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“ Sooo? How’s it going? Have you made any friends yet?”
Max barely suppresses a face when there’s a loud smashing sound behind him, followed by his new tag along’s panicked heartfelt apologies. He just steps aside so that May can catch a glance of his blonde travelling companion spasming around the knocked over display with all the grace of a flustered taillow.
Which is to say, absolutely none.
Bonnie is ten years old. She laughs like a mightyena and sings incessantly at any little thing with a voice that sounds nice enough but will forever be ever so slightly out of tune. She wears a onesie to bed without shame and can and will stop to admire and coo over any and all pokemon that catch her eye. There’s a tiny powerhouse of a dedenne on her shoulder and a tyranaton in a pokeball around her belt.
She’s loud, and funny, and prone to random bursts of theatrics.
She also keeps the legendary embodiment of balance in her purse.
…. She calls it Squishy
(But Max doesn't know that yet.)
He steps to the side so his sister can see.
May wipes at her eyes, offering him one of her big watery smiles. It almost sets Max off panicking- because Max lives off being prepared for the worst and tears almost always mean trouble- but then the older girl opens up her mouth and all concern leaves Max as quickly as it comes.
"Awww, my little baby brother has gone and grown up and gotten himself a girlfriend!"
"What!?" Max sputters, face red and eyes lighting up with a flare of anger, just like when Pikachu was about to set off an electric shock after being handled too roughly, "she's not my- May!"
His older sister starts singing some incessant song, and Max glares and covers the speakers up with both his hands.
"It's not like that, you big dweeb!"
May just laughs.
"Oh! Oh! Wait until I tell Mom!'
"There's nothing to tell her about!"
May’s eyes widen and then her expression settles into a truly evil smirk.
"Wait until I tell Brock-"
Max feels all the colour drain out of his face. Everyone knows that Brock had the worst reactions to finding out all his younger friends had partnered up, mostly because he was still stuck dramatically proposing to random girls he didn’t know in dramatic over top ways and dramatically failing miserably almost every time.
"You wouldn't dare-"
May laughs again, although it wouldn’t be too out of place to call it a cackle, and Max fumes for a moment before feeling his own evil smirk crawl over his face.
“If you tell anyone that I have a girlfriend- which is not true, by the way- I’ll tell Ash you had a crush on him.”
It was May’s turn to go white as a sheet.
“What- Max! No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“YES!”
“NO!”
“YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYE-”
“NONONONONONONONONONO-”
“What’s going on?”
Both he and May jump about a foot in the air with Bonnie’s sudden appearance. The blonde’s face is settled in an eager curious mask, but Max knows her well enough by now that he can see the humour in her eyes, and knows she totally snuck up on them on purpose.
He sticks his tongue out at her. She grins back.
May makes a little harrumph noise at the back of her throat in impatience. Making a show of reluctance about it, Max drags the younger girl forward so that she’s in front of the screen besides him and says, “Bonnie, this is my stupid sister. She’s terrible: don’t listen to a single thing she says. Stupid sister, this is my friend, Bonnie.”
May grins, leans in so that her entire face takes up the screen.
“Hi, Bonnie! Don’t listen to my brother. My name’s May and I’m absolutely amazing-” .
“Not,” mutters Max under his breath, but the speakers must manage to pick his voice up anyways because his sister hears him, her head snapping in his direction with a fast forming glare..
“Am too!
“Are not!”
“Am too!”
“Nu-uh!”
“Yu-huh!”
“Nu-uh”
“Yu-”
“Hey!” says Bonnie, interrupting again, her eyes wide where they had been narrowed in thought, “Aren’t you a Top Coordinator? The really young one who won a couple of years ago?”
May grins at being recognized, clapping her hands together before pointing at the younger girl.
“Yes! That’s me! Pretty cool, huh?”
"Totally!! This is so cool! Just wait till I tell my older brother, he's gonna be so jealous I got to meet you! We watched all your shows!”
“No way! That’s so awesome! Which one was your favouri-”
Max interrupts before the two of them get too engrossed in the conversation, clears his throat and gestures wildly to capture their attention. May pouts, Bonnie turns expectantly towards him, and Max flounders for something to say before being saved by Nurse Jenny calling out their names.
“Our pokemon are waiting for us, so we better get going, May…”
They say their goodbyes, rushed take care’s and keep in touch’s, and May throws him a kiss and Max makes a point of making sure she sees him wipe it off his face even as Bonnie waves madly besides him with a grin.
They run across each other by complete accident, both of them pursuing adventure in a mysterious cave that the nearby village had been calling cursed. What follows is an epic journey that involves no less than three Pokemon battles, running away from a herd of angry beedrill, and a lost psyduck with a massive migraine and a temper to match.
There’s nothing like a life-threatening experience to form a friendship of the ages.
Afterwards, the two of them are laying in some meadow of long green grass. They're both panting hard, sweat clammy on their foreheads and cheeks flushed from running and only slightly delirious relieved laughter, and Bonnie giggles, turns to him with a split lip, and grins.
"Hi!" she says, "I'm Bonnie! Some day, huh?"
The psyduck besides them, not yet returned to its owner, clutches it's head and groans.
Max smiles back, chest still heaving from exertion and scraped knees starting to make themselves known. He feels more at ease than he has in a long time.
“Max. And you can say that again.”
Bonnie just grins wider.
“ Some day, huh?”
And they both chuckle, more out of sheer relief than anything actually humorous, but present nonetheless.
They drop the psyduck back off where it belongs, reassure the village leader that everyone is safe, and head off their separate ways soon after.
Except, they run into each other again soon after, the next town over. They’re both competing in the gym, and it only makes sense to cheer each other on.
And then they do it again, all but crashing into each other by the city gates. They smile in greeting at the familiar face and get lunch together. And really, after the third time they bump into each other, it almost seems ridiculous to not travel together. So the next thing Max knows his once silent days of soft companionship with his pokemon are suddenly filled with sunny chatter and inane singsong near twenty four seven, with a human presence to help set up camp with and point out different constellations in the stars.
Max has tried travelling companions before. Has made rivals and made acquaintances and made friends. But he’s awkward and a bit of a know it all and his temper cuts quick and fast once you start the fuse, a lifetime of sibling rivalry under his belt. He crams his nose into stuff he shouldn't and getting himself into a jam is a semi-weekly occurrence, and, well, most travellers aren’t really up for that.
