I awoke smiling and scratched the Froakie resting on my lap behind the ears, watching her make little kicks in her sleep. One of the kicks hit a very, very hard and pointy object that she seemed to be curled around.
"Oh shit." I whispered trying to think of things that would kill my morning wood before she had time to wake up. "Um, Growlithes, nuns, my mother, Tierno-"
Ah. There we are.
I sighed with relief as Shinobi awoke after I had killed my arousal, turning to face me and smiling. "Good morning, Shinobi. Sleep well?" I asked her, smiling back.
"Very well, thank you." She got up and zipped open the tent, letting in the sunlight and waking up Cinder. "I'm just going to go and ... use the bathroom. Excuse me." She rushed out and into some bushes.
"Sure you are, Shinobi." Cinder muttered, dragging herself to her feet. "Yeah, I don't believe that for a second."
"Why not?" I asked her sternly. She chuckled a little. "You're hiding something."
"Indeed I am." She jumped on top of me and looked down to make eye contact.
"First off, I know you were listening to our conversation outside the tent." My throat dried up. "Don't worry. She doesn't know. To explain where she's actually gone, I need to break her privacy, but you already know the rest of it, so it doesn't really matter if we keep one more little secret between us. We woke up a little earlier and discovered that she was lying on top of ... well, you know." All the colour drained from my face. "She asked me if that was because of her, and I said probably not. However, she didn't stop thinking about it, and now I presume that she's gone out to, shall we say, relieve herself. Release some pent-up stress." She looked at my confused face. "Wow, you really are a brick wall, aren't you?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'll tell you later. Anyway, she's become a bit interested in it. In you."
"So, what you're saying is that my Pokemon wants to get in my trousers. How bleeding wonderful." I sighed and started packing away our things.
"You were thinking about her in your sleep, weren't you?" I sighed and gave a weak nod. "Don't fret. She doesn't suspect a thing, and your secret is safe with me."
"I really don't trust you, all things considered." I told her. She frowned.
"I guessed." I smiled at her before pulling out her Pokeball and returning her to it.
All sorts of conflicting thoughts were going through my head. I knew that my attraction to Shinobi was not one-sided, but she didn't. For all she knew, I had no deeper feelings for her, and that I was completely uninterested in me. However, she obviously had her suspicions. I knew that one of us was going to snap eventually. Due to the fact that I would go to jail if anything physical happened between us, I knew that she was going to end up being the one. All I had to do was ignore it. Wait it out. The time for us to confess our feelings for each other would come in time, and until that point, I would just go on as normal. Once I had my thoughts straight, Shinobi came back, looking especially flustered.
"Someone took their sweet time finding somewhere to do their business." I teased, knowing exactly what the actual reason was.
"I wanted to get some privacy. It would be kind of degrading if someone saw what I was doing." She lied - well, not about what happened, but the context in which it happened. "So, we're not eating breakfast?" I shook my head, but passed a berry to her.
"I'm not. You can, if you want. I haven't got anything left besides tinned fish." She smiled at the berry and started to eat it.
"I'd offer you some if I didn't know it would make you throw up." She said in between bites of Pecha. I picked her up and put her on my shoulder so that I would be able to travel while she chowed down.
After some time, I realised that we had passed into Santalune Forest, and that it barely was a forest. I did, however, come across Serena's tent. Peeking my head inside and instantly regretting the action, I continued on my way.
"We never saw that, Shinobi. Agreed?" I told her. She gave me a look that seemed to say 'what didn't we see?', followed by a wink. The trudging through the boring-ass death forest filled with annoying-as-hell bugs, as I so eloquently nicknamed it, led to a few uninteresting and incredibly one-sided battles with some incompetent kids. "This forest looked much bigger from the outside." I muttered as we stepped through the forest exit and found Tierno, Trevor, Shauna and surprisingly, Serena, standing outside and having a conversation.
"Hey! Jack! Over here!" Tierno yelled to me, waving like a crazy person. Knowing that there no chance of escaping this time, I walked over to the group of madballs and joined their conversation.
"Um ... Hello, Jack." Trevor said quietly. I waved my response.
