PART 1
When Elle DuRich agreed to work for Professor Oak, she was excited to assist with his new Pokemon photography project, Pokemon Snap. As an experienced photographer, she knew she had the skills needed to take some excellent wild ‘mon photos, just as Oak requested of her.
However, as she rode her stupid little Smart-Car-Bumper-Boat hybrid abomination buggy down the same goddamn beach path for the 20th time since she started, she could practically feel the missing four hours of sleep she didn’t get last night creeping up on her. But of course, she couldn’t doze off. Oak just absolutely needed 60 more pictures of the local fucking doduo that hung around near the beach.
As if it were programmed to do so, one ran past her as she idled by in the rumbling cart. She raised her camera and snapped the picture without even glancing in the viewfinder.
“Doduo,” the specialty device said, like it didn’t know Elle had the image of that exact fucking doduo seared into her brain, where it would likely remain for all eternity.
Like clockwork, a pikachu scurried out from behind a sand dune and began to clean its face. Slightly different from yesterday, when it had tried to zap a meowth that had tried to sneak up behind it. With a yawn, Elle dug around in her knapsack and fished out one of the apples she’d brought along. With a limp-wristed toss and a blasé grunt, she watched it roll toward the electric rodent. The pikachu was more disinterested in the fruit than Elle was in the job as a whole. Nonetheless, she snapped a picture of it staring stupidly at the offering anyway.
“Pikachu,” the camera reported.
“Wow, who could have predicted that one?” Elle huffed.
The rest of the ride was just as standard. More meowth prancing out from the reeds. An eevee chasing a jigglypuff around a bush. The resident kangaskhan glared at her as she wheeled by; a scare tactic to keep her away from its baby. Because if she hadn’t made a move to pouch-nap the eight-foot-tall beast the first 19 times, she was definitely going to do it on the 20th, right?
“So fucking stupid,” Elle grumbled to herself, leaning her head against the wall of the cart, silently willing any slightly more exciting ‘mon to show up and put her out of her bored misery. At the thought, she pulled the last apple she had out of her knapsack and chucked it over her shoulder, just for the absolute fuck of it. It wasn’t like it was going to change anything about her mind-numbingly monotonous routine.
DONK.
The sound made Elle start, and she perked up in time to see that her apple had struck something she hadn’t noticed before. What had looked like a weirdly overgrown tree the past 19 times had been jostled, and she watched the leaves and vines covering it fall away to reveal an all-too man-made sign, sporting a statement she was not expecting to see out in the island wilds.
Pokemon Sexyman Meetup–Pictures Welcome!
As if the cart had sensed the utter shock that had stunned her into a brief paralysis, it also came to a screeching halt. Elle blinked once, twice, three times, trying to make sure that what she was seeing was actually real and not just a hallucination produced by her dying brain cells. When no surprise psychic Pokemon manifested to bombard her with bullshit, and when none of the words in that strange phrase faded away, she knew she’d discovered something very real.
“Reroute, Miss DuRich?” the cart spoke.
Elle took a moment to weigh her options. The likelihood that she was about to take a ride through a sea of washboard abs and luscious hair and chiseled jawlines was slim to none. It was more than likely a very poorly executed attempt at a robbery, or even a kidnapping. Or, perhaps less grim, it was just some traveling salesman trying to entice some unsuspecting young trainers into buying merch of the attractive champions.
Either way, every single one of those options was more exciting than what she was doing now.
Without another thought, she pushed the single green button on the cart’s dashboard, accepting the change in route. The cart backed up just enough to match up with the poorly paved path into the treeline, and turned down in the direction the sign was pointing.
The ride through the brush was unremarkable, if she elected to ignore the slight anticipation brewing in her gut. Even if it was some grimy salesman, or even one of those villainous teams out to mug her, she was so desperate for a change of pace that she was willing to accept anything. She had her own partners on hand; she’d be fine either way. Though, perhaps she would accept a minor kidnapping, just to get out of finishing her work for the rest of the day.
When the cart rumbled out of the treeline, and back onto a sandy path yet again, she was quick to realize that her latter thoughts were completely and totally unfounded.
It was exactly as the sign had said.
Sexy men. Everywhere. All over the beach.
Playing volleyball, standing in the ocean, tanning out on towels.
They were fucking everywhere.
Elle felt her breath hitch, followed by the sensation of drool pooling up in the corners of her mouth. Her heartbeat sped up into a gallop, before taking off into a flutter that a hummingbird would have been jealous of. Heat exploded across her nose while all the air drained from her head.
