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The world, for all of its bright colors and its promises of better tomorrows, is unforgiving. It is a lesson hard learned by the people it houses, epiphanies hammered into minds at their weakest moments. Some learn faster than others; children his own age suffering in the shadows of their family. Some are orphaned, others abandoned. A little girl breaks her arms when she's alone in the mountains. Two are taken from their families, never again to be seen by those who had so loved them. They fight, they struggle, they fail – but none of them are
him. Hunger claws at the bellies of the poor, heartbreak pounding inside the heads of those who have loved and those who have lost, but
he goes to bed with a stomach full and with the knowledge that he will never have to face the world alone. Dad's gone, yes, likely never to return, but his mother affection down to an art, flooding him with enough to more than make up for a father figure lost. There may never be brothers or sisters, but there will always be the
Pokemon, infants at his birth and children in his childhood. Every morning filled with laughter and after night filled with song. What the citizens of Newbark Town call the Pokemon House, he calls
home, and while perfection may never have been in Arceus' grand design, Gold thinks back on those days with fond recollection and thinks that they might have just come close.[break][break]
Heroes are born from tribulations and triumph, and four come before him facing and achieving just that. No one expects him to follow in their footsteps. He is sly and he is crass. Heroism, they say, calls for everything he is not.[break][break]
(
It'll take everything he's got to prove them all wrong – but that's more than he's willing to give to get it done.)[break][break]
ripples on the waves, battles on the brain
Gold is eleven when he says goodbye to Newbark Town. It's an errand and a mission: The boy he helped last night has connections, one can see, and if he
oh so graciously helps escort the professor's aid to prevent another birdnapping, he'll be closer than ever to getting a genuine autograph from none other than DJ Mary herself. It's not meant to be a journey that takes him away from his mother - “I'm making your favorite tonight, so don't stay out too late at the pool hall, alright?” she tells him on that early morning – but even the small distance between home and Cherrygrove feels like an adventure in itself. The people they pass on the streets, each calling his name and wishing him well, is enough to attest to the amount of time he's spent cooped up in the confines of this place, and while the neighboring area is certainly not foreign to him, it's fresh enough that he won't miss an opportunity to see it again. (
He won't lie, though. The recognition he gets and Joey's shocked reaction to it are doing a great deal for his already inflated ego.) They haven't even made it to Route One, though, when their plan comes falling apart. Even his beloved hometown is not free from the terrible reign of the unofficial league of con artists, and all it takes is one showing up for him to forget about their mission and leave his bag, as well as the dozens of Pokemon he has grown up side by side with to get snatched from under his nose. The thief is after a backpack full of PokeBalls. Through the haze of disbelief and loss, he barely registers his friend's explanation of why his was accidentally snatched when the bag next to it, the one they were tasked with delivering was more than likely the intended target. What he hears load and clear is what they'll have to do to get it back.[break][break]
“And when the crook catches onto his mistake, where does he go then?”[break][break]
To Professor Elm's place.[break][break]
It's a gamble, he knows, to assume that he'll have his family back with him by dusk by intercepting the crook at the not quite as acclaimed Professor's lab, but even if they're not on hand when the intercepting happens, he can think of about a dozen ways to beat the information of where it was ditched out of the guilty party. So they U-turn. Cherrygrove is forgotten in favor of a house stacked onto a laboratory, and the raven-haired boy is flaunting his expert knowledge of stealth by climbing up to the second story window when he nearly topples over
him – red-haired, silver-eyed, more than a touch intimidating, and most importantly,
fleeing the scene of a crime. And Elm has the audacity to call
him, the one coming to warn him about the real danger, the thief! It doesn't take a genius to realize that something's gone awry here, nor is it to put two and two together to figure out that the angry boy with the unopened PokeBall in his hand is the one to blame for it. Hindsight will tell him that it was more than a bit of a stretch to immediately assume that the theft of Elm's Totodile meant that, without a doubt, this was the same culprit of the morning's earlier crime, but for an eleven-year-old boy caught in the raging heat of the moment, it's just so
easy to scream: “Give me back my backpack!” They battle – although, what with the way this nameless criminal is running rather than really going on the defensive, maybe it's not really a battle in a traditional sense – and it takes the joint effort of his Aibo and that feisty little Cyndaquil in the lab to finally get this guy on the other end of his billiards cue. (
As it turns out, he's not the only one here who won't stand to see him get away with that Totodile.) Vengeance is about to be served cold, his victory assured in a ring of fire that only
he gets to decide when to put out...[break][break]
… and the world immediately turns to black.[break][break]
He wakes with a burnt glove in his hand and a name to a face he'll remember well stitched on the inner linings of the ruined fabric.