"Okay, now that we're all here, I have something to give you guys." She pulled out four cheap notebooks from her bag. "These are Adventure Rules. They're ten tips from me on how to be the best trainer you can be." She handed them out, stopping as she got to me and giving a very 'I know what you did' face, before shoving the booklet into my grasp.
"Thanks, Serena! I'll treasure it forever!" Shauna yelled, squeezing the small notebook. Trevor and Tierno gave each other weird looks, but expressed their gratitude anyway. However, due to my hunger, I was in an especially dick-ish mood that morning.
I flicked through the notebook, found nothing of substance, value or help, except for a page in the back that had Serena's phone number on it. I laughed and tore it out, putting it in my back pocket for later use. After a quick thought and an evil grin, I expressed my own gratitude.
"Oh, a notebook full of useless tips. Golly gee, this sure is great." I pulled a box of matches out of my bag and took one of them out. "And now, fire." I scraped the match across the box, lighting it and holding it to the notebook, laughing coldly as it burned before their eyes.
"What the fuck are you doing? That was a gift from me, you asshole!" Serena yelled, grabbing the book from my grasp, throwing it to the ground and stomping on it to put the fire out.
"Something that's shit is still shit, even if it was a gift." Tierno had burst into laughter by this point. Even Shauna and Trevor were chuckling a little. Serena just stared me down, looking like she was going to gut me at any moment. "And with that taken care of, it's time for me to go." I started to walk away from the bewildered crowd, but ended up with my face in the mud as Serena had punched me in the back of the head.
"What the hell is your problem? I give you a gift, and you burn it? You're terrible!" She cried, slapping my laughing face. "Answer me!"
"I know that you'd like to think that we're friends, but that's completely false. I don't like any of you people, so take your gifts and shove them up your asses, because I really don't care." I watched uncaringly as she ran away from me, tears forming in her eyes.
"Um, Jack, that was a bit excessive, don't you think?" Shinobi asked as I wiped some of the mud from my face.
"I'm tired, angry and these people won't shut the hell up. They're lucky I didn't use those matches to set fire to their clothes." I muttered, standing up and putting her back on my shoulder. "I'm sorry if you disapprove, but you're going to have to get used to it."
"But ..." I rubbed the side of her head as she tried to criticize me. "Well, alright then. Just don't do anything you'll regret." I nodded at her and started looking around the area. "What's next, then?" She asked, wondering why we were standing around.
"Trying to see if there are any interesting Pokemon around here." I noticed a small hopping blur in my peripheral vision and looked over at it. There was an Azurill looking at me. Its eyes widened upon noticing me, and started hopping towards me slowly. Truthfully, I was terrified. Every time it hopped towards me I took a step back. Eventually, I stopped stepping away and pulled out my Pokedex. I pointed it at the creature, and it displayed some information about it. I checked its stats. 190.
I dropped to the floor in laughter. The Azurill looked at me confusedly and continued hopping toward me. I didn't even care at that point. I just got up and looked at the little thing.
"Why are you laughing? Fear me!" The Azurill yelled, jumping into me and knocking me to the ground. It hurt. Badly. With the knowledge that the little bundle of murder in front of me actually posed some sort of threat, I rolled away from it and got to my feet.
"You're adorable." I teased. It looked rather mad. I pulled Cinder's Pokeball from my bag and threw it up into the air, letting her out.
"Alright, boss! What needs to die?" She shouted proudly, circling the Azurill.
"Just soften up the Azurill over there so I can catch it." She nodded and flew back to my side. "Hit it with a Quick Attack. Just, don't go too hard." She paid no heed to the last part of my sentence and darted to the pissed-off Fairy, smashing into it and leaving a dent in a nearby tree which it was sent careening into. "Well, fuck. I think it's dead." I put Shinobi down and ran towards the injured Azurill, my worries spirited away when it dragged itself up and tried to smack me with its tail. It didn't hurt that time. "I think you got it, Cinder." I returned Cinder to her Pokeball and threw my spare one at the Azurill.
It didn't go inside. Instead, I was met with a very confused Vivillion looking around.
