Sabrina poked me telekinetically. “That was very mean,” she said the moment Lance hung up.
I chuckled. “Ah, I know, I just couldn’t help myself,” I said as I rubbed my hands together like some B-lister villain.
“You do realise that Lance would have thought you were about to apologise and announce you were going to challenge him no?,” Sabrina said with a raised eyebrow. I waved my hand dismissively, and she leaned in closer to me. “Brock, you did just win the Ace tournament and are currently first-ranked,” she said.
“Nah!” I said waving her off. “I mean, I always had the right to do that, what with being a Gym Leader and all. He should know that.”
“Hmmm he knows it but it can be hard to remember it in a dark moment,” she said.
I chuckled and wrapped my arms around her. “You certainly have become good at reading people,” I asked.
“Especially when it comes to ‘we need to talk,’” she said with a slight twitch of her lips.
I tilted my head. “Why do I get the impression that there is a story there?” I asked.
Sabrina smiled. “I decided to experiment with some of the ladies,” she said.
I took a moment to run what Sabrina had said through my mind.
I had to discard the initial reaction I had to those words. That initial reaction belonged in horny jail, so instead I took it by the literal meaning, which was much more in line with what Sabrina would have meant.
This drew a very different response from me as the implications occurred to me.
“Oh dear,” I said, an inkling of an idea forming in my mind as to what Sabrina had done.
“We set up a formal talk and an informal talk with blinds in place—” I whistled, damn she really had gone all in on making this a social experiment.
Sabrina continued, unmindful of my interruption, “—for who would be receiving the dreaded phrase and who would not. There were lots of responses with all of those that received the words, both formally and informally.”
She leaned back and smiled. “From the study, I have learned that saying the phrase in a more formal, ‘expensive’ environment, such as a high-end restaurant or a high tea elicits a stronger reaction than having it performed in a setting that is more informal such as a cafe.”
“Oh, those poor girls must have had conniptions!” I said with a laugh.
I shot Sabrina a look. “You know in some circles, this would be the definition of evil?” I said playfully.
Sabrina shot me an amused look. “They shall call me Empress by the time I am done,” she said with a fake haughty tone that had me chuckling.
I waved for her to continue. “So what happened from there with your ‘experiment’.”
“By merely stating the words and then letting the moment linger, some of the girls would throw themselves at Erika’s feet and apologise for events and deeds that Erika did not even know they had done. This happened enough to be considered significant with the sample size I collected. Erika is thinking of regularly using it on her first-year Gym trainers on more than one occasion,” Sabrina said placidly.
I glanced at her. For her, this was just an experiment, but damn, for some reason, that just made it funnier. “I can’t believe Erika went along with you on it, seems a bit mean.”
“She was interested in my findings,” Sabrina said as she shot me a pleased look. “She also thought it a creative way to punish some of the younger girls who hadn’t been pulling their weight.”
“How many did you ‘test’ this on?” I asked, expecting to hear something like five or six.
“We ended up with a test group of roughly twenty girls,” said Sabrina. “We’ll need to create a scenario for boys as well to see how the response differs between genders.”
“You’re going to terrify people without even meaning to,” I said.
“Hmmm, you say that like it’s a bad thing to be a little feared?” she said with a raised eyebrow.
“Heh,” I said. She wasn’t exactly wrong; I had to give her that. Sabrina had a lot of people loving her, but it wasn’t terrible to be feared as well. It helped give some people pause before they could become problems.
I stretched up and turned so I could rub her shoulders. “So, any thoughts on what we should do for the rest of the day?” I said leadingly.
She shot me an amused look. “Get out of bed,” she responded. “I think there is plenty to do in Chrysanthemum City, and now that your tournament is over, you can experience that,” she said.
“Hmmm, good idea,” I said, and after a moment’s thought, I added. “Got something in mind?”
A brochure flashed into Sabrina’s hand, and she handed it to me with such speed I knew she had been waiting for just such a question.