Silver, it says. If he weren't so pissed about this whole thing, he might have given the cliché nature of their names - Silver and Gold, Gold and Silver - a good ol' laugh. Instead, he saves it for when he sabotages the police that night, leading the kindly officer on with lies and a composite image that couldn't be further from the truth if it had gray skin and candy corn horns jutting out of its head. Professor Elm, caught up with Joey in one of the red head's ice attacks, had supposedly been hospitalized, and none of the force would possibly understand just how badly those stolen Pokemon needed to be returned to their home – not like Elm, not like Cyndaquil, and
certainly not like Gold. They'll be an obstacle, he tells himself, in a race that he's determined to run alone.[break][break]
Whatever it takes to bring them home, he tells himself. Whatever it takes.[break][break]
...
[break]
It doesn't take long at all for him to learn what it is that separates him from the boy that got away. There's an old geezer who hogs up time on DJ Mary's radio station, the way he drones on about the factual aspects of Pokemon life as boring to listen to as it'd be to stare at the oak trees he's named after for a few days. More specifically, he's the old geezer that Joey was meant to rendezvous prior to all of the day's crime-related happenings, and even
more specifically, he's the old geezer who hand crafted an object that appears to have been stolen by the Totodile thief the trainer had confronted just earlier than day. The PokeDex. In the throws of battle, the red object his opponent had been glancing at every so often had easily been disregarded, but seeing it now and knowing that it was worth enough to be snatched away before the raid on the fellow professor's home, it'd be impossible not to remember. Once its functions are explained, as well, it's no wonder why it was stolen, nor why it was being acknowledged more than once on the battlefield. Beyond its use for gathering information of any and all types of Pokemon, it can also give you such valuable information as an opponent's strength and move pool in an instant. Clearly a valuable asset to any battle strategy. An asset the bad guy had. The asset
he wants. His upbringing, however, does not prepare him for the blatant refusal that comes after his excellently thought out speech (
“This is for you. And I don't think you want me to fail.”), and it certainly doesn't teach him how to handle the sting of losing not one, but
two brief Pokemon battles in the span of less than twelve hours. He catches Aibo's limp body mid fall, glaring all the while that Oak prattles on about how he'd never give such a precious object to someone he doesn't know, much less someone who has proven that he lacks both the skill as well as the forethought and mindfulness befitting of those known as the Dex Holders.[break][break]
He's not good enough is what's being said here. He's not smart enough, not strong enough. The thought makes his blood boil hot, warmer than the flame erupting from Exbo's fiery backside, and he
knows that he has to prove to this man, to
everyone, that he's
more than good enough. Who needs a dumb old PokeDex to succeed, anyway? Clearly not him! He'll train until his Pokemon as so strong that no one will ever think of stealing from him again, and by the time Oak comes back begging for him to honor him by completing one of his new Pokemon encyclopedias, he'll be so beyond needing it that the best he'll offer the dying old man will be a laugh in the face and a punch in the gut. And train he does, pushing the last two of his Pokemon to exhaustion and beyond that still, because no matter what the wold may think of them, he knows that they're stronger than this. That
he's stronger than this. (
Their training turns the ground, solid, sturdy, to sand, and when the rains settle in, it sends Joey off the riverbank and into the raging waters. All he can hear is his friend's screams for help when he dives headfirst into the water, but all he can think is that if this is the best he can do, his mother's Pokemon will be gone for a very
long time.)[break][break]
It takes a rainstorm, a near-death experience, a great deal of kneeling and begging, and a proclamation of their goals and how he'll work alongside his
partners to achieve them before the famous professor finally breaks down and hands the darned thing over. “Take this – and be grateful!” he says. What he doesn't say, and what he'll
never say, is that this is a responsibility far beyond what Gold had ever imagined it would be, gargantuan shoes that demand to be filled and a mountain of trials, the likes of which he has never seen laid out sloppily before him. Whatever may come, though, he'll overcome. They may have lost these first rounds, but Exbo's flame hasn't given out yet, and if his partners aren't giving up, neither is he. They know their mission. It's just a matter of time before they see it through.[break][break]
...
