181… DIE AP TESTS!
Disclaimer: Come on, I’m sick of putting this. I don’t own pokemon. Don’t take my work. I’m making zero profit off of this. No copyright infringement is intended. *faints*
Notes: <> for telepathy, ** for thoughts, italics for pokemon talking.
Briememory – thanks!
Link Masters – hehehe, Lance shall be back b4 this arc ends
Ranma – hehehe, I guess my writing’s kind of predictable isn’t it? Oh well…
SS2 Megami-sama – thank you! And despite prosecution I shall continue putting some shonen-ai here on ff.net to show support
Aragorn the Ranger – hmm, I may make a new fic centering around ‘Guy’ the knight and the rest of the Wichita cast along with Ash and Lance… *twirls plotbunny* I haven’t done medieval yet!
Episode 181: I guess all these trainers aren’t so bad…
“Flareon, Flamethrower.” Ash said almost lazily as his pokemon torched the Treecko the opposing trainer had been using.
“Damn.” The kid swore, handing over his money.
Ash grinned. * I guess there is a practical benefit to this… its certainly a very profitable mode of gathering cash. *
Charlotte nodded. “Tell me about it.”
“Eh?!”
“Oh, sorry, but you were broadcasting your thoughts.”
Ash accepted the reasoning and walked on.
“Halt! I challenge you!” Ash blinked twice as a trainer jumped out of – a tree? Yes, a tree, and sent out a Koffing.
“Well, that was direct.” He said dryly.
“Koffing! Smokescreen!”
“I am so bored… let’s make this a bit more interesting. Poliwag, go! Give ‘em a water gun attack!”
The Poliwag card happily complied. The result? A very wet, smoky, trainer, who started to yell…
“I am Ninja Jiro! How dare you!”
Ash rolled his eyes. “For all I care, you’re just a junior trainer.”
“Koffing, Tackle the Poliwag!”
“Poliwag, Water gun.” The water gun hit Koffing squarely in the middle of its stocky body and… sent it flying.
“Argh! Spinda, I choose you!”
“New pokemon.” Ash said, making a mental note to create the card as soon as the junior trainer was taken care of. “Normal type?”
“Think so. But it also knows psychic n’ dark moves.”
“Thanks for the info, Skarmory, you’re up! Steel Wing!”
Spinda used psychic… but since steel types were quite resistant to psychic attacks, Skarmory just shook off the hit and went in for the kill. Ouch, that had to hurt.
Jiro recalled his pokemon and ran off wailing. Ash sweatdropped.
“Seriously… but first things first. Light of the sky, grant me your energy, recreate fallen spirits, noble and free, the sun and the moon, magic and mystery, light and darkness now shadow, I summon thee! Spinda!”
Charlotte smiled and sipped her chocolate milkshake. “Well, one down.”
“Who knows how many more left to go.” Ash rejoined.
“I only wish that time would slow down and give you enough time to prepare for the test… wait!”
Ash stared at Charlotte. “What is it?”
“Time.” Charlotte said simply, pulling a card out of her pocket. “And Return.” This was a second card.
“Between these two, we can create many threads of time, threads running at the same time but with different results… you could be fighting four different battles at the same time…”
“But… that would drain your magic.” Ash said. “And you’re still not fully recovered from that dark attack.”
“Well… I’m sure we’ll think of something.” Charlotte said, tucking the cards back into her pocket.
Ash nodded thoughtfully and resolved to use only pokemon cards for the next few days to see if that would improve his situation.
Three days later…
Ash was lounging on a beach near Meteor falls, dressed in dark blue slacks and a t-shirt, sunglasses on, enjoying a glass of lemonade and battling quite easy trainers.
“Minun, give them all a Shock Wave attack!”
The little blue-cheeked electrical mouse nodded, flipped her ears, and fried all three of the goldeens the fisherman had been using. The man scowled and tossed Ash a wad of dollar bills.
Charlotte waved from where she was running an ice-cream stand about fifteen feet away. Ash waved back. Pika-chan was currently advertising for the ice-cream stand by standing in front of it and eating chocolate ice cream, attracting a steady stream of customers.
Admittedly, the ice cream she ate definitely amounted to more than the cost of labor, so Charlotte wasn’t paying her.
