Oh Boy Do I Ever Love Boats

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Ten once had a long, prestigious history of crashing, but I only realize how much I now depend on his not slamming into the earth like a flaming owl cannonball when we manage to do so. The sands of Olivine are usually soft, but the grit is all over my face now and the abrasive stuff gets all over my hair and clothes, like a thousand tiny claws digging into my skin. My avian friend looks no better off, seeing as he's on his face not too far away, hooting with disappointment into sand.

As I approach, he gets up, looking at me with earnest confusion in his eyes. "Take it easy," I tell him, "None of those fancy acrobatics earlier were necessary. I thought you had 'wing pain'!"

"I do, and bloody hell do they hurt now." Ten protests, "I wasn't trying to go fast at all. If anything, I was easing up, and-"

"You don't have to show off." I shake myself off. My left arm stings a bit, though I don't know if that's from his wing pain or because that was the arm that hit the sand first.

Ten clicks his beak and mumbles something beneath his breath, like I can't tell exactly what he's thinking. He looks up at me, eyes wide, and asks, "So, what now?"

We walk into the shabby building at the end of the docks together. Ten is awkward as ever on land, and the clip clip of his talons on the wood as he waddles along makes me snort, which in turn makes him more indignant.

"I'm injured," he announces.

I pull out the Pokedex and produce the statistics, which say otherwise. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen his health this high before. "Since when were you in the two hundreds?"

"Since never." Ten squints. "Is that a glitch?"

"No idea." I shrug, pushing open the door, which whines with age. The inside of the ferry registration smells like fish and chum. Worms for bait sit on one counter loaded with fishing supplies, while a disgruntled woman in glasses sits behind another with a laptop and more papers than you could shake Ten's recently absent stick at. Sailors sit at benches around the room, half-shouting about their latest trials at sea.

I approach the woman and hold out my ticket.

She looks up with her lip curled. "S. S. Aqua finished boarding fifteen minutes ago. They'll be leaving right now, I'd wager."

"Well, Ten, you know what we have to do."

"What?" Ten asks, stressing his fake British accent more than ever. I just laugh and give the woman a thumbs up, then run past the door to her right and out onto the pier. Sure enough, the boat's engine is starting now, but the massive thing hasn't gained any kind of momentum yet. Even putting cruising speed ahead of Ten's flight abilities, we should still have time to jump for it. "Oh no."

"Oh yes." I say. "Come on. We don't have that much time."

Ten's signature enthusiasm rushes back and he opens his wings, flapping into a take off and grabbing me with his talons just past the armpits, so that I'm suspended in a position twice if not thrice as bad as Morty's accursed Drifbloom put me in.

Luckily, it doesn't last long, because just seconds later Ten and I are falling across the deck in the second worst landing of the day. Several confused trainers turn, aghast, and one even helps me up. A man in uniform walks over. "Madam, did you just hijack our boat? If you don't have a ticket, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to-"

I hold up my ticket and he falls silent, backing slowly away.

"Ha." I say, "Man, we're so on top of things. Should I get the team out?"

"Does this count as a contained area? If so, I dunno if Pisces will fit."

I send out the rest of the team, seeing as he has a point. Reginae, Minerva, and Fang all appear in a semicircle around us, all looking far more alert than they did in the hotel.

"So, how did... Morty go?" Reginae asks, purposefully trailing off to avoid the entire middle of the question.

"Terribly. Can't you tell?" asks Minerva.

"I don't know. Maybe I don't like prying into Ashley's mind, unlike someone we all know." Reginae says, flicking his antennae with a scoff in Minerva's general direction.

Minerva snarls, "I'm not prying. It's part of our team bond. Maybe I'm just a lot closer to her."

"We're not having this argument, not now and not ever." I inform them. "It happened and now it's over. I think that we should probably find our cabin."

"Wait!" cries Minerva, tails wagging in delight as she probes the stream of uncomfortable memories the incident brings to mind, "Don't tell me you told him off after he came to give you flowers. You're brutal, absolutely brutal."

"Ashley. You are the worst partner ever." Reginae adds, dropping his quarrel with Minerva to tag team me (thanks Reginae, I appreciate it).

"Okay, you can talk when you have experience with committed relationships." I say, looking around at the children in the pool staring at my Pokemon, as well as the parents by the pool, who are staring at me. Semi-champion or not, when someone's talking to their Pokemon in a public area, they're either a hardcore trainer or completely nuts. Judging by the looks I'm getting, I'm guessing I give off 'completely nuts' way more than 'hardcore trainer', although that also might be the conversation's fault. "We need to get out of here. I'm sure there's a cabin with our name on it, or at least Elm's name on it."

"Ashley Elm," peeps Fang, his sing-song voice unbearable.