It usually doesn’t last.
And it doesn’t help that no matter who he travels with, it's a struggle not to compare them to Ash. Ash who is so… intense. Who has this passion inside of him that burns like wildfire and can be incredibly silly but also incredibly wise. Ash, who attracts trouble like a magnet and makes impossible situations somehow work for him. Ash, who is special, who is important, who was everything Max wanted to be when he was younger.
Now, Max just wants to be Max, but he’s not sure who that is yet.
Now, Max looks out to the world and everyone is just so normal. Normal, and slow, and unexciting. Max encountered living breathing myths, once. It is hard to take his journey and hold it up as worthy and good when compared to that.
But Bonnie… Bonnie is different.
Bonnie is just so- big. Not in size, she’s actually rather short, but in heart. In spirit. She steps in and the attention gets pulled to her like a moth to a flame. She’s got this fierce sort of protective love in her veins for life and friendship and pokemon, especially pokemon, and that’s always going to be something Max can respect.
It’s late, the stars peeking out their weary heads. Bonnie snores in her sack, partially splayed on the ground with Dedenne curled up in the hollow of her neck.
It looks ridiculous, and he finds the energy to snort at her, weekly.
He’s shaking, leftover adrenaline from a dream he can’t quite grasp. The nightmares aren’t as common as they used to be, when they were just home from the road and his mom and dad would trade worried glances over his head. They’re still more common than he wants them to be.
Max breathes, breathes-
Glances back at Bonnie.
“What do you think?” he murmurs to Treeko, who croons with a smirk and wacks him lightly with his tail.
Treeko has kept him company for many of these long solitary nights, here and in Hoenn. Max has learned by now to trust his senses.
He smiles.
“Yeah, I think this’ll be good, too.”
(Bonnie steps into his life with flyaway blonde hair and this sort of vivacity to her that’s different still from anything he’s felt before, and Max doesn’t even remember to compare her to Ash until three routes over.)
Bonnie’s Dedenne rushes to and fro all around them, scrambles up its trainer’s pant leg to nuzzle her cheek and then gives a flying leap so that it can give Max a shock and toss him a stink eye.
Bonnie says that it’s just Dedenne’s way of expressing affection.
Bonnie is a dirty lying liar who lies.
The small mouse pokemon has it out for him. The other night, Max woke up to find the creature standing over him in his sleep, glaring, rubbing its little paws together and very clearly plotting his demise.
Telling Bonnie this does not cede any results.
“You’re being overdramatic.”
Max points at her, gesticulating wildly.
“You! Are a biased party!”
Luckily, Max has his own form of protection. Kirlia has taken to balancing on his shoulders and using telekinesis to block any sudden Dedenne attacks. Kirlia is overprotective to the points of extreme, most of the time, but in this case it is rather useful.
Max allows it. He can’t deny that it’s nice, walking the trails with his friends by his side.
“Shuppet! Shadow ball!”
“Tyrantrum! Block it using Dragon Tail!”
The two moves meet with an explosion.
(There tends to be quite a few explosions, whenever they fight.)
Max grinds his teeth together, lifting an arm to shade his glasses from the smoke and grime. Bonnie, across the way, is beaming, bouncing on her toes. Shuppet wavers in midair before steadying itself, glancing back at Max.
What should he do? Tyrantrum is huge, and Shuppet has already taken a couple of hits-
“If you’re not gonna make a move, we will! Tyrantrum! Crunch!”
A roar, and then several tons of mass is charging forwards. He wonders, briefly, if Tyrantrum is still upset that Shuppet hid all its pokechow during lunch.
“Dodge it!” he yells, loudly, but too little too late. The move lands and his pokemon goes down, ending the battle.
There’s cheering from the other end of their make-do battle field as Bonnie celebrates with her pokemon, but Max only has ears for Shuppet, who comes to with a groan. Battling is a new thing for them: it much prefers to pull pranks than throw itself into fights.
The loss was more Max’s fault anyways: he got too lost in his own head, thinking strategies instead of acting on them.
But still, he holds on tight, feeling the slight wavering intangibility of his friend. “Hey,” he says, and smiles. “You did good, Shuppet!”
It’s true. And they’ll get stronger yet.
They live, they grow. Treecko evolves into Grovyle during a gym battle, and Max feels powerful for it, stronger and brighter and him and him and him.
“Look at you!” he says, and practically beams as Grovyle preens, pawing at the dirt and lifting its head high.
This is his partner. His partner. They’ve been working for so long, and now they’re so much stronger than they once were. When they had first started travelling in Hoen, Max had dreams about taking on the league in between conducting his research. He had thought it would be cool.
But Treeko had lost his first battle, even with Max trying to apply all he’d learned about strategy and type matchups, and it had come with a foreboding sensation that this wasn’t what he was meant to do. That he was trying to mimic someone who didn’t exist.
He stopped taking on the Hoenn league after that. Focused on his research. Shuppet and Kirlia joined him as he went his solitary path, and he thinks they’re amazing, he’s so glad they’re friends, that they’re here with him, now, but- but it still hadn’t felt right.
May had suggested Kalos. Max had agreed.
And now he’s here, he’s here, and Grovyle and him are growing stronger together with his other pokemon by his side, and his new friend, and it’s not quite right but it feels good.
It feels good.
Bonnie catches a feebas, and he cheers while she does it, fishing rod flying high in the air and a quick battle balanced on top of an unsteady sea.
"That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen," he teases. Bonnie scowls at him and coddles it like a Lillipup, sticking her tongue out.
Feebas, for its part, slaps him in the face with its fin.
(He supposes he rather deserves it.)
She’s doing the thing that she does sometimes, when something is very clearly bothering her but she’s cramming it down deep, deep inside. Max watches Bonnie and doesn’t know how to ask.
Squishy stays close, shooting concerned looks. He wonders why.
That night, when his companion’s breath hisses between her teeth and she gets up, near silent, for a walk around the campground, Max stays exactly where he is. He stares up at the universe above his head and is overwhelmed by how big it is, how huge. There is so much ahead of them, really, and it makes him feel small and dark in comparison.
Bonnie slips back into her sleeping bag in the early pre-dawn light. She’ll be all smiles come morning.
