Pokémon, or Ash Ketchum and his adventures

by Greenegonenuts

Summary:

10 year old Ash Ketchum wants to be a Pokémon Master. He'll be a Pokémon Master, one way or the other.

If he makes friends on the way, great!
Making new rivals? Nice!
Unwittingly confounding people? Mmhmm!

(Ficlet collection, not chronological, same continuity, slice of life)

Chapter 1: You threw a mouse at a deity?

Notes:

I'm sorry if there are spelling or grammer mistakes, it's unedited, it's 1am and I have a math exam tomorrow, brain not braining rn.

Nurse Joy of Ecruteak was young, but she had seen many things in her life. After she graduated from med school, she apprenticed under her mother to learn the crafts of her trade. Nurse Joy was a job that not only required medical knowledge to treat both unfortunate trainers and their pokémon, but also a grasp on various fields of knowledge such as outdoor survival and the like. Nurse Joys were a prominent figure in the societal hierarchy since every major city and town had a pokémon center and they were basically a trademark of the job.

Heck, some Nurse Joys even learned pokémon battle tactics despite their oath to never have any pokémon of their own except Chansey, using those tactics in exhibition matches with rental pokemon.

So she learned at the tutelage of her mother. She learned how to calm down worried trainers, how to deescalate arguments in the center, how to take care of hapless trainers after a tiring day or week. She learned, and soon she was ready to take over the center.

Being a Nurse Joy was hard but rewarding. The feeling she got from seeing joyful trainers reunite with their partners lit her up inside and gave her incentive to stay on her job, despite the long hours she sometimes had to work as the face of the pokémon center.

In her long tenure, she'd seen some weird things. One time, a Lucario who’d accidentally inhaled some burning weed came in. He’d been as high as a kite, laying on his back and pawing at the air with a dopey grin on his muzzle. Another time, a man came in with a wild Weepinbell gnawing on his…well, let's just say it had been an awkward situation.

Her weirdness tolerance was off the scales, and that's why when a boy entered the pokémon center with a banged up Pikachu in his arms, she thought nothing of it.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed at the electric rodent that the boy put down on her desk, tired and covered in scratches but the trainer and the pokémon had the same grin on their faces. Pikachu hadn't fainted, which meant the rodent had won whatever fight they picked. Her Chansey waddled over with a worried look on her face and started to use Heal Pulse on the pokemon.

She looked up at the trainer, belatedly recognizing him from the last Indigo conference, “Hey, aren't you Ash Ketchum?”

The boy looked surprised, but recovered with a bright grin, “Sure am! You recognized me?”

“Well, hard not to when your face is plastered on every television screen these days, mister champion.” she said dryly as she cleaned up some of the deeper cuts on Pikachu.

“Hey!” the boy objected, blushing, “Lance is the champion! I just won the conference!”

“Alright, don't get your undies in a twist,” she winced as Chansey's Heal Pulse once again swept through the mouse’ body despite already having been under it thrice. “Sheesh, what did you guys fight, kid? He's all banged up.”

“Oh, it was Ho-Oh!” the boy said brightly.

Nurse Joy's train of thought halted, crashed, and flew off the track to hit a skyscraper that then proceeded to be knocked down as well.

“I'm sorry, I must've heard that wrong. Did you say Ho-Oh?” she said slowly.

“Yeah, it was a hard fight, but Pikachu scrapped out a win by using Thunder at just the right time. I told you all the practice would eventually pay off!” the boy addressed his pokemon, beaming.

Nurse Joy wondered whether it'd be prudent to bang her customer's head on the table, or to bang her own head on the table.

“You met Ho-Oh, The Storm's End, a pokémon so rare and powerful it's said to be a minor deity, rumored to have mythical abilities of resurrection, and your solution was to throw a mouse at it?” she was aware her voice sounded distinctly high-pitched but she couldn't quite bring herself to care.

“Why? What's wrong with it? We won, didn't we?” The boy and his pokemon both looked at her, confused. “I mean, if Pikachu hadn't- wait miss why are you banging your head on the table, miss stop, MISS-”

Notes:

Constructive criticism please, R&R!

Chapter 2: Drabble: Mmm, ketchup

The Mouse stared at the trainer.

