Chapter 3: First Contact
The space between them crackled with a promise neither of them knew how to keep. The “medical procedure” agreement dissolved the second Misty’s knee dipped onto the mattress beside Ash. The bed, with its stupidly cheerful canopy of floating Jigglypuff and Staryu lanterns, creaked under the new weight. The shifting lights made the shadows on Ash’s—on her—face seem to flinch.
“Just… close your eyes,” Ash suggested, his voice small. He squeezed his own shut, a cascade of orange hair falling forward as he did. It was a childish solution. He knew it immediately.
Misty, looking down at her own face screwed tight in avoidance, felt a hysterical laugh bubble up. She choked it down. “That’s your plan? We’re gonna fumble around in the dark?” The coarse timbre of Ash’s voice made the sarcasm sound harsher than she intended. She was angry at the universe, at the psychic Pokémon, at the traitorous heat still pooling low in this borrowed body, but it was coming out all wrong.
“Do you have a better one?” Ash shot back, eyes flying open. They were wide, her blue eyes, full of a panic that was entirely his.
“Obviously not!”
They glared at each other for a breath—two people wearing each other’s scowls. The absurdity of it was a physical weight.
“Okay, okay,” Misty said, forcing a measured tone. She lifted Ash’s hands, holding them out as if approaching a Skitty. “We just… start. Like you said. Clinical.” Her own words from earlier sounded hollow now. She reached for the hem of the pastel crop top.
Ash flinched. A full-body recoil that shuffled him back on the quilt. “Whoa, wait! Just—wait a sec.” He wrapped Misty’s arms around Misty’s torso, a protective hug around a body that wasn’t his to protect. His mind was racing, a feedback loop of this is Misty this is me this is wrong. Eight years of friendship, of bickering over food and map directions and battle tactics, had not prepared him for the geography of her collarbone.
Misty froze, her hands—his hands—hovering. The frustration returned, hot and immediate. “What now, Ash? You wanted to get it over with!”
“I know! I just… I’ve never… You know.” The admission tumbled out, naked and pathetic. His cheeks burned.
The fight drained out of Misty’s stance. The raw confession mirrored her own inexperience, a shared vulnerability that was somehow more intimate than anything physical could be. “Yeah,” she muttered, dropping her hands. “Me neither. Obviously.” She looked away, her gaze catching on a worn Pikachu plush slumped in the corner. A relic from his childhood, now a witness to this mess.
The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable. The neon glow from Cerulean City’s streets pulsed through the window, painting alternating stripes of garish pink and blue across the bed.
Ash took a shaky breath. “We have to try,” he said, more to himself than to her. He uncurled his arms, placing Misty’s palms flat on her own thighs. The contact sent a jolt through him—the softness of the cotton shorts, the firm muscle of her leg beneath. It was just a leg. A runner’s leg. He could handle this.
He nodded, a decisive little jerk. “Okay. Let’s… just get the clothes out of the way first. Then we can… figure out the rest.” He said it like they were preparing a camping spot, not themselves.
Misty nodded, a tight movement of Ash’s head. “Right. Clothes. Simple.” Nothing was simple.
They moved at the same time, a clumsy parody of coordination. Ash’s hands went to the knot of his—her—side ponytail, fumbling with the elastic. Misty’s hands went to the button of Ash’s jeans.
It was too much. The dual movement broke the fragile focus. Ash’s fingers, unfamiliar and nervous, slipped on the hair tie. He gave a frustrated grunt and pulled, the elastic snapping free with a sharp twang. A cascade of orange hair tumbled around his shoulders, a sensation so profoundly her that it was dizzying. He instinctively raised his hands to sweep it back, forgetting the crop top entirely.
The motion was too abrupt. The loose, soft fabric of the top, already riding up, caught under his forearms and was pulled upward with the sweeping gesture. In one inelegant, accidental motion, the garment was over her head, caught around his wrists, and then gone, tossed slightly behind him on the bed.
