September 14 – 7:30

“Holy shit…”

It was the first thing that came to mind for Max when he followed Misty into the room Ash and May shared. Minutes before, they had both been woken up by a high-pitched cry produced by his sister. It really baffled him, how his sister always managed to draw all attention to her when she was having sex. Back in their hotel on Vulcan Island, hearing his sister scream in orgasm had become something of a daily habit, much to Max and Misty’s chagrin. Turns out, the fact that May was now pregnant hadn’t done anything to decrease her libido so far.

Misty had been quick to barge  in on the two lovebirds when she was fully awake, while Max had bashfully followed her at a safe distance. He knew Misty was still very emotionally unstable about losing Ash to May, who knew what the redheaded girl would be capable of?

What Max definitely hadn’t expected was to find Misty firmly impaled on Ash’s member, sliding up and down as May sat on the same bed close by, too shocked to really do anything about it.

“What the hell Misty?!” he finally managed to croak, his voice still unwilling to wake up completely.

“What do you think you’re doing? Is THIS how you plan to put your Ash-obsession behind you?”

Misty moaned softly before answering, further annoying Max. “Oh shut up, Max! Can’t you see I’m fucking your sister’s boyfriend here?!”

“That’s exactly what’s wrong here Misty!” May suddenly flared up. The last waves of her orgasm were completely gone now and she was fully aware of the fact that the jealous redhead was busy stealing her boyfriend. “What the hell do you think you’re doing Misty? I thought you said you weren’t going to stand between us?! You promised!”

The copulating girl scoffed, squeezing her legs together and causing both her and Ash to moan out in bliss. “So? I thought that one time was enough… Turns out I was wrong” she almost casually waved May’s complaints away.

“No way,” May growled, “no fucking way am I going to let you have your way with MY boyfriend here Misty!”

“Urgh, why don’t you stop whining?” Misty growled, she halted her rhythmic bouncing for a moment, going on to grind her pussy in small circles instead. Ash involuntarily bucked his hips at the sudden loss of stimulation, something Misty picked up on with a smug grin. “You see? Ash isn’t exactly complaining… Looks to me like he’s actually enjoying it!”

Ash groaned as he grasped at Misty’s hips. “Haven’t exactly got a choice now, have I? You’re pretty much holding my dick hostage with that tight cunt of yours…” he hissed with a note of anger.

“Pfff, details!” Misty muttered. “Now, be quiet and fuck me like you mean it… Or I will do it for you!”

She eyed May for a moment and turned to Max, her voice a grunt of fruststration. “C’mon Max! Your sister’s pretty lonely over here, and Ash prepped her pretty good earlier… She’s all yours man, go take her! I know you want to!”

“T-… That’s not true!” the young man gritted through his teeth. He was lying to himself, he knew… It took every bit of restraint he had to stop himself from jumping in and taking his sister then and there. Arceus, he loved her, and he knew she loved him in the same way which made it all the more difficult to stop himself. But he had to. She was his sister… it was wrong and he had to move on.

“That train has come and gone, Misty… May is my sister and-… and that’s all she needs to be!”

Misty threw her head backwards and let out a shrill laugh. “Fine! Just keep on lying to yourself then! It’s not like it would be risky in anyway… I mean, we’re already pregnant as it is!” she taunted, bouncing up and down Ash’s slicked up member with increasing speed. She had to be getting close. “Suit yourself…” she concluded, “I don’t care anymore, about anything… Just keep on fucking my pregnant pussy Ash Ketchum!” She moaned again, closing her eyes as she placed her hands on Ash’s chest and increased her speed once more.

Suddenly Ash had an idea. Gritting his teeth against the pleasure Misty was giving him, he grabbed a hold of her asscheeks. With a cough he managed to draw Max's attention. The surprised teen still stood by the bed in indicision, but luckily he caught up with Ash’s idea soon enough, as Ash nodded downward and used his hands to spread Misty’s ass wide.

Max gasped and pointed at himself. Ash nodded and he was joined by May a moment later as the brunette caught on with the two scheming boys. Misty, her eyes closed and her body caught up in bliss, remained unaware as Max silently stepped out of his pajama pants and softly rubbed his member as he sized up her behind.

“Actually Misty, I think I’ve got a better idea…” he grinned. An edge of uncertainty crept into the back of his mind. Was he really going to do this?  Could he bring himself to act upon Ash’s idea?

One look into the determined eyes of his sister told him the answer. Yes. Yes he would.