 

The trainer stared at the mouse.

 

The mouse squeaked at the trainer.

 

The trainer narrowed his eyes.

 

The mouse frowned, then pushed up his orange cheeks with his front paws and opened his eyes wide, looking like a particularly cute Growlithe.

 

The trainer visibly hesitated.

 

The mouse redoubled his efforts.

 

The trainer looked like he was caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

The mouse added teary eyes for good measure.

 

The trainer huffed, “Okay, fine! Have at it, but don't come whining to me when you get a stomachache.”

 

Pikachu, the electric rodent, cheered, grabbed for the ketchup bottle on the top of the table and started gulping it down by the drove.

 

“I don't know why I even bother.” Ash glumly rested his head on his hands, as Misty giggled at his misfortune from the other side of the table.

Notes:

Constructive criticism, R&R!

Chapter 3: Fangirls, woe is me

Notes:

Disclaimers:

1. I don't own Pokémon.

2. This is unbeta'd. Like, I wrote this in the middle of the night, forgot about it and I'm posting it now levels of unbeta'd. Please don't flame me if you find inaccuracies although criticism is welcomed as I have no idea what I'm doing.

3. The timeline is late Sinnoh when Ash is early fifteen. If some things are different from canon, it's because the fic is tagged as AU-canon divergence so yeah.

Ash had a problem.

Quite a large problem, as it stood.

 

You see, after his really, really narrow win over Tobias in the Lily of the Valley Conference semifinals, coming out on top with his team bruised, bleeding and battered against someone with not only one, but three legendaries, Ash’s fame shot to new heights in Sinnoh. And it only went higher after he brought in Charizard and Lapras from the Professor's ranch and steamrolled the final against an Ace trainer named Liliana, to win the entire thing. His fight against the first elite four of Sinnoh, Aaron the bug-type specialist was streamed on live television, which happened for the first time in Sinnoh league history because of Cynthia's reforms that were pushed through at the last second.

Regardless, Ash could say that Aaron was an absolute monster to face. Bug-types were usually frowned upon, seeing as they were usually physically weak, had a lot of type disadvantages and their lifespan, too, was really short so investing time behind a bug-type generally didn't pay off in the long run. But Aaron made bug-types something to be feared. There was a reason why 50% of all challengers fell short of the first hurdle on the way to the champion.

Ash hadn't won his fight, but in the press conference after his fight, consisting of him, the elite four and Cynthia, Aaron sang praises about his fighting ability and superb grasp on tactics. But then, after a question from an inquisitive reporter, Cynthia blew them all away with the declaration that, “Mr.Ketchum is a very capable fighter, and I think that he only has to go up from here. His potential is sky-high, and I dearly believe that in time, he will have what it takes to take the mantle from me.”

 

Cynthia. The queen of Sinnoh. The person whom Sinnoh idolises said on live TV that she believes that he has what it takes to beat her.

 

Since then, the name Ash Ketchum had become a household name in Sinnoh as well. People stopped him in roads to take selfies with him, some asked for his autograph, a crowd of fans popped up wherever he went exploring with his friends. This in itself wasn't a cause of concern, he was well used to it. After the Indigo league win he'd experienced the same thing. 

 

Well, almost the same thing.

For Ash was 10 then, a child with friends by his side, a child with sparkling eyes filled with dreams of becoming the best, a child that had experienced horrors that would make grown men faint, but he was still a child. 

And a child didn't have to deal with pesky things like hormones and puberty and freaking fangirls.

 

“Ah, um, ah… Mr.Ketchumwillyoupleasegooutwithme?!” the girl in front of him squeaked out, face down and cheeks blazing.

Pikachu snickered from his perch on his shoulder. Infernape clutched his stomach and let out a full belly laugh behind him.

Ash was prepared mentally. This exact situation had happened a few times already, and each time he fumbled out something he himself didn't even know and hightailed it out of there. So Ash had been coaching himself in front of the mirror at the hotel on how to gently let down admirers.

It didn't go quite well, considering one cannot let down their own reflection asking for a date and see what the honest reaction would be. The fact that Pikachu choked on his Pokéchow laughing at him was just reinforcing the fact.