It showcased several dolls and what looked like a competition for them. “I will be taking part in this. There is also a lucky entry door prize and I have narrowed it down to a minute time slot for when the prize will trigger. I need you and as many of your family to help me win this prize later this afternoon!” she said with a tone that brooked no argument.
She locked eyes with me and instead of my fighting spirit rising, I felt intimidated in the face of her blazing passion.
“Uhmmm alright?” I said, thinking but not vocalising that it was a bit much to use her psychic powers to win rare dolls. It didn’t seem fair if I was being honest.
Sabrina put her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll need at least ten people to guarantee one of us wins the doll,” she said, already making plans… or at the very least, informing me of her plans.
I glanced at the brochure. “Alright, well, that is going to take up… part of the afternoon I suppose. Shall we go hang out on the beach before that?” I suggested.
Sabrina relaxed instantly. “Yes, that would be fine,” she said.
I chuckled. “I’d almost forgotten about your doll collection. How’s it going these days?”
“I have now acquired eight thousand seven hundred and thirty-two dolls of various makes. Not counting the duplicates I have for actual play purposes.”
I blinked. Was that a lot or not that much in doll-collecting circles? It seemed like a lot to me but I was obviously uninitiated when it came to doll collecting. “Is that a lot?” I asked.
Sabrina shrugged. “It’s the most in Kanto that is not the result of a conglomerate for Doll enthusiasts.”
“Oh, would it be easier to be in one of these?” I asked casually. Wait? Only Kanto? Did that mean Hoenn and Johto had someone who owned more? Also Conglomerate?
I then held up a hand. “Wait no, that would mean you’d have to share ownership of the dolls,” I said my mind caught up with what a conglomerate would mean.
“Precisely, and I shall not be doing that. They are mine,” she said firmly.
“Ah, how does that go during that festival that is coming up later this year?” I asked.
“The Doll festival? I have stands and displays set up so people can look. There are also set duplicates that children are allowed to use which lets them interact and play with the dolls. I also host several workshops for people to learn how to restore dolls and care for them,” Sabrina said as she donned her sandals and a hat floated onto her head.
With her ready for the beach, I laced my arm through hers. “Oh, you open up one of your warehouses for that?” I asked.
Sabrina laughed lightly, “Don’t be silly. I rent out a convention centre for my display,” she said as we teleported to the beach.
I whistled in appreciation. Damn, there was flexing on your opposition and then there was flexing Sabrina style.
I still wanted to know about whoever had the Hoenn and Johto regions locked up if Sabrina wasn’t claiming the title of the best collection in the known world but I wasn’t sure I was ready for how deep that Furret hole might go.
I rolled my shoulders as we went from a controlled environment to the cool but steadily warming beach in an instant.
I could see Tide out on the water acting as a buoy for many of the young kids to jump off, while many of my other water-type pokemon swam around. Hypnotoad had somehow stolen a lifeguard's raised chair to sit in with a cap that rested in the space between her eyes.
Ah, she was playing lifeguard, was she?
I glanced down the beach and found that the lifeguards themselves had set up another chair. I waved a hand towards Hypnotoad. “Sorry about her,” I said, preparing myself to have to pay some sort of reparation or drag the chair back.
The lifeguards just shrugged with the eldest of them waving a hand lazily. “Happens all the time, we have spares. As long as she brings it back, we’re all fine. Honestly, she’s got one of the best spots on the beach to watch the kids… well apart from the watchers the kids have got that are already in the water that is,” he said, waving to where Shrek was submerging and emerging after moving small distances in the water. His eyes were tracking back and forth with the various kids as they dove and swam about.
Ah, they had created quite a little safety net, hadn’t they?
“Been any Gyarados?” I asked, knowing that was the Lifeguard’s main concern. That and Sharpedo. They usually had another two buoys out further from any swimming beaches specifically to intercept any pokemon that might be malicious, but sadly, with the ocean, a lot of pokemon could be deeper and thus escape the net of early detection.
“Nah,” said the older man before tilting his head. “Well actually, there was one, but I think your pokemon with the claws? Kabutops? Intercepted them fast,” said the man.
