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Ash's POV

"This is going to be great!" Gary spoke with much enthusiasm as we arrived at the entrance of what I have heard is one of Kalos' best shopping malls! The undeniable size of the multiple buildings that seemed to interconnect would definitely live up to that title and the swarm of cars and people everywhere you look demonstrates this places overwhelming popularity as both people and Pokémon exchange smiles while they shop in what seemed like harmony.

'How can people find harmony in shopping?' I ask myself while my friends push me into the shopping entrance while Pikachu giggles in amusement on my shoulder making me just shake my head while I quickly placed and foot in front of the other to match the speed of that of which I was forcefully being pushed by Gary at.

"Trust us Ash! After today you will be able to look your very best for that party!" Drew speaks while walking next to me with one of his hands half engulfed by his pockets. Though for some reason I doubted their analogy.

"Pika Pi!" Pikachu spoke in a cheerful voice while his face lit up with joy as he launched himself of my shoulder and in front me as he rushed up a head, examining each shop as he ran by them. His face seemed bright and full of life which came as more of a relief compare to how he has been behaving the last couple of weeks.

"Pikachu!" Pikachu yells up ahead while pointing to one of the shops.

"Great choice Pikachu!" Gary spoke, quickening his speed as he pushed me along unwillingly towards the shop of which Pikachu stood proudly in front of.

"No fuss for the Tux?" Gary spoke, reading the name of clothing shop out loud. All of us couldn't help but laugh a little at the name. "Well at least is has exactly what we need!" He added before he nodded to Paul, Clemont and Drew then giving me one final push into the clothing store, which resulted in me falling over as I place a foot into the store.

"OW!" I say in pain as I turn back around to the group while still on the ground. "Sometimes I really hate you guys." I say jokingly while shaking my head as Pikachu jumped back onto my shoulder and nuzzled my cheeks while giving a small laughter of enjoyment.

"Good day young sir, can I hep you?" I hear a voice speak in a very formal tone which kinda actually sounded rather familiar...

"Yes please! See our friend here needs something fancy to wear for my party." Clemont explained as I turned around to see a familiar face.

"Cilan?!" I say in both happiness and confusion as at of all people I didn't expect him to be here!

"PIKACHU!" Pikachu yells in excitement as well upon realisation that it was our old friend Cilan.

"Ash? Pikachu? Is that really you guys!?" Cilan responded in amazement and utter disbelieve as his posture changed from formal to friendly almost instantly while the others just had a confused look on their faces.

"You know him? Paul asked in his normal emotionless tone which caused Cilan to tilt his head a little.

"Yes, guys this is Cilan! He is one of my friends I travelled with." I explain and introduce Cilan to the group of boys who didn't seem to interested... "He's a gym leader." I add after a second of silence which almost immediately cause both Gary and Paul were begging Cilan for a battle!

"I can't now I'm working!" I hear Cilan try and say through the pleads of Gary and Paul who really wanted to have a battle and didn't seem like they were going to leave Cilan alone until they got one as show through the determination in their eyes.

"Pppppiiiiii..." Pikachu speaks while all of the remaining guys simply sweat drop at Gary and Paul's actions. I mean I get why Gary would want to but the fact that Paul was also doing this just made me laugh a little.

"Boys stay focused! We can't loose!" Drew shouts at Gary and Paul which I was confused about but his words seemed to snap them out of their desire to battle Cilan for some reason.

"Right! Gotta stay focused!" Gary said while holding out his fist and had a determined expression on his face which was different from the determination he showed to battle Cilan.

"So what are we looking for again?" Cilan said, attempting to sound professional again but clearly wasn't working as he appeared to be a little in shock of how much people wanted to battle him.

"Weeeeee... aaahhh, what are we hear for again?" Gary asked which caused us all to fall anime style while he just stared at us in utter confusion.

"These are some friends you got here Ash." Cilan says while sweat dropping and giving out a little chuckle while talking.

"Tell me about it." I respond in a lower pitched tone while rubbing the back of my head which caused Gary and Drew to glare at me as I did so.

"BOYS! SUIT NOW!" Clemont speaks in a rather urgent tone which is now starting to make me a little suspicious. Everyone looked at Clemont for a brief second before the urgency in his voice must have found its way through their heads because they soon seemed to become serious! Well all except Gary who took a little longer which didn't really surprise me because the information probably has to travel through his big ego before it actually reaches his brain!

"Alright Boys lets do this!" Clemont speaks, this time in a more calm and composed tone.

"OH YEAH! The challenge!" Gary blurts out which causes all the boys except me and Cilan to start panicking for some reason.

"What challenge?" I ask as me and Pikachu give them a death glare while leaning closer to them to make things a little more uncomfortable for them to try and flood the truth out of them.

There was no actual response from them except a bit of "aaaahhhh" while they held their arms up in a surrendering stance to make show that they admit they have been caught and were now waiting for someone to be brave enough to explain!

"Well..." Clemont starts to explain but is cut of but Cilan who says: "Aaahhh I'll be right back guys... yell when your ready." Before leaving and an awkward silence appears as everyone looks at each other and laughs at this awkward situation.

"Hahaha! So what's this about a challenge?" I ask while still letting some of my laugher out as much of group is doing as well.

"Before you and Serena came we were talking about how long girls take for cloths shopping." Drew starts explaining to start to confession.

"So we made a bet that-" Gary tried to say before he was cut off by Clemont who wanted to take it upon himself to finish the confession. But his actions only made Gary pout which was kinda funny because his face was similar to that of a meme he had showed me only a couple of days ago.

"More like a challenge! We said that we can prove that girls take longer than boy at shopping by having a race! And when you and Serena came we all came with the idea to do a girls vs boys race!" Clemont explained perfectly as my mind pieced together the puzzle in such a manner that I agreed with them!