Still! He had it all planned out! It was going to be fine!

‘Thank you, miss. I'm very flattered that you asked me out, but I'm afraid that I am not quite interested in a romantic relationship right now, sorry.’ Ash thought.

“Uh…ehh…ahhh…bwah…sorry!!” Ash said.

 

Pikachu fell off his shoulder laughing.

 

“ah...what?” The poor girl looked extremely confused.

 

Ash panicked.

“Infernape, return! Charizard!” with a click and a swoosh, Infernape was back in his pokéball and Charizard stood in front of Ash, released from his pokéball. The fiery dragon had his maw opened, prepared to greet his trainer with the usual healthy dose of Flamethrower to the face. But as soon as the dragon materialized properly its jaws shut with an audible crack, from the impact that was Ash jumping on his back like a particularly springy Spoink.

“Charizard, to Jubilife City, quick!” Ash yelled into the fire-type's ear, Pikachu's ruff grabbed in his fist. The dragon snorted out a puff of smoke, but obliged, jumping up and thrusting his wings to reach incredible speeds and heights in seconds.

Now, a healthy distance away from his source of panic, it dawned on Ash what had just happened, and he facepalmed. Hard. So hard he almost gave himself a black eye.

“Owww.” eyes watering and half-shut, he did the only thing he could do at his state and glared at Pikachu, who was still laughing, the traitor. The heated glare seemed to slide right off Pikachu's fur, who looked at him and laughed even harder.

Ash whined to no one in particular, “Why does this keep happening to me?”

Charizard snorted out a plume of smoke with a sound that seemed suspiciously like stifled laughter.

Chapter 4: Misty, are you sure you don't need a vacation?

Notes:

So I wrote this one like, 3 years ago and this was sitting at the bottom of my drives. Found it, added some stuff and posted it. This is unbeta'd to a new level, as I myself didn't give it a once over before posting. Point it out if you see any mistakes. Oh, and this is also the reason the chapter might not mesh quite well with chapter 3, this was long written before that.

This is in the future, Ash is 23 years old.

Oh, also Misty acts a bit funky in this one. I didn't want her to, but she punched me and said that if I wanted to have any say over what she did then maybe I should have owned Pokémon, which I don't. So...yeah

At 7 in the morning, the office of the combined Kanto-Johto champion, or as usually known, the Tohjo or Indigo champion depending on who you asked, was lively and already busy at work. Not everyone in the office was a morning person of course, some still looked like death warmed over clutching a mug of coffee in their hands, but overall the main branch of the two regions government had no excuse to be sluggish, even this early in the morning. 

 

The new champion of the combined tournament was crowned just last year, and the last champion Lance Blackthorn almost desperately threw all their administrative duties at him and fucked off who knows where; last time he was seen in public was a month ago in Alola, vacationing on the islands. The new champion was still busy assimilating all the duties and responsibilities of ruling over two different regions. Although his elite four (elite eight if you count both regions) helped, it was still ultimately his duty, so understandably he was rather swamped with work. Even at this early in the morning, his office door was closed and sounds of typing, printing and drawers opening and closing could be heard. No one dared to go in and disturb the champion in a working frenzy like this, because one poor intern who did it in Lance's tenure was almost bitten by a cranky Bagon he had kept in there. No one asked him why and the poor worker was compensated, but no one dared to disturb him anymore. And this new champion was a variety user, so of course they'd be wary of him even more; hard not to be when everything starting from mild electrocution to burns in places best left unmentioned was on the cards.

 

Although this rule of ‘No disturbing the champion’ did not apply to a select few people, like the elite four, the champion's family and friends, simply because no pokémon of his would hurt his family, even accidentally, and the elite four knew how to take care of themselves.

 

It was because of this exception that in this morning an orange-haired whirlwind was able to storm through the office, scaring a worker who was nodding off into spilling his coffee all over himself, startling the flustered secretary of the champion sitting behind a desk beside the door of his personal office, and almost rip the door out, stomp in, slam the door shut, and yell at the man behind the oak desk, who had been in the process of signing a stack of forms and letters, “You, mister, are going to tell me how you've done it, otherwise I'm going to sic Staryu on your paperwork!”

