Alison, Joseph, and the Most Important Useless Pokémon

Castelia City was big, bustling, and as crowded as it usually was, but whenever Alison made her way up into the city she tended to ignore the throngs of people surrounding her in exchange for making sure that nothing got in her way. Armed with a basket filled with eggs and a small purse for everything else she might need, she wasn’t going to deal with anyone causing any trouble on her perfect day in the city. She was going to visit with some people sent from Johto to talk to her about her research, she was going to do a bit of shopping for her father so that he didn’t have to, and then she was going to cap the day with a date night with her dear boyfriend. There was no room for error once her mind was set on things, and she wasn’t going to let anyone or anything take away from what she knew was going to happen in perfect order.

The meeting went well, the older men were impressed with her fledgling calculations and charts she’d started drafting when it came to hatch times and predictions, even if she didn’t have much in the way of substantial evidence for her to use. In exchange they gave her some of the notes they’d been sent with from their professor, telling her to make use of them whenever she possibly could, before they set off into enjoying their time in Unova’s largest city. With that taken care of, and those notes tucked in with the eggs in her basket, the second task of the day was started, running all the little item-finding errands her father needed someone to take care of before he had to travel into the city himself to do it. That was a lot harder than the research task, yet she got it done diligently, even if she did stop midway through to check on each egg she had individually, to make note of any changes and developments that may have happened while she was walking.

After that was done and she had exactly what her father had asked for hanging in a bag off the arm not holding her basket, Alison slipped into a small café hidden along one of the alleyways in town, somewhere sketchy and shady and probably not anywhere that’d stay in business too much longer. She sighed deeply in relief once she was inside, taking a seat at a table and setting all of her belongings in the chair next to her. Everything was finished and there were still a couple hours before she was supposed to meet with Joseph for their date, what else was she going to do besides sit in a café by herself? Well she could have easily gone walking around trying to hatch those eggs, but then she would have shown up to the date tired and smelly and she didn’t want to do that.

She ended up spending those hours with a notebook out, scribbling down every passing thought she had about her research and what she was going to do after this date night, which was almost exclusively work with those notes she’d received. Time always seemed to fly by when she got to thinking about those eggs in her basket, and if she wasn’t careful she’d forget about everything else she needed to do if she got too focused.

Thankfully, Joseph was well-aware of this trait of hers, and when he got to their agreed date location he called her over the Xtransceiver to remind her of where she needed to be. He wasn’t bothered by her being late, despite her being the one who’d decided on what time they were going to meet at the rather upscale café on one of the bigger streets in Castelia; he knew that if she got focused on eggs she wasn’t going to think about anything else, and this was going to be the night where he kept her from falling into the trap of that focus.

When she came up to him outside the café’s door, her basket, purse, and errand-purchases all in tow, his first action was to gently kiss her cheek, then to greet her properly. “It’s about time you got here, almost got scared you weren’t going to show up,” he said, taking her hand and leading her inside. He’d already gone through with saving them a table in the corner, so that they could talk without too much interruption, and after she’d chosen which side of the table she wanted to sit on he pulled her chair out and took everything from her to set it aside, like a proper gentleman would. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be here with anyone but you, Alison. Time spent with you is—“

“It’s time that could be spent on research, but sometimes we need a break from it, don’t we?” She’d cut him off with something he hadn’t wanted to hear her say, and he was wary that it was about to lead into conversation about nothing but eggs and what her particular brand of research was all about. In all the time they’d been dating, he was pretty sure there hadn’t been a single time they were together that hadn’t ended in talking about eggs.

This night was going to be different, he was certain of it, and to ensure he wasn’t going to be proven wrong he needed to make a move, and fast. After a waiter came to take their order and left the table’s side, he took in a deep breath and jumped right into his one chance at talking about himself for a change. “Are there really ever breaks from research? I know that, no matter where I am, I’m always looking out for Pokémon that are of interest to me. Sometimes people passing by just have something that fits the bill of what I want to really study, and I have to take the opportunity when I get it. I’m not going to be young forever.”

“You’d walk up to random people and ask them about their Pokémon if needed?” Alison asked in clarification, bringing her hands to her mouth in surprise. “That’s really bold, isn’t it? I mean, if I was walking around and saw someone with an eggie, I’d probably stop them and ask what it’s gonna be, but…”

He cringed, hearing the one word he hadn’t wanted her to say, but when she didn’t continue talking he considered himself lucky. “It’s bold, sure, but it’s a great way to get leads on what to study. Not everyone’s got a Pokémon you can find around these parts, and sometimes the ones that are from elsewhere are the more interesting ones.” This was stuff he’d read and heard in discussions with Professor Juniper, this wasn’t anything he’d experienced on his own and he didn’t think he’d ever have the chance.

