Yay! It’s a lil AAMRN to
celebrate le birthday of moi! You’re expecting mush, né? Well, it’s not that
fluffy. It has its moments. Anyway, this is probably going to be uploaded way
after my birthday because I’m musical-ing that week, and will be rehearsing/performing
non-stop, and have NO time to write!
So regardless of when I’ve uploaded this, this fic is
written for July 6th, 2001. Honestly ^_~ Just pretend…
Notes: Pikachu is a GIRL (in this fic at least) and Ash’s
full name is AshTON. I don’t mind other people calling him Ashura… it’s just
that I have a friend called that, and well, she’s a girl… And where’s the Egg
in this fic? Nowhere. ^_^ Use your imaginations. If you like it, just pretend
it’s in a Pokéball. Oh look, it’s Linda! This story has nothing
to do with D’Amour but I was too lazy to think up another cousin ^_^
~*~
“He really gets under my skin; he has been there since the moment I met
him. I don’t know what to do! Half the time I literally want to STRANGLE him!”
~*~
Misty held her jotter pad
in both hands as she perched on the edge of the bath. She twiddled the chewed
biro between her thumb and forefinger and used the other hand to push back a
lock of her bright orange hair behind her ear. The slender fourteen year old
tapped her water-wrinkled foot against the side of the bath as she scribbled
furiously in her pad. She was dressed in nothing but a regulation pink Pokémon
Centre towel and her semi-damp hair was falling out of the low ponytail
fashioned at the nape of her neck.
The scratching of the nib on the paper ceased, and Misty
re-read her work under her breath, pride evident in her low voice. She grinned
to herself, crossing some words out and re-scribbling alternatives. She sighed
happily, crossing her arms across her chest and cradling her precious notepad
to her.
“I wonder what would be a good writer’s name for me?” she
murmured to herself, gazing at the condensation on the window, masking the
twilight outside. “Misty Waterflower sounds so…fake…” She screwed up her
face delicately. “Misty… Misty… Sketchitt?” She laughed out loud. “No
way. Misty… Slate? Hell no!” She smiled to herself, and reached out a
finger to trace a path on the wet window. “Misty Ketchum…” she murmured,
smiling decisively. Suddenly, her finger juddered to a half as she cleared
enough from the window to reveal the reflection of someone standing by the
bathroom door. She whirled around, and her cheeks coloured as she pulled the
pink towel further up.
“Finished?” asked a cheekily grinning Ash.
“Ash! How long have you been in here?!” she asked,
far more concerned with the fact he may have heard her reading from her pad
than the fact that she wasn’t properly dressed.
“Long enough,” he smirked. Her temper rose.
“Well get outta here you lecher!” she yelled,
still clutching the towel tightly.
“You’ve been in here for over two hours Misty,” he
complained. “I need to go to the toilet!”
“Get OUT!” she
growled, shoving him out the door and slamming it on his toes. Ash stared at
the closed door for a second.
“Jeez…” he mumbled, before walking over and
climbing with experienced skill up to the top bunk. Brock was unfurling his
sleeping bag on top of the just-only-adequate Pokémon Centre bed on the other side
of the small room, whilst Tracey was sitting on the bunk above that, sitting
cross-legged and managing to sketch and eat strawberries at the same time.
“Told you not to go in there Ash,” he murmured
across the room.
“See anything?” Brock asked as he slipped his
green sleeveless jacket of his shoulders and let it slip to the floor. Ash
looked down at him in disgust.
The boys jumped as the en-suite bathroom door flew open
and Misty, clad in her lemon yellow pyjamas strode across the room, throwing
her damp towel in the general direction of the radiator and climbing into the
bunk below Ash with her jotter still in her hands. There was an uneasy silence.
“Er, goodnight Misty…” mumbled Tracey, feeling the
need to break the oppressive silence. Misty mumbled a reply, then turned her
back on the room so she was facing the wall. Ash sighed as he skimmed down the
bunk ladder and she didn’t turn around or acknowledge him. He noticed that the
tips of her ears were pink, and knew well enough to leave her alone.