[break]
The second arrival of Kanto's greatest professor brings with him, miraculously, Gold's missing bag, tossed carelessly onto the riverside and retrieved with the intent of turning it and its PokeBall contents into the police. What
should have been a heart felt reunion quickly because a detour, though, when the supposed return of his family comes with a headcount falling just one short. The bag's presence at all and the fact that Joey and his own went untouched in Silver's raid are proof enough that he isn't to blame for all three of the day's near identical broken laws, and while his hands still itch at the thought of clobbering him into the ground, he also knows better than to abandon his original search when there's still one not quite sibling out there in the region, washed away by the river's current and lost on some foreign soil. There's justice to be served, but before that, there is a brother he needs to be reunited with, and if he can help it, it won't stop until just that has happened.[break][break]
As it turns out, he
has to help it.[break][break]
Hours turn into days, and by the time he has ripped through an entire week and an impressively sized pile of unconscious Chinchou, it's becoming increasingly clear that his missing party member, the timid little Polibo, isn't going to be showing up anytime soon – or any
where soon, so long as he keeps searching in the same old places. Regret seats itself heavily on his heart, but there's no choice to progress, off and further away from his humble beginnings, and the best he can manage is casting a sidelong glance here and there in hopes that maybe, just once, he'll catch a glimpse of familiar navy blue out of the corner of his eye. Time, of course, is never so kind. He sees a Sunkern, and then an army of Sunkern first and finds himself giving aid to that same police officer –
Falkner, his name is, and outside of uniform, the man with dreams to inherit his father's gym is
much more personable – in his attempts to add an out of place metal bird of all things to his roster of Pocket Monsters. After that, there's Bugsy, who, despite turning out to be male, is promptly asked out on a date that is ultimately denied. (
A touch difficult to think about tea and hand holding when all of your co-workers and friends have mysteriously disappeared during an archeological dig.) The raven-haired menace would press for one once the Ruins of Alph have been opened – all thanks to him, of course! - and the missing residents of Azalea Town returned to their rightful place, but he has a strict no-male policy when it comes down to who he'd like to take out for a night, and beyond that, there's a red head on the loose who needs to be brought down a few pegs. Finding him quickly proves to be no great feat. Keeping him in one place long enough to apprehend him, on the other hand, is a different story entirely.[break][break]
They cross paths first in the unsteady tower in Violet City, a tip from a little girl pitting him against the monks inside (
they want to shave his head
, what's the matter with these guys?)and eventually, with surprising ease, the one he's
really after. Not even a whole minute seems to be spared before Silver tries to send him falling into an endless abyss – or, more accurately, at least a story's worth of height – but determination and quick thinking simultaneously save his hide and start their feud anew. Regrettably, it doesn't last long, and if their squabble in the lab all that time ago was a loss, this is a downright
pounding. With a great deal of pride swallowing, he comes to realize that in a battle of brute force or strategy, he may never get any leverage, but his ultimate goal of returning the stolen Dex and Pokemon don't necessarily require any real battle skill to achieve. All he has to do is practice a little trickery. No problem there. A surprise smokescreen separates Pokemon from trainer, but Gold's goggles come in handy for more than a few things, and he manages to get to the water-type he's after before it's supposed trainer. A few sugary words about how badly Elm is missing it should be good enough to persuade it to his side.
