I couldn't believe James fell out of the balloon. I could hear him yelling on the way down and after he hit the ground. "I hope he's O.K." I said.
"He's always O.K.," said Meowth. "He's got a hard head."
"Thanks for your concern," I replied sarcastically.
When I saw the twerps sitting around him laughing I got angry at him and at them. They must wonder why I keep hanging around him.
When James saw me he cringed and covered his head. I felt a little bit bad when I saw that, even though I had been considering hitting him in the head. I decided it wasn't worth humiliating him in front of the twerps again. Misty was probably just jealous anyway, look at what she had to deal with!
Anyway, I yelled at them to get away from him and I got him into the balloon.
He immediately admitted that what he had done was stupid. That left me nothing to say, so I just told him I knew he didn't mean to do it. Then he actually looked at me and said "What you said the other night... is it really too late?"
There he was again, talking about kissing me. I looked to make sure Meowth wasn't listening, then I said, "Well, let me put it this way, I wouldn't worry about the mallet."
I could not believe I had said that. I was practically asking him to kiss me. I didn't want him to, did I? Well, yes, some of the time I did. I was too embarrassed to look at him for the rest of the balloon ride.
We decided to stay in the motel another couple of nights. When we got there, I ran into my room and yelled "Good night!" through the door. Then I told myself that was stupid, James wasn't about to try to kiss me with Meowth around.
After about fifteen minutes, James knocked on the door and said, "Hey, Jesse, Meowth's asleep!"
I opened the door a crack and said "So?"
He certainly hadn't wasted any time! Well, if he thought I was going to kiss him just because he felt like it, he'd better think again!
"So, do you want to go get some ice cream?" he asked.
"Um, ice cream?" I said.
"Yeah, it's more fun without him around to bug us."
"Um... no thanks, James."
"O.K., good night then!" And he shut the door.
I was so relieved. Then I was kind of angry. Had he just been joking around? Did he even want to kiss me? I sat up for a while wondering about it, then told myself I was being ridiculous and went to sleep.
In the morning we tried to work out a new plan to get Pikachu. We probably would have been better off with a new project but those kids were still around so we decided we might as well try to make their lives a little more miserable.
This plan involved borrowing Mondo's ditto. We would call out our pokemon, and have the ditto transform into a Pikachu. In the confusion, we would grab the real Pikachu and leave. Ditto would re-transform and find us later.
James was a bit skeptical. "Jesse, the last time we had that ditto it was a disaster. We didn't even manage to get rid of Meowth!" Meowth hit James in the head then. I couldn't help laughing at both of them.
We finally decided it was the best plan we could come up with and contacted Mondo so he could send us his ditto. Then we took off in the balloon (the old Meowth one) and landed near the twerps.
"Prepare for trouble!" I shouted. Then we went through the rest of the motto. That, as usual, was the only part that went well.
First we called out Weezing and Arbok, and we sent Mondo's ditto out and yelled, "Transform!" For some reason I have still not figured out, it forgot what I had told it to do and transformed into a Raichu instead of a Pikachu. Then it hopped up to Ash's pikachu, and Ash's Pikachu started... flirting with it. At least that's what it looked like to me! The Raichu didn't look unhappy about it, in fact it started a whole conversation with the Pikachu. The artist kid started drawing a picture of the happy couple and I had Arbok chase him into the woods.
Ash and Misty were laughing too hard to do much. We went to grab Pikachu with a net anyway, but the ditto/Raichu forgot who we were or something and shocked us. It wasn't quite as bad as the Pikachu but we did go flying through the air and land near the balloon. The ditto didn't want to come back either, but I sent Arbok to threaten it and it finally broke up its little romance. It seemed to complain all the way home though, even when it got out of Raichu form.
When we got back to the motel I was feeling pretty discouraged. We sent the ditto back to Mondo. I didn't have the heart to tell him the whole story.
We ate some cheap take-out for dinner. Then Meowth went out to see if he could find any street Meowths to hang around with and I had to be alone with James.
"Don't look so sad, Jesse," he said. "We'll get that Pikachu someday!"
Then he put his arm around me. He had done that before many times, but we had both pretended it was just friendship. Now I started blushing and moving away.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
"I just don't want you to get the wrong idea because I said I wouldn't hit you in the head with a mallet!"
"If I kissed you, you mean?" he said. Then he put his hand underneath my chin. "Were you planning on hitting me in the head at all?"
Then he kissed me. It was an amazing kiss, and I really couldn't help kissing him back. Finally I pulled away and said "On a scale of one to ten, I'd give that a three." Three hundred was more like it, but I wasn't about to tell him that.
He looked at me. "Are you saying I need practice?"
"Who says I'm going to let you practice on me?" I said. I wasn't smiling. I didn't want him taking me for granted because of one kiss.
He looked angry. "Who says I want to?" he replied.
"Fine, go ahead and pout," I snarled at him.
He was about to stomp off into the other room when he realized that was supposed to be my room. He stopped at the door with his back to me and sighed.
I realized I had pushed James too far, and he deserved an apology. And if I didn't say something, he would probably never kiss me again. I didn't think I liked that idea. I hate to apologize more than I hate getting thundershocked, but finally I said, "I didn't mean that."
He turned around. "I didn't either."
I felt sorry for him when I saw the sad look in his eyes, so I didn't object when he kissed me again. This kiss was even better than the first. I only gave it a 6 though. No sense in letting him get conceited... or forgetting to practice.