“Holy mother of daddies,” she breathed.
Blinking the hearts out of her eyes, she tried to focus on who exactly was frollicking before her. The sign had indicated Pokemon Sexymen specifically, which had to mean this wasn’t just some random male model meetup she’d stumbled across. And boy, was she right.
The cart rolled past the volleyball net, where she could easily make out the sight of a tall drink of deep, caramel-y goodness. That head of purple hair, topped with a visor littered with sponsorship patches left her realizing she was looking at the reigning champion of Galar himself, Leon. The Leon.
Without hesitating, she raised her camera and snapped a photo. The sign did say pictures welcome, so who was she to deny that?
“New presence logged!” the camera spoke back to her. She wasted no time before she zoomed in on his bare chest–good lord, was it jacked–before snapping another photo. And another. And another. Before she could fill her memory card with pure body shots of Champion Leon, her eyes wandered just slightly to the left, where a pair of bare pelvic muscles poking out of a skin tight bodysuit left her doing a double take.
Wallace. The star of Sootopolis himself, fucking Wallace. Beaming under the summer sunlight as he spiked a volleyball back toward Leon.
Elle was quick to snap her next round of shots. From his flowing teal hair to his toned ass legs, she got it all.
“New presence logged!”
It didn’t stop there. Between close-ups of Steven Stone’s glowing blue eyes and pearly white smile, and N’s twinky yet fit arms and lucious green mane, and Lance’s chiseled jawline and impressive calves, and Grimsley’s obnoxiously toned abs and neatly trimmed eyebrows, Elle was snapping more photos in this one instance than she had in the twenty treks she’d made down the ocean path.
“New presence logged!”
“New presence logged!”
“New presence logged!”
Oak was going to get a kick over her spike in activity, she was sure of it. Perhaps he wouldn’t exactly enjoy examining pictures of abs and calf muscles and beautiful faces, but she’d call it payback for sending her down the same route for the same pictures every day for three straight fucking weeks.
This was the subject matter she didn’t know she needed, and now she couldn’t get enough.
But of course, even with her camera’s memory card brimming with the best batch of photos she’d ever taken, nothing would prepare her for what came up at the end of the route.
He was tall, but walked with a bit of a hunched swagger. She couldn’t tell if he really took care of his hair or just left it up to the elements, but she’d dare call the style of it avant garde–spiky, unkempt white hair over black roots. It was quite the combo. But it framed the most immaculate rectangular face she’d ever had the privilege of laying her eyes on, and gods almighty, his body…
Guzma. The most perfect Pokemon Sexyman specimen.
Elle simply held down the shutter trigger button. Clearly, he was worthy of the continuous shooting mode the camera had to offer. He was simply walking along, and yet Elle was convinced no picture would adequately capture the tan tone of his skin, or the cool sway in his step, or the smolder in his eye when he grinned.
“New presence logged!”
As her camera soon cried full memory card, Elle sighed with content. For the first time in over 20 expeditions, she felt like she’d been productive.
***
As expected, Oak was silent at the end-of-day photo viewing.
Elle had spent quite a while picking out her selects. With so much perfection to look through, it was hard to pick just a few. Though, she had a feeling that no matter what she’d decided to show, it was likely Oak would have still given her the same pinched glare he was giving her now.
“Miss DuRich,” he said evenly, like he was trying to stay polite, but his frustration was too deep rooted to really cover up.
“Yes?” she replied, batting her eyelashes.
“You do realize that the name of this project is Pokemon Snap, right?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And while I am…thoroughly impressed with your activity level today, I have to say that I am profoundly alarmed at the lack of Pokemon subjects in this batch of pictures,” he continued, slitting a gaze at one of the shots of Guzma’s butt.
Sighing, Elle clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Well, you see sir,” she began, speaking with an air of authority, “I had no muse. I was losing touch with the sense of art behind this project, you see. This detour was simply a jumpstart to my creativity.”
Oak wrinkled his nose, indicating he was unsure if he wanted to accept that answer. He leaned in to peer at a close-up of Wallace’s pointy pelvic bones. “While I admire your dedication to your craft, I fail to see how photos of the appendages of and assets of these men will jumpstart your creativity on this project, Miss DuRich.”
Elle scoffed before the noise petered out into a soft giggle. “Well, sir, they were Pokemon Sexymen. It’s adjacent enough.”
Pokemon Sexyman Snap was heaps better than Pokemon Snap, and Elle would die on that hill before she let Oak tell her otherwise.
