Touketsu Namida
part II - Ecruteak City
Narrated by Brock; Fanfic written by Sami, aka Suicune3K

Pre-Fic Notes:
Err..I don’t own Pokémon or any of the existing characters.. They are copyrighted by their respective owners. Uhmm..err, this fic is for fun, etc. and so forth. Errr...I hope you get the idea..and please don’t hurt me, I have a delicate bone structure.. All disclaiming aside, I’d like to thank my friend Misty Kasumi Ketchum for helping me through my writer’s blocks, and for being a good friend. (Plus, her fic is awesome!) And one more thing, look for where I use the caps-lock for a word, something I never do very often! (err..a little trivia..)

. . .


   Without a single word, I helped Misty to unpack our sleeping bags.
   I was still drowned in thought, even as the sun was low upon the orangish horizon, and it had been hours since I was essentially laughed at for recalling the odd event that had happened to me. This was an odd sensation; I hadn’t been so lost in thought since I first started having those wierd dreams.
   And before I knew it, we were unpacked. Well, I guess it was a sign when Ash looked up from his exciting game of solitare and asked about dinner.
   “Uhmm..err, sorry. I have to remember what I was going to make..” I replied, still feeling as if I was caught in a thick haze.
   Misty and Ash then looked at me with the strangest looks of concern. It wasn’t exactly like they were worried about my stress; they seemed to want me to lay down or something of the sort.
   I scowled.
   “All right. Something strange happens to me, and you don’t believe me. I have wierd dreams accompanying, and you think I’m a little out of it. And then I also forget dinner, and all of a sudden I’m nuts!”
   “Well..” Ash then spoke up. “It’s not that you’re nuts; it’s just that you run into a girl, and you don’t turn into a babbling idiot, and she doesn’t slap you...that sounds just a little out-of-the-ordinary, doesn’t it?”
   I sighed, and turned away to scrounge through my backpack for something edible, greatly fighting back the urge to lecture Ash on how I was far from being a conniving skirt-chaser. As I finally pulled out a small bag of mystery potato chips, I could have sworn I heard Misty mutter under her breath about how I had finally lost it; I had actually started to believe that.
   “So that’s dinner,” Misty then said, nervously poking the old bag of potato chips.
   “No..uh, just doing some Spring-cleaning,” I had taken another look at it and hastily threw it over my shoulder. Again digging through my bag, I finally discovered a packet of the “instant” Râmen noodles that I had hoarded during our last trip into town.
   “Hmm..” Ash then perked up, peering back into the dark brush with a skeptical gleam in his eyes. He curiously got up to get a closer look, murmuring beneath his breath, “I thought..I just heard something..”
   Misty helped me to uncover my pot and its lid as I removed two more packets of the noodles. Her gaze was softer, fixed to what she was doing; somehow the expression on her face had grown a little depressed as well.
   “What is it?” I always homed-in on this kind of mood change.
   She now stared directly into my eyes with a stiff look that seemed to turn my insides. Misty wasn’t depressed at all: she was concerned.
   “I’m worried about you, Brock,” her tone was surprisingly firm. “All of these wierd things you’ve been telling us about: vivid dreams, some girl.. I think you’re pushing yourself too hard here. Maybe you should go back home and rest for a while.”
   That was something I had never expected to hear from her. “You want me to go home? I don’t understand why you think—”
   “WAAUGHH!” Ash’s voice then came bellowing from the woods, with all its shrilled glory. (I had practically fallen backwards in surprise.) “Uhmm...guys! You better get over here, quick..!”