I hummed. Shin always did favour speed attacks and a blindsided Gyarados wouldn’t have been able to handle Shin coming in hard with Aqua Jet, that was for sure.
Hmmm, that would be something I’d have to work on. He was damn good at speed attacks after all.
“Brock,” Sabrina said. “No working right now, you can plan your retraining of Shin when you return to the Gym and learn how much free time you have,” she said.
I groaned. “Urgh, it’s going to be bad isn’t it?” I said as the inner pessimist sat up. I clawed at my face playfully. “I did this to myself! I became too enticing!” I said sadly. It was true enough. Most people wanted to test themselves. There would be—
“Brock, no. You won the tournament and are now known far and wide throughout Indigo as one of its strongest trainers. Most of the trainers have withdrawn their bid. They know the gap between themselves and you is much, much too great. You’re about to have almost a free week, then you’ll see a resurgence once a certain trainer arrives to spark the last trainers to challenge you that will be worth anything,” Sabrina said.
I snapped my head up to stare at her. Sabrina, with her beautiful precognition, could say things like this and have perhaps some of the best odds of success I’d ever encountered.
“Seriously?” I said with a tiny tinge of hope that felt oh so fragile to me.
Sabrina nodded, and I pulled her in for a kiss. Damn, but I loved this woman! A whole week? Holy hell, was I going to make the most of it!
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I grinned, my spirits soaring almost to the same degree as last night as I pointed imperiously at the beach. “Onward!” I shouted scooping Sabrina up into my arms and charging.
Sabrina saw exactly what my plan was and instead of stopping me she telekinetically threw the items she’d been carrying off to the side and I sprinted headfirst into the water with her. Before I hit the water I turned and grinned at her, catching sight of the bemused expression on her lips and the sparkle of delight in her eyes.
I was one of the few people around that could properly surprise Sabrina these days and I usually made sure it was always a good surprise for her.
It takes all of ten seconds for my family to catch sight of us and for them to instantly make their way, splashing and thrashing towards me. The smaller kids quickly found themselves within arms reach of a water-type pokemon; there was little risk with their little arms encapsulated in floaties that kept them more in the water than any effort on their part.
It took me a moment to spot Kirlia struggling along at the back with her kicks only to grow sick of not being very quick and using her psychic might. She quickly shot through the water with that change.
Still, Sabrina and I were soon swarmed by kids with them all babbling away at once. Kirlia claimed a spot atop Sabrina’s shoulder while Suzie took the other.
Both seemed equally pleased, especially as they watched the writhing mass that was my own body as Timmy, Tilly, and Billy all tried to claim their own spots only for it to morph into a game of King of the Hill.
Or rather, King of the Brock.
I quickly erupted out of the water and tossed them all off me. They landed and shot up out of the water giggling and splashing hard to get back to me.
“Ah!” I wailed as they came back, twice as determined.
I knew from experience that they’d be exhausted later this afternoon. The trick, I’d found from experience with situations like this, was always outlasting them.
Which meant I needed to redirect them when my own energy reserves started to flag. “Look! Flint’s free! I heard him say the King of Flint gets a double scoop of ice cream!”
Kirlia Teleported from Sabrina’s shoulder to Flint’s head and assumed a T pose while staring down her nose at any children around her.
I blinked. “I… was not expecting that,” I said.
What I was expecting happened next as all the kids roared battle cries and rushed for the throne. Kirlia defended well with gentle pushes and shoves telekinetically to knock my siblings back into the water.
I blinked as I realised how free Sabrina and I were now while Flint struggled under the mass of kids. “That… worked way better than I planned,” I said.
Sabrina nodded, watching with amusement as Kirlia was finally dislodged by a combination of Tilly and Billy teaming up with Munchlax, who leapt out of the water last to claim Flint’s head. They could be cunning when they wanted to.
Flint wasn’t able to handle Munchlax’s weight and he toppled into the water. The kids shifted targets instantly to Tide’s back with the large Lapras watching on in amusement as the kids fought it out on his back.
With the younger kids distracted the older kids lazily approached.
