eyes off Ash as she mouthed out two simple words:

Thank you.

Of everything that had happened in the conversation, this tiny, easily missable line was the thing that made his heart leap the most. It was still inaudible, but seemed so sincere, so understated, yet so powerful all at the same time. He barely let five seconds pass by before smiling as warmly as he could manage and then bidding his best friend farewell with an equally earnest reply:

Thank you, too.

"I think I'm going to cry," the typically hard-faced Iris whimpered.

Cilan, however, had crossed that bridge some minutes ago. "Oh, those bittersweet aromas!" he gushed melodramatically. "Their compatibility is off the scale! How fortunate I am to have witnessed this rare miracle!"

By now, Iris had pulled herself together. "Okay, drama queen, let's get back upstairs before he sees us."

So they did – but not without Cilan continuing to sing their praises every step of the way.

Standing up from his seat, Ash took one last glance at the now blank videophone screen, then proceeded to stroll at a leisurely pace towards the staircase, keeping a tranquil silence even now that there was no longer any need to. Speaking was overrated. What he really needed at this point was a long, satisfying rest. Tomorrow was a big day, after all: he had an alomomola to catch!

1:16am, read the small clock on Misty's desk. It had been at least three minutes since the call had ended, but her eyes remained fixed on the inactive screen that, for the last hour, had been graced with the image of her oldest and most valued friend.

Ash's calls kept her going through the lonely days of running the Cerulean gym virtually singlehandedly. Suddenly, it did not matter that they were so few and far between, for tonight's was absolutely the most fun she had had in a very long time, and those experiences were more than worth waiting for.

Keeping with the tradition of their recent conversation, she raised up her lithe finger, pointing it at her chest like she had earlier. Then, she pushed both of her hands out in front of her, joining them together to form a heart shape. In her final movement, the same finger as before extended out towards the phone screen, stopping when it lightly touched the cold, plasticky surface.

After their silent connection of a few minutes ago, Misty was surer than ever that the time to tell all would be very soon. Maybe when he came to visit, just like he promised. Yet, as pleasing as tonight was, there was no way in Hell she was going to reveal something like that through the medium of miming and rice balls. In order to render him speechless, the very least she needed to do was be able to speak.