   Misty and I, of course, dashed into the woods to see what was the matter, and we were startled by what we found.
   There was a girl that had virtually collapsed right upon Ash. Both were on the ground, and Ash had to use most of his strength just to keep from falling back under the girl’s limp weight. She seemed to still be conscious; she was panting and was trying her best to get off of Ash, whom was loosely holding her with shaking arms.
   “Ackk..err..uhmm, guys?” Ash said through gritted teeth. “A little help h-here..?”
   Puzzled, I grasped her arm and helped the girl to her feet. The scratchy turtleneck sweater, however, seemed a little familiar..
   “Aisu..?”
   Before I had even realized that I had said it out loud, the girl had broken free of my grip and faced me. She straightened up, her eyes widening with a clear sense of awe. “..Brock?”
   Even as I was also surprised, I looked at Misty and Ash with a deadpan glower.
   “‘I’ve finally lost it’, eh?” for once I seized my opportunity to rub it in. A rare event, as I was the one who was supposed to remain neutral; I also didn’t much care for taunting as an everyday activity.
   Ash exchanged an unenthusiastic look with Misty, whom was wearing her famous mildly-irritated smirk only seen when she found out that she was wrong. Ash then glowered at me and muttered “Shut up.”


   Tearing the package of Râmen open with his teeth, Ash helped me pour the noodles into the boiling water of the pan over the make-shift firepit.
   “Tasty,” he commented with sarcasm as the thick clump of noodles sank to the bottom of the pan. I snickered, stirring and trying to pick the noodles apart with a large spoon.
   I then looked up and glanced at Aisu. She had long fallen asleep in the sheets we had layed out for her to rest on, her Vaporeon curled up at her feet. Misty kept an eye on her for a bit, while reading her novel with Togepi. Somehow, Aisu almost appeared to be too peaceful in her deep slumber.
   “She’ll be fine, Casanova,” Misty taunted once she took notice of me looking in her direction, giving me a semi-annoyed look from over the top of her book. “Just let her sleep.”
   I nodded, and returned to stirring the noodles without a word.
   “Hey, Brock,” Ash then asked me as he got three bowls ready for the dinner. “Uh, did she tell you anything besides her name?”
   “No,” I answered without a second thought. “Just that her name is Aisu, and her Vaporeon is named Ryouki..”
   “But who is she? What about where’s she from, and regarding her health—”
   I nearly dropped the spoon I held; that was exactly what I had thought after I had first encountered her. “I..don’t know.”
   “You ought to ask her when she wakes up,” Misty suggested, finally shutting her book with its page marker, and laying it at her lap. “Maybe she’s a local. Maybe she could show us to the city!”
   Ash and I looked dumbfounded; now, why hadn’t we thought of that before?

. . .


   “Maan...” Ash mumbled, still trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Why do we have to leave so early?”
   “It’s ten-thirty!” Misty exclaimed. “How are you supposed to be a Pokémon Master if you’re sleeping half of the day?!”
   I sighed, rubbing my forehead; that darn headache was coming back.
   That morning, we were finally on our way in the right direction. Misty was right, Aisu did know her way around the area. Even though she did still seem tired, she was a lot more upbeat than I’ve seen, as she grinned broadly and had to hold back from snickering at Ash and Misty’s quarreling. Even Ryouki was having some fun; it and Pikachu appeared to keep each other company fairly well.
   Since I didn’t feel like having a migraine in the morning, I decided to nip the argument right in the bud. “Guys..come on! Just some quiet, for once?”
   The two wheeled around to face me, and with quite some embarrassment, remembered that there was a guest present. Believe it or not, Aisu was the one who was the most bashful at all of this, turning nearly went beet-red in the face when they let out an uncomfortable snigger.
   “Oh, jeez..” Aisu then hung her head and scratched the back of her head nervously. “I’m terribly sorry about lying to you.”
   This got my attention at once. “What do you mean?”
   “Well,” she continued, still carefully avoiding my eye-contact. “When you guys asked me if I knew the way to the city, and I said I did...”
   I suddenly tripped over my own shoe, which caused a chain-reaction that made Ash lose his balance and topple into Misty, whom had stopped dead in her tracks.
   “W-What!?” Ash jumped back to his feet at once, completely ignoring Misty’s cursing. “You don’t know the way?!”
   From the looks of it, Aisu had herself practically fallen backwards in the commotion. “I-I do, for the most part. But I just never go to the city, so I’m not sure if this is the right way.”
   “Hmm.. Come to think of it,” Misty had calmed once she pulled herself up, studying our surroundings closer. “This actually is starting to look right..”