“Hey Brock!” called Salvadore from the middle of his floating tube. Next to him, Olga floated on top of an inflatable Mantine floatie. Yolanda, Crystal, and Greta swam over and grabbed onto Salvadore’s tube to give themselves a rest.
“Hey gang, enjoying yourselves?” I asked, earning a round of nods. I turned to Salvadore. “Oh, by the way, I didn’t get the chance to show you earlier, but I got a new pokemon from one of the bounties that I offered earlier this year,” I said.
Everyone perked up at this information, and their eyes tracked my hand as I reached down and released a pokeball I’d snatched before we’d left the room.
From the water, a large mud-coloured fish emerged. “Reli-canth,” said the fish pokemon.
“Relicanth? I’ve not heard of that pokemon before?” said Salvadore only for this to be confirmed a moment later as Greta whipped out her pokedex.
“This pokemon is not currently known to the database beyond matching images taken from extreme distances and blurry shapes. Please record as much data as possible and consider your observations. Professor Oak will soon be in—”
The pokedex’s robotic voice was soon disrupted by the loud chiming of Greta’s transceiver. Greta blinked in surprise. “It’s uhmmm, the Professor?”
She answered and was immediately bombarded by the man on the other end of the phone. “Greta! Excellent work discovering a rare pokemon like this! You’re an amazing girl! Where are you, and if possible can you capture that pokemon?” Oak shouted.
I tilted my head as, in the background, right as Oak stopped speaking, I thought I heard a musical tone that I was more than passingly familiar with.
“Uhmmm sorry Samuel! That’s one of my pokemon! I put out a bounty on it and well,” I spread my hands towards Relicanth. “It took a while but we got there in the end?”
Samuel nodded slowly. “I should have known—” Behind him, I heard an all too familiar. “Yahoo!” and Samuel’s attention snapped to the side “—Rocko No! I called pause!”
“This isn’t a marathon match! You didn’t establish rules before we started racing!” Rocko said from offscreen.
I facepalmed. Oak had been playing Super Mario Kart when Greta had raised up her pokedex. The rest was self-explanatory enough.
“Right, well, you sort that out and I’ll have Greta and my little brother write up a report on Relicanth for when we return to the Gym. That sound good?” I asked.
Samuel twitched. “It will do. Now excuse me, I need to regain my honour!” Oak said grandly.
If it weren't for the game music playing out behind him I would have thought he was about to right some wrong or slay an ancient evil. Instead, I knew he was just going to play another game of Mario Kart though, so his epic tone of voice lost a good deal of its gravitas.
“Suuuure,” I said, tapping Greta’s wrist to end the call.
Greta stared at where the screen had been. “That man used to be a respected member of my community to me.”
I shrugged. “Eh, he can still be that. He just has a hobby is all,” I said.
“An obsession more like,” muttered Salvadore.
I chuckled before raising my hands and clapping twice officiously. “Right, that report isn’t going to write itself you two. Chop to it!” I said before splashing my hand on the water to get Relicanth’s attention. “Relicanth? Welcome to the team. We’re having fun today so meet the others that you will be interacting with when we get home. I think I will need to see about making some changes to the pool however as Jessie and James mentioned they caught you at a relatively deep location in the water?”
Relicanth nodded and mumbled its name a few times as did most pokemon. I raised an eyebrow; hmm, it seemed this deep-sea pokemon was a bit shy on the surface.
I turned to Sabrina who, in the space of time I hadn’t been paying attention to her, had gained her own tube to float in along with a small drink in a pineapple with a tiny umbrella.
Sabrina lowered the drink and said, “She said she prefers the depths and darkness but this seems interesting and she might like to stick around. Darkness is more preferable than anything else, however.”
Salvadore blinked. “Wow, that’s so cool! A deep sea pokemon! This Jessie and James who found him must be adventurous sorts to dive that deep! And how can you tell it's a she?” He asked as he started to tilt his head so that he’d be submerged only to notice the looks from the girls around him and stop.
I made a gesture with my head and he pretended to shake his ears out like they had water in them, causing the girls to relax.
