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“Happy birthday, Pikachu!” Ash called, and Pikachu groaned from where he was still sleeping on Ash’s couch.
Wait, Ash was up before Pikachu was?
The mouse jumped up rather abruptly, spotting Ash down on the first floor, entirely skipped the ladder—who needed ladders anyway—and landed roughly on his partner’s face. “Ah!” Ash yelled, before falling back. “Uh, happy birthday, bud.”
Pikachu scrunched up his face and informed Ash that it was not, in fact, his birthday, to which Ash snickered. “Well, yes, but it’s the anniversary of when I got you, right?”
That wasn’t Pikachu’s birthday, though. “Then when is your birthday, party pooper?”
Pikachu paused, before sticking his nose proudly up into the air. Pokemon didn’t follow the stupid human calendars. His birthday was in the spring, when the cherry blossoms had begun to bloom.
“And what season is it right now, Pikachu?”
…It was spring.
“We do this every year, bud. This is when we celebrate your birthday!” Ash got to his feet. “And anyways,” he said, moving his hand from behind his back, and Pikachu perked up. He recognized that smell. “who would pass up the opportunity to get a whole bottle of ketch—ah!”
Pikachu didn’t deem it necessary to let Ash finish his sentence, because he was talking too slow anyway. When a bottle of ketchup was involved, words weren’t needed, he just wanted the ketchup!
Ash scoffed, and looked at him rather peeved, but Pikachu didn’t care. “Alright, then, buddy, I guess you don’t even want cake too.”
Cake? Now, ketchup was one of Pikachu’s favorite things in the world (his second favorite thing, actually, and the only thing that had a narrow—very narrow—lead was standing in front of him now) but cake sounded pretty cool. Pikachu took a big drink of the ketchup before setting it down reluctantly (he should pace himself anyways, because an entire bottle of ketchup should be saved and savored!) and hopped up to Ash’s shoulder.
Cake?
“Okay, buddy, so—get this. The professors are out for the morning, they had stuff to do, and we have the house to ourselves! And they actually—gave me permission to use the kitchen this time. And gave me a recipe! And now I know how to not set stuff on fire! Wanna bake a cake together, buddy?”
Ash really wanted to do this, huh? And if Pikachu did not help him—despite his, in Pikachu’s opinion, unreasonable belief in himself—he would definitely set something on fire. Plus, you know, cake did sound pretty good! Especially if—what if they did a ketchup-flavored cake!?
Ash wrinkled his nose in distaste. “I…don’t think that’ll turn out how you think it will, bud. You can just put ketchup on your cake slice, ‘kay?”
Fine.
“So, uh, I was thinking, since it’s your birthday—yes, Pikachu, your birthday—we could make it look like you! The professors said we could do a yellow cake, since you’re yellow, and then there’s strawberry on the inside because of your cheeks!”
This would—yes, this would be fun. Pikachu would keep Ash from setting the house on fire, or getting it filled with sand, or messing up with the laundry. Yes, yes. Besides, Pikachu had never baked anything before, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?
Well, wrong, but that was just an Ash-and-Pikachu-thing. Pikachu padded his way over to the recipe, which was written in Burnet’s script. And—wow, that was a lot of words, huh? Like a lot of words. Pikachu could read some, after years and years with Ash of course he could, and he could pick out, like—the numbers. There was…’2 C. flour.’
What did the C mean?
What was…’granulated?’ G-r-a-n-u-l-a-t-e-d. Pikachu knew the letters.
Apparently Ash didn’t even know what it was, but at least Pikachu knew how it sounded now, out of his best friend’s mouth.
Well, it was okay! Ash could read the stuff for Pikachu! That’s how it was a lot of the time anyway. “So we need to pre-heat the oven, first. To three-hundred-fifty-degrees. Wait, woah, that’s really hot! That’s—back home, forty-five degrees is killer!”
Ash paused, looking back down at the paper. “Oh, wait. There’s ‘F’ written next to this. I don’t—I don’t know how hot three-hundred-fifty-degrees is in ‘F’ but it’s probably still pretty hot, right? Well. Uh. Let me do that.”
Ash squinted at the buttons on the oven, and Pikachu watched cautiously, before he could see the way a lightbulb went off in his partner’s head. “Oh, yeah! You pre-heat by doing this, and then this, and then this!”
There was a beep, and Ash looked rather self-satisfied. “First step, done!”
