Buzzing. Ash awoke the next morning to his alarm, face down in the pillow. Fighting a slight headache from the conversations about life, Pokémon, and women with Brock over wine – and later some other old friends and colleagues – he hated himself now for having stayed up so late. Pikachu, who was peacefully dozing at the foot of the bed, groaned like its owner. Ash lethargically followed his morning routine. However, this time before putting on the suit, he dabbled some water into his hair and attempted to comb it. Failing again, he gave up and rushed with Pikachu in tow to the conference breakfast.
As he arrived and stood in line, the wonderful smell of pancakes, sausages, and coffee wafted to his nostrils. Ash's eyes scanned the various breakfast foods in silver trays, forming a game plan to stuff himself. As if the smell reminded his body that it was hungry, his stomach rumbled loudly.
"Hungry today?" the woman in front asked. She chuckled and turned to, unfortunately, see a very surprised Ash Ketchum.
A moment of utter disbelief, Ash and Misty looked directly into each other's eyes. Before Ash could reach, she quickly turned around to grab a yogurt and hurry away to a table. Presumably while cursing herself for trying to be friendly to a stranger.
Ash haphazardly scooped some scrambled eggs into his plate before hurrying after her. He barely noticed that poor Pikachu missed the chance to grab some pellets.
In the main dining area, his eyes scanned all the round tables for the familiar hair. Seeing Misty in the back sitting alone, he quickly walked to the table, ignoring that Misty was alternating between looking at him and poorly pretending to not notice him.
As he approached the table, he looked at the seat to Misty's right, and asked, "Is this seat taken?"
Misty, looking up at Ash, said in a half-hearted lie, "I think so?"
"Well, I can move when your friend arrives," Ash declared confidently. He sat down and looked at his sad plate of just scrambled eggs. Pretending to enjoy the sparse breakfast, he ate slowly, thinking of what to say. Pikachu, sitting in the seat to Ash's right, watched the two curiously.
"So, where's your Psyduck?" Ash asked cautiously.
"In its Pokéball," Misty responded curtly, "avoiding coffee spillers like you." She glanced at him quickly before looking back at her plate, "Though it looks like you don't have any today. Pokémon everywhere should rejoice."
Ash chuckled lightly, trying to think of a witty response, when suddenly Pikachu chimed in.
"Pikachu?" it asked, putting its chin on the table.
"What's wrong little buddy?" Ash asked in concern.
"Pika Pika," it responded, pointing at Misty's plate.
"Oh!" Ash exclaimed. "Didn't you get any food? I'm sorry, I'll get you some-"
Ignoring Ash, Pikachu quickly jumped onto the table and approached Misty. "Pikachu-Pi!" the mouse waved at Misty.
"Ohhh, you're so cute!" Misty cooed. She reached out her hand for Pikachu to sniff before allowing her to pet it. "What's your name, cutie?" she asked.
"Pikachu!" the mouse declared happily before jumping into Misty's lap.
The two humans looked at Pikachu in surprise as it snuggled into Misty's lap. It looked immediately at home, and not at all sitting in a stranger's lap for the first time. It reached out its paws to the toast on her plate.
"Your Pikachu is adorable, Ash," Misty said, handing the toast while gently petting Pikachu. "It looks really happy, despite you not feeding the poor thing."
Ash took slight offense and responded, "Hey, I take good care of my Pokémon – it's just today I got a little distracted with-", Ash stopped himself, "Wait, how do you know my name?"
Misty looked up from Pikachu to Ash. "Of course I know who you are. Everyone here does. You're Ash Ketchum, the World Champion from Pallet Town. You're the hero of every aspiring trainer in Kanto. You spoke yesterday."
He looked at her in surprise, "You know the name of my hometown?"
Misty quickly looked down at her food again, a slight blush to her cheeks. "Yes, I'm from Cerulean City, not too far Pallet Town. I've met quite a few new trainers who wanted to be you by starting in Pallet."
