ILuvPurple16 and Suicune95 present

Defoliation Arc: Mission 002

Disclaimer: We don't own anything. Sorry.

A/N: Suicune95

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our story! I apologize if this took a while to get out, but I've been so buried in school work and balancing sleep and other activities that I haven't been able to sit down and actually write this chapter. Yes, yes, so I've decided sleep is overrated and decided to finish this. And I'm not sure if we put in a disclaimer, so there it is above. Well, here it finally is. Enjoy.

Misty opened her eyes. Everything was so blurry. She looked at her hands, there were much smaller than she remembered.

"Hey Misty! C'mon! Over here!" yelled a boy from afar. He looked so familiar, yet so unfamiliar at the same time. He had black hair and a sharp face that she admired so much.

It was Ash!

Misty stood up, from her lying position. She was very short now, wearing a frilly dress that she used to wear when she was eight years old. Had she gone back in time?

No, that wasn't possible.

She ran up to the 8-year-old Ash. But, as she kept moving forward, Ash just kept on moving farther and farther away.

"Ash! No! Ash!" She yelled.

What was she doing? Shouldn't she be angry at Ash for breaking her heart? But something was telling her to go towards him? Nothing seemed real at the moment.

"Ash! Ash! Ash!" She kept screaming.

Misty woke up from her dream with a start.

"I haven't had a dream like that one since Ash died…" Misty mumbled, and then smacked her head hard. "No, he's not dead, get it together Misty!"

Misty finally got out of bed after a few moments to take a hot shower.

It was a beautiful morning. The curtains were partly drawn in the bedroom. There was still a dim twilight in the room, along with a serene silence.

Dawn's alarm clock beeped exactly at 6:30 a.m. successfully waking her husband Paul, who was, as of this event, not in the best of moods.

"Dawn, will you shut that damn thing of!" Paul angrily whispered, "It's going to wake the twins, and I am not putting them back to sleep!"

Dawn quickly shut of the loud, annoying beeping sound. "Well excuse me dearest husband, but I'm starting my new job today, and I don't want to be late!" She smiled teasingly at the end.

Paul smacked his forehead in frustration. "What time does this job start anyways?"

"Eight thirty." Dawn replied, getting out of bed.

"It takes you two whole hours to get ready for an editing job?" Paul said in disbelief.

"It is my first day, so I want to look good Paul." Dawn replied, disappearing into the bathroom.

Paul slammed his head back onto the pillow to attempt to fall asleep again before he had to get up in a couple of hours.

Misty checked the clock as she sipped slowly at her coffee. 7:15, still a bit before her ride to work would arrive. Her car… unfortunately had some technical difficulties and she wouldn't be getting it back for another week. The paper work had taken awhile to fill out, and the maintenance crew was drowning in work apparently. Though, she thought it was just because she rejected one of the crew when they'd tried to flirt with her.

Misty heard a ring at the door bell that brought her out of her thoughts. She got up slowly to answer it.

"Ready to go to work?" Gary said as she pulled the door open.

"My, my, you're early today Gary." Misty replied.

"Oh I just figured you'd miss me too much, so I came early." Gary said teasingly.

"Oh ha, ha, ha," Misty rolled her eyes, "let me get my bag."

Dawn shuffled the papers that were just put on her desk. She got a foreboding feeling as she felt eyes prick the back of her neck. Dawn glanced behind her, and saw her boss staring at her… Again. She squeaked and buried her nose back into her work, even as she felt the eyes still on her.

Geez, he does realize I'm happily married… Right? Dawn thought organizing the papers.

Misty sighed as her unit officer came in to dump more paperwork on her. It was only 10 o'clock in the morning, and she was already stressed about as much as she could handle.

"More files to be sorted, agent Misty." Gary said, dumping the papers in her already overflowing inbox.

"Of course, there just would be!" Misty snapped.