“Whatever makes you happy, twerp… I really couldn’t care less!” Misty groaned without looking at Max.

“Oh, you’ll care…” Max stated ominously as he climbed on the bed and grabbed hold of Misty’s ass. Her head snapped up and her eyes flared open in surprise.

“Wait… What are you-…. OW! OH GOD!” she yelped in pain loudly as Max suddenly pushed his dick into her behind, her nails pushing tiny red marks into Ash’s chest as the sudden pain surprised her.

“OW! Hrrrr-!... MAX! What the FUCK are you -aah!-… DOING?!” the young redhead cried out in outrage.

“Well…” Max replied calmly, surprising himself by how calm he was even though he was halfway buried into Misty’s unbelievably tight ass. “I figured, if you absolutely insist on fucking Ash in front of me… You might as well let me join in on it!” he shot back at her, using her own warped sense of logic against her. Misty growled and tried to push Max away from her, but she found herself unable to move much as Ash had grabbed her wrists.

“Fuck that, get that thing OUT OF ME! This-… This isn’t what I wanted!”  she cried out in anger, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“And you think this is what I wanted?” Ash asked her seriously, locking his determined eyes with her sadness-infused orbs. “You come barging in here, then you proceed to more or less sexually assault me and all the while you’re only thinking about yourself. How YOU could claim me for yourself, how YOU could get a good fuck and how YOU could convince Max to keep May from intervering…”

“I’m sorry Misty… But you can’t win back the love I’ve already given to May… We were just, not meant to be… You know?” he finished softly. Misty’s shoulders shuddered and he felt small teardrops land on his chest as the once so determined Cerulean seemed to crack under his words.

“I-… I don’t!” she stuttered. “I don’t know anything anymore!”

She cried in earnest now and Max quickly pulled himself out of her as Ash gently tried to sooth her as best he could. As much as he wanted Misty to understand he would never be hers, he hated having to hurt her feelings. Misty outright bawled as years of unexpressed love now forced their way out of her in a torrent of hurt and sadness.

Misty’s sobbing seemed to last forever until it eventually receded as Ash quietly rocked her up and down and from side to side. Seeing as she was still impaled on his member, her sobs eventually gave way to moans as Ash regained whatever stiffness he had lost down there as Misty’s pussy stimulated him again.

“Please…” Misty begged through her tears. “Make me forget…”

Max gasped as he recognized her words. They were exactly the same words she had uttered when he had had sex with her the last time, in their hotelroom on Vulcan Island… Now, she had uttered the same words to Ash.

The Pokemon Master from Pallet Town nodded understandingly and bucked his hips, setting up a slow and steady rhythm. Misty moaned out in pleasure as she felt herself becoming numb to all the pain and heartache she had been feeling. There was just something about riding Ash that made her feel amazingly good. Ash, meanwhile, was back to full strength and he was meeting Misty’s thrusts with equal vigor. Every time she would sink down on him, he would push up, filling her tight pussy with every centimeter he had to offer.

With tear-stained eyes, Misty suddenly turned to Max. Bringing her hands behind her ass herself, she spread her cheeks and repeated her plea. “Please…”

The young boy felt awkward at first. She had clearly hated taking him from behind before, but something seemed different about her now. He decided he wasn’t going to bother. Things were already so out of hand, nothing made sense anymore, so he chose to give in and go with it.

Softly, he positioned himself behind her and kissed the nape of her neck. He shuddered as he felt his tip slide into her ass again, the tight hole squeezing his thick meat unlike anything he felt before. Misty cried out in a mixture of pain and pleasure as both boys started to pump in and out of her two holes. Ash growled in a low and almost feral way, while Max couldn’t help himself from letting out a sharp, high-pitched cry every time he pushed in.

Fucking Misty this way was a whole new experience for the boy. She had always been especially tight in the front, thanks in part to her tomboy-ish build, but fucking her in the ass provided Max with a whole new level of tightness. He only managed to push in his tip and maybe a good 4 to 5 centimeters of length before he simply couldn’t go on. But really, it was all he needed to get one of the best feelings he had ever felt. Misty’s ass squeezed him tightly and he could feel Ash pushing into her pussy  every time the two of them pushed in at the same time.

Meanwhile, Misty was on a whole new level of pleasure herself as well. Riding Ash in the forests of Vulcan Island and getting screwed by Max in their hotelbed had felt good, but this just felt so much better. Two big, hard members pushing in and out of her all the time, filling her up more than she had ever been filled before, she was going to go crazy. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t talk. All that mattered now were Ash and Max and reaching that desperately needed point of exstacy they were all chasing.

