Hi everyone and welcome to chapter sixthteenth of this story. This chapter will follow May's second day when she takes a trip to do fieldwork and it hopefully turns out better than the first. Hope you guys enjoy!

Chapter 16: May's Fieldwork Part 2

The sun was slowly rising over the horizon over the small town of Littleroot. A brunette caught herself being woken up by the sun's light as it struck her right in the eyes. She groaned, pulling the comforter over her face before returning back to peaceful sleep.

She awoke a full hour later to the noise of toys being played with along with the smell of breakfast. She slowly rose out of her bed looking towards the digital clock sitting on her desk next to her torchic plush.

The clock read 9:13 AM.

She considered going back asleep again since it wasn't a school day but she abandoned the thought knowing that her mother or more likely her neighbor would come around sooner or later to wake her up.

She slowly got off her bed and grabbed a change of clothes from her drawers. Since she was going on a fieldwork trip again, she had decided to wear an outfit similar to the one she had worn the day before. She made her way to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and combed through her messy bed head. She then quickly changed into her outfit and headed downstairs, the memories of the previous day still fresh on her mind.

"Oh my goodness May! You look like you were in mud wrestling contest!" Caroline exclaimed once her daughter had entered the dining room after a long day of fieldwork.

Although she had changed clothes and rinsed off, there were still large mud stains all over her body and specially in her hair.

"Yuck! May you look nasty," her younger brother said holding his nose with his hand in disgust.

She shot him a halfhearted glare before she responded with, "well Brendan pushed me into a mud puddle and we had a mud battle."

Her mother had a blank expression on her face for a moment before she said, "well, I bet that's not how you expected your fieldwork day to go. Why don't you go upstairs and take a bath while I get dinner ready?"

May was all too ready to take a bath, as she rushed upstairs to her bathroom to rid herself of the mud.

As she was laying in the bath, she come to the realization knew she was covered in more mud that she had initially thought. The water in the bath had turned a light brown color, almost the same color as her hair when she began washing herself. She spent the next half hour washing herself until she was sure that all the mud was gone and got dressed in her pajamas.

She wondered about the moment Brendan and she had back on top of the tree. Perhaps he remembered it or perhaps he had forgotten it all after all the excitement. She shook her head frantically trying to rid herself of the thought. She didn't know what had come over her at that time, all she knew was that she was feeling tired and Brendan just happened to be there for her to lean against.

One thing was for certain however. After her horrible experience today with pokemon, she was more than convinced that she didn't want to be trainer when she graduated from school. Well at least that's what she told herself, although part of her hated to admit it, she had quite a bit of fun today even through the experience.

She made her way downstairs where her mother was setting up the table while Max was in the living room playing with his pretend pokemon. Brendan had often come over on his days off and he taught Max about the pokemon toys he had. He had explained what pokemon they were, what type they were, where you could find them, and what they evolved into.

Max absorbed everything like a sponge as his interest in pokemon grew to the point where he wanted to follow Brendan to his fieldwork, but due to his age he couldn't yet. May knew without a doubt that her brother would want to be a pokemon trainer and that made her happy yet a bit sad on the inside.

She was happy that her brother already had clear goals in his head for when he grew up, but she was sad because she couldn't figure out what she wanted to do.

"Good morning honey," she heard her mother say as she was laying breakfast on the table. "My, don't you just look like a little scientist!"

"Good morning mom," May greeted twirling around so her mother could get a full view of her outfit. She sat down on the table in front of her serving soon after.

Max was quick to come over and offer his less than enthusiastic greeting as well. "Oh, good morning sis," he said in a teasing tone not offering her his full attention.

"Good morning to you little bro," with a fake smile. The siblings argued quite often specially over the subject of pokemon. It didn't help May's case that when they tried to settle an argument by playing video games, she would be the one to lose most of the time. But when she did win, she would rub it in his face for the rest of day while he sulked saying 'he went easy on her.'

Despite their constant arguments, the two loved each other like any other brother and sister would do. They each had each other's backs if something bad happened to one of them, however that sibling protection didn't extend when their neighbor would tease May. May would absolutely hate it when her neighbor and brother teamed up to cause her trouble. She specially didn't appreciate the pranks. Most of them were harmless ones since Brendan could sometimes be evil, but he wasn't a monster.

"So, May, you think you will like today's fieldwork?" Her mother asked as she was eating at the table along with her children.