Max helps an injured Amaura escape from a hunter’s trap, wraps its wounds as best as he can with all his lingering memories of Brock’s steady hands. Bonnie shrieks in outrage at the poachers and her pokemon answer to her call.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and the pokemon groans, gnashing its teeth. It’s eyes are wide and blotted out, flank heaving.
Their adventures usually aren’t as grand as this. They don’t usually get up to ‘Ash-Levels,’ as he has taken to calling it in his brain. Smaller occurrences, little things? Yes. But this…?
“Just a little longer, just a little longer-”
“Max!” Bonnie yells, hair getting in her eyes, surrounded. Squishy hasn’t revealed itself yet, still hidden away in her purse, and he takes that as a sign that they can handle this.
They can handle this.
Max reaches for his pokeball, and Kirlia comes out fighting, twisting to his friend’s side. Grovyle comes out, too, and starts helping him break apart chains.
There is adrenaline thrumming under his skin, there is something growing inside his chest-
(He wonders if this is what it’s like to be Ash.)
Moments later, the dinosaur pokemon is freed, limping heavily but stubbornly blasting out ice. Max joins the fray properly, and they hold back the poachers until reinforcements come.
Officer Jenny looks a strange mix of impressed and worried at all the electrical burns Dedenne manages to leave behind. Amaura, its small soft sails flipping through every colour of the rainbow, makes it rather clear it would like to come with him by biting onto his arm and refusing to let go, and even through the pain Max agrees wholeheartedly.
He has never been good at letting go of friends.
(He dreams, sometimes, of his friend encased in stone. There is always a bitter part of him that curses the unfair reality that he only had a few days with his starry companion and then it was gone.)
Both of them don’t quite make the cut for the Performances or the League, and neither of them are particularly disappointed about this, even if there is that sharp sting of not being good enough, even if they’re both surprised by the lack of a sense of loss.
It wasn’t for them. Max felt too much like he was trying to step into somebody else’s shoes, be it Ash or his sister or even his past expectations of self. Bonnie calls her brother, in the aftermath, and he catches a glimpse of the unfamiliar space of the Lumiose City Gym. He wonders if she feels the same.
They are standing in a clearing, much like the one where they met. Kirlia is dancing with Shuppet, floating and intertwining higher and higher into the air. Grovyle is balancing on Tyrantrum’s head, Dedenne chittering away as Squishy sunbathes on a rock. In the weedy pond they rest besides, Feebas splashes in the water.
“Where do you think we should go next?” Bonnie doesn’t look at him. Just looks at the sky. Max thinks he likes the fact that there is no question to it: this next step of the journey is one to be taken together, not apart.
“Anywhere we want!” he says, and there’s something brightening in his chest. Something about the journey, the thought of that road ahead of them never ending, sinks into his skin and makes him feel light. “Think of all the new pokemon we could study!”
Laughter, light and reminiscent, and Bonnie suggests Sinnoh and Max doesn’t disagree.
They crash into Mimo quite literally, the younger girl running out of a pokecenter right when they’re running in. She’s got thick braids down to her thighs and fire burning bright in her gaze.
“Did you get attacked too?” she asks, and they nod, frowns set.
There’s a new gang messing around town, brutally assailing trainers and their pokemon. They lure folks into what seems to be a casual battle and then take things way, way too far.
Kirlia’s limp in Max’s arm and Grovyle’s pokeball feels like a weight on his belt. They trade looks, a thirst for justice roiling in their veins, a cause to do something and do it right. All three of them- though they don’t know it yet- grew up watching a kid with too big a heart in his chest rise up to meet the world again and again and again with a sort of passion and drive that lifts you up and carries you away.
Really, there’s nothing for it.
They spy on the gang and turn in the information to Officer Jenny, helping her take down the group of haughty and dangerous jerks. Max gets a bruised tailbone for his efforts, and a new friend.
(“My little brother is such a charmer!” May flails next time he calls, and he groans into his hands while Mimo and Bonnie exaggeratedly wink and then laugh.)
“I had to get out of Alola,” Mimo explains easily, two days into their trip. She’s balancing on a crumbling stone wall, hands out. Behind her, her new Tepig cheerfully squeals and clops along. “My big brother is so overprotective, and I wanted to prove to him, to everyone, that I could do this! I could be independent! And strong! And as powerful as Wela Volcano!”
“Is that where you got your Marowak? From Alola?” Max peers down at the fascinating regional variant, his fingers itching for a notebook to mark down on all the differences he can see in size and colouring and personality.
“Yeaaaah, he belongs to Kiawe. Here to 'keep an eye on me.' It was the only way he agreed to let me go.”
Bonnie hops up onto the wall, starts precariously walking backwards, hands flailing in excitement. “But now you’re here! And you’re travelling with us! Oh- this is so great. Think of all the new pokemon you’ll see and all the cool battles you’ll get to have-”
“I know! I’m so excited!”
“Den- dedenne!”
“Te-Pig, pig!
Max walks quicker to make sure he’s in position to prevent pokemon and people alike from crashing their skulls open if one of them might tumble. But he’s also smiling, trading fond looks with Grovyle as they walk slowly along. He is not quite as extroverted as the girls, as loud or chatty as they are, but he likes to listen.
He likes being there.
Mimo is all fiery passion and recklessness, throwing herself full heartedly into every which thing. She smiles big and laughs louder, and Max gets rather skilled at putting bandages on skinned knees.
The world is big. It’s so so big. Mimo exclaims in excitement over every new experience and goes through bouts of vicious homesickness. She upholds fire types as the clear superior type, which Bonnie and Max argue fiercely against until all of them are hot headed and glaring, and then laughing because they all look rather ridiculous with their puffed cheeks and beady eyes.
They walk together, talking and sharing and dreaming by one another’s side. Their pokemon scramble about in fields and parks and in forest clearings, playing and training and forming tight and brilliant bonds.
There is something to this, Max thinks, that is unfamiliar and new. For all his travels with Ash and his sister and Brock, he was young, then, the baby of a group. Now he’s travelling with these two girls and they’re his age, they’re his friends, and their goals and plans for the futures are intertwining with his, and there is something to this-
They sit together in the pokecenter and the evening stretches long outside. Bonnie is out, shopping, and Max fumbles for words because his new companion is so rarely quiet. Mimo looks out the window and taps her finger against the table, a steady thrum.