"I'm not taking his last name. My mom can do whatever she wants, but as far as I'm concerned I'm an independent woman now." I say, hands defiantly set on my hips.

"You're fourteen." Minerva retorts.

"But I don't live in her house!"

"You don't have a permanent residence." Minerva chimes in.

"The road is a permanent residence. We can settle down after we've saved the world, if there still are mountainside cottages far away from any people after Red tries to bring about the apocalypse."

Okay, now the civilians are definitely staring at me.

"Cabin. Now." I say, hurrying the team along, and they finally oblige. We clamor down the steps together with varying degrees of success. "Pokemon friendly" or not, Reginae trips over everything. Eventually we give up and just start using the ramps and elevators instead, though it still takes us forever to get to our cabin. I swipe my card again and the door clicks open, revealing a sparsely decorated room with a bed and a shelf with various mementos that a sign hanging beneath the display informs me may be purchased in the gift shop.

"Nice place," I say, sitting down on the edge of the bed and watching the wall as my team files in. "Seeing as we should get there before night, I don't know why they have a bed, but still, pretty nice."

"You know, going off of earlier..." Fang says with a wry grin.

I don't really want to go off of anything from earlier, so I sag into the bed and pull out my Pokegear. Morty hasn't sent me any messages and I don't have Lance's number, so I text my mom Hi mom!!! Love you, sorry we couldn't talk earlier. I'll send you pictures from Kanto- it's supposed to be beautiful this time of year. :) Having a great time on my journey.

I think of putting something like 'Love, Your Daughter', like it's a letter instead of a text, or like I'm actually her daughter. My mom was blown up with the rest of the universe two years ago.

Pushing that out of my mind, I scroll down as if to convince myself that I have friends and find the only other registered user in the 'gear is Ethan.

This job is going to make me sick.

"Ashley, what do you think?" Fang pipes up, and I drop the Pokegear on the floor, startled.

"Uh, what? Okay, I-" I scramble to pick it up and put it safely back in my pocket, heart still racing. "Sorry, I wasn't paying much attention."

Reginae gives me the are-you-okay face and I give him the sure face back, which does nothing to convince him.

"We were just discussing couples." Fang says with a toothy smile, lying on top of Minerva's back. "Reginae says he's not interested anymore, and Ten's waiting on someone, so that just leaves Minerva, Pisces, and I..."

"I think we're all dying alone." Minerva yawns

"Maybe you guys, but personally? I'm a total stud." Fang says. "Someone find me a golden garbage can, because this Umbreon's a-"

"Extra shiny piece of trash?" suggests Minerva, turning her gaze upwards.

"You know it." Fang cuffs her over the ear. She shoots embers back at him, and he gasps in surprise before rolling off her back.

"My old team was nothing but couples." I tell them. "Any time we went anywhere, you had Sky and Khrys, Dill and Toxis, and Bronze and Lilly. That was just how it worked for half the journey. I'm not going to lie, I've always liked that you all seem to spread the love around a bit. Makes us feel like a team, y'know?"

"True, and now you don't have to think about how much better along your Pokemon are in the romance department." Minerva is a beast today. She licks her paw, but she's looking right at me, red eyes full of mirthful, devilish glee.

"I'll have you know Morty and I were an official couple in that timeline. He kissed me, right before it was over." I brag, but it comes out more as desperation than anything.

"Really? If it was the last Morty, then... does our Morty not remember any of it?" Reginae asks.

"No," I admit. "That... that would be the problem."

Reginae's giving me the face again. I sit with my arms crossed, listening to the distant swell of the ocean, and praying that we don't have another sea disaster. It's on the minds of my older members as well, but beneath it all, I can feel something soft pulsing in Reginae's mind- Rose.

There's a knocking at the door, sent from up above to relieve the tension. Fang rushes to the door and throws himself against it, tail wagging. Sometimes I forget he's just a big, snarky dog.

I open the door and find a ten year old, about half my height, grinning at me with Pokeball in hand. "Are you a Trainer, miss?"

"How did you find me?" I ask.

"Your cabin is marked open for challengers. You sign up for it at registration, dummy." He looks me up and down with intense distaste. "You're not Professor Elm though. Man, I was hoping to see some real rare Pokemon."

I didn't know Elm did recreational battling. I muse.

He does but he's not good at it. I've seen him practicing with some other lab Pokemon. He's got no idea what he's doing. Reginae informs me. It's got to be the longest, clearest message we've ever gotten to each other, but given our recent progress, it's not too surprising. What's more of a shock is just how comfortable he looks...

The kid's staring at me. I force a fake smile, hoping I don't look completely out of my mind. "If you want to see some rare Pokemon, you're in for a treat, kid. Reginae, go!"

Reginae steps past me into the hall.