Ash could feel himself crumble as it took him more and more energy to repress his incoming orgasm. Misty had been tight the last time they had had sex, and stuffing her backside with Max’s sizable rod only added to that tightness. He could feel his young rival’s member moving around inside Misty, bumping into his own rod from time to time with only a few layers of flesh separating them. Misty’s pussy clamped down on his cock and he groaned out as his balls slapped against her ass, joining Max’s in a carnal symphony of flesh against sweaty flesh.

Max knew he wouldn’t last very long, and he wasn’t surprised he was the first to cry out.

“I-…I can’t-…” he groaned lowly. Misty… She was just too tight! “I’m-… I’m gonna c-cum!”

“S-same here!” Ash growled back as his thrusts increased in power a final time. In a pleasure-fueled rush, he grasped upwards and squeezed Misty’s small breasts in his hands as he buried his member deep within her core.

“Please… Come inside me…” Misty begged softly. “I-… I’m a-already p-p-pregnant anyway!”

This final plea proofed too much for both Ash and Max. Together, they buried their members inside the young girl as they groaned in orgasm. They shuddered and twitched as pure pleasure coursed through their bodies and their balls emptied into Misty’s tight holes. Each shudder added another load and it wasn’t long before their seed slowly started to drip out of her as they rode the final waves of their orgasm.

Feeling them spray their seeds inside of her finally pulled the trigger on Misty too. A wavering, short cry of pleasure left her lips as she fell on her side and her whole body tensed up in orgasm.

Max was the first to pull out a few moments later, the tip of his member coated in his juices as a steady trickle of sperm dripped out of Misty’s recovering asshole. On the other side of her, Ash too pulled out and laid down on his back with a heavy but satisfied sigh. His member was entirely covered in a mixture of his and Misty’s juices, just as three globs of his cum dripped out of her pussy after his member left it.

Across from them, May suddenly cried out too, a high-pitched mewl of pleasure as she furioulsy rubbed herself to her second orgasm of the day, rubbing and pinching her clit while two fingers on her other hand had been pumping in and out of her pussy. Just because both of her boys were occupied fucking the living daylight out of Misty didn’t mean she was going to be left out. The clear liquid dripping from between her thighs joined the other bodily fluids in staining the sheets.

The four of them were breathing heavily as May suddenly spoke out, her voice laced with a satisfied relaxation. “Well… Looks like we’ll have to run an extra wash now…”

“W-… worth it… though!” Max added with a wheeze, his crotch stained and his face so sweaty his glasses threatened to slide off his nose.

-

 Remnants of last night’s dinner splattered down the toilet as Dawn pushed the button and flushed the device, coughing slightly as a rancid taste filled her mouth. She had just been violently sick, shortly after she, Zoey and Mina had enjoyed a quiet breakfast courtesy of Delia Ketchum.

“Urgh… That was nasty” she mumbled, “must’ve been something I ate… Yeah, I just ate too much during breakfast…”

In the back of her mind, that one word that now plagued her friend’s lives whined for attention. Pregnant.

Could it be? No… That’s insane! I-… I couldn’t be pregnant, something like that wouldn’t happen to me! That sort of shit only happens to-… to other people!

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Cold dread radiated from her bright blue eyes as she absent-mindedly brushed her teeth. No… It was impossible, a louder voice inside her mind reminded her. She couldn’t be pregnant… She was on the pill! And not just that, the last time she had had sex was with that Dragonite, more than a month ago on Vulcan Island. Even if by some miracle the dragon Pokemon had managed to impregnate her, surely she would’ve been suffering from morning sickness a lot longer already?!

“Yeah… It’s just a coincidence… There’s no way I’m pregnant…” she said to her reflection in the mirror, a little more confident now. Just then, Zoey’s voice echoed through the house, a little more hoarse than usual. After all, the new mother hadn’t had much sleep since the birth of her daughter.

“Dawn! You coming? We told the professor we’d be there in 5 minutes!”

“Oh, right!” the blue-haired girl swore and quickly joined her girlfriend downstairs as they made their way across the road to Oak’s research facility.

-

“Delia, welcome! I see you brought quite an entourage, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Professor Oak opened the door in a jovial mood, but he was quickly tempered as he saw the serious look in Delia’s eyes. His eyes suddenly snapped to the baby-stroller Zoey was standing behind. “My word, you had your baby while I was away on my trip? Congratulations!”