The cool air of the room hit skin that was now bare.
Time didn’t stop. It slowed, congealing into a thick syrup of pure, unadulterated horror.
Ash froze, Misty’s hands still tangled in her own hair. He wasn't thinking. He was just seeing, the visual information slamming into a brain that was utterly unprepared. The gentle curve of her own breasts, pale in the multicolored lantern light. The faint constellation of freckles across her chest he’d never known were there. It was a detached, clinical observation for a fractured second before the reality of it—his reality, looking out from behind her eyes—crashed down.
Across from him, Misty stared.
Her hands had frozen on the button of Ash’s jeans. Every thought, every ounce of processing power, was hijacked. The sight of her own body, exposed and vulnerable, with Ash’s shell-shocked expression plastered on her face, was one layer of madness.
The second, more insistent layer was the violent, surging response in Ash’s body. It was immediate and beyond her control, a sharp, aching stiffness that made the denim of his jeans feel like a prison. Her face—his face—flushed a deep, mortified crimson. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t a thought; it was a primal rejection. She wasn't supposed to feel like this, not from this. It was a biological betrayal of cosmic proportions.
“Ash,” she gasped, the word strangled.
He didn’t hear her. He was fumbling, a frantic scrambling of slender limbs. He grabbed for the discarded top, for the quilt, for anything. His movements were jerky, uncoordinated, fueled by a panic that had short-circuited his brain. He finally just clutched the pillow to her chest, hiding himself, hiding her, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps that made her body shudder.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—it was an accident, it just—” The words spilled out, high and panicked.
“Stop talking!” Misty hissed. She turned away, presenting Ash’s broad back to him. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image was burned onto the inside of her lids. And the physical fact between her legs refused to be ignored, a throbbing, humiliating monument to the whole impossible situation. She wanted to scream. She wanted to punch the wall. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“We can’t do this,” Ash whispered into the pillow, the muffled voice finally cutting through her turmoil.
“What?” She didn’t turn around.
“We can’t.” He said it with more force, lifting his head. The pillow remained clutched tightly. “This is… it’s too messed up. I can’t… you can’t…” He trailed off, unable to articulate the tangle of violation, empathy, and sheer, overwhelming awkwardness.
Misty finally turned. She saw the sheer, unvarnished distress on her own features. The shame. The plea. The body she was in still thrummed with a frustrated, urgent energy, but looking at him—at her—like that, the drive crumbled into ash. He was right. This was a bad path. A horrible one.
“Yeah,” she breathed, the fight leaving her in a long exhale. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, her back to him, and put Ash’s head in his hands. “We really, really can’t.”
The confession hung in the lavender-scented air, a surrender. The glowing lanterns bobbed silently overhead. Down on the street, the distant Pokémon Center jingle ended, leaving only the low urban hum.
Ash slowly let the pillow relax its grip, but kept it pressed close. The immediate crisis was over, but the larger one remained, more daunting than ever. They had tried to walk the path and had tripped at the first step. Now they were stranded, further from home than ever.
“So now what?” Misty asked the floor, her voice flat. “We just… live like this?”
Ash looked at the back of his own head, at the tense set of those shoulders he’d seen carry a backpack across regions. A stubborn spark, faint but familiar, guttered to life in his chest. “No,” he said, and it wasn’t just optimism. It was necessity. “We find another way. We track that psychic down and make it fix this. For real.”
Misty turned her head, looking at him over Ash’s shoulder. She saw the determination setting his—her—jaw. It was a look she knew. A look that had gotten them into countless troubles, and out of most of them.
It was the only thing they had left.
“Fine,” she said, pushing herself up off the bed. She adjusted the still-buttoned jeans, a mundane action that felt like a small reclamation of control. “But we’re getting Brock. And we’re getting Pikachu. And then we’re finding that little freak and wringing its neck.”
A ghost of a smile, shaky and weird on her face, touched Ash’s lips. It wasn’t a solution. It was just the next step. And right now, that was enough.