Her vulpix, recently caught, coos and presses to her side. She had been ecstatic, earlier, to find out that the fox-tail pokemon wasn’t an ice type in other regions. Now she seems small and self contained, sinking into herself.
Max licks his lips, runs his own hands over Kirlia’s smooth head. There was a reason, when he was young, that he tended to gravitate towards pokemon rather than fellow children. There was a reason that his journey with Ash and Brock and May had been such a big deal, because they had treated his knowledge as valuable rather than as him showing off.
But still, Mimo is his friend. And he should try.
“Are you okay?”
She glances over at him from the corner of her eye.
“Fine. It’s just- You know. We’re a long way from home. I miss my friends, from back on the islands, and my family. They would have been ecstatic to meet Vulpix.”
Max glances out the window, too. The sun is bleeding orange and red, and the trees seem to be almost set aflame by the glow. Earlier, the evening rush of city traffic had been easy to hear, but it seems to have settled, now.
There is a difference between him and Mimo: Max tasted this sense of adventure young, and grew a hunger for it that hasn’t left him yet. She grew up in a central location and this is the first time she is really stepping outside into the wider world.
But there is a difference, also, between who he was and who he is. There is a difference from who he imagined he’d be when he became a trainer and the person he has become. Sometimes, Max looks back at that little kid who was so sure of who he was growing into and feels a bit nostalgic, feels a bit bittersweet.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I know what you mean.”
Bonnie finds an abandoned turtwig in the woods. All of them are wet and cold, the rain pouring down in torrents, and the nearest pokecenter is miles away. They’ve sacrificed their coats to keep the small pokemon warm- all three of them rushing through the forest and hoping beyond hope they’ll make it- when Max suddenly realizes he recognizes street names from collections of traded emails.
“Wait!” he says, “I know where we can go!”
And the others trust him, so they follow him, and in under an hour they’re dripping water on cheap apartment hallway flooring and knocking on a rundown little door.
It opens almost immediately.
A spiky haired man blinks down at them, looking exhausted as any young person in the midst of their residency might. Still, after only a second, a bewildered smile is growing on his lips.
“Max?”
Despite everything, Max finds himself smiling too.
“Brock. Hi. We uh- we need some help and I remembered you were in town.”
The older man tears his gaze away from Max and focuses on the trembling pokemon hauled up in Bonnie’s grasp, wrapped up in blankets. Mimo’s quiet panting gives way to quiet, furious words, “We found it in the woods, all tied up. It’s been abandoned by it’s trainer.”
They all nod, and Brock is still staring.
Then he sighs, rolls up his sleeves, and pulls Turtwig into his arms. “I suppose I should just be glad it’s not a fire type.” Walking into the apartment, he gestures them to follow, calls out, “Misty, we’ve got company!”
Max frowns. Misty?
Misty turns out to be a young woman around Ash’s age. She looks tired, a pair of sweats and a sports bra, but she smiles readily enough when they enter the living room. Bonnie refuses to leave Turtwig’s side, so she follows Brock through to the kitchen, but Max and Mimo are ordered to stay behind.
“It’ll be okay,” Misty says, “Brock’s the best at this sort of thing.”
Max nods, agreeing. “I know.”
Still, his foot taps an errant beat on the carpet, and he doesn’t blame Mimo in the slightest when she takes Tepig out for a cuddle. Misty sits up, squinting at the younger girl as if trying to place her face. Max can tell the moment she gets it because she snaps her fingers.
“Hey! I remember you! You’re Kiawe’s younger sister!”
Max blinks. “You two know each other?”
But Mimo ignores him, pointing at the older girl in turn. “Huh? Oh- Oh wait! Yeah! You’re Ash’s friend!”
Max turns on the younger girl.
“Wait- you know Ash?”
“ You know Ash!?”
“I travelled with him and my sister in the Hoenn region a few years back-”
“He went to the Pokemon School with my older brother-”
Bonnie appears in the doorway.
“Why are we all talking about Ash?”
“What-”
“You know Ash too!?”
Their exchanges get cut short when Misty starts laughing, looking fond, looking a little sad. “I should have known,” she says, “Ash gets around. He knows just about everybody, these days.”
With no way to refute, they all just nod. Then Bonnie jerks a little, remembering her original purpose of entering the living room, and lets them know that Turtwig is going to make a full recovery.
They’re invited to stay the night while Turtwig recuperates, and they eat themselves silly on Brock’s absolutely delicious homemade dinner. The evening becomes one of traded stories about Ash and his crazy adventures, but also about their own journeys: catching up and catching on. Mimo challenges Brock to a trainer battle in the morning, and then Misty too once it’s revealed she’s the Misty who’s recently been added to the Elite Four lineup. He and Bonnie, of course, clamour for a chance to battle as well.
They sleep on Brock’s floor that night and Turtwig clings to Bonnie like a limpet come morning, much more talkative and alert. They battle in the public battlefield just a few blocks away, and Misty beats all of them consecutively. Gyrados is huge and terrifying, and mega Gyrados even more so. All her pokemon work so well with each other, with their trainer, and Max can see the years of training behind such smooth formations. He realizes, with a start, that he wants that for himself and his partners.
Brock manages to defeat Mimo, the younger girl’s fiery temper getting the best of her. She cradles Marowak in her arms and frowns at the ground. Max can just hear Brock’s voice when he comes up to console her, telling her, “Let your passion drive you forward as a tool of success. Don’t let it overwhelm you. You have to trust your pokemon just as much as they trust you for your partnership to work.”
Mimo nods, something new and determined building in her eyes. “For the power of Wela Volcano!”
And then it’s Max’s turn. Two on two. The energy hums inside of him and Grovyle steps up to the plate.
The battle is fast, fast, fast, and Max almost loses his cool once or twice. Onyx towers above Grovyle, and Toxicroak is a force of speed hard to follow with the naked eye, Kirlia having to do everything it can to stay on track, but he keeps it together, gets the upper hand and comes out with a victory.
It feels a lot like growth. It feels a lot like growing.
(And still, still, Max celebrates his win and wonders if this is where he is supposed to be, what he wants to do. A younger version of himself would be ecstatic, having beaten Brock. Now, he just feels doubt.)
