Miri is Missing

Word Count: 5,366
(DocX Version for people whose browsers don't load PDF's can be found here.)

Following her wake-up call from Doll, Asuka is trying to clean up her act by cleaning up her house.  The journey to become a fully-functional adult will be long and agonizing but, with the help of her friends, Asuka is confident she will ascend to a higher state...I mean, she's roughly as intelligent as a 10-year-old and they get through school fine, so she's gotta have some chance, right?

PKMN Skies: Child Walks the Path of Adulthood: Lesson 2.5: Miri is Missing: Easy as ABCD'oh! Part 2

So, as the title implies, this is actually a sequel to confusedkangaroo's story, Easy as ABCD'oh!.  I felt that Asuka hadn't hung out with Miri in a while and thought a great way to get the band back together and continue Asuka's "I Need to Grow Up" storyline was to have Miri teach Asuka how to read.  Between her bio and a few submissions to the group, I've tried to establish that Asuka is pretty much illiterate, due largely to the fact that she always prioritized her fighting over all of her other life skills.  Since she's trying to turn her life around and become more responsible, I figured that learning to read should be one of her top priorities.

Kanga's story was great and a very quick and fun read, but she left me with quite a challenge when Miri said she was going to find a teaching method that was "as awesome as Asuka."  I've never been good at mysteries and I don't know how to teach anyone anything, so I didn't think I'd be able to come up with anything for this story, but Kanga shared some teaching references she used in her own story, which helped me come up with the idea of visual aides and piecing sounds together, as you see here.  The idea of Asuka subconsciously learning things while she runs around and fights was inspired by the MLP episode, Testing 1, 2, 3 and how Rainbow Dash learned things by scanning her environment during her flights.  The notion that Asuka learns better from direct experience and physical action rather than intellectual lectures was put into my brain by various documentaries about Shaolin Kung Fu, Taoism and Tai Chi.

...I have no idea if this teaching method would work in real life, but I do know that I'm happy that I was able to put legit martial arts philosophy into one of Asuka's stories.

The signs took some time to make.  Not a whole lot of time, but more than I would have preferred.  I just hope they're legible...It'd suck if the visual aides in a story about learning to read were impossible to--y'know--read...

I also borrowed LunaSheWolf's character, Kamala Mele because Kamala is another friend Asuka hasn't seen in a while and Luna and I have done so little with the fact that Asuka is teaching Kamala Tae Kwon Do.  She wound up being a lot more helpful in the story than I originally thought she would, so that's another bonus, heh heh.

Credits

Miri Quispe created and owned by confusedkangaroo

Kamala Mele created and owned by LunaSheWolf

Sir Gawain created by Maiden-Chynna, but loaned to me

Asuka and Smooze created and owned by moi