Should be, being the key words. His arm is bleeding when the smoke clears, the crocodile-like creature to blame scurrying back to the thief's side just moments later, and, for reasons he won't understand for some time yet, the darned thing
chooses to stay with his captor. It's Stockholm Syndrome at its finest; he's having
none of it. The two manage to get away, a triggered security system that the four
barely make it out of alive as good a scapegoat for attention as any, but not even that is enough to dissuade the boy from his mission. His goal only falters when they meet again in the mountains, Kurt's fragile little granddaughter accompanying him, himself, on a quest for a rare Teddiursa, and the other silently flaunting the way that Kurt chose
him as the strong one over his not-quite-reciprocated rival. They're cornered, and Gold's impromptu strategizing not only saves all of their lives, but catches both Teddiursa and its aggressive protector of an Ursaring.[break][break]
Silver gets away – typical.[break][break]
(
Silver risked his life to protect that little girl – Gold thinks about this for some time to come.)[break][break]
...
[break]
It starts with a masked man in a forest, and it escalates into a force strong enough to level the entirety of Ecruteak City. The world, he learns firsthand when he is eleven, is unforgiving, and what begins as a quest to catch a thief leads him into an elaborate scheme full of mind control, kidnapping, and
murder. Someone wants something from the shrine in the forest – he won't realize until much later that he'd averted a crisis on that day, regardless of the fact that his team was utterly destroyed – and someone
else wants something from the Tin Tower, each badly enough that they care not for the fates of those who may stand in their way. By now, he's hatched the world's first discovered Pokemon egg, and the training the Daycare Couple put him through upon going to show them the results has certainly buffed his team, but when he thinks back to the cloaked stranger in the woods and looks out across the crushed earth of what used to be an entire city, he can't help but think that even
that may not be enough to stand a chance against the criminals he's being pit against, much less complete his newest mission. There's a girl out there somewhere who never made it out of the city, and as “Thanks” to the old couple who allowed his Cyndaquil to evolved into a Quilava, he has to bring her back to Goldenrod – preferably
alive. Much to his surprise, however, he finds Silver of all people, and to his even
greater surprise, he finds Jasmine no more than three seconds after, unconscious and held in his arms. He's angry, yes, but he'd be more angry had it not been for the fact that the ground they walk and the tower they're in are anything but stable, and his memory calls upon fighting for their lives in the broken Sprout Tower when, once again, death stares them long and hard in the face in just another tower. Jasmine gets out first, but it takes a landslide and a sudden trade for the boys to make their escape. Figures that it would be out of the frying pan and into the oven.[break][break]
Team Rocket. He's heard their name in passing before, reports on the television speaking of their upheaval of Saffron City in Kanto and the way they single handedly disrupted the entire ecosystem of Viridian with their army of violent Pokemon, but he'd never expected them to try to make any sort of come back, much less in
his region. He and Silver are surrounded when they take their first steps out of the collapsed building, but it's no more than fifteen minutes before the younger of the two has dispatched the massive Goliath that wrecked the city in the first place and he, himself, has dispatched of the leftovers. This is still among some of the first times he's battled against more than one Pokemon at a time, the
very first having been up against the Masked Man, but he's quickly getting into the groove of things. He must be, after all, if his meager party of six can take out a force of dozens of weak Rocket grunts all at once. He still has no idea what the goons were after come the time of their retreat – the closest he comes is noticing his not quite partner's reaction to the word “Ho-oh” and they way the culprits seem to have achieved whatever it was that they came here to do – but more than he wants answers about that is that he wants a
battle. Time and experience has told him that his silver-eyed rival isn't doing bad for the sake of evil, and while his methods are more than a bit unorthodox, there's no doubt that he's a strong force against a group of people that have been known to do a lot worse than steal Professor Oak's PokeDex. (
