Chapter 2

A/N: Okay, now I present to you CHAPTER 2! School is being such a poop storm right now, and it's not even October yet -.- However, I sucked it up (that's…what…she…said) and wrote this when I had time. This is a relatively slow chapter, but the plot will get more eventful soon when I begin to type the next chapters. I can't just have Ash in trouble so early on.. :)

Enjoy! :3

The sweet and mouth-watering smell of fluffy pancakes and bacon drifted to the nose of a certain Ash Ketchum as he continued to sleep. His nose twitched, mouth muttered something as drool slid down his cheek, all while Dawn stifled a laugh at the scene. She hoped at the moment that the world would survive the day Ash Ketchum became the Pokemon Master if she had ever taken a picture of this and showed it to the world. Of course, she had no camera at hand, and she wasn't that cruel. However, she did have to admit that it would be called, 'the ultimate blackmail'. She gave a loud, airy sigh at him and continued with her usual habit of smashing her home-made poffins and sprinkling the pieces into her pokemon food that Brock had given to her. Dawn hoped that Brock would never notice, or else he would fall in despair because he thought his cooking was beyond amazing. It was, but Dawn knew how to make it better.

'Oh well,' she thought and handed the last bowl of poke-food to her proud piplup. 'As long as he doesn't check the food, it's all good.'

"Piplup!" the little penguin cheered. It began to lift up bits of food with its light blue flippers and began to stuff it in its yellow beak. All while Dawn was continuing to watch.

"Wow Piplup, you're becoming the next Ash Ketchum," she teased and giggled. "Just keep on eating like that."

Brock couldn't help but over hear the mini-conversation. "Speaking of Ash, Dawn, did he wake up?" he asked as he pulled out some glossy brown maple syrup and some grape jelly from his 'cooking bag' as he like to call it. How he could fit so much stuff in there, no one knew.

"Ash? Nope, he's still sleeping like it wasn't already past 10am." She said annoyingly. "Honestly Brock, do we really need to wait for him? I can just save his food and he can eat it when he wakes up. No biggie." She stood up and soothened out the wrinkles on her mini dress. Dawn grimaced when she saw a huge dirt stain on her left side. "Besides, how much longer do we have until we reach the next pokemon center? A few miles?" she looked over at the elder of the group as he fed his own pokemon.

"I think so. Maybe just an hour hike and we'll be there by lunchtime if we go now." He petted his little happiny as it cutely smiled at him. "But like you said, we're almost there, so there really is no reason to rush, unless you have one…?"

"I haven't had a decent shower for a few days now, I feel icky!" she stuck her tongue out in grimace and gestured to her wrinkly dress, mud stained boots, just an all out dirty outfit. Her ocean blue eyes quickly darted at the still sleeping trainer. "If he doesn't wake up in the next five minutes.." she threatened.

"Then we'll continue to wait. It's not like you never over-slept before." Brock finished as he stood up.

"I know but…Beauty sleep!" she attempted to explain. When she saw Brock make absolutely no attempt to wake Ash up, she simply sighed and plopped back down beside piplup.

'I guess I can wait more than five minutes…' she reasoned with herself in her mind. 'My stomach isn't really growling or anything.'

Pikachu, who was sitting by his trainer's messy head of ebony hair, simply sighed and continued its task of waiting for Ash to wake up. It noticed Ash's strange breathing pattern, and not to mention those slightly red rings around his closed eyes. His skin color wasn't the light tan as before, no, it was just pale. The type of pale that comes up when you're extremely sick, and that worried Pikachu to no end. How did no one notice this? Surely Brock must've seen it, and maybe he didn't react or anything because it was nothing. Just a the result of sleeping, uncovered, in chilly air for an extended amount of time. Yeah, maybe that's what happened. Pikachu couldn't think of any other reason for it.

After seemingly staring of into nothing, an extremely familiar startled Pikachu out of a daydream.

"Pikachu?"

Pikachu looked at Ash as he slowly began to open his eyes. The bloodshot look in his eyes had completely disappeared at this point. "Pi?"