Bonnie, too, comes out a winner against Brock, a success made all the sweeter because Turtwig had insisted on fighting by her side. Their battle ends with a new partnership, a new member to their little group, and Max smiles for her all throughout the following picnic.
Eventually, however, the time to leave comes. Brock hugs Max tight, tells him to keep in touch, and Misty gives them a standing invitation to the Cerulean Gym, whenever they’d like to stop by. It’s a little harder to smile, then, but he still tries.
That night, Bonnie slowly pets Turtwig’s flank and looks up at the sky, frowning. Max prods at her, gently, asking if she’s alright-
“I’m fine,” she says, quiet.
Mimo snores. Max doesn’t say anything.
Bonnie always says that she is fine, and he’s learned not to believe it, not when he can see the truth tucked away in her eyes. Max sits down besides her and knocks their shoulders together. They watch the stars until daylight creeps into the cracks of the universe. It is a little less overwhelming facing it when he is not alone.
They travel, trading stories and laughter and time. Mimo spends a week chasing down a Darumaka, dragging Max and Bonnie along for the ride. The fiery pokemon makes a game of it, engaging in battle only to vanish again with a flick of its eyebrows and a pounding beat on its chest. Only after Mimo proves her worth in some sort of mysterious adventure does it decide to join her party, the two of them coming back to the campsite scuffed up and dirty and inordinately pleased with themselves.
Feebas evolves one sunny afternoon. Bonnie puts it into yet another battle to the jeers of her opponents, but all it does is make her defend its place in her team with even more passion. Max watches, ready to step in if needed, but then the fish pokemon begins to glow.
After the opposers have fled, defeated, and Bonnie has gushed over the evolved form enough, Milotik turns to him, long and ethereal and graceful in every which way, and Max gives it a considering look. “I liked how you looked before better, I think,” he says, and gets slapped in the face by its tailfin for his efforts.
He deserves it this time, too, but it does make him smile because the fin had been much gentler, much more teasing.
Tirtouga joins Max’s team, and it’s something he doesn’t expect. Max loves pokemon, he does, but it is hard, sometimes, to open himself up to the vulnerability of having a bond. Still, Tirtouga has a vibrancy for battle and growing strong he appreciates, throwing itself headfirst into every which thing. It gets to a point where they have to talk about it, talk about fairness and teamwork and handy little factors like type advantage and battle strategy, but they work things out, because that’s what you do.
“Look at that! Look! It’s a festival! We just have to go!”
Max frowns. “I thought we were trying to get to the city before nightfall.”
But Mimo is insistent, and she wins Bonnie over with minimal bribery, and then he had two wide eyes pleading at him. Amaura, standing behind him, snorts at his dire situation. Loudly.
They go to the festival.
To be fair, it’s fun. It’s incredibly fun, with the lights and the food and the dancing. Bonnie all but eats herself sick with sweets and Mimo does cartwheels across cobbled tiles, laughing. Max wins pokepuffs at a carnival game and shares them with Tirtouga, because he’s been working on a new move and deserves it. Shuppet causes only a minimal amount of chaos.
It’s rounding up to be a wonderful night.
And then a trainer called Jack shows up.
He and Mimo immediately butt heads. He’s loud, jeering, and kind of downright a jerk, and Max plays mediator but only out of a vague sense of obligation, not because he actually wants to. It’s what Brock would do, at least.
Mimo, on her part, is definitely mimicking Ash when he’s at his most fired up and petty.
“You think you’re such a good trainer, then I dare you to take me on!”
Mimo frowns, clenching her fists. “You bet! My pokemon and I can take yours any day!”
Bonnie nods furiously. Max hesitates.
“Mimo-”
“No! This kid needs to see the power of Wela Volcano! He needs to be put in his place!”
“Fine then! Tomorrow morning, we fight!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
Jack vanishes without a trace. Max groans, and Amaura lets out happy little noises that could definitely count as a cackle about his misery.
Traitor.
“Max.”
He blinks at her, and Mimo blinks back. There is something so alive in her eyes, and it reminds him of Ash, in a way, but also it’s just how she is. His friend. His ridiculous, hot headed friend, yes, but his friend nonetheless.
“Talk strategy to me,” she says.
Bonnie is grinning, glancing back and forth between them. Out of the two of them, Max probably is the better one to ask. Bonnie’s explanations tend to be mostly onomatopoeia.
“Why?”
“It’s something Brock said. I get so absorbed in calling attack moves I forget to think! I get so fired up that I forget that to be sustainable, I got to have a source, a base, something to fall back on. And you’re the best person I know for spouting strategy facts, so talk. Strategy. To. Me.”
And, well, he is a bit of a know it all.
Max talks strategy, and when the sunrise comes Mimo greets Jack with her pokemon, her passion, and no small amount of logic. It’s growth, something more than just bursts of fire and brimstone. Tepig sprints around the course as fast as its little legs can carry it, Darumaka rolling away from attacks and springing up swinging. Vulpix throws rings of flames in the air and is washed in warm light that turns blinding when it evolves.
They win.
It’s a pile of fire pokemon and long braids, afterwards, Bonnie’s voice cheering loud and clear. She crashes into her friend in a flying hug as soon as the younger girl is done scritching a proud Ninetails under the chin and cooing over the beautiful fur.
“You were amazing!” she shouts, flyaway blonde hair and endearing grin. Mimo’s hands spazz before they’re tugging her tighter, happily bouncing and spinning round and round
“Thanks! We totally were!”
Bonnie laughs, and Max claps until his hands hurt and feels proud, and feels inspired. Mimo came to him, looking for the knowledge he carries in the palms of his hands, and it worked.
It worked!
There must be some merit to it, he thinks, recalling his own failed battles. The strategies that did not hold up in the face of the whirlwind moments. The lingering doubts that curl around his bones.
Later, later, he awkwardly scrambles up a tree to sit by Mimo’s side and says, with a smile on his face, “Talk to me about passion. How do you get to be as strong as Wela Volcano?”
And Mimo will blink, and then she will grin, and then she will answer.
They travel, on and on and on. They find themselves in the spaces of their lives, in battles and performances and brilliant, catching moments. They find themselves among one another, in shared joys and shared hardships.
