He did not consider himself much of a parent, but he had picked up a few tricks over the years. One of them being, whenever the general activity amongst the youngsters seemed to trickle into boredom territory, to pick phrases from a slightly out of date Pokemon catalogue and gently yell them in the general direction of youth. Now seemed to be such a moment, and thus he zoomed in on a phrase not previously used and happily yelled

“Hey, remember the Lickitung sushi minigame from Pokémon Stadium?”

If asked, he would be the first to admit to not knowing what these words meant. But they seemed to have done the trick, if the sudden amused buzzing activity was anything to go by

Tension and emotion filled the air. Fighting words had been spoken, and there were no apparent way of taking them back. Conflict seemed all but inevitable, and it would come to blows unless something distracting happened. And then they came, the fateful words

“My dad is stronger than your dad”

Unruffled by the forcefulness of the remark, the insulted party retorted

“No, my dad is stronger than your dad!”

As it happened, the very dads in question walked into the room at just that moment. Without hesitation, they began to arm-wrestle; within moments, the crowd of young boys were transfixed by the competition. As the efforting seemed to reach a crescendo, the dads went in for the final blow: a hug so hearty and wholesome that the young ones could barely blink before joining in

This place

She had not been there in a long time. Just seeing it from afar brought back memories. A place should not have that kind of hold over a person

“So, does anyone know where we are going? I’m flying blind here” someone in the group said, oblivious to the morphogenetic field hovering over the area. Not wanting to stay there any longer than necessary, she stepped up and said

“Sure, it’s this way”, then walked in a direction that would circumvent the epicenter

“You’ve been here before, then?”

“This way” she voiced straight ahead, not waiting to see if they followed