Author's Note: Blargh. Several days without a new chapter. Sorry about that, folks. I'm totally not running out of steam.

In any case, I'd like to thank Coty for Kathy Donovan and PokemonRules14 for Asuka. Yes, they're both getting used in this story. It's also a response to a prompt in the LJ community 50 Passages (the line being "You will be glad to have these safe again").

Furthermore, I apologize in advance if people's feathers get ruffled. It will all be explained in the last chapter. I promise.

Day Seven: The Chosen One x The Love Interest

"Bet you can't catch me."

After tossing her long, black hair over a blue-cotton-covered shoulder, Kathy Donovan put her hands on her jean-clad hips and narrowed her sapphire eyes. Her traveling companion stood in the doorway of the pokémon center. Sighing, Kathy turned away, looking from the broad smile on her partner's face to the corner of the room.

"Come on," she said. "Why would I want to catch you?"

"Well," her partner drawled, "for one thing, you'll be glad to have these safe again."

Turning back towards her friend, she came face-to-face with her own badge case, a rectangular box made of slightly rusted tin. Her companion opened it and examined the badges inside – six in total, all recently polished.

"Hey, I wonder if I could make these into barrettes for my pokémon."

Kathy balled her hands into fists and crouched into a ready-to-run position. "You'd better not!"

With a shriek of laughter, her friend snapped it shut and tore out of the building. Kathy growled and looked over her shoulder, towards her lucario. The canine pokémon reached for an apple the nurse at the front desk was offering him just as he sensed his master's sudden burst of emotion. Blinking his red eyes, he looked back at her.

"Lucario, come on!" she called. "We've got a coordinator to catch!"

Barking, the dog turned back to the nurse and snatched the apple. He wasn't about to follow Kathy until, much to his surprise, a hand clamped around his arm.

"I said come on!" she snapped.

Startled, he stumbled after her as she dragged him out of the pokémon center.

There was an advantage to being from Snowpoint, as Kathy just realized, and that was the fact that it was always so peaceful and quiet. However, there was also a pretty big disadvantage, and that was the fact that right around the winter holidays, when it snowed, it left a deep, white blanket over everything. Already, Kathy had lost sight of her companion, not because she lingered for a second too long in the pokémon center but instead because all around her were feet upon feet of snow. Snow that nearly matched the color of her companion's long, silver hair.

"Where did that kid go?" Kathy muttered. "Lucario, can you sense anything?"

Crunching into the apple, Lucario hung back. He only stared at her indifferently as he chewed. Furrowing her eyebrows, Kathy turned completely towards him.

"Lucario, you're supposed to help me find my love interest with your powers. You know. The whole glowy aura-sensing thing?"

The dog shrugged and tapped into his master's mind… because of their deep-seated, aura-based connection… or something. You screwed up. I'm not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be the one to locate her using your Aura powers and save her from an avalanche or something.

Kathy's voice lowered to a low hush. "Don't screw this up. That comes later."

No, that's really not how it goes. And I'm supposed to be left behind because I'd interfere with all the intimacies and declarations of love and whatever. Or was I supposed to just stand here to represent the obligatory lucario of the fanfiction?

"Crap. Which script is this?"

Uncomfortable with how much time was passing since she'd moved off-screen, Kathy's silver-haired companion emerged from a nearby snowbank. Asuka shook the fake snow from her hair and blinked her golden eyes.

"What's the hold up?" she demanded.

Kathy turned. "Lucario's refusing to act!"

"What?!"

"For the last time, I said CUT!"

The nearby camera backed away, and a short, dark-haired girl in a director's chair uncrossed her legs and propped them both on the back of a young man with dirty-blonde hair. Suddenly, the trio was no longer in Snowpoint City. They were on a soundstage, and more importantly, they were in deep, deep crap.

"Look, it's really very simple," the director said. "You're Kathy, the second-most powerful Aura Guardian to hit Sinnoh this generation and the soon-to-be champion. You're deeply in same-sex love with your companion, Asuka, who is a talented and beautiful coordinator. That's deeply in love, and that means a lot of angsting and worrying about how stupid your girlfriend is in this snowdrift. There is no avalanche. There's just Asuka being confronted by the evil Aura Guardian with a weavile and ending up in a hospital."

She thumbed off-stage to a red-haired man in a long, black robe. He held up the cup of coffee in a salute.

"Oh," Kathy said. "That script."

"How many scripts did I give you?!" the director snapped as she massaged her temples.

Kathy shrugged. "I dunno. Personally, all these stories seem the same to me. Girl wanders around in the cold wilderness. Boy – or, well, butch in this case, I guess – finds her and uses her powers to save her as just another step towards saving the world."