Mimi calls her family every day she can- her brother’s worried tones becoming a familiar rhythm- and Bonnie shares the occasional chat with her own brother, his glasses reflecting in the screen light, and an even rarer chat with her father. Max writes Ash emails, which get responded to near immediately or with a month’s worth of waiting and no variance in between. He keeps calling May, too, even though she’s annoying, and his mum and dad ring whenever they can manage, and it’s good.
It’s good.
They stumble across a new sort of championship with team battling. Three trainers, six pokemon, all working together. It’s not big leagues yet, but it’s getting more popular with every passing day: more pokemon and more people means more controlled chaos, more planning and more combos, and people are eating it up.
Max trades glances with Bonnie and Mimo, and Bonnie and Mimo trade glances with each other.
“What do you think?” Mimo asks, but the answer is in her grin, and Bonnie has already begun to chant in her enthusiastic agreement.
They sign up for their first match.
It’s hard, their strengths lying in different places and their strategies for battling scattered across the board. Tirtouga almost hits Marowak with its enthusiasm, and Turtwig keeps getting blocked by Amaura’s bulkier frame. Darumaka and Dedenne seemed to stop focussing on beating the other team halfway through the match and instead focused on causing as much destruction as possible.
But there’s also something to this, Max thinks, that he really likes. He likes standing here, shouting out instructions to his pokemon with his friends by his side, calling out their own attacks and defenses. He likes this teamwork, this beginning of effective collaboration forming among their ranks. It’s nothing like he’s ever experienced before, it’s new, and he realizes maybe this is who he is, this is how he differentiates himself from Ash and the expectations in his head: a fighter among three, not a fighter of one.
When he falters, getting caught up in the strategies, his friends cover for him. It happens less than it once did.
They win, miraculously. Marowak and Amaura are the only ones still standing, but they win, and the crowd cheers and Max builds himself up with it, grabs onto his friends hands and grin and grins and grins-
Later, an old woman will come up to them with something sharp but twinkling in her eye. “You cannot win this tournament,” she says, “without trust. You must trust each other’s pokemon as well as your own. Trust in one another. Completely. Implicitly.”
They had glanced at each other, then, confused and a bit lost, and by the time they looked up the lady was gone.
But her words linger.
Max wakes up from nightmares, one night, of that false reflection of Groudon storming the earth, of being swallowed whole into that inky blackness, Jirachi’s screams of pain. He wakes up sweating and crying and not quite breathing, and Dedenne hops up from Bonnie’s bedroll and to his side, nuzzling at wet cheeks before pulling away.
His lungs hitch. He closes his eyes.
There’s the sound of pokeballs unclasping. And then Amaura is wrapping its long neck around his shoulders, Kirlia is moving to his lap, and Shuppet is nuzzling his head. Tirtouga seems at loss, but only for a moment, and then he’s leaning against his back.
Grovyle vanishes from sight and returns with Mimo and Bonnie at his side.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice rough and harsh and choked, “I’m sorry.” He’s not sure if he’s talking to the girls or his pokemon or Jirachi. Dream and reality seem to be mingling in his mind.
Dedenne chitters. Bonnie squeezes in besides Amaura and huddles close.
“I get nightmares, too,” she says, and Max nods stiffly.
He knows. Has laid awake some nights, frozen stiff when the younger girl woke up stiffly and quietly, shaky breathing in quiet air. Still, Bonnie takes a step of bravery and starts quietly describing the Kalos Crisis, something sharper in her eyes than he’s used to. Something harder.
In turn, Max describes the extraordinary events leading up to his friend being swallowed by the earth. The monster they fought. The man who created it.
(The commonality of their stories is Ash. Neither of them mention it.)
Mimo has no stories of her own to share, none so personal as this, life threatening dangers and world ending calamities. But she holds Max’s hand and holds it tight, and it means something, too.
Trust, he thinks, trust.
And it is.
“This,” Bonnie says, “is Squishy.”
Max glances at Squishy, glances at Mimo besides him.
“Yes?”
They know that, already. Squishy has been travelling with them for months, now.
But Bonnie shakes her head, licks her lips. The little green pokemon in her hands, for its part, looks vaguely amused.
“Squishy is from the Kalos region: and that’s just my name for him. His official title is Zygarde, the legendary pokemon of order.”
While Max pretends he’s not geeking out. Mimo cocks her head, sounding vaguely confused. “Isn’t Zygarde… big?”
“Squishy can get much bigger.”
“Is that how? It does the thing? The reversible evolution thing?”
Bonnie smiles, seeming pleased that they’re taking it so well. Max is glad she’s pleased, but he also thinks his head is gonna explode.
“Exactly! And that’s when he’s as his 25% form!”
Groaning, Max plops himself down on his butt. For the last year, he’s been travelling with a literal walking legend. Right. Right. “Did Ash have anything to do with this?”
The blonde girl smirks. “Max, is that really a question you have to ask?”
Mimo raises her hand.
“I wanna see it get big. And when it gets big, can I fight it?”
“...probably not the best idea.”
“...fair enough.”
Squishy snorts and goes to find some sun.
Legendaries may be out of the question, but three way battles are still well within the line. They keep fighting, keep winning. They train together, compete together, and it is much better than going against each other.
Kirlia evolves into Gardevoir in the middle of a battle, in a moment of pressure and grasping at straws. He’s seen it happen before, a thousand times, but still Max watches his pokemon do it with awe in his eyes and something so happy and proud in his chest. When he glances at his companions they are beaming just as bright.
“Look at you,” he murmurs to Gardevoir after, “look at you!” His pokemon spins and pats his cheek, and he laughs.
They keep fighting, keep winning.
Mimo catches a heatmor, and on cold nights they curl up amongst all her pokemon, basking in their warmth. The new addition to their little family in particular seems pleased to cuddle with whomever whenever, and occasionally even hangs on longer than strictly wanted until Tyrantrum comes over and pulls Heatmor off.
“He’s just lonely,” Bonnie says, and withstands the cuddles the longest.
They keep fighting, keep winning.
Three way battles and three way bouts of training. The question is how to make their collection of pokemon work together as well as they can, how they take each other's weaknesses and make them into strengths, how they take each other's strengths and make them stronger.
Long days travelling and long evenings sharing moments. Mimo laughs during the sunshine hours and murmurs quieter truths during the night, doubts in the face of an older brother who’s passed every trial with flying colours, this consuming need to do her family proud without knowing how. Marowak always grumbles about this, patting her on the back or doing funny tricks until she smiles again.