"Umm… as long as Brendan doesn't push me into a mud puddle to hide me from a horde of angry poochyena it should be fine." She had already begun stuffing her face.

"Will the professor be going with you today?"

"Nah Brendan said that the Professor will be busy today at the lab, so it it'll just be the two of us."

Her mother gave the girl a sly grin. The girl was all too familiar with that grin. She already felt her stomach retch. "Oh, is that so… it will be like a date then. Good for you May. I see that you guys are getting serious."

The mother had begun tapping her fingers maliciously on the table as her grin grew wider.

"Mom what's a date?" Max asked as he stopped eating to enter the conversation.

"Well Max, you see when a boy and a girl-" she began before she was cut off by an embarrassed daughter.

"Mom! Stop! Brendan and I aren't going on a date! It's just fieldwork nothing more!" She exclaimed as her face was growing a bright shade of red. She had slammed her hands on the table in an effort to reassert her point.

Her mom could only laugh seeing her expression as Max was giving them a confused look. Her mother took pity on her and decided to drop the subject by asking a safer question.

"So, May, do you know when he will come over?"

She paused for a moment relieved that her mother would no longer keep the date matter up. She took a quick calming breath and said, "he said to meet him by the town's exit to Route 101 around noon and we would head out."

"Mom can't I go with them today? I really want to see pokemon," Max nearly begged as he ran to his mother's side and gave her his puppy dogs eyes hoping to convince her.

Although Caroline would have loved to have her son go with May, she knew he was still too young and couldn't let him out into the woods even if Brendan was with them.

"Max, I already told you. You're too young for that. When you get older you can go ok?" she asked, patting her son on the head.

"But mom it's so boring here. I wanna have some fun with the pokemon."

"Oh come on Max. It's not too boring. Why don't we have a mother son day?"

"I guess," he began dropping his head staring at the floor. "May is so lucky," he muttered through his breath although no one else could hear him.

"Make sure you're ready by noon then May, you wouldn't want to be late to your date," Caroline giggled in the background.

May couldn't force a comeback as her mother had already left the room with Max trailing behind her. Geez why does everyone think that Brendan and I are some sort of couple.

She made her way outside to be greeted with the cool October air along with the sun that was high in the sky. She had already packed all her supplies like the day before and she looked clean and presentable, but she wasn't sure how long that would last with her neighbor around.

She walked to the town's exit where she saw her neighbor standing at the exit, reading a book while Skipper was sitting on his head like always. He looked completely absorbed in his book that he didn't notice a familiar brown-haired girl sneaking behind him with a smirk on her face.

She harshly grabbed his shoulders and yelled out a loud "Boo!" which caused not only him to jump up in fright but the water type as well. His book fell to the floor from the shock and he quickly spun around to see who the perpetrator was.

His shoulders relaxed when he spotted his neighbor laughing at his reaction and picked up his book. Skipper was still laying on his head scared out his wits to the point he didn't spray May immediately.

"Geez May, don't sneak up on me like that," he sighed, putting his book inside his backpack.

"I just ha couldn't ha help it," she managed to get out as her hands were clutching her stomach from all the laughter. "Your reaction was priceless, I wish I would've gotten a picture of that because you-" she never got to finish as she felt the familiar cool feeling of water on her face.

This time the tables had turned as she heard laughter coming from her neighbor as she wiped the water out of her face.

"Ugh Skipper! Why must you always ruin my fun?" She asked giving him a glare. The water type merely shrugged and turned to look away.

"Now I wish I had a camera so I could have caught that," the brown-haired boy said with his hands on his stomach. Skipper was offering his own snickers as well which only added salt to the wound.

"Oh ha ha you're hilarious," she responded back sarcastically already taking her towel out to dry herself.

As soon as his laughing fit died and she dried herself off he asked, "so ready to go? I can't promise we won't be chased by poochyena today though," rubbing the back of his head.

"Yeah let's go." she pulled her towel away and moved to walk shoulder to shoulder with her neighbor towards the woods.

He explained how today they would be observing the pokemon that come a nearby creek as well as their interactions. He promised they wouldn't be chased today, but that they should still be careful as you couldn't know what would happen. They made their way through the large trees of all kinds as well as smaller creeks before reaching the one the boy told her about.