He jogged over to the recipe, bouncing in place. “2 C. flour. Um. Does ‘C’ mean cups?”
Ash went over to the cupboard that held the cups, and pulled two glass ones out. “Wait, Pikachu, do you think they mean the short ones or the tall ones?”
Pikachu thought it was strange that they called for cups, because what if people used cups of different sizes?
Oh, well, Mom’s cups at home were actually pretty close to this size too. Pikachu pointed his tail to the short one in Ash’s hand, and he smiled. “Where’s the flour? It’s…oh…”
Ash proceeded to spin in a full circle to the right, and then a full circle to the left. “I’ve…never actually cooked something good in this kitchen. Professor Burnet told me it was in this one. Or was it this cupboard?”
Pikachu looked at his human, sighed, and leaped onto Ash’s head, opening the cupboard at the top. There was a white bag that, when knocked over by Pikachu (oops) puffed clouds into the air and he could only barely let out a ‘Pika!’ before it went on Ash.
He coughed. It was so thick Pikachu couldn’t see!
Ash was entirely white. He looked up at Pikachu, who was still on the shelf, and got this devious sort of look on his face. Pikachu knew he would be safer if he definitely stayed in this cupboard, which Ash was too short to reach. His human jumped anyway, as high as he could, as powder came off of him like powdered sugar off a malasada. “Pikachu,” he called, each word punctuated by a jump, “come down here! Let me cover you in flour too!”
Pikachu considered hightailing it out of here with a quick attack, before deciding ultimately he was safer in the cupboard.
Until, of course, that didn’t pan out, because Ash just grabbed a handful of the white stuff and threw it at him, and now he wasn’t yellow anymore!
They laughed for a good minute before remembering that they were supposed to be making a cake. And this was the professors’ kitchen. And it was covered in flour. “Okay, okay,” his boy said, mirth still palpable in his voice, “let’s get the flour in.”
Two glassfuls of flour later, it was time for the next step. “What is corn starch? I’ve never heard of that. Pikachu?”
Pikachu didn’t know what corn starch was. He knew was corn was!
The professors did not have corn. That was—a big Unova thing, Pikachu was pretty sure. He didn’t even like it that much. It was too starchy—
Oh. Corn starch.
Well, it probably wasn’t that important, right? They could just—skip it.
Ash turned out to be fine with that. For the next step, Pikachu could read it. “One cup of sugar, buddy? Can you find that for me?”
Pikachu sniffed the air again, like he’d done for the flour. Something sweet, something sweet, where was it?
Up. It was up. It was probably in the same cupboard. This was probably the baking cupboard.
Why the professors refrained from telling his boy that the tallest cupboard was the baking one, when he couldn’t even reach it, Pikachu couldn’t puzzle out. Especially when there was a strict no-climbing rule in the kitchen!
There was a story behind that one, and the story was Ash.
Well, whatever, because Pikachu gripped the bag of sugar in his teeth and jumped into Ash’s arms carefully, not spilling it this time, because they didn’t need more mess. “So, granulated sugar? This thing just says ‘cane sugar,’ but that’s probably good enough, right buddy?”
Probably. Ash knew more about baking than Pikachu, though he didn’t know anything. If only they had Serena here! She was really good at baking, and she always made those good pokepuffs, but she wasn’t here, and—
And he was with Ash, his best friend, who was handing him a cup full of sugar expectantly. “Pikachu” he heaved, pouring the sugar into the bowl. “Good job, buddy! Up top!”
Pikachu and Ash high-fives were unique, because Pikachu always put a little of the force he’d put behind an iron tail into it, but not quite, because he didn’t actually want to hurt his human, but it always made a pretty loud clapping sound. With the two of them how they were, white powder poofed out into the air, and he coughed just a little bit.
The oven beeped. “No way, it’s already heated? We barely even started!”
Next was baking powder, and Ash had no idea what that was, but Pikachu searched around in the cupboard until he found baking soda, and it wasn’t the same, but they shared the first word and also the soda was powdery! But this was two teaspoons, and Pikachu was sure they didn’t have spoons just for tea, but for this the professors had measuring spoons.
It made him wonder if there were measuring cups, too.
Nah, that was stupid. Why have measuring cups when they have water cups right here?
Next came the salt, which ended up coming out way too fast, and Pikachu tucked his tail around him as his ears dropped in shame. Did he ruin the whole thing? Did he—
“It’s fine, buddy! I like salty things!”