Before the old professor could enquire further, Delia closed the distance between them and placed her hand on his shoulder. “The baby’s actually the reason we came to you today, Samuel. But… It’s not something we should discuss out here. Would you mind inviting us in?”

Oak’s expression darkened and he nodded. “Go right ahead, you know the way to my office. I’ll be there in a second” he said as the group filed in through the open door. The aging professor locked the door behind them. The group of teenagers and early-twentiers settled themselves on the couch and chairs that dotted professor Oak’s private office, Ash and Ritchie preferred to remain standing, leaning against one of Oak’s bookcases with their arms crossed. A giant machine lined the opposite side of the room and a massive flat-screen monitor dominated the wall above it, a Slowpoke screensaver gently waggled across the screen. Before long, professor Oak entered the office, carrying with him a trolly loaded with tea and biscuits.

“Right… So, what seems to be the matter, Delia? You were awefully vague over the phone earlier…” he enquired. Delia nodded, her expression a mixture of sadness and unease. “I know, Samuel. It wasn’t something we could discuss through the videophone” she turned towards Zoey and motioned towards Oak with a wave of her hand. “You see, there’s something about Zoey’s child we need to ask you about…”

Zoey rose and retrieved Mina from her stroller, the newborn wore a white outfit and a white cap and was wrapped in a light green blanket.  She let out a  soft gurgle as she recognized her mother.

Professor Oak quirked his eyebrow, the little child seemed fine to him. “I don’t understand… What’s wrong then? Looks like a perfectly healthy little gi-…”

The words died in his mouth as Zoey carefully pulled away the blanket, revealing Mina’s hoofed little feet and the double set of tails that sprouted from her behind.

“Let’s just say we found out who her father is…” Zoey mumbled awkwardly. Mina let out a wail of discomfort, almost as if she could her mother’s unease. Oak was stunned for several seconds before he managed to recover himself enough to speak.

“Great Scott…” Oak mumbled, his eyes wide. “I never thought I’d see the day… An actual hybrid child...”

Zoey cocked her head in surprise. “A what now? Professor, what did you just call my daughter?”

“A… A hybrid, Zoey” the old professor explained. “A person or Pokemon of mixed heritage… A Pokemon father and a human mother, or vice versa of course.” Oak quickly pulled up an empty chair and set himself down, across from him, Zoey mirrored his movements as she sat down on the couch besides Dawn. The blue-haired coordinator spoke next.

“So, there’s a term for what -sorry, I mean- who Mina is?”

“Mina, is that her name? But, yes… To answer  your question, Mina is most definitely a hybrid” he stated with a mixture of surprise and certainty. He gently held out his arms and beckoned to Zoey. “Would you mind if I hold her?”

Zoey seemed to hesitate for a moment, but eventually she carefully placed her daughter in the old man’s arms. “Just be careful with her, okay?” she asked with care. Oak smiled back at her. “Trust me Zoey, I know my way around a newborn. Though, I must admit, the babies I’ve handled were nowhere near as special as this little one is…”

He carefully touched Mina’s left hoof, gasping in surprise as the baby gurgled and shook her little leg as though she had been tickled. Then, he carefully examined the double tails that sprouted from her backside, through a hastily torn hole in her outfit. Mina gurgled audibly as he brushed his fingers over the small tuft of hair on the end of the two tails.

“Fascinating…”

“Erhm, excuse me Professor…” Zoey interrupted uneasely, “but we didn’t come here to show-off my little girl, if you get what I mean…” Oak snapped back to attention.
“Right, right, of course you didn’t…” he gently handed Mina back to her mother, who then placed her back in her stroller again after giving her an affectionate hug. “I can imagine you came to me for answers, right Delia?” Professor Oak said as he straightened himself in his seat.

“Exactly!” Delia nodded, “is there anything – anything at all – you could tell us about Mina… About how this could’ve happened?”

“Yeah, I never knew Pokemon could get a human pregnant?” Max quickly added.

Samuel nodded slowy and took a long swig of his tea before he spoke.

“I’ll admit, I’m no expert on the field of hybrids, but I can assure you Zoey, your daughter isn’t the only one.”

Zoey gasped. “Y-you mean there are others? H-how come we never met any of them on our travels? Why have we never heard from them on the news?”

