This choice: No more Growth for now and she finishes up with the Clothing dept? • Go Back...Chapter #5Shopping In (Relative) Peace by: Unknown Mercifully, whatever strangeness was going on with Misty stopped. No more child-like voices in her head, at least. The rest of her time clothes shopping went by in peace, trying out this and seeing how it matched up with that.
Well, mostly in peace. A vague but pervading sense of "offness" bothered her. Everything she tried felt smaller than it should have. But how could that be? She'd been wearing the same size for years! What was going on here? Incorrect measurements? No, not likely. Maybe it had to do with that weird, stretched-out feeling...
"Did I have a growth spurt?" she asked her reflection as she evaluated a navy blue tank top. "I don't look any fatter, and I haven't put on any muscle, so maybe I just...grew. I know I finished puberty a long time ago, but..."
She looked down to her shorts on the bench, specifically at a bump in one of its pockets. Was the gem causing all this? Was it sentient? She did start hearing that voice after picking it up, after all.
Sighing, Misty forced herself to focus on shopping. Fretting over things in a changing room wouldn't accomplish anything. Better to focus on her shopping trip now and...search Mt. Moon for clues later or something. And as she thought that last part, she couldn't help but smile a little.
------
"Wow, Misty. You sure are hungry today."
"Pika Pika."
Misty looked up from her lunch--a large combo meal of some fast food chain's signature burger--to find Ash, Pikachu, and Brock staring at her with mildly dumbfounded expressions.
"Yeah," she replied, her words muffled from her current mouthful, "I guess so."
"I don't think you ever dug into my cooking like this." There was a hint of dejection in Brock's voice.
"Oh!" Misty swallowed. "It's not that like this stuff that much! Really, it's got nothing on you, Brock! I'm just really, really hungry all of a sudden."
"Ah, okay then." Brock's mode seemed to lift a bit at that. "Did you have a light breakfast this morning?"
"No, I--"
"Because it's not healthy to under-eat."
Misty huffed. "I know that. My breakfast was the same amount it's always been. My trip through Mt. Moon must have taken more out of me than I thought."
Ash smirked. "You mean your trip over that Geodude?" He snickered, earning a disapproving look from Pikachu.
Glaring at him, Misty crammed the rest of the burger in her mouth, grumbling under her breath.
Brock sighed. "Ash, is this really how you plan on acting? It's been so long since we all got together..."
"Yeah, okay, you're right. Sorry, Misty." At least Ash dropped his smirk when he said that. "I guess Iris was right about me being a kid after all..."
Misty, currently grabbing a handful of fries, stopped and looked back up from her meal. "Who's Iris?"
Ash's face lit up. "She's a friend I made in Unova! See, just after I got there..."
------
Misty tried to listen to Ash's recounting of his adventures. Tried to. But between quelling her appetite and that "offness" she couldn't ignore, she could only offer his stories a fraction of her attention.
The rest of the group's trip through the mall wasn't much help either. Every other step she took only served to remind her of the weight in her pocket. She gripped the gem through her shorts every so often. Said shorts covered less of her thighs than usual. Or did they? It looked that way. Felt that way, too. But considering she could say something out of nowhere and not even realize it, her mental state didn't seem particularly trustworthy.
Which was very worrying, to say the least.
She ended up not buying anything else. "The clothes and lunch are all I can afford," she told them. Ash decided to buy a travel guide for Kalos, insisting he would study it thoroughly and not forget about it (Yeah right, Misty thought). Also some of Pikachu's favorite Poke-Food. Brock went with a new cookbook, hoping to treat all his siblings to something new. They spent the rest of the time either window shopping or just checking out what the mall had to offer. After a good few hours, they deemed the mall to be perfectly decent. Not quite on par with the Celadon Department Store (this new mall lacked an evolutionary stone shop, for example) but useful enough to be a worthwhile addition to Pewter City.
"Is it that late already?" Ash asked as they exited. The sun was setting, the sky awash with red, orange, and purple.
"Looks like it," Misty muttered in response. She looked in the direction of Mt. Moon. Her fingers once again wrapped around the gem-shaped bulge in her pocket. Home.
... Er, in the direction of home. She felt at home in Mt. Moon, yes, but that didn't make it her actual home, right? Right!
Anyway.
"I better get going."
"Are you sure?" Brock asked. "Cos I was thinking we could all have dinner at my place. My family would love to have you guys."
Ooh, Brock's cooking! She hadn't had that in forever! What a perfect to relive the old days. And they wouldn't even have to get lost in some woods like they used to!
And yet, Misty still found herself staring longingly at Mt. Moon. It almost called to her, begged her to come back.
"Sounds great! Count me in!"
"Pika-Pikachu!"
She turned to Ash and Pikachu. Their faces exuded eagerness. That Cilan person he'd talked about sounded like a great chef in his own right, but there was no way he could serve up the same dose of nostalgia that only Brock's culinary delights could.
And yet Mt. Moon...  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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