   Sure enough, once we had gotten ourselves back together and continued to mindlessly wander in the same direction, the outline of Ecruteak City came into view. The very city that Ash’s Pokédex had earlier confirmed. Aisu’s gaze had immediately stuck to the Burned Tower, which was tucked within the Northern outskirts of the city, but I didn’t read too much into it at first.
   “All right!” Ash broadly grinned as we entered the city. “Now that we’ve finally gotten back to some sort of civilization, let’s find something decent to eat! I’m starving!”
   I glowered at Ash as I thought, ‘Something decent to eat?’
   Misty seemed to have a talent for noticing my emotions through my looks; she hastily agreed with Ash, and then the two went in their own direction into the city, with their Pokémon scurrying close behind.
   “Those two continue to baffle me..” I mumbled to myself, giving in to the urge to follow. “C’mon, Aisu.”
   I turned to make sure that she was following me, but instead she stood very still in the same place she had stopped.
   There was a look in her eyes that haunted me; a very blank, emotionless stare into the distance, far into the Northern outskirts of the city. She hardly dared to breathe as the images clouded her memory. That feeling of heat..the sensation of suffocating engulfed her. Beads of sweat gathered at her temples, and freely streamed down her cheeks like tears. Her hands weakly shook as she felt her flesh begin to burn; the searing pain and unbearable heat was coming back to her...
   “Aisu?” I touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
   She jumped at my touch and turned to face me, a look of confusion and fear now clear in her eyes. “Oh! I-I’m fine!”
   “What’s wrong?”
   “Nothing!”

. . .


   Shortly afterwards, we found ourselves sitting in a cosy little restaurant along with Ash and Misty, after much deliberation between the three of us over how “stale” my cooking gets after spending a week lost in the wilderness.
   We were having some breakfast, which no matter what it was, it still tasted extra good since we were starved. Aisu, who was sitting across from me next to Misty, tiredly rested her head on the table with her eyes just barely open, as if she finally had a chance to rest after the morning commute.
   “All right,” Ash continued, taking a bite from his toast. “So Dragon-types are resistant to Water, Fire, Electric, and Grass-type attacks, but Steel-type attacks are weak against all of those but the Grass-types..”
   “Right!” Misty replied with a slight grin. “You’re slow, but you’re finally getting it!”
   “Gehh..my head hurts..”
   “Hunh..? So does mine..” Aisu lifted her chin from behind her arms, and up off of the table slightly.
   “Boy, you look tired!” I then commented, unknowingly returning a spoonful of soggy oatmeal to its bowl. As lacking of some strong flavor as it was, I had fully intended on gulping it down.
   Her drooping eyes glanced back at me for a bit, but then kept a low gaze. She stretched her arms out slightly as she sat up, and then got to her feet.
   “I am..must’ve been the trip here or something,” Aisu turned for the door, running her fingers through her already ruffled hair. “I better wait outside..cold air always clears my head..”
   Without knowing it, I still watched her with my spoonful of oatmeal frozen in my grip nearly halfway to my mouth. Somehow, my mind had wiped blank, and yet it was swirling with thought that I could not decipher. It was something I just couldn’t put my finger on; something about Aisu..?
   “Ah!” Ash immediately picked up on my staring, and gave me a sly but stupid look. “The good ‘ol Brock charm strikes again!”
   “W-What..?” a bit harshly, I was brought back to reality.
   “Heh! Every single girl we meet! It never fails!”
   I was becoming about halfway irritated. “What are you talking about?”
   Ash casually returned to munching his toast, and took a sip of orange juice.
“You like her, don’t you?”
   Of course, I hastily denied it.
   But that was true. She simply wasn’t like all of the other girls, and I just didn’t know why. This puzzled me to the core; she just seemed like another stranger.