And then there's Jasmine and Kurt's granddaughter; it's hard to imagine someone as heartless when they're putting their neck out there for the sake of the helpless, especially when it's anything but strategically advantageous.) This is the sort of guy who's probably never battled for fun in his entire life, and the Newbarkian's getting a little sick of jumping from one missed swing with the hammer of justice to the next.[break][break]
He offers. To his glee, the other accepts.[break][break]
It starts out simple: starter versus starter, Croconaw versus Exbo. They add in another to each side, and then more, and more still. It's clear that Silver's good, battling at a level far beyond Gold's own, but the underdog refuses to turn down a challenge and pushes himself and his partners to keep up the pace. He thinks he sees his opponent smirking across the way, the first real expression beyond stoicism and an angry frown that he's ever seen color those features, and Arceus doom it all, he'd swear that they're both having the time of their lives. There's no need to hold back out in the desolated ruins of Ecruteak, and if the two get caught up in the heat of the moment, it's all for the better. There's nothing that can interrupt them now – nothing short of Silver's PokeGear, knocked out of his reached in the debris of a missed Dynamic Punch attack cuts through the otherwise silent night. “Silver,” comes the calm voice, effectively freezing every human and Pokemon that can hear it. “Your next objective is at the Lake of Rage. We've received reports of strange Pokemon activity in the vicinity. We need on site confirmation. I await your report.” The device buzzes, and for one horrible minute, the only thing that can be heard is the wind dusting over the ruined earth beneath their feet. There's something quietly shameful on the enigma's face now, and despite the voice in the back of his mind telling him to think better of it, he asks, “... What was that?”
And who are you? He shouldn't even be surprised when he doesn't get any sort of answer to that; instead, he suspends his disbelief until a
Tyranitar of all things is summoned to the field, immediately laying waste to any of his team members who are unfortunate enough to get caught up in the storm. Their battle has to be cut short, he's told, and the way that's supposed to happen is by calling out a beast so powerful that not even its supposed trainer can hope to tell it what to do. He struggles, calling out useless orders that are intercepted by a terrifying storm of sand -[break][break]
He
downs it. There's a gamble involved, just like all of his best strategies, but he watches the giant fall to the ground in a daze, taking Togebo, the culprit, with it. The Togepi is his last Pokemon, unfortunately, and with its fainting, he's officially lost. The shock on his rival's face, though, is certainly worth the loss.[break][break]
Team Rocket is after Ho-oh. An explanation, he's explained, is in order for his efforts both against the team in question and in the battle that has just reached its conclusion. No one beyond the brains behind the organization knows for sure why, but Silver and... whoever it was on the other end of that PokeGear don't need to know in order to bring the group to their knees. It's as the golden-eyed male suspected. This boy will do whatever it takes to bring the Rockets to their knees, even if he has to lie, cheat, and
steal to do so – and when he leaves, off toward his next objective, he, himself, knows that he's got not choice but to follow. This isn't something someone can do alone, aid from some mysterious man in some mysterious place or otherwise, but the two of them together may just stand a chance. They meet the Masked Man there, despite the former's protests to being followed, and catch him forcing the Magikarp of the lake into rapid, violent evolution. The three battle once the Gyarados in question have been dealt with, two reluctant allies against a foe who still seems to outclass him in every way possible. (
He learns on that day that Silver was a slave
, forced to do this man's bidding just like those Magikarp. His heart breaks a bit at the revelation, and his fists clench when their icy foe has the audacity to call him weak for breaking free five years prior. “This guy uses Pokemon and people like things. He's a disgrace to every trainer![break][break]
“Let's shut him down!”)[break][break]
Gold watches Silver's unconscious form slip below the ice first, plunged into the frigged waters of a lake now frozen. He doesn't last a whole minute before he, too, is shoved down below.[break][break]
new life has come along, & it needs your love, too
The first thing he sees on waking is fire. Flames rise high in a circle around him, the tips clawing at the ceiling of the cave above his head and dancing uselessly a yard or so from his fallen form. The second thing he sees is Aibo pulling at his hair, freed from his missing cap and as explosive as its ever been. Not that he cares so much about the state of his hair. There are more pressing matters to attend to – matters like