"Brendan why are we wearing these silly hats again?" she whispered as she looked at the hat the boy had given her earlier. It was a hat that had the appearance of a baseball cap on the bottom, but at the top it was lined with numerous leaves that had a similar appearance to the bushes. She looked over to the boy who had his own hat on and his two pokemon that also had their own little silly hats on.

"I told you May. These hats will help us camouflage better and hopefully get us in closer proximity to the pokemon without us disturbing them," observing his clipbaord and the zizzagoon frolicking in the creek through the bushes.

"I still think these hats are stupid," she replied.

"Would you rather I paint your face and body to look like the bushes then?"

"No," she fired back.

"Then don't complain about the hats." His attention still on the pokemon.

"Fine," she sighed, grabbing her own clipboard to take her own notes. Brendan had told her to take notes on any sort of movements that the pokemon made such has how they moved their legs, shook their heads, reacted to others of their kind, reactions to other pokemon species and a ton of other things she couldn't recall at the moment.

"Why can't we just get close to them? Pretty sure they wouldn't mind. They don't look violent." She turned to face him.

He quickly responded back with, "well May, many pokemon act differently when there's humans around, so if we would go over to them, their behavior could be drastically different than the one we are seeing right now. I'm not saying that we can't interact with them, just saying that for this observation it's best to keep our distance and observe from afar."

She hadn't gotten much interaction with pokemon other than the boy's pokemon and the poochyena from yesterday. Part of her wanted to interact with other pokemon yet she was afraid that the pokemon wouldn't like her.

"Pretty sure that pair over there is a male and female," he said eyeing and pointing towards of pair of zigzagoon that were looking at each other.

"How can you tell?" she asked. To her they looked exactly the same.

"Well male and female zigzagoon have a different number of stripes. Why don't you try counting them?"

She did as suggested and counted the number of fur stripes the pokemon had. She realized that one had a greater number than the other, but before she could say anything a hand slapped over her eyes and she heard, "yep, that's definitely a male and female."

After a quick lunch between the pair and the pokemon May asked Brendan on what other pokemon lived in the area.

"Well the most common pokemon are poochyena, zigzagoon and wurmple," he paused as he was gathering his stuff back. "I have also seen some other pokemon such as zorua, lillipup and sewaddle and in a really rare case I saw a ralts."

May racked her brain for the pokemon the boy mentioned, when she couldn't come up with anything she said, "I've never heard of those pokemon before."

"I'm not surprised. Those pokemon don't generally live in this area. Ralts for the most part live in Route 102 but sometimes pokemon do migrate. As for the other three... well those are bit harder to describe," stopping to stretch out. "They're actually pokemon from the Unova region so maybe someone introduced them to the region or maybe I was just hallucinating who knows."

"My guess is that you were finally going insane," she giggled as she eyed her neighbor.

"Ha ha you're so funny," he said sarcastically. He slung his backpack over his shoulders and said, "we should probably be going to the next pokemon now."

"What pokemon is next? And do we have to keep wearing the hats?"

"The next pokemon might require us to climb some trees to get a better look, they live on trees although they also crawl on the ground, and we probably won't be needing the hats."

"Are those the wurmple?" she asked as she too strapped her fanny pack on her waist. She wasn't exactly ecstatic about having to see wurmple, but it was better than a poochyena.

"Yep now let's go," he said as he lead the way deeper into the forest. May was quick to follow after him as she didn't have the best sense of direction and getting lost wasn't on her bucket list.

The boy lead their way deeper into the forest where the trees gradually got larger. The sun had been making its way across the sky and was now laying on the western half of the sky indicating that it was around midafternoon. He stopped when he caught sight of a large Maple tree, even larger than the one from yesterday and eyed it for a minute.

"I've noticed that the wurmple seem to like maple trees the most, so this will be a good spot to find some," he said as she lowered in backpack and took his clipboard out.

"They're not violent, are they?" wary that perhaps some pokemon would attack her.

"Nah don't worry about them. They're really gentle, they're just a bit slimy so it may feel weird if you touch one or if they touch you."

"Oh good, I didn't want to be attacked again. Speaking of being attacked, have you been attacked before?"

"Well… a couple of times. Mainly because of my dad," he paused for a moment before bursting out in laughter. "For a pokemon professor, he doesn't get along well with wild ones. It actually isn't the first time Dad was bitten in the backside. He was bitten by six poochyena if I'm counting."

"Seriously? The Professor was attacked that much?" She tried to hold her laughter but couldn't as she started laughing as well.