“Okay, so now we’re supposed to whisk this together. Do you know what whisking is, Pikachu?”
It had to be some sort of mixing, right?
“Bud, you’re a genius!” Apparently, the professors had left out a machine mixer, already plugged in. His boy held it in the bowl, fiddled with how to turn it on, and pushed the dial all the way up.
Oh.
Pikachu coughed as he was once again covered in white powder, and Ash turned it off immediately. “Why’d it explode out?!”
Maybe they weren’t supposed to push it all the way up?
Ash thought Pikachu was probably right. They’d lost about half of their dry mixture, but it was okay. Ash set it aside.
“Half a cup of butter! Oh! The butter’s in the fridge!”
Ash opened the fridge, grabbing a stick of butter. Pikachu wasn’t sure if that was half a cup or not, but Ash threw it into the new bowl with such gusto that he couldn’t bring himself to bring it up.
“Wait, we were supposed to cream the butter and sugar? What’s creaming? And we were supposed to put the butter and sugar together?”
Oops. Well, Pikachu, thought, it was fine, because everything would end up mixed together anyway, what did it matter if they got the steps wrong! They should just—mix the butter. With itself.
This time, Ash turned the mixer on the lowest setting, but the butter was cold and hard, and wasn’t doing much of anything except being thrown around. Ash pushed it up, and he meant to do it gradually, but it went back up to the highest setting. Nothing exploded, but Pikachu had to hold the bowl really still so nothing went wrong.
Well, now the butter was mashed up. That was probably creamed, right?
Oil. That was easy. The oil was on the counter next to the stovetop. Three eggs? In the fridge. Pikachu was given the privilege of breaking them into the bowl, which he did very carefully, but eggs were harder to break than he thought. He ended up getting lots of shells in and raw egg all over him.
Ash helped him wash up, but now it meant that Pikachu was somewhat yellow again!
“One teaspoon of vanilla?” His boy held the vanilla extract in his hand, from where Pikachu had sniffed it out. “That seems like hardly anything, and vanilla’s sweet, kinda like sugar! We put in a whole cup of sugar. Maybe I should just—put in a little more, right?”
A little more was an understatement. It called for one teaspoon, which was probably more like at least ten. Well, oops. It would be okay. Vanilla smelled really good, Pikachu bet it tasted good too!
A little had gotten on the counter. Pikachu licked it, and then cringed. Ah! That was spicy!
Maybe that was why it only called for one teaspoon.
…it would be fine! The cake would be great!
They used the mixer, successfully this time, to mix everything, both wet and dry, together. Ash and Pikachu were feeling pretty proud of themselves, and they poured the batter into cake pans and put them in the oven. Ash burned himself a little bit, and tried to play it off, but Pikachu wasn’t stupid, if this was three-hundred-fifty degrees that sounded really hot, even if it was in F. He licked his human’s fingers, and he laughed, and the cake layers were in the oven and it was fine.
Ten minutes later, Ash realized he should have put on a timer. “Well, it’s fine! There’s probably, like twenty minutes left. I’ll just watch the clock.”
It was time to make the filling! The recipe called for water—easy, a cup of water, that’s what these glasses were made for. Corn starch again? Ah, it was fine, they probably didn’t need it. Strawberries? Ash helped cut those into small pieces, and then Pikachu put them in the bowl. Sugar? They already had it out!
The strawberry filling went off pretty much without a hitch, but then Pikachu smelled burning, and it had been more than twenty minutes, for sure.
Well, thankfully enough, even though smoke came out of the oven when they opened it—not a good sign—there was no fire. And the cakes weren’t even black! They just—well, they were more brown than yellow, but that was fine. Pikachu had brown spots on him too!
They wouldn’t come out of the pans. “I…guess we forgot to oil them, huh, buddy?”
Wait, really? No, no, this was alright, Pikachu could get it out with iron tail!
Ash cringed, and said “I’ve already cost Professor Burnet enough of her pans, ‘cause Melmetal eats metal, and I don’t wanna ruin this.”
But—and Pikachu felt completely unreasonable for this, because it was Ash’s idea, not his, this was supposed to be an Ash and Pikachu cake! It was supposed to work! They could do anything they put their minds to, so why couldn’t they do this?
Pikachu was crying. Oh no.