And no one thinks this is weird, Misty scribbled
in the pad, that I’m here, sleeping in a room with three guys around my age
and one of them just walked past my bed wearing nothing but boxers and a hat…
~*~
Misty touched her grazed knee gingerly as she gathered up
the fallen sheets of paper with her other hand. A little way ahead, Ash, Brock
and Tracey turned around with exasperated looks.
“Misty, we’ve been walking for an hour and that’s the
fifth time you’ve tripped on something,” Brock said in an annoyed tone. Ash
said nothing, and Tracey clucked disapprovingly. Misty blushed hotly as she
shoved the notepad in her red backpack, allowing the boys a quick glimpse at
the many, many identical, yet full notepads inside.
Misty swung her back up on her shoulder and strode ahead
purposefully. Tracey and Brock shared an understanding ‘look’, whilst Ash just
scuffed the dirt with his trainers and scowled to himself.
~*~
Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tracey’s eye had started to twitch in an interesting
fashion. Brock had somehow permanently attached sofa cushions to his head,
covering his ears and was carrying on as normal. However, Ash, the one closest
to the source of the annoyance, was simply staring into space.
Yet Misty still continued tapping that bloody pen against
her front teeth.
Unsurprisingly, Tracey was
the first to crack.
“I’m going to go observe some nocturnal Pokémon,” he mumbled, with a trembling bottom lip, before
wandering off into the sunshine. Brock seized his opportunity.
“I- think I see Nurse Jenny!” he babbled. “Excuse me a minute!”
Ash raised an eyebrow as he watched his older friends
leave. Nocturnal Pokémon at 2pm and Nurse Jenny? Uhuh.
At least now the
tapping had stopped, but it was replaced by the infernal scratching of the
cheap nib of the pen against the paper. Ash gritted his teeth against the sound
that had invaded his life for the past two months.
It wasn’t just the noises that were annoying. It was the
way Misty had changed. She barely spoke to any of them, and even at meal times
it was obvious that she was still writing in her mind. Her teal eyes that used
to flash with anger whenever he annoyed her now constantly scoured the words
that she had written, and sometimes, he would have given anything for her to
wallop him with her mallet again.
Now whenever he or any of the others annoyed her, she’d
simply go straight back to furiously writing, and would vent her anger that
way. It was… surreal to say the least.
“Ash?” Ash turned towards the turning-unfamiliar
voice.
“Hmm?” he answered. Misty’s cheeks flushed ever so
slightly, as if she were embarrassed to be asking him a question.
“What day of the week was it when we met?” Ash
blinked.
Thursday, his mind immediately said.
“Why should I remember?” he snapped, defensively,
quite upset that she didn’t remember things like that. Her cheeks flushed
again, but this time with annoyance.
“Because it was the day you became an Official Pokémon
Trainer, you twerp!” she
yelled. “I thought that it might be one of those things you’re not likely to
forget within a five year time span!”
“Oh,” he mumbled, berating himself for forgetting
that. “Thursday.”
“Thank you,” she snapped, before returning to her ferocious abuse
of the thin paper. Ash sighed. Enough is enough, he thought to himself.
~*~
Okay, it had to be here
somewhere…
Jeez she had a lot of these…
Ash sat cross-legged on the
floor, the light from his torch slightly wavering. He was so dead if she
caught him. Worse than dead, he would be annihilated.
Quickly
he skimmed the front covers of the notebooks. Luckily, Misty was quite an
organised person, and had numbered and dated each of her ten or so notepads. He
found the first one without much difficulty, and curiously read the first page.
C’est La Vie?
Written by Misty _______
A book for girls travelling with guys.
He stifled a giggle. Oh man! He and the others had guessed she was
writing some soppy romance story set in France, not some kinda voodoo self-help
book! Still sniggering to himself, Ash flipped through the most recent of the
notepads, not counting the one she currently had under her pillow.
“Have you ever
felt that because of this reputation you’ve built up around the guys you can’t
indulge yourselves in little, minor out-of-character actions? I feel like that
all the time – it’s stupid and I don’t know why, but sometimes I just feel like
quoting poetry and greeting each of the guys with a good-morning kiss on the
cheek, (definitely not a day I’m on my period then – hee hee!) but then I imagine the LOOKS I’d get from
them, and suddenly lose the urge.