Bonnie sings and chatters and holds the places she is hollow in her sleeves. Shared briefly, too brightly, in moments you wouldn’t expect before they are once more tucked away: missing parents and angered gods. Dedenne tends to curl up under her chin as she speaks, as if he can sense whenever the girl is going to pull such thoughts to the surface.
Max ignores the hairline fractures of bad memories and past tragedies in his bones until they break open, and then the words come tumbling out louder than he ever wants them to. It is a relief, always, to let them go, but he still struggles with letting them flow easy.
But they are building trust, in all these little moments. Friendship is more than what is brilliant and bright. Friendship is about taking in each other's flaws and hurts and carrying them.
They keep fighting, keep winning-
And then they run into Ash.
It goes like this-
They’re walking through the wilderness, and there’s a figure sitting at the edge of a buff with a pikachu on his shoulder. This in and of itself is no big deal, many trainers have pikachus, but paired with the fingerless gloves and that flyaway hair and an all too familiar hat-
Well.
He and Bonnie pause without much thinking about it. Mimo catches on a second later and freezes besides them.
For a moment there is silence.
“Ash?”
And it is, it is, Ash turns around and catches sight of them, eyes widening with apparent glee even as Pikachu leaps off his shoulders and breaks into a sprint, crashing into the three of them in seconds.
“Max! Bonnie! Mimo!”
And then Ash is there, pulling them all into an enthusiastic hug with his classic megawatt grin that scrunches his eyes and shows off his teeth. He’s taller than Max remembers, more gangly and a sharper cheekbones and jawline, but that smile is the same. Pikachu nips at Max’s ear in a friendly way, nuzzles into his hair. The little mouse pokemon is different too, more sturdily built and muscular, but its fur is still bright, tail just as jaunty, and it seems happy to see him.
He supposes he must be different as well. He feels different.
Both he and Bonnie are talking a mile a minute while Mimo has taken over Pikachu cuddling duty- being very, very gentle- and then Max is letting loose all his pokemon so they meet Ash, and then everyone lets all their friends out, and with all those beings crammed together on a bluff it’s practically a party.
They spend the night there, under the stars, catching up and sharing exploits. They talk about their three way battles, and Ash challenges all three of them to a battle come morning. “I have a full team right now, I think we can handle it!”
It’s not the point of their league- their league is about the bond between people and pokemon on multiple levels- but the older boy seems excited and all of them are too enthusiastic to test their skills to deny him the opportunity.
“Besides,” Ash says, “it’ll be good training.” And it’s true, if Ash is planning on taking the Sinnoh League on again, facing above and beyond what is expected of him is a great way of preparing for it. But something in his eyes suggests something darker than just the league up ahead, and Max wonders about Ash’s adventures, where they have taken him over the years.
(Ash loses the fight, but it’s an impressive show of skill, how he directs six different pokemon with that thousand megawatt grin all on his own. It’s impressive, because the loss wasn’t a no brainer, but something the three of them had to work for.)
(That night, they eat dinner and lament over the fact none of them are great cooks. Ash cracks jokes, a scar trailing up his finger, a bruise fading at his temple, and Max wonders if their battle was a real measure of his older friend’s strength.)
(He knows better than most that Ash’s true power is often only prominent when it needs to be.)
They start travelling together, and their adventures kick up a notch. Everyday is something new, something brilliant and a little terrifying but ends the way it’s supposed to. The way these stories end in books and movies and- with the outlier that is Ash as a companion- in reality.
Impossible realities are just the older boy’s way of life. Max remembers this from their journey, before. He sits next to him as they mess around a local park, his newly evolved Aruorus mock wrestling with Tyrantrum. He’d been expecting that to take months, and here they are a couple scant weeks later.
Aurorus roars and Tyrantrum jumps at the sudden sound, stamping its feet when it sees how Aurorus starts laughing. Bonnie, swimming laps with Dedenne and Milotik, yells up at the giant pokemon to remember their size.
Fond amusement crosses Ash’s features, and Pikachu shifts on his shoulder, nuzzling his partner’s cheek with a shining light of its own in its eyes. Max wonders what the dinosaur pokemon are saying, to make Pikachu’s face crinkle in such humour, to spur such an act of affection.
“Emboar! Flame charge!” Mimo all but roars, hands thrown wide, and the flare of the fire is bright against the green. Ninetails dodges, barely, and starts off in a spirited flamethrower. Max sends an appreciative glance over at the display of power, but otherwise pays it no mind.
Just a little bit ago, that massive creature could fit in Max’s lap with ease. Just a little bit ago, Bonnie would swoop Tepig up into her arms and groom it for a good half hour, humming happily under her breath while Mimo plays with Dedenne.
Bonnie still grooms it, only it takes much more than a half hour to get through all that fur.
He remembers these moments, the captured snapshots in between shenanigans and insanity. Ash, by his side, is watching Darumaka and Turtwig help each other through increasingly complicated obstacle courses that Gardevoir and Shuppet are setting up at lightning speed, the training exercise quickly becoming a game of who can trip the other up first. Grovyle watches, acting like a referee.
“Hey, Ash,” Max says, and the older boy looks over with a quirked eyebrow. It reminds him, oddly, of May.
“Yeah, Max?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
A thousand megawatt grin, so similar and just a little different from what he remembers.
“Me too.”
This is how it goes, because this is how it always goes, when it comes down to Ash.
The adventures amp up, and suddenly the worry isn’t helping out a village they pass through, isn’t getting the next badge from the upcoming gym, isn’t getting more skilled in their three way style, but how to best help a living god.
Max is covered in sweat. Bonnie is limping, but her face is set in a fierce smile in odd contrast to Mimo’s concentrated frown. Their team is a little worse for wear, after fighting dozens of corrupted pokemon and their false masters.
Distantly, he can hear the sounds of Zygarde battling in a nearby canyon. Distantly, he can hear the way his own breathing is rattling in his ears. Distantly, he can hear Mimo sucking in a shocked gasp.
Everything else is concentrated on Ash.
On Pikachu.
They’re seemingly alight in power, golden and blue and bright, bright, bright. Pikachu is but a pinprick in comparison to the truly giant form of the legendary they’re facing, an all too easily lost dot of yellow lost in a mass of greens and purples.