   Aisu perked up when she saw me leave the doorway of the small restaurant and approach her, Ryouki giving me a curious tilt of its head before laying back down.
   “Here,” I unwrapped a napkin that held a couple pieces of toast, that I had managed to sneak past Ash. “Maybe if you eat something, you’ll feel better?”
   Aisu hesitated for a moment, then took the napkin with a slight smile and sat back down on the ground. Once she had fumbled to unwrap the toast, she tore one of the slices in half and dropped it to the halfway-dozing Ryouki. They both, curiously, took a small sniff of the bread, before gratefully taking generous bites.
   Not knowing what else to do next, I sat down next to her and Ryouki. I certainly wasn’t going back inside to rejoin Ash and Misty; I could feel a tinge of a headache coming back to me just thinking about their horribly-boring trivia session. Don’t get me wrong, the different advantages and disadvantages of the vast variety of Pokémon species do fascinate me, but trying to teach Ash about all of this kinda makes my head spin.
   Aisu brushed some crumbs from her mouth with her shirt sleeve.
“Thanks.. That did make me feel better.”
   To my surprise, she and Ryouki had gobbled both of the toast slices quite fast!
   I gave her a smile and nodded. “Food usually gives me some energy.”
   Her indifferent look softened a bit, but her face still seemed oddly pale. “Yeah.”
   I took notice to this once again, and finally asked what I was thinking. “Aisu, have you always been ill..like this?”
   Still she held her gaze ahead, most of the ice in her looks replaced with an odd appearance of being startled. Remaining silent for a moment or so, she finally made the rare eye-contact with me.
   “I..I guess I have,” her voice was strangely unshaken, but instead hinting shame.
“I just cannot remember..when I wasn’t like this.”

. . .

   Curiosity was always a thing that hooked me.
   Of course, nowhere near the extent of Ash and his impulsive-but-good-intended decisions, but I was that way in a different degree. I mostly think before I act, and try my best to keep a cool head, but there’s always a certain weakness.
   And it isn’t what you think it is.


   Aisu seemed more tired than ever, though we agreed on taking a walk along the Northern outskirts of the town. She had claimed that crisp, cold air calmed her nerves, and I always knew that some exercise is good for gaining energy. However, that didn’t seem to be the case.
   Once I began to notice how flushed her face was becoming, I again asked if she was feeling all right. Like before, she continued to insist, blindingly reaching to the side for something to steady herself until she finally brushed up against a tree.
   “Of course I do..why wouldn’t I be?” she replied with a small grin, still trying hard to keep steady.
   Somehow, this time I decided against trying to persuade her to sit down and rest, or to visit a doctor. As much as I did ramble on about this, she was surprisingly stubborn. I kept my mouth shut, doing my best to avoid sounding or acting obsessive.
   Aisu was now leaning most of her weight onto her outstretched left arm, the tree seemingly being the only thing that kept her standing. The Vaporeon Ryouki rubbed up against her legs with a purr that sounded to me more like a sigh.
   Somehow, I finally did believe that this was normal for Aisu.

   As sudden as a clap of thunder, Ryouki snapped into a fierce gaze, its back heavily hunched and prickled like the needles of a Jolteon. Its claws tore into the earth as it leapt into a dead-run, hissing wildly.
   “Ryouki!?” Aisu followed close behind with a speed that nearly matched the Pokémon; I, of course, pursued as well.
   I wasn’t sure how far this had went on, but it seemed like we had just taken off when Ryouki paused in the center of a small, closed-in clearing. Now in a complete frenzy, the Vaporeon clutched and ripped into the grass and dirt beneath its paws, its back menacingly arched.
   “Heh!” and, as if things weren’t strange enough, an all-too-familiar female voice came echoing down from one of the nearby trees, where I could just barely make out a trio of silhouettes. “Right into our trap!”
   Damn! I cringed, unconsciously gritting my teeth. Not Team Rocket! Not now!