Salvadore coughed. “Well, thanks for that Sabrina, although it sort of feels like cheating when you can just tell us what Relicanth is saying instead of us working it out with other methods,” he said with a slightly put-upon tone.
I rolled my eyes. You try and help, then some people just keep forcing that foot into their mouths.
Sabrina merely blinked as she slowly began drifting away.
Salvadore flapped his arms frantically, causing small waves to form as he splashed. “No No! I mean that in a good way! Thank you for helping us big sis!” he said quickly.
I chuckled and decided to leave them to it. I made a note though of how Sabrina’s eyes had gleamed with a spark of joy when Salvadore, the more technical of the kids so far, had called her ‘Big sis’. Maybe that was something I should encourage the others to say and not just Suzie?
It wouldn’t even be that hard to sell with most of the younger ones already seeing her as their big sister. It would just be people like Cindy, Yolanda, Tommy and Forrest.
Maybe I should ask them what they thought of Sabrina rather than plotting methods of getting them to call Sabrina big sister?
I grabbed up a tube that one of the kids must have abandoned to float on the water as I cast my mind about. Was it even needed? If I asked, they’d probably just do it at this point, especially with all the years she’d been there helping out.
She was practically family already to them and as my girlfriend, that just made it more locked in.
But… well, I suppose if I was entertaining every option, our relationship and that between my family and Sabrina could be more set in stone.
I mean I could always just… marry her…
I bobbed up and down, ignoring the splashing and waves that were being created not that far away as Flint tried to be a good platform for the kids and Kirlia to play on. I had more important things to think about.
Such as Sabrina and I… getting married.
Wow, this felt like it had come out of nowhere for me but somehow, just seeing her interact with my siblings made it click home.
It also felt weirdly right to think about.
I could only presume that the weird part came from how young I was in this life. I hadn’t even turned eighteen yet.
Not that it would stop anything with the legal age for most things being sixteen, the only exception being alcohol consumption, which was so much later in life compared to my last.
We’d been through a lot but I kind of felt like I needed to do something more in regards to our relationship. Perhaps it was due to a lot of traditional milestones being skipped or not really applying in the first place?
Hmmm, perhaps that was the issue?
The relationship had skipped some steps that I thought were important, even as I understood they were impractical for us. Was it a matter of intellectually acknowledging it, but I hadn’t yet accepted it in my heart?
That could be it…
But, so what?
So what if we couldn’t or didn’t move in together? We slept together enough times in my home or Sabrina’s for it not to matter. Both of us even owned the houses we lived in.
It wasn’t us living with our families so much as them living with us.
It was a nontraditional situation but I was still adrift as to what came next.
Should Sabrina and I have a place all to ourselves? A separate, Brock and Sabrina-only house?
That… wasn’t a bad idea.
Proposing to her seemed a step too far and at the same time… like it wouldn’t do anything or change our relationship.
Well, no. That wasn’t true as it would make it official, for us and the world.
Something would change even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. It was ephemeral and elusive. The more I tried to grapple it into place in my mind to understand it the more I felt I was grabbing at air.
Sadly, this wasn’t like fighting a flying type. Against them, I could just unleash a barrage of rock to knock them out of the sky.
I let myself drift in the water.
Did I want to propose? Things were going well for us, but… they could be better with us being more. I shouldn’t have to fear change, and yet…
I wanted things to stay the same as much as possible.
Was this my rock-type aura or was it human nature?
A wise man once wrote that what people really want is an assurance that tomorrow will be very much like today.
Urgh, I felt like my mind was cooking with how much I was chasing my own tail over this.
I tilted my head and looked over at Sabrina. She was smiling gently as Salvadore tapped away at his transceiver while Olga and Greta pointed out various parts of Relicanth.
She looked completely unbothered by their constant deluge of questions and, if anything, was more than happy to encourage their curiosity.
Hmmm, I needed to take that woman on more dates at the very least and shower her with presents. I would need to look into these dolls of hers and see if I couldn’t help her collect them if they were that important.