"Ugh," Ash forced himself to sit up, his back aching from the hours he slept on the hard ground. "What time is it?" he groggily asked and rubbed his eyes like an innocent child. That sunlight was strong…

"A few minutes past ten." Brock answered. "You were knocked out longer than usual." He looked closer at Ash, concern dripping into his facial expression. "Hey buddy, are you okay? You look like you've seen a Ghastly or something.'

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"No you aren't. You also have red circles around your eyes! That can't be normal, right?" Dawn had looked back towards Brock, the irritation of not having breakfast was leaving her mind AND stomach.

"Dawn's right Ash, you are not in the condition to hike to the nearest town. We're close enough, you can rest and tell us when you're ready to leave." He began to reheat Ash's breakfast including theirs.

"No, you said we're close, so why not go now?" Ash stubbornly asked. Pikachu didn't lay his eyes off him.

"Didn't you hear what he said? It's for the best, we got all day." Dawn said.

"No, let's just get over it over with, I'm fine!" Ash insisted and tried to get up. He heard Pikachu loudly protesting, and saw it wave its little arms in a 'sit down' gesture. "I'm fine," he said to it.

"Ash, sit back down before you hurt yourself!" Brock exclaimed and rushed over towards Ash along with Dawn.

"See, I'm fine!" Ash said proudly as he stood up straight. He saw Brock and Dawn somewhat shocked faces. "You guys should really trust me more, I'm alright!" he hopped on one leg and alternated with the other to prove that he had balance.

Brock simply looked at him wearily. "Alright, if you insist." He gestured toward the table with the warm food. "C'mon, we better eat before it gets cold again."

For the first time that morning, Ash smiled. "Sure, I'm starving!" he began to rush towards the table before Dawn stepped in front of him.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she raised an eyebrow.

"What?" Ash asked.

"Ash Ketchum, didn't your mother ever teach you to wash up before eating?" She replied.

"Wha…Oh! Yeah, I forgot." He smiled sheepishly and waved. "I'll go do that right now!" he turned and bolted toward the lake, Pikachu also ran after him.

"He'll never learn." She chuckled and headed toward her delicious breakfast. 'Although I really hope he's okay, he looked so pale, how did we not notice it?' she took her first bite of pancake. 'It's probably just some random thing.'

"Ah, that refreshing!" Ash exclaimed as he splashed the somewhat chilly water onto his face. "Nothing like some water to wake you right up, huh Pikachu?" He smiled as Pikachu 'chu'-ed back. It dipped its little face in the water before raising it back up. 'This place looks familiar..' Ash noticed in his mind. 'I wonder why?' he looked down and saw how still the clear water was, making his reflection look like a mirror. 'Wait, this is the place that it happened, wasn't it?' His eyes widened as his reflection didn't.

"What's happening?" he asked out loud, it scared him how his reflection didn't even open its mouth, it seemingly frozen in a smirk, so un-Ash like. "Pikachu, do you see that?" he asked at it. His eyes widened like dinner plates as Pikachu looked at his reflection and shook its head. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead as Ash could hear his heart thumping loudly in his ears. He tried to get up, but was seemingly frozen, forced to keep looking at the demonic looking reflection. "Pikachu, shock me!" he commanded, his voice wavered from how scared he was.

"Pikachu?" it asked at him, it was clearly starting to freak out at Ash's scary behavior. What was going on?

"Please, now, just do it!" he closed his eyes as he saw Pikachu getting ready to thunderbolt him. Not a second later, he felt the familiar current of electricity racing through him, he was sweating more now.

"Thanks, Pikachu." He said after it was over. He hesitantly looked, and much to his relief, saw he reflection not wearing that awfully scary smirk. Not wasting any more time, he quickly shot up, grabbed Pikachu, and raced back towards camp, not daring to look back.

A/N: Okay, so that's the end of chapter 2! Hopefully it was good, and not rushed towards the end. Next chapter will be up around the same time next week if school doesn't decide to poop all over my time. -.-

Please READ and REVIEW! :3