Disclaimer: If I owned Pokemon, I would first have to be able to draw a rabbit that looks like a rabbit, not a mouse.
Thank you to all the nice, kind, wonderful (sorry, I can't find my thesaurus or I would write hundreds of words of pure praise) people who reviewed me. Now, back under my rock. I'm sure I saw that stupid thesaurus somewhere. Maybe it was between the Pringles and the Coke...
Ash hasn't changed at all.
But somehow, he's still different.
Gary leaves Misty and Brock to fill out the paperwork. He joins the scraggly bunch of people who are waitng for the elevator to open its doors, and raises his head to look at the old-fashioned indicator. Two more floors to go.
It's actually something he's been pondering for quite a while, that revelation. He thinks about it as he writes out half-baked ideas that are only fit for throwing at the idiot next door, the one who always drinks the milk he leaves for Umbreon at his front door. He thinks about it when he goes through an old, blood-stained album of his grandfather posing with him, when he received his first set of Pokeballs. He always manages to get a paper cut when he flips through the pages, still crisp and sharp after so long. He thinks about it when he's not thinking about anything at all.
The elevator doors open, and he lets the other people push and shove him as they hurry to get in first. A young child squeezes between him and the shiny buttons on the control pad. She presses the number 13. Then she squeals in delight and squeezes past him again, back to her mother.
It's something about the way he smiles. That, he is sure of. Something about the way he smiles.
The elevator doors open and close, open and close. People leave, others enter, some are forced to wait because there isn't any space. The little girl behind him chatters incessantly. She can't wait to be a trainer, she tells her mother. Coordinators are too flashy, Pokemon Watchers are boring, Rangers are old people, and Researchers aren't even worth talking about. Being a Trainer is the only thing she will be.
He would like to turn around and ask her how she would catch Pokemon if a Researcher hadn't invented the Pokeball.
Finally, the doors open onto the twelfth floor. He steps out and turns right, down the banana-yellow corridor. At least it was better than white.
1213. He knocks once and twists the knob. Ash is sitting on the bed, wrapped up in an old jacket, talking to Pikachu.
"You ready?" he asks.
Ash turns to look at him and grins. "Yup."
Something about the way he smiles. It clicks.
Pikachu jumps off the man's lap and onto the table, nudging a small bag with its nose. Ash gets up, says something to him, that smile still on his face.
Gary nods, whatever the question was.
He smiles without memories.
That's it. Like he was meeting a stranger, not a person he has known for years.
"Gary? Did you hear what I said?"
He shakes himself, and snaps, "I nodded, didn't I?"
Ash guffaws. "Sure. So you really don't mind buying me Trainer's Weekly for the next ten years."
Press the button, press the button, press the button...you know which one!