Silver, the third thing his eyes land on, laying face first on the stone ground across the way, Sneasel standing scarily still over his form. A closer inspection tells him that neither of them are dead, and words uttered from lips other than his own tell him that he wasn't the first to wake. Neither of them are in top shape, but considering that Gold was almost certain his last few minutes of life were full of a frozen lake, a frozen-hearted boy, and a man with a mask of ice, he's not going to catch himself complaining, now or ever. None of that explains how they made it out of that situation alive, though, nor does it explain where they are. Attention is drawn to the flames surrounding them, dissipating almost as soon as the two are up and about, but his brain simply isn't large enough to figure out what caused them, what they did, or how they knew their job was completed. This, however, is the calm before the storm. They wonder for no more than ten minutes, and just like that, the fray swallows them whole and demands their immediate and full attention.
Something is attacking them, and without their full attire and arsenal (
of all the things to go missing, they had
to be his billiards cue and shoe), their best option is to run.
Right into another battle.[break][break]
Fortune is kind enough to send a military man to them with their missing Pokemon and items, but misfortune is hot on its heels with a
massive monster attacking everything in sight. Someone says the name Lugia, but all the black-haired boy can focus on is the beautiful SS Anne, plucked right from the ocean and floating in midair against every bit of logic he's ever been taught. Boats don't
fly – and neither do any of his Pokemon. He hitches a ride with a man he'll never learn the name of, watching helplessly as the legendary lays waste to what he's learned to be the Whirl Islands. Silver's out there fighting alone, but it's clear than none of his attacks are landing, and even if they were, one measly Murkrow isn't enough to stand much of a chance against
that. What he notices
next, however, takes priority over all: a girl on a shipwrecked boat, barely conscious and struggling against waves. A damsel in distress, if you will. A damsel in distress
he's going to save. “Thanks for the ride, old man,” he tells the gym leader, forcing his way out of their shared protective pod and landing a skip and a jump away from her fallen form. Before he can get a grip on her hand, though, he sees a black glove suspiciously close to his – Oh, darnit, he's been beaten to the punch
again. Rescuing girls, he yells while taking that black jacket in a fist, happens to be
his calling. Frightening them seems to be one as well. “Ack!” the twin-tailed girl screams, suddenly awake and fleeing from the two as if they were creatures made of fire. “A pair of delinquents!” He's offended, not by the fact that she called him a delinquent (
if he grew offended each time someone called him a delinquent, he'd spent his entire life saltier than a salt lick), but rather the fact that he's been paired up with the boy next to him at all... although the feeling doesn't last long. It'd be hard to think of anything but the abrasive noise of three PokeDexes reunited.[break][break]
Four things happen that day: first, Gold realizes that he has, against all odds, narrowly escaped death for the first of more than a few times to come; second, Lugia is captured, and despite the fact that it appears to this strange girl and her perfectly aimed kicks that did the trick, they're all crushed to find that someone stole the beast from right under their noses; third, he learns that the third (
seventh) child that Oak has entrusted with a PokeDex with isn't a prissy girl, she's
Crystal, or Crys; fourth, Silver leaves them to face the aftermath of the legendary's sudden rampage alone. For the better. They've a new mission from the Professor himself, one that the gambler
knows will have him crossing paths with his rival once more. The Masked Man that nearly had their heads is a gym leader, evident by his possession of badges specifically given to League official badges beneath his cloak, and in order to discover his identity, the League has staged a battle of the gym leaders to take place prior to the bi-annual tournament held at the Indigo Plateau. As it turns out, he's been out like a light for quite some time, and by some miracle was awoken on the tournament's exact date. Thousands of Pokemon fans are going to be tuning in all around the world for a good show, and one of its stars has been working behind the scenes to reunite and use Team Rocket for evil. The thought alone makes his blood run hot.[break][break]
Twice, now, this man has tried to put an end to his life, and Arceus only knows what else has done to others or what heinous schemes he may have stashed up his sleeves. If he can do anything to bring this man to justice, darnit, he'll go above and beyond the call of duty to do it.[break][break]
...
