Take Me As I Am

By Meredith

NOTE: I do NOT own Pokemon... Or anything else it's obvious I do not own... ^^; 

NOTE TWO: I had to split this up into two chapters. It was getting too long... 
Sorry. ^^; 

~*~

The doorbell rang.

Sighing, Misty opened the door. As an elite-four member in training, she had 
been provided a 
small (VERY small) house by the Pokemon League--right next to the other 
trainees' gift houses. And lately, the doorbell had been ringing more and more 
often.

"Danny," she said, with no enthusiasm.

The Orange Island Gym Leader stood grinning on her doorstep, boquet of roses in 
his hands. 
"Hello, Misty--"

"Stuff it," she sighed, and slammed the door. "Oh, tell the conglameration of 
hopeful suitors out 
there that I saw them fighting, and I think they should go jump off of a very 
high cliff with a lot of thornbushes in the bottom. Also, tell them to GET OFF 
OF MY LAWN!!!" she yelled through the door.

"What? But Misty..." Danny's muffled voice came. 

"LEAVE!! I AM NOT INTERESTED!!" she screamed.

She heard the fifteen men hiding in the bushes shuffle off to find lodging for 
the night. 

"AND DON'T COME BACK!!" she yelled.

Ever since her picture had been shown in Pokemon Trainers' Monthly, there were 
more 
prospective boyfriends coming to her house every day. At first, it had been 
funny, but now... She sighed. 

"Now I'm thinking of becoming a nun," she finished aloud. 

She heard the by-now familiar sound of footsteps on the path. She looked out the 
window.

A man, draped in a long black cloak that completely obscured his featured, was 
walking up the path.

All of a sudden, she heard screams.

"Oh crud!" the man yelled. He ran towards the house.

A horde of screaming girls was stampeding after him.

"Darn you Saffron psychic ditzes!!" he yelled. "Pikachu, Thundershock-- and no, 
you may NOT kill them!"

"Pi..." A Pikachu said reluctantly. It threw off the part of the cloak obscuring 
it. "Pi...ka...
CHUUU!!!" it yelled, sending a bolt of electricity into the screaming mob. 

The man turned and rang the doorbell frantically. Misty opened the door. 

"Please, for the love of the Leauge, Misty, let me in before those maniacs wake 
up!!" he pleaded frantically, shooting glances at the floored conglameration.

She smiled. "Okay, Ash." She let him in and quickly slammed the door.

Ash Ketchum grinned as Misty threw a ridiculous number of bolts into place. 
"Thanks. Those 
girls are nuts."

"Don't mention it," she said, grinning.

"So, are you afraid of burglars or do you have a fan club too?" he asked, 
smiling wryly and
gesturing towards the many bolts.

She grimaced. "Fan Club. Unofficial, but they know where I live."

"I hate the media," Ash sighed, dropping into a chair.

"Pika pika!" Pikachu agreed.

Misty sat down. "Honestly, there are some screwballs in this world!"

"Yeah? Well, at least _yours_ take a break at night." Ash rolled his eyes 
bitterly. "I can't even 
SLEEP anymore!"

"Why?" Misty asked. "They make too much noise?"

"No...They have lockpickers." He hung his head.

"Oh my gosh..." Misty's eyes were wide with sympathy. "What do they do?"

"Well, either I get woken up by the sound of Pikachu frying a horde, or I get 
woken up by 
someone kissing me." Ash gagged.

"Not French?" Misty asked, eyes wide.

Ash nodded sadly.

Misty put her hand to her mouth. "My god..."

"And those darn Saffron chicks can always figure out when it's me leaving and 
not just an intern I paid twenty bucks to lure 'em away." Ash sighed. "It's 
pathetic."

"Amen to that!"

"So..." Ash looked at her. "Can I please, please, PLEASE stay here tonight? I 
really need a 
night's sleep without worrying about insane girls getting through the door..."

"I can tell," Misty said wryly. The bags under Ash's eyes had not escaped her 
notice--and, for 
that matter, neither had his eyes themselves. They spoke of simple desperation 
for being left
alone."Yeah, you can. If you don't mind sleeping on the couch, that is."

He looked at her gratefully. "Misty, at this point I would sleep on pointy rocks 
on the ocean floor with Tentacruels stinging me if it meant I'd get away from 
those--those DEMONS." He moved his head, gesturing towards the front lawn, where 
undoubtably the girls were still.

"Okay, then." Misty grinned.

Ash sighed in relief. "Oh, thank god. If I'd had to have those girls break in 
one more night..." He shuddered. "I don't even want to THINK about what I'd have 
let Pikachu do to them."

She stared at him in amazement. "Good lord, I hope MINE never get that bad..." 

"Pika!"

"He says you should." Ash yawned. "So I really hope you don't mind if I just go 
to sleep on the couch..."  He laid down on the couch and took his cloak off, 
using it as a blanket.

"Oh, of course not, Ash!" Misty exclaimed. "...Ash?"

"Pikachu." 

Through knowing Pikachu for so long, seeing a natural reply to her question, and 
intuition, she knew Pikachu had said, "He's asleep." 

"My gosh..." she breathed. "He's really been pushed to the edge, hasn't he?"

"Pika."

She knew that meant yes.

Misty heard the fangirls screaming outside. She stalked up to a window and 
opened it. 

"SHUDDUP, YOU CRAZY WITCHES, OR I'LL CALL THE COPS ON YA!!" she screamed. She 
slammed the window down, locking it. She made sure that all of the windows and 
doors were locked before she went to her room.