That, I decided, was the best middle ground I could achieve in resolving my mental dilemma.
And… maybe I’d also look into getting a ring.
I’d need something amazing.
Was it cheap or thoughtful to pull a diamond from your own cave full of them instead of purchasing something?
Hmmm, I’d have to sound her out on her own thoughts regarding gems and what she liked. I honestly couldn’t recall her ever expressing a desire for jewels.
Then again, she seemed to like the Mega Stone I’d given her, so it wasn’t like she disliked jewels.
Buuuuuut that was that, and this was something else entirely.
Urgh, all this thinking was getting me nowhere fast. This was more like me and my rock aura. I needed to trigger some initiative and get a move on.
I sat up in my tube. “Sabrina! Want to go on a dinner date tonight?” I called out.
“I think there’s a rather reputable steakhouse in the city,” she replied, which I took to mean yes, while also telling me where we’d be going.
I smiled. Heh, that sure made it easy. And a steakhouse would mean that it would be casual dress, exactly what I preferred. No need to suit up for fine dining that would leave you hungry by the time you’d eaten five ‘courses’.
I lay back down and felt my heart and mind relax properly.
Excellent.
Great even.
We had a date. A proper one. And we’d be able to—
“I love steak!” announced Suzie, making me sit up. Damn! I’d forgotten about them with how laser-focused I’d been on Sabrina!
Sabrina smiled kindly. “Hmmm, is that so? I will bring you some back, as the bar makes them extra spicy,” she said deftly and Suzie nodded, accepting the lie at face value.
I shot Sabrina a ‘nice’ signal with my hand and decided to distract Suzie from asking again. “Hey Suzie! Want to surf with me?” I said.
“Yes!” she shouted, paddling her way towards me. Sabrina mirrored my earlier gesture and I chuckled.
Right. That was also another factor that had perhaps delayed the development of Sabrina and I’s relationship.
I’d been locked down by my family for such a long time, I hadn’t even given dating a serious thought.
Sabrina had been with me, and in a way she’d contributed to raising the kids. A lot more than Flint or… she had with their neglect.
I claimed a surfboard from the lifeguards on the beach and showed off my meagre talents as a surfer. Despite not having that much practice I felt a lot more steady than I had in the past.
I was just starting to get confident in my abilities when I caught sight of Sabrina watching me with glowing eyes while Kirlia pouted.
Ah, that would explain it. I waved at her that I didn’t want her help on the next wave, and she nodded.
I wobbled a bit more than I had with the standing phase, but… maybe having Sabrina acting as a set of trainer wheels had helped more than I’d realised?
I allowed myself to leap off the surfboard with Suzie in my arms, with both of us laughing. I pushed the surfboard towards Sabrina and Kirlia. “Your turn?” I suggested, and Kirlia leapt onto the board and bounced up and down enough to almost send her into the water.
Sabrina smiled and levitated onto the board.
She then proceeded to hang ten better than I ever could, much to my family’s delight.
I just shook my head and laughed, knowing she was probably using her telekinesis. I couldn’t fault her for it. It was still a damn impressive sight.
Sadly, with all success, there came a price.
“Oh! Take me with you!” “Can you show me how to do it?” “Sabrina! Teach me to surf!” shouted my siblings shamelessly.
Sabrina gave me an amused look, likely knowing the thrust of my thoughts. I just smiled and swam to shore to get some more surfboards.
We still had time before we needed to get out of the water and investigate this doll sale.
I stretched out and enjoyed the sun as I rose out of the surf.
On the beach, I caught sight of Titan and Bertha walking along the shoreline, between each of their giant bodies, their hands were entwined.
Huh, good for them, they’re enjoying their break.
Today was a good day, and according to Sabrina, things were going to be really good for another week at least!
Hmmm, I’d have to find a way to keep myself busy, I thought to myself, only to chuckle at the oxymoronic nature of making myself busy during a slow phase.
I shook my head. I’d have to install some breaks and force myself to relax, but still, it felt good knowing I could get a lot of tasks I’d let languish done.
But that could wait until next week.