Misty released a pleasant sigh as she towelled off her damp her. The dirt, grime and sweat that had accumulated on her skin on the way to Vermillion City finally being washed clean and making her feel less yuck.
She wasn't a girly girl like any of her sisters, but that didn't mean she liked smelling utterly rank and covered in grime for long periods of time.
…And it had been a long, long time.
They'd been in Vermillion City two days now she'd only just now had the time to wash up.
'That damn mutt.' Misty's eyes narrowed in annoyance and she clicked her tongue.
Her travelling companions newest pokemon, well, one of two newest pokemon.
Riolu, and according to Jord, a super rare and powerful line of pokemon. And perhaps one of the most annoying pokemon she'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with.
And a little battle loving annoyance. It literally picked out Ash before ever hatching from its egg and some other nonsense about it refusing to hatch until it found someone on its wave length or whom impressed it.
That being Ash apparently.
'Honestly, how does that even make sense, how can you refuse to be freaking born?' Misty scoffed, shaking her head.
It was so stupid.
What was even stupider was that it hatched just as she was going to go for a bath finally….yesterday.
And then upon hatching, the stupid thing had literally broken the window to their assigned bedroom, jumped out and rushed off out of the city to pick fights with all of the wild pokemon around.
Literally seconds after being born, it was already craving for a fight, and if that didn't say enough about Riolu then Misty didn't know what did.
They chased it around for an entire freaking day.
Before finally cornering halfway up a mountain range hours from the city, where it was fighting an Onix…and promptly got pasted by it.
Because an Onix wasn't some unexpecting little Rattata.
Of course, that was when they arrived on the scene and Ash wasted no time in pasting that Onix right back with his Scizor.
Which Ash then promptly captured.
Because as if he didn't have enough pokemon already. Was he trying to compete with Jord or something? Between the two of those idiots they could field an army. Jord had apparently caught a bunch of Meowth and a Persian on the way to Vermillion City and everything.
Crazy.
But either way, that was how her last two days had passed. Ash got a new super rare pokemon to go along with all the other rare pokemon he had, like his Scizor, Charmander, Bulbasaur and Squirtle.
And that last one rankled her a bit. Because sure, it was fine Ash caught one, she didn't begrudge him getting one over her, but there was five of them!
And just as she was about to make her move on them and try and get one to join her, freaking Officer Jenny had decided to butt in and claim them as the new firefighters of her town.
'Lady don't be so damn cheap, get an actual firefighter squad, don't just throw pokemon at it!' Misty huffed, rolling her eyes and towelled her hair particularly roughly at the thought.
She was utterly exhausted and just wanted to crawl into her bed and hibernate for the next forever.
First, she had to dry off and get changed though. Which was why precisely she had brought her clothes into the bathroom with her. Hopefully they weren't damp.
She wasn't exactly going to walk out into the room where Ash and Brock were just in her towel after all.
Ash alone would more or less be fine, even after over a month with him, she hadn't caught him checking her out once, nor any other girl for that matter. In fact, the only things that seemed to go on in his head were battling, eating, training and gym badges.
He was a wholly simple guy, even if he could do with having his head deflate for a bit, you'd think after Jord beat both Pikachu and Scizor with his Fearow, he would have learned some humility, but nope, he was as hyped up on himself as usual.
No, rather than Ash, Brock was the problem. Brock who seemed to flirt with anything with a pulse and was female. The amount of times she had to drag him away from a girl he saw and immediately rushed over to flirt with was insane.
And possibly the most annoying part of it all, was just how terrible he was at it. He came on really hard, but at the same time tried to be subtle with metaphors and stuff and it was just sad to watch.
The fact he couldn't draw any interest from girls despite being a young, successful gym leader that was pretty good looking and in great shape, showed how bad he was at talking to girls.
"I could totally do that!"
Misty perked up as she heard Ash shout.
"No way," Brock laughed, "That's insane. I've no idea how he even did that. Look at that the size of that Gyarados. And then what he did to that Dragonite, what kind of thing can lay out a Dragonite like that?"
Where they watching some kind of battle of something? Maybe a pro match. Though the only famous person that came to mind that used a Dragonite was Champion Lance, and he had a Gyarados as well.
Was he fighting someone with really powerful pokemon?
'Typical Ash, thinking he can compete with someone that can take on Lance.' Misty rolled her eyes.
"I mean, look at this, let me scroll back," Brock said, "There, are you telling me you'd seriously do this?"
"You think you're tough cuz you're a Dragonite mate? I've met a Bellsprout that could clap you!"
Misty froze.
That voice, she recognised it.
It was quite familiar after all.
She had her tongue down the throat of the owner of that voice just the other day after all.
"Look at this, he's choking out a Dragonite, I've never seen something so insane, and that's taking into account what he did just a minute before to that Gyarados." Brock added.
Misty blinked slowly.
"I mean, he knows what he's doing there, but that's not what I mean," Ash protested, "I'm talking about how strong he needs to do to do that, I'm definitely tough enough to do it."
"I'll believe it when I see it," Brock laughed, "Should we go looking for some Gyarados and give you the chance to pick one up?"
Jord…a Dragonite and a Gyarados?
And Ash and Brock seemed to be watching it on a video?
'What?' Misty stared ahead blankly for a moment.
She was completely lost.
None of that computed at all.
A burning curiosity forming in her gut, Misty opted to ignore her night clothes for the moment and approached the bathroom door, unlocking it and clicking it open just enough to peer outside and see what was going on.
Thankfully, they were on the other side of the room, looking away from the bathroom door and crowded around the computer.
And she did mean crowded, that was for sure.