It’s not even
outlandish things like that, that I feel I can’t do… it sounds stupid, but I
can’t wear my hair down!! It’s just… the first time Boy-X-that-I-travel-with
saw me with my hair down, he kept looking at me like it was some kind of
freaky, unnatural occurrence, and it’s put me off it for life! I don’t even
take it out when I go to sleep most of the time!”
Ash paused. Boy-X-that-I-travel-with, he thought. Is that me? He
thought back carefully. When had he first seen Misty with her hair down? God,
it must be about… three or four years ago now, when they were both really young
and ‘new’ with each other. Ah –it was Maiden’s Peak, the summer festival. Yeah!
There had been a really cool talking Gast-
Wait a sec, he’d been
staring at Misty like her hair was freaky? He could remember the events quite
clearly now; he had been wearing that minty coloured kimono that Delia had
bought him for Professor Oak’s birthday a few weeks prior to him receiving his
license. Nah, it wasn’t that! It had just been that she looked SO different. It
was the same thing when he first saw her in a bikini – she actually looked like
a real, pretty, feminine, curved member of the opposite gender.
Ash bit his lip – as
much as she tried to hide it, he knew that she was very, very self-conscious,
and knew exactly what had possessed her to think that him staring at her had
been in ridicule. Of course he stared at her! She may be just Misty, but
she WAS a girl, and she HAD been standing in front of him looking vaguely
attractive… Ash blamed the hormones.
Ash skimmed a few more
pages. His fingers and eyes halted as he came across a page that looked a lot
more worn than the others – there had been many crossings out, and the page
after it had even been ripped out.
“He really gets under my skin; he has been there since the moment I met
him. I don’t know what to do! Half the time I literally want to STRANGLE him!”
Ash flinched. No prizes for estimating that was him, he guessed.
Quietly, with his lips set in a grimly straight line, he closed the notebook
and stuffed it and the rest of them back into the red shoulder bag. He yawned,
without his usual zeal and enthusiasm. For some weird reason, he felt utterly
exhausted. And in a slight way… utterly dejected.
~*~
Ash sat, cross-legged on his sofa, staring, well actually more scowling
up at the ceiling, that was literally pulsating with the sugary pop-music that
was vibrating from his bedroom.
“Pikachu…” he
murmured, still staring glassily upwards. Pikachu stuck her head out from where
she was sheltering herself underneath a couch cushion. “I want you to KILL
Britney Spears,” Ash murmured. “And Atomic Kitten. And Ge- actually, no.
Geri Halliwell can live.” Pikachu sighed to herself and returned to her refuge
underneath the padded, green pillow.
Ash groaned, wondering
what the aspirin content of his body was at that moment in time. Thank HO-OH he
had never had a sister. Or maybe he would have grown up with cotton-wool
growing naturally in his ears. That had always been one of the main foibles of
having Misty as a house guest. That and the fact that she hogged the remote to
watch soap-opera crap.
But now it seemed even
worse – she insisted that she needed the music in the background to aid her
concentration. Ash had murmured a frosty ‘whatever’ and had strode out of the
room. He hated seeing her in those notebooks; it’s like she wasn’t really there
anymore. How DARE she find something more interesting and fulfilling to her
that HIS Pokémon journey?
He sighed with relief
as the music suddenly halted up above. A few seconds later, the opening strains
of a ballad came floating gently through the ceiling. Ash hummed the familiar
tune as an undertone without thinking as he fiddled with the laces on his
trainers.
“How do you
redefine something that never really had a name? Has your opinion changed?
Because I don’t know you anymore…” crooned the singer of Savage Garden from
upstairs.
~*~
“Misty! He’s just a crackpot who’s trying to take you for a ride!” yelled Ash, trying
to conceal the concern in his voice with scorn. Misty looked up with hatred at
him and Brock, Tracey and Gary exchanged looks. They were wisely keeping quiet.
“Oh, right – so the
only way anyone could be interested in my writing is if they were a complete
lunatic, is that right, Ashton?” she countered, jumping up to her
feet and thumping her chest with her balled up fist. Ash hesitated. The nicest
way to say this…
“Yes!” he
blurted out. “Can’t you see? I thought you were smarter than this, Misty!” Hot
tears stung the back of her eyes: his words were cutting deeper into her than
any before. “He just wants you to come see him in Goldenrod, then he’ll take
you off into some woods and RAPE you!” Ash bellowed.
