"He's here!" Brock exclaimed to Ember, who was preparing for bed, when he received a text from Ash.

"Shh!" Ember hushed him. "Where is he?"

"He's up on the deck," Brock whispered back. "He just texted me asking what are room number is?"

"Well did you--"

She was cut off by the sound of footsteps approaching. They both looked at each other, knowingly.

"Misty," they mumbled in sync.

"What do we do!?" Ember whisper shouted. Brock didn't get to respond to her question before she answered it herself.

"Huh?" Misty questioned as the mysterious trespasser knocked on their room door. Ember and Brock had let her in by now and informed Ash of the plan. Well, except for the part about the young, unforseen couple plotting to get them together that is.

"Hmm... I wonder who that could be?" Brock almost hummed in jubilation, if it weren't for the warning look from the dark toned fire type lover.

"Yeah, it can't be room service. It's too late for that," Misty agreed.

Ember turned to her with a grin... er, smile, "Maybe you should see who it is, Misty," she suggested.

"Huh? Why me?" The youngest sensational sister asked, seeing that she's been volunteered by a sightly suspicious pair of lovebirds.

"Because, Misty," Brock joined in, "He could be a friend that you haven't seen in a- woah!"

Was interrupted by a blow to his ribs by a girl's elbow, and it wasn't Misty's.

"Great job for giving out the specifics, Brock!" Ember whisper shouted to where only he could hear, or that's what she thought at least, as Misty sweat dropped.

Sighing, the orangette determined that reasoning with those two was worthless. Honestly, it's not like it could be something as preposterous as Ash standing outside that door, right?

With one last roll of her eyes, she stood up after shouting a quick, 'coming', and strolled over to the door.

At the sound of her voice, Ash got a strange fuzzy feeling. It had felt like years since he had been traveling in Johto with Misty and Brock, and he was kind of excited. Just thinking about the memories he had made with his first friends, reminded him of a time when he was in Hoenn comforting Max.

He had been mourning over the loss of his friend, Jirachi. It had been a few weeks since Jirachi had to return to that forest in a deep sleep, but Max still was pretty shaken up about it. He wasn't himself anymore, and even as dense as he was, Ash noticed it.

"Hey there, Max," Ash greeted. It was late that night. May and Brock were already asleep and Ash was too, until he awoke and noticed Max staring at the sky.

The boy hardly acknowledged the fact that Ash was talking to him, "Hey, Ash."

The Pokémon Master to be held a tight frown. While he could be obnoxious at times, the dense boy at least had the decency of knowing when one of his friends were not feeling well. He took a seat on the rock next to him.

"Wanna talk about it?" Ash asked, making Max jump a little. He wasn't expecting Ash, of all people, to just get to the point.

After he shook off the mild shock, he looked down at his feet, sadly, "It's just that... I still can't believe it..."

Ash tilted his head, not expecting his vague answer, "Can't believe what, Max?"

Max sighed, "That... That I'll never see him again..."

Ash made a small 'oh', realizing that he might, sadly, be right about that. Jirachi only wake up for a week once every 1,000 years. Ash and company only just so happened to have met the mythical Pokémon by coincidence, and befriended it while it was awake during the festival. Max knew that.

Ash forced a small smile, "I don't think that's true, Max. Of course you'll meet Jirachi again."

The short boy looked at him, confused, "But I thought Jirachi only wakes up every thousand years... That's what the legends say..."

Ash put his arm around the lost boy, bringing him closer, "Just because some legend says that it's impossible, doesn't mean it is."

Max, awed by this new way of thinking, nodded, feeling a bit better. The silence continued until a thought came to the young expert, "Hey, Ash?"

"Yeah, Max?" Ash replied, happy to hear the curious tone that replaced the sorrowful one they had been hearing.

"That girl..." Max said, trailing off.

"What girl?" Ash asked with a puzzled look.

"That girl... the one you said that you missed everyday when you talked to me that one night after I got upset at May... Who were you talking about?" The boy replied, intrigued that Ash may have had been through the hardships of losing someone close to him. He had never really thought about what he said because everyone misses someone, but didn't realize how difficult it really was until he lost Jirachi. He didn't think that Ash Ketchum, the dense boy that always managed to be happy, would have any understanding about hardships.

Taking in his words, Ash sat back up a bit, thinking about her. He didn't want to think of it most of the time, because he would just confuse himself at times with emotions and feelings he didn't feel mature enough to understand. When he did think of her, it was mostly during the nights sleep wouldn't come to him, being his mind on overdrive. Yet here he was, forced to look back to his early days as a Pokémon Trainer. He didn't mind reflecting back on it, no, in fact, he thought it was a good way to refresh his mindset.

"Oh that... I was talking about my friend Misty."

Max was surprised, "Misty? I thought that you might've been talking about some else from before you started your journey."

"Why would you think that?" Ash asked, sounding slightly offended.

"Well, it's just that Brock told me you guys fought all the time, so I figured that she wasn't who you were referring to."

The older boy blushed a little a scratched the back of his head, "I guess we did fight a lot... but that didn't stop us from being best friends," Ash ended happily.

They were quiet again for awhile after Max nodded. Ash sighed a little, looking down, "I do miss her..."

The young, but crafty and talented Max's eyes widen a little at the soft gentle tone Ash had just used in thought of the girl Max thought he hated. Instinctively, the boy smirked at Ash Ketchum.

"You're in love with her, aren't you Ash?"