"I think that one of the Pokeballs that Serena dropped wasn't as empty as I thought." I whispered to Shinobi, who had walked back over to me and jumped on to my shoulder. The Vivillion turned around and looked at me.
"Human! Where is my trainer?" It yelled at me. I shrugged and pointed toward the gate to Santalune City. "So, she dropped my Pokeball. Again. It's like she doesn't even care about me." The Vivillion, seemingly a male, sighed and started flapping his wings, gliding over to the gate and stopping. "Human. Can you pass me my Pokeball?" I threw the ball at it and it caught it in its tiny feet. "Thank you, human. I'll look forward to battling you in the future." He flew off, leaving me with the problem of having a heavily injured Azurill at my feet and nothing to put it in.
"Jack, we need to get it to a Pokemon Center. It'll die if we leave it here." I nodded to Shinobi and bent over to pick the Azurill up, hesitating after making eye contact.
"Okay, little guy, I'm gonna pick you up and get you fixed up, okay?" It reluctantly nodded and allowed me to pick the poor thing up. After the Azurill accidentally spread its legs a little too wide in an effort to get comfortable, I noticed that it was a female. We both noticed that we were looking at each other and broke eye contact in embarrassment. I ran toward the Santalune City gate and toward the nearest Pokemon Center.
Roughly an hour later, I had given her into the Pokemon Center and bought some food fit for human consuption. At that time, I was sitting in the lobby of the Center waiting to hear of her fate. I looked up and saw that the nurse was holding a tray out to me with a single Pokeball on it.
"We were able to get your Azurill going again." I sighed in relief at the nurse's words. "We asked her, and she said that we could put her in a Pokeball and give her to you. With that in mind, you now have your very own Azurill! Congratulations!" I picked the ball off of the tray and examined it closely. "You're a lucky guy - that Azurill has the Huge Power ability, which will make it far more powerful in battle!" I considered the meaning of what she had said, and decided to make the Azurill my next Pokemon, if it could really perform as well as the nurse was implying. "We're sorry for keeping you here so late. We have some spare rooms for rent, if you'd be interested." She said, pointing to some doors in the back.
"How much for the night?" I asked her.
"No charge. It's complimentary." I thanked her, picked up my bag and carried it through one of the doors, shutting it behind me and sitting on one of the beds, putting my bag on the spare. I took out the three Pokeballs and released the three girls so that they could get accquainted with each other.
"So, you three are my new friends, huh?" The Azurill asked. We all nodded. "The name's Azure. I hope, for your sakes, that we can get along." Shinobi huffed a little. Cinder just sat in place, fantasising, and I just looked at her.
"I'm Jack. These two are Shinobi and Cinder. Now, I think it's about time we went to bed." Cinder sighed, but Shinobi and Azure had no problem with it. "There are two beds, so I'd say that you three can sleep in one," I proposed, removing my bag from the spare bed and gesturing to it. "And I'll sleep in this one." I made them turn around and slipped into my pajamas as we all piled into our respective beds. Azure and Cinder drifted off almost instantly, but Shinobi seemed not to be able to sleep.
"Hey, Jack?" She whispered to me through the darkness.
"What is it?" I whispered back.
"Can I ... um," She hesitated. "Can I come and sleep in your bed?"
"Why?" I asked her, knowing the reason already and just playing dumb.
"I'd just feel a whole lot more comfortable next to you. You can say no if you want." I mulled over the possible reprocussions before moving from the middle of the bed and patting the side. "Are you sure?" She jumped off of the bed and hopped onto mine.
"Yeah. I'm sure." I lifted her up and put her under the covers, resting her head on the pillow. "Goodnight, Shinobi." I told her, exchanging smiles.
"Goodnight." She froze for a minute before leaning over and giving me a kiss on my cheek, turning away in embarrassment. I gently took hold of her and rolled her over to face me, giving her a kiss on the forehead. I could see her blushing even in near-darkness.
"You don't need to be worried. We're all friends here." I told her, brushing the side of her head. She smiled a little before getting closer to me and falling asleep. "Well, I say friends." I joined her slumber.