Chapter 2:Dreams
Well, goodnight guys!" Dawn called to her friends as she climbed into her tent to sleep. It had been a long day and our heroes were ready to rest.
Ash, Brock and Dawn were camped out in a small forest outside of Sunnyshore City, the location of Sinnoh's eight Gym and hopefully Ash's last stop on his way to the Lilley of the Valley Conference.
"Hey, Ash?" Brock asked.
"Hmmeyeahe..." Ash mumbled incoherently.
"Ash!" Brock said again.
"What? Yeah? What is it, Brock?" Ash asked, startled.
"Are you feeling okay? You're not sick, are you?" Brock asked, concerned for his friend.
"Yeah, I'm fine, why do ask?"
"It's just that you've been spacing out a lot lately,"
"It's nothing, I'm fine really,". Ash replied, a bit too quickly.
"Ash..."
Ash sighed. "Can't hide anything from you can I, Brock-o ?"
"Nope, I know you too well, so what's on your mind?" he asked, curious about what was causing Ash to act out of character. "Are you nervous about the Gym battle tomorrow?"
Ash sighed again and looked into the embers of the campfire. "No, that's not it, you know me, if it was the Gym battle, I'd be more excited,"
"That's true," Brock replied. "In all the time I've travelled with you, I've never seen you nervous about a battle, so what is it?"
"It's just that lately, I've kind of been having these weird dreams," Ash chuckled awkwardly as he scratched the back of his head.
Now Brock was really curious. "What kind of dreams, Ash?" Could it be true? Could his little brother in all but blood be having The Dreams?
"Well, that's the problem, I don't really remember," Ash lied, averting his eyes.
"Really now?" Brock asked, clearly not believing him. "Ash, you know you can talk to me about anything, right?"
"Yeah, I know I just really don't remember is all!" he exclaimed.
Now it was Brock's time to sigh. "Alright Ash, but if you suddenly "remember" what these dreams are about, come talk to me, okay?"
"Okay," Ash said.
Brock went to his tent and was about to get in when Ash called out to him.
"Hey, Brock?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks," Ash said with a smile.
"Not a problem," Brock smiled back.
Brock turned around again. "Hey, Ash? Has anyone ever given you The Talk?"
"The Talk?" Ash asked, confused.
"You know when a man and a woman... y'know..." he trailed off, hoping he wouldn't have to explain it to Ash.
"Oh, you mean sex, right?" Ash responded, slightly uncomfortable.
"Uh, yeah,"
"Don't worry, Mom and Professor Oak explained all that to me when I was twelve," Ash shivered at the memory.
"Must have been pretty bad, huh?" Brock's father had what you could call a unique way of teaching his sons about "The Pidgey and the Beedrill" which comprised of giving them the latest issue of "Jenny n' Joy's Jugs", a sock and some privacy, which he suspected to be the source of his fixation, and his younger brother Forest's more recent one, with the beautiful pink and blue-haired women.
"They...they used puppets...they made them say...things," he whispered.
"That must have been terrible,"
He could only nod.
"Well, goodnight, try not to stay up too late, now,"
"All right, goodnight Brock,"
"Night,"
Ash stayed up for another twenty minutes or so, idly scratching behind Pikachu's ears.
"C'mon, buddy, let's get some shut-eye, huh," he picked up Pikachu, rousing him from his slumber.
"Kyyyaaaa!" he yawned. "Pikachu pika Pika Pi?" (Why'd you wake me up, Pika Pi?)
"Because we're going to bed and I'm can't let you sleep out here by yourself."
"Chu, chu pikachu pika?" (So, looking forward to seeing your dream girl tonight?) he asked, with what seemed to be a smirk, as Ash got inside his sleeping bag with Pikachu lying on his chest.
"Oh, come on! I tell you that in confidence and you never shut up about it!"
"Pikachu, pikachu pika pika, Pika Pi!"
(Well, I just think it's adorable you dream about your potential mate, Pika Pi!)
"It's not like that!" Ash shouted, indignantly.
"Pikachu..." (Of course not...) Pikachu replied patronisingly.
