“Same here.” Casey spoke up, “Ash is my buddy so I wouldn’t eat him either…… Not unless he got to close to my plate.” Casey gave her friend a playful smile, Ash quickly returned it.

“That’s good to know, I’d hate to lose someone else I’m close to.” Daisy smiled sadly.

Though Misty didn’t like her because she viewed Daisy as competition, her heart did go out to her. It was Misty after all who’d eaten her younger brother. But she wasn’t going to lower her guard just because of Daisy’s loss. It was……… regrettable, Misty now wished she hadn’t finished Ash’s former rival off so quickly. Yet what’s done is done. Gary was gone and Ash was here. If Misty was too nice or not protective enough Daisy might try to make a pass at her boyfriend. Of course she knew that her little Ashy would turn the girl down but still……

“Ash I do hope you stay here with your mom. We have so much catching up to do.” Delia gave Daisy a thankful smile, “That’s right Ash. I know you like to travel with your friends but you’ve got friends here to.”

“I know mom but I’d rather go on adventures with Mist. Hunting rare water pokemon is gonna be a ton of fun. We’ll see new countries and islands. We’ll go through deep jungles, cross vast deserts, venture through treacherous mountain ranges!”

“……. Searching for water pokemon?” Daisy asked.

Ash blushed, “Well maybe not deserts or mountain ranges…… but we’ll still be traveling all over seeing new towns, new pokemon, and new people.” For a second Delia despaired inwardly, her son had lost one dream and now he clung to another, one that would take him far away from her.

“But Ash, we’ll miss you.” Daisy gave him another sad smile.

“You wouldn’t be the only one to miss him.” Misty replied sharply.

Daisy seemed a little taken aback, “I know that…… You’re his girlfriend after all.”

Mist looked shocked, then she let an at first hesitant, but growing ever more triumphant, smile encompass her face, “That’s right he’s MY boyfriend and no one elses.”

“My little Ash is growing up.” Daisy cooed at him happily, noticing his mortified stare she pulled back and blushed looking sheepish, “Sorry about that. I don’t mean to but I can’t help treating you like a kid.”

Misty raised an eyebrow, these weren’t comments she’d expect from someone who saw Ash as a potential boyfriend. They were more like comments she’d expect from Ash’s mother.

“Ash I can still remember when you were afraid of the dark and went you wouldn’t go to the bathroom at night without your Snorlax blankie draped over your shoulders to protect you. You see,” Delia said, speaking to both Misty and Casey, “Ash was always over at my house. I babysat him and my little brother a lot. It was great seeing him play with Gary. They got along so well back then. I don’t know what happened. They both were pretty competitive but I never thought it would cause them to grow apart.”

“So when you said you were Ash’s first crush… You didn’t mean you and him….?” Misty didn’t completely voice her question but it was clear what she was asking.

“Oh my goodness no, he’s almost like a little brother to me.” Misty breathed a sigh of relief, “I just call myself his first ‘crush’ because I was the first girl he could stand to be around. Ash used to be deathly afraid of cooties.” Daisy confessed.

“Daisy please!” Ash cried, “Misty already spent the entire afternoon watching home videos of me acting like a moron. She doesn’t need to hear about any of my other childhood mishaps.”

“Sorry.” Daisy giggled.

Everyone was smiling now, everyone but Delia. Daisy’s words had come as a shock. She was the perfect girl for Ash, Delia knew, but she saw him as a brother and nothing more. She glared at Misty. The first few times she’d met her she had liked her but she couldn’t trust the orange haired girl with something as precious as her son. Not only was she too young and immature to properly take care of him she was probably forcing him to do some pretty deviant and disgusting things behind closed doors. Her son was probably in denial, he probably really did believe he loved Misty, but mother knows best. She’d fix him but she’d have to work fast. They weren’t planning on staying that long, a week at most. She needed to make her son come to terms with what Misty really was.

“So, what were we talking about before?” Casey asked when the happy silence dragged on for too long, “Oh yeah, the first time we chowed down on a little dude.” Misty lost her smile and let out a half sigh, ‘not this conversation again’.

She hadn’t been entirely honest. Yes her first human meal had been some jackass trainer who’d demanded a free badge after hearing about how others had gotten them for free from her ‘sensational sisters’. Though her sisters didn’t take their duties seriously Misty did. She had refused and he’d called her some nasty names. When he had shrunk though, he also got an attitude adjustment. Though Misty had told the table he still had an attitude after shrinking the exact opposite was true. He’d begged Misty for help. Misty however hadn’t been in a very generous or forgiving mood. She didn’t ‘explore’ herself with him, he wasn’t the first, but she did torture him quite a bit. Eventually when she grew bored with him She made herself a nice salad and dropped him in the center. He was too bruised and battered to put up much of a fight. Misty had contemplated biting him in half but ended up swallowing him whole. She was thrilled that she did. She had gotten to feel him fight inside her like a wild rabid animal trapped in an electrified cage.
This whole topic of conversation was a poorly veiled attempt to discredit Misty in Ash’s eyes, Misty knew. But Ash wouldn’t think any less of her. He already knew what her favorite food was. Of course he didn’t know what she sometimes did when her went to sleep. He didn’t know about the time she used replaced the soap bar with a boy younger than Ash for her daily shower. His body had rubbed up against the soles of her feet, he had also cleaned her out inbetween her butt cheeks, been scrubbed vigerously into her arm pits, and had his face mashed into her chest as she used him to massag her nipples. Eventually she’d disposed of him by pushing him past her nether lips. He didn’t know about the shrinkee she’d tossed into a toilet and flushed down whole and alive. He didn’t know about how she’d threaten to shatter bones if they couldn’t please her, or how they’d plunge into orifices other than her throat. His mother was clueless so she couldn’t reveal Misty’s interesting night life. Ash didn’t know, he didn’t need to know, or at least she didn’t want him to. She didn’t want Ash to think less of her.

“I don’t think we need to-” Misty started.

“So anyway, there I was at the semifinals! Electabuzz’s verse the Savage Scyphers! All of a sudden their 3rd basemen shrinks!”

“That’s enough dear.” Delia interrupted, seemingly unable to have an affect on Ash she no longer wished for the conversation to continue, “Let’s talk about our plans for tomorrow. Ash you still need to see Professor Oak so-”

“Well being their unofficial roadie and all” Casey started up again, “Mikey Freesch, he was our shortstop, he grabbed the little bugger off his plate during a home run and dropped him in my hands when he came back to the dugout.” Casey smiled at the memory, “Good ol Mikey. I thought about eating him when he shrunk, him and the few others who shrank. I’m glad I didn’t, he was a shrinkee but he used to be a really really good friend.” She looked at Ash, “Maybe he still is… I need to visit my tiny team mates whenever I finally do get back home.”

Ash smiled, it seemed traveling with Casey was having an affect on her. She still felt shrinkees were subhuman but suddenly she didn’t seem completely opposed to having friendships with them.

“Well that’s a lovely story but-” once more Casey cut Delia off.

“He was really annoying. He was crying and begging me to let him go. He kept calling me ‘little girl’. I told him I wasn’t a little girl, that I was an Electabuzz, but he wouldn’t listen. At the end of the game the Electabuzz’s won by a landslide. There was a dogpile and I wanted to get in on it so I shoved the little whiner into my hotdog. I pressed him into the mustard and he kind of stuck there. So after-”

“ENOUGH, no one wants to here it!” Misty complained, annoyed.

“Yeah.” Daisy agreed, not only did she not eat shrinkees she hated hearing people talk about it.

“Al- all right.” Casey sighed dejectedly.