“There have been others, throughout the ages…” Professor Oak answered as  he turned his chair around and started typing away on his computer. The massive screen soon filled with images and texts of various states and ages. “Hybrids have always been few. Most of them removed themselves from society and those who didn’t eventually transformed into urban myths and legends.”

Several old sketches appeared on the screen, portraying a man with a grotesque face, another man with a face covered by an iron mask and finally a dark cloaked man who seemed to have large blades attached to his hands.

“The Donphan-man… The man with the iron mask… Jack the Slicer…” Oak summed up. “Myths, legends you say. But what if I told you that, in reality, they were Pokemon-Human hybrids?”

“B-but… That’s crazy, professor are you serious?!” Ash gasped in surprise. The professor’s stern glance left not a shred of doubt.

“I am, Ash! Pokemon researchers have discovered evidence that suggests the Donphan-man, for instance,  was in fact born from a Donphan mother. The man with the iron mask was a prince, one of twin princes, whose mother had an affair with the royal Snubbull according to rumors. And Jack the Slicer? Sired by a Sneasel, and a particularly vicious one at that… Fact of the matter is, even though they’ve been covered up and largely forgotten about, hybrids have been with us for years. They’ve just been hidden very well, and who can blame them?”

Zoey clasped her hands to her head, Oak’s revelation and claims overwhelming her. Just what did this mean for her daughter? Was Mina destined to be an outcast? A paria, destined to become a freak? What kind of fate had she damned her daughter to on the day she had had sex with Tauros?

“But… I still don’t understand!” she wailed, “How did this even happen to begin with? Pokemon can’t get humans pregnant, right?!”
“Under normal circumstances, they can’t, yes…” Oak nodded, his face a stern mask.

“Normal… circumstances?” Zoey mouthed weakly.

“I’ll explain as best I can… Under normal circumstances, a woman’s body recognizes Pokemon sperm as something alien. Your body would attack the sperm as it would a virus and pregnancy is practically impossible. Same thing happens when a human male and a Pokemon female are concerned.”

Zoey raised her head and locked eyes with the old professor, as did everyone else in the room.

“But…?” she questioned.

“But…” Oak continued, “things are different when a woman’s immune-system is… occupied, so to speak. Now, this is all largely based on assumption... But it is believed that when a woman has sex with a Pokemon partner, and her immune-system is pre-occoupied, not all of the Pokemon’s sperm would be taken care of and pregnancy would be very much a possibility. Now, there are other ways besides sickness, but it all revolves around the same thing. Take out the mother’s immune system, and she could very well be impregnated by Pokemon as well as humans.”

All throughout his explanation, the professor typed away on his computer, causing brightly colored animations to swirl around. Wiggling Pokeballs with tiny tails moved towards an egg cell. First, they were stopped and destroyed by white cells. The second run of the animation featured an inflamed background though, and this time the Pokeball-spermcells had no difficulty in reaching the egg and bonding with it.

“Fortunately, neither humans or Pokemon have a habit of having intercourse during sickness, and in a lot of places there's a taboo on having sexual relationships with Pokemon, so hybrid pregnancies have been few and far between. The last reported birth, at least as far as the guild of Pokemon Researchers knows, has been more than twenty years ago.”

“So…” Max mumbled before turning to Zoey. “If what the professor says is true, it means you must’ve been sick when you had sex with Tauros, Zoey… Is that right?”

The young red-head racked her brain as she cast her mind back to a little over nine months ago. Just before  she started her Unova journey.

“Y-yes!” she cried out and gasped. “Oh god… I was sick that time. It was during Tauros’ first musth and I was runnin’ quite a fever… It all fits!”

“Arceus, what a relief!” May suddenly gasped out, her hand on her chest and beads of sweat on her forehead. Zoey eyed her in annoyance. “How is that good news?!

“It’s good news, because it means I can’t be pregnant from my Blaziken!” May quickly explained, trying to ignore professor Oak’s stunned exclamation as best she could. “I know I’ve been a lot of things during our nights on that island, but I definitely wasn’t sick or running a fever or anything…”

“Same goes for me!” Misty quickly added, “and for me too!” Iris added with relief.

Professor Oak stared at them all, eyes wide and jaw practically dropped to his knees. His eyes found the eyes of every one of the girls, finding only guilty unease in them as he eventually ended up locking eyes with Dawn.

“Don’t look at me! I’m pretty much the only one around here that’s not pregnant!” she remarked, holing her hands up in mock-surrender. Professor Oak groaned and turned to Delia with uncertainty in his eyes.