"Nibbles, wreck 'em up!" The youngster sends forth a well-groomed Raticate, its teeth filed down to short, sharp blades.

I pick up my Pokedex and-

Level 40?

"You have a level forty Raticate?" I exclaim.

"Yeah, get with the program. Nibbles, Crunch!"

Reginae takes it to the neck, and though his health bar doesn't go down all too far. A quick Petal Dance embeds itself in half the lights in the hall but manages to dispatch the Raticate, which falls back, fur windblown and back full of petals.

"Pox, go!" He sends out an Arbok at a similar level.

"Ten!" I yell, and my fearless Noctowl takes to the sky.

The Extrasensory misses, or else Ten just can't get a grip on it. I reach out and find his mind is strange, as if full of static. He tenses in confusion, as if he's not sure what he's doing himself, and the Arbok sends out a volley of poisonous barbs. Several wedge themselves into his stomach, and he falls to the ground. Critical.

"Ten, do you need to go out?"

He's not listening to me.

Ten flares his wings out wide and I half expect him to use Fly, but that's not what he's doing at all. A bright energy focuses in the curve created between them, right in front of his beak, and he spews out a stream of blue fire.

The Arbok doesn't stand a chance. It closes its eyes and a strangely ecstatic look crosses its face as it bows and succumbs to the blaze.

"I... didn't know you could use Flamethrower." I say, though it didn't look like any Flamethrower I've ever seen. Flamethrower isn't blue, for one thing. The rest of the team looks just as confused as I do, and several voices flitter through my mind.

What is- I swear I've seen it before somewhere-

Could he really? Looks like I have competition.

Man, that was super badass. What are the chances of me developing fire powers?

"Who?" Ten asks, unaware. "What?"

"You, right there." I say.

"Wow, you can talk to your Pokemon too! This is even cooler than Elm." The whole team turns as the youngster withdraws his Pokemon. "Here, lemme be right back. I'm going to go get my friends. They'll want to fight too." He runs down the hall and up the stairs, leaving us along in the hall.

"Think we can take them?" I ask.

"We just took on the Champion and won. Bring it on." Minerva laughs. I don't bother telling her that the two Pokemon who actually handled the Champion are both too big for the corridor and one of them is off limits anyways. I'm half certain by the look in her eyes that she thinks she defeated the entire gauntlet herself.

"That was crazy, though. Blue fire?! Ten, where did you learn to do that?" asks Fang.

"I- erm- no clue." Ten says. "I'm not feeling too well. Do you mind if I sit the next few out?"

"Sure," I say. "We need to figure out what's going on here, though. This could be important."

Our team conference is cut off by an onslaught of ten-to-twelve year olds, all brandishing Pokeballs. I throw my hands up. "Okay, okay- one at a time."

***

I'm halfway through my fifth battle when we hear a dinging from up above.

"This is your captain speaking. We'll be arriving at our destination shortly," says the intercom. "We ask that all passengers prepare for departure. Thank you for riding the S. S. Aqua, and have a nice day."

"I gotta go find my parents." says the girl challenging me before withdrawing her Clefairy and running off with the rest of the kids.

I heal my team up. They're no worse for wear, if anything, having a few easy fights has just helped us get back into the groove of it. Ten is standing by my side- he hasn't moved the entire time we've been battling. I'm more than a little worried for him.

"You want to check out the top deck?" I ask the team, eye on Ten. He nods reluctantly, and we all file back up the elevator and into the open air.

The sea breezes are wonderful. My hair flies up and the salty, moist air is thick and exotic on my tongue. Even though I grew up on a city on the water, I've seen little of the open sea, save for during the Whirl Islands debacles, neither of which were times for sightseeing.

To my left and right, I can see Mantines splashing in the surf out on either side of us, their broad forms sailing over the water and wind both. However, the real view lies out in front. Vermillion City shines like a jewel on the horizon, the silver buildings like spires rising high into the heavens. The sunset makes everything glimmer in refracted rainbows, their muted colors in contrast the deep, crimson red of the sun glowing on the highest spires. Spare clouds line the horizon on either side, speckled with the black silhouettes of bird Pokemon soaring the area.

I grip the railings, looking into the distance in awe. "Wow," I breathe, "It really is..."

"Vermillion?" Ten suggests.

The team laughs as the boat pulls in, and the sun slinks the last inches out of the color-soaked sky.


(A/N: eight days im screaming

We're also coming up on the one-year anniversary of this story. 6k reads and 60 parts later, this fanbase is just as strong as ever. Have I mentioned I love you guys? I love you guys. By the way, if you're a silent reader, please remember to comment below occasionally :o It does wonders for the author (hi), my characters are always willing to answer questions, and most importantly I just love hearing from my regular readers ^^. It's so encouraging.)

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