But still, it was a pretty good arrangement.
Ash watched from behind half-closed eyes as a boy with long dangling purple earrings and a shock of wild white hair approached.
“I challenge you.” He said in a misty voice.
“Your name?” Ash asked, as he sat up a little.
“My name is of no importance… I am a psychic. This will not be an easy match for you to win… if you win.”
Ash shrugged. * Annoying power-playing person. * “I accept your challenge.”
“Excellent. Kadabra, go.”
Ash closed his eyes, flipped a card over, and summoned the pokemon. Sneasal’s blue eyes gleamed as it quickly used a wonderful combination of Faint Attack and Ice Punch to secure victory.
Two abras and another kadabra later, Ash was feeding his Houndour and Sneasal ice cream cones pilfered from Charlotte’s stands and telling them how wonderful they were.
But of course, she didn’t mind much.
And Pika-chan was busy eating her sixteenth ice cream cone… and motioning for someone to bring her another one.
Charlotte motioned for Snow and Sweet to make some more ice cream, and they swiftly complied, restocking the shop once more as another swarm of whiny little tots besieged the ice cream stand. All was going well, until one kid ran off with three tubs of ice cream, aided by his Nidorino.
Charlotte saw red.
Literally, two seconds later, Charizard had dragged the kid back to the stand, forcing a very ashamed baby-sitter to pay for the damages.
Charlotte hugged her fire lizard, tossed him a few pokeblocks, and went back to her work.
Ash finally got bored and went for a swim. He swam pretty far into meteor falls, and discovered a few old people meditating, but left them alone. The golbats were kind of annoying though, but if he stayed underwater and breathed they hopefully would leave him alone.
Storm smiled as she swam with him, occasionally catching a stray Magikarp or two and eating it.
The dragonair card smiled at Storm and the two of them chattered and chirruped together.
Ash finally fell asleep in a bubble. He was not awakened until almost a day later, when he found that his swim trunks were snagged on someone’s fishhook. With glue… some type of underwater glue.
Now Ash had two choices here, he could either sacrifice the trunks, or let himself be pulled up. But considering he didn’t have any other clothes, the first option wasn’t very secure.
Ash sighed audibly and decided that he didn’t want to be dragged out of the water, so he transformed into Hope, and swam deeper into the water, hoping that he hadn’t been seen.
His white robes glittered faintly, but other than that, no problems.
Two hours later, Charlotte found Ash asleep in the pokemon center, dripping wet.
“Well, I wonder what he was doing?”
Pika-chan gave her a clueless look. “Don’t ask me, I was with you the whole time.”
Vulpix-chan stared. “Wait a second… Pika-chan, how many ice creams have you had?”
“Um… fifty-eight?”
“And they call me a glutton?” Vulpix wondered. “I only had four!”
“But it was over the course of five days!”
“So about twelve ice creams every day?”
“Somewhere around there, yep!”
Angel rolled his eyes. That mocha had been really delicious. He flipped through a book on meowths idly and wondered when he would get a vacation.
“Well, I’m not leaving him wet, that’s for sure.” Charlotte said as she performed a fast-acting drying charm. Ash was now dry but his hair was a wreck. She left him to deal with it and headed outside to get some sunshine.
Silver, blue, flash, flash, flash, flash…
“Dragonair, Ice Beam!”
The challenger shrieked as his Onix became a frozen snake.
“Magmar, go!”
“No use, Tempest, Surf now!”
And of course, there went the rest of the team…
Matt glared with ferocious hate in his eyes at the last member of the Elite Seven, the one known as the Johto League Champion…
“You-!”
Lance sidestepped easily as the challenger charged her, cape fluttering gracefully in the wind as she formed a ball of energy in her hands.
“You abuse pokemon, you cheat, and put those knives away before you hurt me, or else…”
Matt howled and charged again.
“Hyper Beam.”
A beautiful beam of destructive energy later, Lance smirked and vaporized what was left with a wave of her hand, before she strolled back to her room, boots clicking on the floor, and dragons happily chattering in her head.
End This Episode! 181 are done!
Completed 9/5/2003, created 8/6/03
Let’s see… oh yes, I have a live journal where I put updates now. It’s on my profile, might want to see… since I put web page updates up too.