"Yep, just so you know that first poochyena that bit him actually took a liking to him, and followed us back to town. That's where I caught him and dad takes care of him."

"Brendan! You never told me you caught another pokemon." She eyed him curiously.

"Well I did catch him, but Dad is the one that takes care of him so it's basically his pokemon. He did let me nickname him though."

"Really? What did you nickname him?" She asked with greater curiosity in her voice.

"Well I named him Toto after the famous poochyena that appeared in that old movie about the Unovan girl," rubbing the back of head in slight embarrassment.

"Oh yeah I've watched that one. I really like it, especially the part where she dropped the house on the witch."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "May, out of all parts of the movie, I thought your favorite would have been when she goes back home not when she drops the house on the witch."

"Well I guess you don't really know me that well then," she teased holding back giggles.

"Right… getting back on the subject of the poochyena, he's actually really gentle and he hangs around the lab all the time. You can check him out the next time you stop by," he suggested. "Now let's spot those wurmple."

He looked up at the large trees seeing if he could spot any movement. Wurmples were generally slow moving and gentle so they could sometimes be hard to spot. However, their coloration made them easy to pick out from their surroundings. When he didn't spot any movement at all, the boy assumed that the tree was probably devoid of the pokemon or they were all napping. Since the cool air from the fall and winter months did not appeal to the worm pokemon, many stayed tucked inside their trees with some weaving their cocoons in preparation for evolution until the warmer weather returned.

"Spot anything?" May asked walking up to stand next to the boy who was eyeing the tree.

"Nope, it seems like they are all tucked inside because of the cool weather, but we may be lucky in finding one on the floor so let's take a look." He began to walk and look into the bushes and trees to see if they could spot a pink pokemon, but to no avail.

As the sun began to drop into the horizon May asked Brendan if they should call it a day. He noticed the dropping sun over the horizon and agreed it would be best.

"So, May how did you like this day of fieldwork?" he asked as they walked back to town.

"Well it wasn't as exciting as yesterday, but it was more informative, perhaps I can do this more often."

"Glad to hear it, I'll be more than happy to have you tag along if you want," he said with a bright smile although it was slightly hard to see through the dimming light.

May had a strange feeling that she couldn't describe, boil up in the pit of her stomach. She didn't know what this feeling was but she pushed it aside as the pair arrived in town. Brendan walked her home before saying their goodbyes.

May saw his retreating figure enter his own home before she opened her door to enter hers. Her mother was the first to greet her along with Max who seemed disheartened. Perhaps their mother son day didn't turn out quite the way they had hoped it did.

Her mother had already made dinner and everyone sat down to eat. May noticed the grin growing on her mother's face and she was afraid.

"So, May…" she began. "How was your date?" she covered her mouth with her hands and held back laughter like a highschool girl talking about love when she saw her daughter's expression.

"Mom!" she fired back. "I told you it wasn't a date, just fieldwork. Very boring and informative fieldwork."

Max decided now was the best of times to ask the same question he asked in the morning. "Mom what's a date and why are May and Brendan in one?" he asked with curiosity in his eyes.

"Well Max, when a boy and a girl like each other then-" she was stopped again at the same spot by her daughter.

May yelled out, "Mom, stop! Max is too young for that," she pleaded as her face grew a deeper shade of red.

Caroline realized that she was teasing May maybe a bit too much and changed the subject, "So May did you learn anything while you were out there?"

She felt relieved that her mother would no longer continue as she calmed the redness in her face and began telling her about what they did today. From observing the zigzagoon, to looking for wurmples, to the stories Brendan told her about the professor's squabbles with pokemon as well as the pokemon he had.

"Looks like you certainly had a great day May. Who knows, maybe you would like be a pokemon researcher?" Caroline asked as she was putting her dishes away.

"Umm… I don't know mom," she responded with. She was still extremely unsure of what she wanted to do after all.

At the Birch residence Lisa and Brendan were having a similar conversation. Lisa had her hands over her mouth laughing as she observed her son's red face.

"Mom I already told you it wasn't a date!" His voiced raised maybe a bit too high.

This time Professor Birch joined in on the teasing making his son's face a darker shade of red.

"You guys suck," he sighed trying to ignore his parent's comments.

An: so that's pretty much it for this chapter. Since I said their ages last chapter and this takes place the day after I don't think the ages need to be said again. Look forward to the next chapter, it's pretty sweet and as always I hope to see you guys next update!