[break]
Gold is eleven when he watches he's first dubbed “The Hatcher”. The League tournament has gone horrifically wrong by every stretch of the imagination – the controls hacked, the gym leaders kidnapped, their plan to isolate the Mask of Ice foiled by his presence in another place entirely, and both Lugia
and Ho-oh forced into servitude under a man who has kidnapped, murdered, and abused – and as horrified spectators run to the hills for their lives, the little boy from Newbark Town finds himself in one lost rematch after the next. He battles the ice specialist once at the Plateau itself alongside Crys, then again somewhere between his hometown and Azalea, and had it not been for the untimely arrival of a pair of Pikachu and their egg, he
would have been able to catch the Pokemon hating fiend right then and there. Nothing he or the other two Dex Holders have done has done anything but create the slightest of bumps in this man's –
Pryce, the Mahogany Town's crippled old gym leader – grand scheme, and the knowledge alone hurts him more than actual wounds he has sustained, incapacitating as they may be. But there will be a round three. Pryce may have found his way into what he calls the Crack in Time, the good gym leaders may be trapped, and Silver and Crys may be nowhere to be found, but the Daycare Couple and the fishermen he's helped have arrived with a letter from the Professor to tell him exactly what he needs to do to bring the masked man and his army of brainwashed Rockets down for good. Every child that Oak has met and entrusted to do his research excels in some way, names of people he's never met face to face but heard of from Crystal written in barely legible chicken scratch on the paper in his hand. (
His grip tightens on the egg in his lap with each stroke of the pen; Oak, what are you trying to tell him?) Red is The Battler, the strongest fighter of them all, and Green is The Trainer, capable of raising a Pokemon from the ground up in a fraction of the time it would take another. Yellow has the ability to heal Pokemon at will thanks to powers still unexplained – The Healer. Crystal herself is The Catcher, a title he agrees couldn't fit another trainer better. There are Blue (
The Evolver) and Silver (
The Exchanger), who were expected to master their skills respectively while under the servitude of their ultimate enemy... but there is no Gold. The old man has told him how everyone else is better than him, their skills of expertise that would make them all better substitutes for his supposedly lousy self, but nowhere in this cure all of a letter is there a section that speaks of his own expertise. What is
his special ability? Does he not have one? Is this – is this some way of telling him that he's not strong enough to take place in this fight? If he doesn't have anything that makes him stand out from the others, he's just a waste of space and would be better off biting his nails from the sidelines.
As if he'd do that. If the geezer thinks he can hurt him enough to get him to back out (
the tears aren't real, the pain in his chest doesn't exist, why is he never good enough?), he's going to have to try harder than
that.[break][break]
“C'mon, old man, I've got to have something, don't I? Some skill that I'm better at than anybody? Battle, train, evolve, heal, trade, capture... There's got to be a seventh ability! But
what?” The trio of adults look on in defeat, no one daring to meet another's eye as the youngest of their battered quartet screams to a man who is hundreds of miles away. “Tell me, Oak, you've
got to!