"Whoa, easy there officer sarcasm," Gary replied, "geez, what's wrong with you? You seemed stressed to the max."

Misty pressed her palms into her forehead. "I'm sorry," She replied, "I've just been buried in work since the unit was transferred, and my own independent case going on at the same time…"

Gary looked at her sympathetically. "I think you need to take the day off," Gary replied, "come on, I'll drive you home."

Misty looked up at her unit officer warily, "It's fine, I can do the work." She replied, weakly, but her old temper flaring.

"No, you're going home. That's an order." Gary replied.

Misty just sighed in defeat. I guess I could use a day off… She thought.

Dawn flopped on the couch with a sigh. She threw her bag on the chair next to the couch and closed her eyes.

"So how was your first day of work?" Paul asked, handing Phillip to her as he gave a baby bottle to Portia, who was playing with her rattling toys.

Immediately Dawn's eyes sparkled and she began bouncing her son on her knee. "It was tough," Dawn replied, "I think that my creepy boss is in 'love' with me."

Paul sat down on the second chair in their living room. "Well what did you expect?" He asked, awkwardly looking at the fire place.

"… I'm not sure whether that was a compliment or an insult Paul…" Dawn replied.

"Uh huh…" Paul replied, obviously drifting off into la-la land.

"Hmph, fine then." Dawn said, carrying Phillip back into his room. It was pretty late and it was time to puts the kids to bed.

In the room, Paul stared out the window. He practically went to the land of the dead, and came back again. Dawn was without him that whole time and she had to go through so much pain. Things began to bug him a lot lately.

He probably had the best life a guy could ever dream of. Phil and Portia were everything to him. So, why was there something inside of him that didn't want to fit into the rest?

He thought, something isn't right here…

Misty entered Gary's office. "You wanted to see me?" she said.
Gary turned his head away from his paperwork to face Misty "Yeah, take a seat over there." He pointed to a chair in front of him.

As Misty took her seat. Gary explained everything "Okay, so the reason you're here is because I've got some news for you. Headquarters wants you to go back onto the field and…," he took a deep breath "-you won't have to sit around doing paperwork all the time. I've got a file full of cases for you to work on and you'll be receiving more. However, Agent Drew will not be working with you on these cases…" Gary kept on going on about the rules and regulations. But Misty was frozen in one state.

Gary handed Misty the files, but Misty kept her hands at her side. "S-so you're saying that they want me on the field again."

"That's right." Gary said, looking a bit confused, "You okay? You look kinda pale."

Misty just sat there, staring at the floor. Her last case was a very personal one and it took quite a toll on her. She wasn't ready for another case yet. It was true, that her job meant that she would see death everywhere she turned, but she wasn't ready to go back inside that dark world yet. She still couldn't forget Ash's betrayal. She was about to cry. Wait! Not in front of Gary! You should really stop thinking about this stuff.

There were dangers out there in that world and it was Misty's job to catch them. She couldn't back out now. No, not now. She's going to go back in that dark world and bring out the light there. She made it this far, she was not going to back out now.

She accepted the file from Gary. "Okay, I'll start on the cases," she said.
"Good luck," said Gary as Misty was leaving. He turned around again "Remember Misty, I've read your records, so I'm gonna set the bar pretty high for you. Got it?" He smiled at the end.

Misty laughed and said "Hey! Don't underestimate me, `kay?"

A/N: ILuvPurple16

Hello everyone! Well, the next chapter will have a lot of suspicion in it.

Thank you to all of you who have reviewed our story.

Sorry for the chapters taking so long. I moved away from Suicune's city so we have to do long distance document exchange.

Thanx to all of you who did the CRAZY DOLPHINS thing. I know, I'm pretty crazy. But I luv you all (not in a disgusting way).lol

Sorry, if this chapter is a bit…off.

We were reading a short excerpt from Shakespeare in class, and his style of writing kinda gets into your head.

THANX

-Purple^_^

Let's all eat cake!