 

The man behind the desk looked up to meet the angry eyes of Misty Waterflower, Water type master of the Kanto Elite Four, with amber eyes glinting with annoyance that were deep like a whirlpool, pulling her in deeper and deeper until the world was brown like the earth and mud near a creek in the middle of the forest where she was sitting on a mossy rock, her bare feet in the water, leaning back into the chest built like a bodybuilder and looking up into brown eyes over striking birthmarks resembling thunderbolts, alight with content and mischief and something she couldn't quite place framed by a sharp face with a sharper jawline hard enough to cut through stone and a grin so bright, brilliant like the sun and…

---

 

Ash Ketchum watched, first annoyedly then progressively more confusedly, as his best friend and newest elite four member barged into his room, slammed the door so hard his cup of coffee almost fell off the desk saved only by his superb reflexes, then loudly demanded that he tell her how he’d done… something only to taper off and gain a glazed look in her eyes, mouth hanging open a little and cheeks going from usual makeup blush to resembling a pair of ripe tomatoes.

 

“Uhh, Misty? You alright?” He tried concernedly.

 

Pikachu snickered from where he was sitting on the top of the filing cabinet. Ash didn’t know why the electric rodent was up there, nor did he know how he had randomly procured a bucket of popcorn out of somewhere. Frankly he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

 

Just as Ash made to get up from his chair to see what was wrong with his friend, Misty blinked rapidly and seemed to come to her senses. Then her eyes caught Ash and the flush on her face redoubled, reaching all the way from her ears to her neck. 

 

“Misty? You okay?” Ash asked when the blush on her face lightened. 

 

She jumped in place as if she'd forgotten about him, but the glare directed at him the next moment that was sharp enough to probably vaporise an entire pool proved that was not the case, “That! How do you do that?”

 

“Do what?” Ash asked confusedly.

 

“This!” Misty reached into a pouch stuck to her belt, next to her pokéballs, and pulled out a rolled magazine to slam it down on top of Ash's desk. 

 

Ash took a closer look at it, to see it was a copy of the latest issue of the most famous fashion magazine in Kanto, ‘Fashion Monthly’. He flipped through it, to see if he was missing anything Misty was trying to show him, but the only thing that was remotely interesting in the magazine about the magazine was that the cover had an image of him and Pikachu taken right after he had won his friendly battle against Cynthia in last month’s cross-regional conference. He had been sporting his new outfit that his mom had forced him to buy with his first paycheck as champion, consisting of a tight-fitted white t-shirt, the neckline of which was long and went down almost halfway to his chest, a blue denim jacket which was left open, and a pair of jeans, and Pikachu was triumphantly standing in front of him, covered in bruises and scrapes but victorious, where Cynthia's Lucario was slumped on the ground, too tired to continue. He'd say that was one of the best fights of his life, right under his championship challenge against Lance, and he was quite proud of it. The only thing he didn't get was why would Misty just randomly barge into his office, demand something from him, throw a magazine he’d never get caught reading at him, then just stand in front of his desk looking at him expectantly as if he was supposed to understand the secrets of the universe or whatever she was expecting him to understand.

 

“Misty, what am I supposed to do with a random fashion magazine? If you wanted to show it to someone, you could've just gone to Lorelei, you know she likes these.”

 

Ash pushed the magazine back towards Misty, who was trying her best to resemble a tomato again, although this time the shaking of her shoulders indicated that this was probably not from embarrassment.

 

“Are you blind? Ash Ketchum, have you looked at the caption of the cover picture?” Misty poked a finger down on top of the magazine. 

 

Ash peered over, flicking her finger out of the way with his own and looked at the caption that was stretched across the bottom of the page. It was kind of hard to read, what with the magazine facing Misty, but as soon as he made out what the caption said, a snort escaped his lips.

 

This only managed to incense Misty more. “This is not a matter of laughing, Ketchum! How?!” She yelled as she snatched the magazine from the table to reveal the caption, a bright neon coloured print, saying, “Hottest man of the year, Ash Ketchum, Champion of Indigo!”

 

The champion couldn't hold back his amusement and broke out in raucous laughter. Gasping for breath, he managed to reply, “So they've now found another way of profiting off of me and my fame? Gotta say, this one isn't as impressive as the others. At least some of the others are true.”