Asuka nodded. "Or maybe it's like one of those fun-in-the-snow kinds of stories where we end up being contemplative in some snow drift."

"Or maybe it's one of those stories," the director said, "where I get pissed off because you decide to ad-lib your lines because you didn't feel like studying your script, so we ended up with a story with no twist ending."

She pointed to the boy under her feet. Josh Campbell – or, rather, the actor who played him – glanced up at the girls with terrified eyes.

"For the love of all things good, don't question the script!" he hissed.

Ignoring him, Lucario raised a paw. "Uh, question. What's my part this time around?"

"Obligatory lucario cameo," the director replied. "Don't worry. We've got your shots, and we won't need you anymore. Why don't you take the rest of the day off, and we'll get in touch if we need another lucario?"

"Sweet." He saluted to the girls on stage as he started walking away. "Pleasure working with you girls. It's been real, and if you happen to see that hot glaceon around, tell her to call me. She knows the number."

Asuka blinked. "Wait. What?!"

The director tented her fingers as she crossed her legs again. "Now then. Mind explaining to me why you felt the need to not study the script, Kathy?"

"What?" Kathy said. "I studied the script!"

She quirked an eyebrow. "At what point did it call for you to drag Lucario with you?"

Kathy shrugged. "I thought he'd like it if I tried to include him. I mean, he barely gets paid enough as it is. I know. He told me. Thirty-seven times."

The director sighed. "Don't you know that a good shipping story ignores pokémon in favor of focusing almost completely on character interaction unless the main characters happened to be pokémon – which you two are not?"

"Um…" Kathy rubbed the back of her head. "Yeah?"

"And is it your job to do the casting, the directing, or the writing of the script?"

The actress shifted on her feet. "No?"

"Whose job is that, Kathy?"

"Yours?"

The director smiled. "Good girl. And who was being a thoroughly silly girl in this scene so far?"

"Er…"

Josh and Asuka looked at her in terror. "Just say you are!"

"But it doesn't make sense!"

And then, they all fell silent. The director's eyebrow remained quirked, the man in the robe dropped his coffee, and both Josh and Asuka stared at Kathy with white faces.

"I mean, come on!" Kathy said. "I could be anyone. You could replace me with Ash and Asuka with Dawn, and I can almost guarantee that this story's been done already. Heck, you could replace me with Paul and take out the part with the evil Aura Guardian, and I can name five stories with the same plot."

"Ah." The director pointed one finger towards the ceiling. "Then, it's not like every story because it's not the same plot, is it? I mean, you're you, not Paul or anyone else."

"Oh, you keep pretending," Kathy said as she crossed her arms. "I've been watching the other scenes, and I've been seeing what you're doing. You've been reading every other romance script in this fandom and using bits and pieces to sew together something you claim to be your own. You had the generic school plot with May angsting about Ash. You had Dawn melt over how serious Paul was. You even tried to have James sweep Jessie off her feet. And this one… I've got no characterization, and you've thrown me into a story where the main point is to have me eventually get into some mushy situation where I use my powers to save my one true love. It's just a generic chosen one plot, only condensed into a few pages and centering around two girls, isn't it?"

"Well, it would be if you'd just act," the director growled.

"I guess one of us is going to sacrifice herself to save the other and come back as her pokémon too, right?"

The director smacked the arm of her chair. "Oh, blast! Reveal the twist ending to the bloody world, why don't you?!"

"We're in a studio! Who doesn't already know the plot to this?!"

Everyone in front of the director paused and stared straight back towards the fourth wall. Turning to look over her shoulder, the director spotted a janitor in a red jumpsuit with a mop in hand and his wide eyes at the commotion.

"Well, him for one." The director nodded towards him. "Hey, you! How'd you like to be in a short movie?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess."

"Great!" She turned back towards the scene. "Kathy, you're fired."

Kathy frowned. "You know, despite the loss of my dignity, my reputation as an actress, and quite possibly this week's pay, I'm okay with that. You know why? Because there's one thing that you wanted in this short that you won't get on film if you use him."

"An actor?"

"Well, yeah, that and this."

Abruptly, Kathy strode over to Asuka, grabbed the sides of her face, and kissed her. At first, Asuka widened her golden eyes in surprise. Then, after a few seconds, she closed them, wrapped her arms around her companion, and slipped herself into the longest and warmest kiss she had ever experienced. It seemed to go on forever until, finally, Kathy broke away, panting.

"Call me," she said with a wink. Then, before the director could say a word, she turned and began running. "FOR ART!"

Asuka dropped to the fake snowdrift in a daze as her partner, chased by two security guards, ran screaming and laughing out of the building.