 “Delia… Did I just hear that right? May, Misty and Iris are-… pregnant?” Ash’s mother merely nodded. Professor Oak felt aghast, but managed to regain his composure with some difficulty. “We-… Well… That’s certainly not what I expected when you phoned me earlier today… Might I ask how this all came to be?”

“Well, from what they’ve told me it seems these youngsters ‘got involved’ on their way to the Tournament a couple of weeks ago, and… well…” Delia started, but she lacked the right words in the end. Instead, Ash took over, his head down slightly in unease and shame.

“Things… things happened, on that island… Let’s just leave it at that. I mean, we came here for Mina, and May and Misty’s children will be normal, so to speak. We can handle that…”

Professor Oak let out a long sigh as his shoulders sagged. He wiped his hands over his aging face, suddenly feeling every bit the old man he had become.

“You know, I had expected better from you Ash…” he sighed.

“So had I, professor, so had I…” he agreed. Professor Oak eyed him for a moment longer until Mina suddenly let out a wail, drawing his attention as well as the attention from her mother.

“Oh! Sounds like it’s time for another diaper change… Right Delia?” Zoey chimed, earning a confirming nod from Ash’s mother. As the new mother bustled about fixing her daughter’s  diaper professor Oak rose from his seat.

“Right, well, we’re not going to get anywhere sitting here like this feeling sorry and guilty for ourselves. Ash, Misty, May… I trust you’ll be able to figure things out on your own. For now, I think little Mina here has the best use of whatever help I might offer.”

Ash, Max and the two girls nodded, as did Iris and Ritchie. As Zoey finished her work she looked up at Oak. “Professor, besides what you’ve already told us, is there anything else you could do to help?”

“Hybrids aren’t exactly my speciality, there’s much I don’t know about them, but I’ll help you as best I can. You know, I might be able to learn more if I could examine Mina little more closely… With your permission of course?” the aging professor asked. Zoey bit her bottom lip as she thought about it.

“Feel free to examine her if it’s about her health and wellbeing… But I don’t want to turn my daughter into a science experiment, if you catch my drift.”

“Of course, of course!” Oak quickly agreed, “I’ll just have to reign in my scientific curiosity. You have my word, anything about your daughter that’s not strictly health related is off limits.”

Zoey smiled, her mind put at ease. “Deal!” she spoke brightly, and she smiled for the first time since waking up that morning.

The rest of the day was spent discussing how best to take care of Mina and theorizing about the various issues or quirks she might develop due to her mixed heritage. The other girls and their pregnancies took a backseat for the rest of the day as they all offered whatever help they could to aid Zoey and Dawn in taking care of Mina. Misty kept to herself mostly though, hardly ever speaking and acting alltogether quite distant.

It didn’t really come as a surprise when they found out she had left and returned to Cerulean City, just after lunch. Max wondered momentarily if she’d be okay and if he should follow her to offer his help. But then the memories of the events of that morning crept into his mind. How he had pushed his member into her ass and how he had continued even after she had ordered him to stop. He shook his head as he headed back inside the lab towards the rest of the group. He would probably be the last person Misty wanted to see right now, he reckoned.

By the end of the day, everyone went their separate ways again, Dawn and Zoey following Delia to her house, while Ash and May returned to Viridian City. Ritchie and Iris returned to their hotel, from where they would start their journey towards Ritchie’s hometown on the next day. Max stayed behind at the lab to discuss his plans for a Kanto journey with professor Oak. Despite his obvious fatigue, professor Oak kindly signed him up for the Indigo League and pointed him in the right directions towards a couple of gyms in the region. As Max was about to leave, Oak suddenly called out to him.

“Before you go, Max, I almost forgot. How’s that egg of yours doing? And wasn’t there something with your Absol as well?”

“Oh, the egg’s doing fine… A little bit of activity from time to time, but I expect it’ll still take a few weeks before it hatches” he answered. “And as far as Absol goes, I left her and Grovyle at my dad’s gym for now. She should be delivering her litter in about a month.” Professor Oak smiled at his words. “Excellent! Please, let me now if anything changes. Good luck on your journey!”

“Thanks! I will!”

And with that, Max too left the professor to his thoughts. He returned to Ash and May’s apartment, from where he would start his journey sometime on the next day. Hopefully, his sister and her boyfriend would keep it down until he was gone. But somehow… he doubted it… He looked to the sky and briefly wondered where Misty was right now, and what went through her mind.

Arceus… What a mess…