“Pikachu, Pikachu, buddy, look at me! It’s okay, bud, alright? It isn’t ruined! And, and—even if it was, that would be okay too! We can do everything together, and we had lotsa fun, yeah? And, look, the cakes are right here! Sure, they’re a little burnt, but so are we, yeah? We were totally burnt the first time we met each other! We can—we can scoop them out. Doesn’t have to look perfect, because I have a perfectly cute Pikachu right in front of me, ‘kay? Look at me, bud. We can do anything we put our minds to. We’ve, we’ve—we’ve saved the world a hundred times! We’ve won lots and lots and lots of battles, we defeated the bad guys. We always get into trouble, and then you always help me get out of it! We—we won the Manalo Conference together, and it was all thanks to you, buddy, to us and our Ten Million Volt Thunderbolt! If we can do that, then we can do this.”
It was—it was Pikachu’s birthday. The anniversary of the day Pikachu had met his other half, had officially become Ash’s—and, and, anything that celebrated Pikachu and Ash deserved his happiness. He shouldn’t be doubting—some thing that he’d somehow messed up, or Ash and Pikachu not being able to do something, because—that wasn’t what had gotten them through the end of the world. When Ash was drowning in the middle of an icy ocean, and Pikachu was too small to hold him up, he didn’t give up. Pikachu did not let Ash sink because some—batter stuck to a pan, or because this was it, they hadn’t succeeded in their little fairy tale, they should just give up. Pikachu did not give up on Ash when he was separated for days, when his heart was as fragile as wet paper, when he stared up at the moon, yearning, yearning, Ash, Ash, Ash, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, and Ash had certainly not given up, not when his soul called back Pikachu, Pikachu, Pikachu, I’ll find you, I’ll find you, I’ll find you. Not when Ash had traveled for miles and hours and days to find Pikachu, not when he hadn’t slept, not when he jumped into mid-air, swept away by the wind, carried, tossed, tossed like dandelion fluff, and they weren’t going to make it, they weren’t going to; no, no, Ash didn’t give up, because Pikachu’s name tore his way out of his throat and he caught him.
Pikachu had not given up on Ash when he was freezing to death on the edge of the cosmos, when oxygen was running out faster than sand through an hourglass, and the stars above glittered like snow, like dust, fragile, fragile. They were dead up there, someone had told him once. It didn’t sound like something Ash would say. The stars up there, they’d long since died, years and years and years ago, but they were so far away that it took years and years and years for their lights to finally blink out. The stars were dead up there, and Ash was staring up at them as his tears turned to ice, and his human was going to die like those stars, and it would take a long time for anyone to realize because he was way, way, way up here, in the infinite cosmos, the infinite, black, unforgiving void of space, and Pikachu wanted to stay on the ground forever, forever.
He did not give up, kept holding on, kept holding to the last vestiges of Ash’s life.
And he’d lived.
Pikachu never gave up on Ash, never, never, and why should he give up now, when the batter was stuck to the pan?
Ash was right. They could do this.
With a spoon, Ash tried to scoop as much of the cake out as he could. It came in crumbling chunks, and it wasn’t nice and round anymore, and it looked pretty grainy, more so than he remembered cakes being, but that was alright. Pikachu helped Ash press them back into cake shapes, and then put the strawberry filling on, and then another layer, then more strawberries, and then the last layer. And it looked—messy, very messy, but that was alright. Ash had candles that the professors had given to him, and he couldn’t work the lighter, but Pikachu used the tiniest bit of static to light them.
So now here Pikachu is, sitting back on his haunches in front of their yellowish cake with the candles burning. Ash pulls out the polaroid camera that he has always, always carried, and takes a picture of Pikachu like that, and laughs, before taking another one, with him in the frame too. It is blurry, and bad-quality, and somehow Ash has still not learned how to properly take a selfie despite years of practice, but Pikachu likes this a lot more. He blows out the candles, and then does not wait for Ash to cut the cake. He dives right in, and it is good, mostly. It is a bit bitter, because there was too much vanilla, and it is not the right texture, and it is a little burnt, but Pikachu does not care. He pours an obscene—even for him—amount of ketchup on his half of the cake, and the strawberries are really good, and his boy is laughing and that is the most important part, because this is Ash and Ash is his and they are Ash and Pikachu and Pikachu and Ash and they do not give up on each other. They have been together through hundreds of bad guys and thousands of miles and many, many many battles, and they were will never, ever, ever give up on each other.
Happy birthday, Pikachu.