 

“Ash Ketchum, you were a twerp right up until- wait, what?” Misty had started to say something, but when she registered what Ash had said, she just had to stop, take a break and make sure she heard it right.

 

“Yeah,” Ash went on, oblivious to Misty's thoughts, “I mean, if they wanted to write something about me they might as well write about my co-authored paper on human-pokémon relationships I published with Gary. I'm proud of that, and I want people to know about it. Why make up false statistics when there's stuff about me that's true? Although I don't think some people wouldn't like reading about scientific papers in fashion magazines…”

 

“Wait, wait, hold it.” Misty raised her hand to cut Ash off, took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, then let it out slowly, “False statistics? Ash Ketchum, are you stupid, an idiot, a moron or a combination of all three?”

 

Ash cried out in mock outrage, “Hey, I take offence to that!”

 

“Ash, you were a twerp till you were 17. People asked us if you were our little brother whenever Brock or I would go outside with you. You were shorter than me by a foot, had a pre-teen face, a pre-teen body and a squeaky voice to go along with it. Even we sometimes couldn't tell whether you were 17 or 11, and we've known you since you were ten, for god's sake!” Misty fell down on the chair opposite Ash, the rage leaving her like a popped balloon, “After your battle against Leon, you disappeared to who knows where for two solid years, then when you return you're 6 feet tall, broad and muscular, fighting with triple the power, efficiency and skill than before and to top it all off, somehow you'd become mature.” a raised hand met a slumped face, and she said through her fingers, “I just don't get it. How the fuck did you go from lanky kid to hot hunk in just two years?”

 

“...” were Ash's thoughts.

 

“Misty… have you been smoking something weird? Because you're acting weird.” said Ash bluntly when his brain had managed to decode Misty's rant.

 

“What?” Misty asked, incensed.

 

“You barge into my office this early in the morning all angry, then start acting all weird about asking me something, yell at me and show me a gossip rag's article that didn't even make sense. Then you call me a hot hunk for some inane reason?” Ash actually shuddered saying that.

 

He massaged the bridge of his nose, his temper boiling over, “Forgive me if I think that is not normal behaviour for you.”

 

Misty looked surprised, then introspective, then a flush of embarrassment slowly crept up her cheeks.

 

‘What the fuck am I doing’ Ash could just barely make out from her mumble.

 

“Maybe you're too stressed? Should I harass Bruno to put off his training regimen for a week so he actually gets some work done?” he offered.

 

Misty raised a hand tiredly, “No, I'm… I'm good.”

 

“Okay, if you think it's okay. The offer still stands though.” said Ash.

 

Silence ensued. It was a very awkward silence.

 

“Uhm, yeah, so I’m leaving?” Misty mumbled and almost kicked over the chair in her haste to stand up, “See you later then?”

 

“Yeah, see you later,” Ash said, ready to just get over…whatever the hell this was.

 

Misty almost ran away, slamming the door again and scaring the poor secretary into spilling her cup of coffee over her table.

 

Ash glanced over at Pikachu, then facepalmed.

 

A bucket full of popcorn had turned into two full buckets and an empty one, a bottle of ketchup had appeared, and Infernape was sitting beside the mouse. Both had their paws stuffed into their mouths, shudders racking their frames from the muffled giggles.

 

“You're enjoying this, aren't you?” Ash accused the pair.

 

The poor secretary, who had just finished cleaning up her desk and had brought over another cup of coffee, jumped so badly she spilled it all over her shirt as demented cackles rang from inside the champion's office.

 

‘God, why did I ever take this job?’ The woman thought, forlornly staring at her ruined clothing.

Chapter 5: Brock's Backpack

Notes:

I have no idea what I'm doing, I just came back from a writers block. I am not a good writer, and you're welcome to not read this if you don't want to.

But if you're strong enough to endure my bad writing, please leave a comment, it makes me feel better! Also if you have any advice on how can I make my writing better please please please don't hesitate to tell me, I wanna be the very best.

A suspicious crash sound echoed across their camp.

“Did you hear that?” Ash asked Misty curiously.