"Then start your engines boys! Its race time!" I say with a determined smirk which seemed to fire the group up as they too grinned with both confidence and determination!

"Now its shopping time!" I finally say with excitement which is something I never thought I would ever be saying and I think the same goes for the others but I guess once you put competition into anything then I guess boys will automatically be interested!

"Right! Lets beat the girls at their own game!" Gary speaks to only motivate us more which gets us more pumped! "CILAN!" He adds and almost instantly Cilan's head pops out from some of cloth racks.

"I heard it all! So boys? Who's ready to shop?!" He says while holding up a few different suits that looks like he has picked for me to try on. One was a nice dark blue outfit with bright white gloves, red sleeves and light blue napkin which puzzled me as to its purpose in the outfit but I guess I will find out.

🍪: u see nothing!!!!!

"Pika Pi!" Pikachu signals while pointing to the changing booth which were located at the very back of the shop and were mostly covered by rows and rows of cloths for men which isn't much of a surprise its mainly a male cloths store. As Pikachu singled out the change rooms almost instantly everyone knew what he meant and we all headed over with Cilan with the suit for me to try on.

"Alright Ashy Boy, you try these on and we will wait for you here." Gary says, using the name that he knows I hate to tease me but I simply shake my head a little while Cilan hands me the suit and Pikachu jumps off my shoulder. There were chairs on the other side of the change rooms so I assumed that's where they would be waiting.

I headed towards the change rooms and went into one of them 'Its not that bad, it is rather spacious and well lit.' I thought as I observed the wooden enclosure as I hung the suit on the metal hook attached to the door and started to get changed to try the suit on.

After about 5 to 10 minuets of getting changed because I didn't fully know how to put on the suit correctly and ended putting it on back to front the first time and had to take the whole thing off and try again! But after the 2nd try I finally got it right!

"I guess you know what they say... third time the charm." I mumble to myself as I examined myself in the mirror on the back wall and I had to say that Cialn made a pretty good choice! This one looked really good on me! 'But... what is this light blue napkin for?' I think to myself before deciding that I'll just ask Cilan later.

After getting changed back into my normal cloths I excited the changing booth but as soon as I excited I immediately walked straight into someone. Knocking out heads together I felt both of us fall backwards as I squinted my eyes shut upon impact and began to rub my head.

"Ow..." I say while I ease the pain by rubbing it. But when I opened my eyes I saw someone which made my head hurt even more not from the knock but from confusion.

"Miette?" I ask as I get up and watch as the blue haired girl rubs her head as well with her eyes squinted shut just like mine were but she opened then when I spoke her name.

"Oh, hey Ash!" She speaks in a joyful tone as she gives me a big smile that seemed to fly right off her face.

"Hey Miette, what are you doing here?" I ask, wanting my questions to be answered.

"Oh you know... just doing some cloths shopping!" She says with a big smile but there was something that didn't make sense...

"In a boys clothing store?" I ask, pointing out that she was shopping for cloths in a men's clothing shop.

"aaahhh... yep." She responds while her giant smile seemed to shrink as she searched for an answer but immediately reappeared when she found her answer.

"At 6:00pm?" I ask still not convinced as my brain was still struggling to piece together this puzzle but maybe it was the impact.

"Yes." She relied simply.

"On a Thursday night?" I continue to ask.

"Yes Ash! I can shop whenever I would like. It isn't exactly against the law for a girl to shop in a men's store you know." She explains but there is still one more thing that didn't make sense...

"With a camera?" I ask and almost immediately her smile faded as she rolled her eyes at me, obviously annoyed at the amount of questions.

"Yes Ash, I was taking photo's of the cloths!" she explained. 'I guess that made sense.' My brain concluded but then quickly remembered the race!

"Sorry Miette got to run! Got a race with the girls so I'll catch you around!" I say while waving goodbye which left a confused look on her face as I headed over to the group which from the looks of thing were about to be electrocuted by Pikachu.

"Ash control you friend!" Gary yells while he presses his body against the wall while Pikachu takes his battle stance in front of Gary, pinning his escape options and making him an easy target to hit.

"I don't even want to know." I say simply before turning to Cilan who was just shaking his head.

"These looked great Cilan! I think I'll take these ones." I say with a smile as I handed Cilan the outfit which he simply nodded and took it to the register and came back with a white bag with the outfit in it.

"So how much?" Drew asked.

"This one is one the house! My treat!" Cilan says. "This was one of the least popular ones anyways." He adds which surprised me because it actually looked rather nice.

"Boys Lets go! We still gotta beat the girls!" Clemont spoke as I grabbed the bag from Cilan.

"Thanks Cilan!" I thanked before running out of the shop with the group and Pikachu on my shoulder while also waving goodbye to him as we left.

"Quick guys at this rate we will smash the girl!" Drew said as we exited the shop and started walking through the mall on our way to the exit.

"Yeah we got this boys! I bet the girls are still deciding on what colour!" Gary joked and we all began to let out laughter because it was most likely true knowing those girls. But I couldn't help but wonder how they are going.

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Chapter 38 status: 1/2 complete 😋

Hehe, there we go guys and girls! Another chappie all done! I hope I don't offend anyone when I tackle the stereotype of girls and shopping and boy and shopping. If you were offended then please don't take it personally! This was just for entertainment!

But anyways, Like always make sure to vote if you enjoyed and I will see you in the comments! 😄

And a special thanks to the following for their support!(Voting/commenting/adding to reading list)

cheerycrystal24
And...
Aaaahhh that's it.. Huh I guess this is what happened when you do two chappters close together! 😅
Hehe.