Feeling a breakthrough coming, Ash followed up with a grin, "And how'd you like my talk yesterday? Prety inspiring right?"
"It inspired me to grab more coffee," she responded nonchalantly, with the vaguest of smirks in her lips.
"Wow," Ash replied with mock hurt, "I would have taken a lie, Ms…?"
She looked up directly into Ash's eyes, "I'm Misty Waterflower, the new Gym Leader of Cerulean City." Sitting up straight, she said with rehearsed declaration, "My specialty is water Pokémon and I'm going to be the best water Pokémon trainer in the whole world."
"It's nice to meet you Misty Waterflower," Ash said as he reached out his hand to shake hers. "I've heard about you. You just took over the gym from your sisters, right?"
Misty stiffened slightly at the question. "Whatever you heard about the gym and my sisters isn't true. We've always taken our responsibilities seriously, but I'm going to build up the gym's reputation as a respectable gym for battles. Not just a place for water ballets or an easy badge."
Ash nodded thoughtfully, "I can see why. With water Pokémon, you can get some of the most powerful attack strategies of any type. Water attacks can even stop electric attacks, in the right conditions." Misty nodded in agreement. "Though the challenge is battling in the right environment, which is rare."
Misty proceeded to disagree with the World Champion. "That's a misconception. The beauty of water Pokémon is that there are moves to adapt the environment to your needs."
Ash nodded thoughtfully again, choosing to avoid a debate. He followed up by asking, "And, if I may ask, what's your League Battle Score?"
Suddenly, inexplicably defensive, Misty responded coldly, "It's fine, thank you for asking. I'm working on getting the score up. But scores miss a lot of context measuring true battle performance." She gently picked up Pikachu as she stood up and placed it into her chair. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to get ready for today's sessions. See you later." Without another word, Misty picked up her bag and left.
Ash looked at Pikachu and began to gently pet the electric mouse, who was helping itself to the rest of Misty' breakfast. Ash sighed at as he headed to the buffet again. Why did he have to talk business? Bad habit. Though, what trouble him more was Misty's reaction. Over the years, he had seen this reaction time and time again…Misty was losing battles and her job as Gym Leader was at risk.
For Ash, the rest of the morning sessions went by in a blur. He, in fact, barely paid attention to any of the talks and probably even walked into the wrong one at some point. Instead, his brain was so focused on how he could help Misty, without overstepping or coming off as overbearing. "You can only help people who want help," his mother used to teach him. Now, however, the stakes were much higher.
Ash Ketchum had never cared to check or build his League Battle Score (LBS). It was a complicated system, whose purpose was to give all Trainers actively pursuing one of the League Championships a numerical score to compare each other's relative skill. Generally, winning against higher ranked opponents improved one's own score, while losing reduces it, with the score change based on the LBS differential. Gym Leaders, however, need to meet both the minimum LBS to maintain their standing, but are also expected to give a fair, but not impossible, challenge to trainers looking for a badge. This meant, unfortunately, Gym Leaders have to micro-manage their win-loss ratio.
As Ash sat in the uncomfortable folding chair, he stared vaguely at the Silph Corp. executive of so-and-so's presentation about the latest Pokéball technology. "But what we learned, however," the executive's endless talk continued endlessly, "is that Pokémon are clever and can find ways to break the ball in ways we never conceived. That's why field trials are so critical, in specially designated, low-risk Safari zones…"
Suddenly, a thought popped into Ash's head. Excitedly, he left the session and made a call to his assistant. "Hello? Yes, this is Ash. I'd like to book a battlefield for this afternoon. Yes, I'm League Headquarters, right by the training fields. I know the conference is today, but this is important. I'd like to book the water battlefield for this afternoon." Hanging up the phone, Ash's heart raced – for the first time in months, he couldn't wait for this Pokémon battle.
Looking down at the phone again, Ash typed out a text to his mom. "Met someone, will challenge her to battle."