"Just go back to sleep!" he grumbled wearily.
Pikachu just chuckled as they both drifted off to sleep.
Ash stood in a forest in front of a gigantic, Aztec-like pyramid stretching high into the clouds. That's how the dream always started, and he knew what he had to do next, so he began to climb.
Minutes, hours, days, might have past, he couldn't tell. He lost all sense of time, concentrating solely on getting to the top, his goal was in sight, all he needed to do was make one final push.
But he was exhausted, unable to drag himself up the final step. But an arm appeared from the edge of the pyramid's summit. "Need a hand?" the arm's owner asked. Ash reached out and grasped the arm and pulled himself up. "Took you long enough!" Cynthia smiled as she walked over to her throne and sat back down. "What took you so long?"
"Hey, it's a pretty hard climb getting up here!" he said defensively.
"Yeah, but look at that view," she gestured behind him to the huge forest, the massive mountains and the orange sun, setting behind them. "Worth it, don't you think?"
Ash never took his eyes off of Cynthia. "Yeah, definitely worth it..." he murmured. He took in what she was wearing, a translucent black robe that seemed to be made of a very fine material and not much else.
"So, what now?" Ash asked.
"Well, I think that's up to us. So why don't you sit here with me a while and we can figure it out?" She smiled mysteriously as she patted the space on the throne right next to her.
"Uh, why not, I guess?" He took a step closer and he heard a slight rumbling noise. It only got louder as he got closer. "Cynthia, what is that?" He had to shout over the growling that sounded more like a jet engine.
"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" she shouted back, as an oversized garchomp appeared from behind the throne. How on earth did he not notice that?
The garchomp wrapped itself around the throne and bared it's teeth to Ash. "Oh, don't mind her, she's harmless...to humans...mostly..."
"Well, that's reassuring!" he shouted.
"Ash, if it were too easy what would be the point?" She smiled that mysterious smile again. "It's lonely at the top Ash, come get me," And with that, the garchomp lunged.
Ash shot up, throwing Pikachu out of the tent. "Pika pika chu!" (What the hell!)
"Sorry, Pikachu!"
After a small dose of electroshock therapy, courtesy of Pikachu, a twitchy Ash was in Brock's tent, shaking him awake. "Brock, Brock, wake up!"
"No Jenny! Not the pepper spray!" Brock screamed.
Ash sweatdropped, even in his dreams, Brock couldn't get a girl.
"What time is it? Why'd you wake me up at..." Brock looked at his poketch. "5:30 AM?"
"You said I could talk to you at anytime, right?"
"Yeah, but by "anytime" I meant anytime between 10 and 10,"
"Oh, right, sorry to bother you, I'll let you get back to sleep," Ash apologised.
"Nah, it's fine, I'm up, what did you want to talk about?" Brock yawned.
"Well, I wanted to talk to you about my dream..." Ash started, uncertainly
"Okay, omit no detail, no matter how filthy,"
And so, Ash told Brock about what he dreamt about, telling him everything.
"So, you dreamt about Cynthia, wearing a see-through robe, telling you she was lonely and that she wanted you next to her," Brock said, making sure he got the, in his mind, the key points of the dream. "And what do you think it means, Ash?" Brock asked him in a teasing tone.
"Well, I think that the pyramid represents the hard work that it takes to become a great trainer. Cynthia sitting at the top of the pyramid represents the paragon of what I think a great trainer is and who I want to be, the throne represents the Championship itself, while her garchomp represents my fears about not being good enough to take that throne from her," Which Ash thought and what any decent psychologist would assume to be a fair analysis.
But Brock was no psychologist, Brock was Brock. And Brock being Brock, slapped Ash in the face.
"What the hell was that for!" Ash exclaimed, clutching his face.
"For being an idiot and waking me up, now go back to sleep!"
A couple of years later, Ash and Cynthia discussed the topic of dreams and when Ash told her this story, Cynthia laughed and agree with Brock, but fortunately, gave him a kiss instead of a slap and said that she may have had one or two dreams about him too, but maybe not quite as innocent as his. Oh well, they still had fun acting them out.