“Is anything wrong
in there kids?” came Delia’s musical, slightly concerned voice from the
kitchen.
“No Mrs Ketchum,
we’re fine,” chorused Misty, Tracey, Brock and Gary immediately.
“Yeah Mom,
rehearsing a play,” Ash called in a preoccupied voice, before turning back
to Misty with sorrowful dark eyes – not sorry that he was hurting her, but
sorry that she was being played by this obvious fraud. Why couldn’t she
understand?
“Why can’t you
understand?” Misty wailed, with a crack in her voice. “He’s a
respectable publisher; I’ve seen him on television and everything!”
“Well how do you know
that this guy on the phone was HIM huh, Misty?”
“It’s a vidphone,
idiot.”
“It could have been a
look-alike!”
“Ash, unlike you I’m
not a total thicko!”
“Could have fooled
me!”
“Well I’m going, no
matter what you say!”
“Don’t be daft! You
have barely any money and nowhere to stay!”
Brock, Tracey, Gary and Pikachu were flitting back and forth between
the two enraged teens, looking like spectators at a match at Wimbledon.
“My cousin, Linda
lives in Goldrenrod. I can stay with her,” Misty said, decisively, her
voice calming slightly.
“No!” spluttered
Ash, with his mouth hanging open. “There is absolutely NO WAY I am letting
you go!” Misty’s furious teal eyes narrowed into menacing slits.
“Let me?” she
growled, in a low, frightening voice. “Well I’ve got news for you, asshole!
You are NOT my father, you are NOT my boyfriend and do you know what? You are
NOT my friend”
Ash stared at her
venomous face, as she scowled around at everyone in the room, making the boys
cower backwards and Pikachu lower her ears. Misty swirled around with a flurry
of orange hair and vanilla scented body-spray and practically ran up the
stairs; unbeknownst to the boys, taking deep, wracking breaths to compose
herself.
“Myst…” Ash
murmured, his tanned face showing regret for once. “I’m just worried about
you…”
~*~
The quartet, no matter how strange they were together, were making
excellent time to Crown City. Both Ash and Gary were in high spirits,
foreseeing their victories against Courtney, the GymLeader there. Ash trotted
dutifully along, amidst whispered conversations with Pikachu on his shoulder.
Gary positively strutted along, with his general aura of moodiness
clouded around him. Tracey popped in and out of tree branches, tipping over
rocks and lifting up rotting logs to see if there were any interesting
specimens that simply needed sketching. Brock strode along, clutching
the wide chest straps of his large green backpack, with a suspiciously happy
looking smile on his face as he allowed his feet full responsibility, as he
lost himself in a daydream.
“I think she’s
lying dead and naked under a tree somewhere,” stated Gary, bluntly as he
guessed correctly what his shorter friend was thinking of. Ash stared up at him
in innocent shock.
“Aw don’t say
that,” he begged, his eyes wide. “We got that letter from her remember?”
Gary nodded, a look of doubt still evident in his cinnamon coloured eyes;
Pikachu patted Ash on the shoulder, but her ears lowered as if on cue, and she
whispered a ‘Pika-chu-pi’…
I should have never let her go, thought Ash bitterly to
himself, as they passed the demure entrance sign to Crown City. It was too late
to challenge Courtney, but it was far too early for the harassed Ash to sleep,
so he slipped out of the Pokémon Centre to wander down the
high street.
It was only about 7pm,
and there was still a heavy bustle of shoppers and partiers flooding the narrow
streets. Ash trudged onwards with his shoulders hunched and his hands deep in
his pockets, staring morose fully in at a window display from time to time.
He had been walking
for about fifteen minutes, aimlessly, until a pretty display in a window on the
other side of the street caught his eye; well, not so much a pretty display
than a cardboard cut out of a pretty young lady. It wasn’t anything to
striking; in fact it was done entirely in greyscale. She was simply sitting on
a chair looking backwards over her shoulder and smiling.
Ash drifted over the
road to look in the window more closely. The words ‘Miasmic Ketchitt: signs her
sensational new book April 12th!’