The surprise on his face when Alison reached into her pocket and pulled out a single Ball to set on the table was genuine, but the moment she started to explain herself he was back to worrying if he’d just lost control of the conversation. “One time I was given an eggie from Professor Elm himself, a couple years ago. He told me that it was a Johto-native Pokémon and that I could keep whatever I hatched from it, as long as I made sure to take care of it before it hatched. I had no idea what it was gonna be, and that was exciting because I’ve hatched so many things I can find around here that something new was fun, and you know what?” Despite them being in a nice café, she went ahead and opened that Ball to show Joseph what was inside. Out came a pink thing with leafy green growths coming off of its head, fluttering just above the table. “This little friend was what hatched from it!”

“You…you mean that’s *yours*?” Gone was the fear that he was going to be stuck listening to egg talk for the whole meal, replaced by the shock realization that Alison had been keeping a Hoppip, something you weren’t even able to catch in Unova, and hadn’t bothered to mention it to him until right then. She nodded, happy at his reaction to her Pokémon, and he could barely keep himself in his seat as he watched the little monster float around them, before nestling itself up on top of the egg basket. “You’re going to have to let me check it out once we’re done eating or something, I’ve never seen a Hoppip before in real life. Apparently it’s something that fits right in with my interests.”

“I can tell, you’re super excited about it for some reason.” Recalling it back into its Ball, much to his dismay, Alison hid it back under the table right as the waiter came back with their drinks. Once they were alone again, she leaned over the table towards Joseph and grinned. “I’m so glad that I’ve got something you really like, here I was thinking you only liked me ‘cause I’m cute.”

“Trust me, there’s many reasons I like you that aren’t just because you’re cute.” So not only had he managed to get something relevant to his interests out of his girlfriend, but he’d gotten her to not talk about eggs for more than a couple seconds. This was already shaping up to be a victory of a meal—at least, until they were still waiting for their food a little while later and all he could think about was that Hoppip and how much he wanted to get to play with it. It would have been rude to ask her if he could see it, if just for a few minutes, since they were in the middle of idle conversation (that still didn’t include anything about eggs), but he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last waiting there to eat while thinking about that Pokémon she was hiding under the table.

She had noticed that he was clearly not focused on what they were talking about, and decided she’d do the nice thing for her boyfriend and give him what he wanted. “Bring it right back, I’m sure it won’t be too much longer until our food’s here,” she said as she tossed the Ball to him, him catching it without hesitation and jumping from his seat. “I don’t know why you’re so excited about it but there you go.”

Rather than waste the time explaining why he was so interested, because he already sort of had and she obviously hadn’t been listening then, he merely nodded at what she said and ran out the door, letting Hoppip free the first chance he got. The pink Pokémon looked at him with the same blank smile it had been wearing when inside the café, but it seemed to be more inquisitive about the outside world than where it had previously been let loose. “This is a dream come true! A Pokémon you can’t catch around here that’s more or less useless in this stage? That’s exactly what I want to see in my research!”

He was fumbling for his Pokédex to see if he could find anything of note about Hoppip in it, and hadn’t noticed when a gust of wind blew between the buildings in Castelia, causing the Pokémon to get dragged away a few feet. It was back in its original position by the time he had the Pokédex in hand, but because he hadn’t seen the incident he didn’t know what to prepare for when he heard the sound of much stronger wind rattling through the tall buildings; in the blink of an eye Hoppip went from being right in front of him to being carried off into the sky, with nothing able to be done to save it.

Just like that, he’d gone from being able to see his girlfriend’s cool, exotic Pokémon to having lost it, and now he was going to have to go inside and tell her what happened to it. Before he did that, though, he spent a fair amount of time looking around to see if it somehow got blown back to where he was standing, his face frozen in shock as he started to come up with an excuse to cover what had actually happened.

Thankfully, Alison seemed to have forgotten why he’d stepped away from the table when he returned, distracted by the fact that their meal had been delivered in his absence. That didn’t save him from having to fess up to his crime, though, as when they finished eating she immediately asked him what had happened to her Hoppip, seeing him tense up when she mentioned it. “Er, well, it’s cruel to keep a social Pokémon like that separate from friends,” he lied, wishing he still had food to shovel in his mouth to avoid the lying he was having to do. “And while I was out there with it, way out in the distance there was a group of Cottonee that it saw, and before I could stop it, it was gone to join them.”

“So it went to go find a new home?” she asked, sounding dejected at the thought, and when he told her that was correct she sighed, before shrugging. “It’s for the best, I guess! Maybe it’ll make eggies with those new friends and then it’ll become native to Unova after all!”

Cringing once more, this time not at the mention of eggs but rather at the hopeful idea that it had actually found friends rather than the mouth of some bird Pokémon, Joseph looked at his girlfriend and wished for her optimism in the situation. “That’d be cool, then we could both catch one and have it for ourselves, huh?”

“Oh yeah, that little friend of mine was pretty good at keeping me safe from trainers when I travel from home to here and back. No one ever wanted to fight me with it, because it’s not from around here and I wasn’t going to hurt anyone with it.” Alison laughed at the memory, while Joseph felt himself going pale as he realized that he’d just lost her way of traveling around places without getting into needless fights. He was going to have to fix that problem, wasn’t he? And to do it without letting her know the truth about what had happened…well, what he was going to have to do was going to be drastic.