Not only were Ash and Brock at it, Pikachu was sitting on the table beside the computer, Riolu was bouncing up and down excitedly in Ash's lap and Scizor stood at Ash's right side, slightly behind him, crimson metal arms crossed and staring intently at the computer screen as well.
Some things never changed it seemed. Ash always had Scizor out when he could. Scizor was his go to pokemon besides Pikachu.
She peered passed them, looking at the computer screen and the first thing she saw was a familiar logo.
Pokevision.
It was a video website, incredibly popular where pokemon lovers from all over the world posted videos, ranging from cooking with pokemon, to battles, to sports and even sometimes crazy things that go super viral, like an incredibly rare pokemon.
If someone ever caught a glimpse of a legendary pokemon on video, it was generally uploaded to Pokevision and went totally viral, millions of views within a day easy.
Apparently content creators on Pokevision could even get paid, and those who got absurd amounts of views could even earn a ton.
Misty stared at the logo for a moment.
Before closing the door.
She saw enough to find out herself now.
With that thought in mind, the orange haired girl quickly finished off drying her body and pulling on her night clothes.
Even if it was just the afternoon.
When she was done pulling the clothes on, she turned to the sink, where she'd left a rather recent item she'd bought.
A Cross Transceiver.
She wasn't really all that tech savvy, and had only bought it because…well, Jord had given her his number to get in contact with him if needed.
Which was how she called him the other day when Riolu hatched and went awol, the little nuisance.
She was still puzzling her way through learning how to work the damn thing, but she at least knew how to get on to Pokevision with it.
…Because it came with a Pokevision app pre-installed.
But semantics!
She wasn't looking for long.
In fact, she didn't look at all. Misty found exactly what she was looking for, on the first video generally in the tabs where viral videos were recommended to Pokevision viewers.
It was uploaded only last night, less than 20 hours ago, by someone called T Snapp.
It had over six million views already. What the hell?
Blankly, Misty brought the video up and hit play.
It opened up simple enough, a guy with curly brown hair smiling at the camera and explaining how he was in Cinnabar Island to capture video footage and photos of Pokemon dwelling around the volcano, fire types in general were one of the rarer types of pokemon after all.
He walked around for a few minutes, showing off the sights on video and how the town on the island looked during the evening, it was a pretty nice looking place, almost like a tropical island.
But as he approached the Pokemon Centre, a roar sounded on the camera, a terrifyingly familiar roar.
She still had nightmares about her Sisters Gyarados sometimes.
T Snapp, unlike her who would have avoided such a roar, ran towards it, eager for some footage.
Only to arrive just in time to see a massive Gyarados towering over a young before, before shooting down towards him, gaping maw open, massive fangs gleaming.
Misty's heart leapt into her throat and her eyes widened in horror, even as T Snapp shouted out a warning when he saw what was happening.
Only to be cut off mid sentence as the young boy reached up and grasped the Gyarados' fangs as it barreled into him and smashed him into the ground hard.
Where he lay for only a few moments, before heaving and lifting the Gyarados up into the air over his head!
Misty gaped as Jord on video slammed the huge leviathan into the ground bodily, and promptly headbutted it into submission.
Jord then reached for his belt, where his pokeballs were, only for a Dragonite of all things to burst out of one of them and attack him as well.
Only for Jord to kick its legs out from under it, punch it, and get it into a chokehold, absolutely looking like he was man handling the huge dragon pokemon vaunted for its near legendary strength and prowess in battle.
Gyarados submitted.
Dragonite submitted.
And then he grasped a third pokeball and released a Blastoise!
Which promptly submitted as well.
Only then, just as T Snapp was about to approach Jord when things calmed down a bit, the screen went dark, and opened up with T Snapp's face and an apologetic smile as he told everyone his camera had ran out of power.
Misty's mind was utterly empty.
"…What?" she uttered blankly to herself.
When did Jord catch a Gyarados?
….Or a Dragonite for that matter? Gyarados werne't that rare in the ocean, but where in the hell did he find a Dragonite!?
And a Blastoise as well!
'Wait!' Misty's eyes widened a bit and her thoughts shifted away from that crazy video.
He'd told her before, multiple times now, that he knew where a gathering of the Blastoise line was, a bunch of Squirtle and Wartortle, and he even offered her one.
She thought he was joking. You could buy a small house from selling a single Squirtle. Who would give that to some girl even if they were interested in him?
Had he actually already went and captured them all!?
Common sense didn't seem to apply to him.
Or Ash for that matter.
But more him.
'How the hell did he actually find that place?' she wondered. He'd told her of the Blastoise and its group way back in Pewter City. And he wasn't from Kanto.
Wait, did he fly to Kanto or come by boat? Had he even mentioned that to her before?
"Ugh." Misty groaned, palming her face and shaking her head. She could feel a headache coming up and she was still having trouble digesting the crazy stuff he just did on video as well.
Not to mention he seemed to be bleeding pretty badly in the video.
Her eyes widened as that thought occurred.
And she promptly closed the Pokevision app, though not before seeing the top comment on the video.
With over a hundred thousand likes.
'Fake and gay!' - commented by…Smell You Later.
Misty quickly pulled up her contacts, and went down to one of the few on the list of…four.
Really only her sisters and Jord.
And quickly video called him.
It only rang three times before it answered, "Oh hey Misty, what's up?" Jord answered as the screen lit up, displaying the younger boy. He seemed to be in some form of forest, and with the way he was holding the phone up she could see over his shoulder and noticed there were holes all over the forest clearing he was in, and a large pile of some kind of rocks that reached all the way up to his chest in height, "Actually, funny story, I was just thinking about you."
"…You were?" Misty was caught flatfooted before she could grill him for answers and check he was okay.
"Well, you with black hair and in a skimpy string leotard swimsuit, but still you more or less!" he happily replied.
…What?