Ash stared again at
the grey toned face of the girl. Something stirred. He walked haltingly over to
the automatic doors and then into the brightly lit and busy book shop. He
walked forwards and almost fell over a strategically placed display of pink,
paperback books. Ash reached over and picked up a copy, wincing as he left
smudgy fingerprints on the glossy surface.
‘C’est La Vie?’
A book for girls travelling with guys.
The bold and chunky letters on the front screamed at him.
“Oh. My. God,” Ash whimpered, as he stared back at
the card-board cut out with new eyes. “Misty?”
~*~
The re-arrival of a subdued Ash at 8pm with a pink book tucked under
his arm did not go unnoticed by Gary.
“Reading up on the facts of life, eh Ketchum?” he
jeered, then facevaulted off the bed as Ash completely ignored him and rushed
into the bathroom with his book. Gary shuddered, and made a vow that tomorrow
he peed on the street.
Ash sat cross-legged in the
shower, leafing frantically through the rough and slightly brown coloured pages
of the book. He recognised it; not just passages that he sneakily read, but her
whole tone and style of writing. A beaming smile broke onto his face: his
little Misty had done it!!
Woah, where had that come from? Granted it had
been a long time since Misty was taller than him – man she would have KILLED
him if she had heard him saying that.
With a determination that was so familiar to him, Ash settled
down. He started from page one, and worked his way through the pages, through
the book, through the story, through Misty’s life. Once or twice she had him
sniffling as she described events he remembered, but never knew hurt her so.
He felt the odd stab of pain whenever he read an uncaring
or preoccupied remark about ‘Boy-X-that-I-travel-with’, but mainly he
just sat there, uncaring when he felt his legs fall asleep, or when he heard
the Pokémon Centre close up for the night, at the universal
curfew of 11pm. He sat, reading intently, until the very end of the last
chapter, only briefly noticing there was an epilogue.
It was true, he realised. He had never seen her in her
awkward position as the only girl in a group of boys that fluctuated from two to
five depending on where Gary, Tracey or Todd where headed, as they regularly
travelled as a large group. Regardless of the fact that she was a Water
GymLeader, Ash had always dismissed her battling skills as ‘adequate’ and
pretended that they didn’t even touch upon his.
Ash felt strange all of a sudden; almost like he had
violated her, like he had just read her diary or something. She seemed like
such a different and multi-dimensional person now, instead of just… Misty. That
mallet-wielding red-head who refused to eat carrots and chased him throughout
Kanto, the Orange Archipelago and Johto, yelling about a bike.
Ash took a shuddering breath and stared at the author
photo at the back of the book, as if he was asking the make-up smeared and
posing Misty for help. He returned to the place in the book where he had kept
his thumb, and began to read the epilogue.
“I hope you have enjoyed reading my book. I have enjoyed writing it
immensely, and in fact have just given the ultimate sacrifice for it to be shared
with all of you. I just signed a contract with my publisher, but in order to do
this, I’m afraid I have betrayed and mistreated my best friend in the entire
world. ‘X’, I know you were just trying to protect me, and I thank you for
that. You know I’d do the same for you. If you are reading this, I hope you can
realise what I mean when I talk about you. Try to read between the lines a bit.
I’m sorry if I made you and the others worry. You’re my star, and I’ll never
think that of anyone else. Love, Myst xxx”
Ash blushed deeply, a custom he was not very used to. Jeez, he was
acting like some love-struck teenager; blushing just cos she signs something
‘Love’ and adds kisses, and falling head over heels for cardboard cut outs of
her. He sighed deeply, and contently, leaning back in the shower and crossing
his arms over the book which he held to his chest. He felt warm all over.
~*~
“You’ll be fine, doll,” croaked Elise in a
guttural voice she lit up yet another filthy cigarette and waved it around in
the air. Misty smiled self-consciously, and she tried to not let her disgust
show as the petite talk-show hostess breathed foul-smelling and deadly smoke
all over her. A busty brunette fussed over Misty’s hair and numerous people
holding everything from clipboards to cameras to Pichus ran around the studio.
“And we’re on in five – four – three – two…” came
a seemingly bodiless voice.