'Will this happen to me?', she couldn't help wondering. She kept thinking of 
poor Ash, stalked so much that he couldn't even sleep. And the police... They 
would come in, certaintly. But there were so many of the girls that there was 
always a new group, and there wasn't enough room to keep them all in jail. So...

So Ash was haunted. Even so, he had managed to still be Ash somehow, instead of 
going insane, or losing himself through all of the fustration.

Her mind was filled with thoughts like those for a while, but finally, 
exhasution set in, and Misty fell asleep...

~*~

"AAH! JESSIE JESSIE SAVE ME!!"

Jessie woke up with a start. "Oh no! Not again!"

"Meowth, I'm guessing that's right!" Meowth said sarcastically.

Jessie threw on some normal clothes and stormed off to where she'd heard James's 
voice. 

"Now look son, you are going to marry Jessiebelle whether you like it or not!" 
James' father said.

"I don't like it, I don't like it!" James whined.

"But Jamesy honey, don't you see that Jessiebelle is your perfect match?" James' 
mother said. 

"NO!"

"Well, I am, James sweetie, so you just sit tight! Don't worry, we know what's 
best for you!"

Jessie ran.

"BUT MMPPPPH!!"

"Now James, don't be stubborn," his mother warned.

"HE WILL IF HE WANTS TO BE!!" Jessie burst into the clearing, eyes afire.

"Aw no, not you again," Jessiebelle moaned.

"YES, me again!" Jessie yelled. "And as long as you try to--to FORCE James into 
this, I _WILL_ BE THERE!"

James, bound to a chair and gagged, managed to hop over to Jessie's side of the 
clearing. What with his nutty parents and Team Rocket training, he had become 
quite good at it.

"Now do you leave, or does Arbok put you in the hospital again?" Jessie said, 
her voice dangerously sweet.

They glared at her.

"Does that mean hospital?" she asked sweetly.

Suddenly, Jessiebelle threw down a smoke bomb, and they were gone. 

"Make no mistake, James-honey, we WILL be back for ya!" Jessiebelle called 
sweetly.

Jessie sighed as she untied James. "I can't believe they found us AGAIN! You'd 
think they'd have the sense to quit--no, actually, thinking about it, they're 
MUCH too stupid to do THAT. Darn."

As soon as James could speak again, he said, "I think they're in touch with your 
fan club. They'd never manage to track us on their own. They're too..._rich_ to 
wander through the forest."

Jessie groaned. "WONderful! We can't get rid of those freaks, we can't get rid 
of the other freaks. And now they're banding together."

"I'm almost starting to want to--to just marry her already. This is too much." 

"JAMES!" Jessie screamed. "You will NOT marry that whip-happy witch!! You KNOW 
what she would do to you! You are NOT marrying her and that is FINAL!!"

"Okay, okay!" James said quickly.

"Don't worry, James," Jessie said softly, looking into his eyes. "We _will_ get 
out of this, I swear."

"I hope so..." James looked off into the distance.

~*~

Ash slowly opened his eyes. "Oh, hi Misty," he said. "Sorry, I must have dozed 
off. What were we saying?"

Misty looked at him. "...Ash, you were asleep for three days."

"WHAT?!" he yelled. He jumped up. "Oh my gosh! I missed the planning meeting, 
and the briefing, and the Gym report, and the--"

"Ash!" Misty interuppted. "Don't worry! I got notes for you!"

"Oh my gosh, I missed so much--WHY DIDN'T YOU WAKE ME UP?!" 

"ASH KETCHUM, YOU REALLY _DON'T_ HAVE ANY SENSE, DO YOU?!?!" Misty screamed. 
"You NEEDED that!! I didn't wake you up because you NEEDED THE BREAK!! Good 
LORD, Ash!!"

"Well..." Ash scratched his head. "I guess...maybe...I did need that." He 
grinned apologetically. "Thanks."

"No problem." She grinned.

"But man, what is everyone going to think?" he said, horrified.

"Probably that I'm your girlfriend--which would solve all our problems, 
probably, now that I come to think of it." Misty raised her eyebrows.

Ash laughed. "You want to be dead? The fan clubs would probably kill us!"

Misty brightened. "Maybe they'd kill each other!"

He laughed again. "I wish!" 

"Yeah!" They laughed for a while. Then, Ash sighed. 

"Well, here comes the hurricane... Pikachu, we'd better get to the office. How 
much of a head start can you give me without killing the morons?"

"Pika!"

"Five minutes? That's all?" Ash sighed. "Well, I guess it'll have to do." He 
took out a Pokeball. "Pidgeot, I choose you!"

His Pidgeot had come back to him just before he won the Championship. It had 
wanted to make sure that there were a couple of other Pidgeots to guard the 
flock before it resigned and came back to Ash.

"Okay, Pidgeot, I'm going to open the door. Pikachu will take out the nuts 
temporarily, and we'll have to jump on fast before they wake up. Think you can 
get us to the office in five minutes?" Ash asked.

"Pidgeooooo!" Pidgeot said, slightly miffed.

"Yeah, I thought you could," Ash said, grinning."Okay, let's go!" 

Just before he opened the door, he grinned at Misty. "Thanks, Mist!"

"You're welcome!" she replied sincerely.

"Okay, one, two, THREE!!" Ash yelled, flinging open the door on three.

"PI-KA-CHU!!" Pikachu said quickly.

There were a number of screams from the girls, as well as from Rudy, who had 
apparently been walking towards the door.

"Pika!" Pikachu called as they flew off. 

"He says no charge!" Ash translated, his voice quickly fading as Pidgeot soared 
upwards.

"Thank you Pikachu, Ash! Goodbye!" she called. 

She couldn't be sure if they had heard her as Pidgeot flew away...

~*~