Pokémon AU: Dimensional Travelers

Chapter 5: Data Collection

 Mitsuki could barely sleep. Not from the anxiety, but of the fluttering in her chest. Her heart was beating like it was electrified. The warmth leftover from his gentle hand on her shoulder remained, even after its physical presence left. Somebody cared. She was Vice President of the Pokémon Club, but few people saw her as an actual human; they saw her as a leader. Nobody asked her how her day was, even if she asked them, and she once overheard a young teenage boy talking to one of his older friends, gushing over her. The older friend told him to not bother because of her crush on Josh.

"But didn't Josh blow her off? She's not that stupid is she?"

"Ehh, knowing how some girls can be, she might be dumb enough to ignore it. Shame really, she doesn't deserve his idiot-ass; she deserves a gentleman."

It hurt at the time, but as the year pressed on she realized that the older boy was right. She deserved something different. She never saw that younger boy again since he moved a few weeks later. Even so, the wisdom of the older boy that had reached her didn't seem to affect those around her, who still avoided or laughed at her because of the perceived crush. That's what really stung. If this was her high school, Gladion would have known about it long before he'd actually met her. But as far as she knew, he didn't know a thing about it. Thus he ignored the notion, even if he did know about it.

Either that or he was too smart to trust rumors.

Mitsuki liked to think the latter.

In the end, all that mattered to her was that somebody cared to ask her if she was alright. Somebody cared enough to treat her like an actual human being. Somebody cared enough to see her as she was: a teenage girl. And that somebody happened to be one of her favorite Anime and Video Game Characters of all time; a dream come true.

Yes it was a little suspicious--what could Gladion be up to showing affection like that--but at this point her admiration of Gladion overrode her normally suspicious and careful nature. She felt like she could actually consider him a friend by the time her eyes finally closed and she slipped into a dream.

The same little black-haired girl sat alone in the grass of a beautiful yard. She was playing with her Eevee plush, her little sun-dress sprawling across the grass around her legs. A Cosmog happily danced around her as she sang songs to it and the plush. It seemed she was singing a familiar lullaby.

"Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly, lavender's green. When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen. Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so? 'Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so~"

"Mitsuki," her mother called.

Mitsuki looked up to her mother, meeting her mother's midnight blue eyes with her own blue-green eyes. "Yes, Momma?"

"Aren't you going to come greet your friends? The Aethers are here to visit."

Mitsuki's eyes lit up. Her best friend was the Aether son, though his little sister was extremely sweet as well. She stood up and turned to Cosmog. "Cosmog, I have to go now. Are you going to go home too?"

"Cosmo!" Cosmog squeaked, burrowing its gaseous body into Mitsuki's chest. It sounded sad to leave, but perhaps that was for the best. It left the yard sadly as Mitsuki followed her mother inside, ecstatic to see her best friend again.

Mitsuki awoke as the duo entered the living room, getting annoyed at the alarm sound that was ringing in her ears. She slapped her hand over her Rotom Phone to shut the alarm off and rolled over. Eirene was on her other side with Eevee, Rockruff, and Blaze. Failing to fall back asleep to continue the dream, she laid on her back, forcing herself to daydream and wonder. It was then, as she listened to the raspy breathing of poor Eirene, she realized that this was a new and vivid dream. She'd mentioned that she's dreamt she'd played with a Cosmog once, but that was years ago when she was a five-year-old child. Yet here she was at sixteen having just dreamt she was playing with a Cosmog at about age three. And the fact that one of the characters said her name, it felt like a memory. But it couldn't be, could it? Pokémon weren't real in her world, and therefore having a dream so vivid and memory-like would have to be mentally fabricated, right?