“Welcome back to Elise Live!” chirped Elise, in a
light airy voice that could not have been more different from the one she had
just been using. “Today your telephone guru is none other than the teenaged
author of the best-selling cult book, C’est La Vie?!” Misty
plastered a smile onto her face and gazed warily into the camera.
I wonder if Ash is watching… she thought.
“Miasmic Ketchitt!” A little sign concealed from
the camera blinked on with the word ‘applause’ and the studio audience went
wild. Misty frowned – she bet half these people had never heard of her.
“Miasmic? Miasmic? Miss Ketchitt?” Elise reached
out and tapped Misty’s shoulder, and she jumped guilty as she realised she had
not been responding to the name that her publicity agent had given her. “Are
you ready to take your first caller?”
“Yes,” Misty croaked, swallowing deeply. There was a barely
inaudible click in her earpiece.
“This is ‘Manless in Mahogany City’,” Elise
announced, and Misty winced.
“H-hello?” she murmured, timidly.
“Hi Miasmic,” came a young woman’s voice down the
line.
“Hey uh, Manless. W-what’s the problem?”
“Well I’m manless.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Misty smiled.
“But I’m in love with my best guy friend,” the
caller moaned. “I thought you could help since you’re in love with yours…” Misty
chuckled.
“Hmmm? What makes you say that?” she asked with a
feigned innocence.
“It’s totally obvious dear – that ‘X’ guy.” Misty
smiled again.
“Well Manless, the best I can tell you is to be
yourself, and if it’s meant to happen, then it will happen.” There – that
was easy enough to say. Misty had been telling herself that for years now.
There was a brief exchange of thank yous, and Manless vacated the line. Misty
felt happy that she was helping, and looked forward to the next caller, who was
announced as ‘Mr A’.
“What can I do for you, Mr A?” she asked, with
restoring confidence. There was a brief hesitation on the other side of the
line.
“I have a question about love as well…” he finally
said, in a voice that sounded slightly accented.
“Shoot,” replied Misty, smiling as she reached for
her water glass.
“Well, there’s this girl I- I used to travel with…”
“Go on.”
“She gets under my skin you see. She has done ever since
the day I met her. It was a Thursday. Best day of my life. Not only did
I become a Pokémon Trainer, but I also met the most important
person to me. But she irritates me like no one else. Sometimes I just want to
strangle her.”
Misty shakily put her water glass down. She had take
out that whole passage about Ash and how he got under her skin. No normal
reader could have known it. It only existed on a scribbled on page in one of
her earlier notebooks that had resulted because of the sadness of yet another
failed attempt to spend some ‘girly’ time with Ash.
“And other times,” the gentle voice continued,
losing its put on accent. “I just want to grab her and kiss her. But I never
really understood her, until I read your book, Misty, er, Miasty, er, Mia –
what’s your name again. Damn. I was doing so well.”
Misty was almost crying with laughter.
“Ash? That you?” There was a sigh on the other
connection.
“You’re my star, Misty. Too bad I never realised it
until you became a genie or whatever.”
“Guru!” Misty laughed. Her voice quietened, and
suddenly, she forgot all about the people watching their televisions
spellbound, and the hoards of people in the studio around her. For one moment,
there was only the voice on the other side of the line. “So who’s this girl
you met on the same day as me, she grinned. “And where have you been
hiding her Ketchum?”
“You and me are the bird and the fish,” he
answered, using a metaphor she had used in her book. “Ridiculous together,
but inseparable.”
“Ash, a bird and a fish are very separable,” she smiled, with a
happy, puzzled air. “Never write a book, okay?”
“Deal. Misty, I love-“
“I’m sorry that’s all we have time for,” cut in Elise’s voice
as the line went dead. Misty let out a huge, shuddering breath. “Before we
go, would you care to tell us about any upcoming plans?” Misty hesitated,
before beaming straight out at the camera and into the eyes of the many people
watching, knowing that he’d still be watching her.
“I’m going back home to my journey,” she smiled. “I
may write another book, another biographically based piece of writing, but not
for a long time.” Her grin grew even wider. ”I’d very much like this one
to be a romance, if ‘X’ will care to oblige?”
~*End*~
[A/N]
Not too mushy. Not in a very mushy mood. Apologies.
06/07/86 ~ Riny is 15!!
© Erina-chan – fic finished 9/7/01