The next time Joseph came to Castelia was to pass through on his way to Nacrene to visit Alison at her house, without warning her about what he was doing. It had been a few weeks since that date night, and they’d gone their separate ways the following day after he’d walked her home so she wouldn’t be battled; he had spent the time since then working on what to do to fix things with her. Sure she had no idea that anything was actually wrong, but he knew it and he wasn’t going to live with that fact without doing something to fix it.

He showed up at the front door of her house with a box under one arm and the worry that showing up unannounced was going to cause more issues than it fixed. Like normal, the door was answered by someone who looked like a sour-faced, male version of the girl he so strongly loved, who lightened up when he saw who it was standing there. “Thought for a second that you were Alison trying to get back inside for some reason,” her older brother Pon said, stepping aside to let Joseph in the house. “She’s out walking with her eggs like she always is, wasting her time on it. What brings you around here?”

“Came to visit her, actually. Know it’s not your favorite thing to hear but it is what it is.” From inside the box there was a small rustling noise, something Joseph shushed by bouncing the box, which earned him a dirty look from Pon and a grumble from the other person in the house, who’d come up to the two guys to see what was going on. That very grumble caught Joseph off-guard, and he drew in a sharp breath when he saw the older man standing right beside him. “Mister Alison’s dad, sir, what are you doing?”

“Don’t refer to me like that,” the grouchy old man snapped, immediately stepping away and heading back to the seat he was always in while in his home. “And get that Pokémon out of here, no one needs that in this house.”

“It’s a gift for Alison, how about that?” Pon called after his father, snorting as he spoke. “As if she’s going to make any use of it! She’s just as bad at being a trainer as she is being useful around here, isn’t she?”

The grunt he got in return made him laugh, but it made Joseph feel more uneasy about what he was doing. This gift was supposed to smooth things over after the mistake he’d made, but now that he knew it was going to cause issues with Alison’s family, was it worth it? He didn’t have much of a choice in the end, especially since he’d traveled from home to give this to her, but the worry remained in his mind that maybe, just maybe, he was going to dig himself a bigger hole by presenting this Pokémon to her when she came home.

Her coming home was much later in the day than he’d expected, and came with her having to beg to be let in by her older brother, who seemed to enjoy keeping her locked out for as long as he possibly could. She was thrilled to see that Joseph was there to visit her, and escorted him to her bedroom the first moment she could get away from the verbal berating she was greeted with by her father. “You should have told me you were coming, I would have invited you out eggie hatching with me,” she said, seemingly unbothered by what she’d endured upon her arrival. “I bet they weren’t too happy to see you here.”

“If they minded, they didn’t let me know,” he replied, before awkwardly thrusting the box he was holding at her. “Well, your father let me know he didn’t like what I got you, which I bet means you’ll like it more.”

“The only time I get presents is from you, so yes, I’ll definitely like it if he didn’t!” Tearing into the box as fast as she could, Alison squealed when she saw the puppy-dog eyes staring up at her from inside it. “Oh my, it’s a Lillipup! I’ve never gotten the chance to hatch one of these, and you’re *giving* me one?”

“Not just that, take a closer look.” This was the part that he was wary of, because while a Pokémon could be hidden, the second half of his gift wasn’t going to be something kept secret. He watched as she looked in the box, finding it completely empty aside from the dog, then she started to look at the dog itself. Her second squeal was a lot louder, and the way she worked to rip the carefully-tied ribbon off of the dog’s neck made him hope he hadn’t just led her to hurt her new Pokémon, but when all was said and done, she had a new Pokémon and a new piece of jewelry to wear.

Except she wasn’t wearing it quite yet, as he’d taken it from her once she’d gotten it untied. “I know there’s probably a better time and place to ask you this, but Alison, please, will you do me the honor of marrying me someday?” he asked, properly offering her the ring. Without hesitation she shoved the box with the Lillipup still in it at him, grabbing the ring and shoving her finger into it, and before he could even react she had opened her bedroom door and was running out into the other room to let her brother and father know what had just happened.

It wasn’t the prettiest proposal, but she seemed to have accepted it—and when they were sitting outside minutes later, her father having kicked them out because he didn’t want his daughter getting to live the life she had chosen for herself, they were laughing about the fact that that’s how things had happened for them. But even though they found the ability to laugh at things, Joseph couldn’t shake one of the things he’d been told while he’d been waiting for her to get home in the first place: “I sure hope you don’t feel like you’re forced to be nice to her, no one needs to be,” Pon had said, eyeing the box that he’d been holding under his arm. “She’s not worth the time or effort, she’s never going to do anything with her life and it’s better if you get away while you can.”

Little had he known that he was planning on making her his forever, if only because he felt he owed it to her after losing something so precious to her. Although, given what had happened immediately after the proposal, maybe it was for the best no one had known what he was doing until it was done…