Misty, who had just finished pitching her tent, had also looked up, and replied confusedly, “Yeah…I did. That's quite an odd sound though, it kinda sounded like something heavy just fell over-”

She was cut off by a sudden gong. Then a crack. 

 

Then Pikachu quickly folded his ears over themselves with his paws as a cacophony of crashing noises filled the clearing like a group of stampeding Rhydon.

Ash paused.

Misty paused.

Pikachu paused.

Brock paused. Then paled.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no no nonono-” he started whispering under his breath.

“Brock? You okay?” Misty asked cautiously.

“NO!” Brock wailed, and slung off his backpack from his shoulders. He put it down on the ground, and started searching inside the bag for…whatever he was searching for, mumbling all the while, “No no please no don't tell me-”

Ash and Misty watched, gobsmacked, as Brock started throwing stuff out of his backpack to get to whatever he was looking for. Clothes flew through the air, a purple-and-maroon polka dotted sock almost hitting Misty on the nose.

Then to their disbelief Brock seemed to reach downwards, putting his entire arm inside the bag and searching deeper. A dinner plate almost smacked Pikachu. A football bounced off into the bushes. A foldable step-stool got stuck on top of a tree.

“Why does he even have that?” Ash asked no one in particular.

“The better question is how is it all fitting in there?” Misty said, baffled, as Brock pulled out a giant dining table before tossing it aside.

“Aha!” Brock suddenly yelled triumphantly, “oh thank god, it's okay.”

“Brock? What is going on down there?” Misty asked, fed up with the weirdness.

“Ah, my closet fell over on top of the climbing gear, which made the pots and pans fall over,” Brock said sheepishly, “that was the sound we all heard. It's okay, nothings broken.”

Misty opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Then she pinched the bridge of her nose, “There are so many things wrong with that sentence I can't. First of all, that's a backpack, how did all this,” she gestured to the weird stuff laying around them, “fit in there? Second, why and how do you have a freaking closet in there? And third, what were you searching for like that? Please enlighten me because I. am. confused!” throwing her hands up, she exclaimed.

A moment of silence.

“Okay, so I actually don't know how the stuff fit in there, I found that bag one day on my doorstep and started filling it with my siblings' junk stuff. And when it didn't ever seem to get full, well I knew I had a helpful thing on hand.” Brock rattled off, kind of intimidated by the look in Misty's eyes.

“And you just started putting your stuff in a weird suspicious bag you found?” Misty said skeptically.

“You try taking care of that many kids at the same time and not jump at a vaguely safe opportunity,” Brock snorted.

“Okay but that doesn't explain why you had a closet in there,” Misty shot back.

“Isn't it better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it?” Brock looked genuinely confused.

Misty felt each word coming from Brock's mouth was melting her intellect bit by bit. “Where would you even need a closet on the road?” she whispered.

Turning to Ash, she started to ask, “Ash, what do you think…” then just sort of looked at him lifelessly, where he and Pikachu were playing hockey near the bushes. With the football that got lost in them. Ash was using the step stool as a hockey stick. Pikachu had picked up a branch from somewhere and was hitting Ash's shins just as much as he was hitting the ball.

 

“Misty, you okay?” Brock asked.

 

“No, no I'm not. Why are my friends like this.” Misty said plaintively. Then walking over to her tent, she opened the flap, entered her tent and closed it.

Brock could hear muffled screaming coming from the tent.

Pikachu cheered as he finally got the ball past Ash and into the bush they were using as a goalpost.

---

“What were you searching for anyway?” Misty asked Brock, after she had calmed down.

“Oh, this!” Brock held out a tin.

Misty examined it closely, “...Premium ground coffee, imported from Hoenn?”

Brock answered her unasked question in a deadpan, “I have gone through more stress in my life trying to keep you two corralled than I have raising my siblings. This is my baby. It’s helped me survive you guys.”

Pouting from where Misty had put him in timeout, Ash said, “I don't know whether I should be offended or not.”

Patting the tin of coffee like a baby, Brock nodded sagely, “Offended. Definitely be offended. I feel like my hair is going to go grey soon from your shenanigans.”

Misty snorted, “As if you weren't part of those shenanigans yourself.”

“Semantics,” Brock waved her off.