Except-
Except for the blast of energy surrounding it by all sides, the lightning swallowing the mountainside, swallowing up the forgotten legendary, a pillar of blinding light.
Max has never thought to be afraid of Pikachu before. Not that fuzzy, snarky mouse pokemon who cooed whenever you pet its tail and would eat a whole bottle of ketchup if you let it.
But now-
Bonnie has grabbed his hand, squeezes tight. Max squeezes back tighter and grabs for Mimo.
The legendary falls. The resonating crash shakes the earth beneath their feet, sends them tumbling. By the time he gets the chance to look up again, the horizon has turned into a flare of red smog.
Ash steps forward into clouds, glowing blue. Like, actually. Literally. Max remembers Lucario and that near silent trip home from the Tree of Life. He remembers the scars littering the older boy, the new hardness that sometimes shines in his eyes, the exhaustion Max catches glimpses between that familiar happy go-lucky attitude.
It takes minutes. It feels like hours.
“C’mon, Ash,” Bonnie murmurs, tensing, as if she’s two seconds away from running in after them. Max just breathes.
Breathes.
When the older boy does come back, he’s carrying a strange little pokemon of green and purple limbs, tiny tentacles and tiny features. He throws it up into the air and it floats, spinning rapidly before vanishing altogether.
They trudge closer. Ash offers them an exhausted smile and no explanation. His eyes carry that same weight from when Max was young and gullible and staring up at this kid as if he was supposed to be a hero.
(Ash is a hero, is the thing. He wasn’t wrong to look up to him in that way.)
(It’s just now he can see how hard it is on his older friend. How exhausting. Mimo opens her mouth to ask, to demand a story on what happened, but Max shakes his head sharply and she shuts it with a snap.)
“Let’s go find Squishy,” Ash says in the resulting silence, and Pikachu murmurs in agreement, scuffed and shivery with adrenaline, still miraculously breathing.
They go find Squishy.
It’s a very quiet walk.
(“I always wanted to be a part of one of Ash’s big adventures,” Mimo will murmur after everything, after they have gone their separate ways. “It always looked so exciting when Kiawe did it, going out and saving the day. But-”
Max and Bonnie will nod, sharing knowing, quietly haunted smiles. When your life is on the line, when your friends are on the line, when the world hangs in the balance-
It’s different.)
It goes like this, after:
Ash wins the Sinnoh league.
They’re in the stands, cheering, as it happens. The euphoria is growing, and Pikachu is wrapped up in its partner’s arms and they spin in excited circles, fireworks and glory. The victory is added alongside Ash’s successes in Alola and Kanto, and it means something more than what Max can say, seeing the beaming grin on his friend’s face.
Ash is retaking the leagues, retracing his steps. Where there was once failure there is now building, blinding light.
It goes like this, after:
Max, Bonnie, and Mimo don’t win their own tournament.
Their pokemon lay scattered across the field, unconscious or groggily pulling themselves to their feet. There’s a bitter taste on their tongues, even as Mimo is pulling them into a group hug amidst the sounds of the roaring crowd and the opposing team’s excited yells.
Bonnie’s eyes are a vibrant, vibrant blue when they’re this watery. Mimo’s grip around his shoulders is as strong as Wela Volcano. Max breathes in their space and bears the weight of disappointment with them.
Gardevoir pats his cheek and her steady gaze reminds him to smile. Sceptile awkwardly rubbing a wailing Tirtouga on the back, even as Ninetails nuzzles Grotle’s side. Sharing the load comes in many forms.
Stepping out of the gym results in an immediate swamping by flying loved ones. Kiawe is sobbing with pride over a huffing Mimo even as she hugs him tightly. Clemont is standing next to a huge man that must be their dad, Bonnie bouncing on her toes, their voices echoing in joy, in pride.
As for him, Max is pulled into May’s arms and she spins him round and round.
“I am,” she whisper shouts in his ear, “so happy for you!”
“You’re a doofus,” he says in response, and she laughs.
The bitterness in his chest gives way to soft warmth.
It goes like this, after:
Ash leaves them, with a smile on his face and Pikachu on his shoulder. Max has been expecting it, because Ash is almost larger than life, flitting in and out of people’s stories, for all that he is a young boy but a few years older than them. His lone frame paints a striking silhouette across the horizon as they watch him go, and his parting words linger in their minds.
Words about giving it their all. Words about never giving up.
They didn’t win, not this time. But next time-
Next time, they’ll be ready.
“What do you think, team? Try for it again next year?” Max asks, and Mimo pumps her fist, all the pokemon cheering as Bonnie woops and starts clapping.
They visit each other’s home regions in the times in between their battling seasons. Max gets kicked by a mudbray and Bonnie introduces them all to Clembot. There are mountains they hike and rivers they splash in, long hours in sun and rain and life.
He takes them to a hidden valley tucked amidst stone canyons, to a land that thrums with something more than just what nature provides. There are caves beneath the earth and Max knows these secret tunnels, his step study as they go deeper and deeper into the earth.
There is a creature that sings in its sleep. He places his hand against its crystal and can’t stop the broken sort of smile on his face from growing.
“Hi, Jirachi,” he says, “there’s some friends of mine that I want you to meet.”
He glances back at Bonnie, glances back at Mimo, at the cluster of pokemon gathered at their side. Their gazes meet his own and hold him steady.
He breathes.
That night, Max sings a lullaby he only just remembers, and that night they camp in a cavern of melodic stone. Tomorrow, they will tour the surrounding forest, and Max will look at once ruined underbrush and find it green and healing. In a week they will be back on the road, and in a month they will be back in Sinnoh, ready to take on the three way battle league once more.
“Max!” Bonnie yells, “C’mon! We’re gonna miss the train!”
“Hurry up, slowbro!” Mimo contributes, sticking her tongue out at him and winking, braids swinging, and he groans before bursting into a run. He collapses into the train right before it pulls away too fast for him to follow, and he groans while the girls laugh.
But he’s smiling, too, so there’s that.
There are challenges to face, doubts to overcome, but Max looks out from where he is and back to where he was, and he thinks, with a spark of hidden joy, there is an entire universe ahead of us.
He glances at his companions, at the road stretching long before them, seemingly filled with endless opportunities. Thinks, and it is nothing less than bright.
(There is a shine in his friends’ eyes that tell him they agree.)