Ash wanted to blush and look away, and deny it over and over, but even Ash couldn't help but smile. That was the first time in a long while since Max had poked fun at someone, let his ego flare up, and sound genuinely happy, and Ash was glad to hear the old Max. So he smiled, not caring that Max was teasing him, and said, "It's great to have you back, Max."

As soon as Misty opened the door, she soon found herself tackled in a hug. She was about to pull away before seeing his Pikachu smiling at her, making her realize what was happening and she happily returned the embrace.

"Ash!" She exclaimed. She couldn't believe that he was there.

"Misty..." He smiled over her shoulder, getting a glimpse of the inside of the room, where Brock and Ember exchanged an ecstatic high five.

Ash was the first one to pull away and let her see him smile as he came out and said it, "I missed you so much, Misty."

She lightly blushed before replying with a soft, "I missed you too, Ash."

He didn't know why or how, but hearing her say this made him feel delighted inside, as if was not expecting her to have actually missed him, even though he knew that they were best friends from now until the end of time. It made him feel special for some reason, although it was normal for all friends to miss each other. He just couldn't put it into words.

When he was sure that their hug was over, Misty did something unexpected. Before the hug could completely end, she neared the gap between them, almost closing it, before suddenly flinching backwards, completely red in the face.

Ash, for a moment after realizing what she almost did, wondered why she didn't kiss him, until his mind corrected itself as that answer became clear, leaving room for him to instead question why she wanted to kiss him.

Ember and Brock, however, didn't see what had happened because they were distracted by the TV, that was playing an animated movie classic of some sort while waiting for them to come in.

"Azu! Azu! Azu! Azurill!" Azurill cried, bouncing into Misty's arms as she walked in with Ash.

"Pika! Pika! Pi!" Pikachu squealed to his new and old friends, before happily running off to the other room Tracey and Teari occupied to play with Azurill.

"Got any 4's?" Teari asked, sitting across from her opponent, Tracey, on his bed, playing their favorite card game.

"Nope," Tracey replied, "Go Magikarp."

Teari huffed at him as she drew a card from the deck.

"Teari, do you have any..." Tracey was about to ask, before being interrupted mid sentence by the door leading to the connected room opening, revealing the familiar iconic yellow electric mouse with red cheeks.

Pikachu looked up at the pair with a smile, "Pika! Pi!"

Much to Tracey's surprise, he found Teari smirking.

"You know what this means, right Tracey?"

Tracey nodded wearily, "That Ash is here?"

Her smirk increased, turning more into a wide grin, "Bingo."

Somehow, he managed to pull off a teasing smile, "We're playing Go Magikarp, sweetie, not Bingo."

Teari laughed at him, before grinning, and laughing even more.

"What?"

"You didn't catch it, did you?"

"Catch what?"

Teari smiled, teasingly, but happy, "You called me 'sweetie'."

Slowly, Tracey thought back and when the realized what he said, he started blushing.

Pikachu looked at them questionably for a second, before giving in to Azurill's demands to play with Teari's Pokémon.

"So... Ash..." Misty started, hoping to begin conversion here, "why are you-- Wait a second! How did you even get on board?!" She shouted.

"Umm..."

"Ash-"

Brock, not wanting a meaningless fight to break out, noticed Ash's dilemma and answered for him, "He followed the ship with a flying type Pokémon, Misty, and then land--"

"-So he doesn't even have a ticket!" Misty exclaimed, "Let alone his own room!"

Brock and Ember sweat dropped, "He could always stay with us you-"

"-THAT'S NOT AN EXCUSE!!" Misty fumed, "What if he gets cau--"

"Ahem," coughed another figure from the opposing room, who walked in and revealed herself to be Teari. In her fingers, held a single green slip of paper. It was none other than an extra ticket.

They looked at her in amazement.

"You knew he'd come!?" Brock asked more than stated.

She nodded, "But of course, how did you think Ash found out what boat we were on, or how it was headed toward Inkanni before you told him, Brock?"

Misty, turned to Brock, furious, "Keeping secrets away from me again I see? And just when things were almost normal again!"

Ash gasped, turning to Brock as well, "You mean you didn't tell her I was coming! You idiot! She's going to kill us all!"

Ember simply faced her boyfriend, and in following the trend, waved her index finger tauntingly, "Looks like someone's been a naughty Brocky Rocky."

Brock could only sweat drop at Ember's response.

Teari face palmed, "Guys, chill, I've been keeping more things from you guys than you know, so stop acting so immature," she scolded, "That goes for you too, Ember."

"Aw..."

Rolling her eyes, Teari continued, "I was the one who told Professor Oak about where to find us, and was also the one that told your mom ahead of time that you'd need to have a bag set up for your journey to Inkanni."

Ash's jaw dropped, indicating that he didn't have a clue that she was the one who did that. Tracey, who was behind Teari the whole time, simply just poked her on the shoulder, catching everyone's attention, as he asks her...

"So... We're going... home?"

~

Words: 2072

MWHAHAHA, I FOOLED YOU

Did y'all honestly think they we're cancelling the trip?

No... Seriously... Did you??

I honestly liked that some foreshadowing has been added that they don't even QUESTION

What could Teari mean by her keeping more things away from them then they know??

And what did Tracey possibly mean by them going home??

Ooooooh something's up

I also liked how I managed to actually get some PokéShipping from Ash's side on here through a (made up XP) flashback

Isn't Max the best :)

The storyline barely progressed in this one though, as it's still that same night

But oh well

HaVe An AbSoL-uTeLy FaNtAsTiC dAy!