Tell me!” The words take all of the energy from him, the damaging letter crumpled in a loosening fist as he doubles over himself. “Please, Professor Oak...” he whispers, hugging the egg all the closer to his chest. “Please...”[break][break]
It grows below his fingertips. An egg that has existed for no longer than a day doubles in size, glowing a furious light and reacting to
his touch, to
his emotions. There's a page they had missed, abandoned on the ground and retrieved by the fisherman who quickly reads its contents. There
is a seventh ability, and one that only The Hatcher could possess: Pokemon hatching. The egg shatters into pieces in his lap, and in its place, a Pokemon none of them have ever seen before bubbles with electricity to rival that of Zapdos itself. The golden-eyed trainer sees himself in it immediately. It has been brought into the world because of
him, and between this new found knowledge and the look of utter determination it gives him, resolve floods into him anew. He is the fifth Dex Holder, children who have time and time again overcome all odds and protected their world from the forces of evil. He can't... No, he
won't let Oak, the other Dex Holders, the
whole world down now. Not when they're all counting on him.[break][break]
“You're telling me to go after Pryce? … Okay. Let's go!”[break][break]
...
[break]
Time is what this has all been for. People make mistakes, and people are hurt by them; lives are lost, love quick on its heels, and a man whose ignorance led to the demise of his closest friends froze over his heart in ice colder than the Pokemon he specialized in. All of this crime, all of this suffering has all been so that Pryce could traverse to the past, save lives that were never meant to be lost. Pokemon aren't tools – just the people, everyone he has to use to be reunited with the ones he has loved and the ones he let fall. It's taken six legendaries, nine starter Pokemon, and seven PokeDex Holders to get to this point, chasing a mad man through the Crack in Time to make him pay for his crimes, but the catch is that the only thing keeping them
alive, the only thing allowing them entry into Celebi's domain at all is their possession of the Rainbow Wing and Silver Wing. More accurately, the Rainbow Wing and Silver Wing that have been brutally knocked off of his person, floating just out of reach. Gold, himself, is fine. Silver and Crys, however, are anything but. They're strong enough to withhold a shriek of pain, but even from where he is, flattened against the fur of Raikou's back, he can see the way they're crushed under the pressure of this strange world. They'll die if he doesn't act soon, and despite the protest his body gives all the way down to his bones, he pushes himself away from his lightning dog just far enough to retrieve the feathers of Lugia and Ho-oh. “I'm sorry, okay?” he tells Silver as his fingers reach out into the void, encircling the ends of their one protection against inevitable doom. He's sorry for foiling his theft or for standing in his way at every twist and turn in the road since. He's sorry that this is what it has all come to. He's sorry that he wasn't there to prevent his capture, and he's sorry that he wasn't there to undo it. (
He's sorry that this may be the last time he ever sees him.) Looking at them now, bruised and scraped but not quite broken, he can't help but think to himself how much he'll miss this. Miss
them. A friendship built in less than twenty-four hours and another built on chasing a crook all across the region don't exactly scream typical – but hey, there's a certain kind of bond you make with a person when you've spat in the face of death together more times than you can count on a hand. He doesn't expect them or anyone else to understand. Heck, he doesn't think he quite understands himself. That, he thinks, is the beauty of it all.[break][break]
The Hatcher takes each of their hands in his own, entrusting with them what his own could not keep long enough to protect them from harm. (
Deep down, he never wants to let go.) “Ever since I started traveling with you two, I've gone to so many places, met so many people, joined so many battles... It's been fun![break][break]
“Thanks!”[break][break]
All three of them won't make it out of this, his conscious has been telling him. He'll fight tooth and nail, though, to make sure that
those two do.[break][break]
He pits himself against the Mask of Ice, bursting through the man's barrier and hitting him with everything he's got. No Pokemon deserves to fall into hands as bloody as those, least of all the keeper of time, and each bolt of electricity that erupts from his nameless partner's cheeks rings true with his thoughts. He'll never understand, the leader tried to tell him, what it felt like to hold that baby Lapras on that endless expanse of ice, the cries of its fallen parents still fresh in his ears. This, of course, couldn't be further from the truth. What the
leader doesn't understand is that, if there is one boy in all of Johto who could possibly know that feeling, it's the one putting his life on the line to bring an end to this all. “Like Professor Oak told me -” the younger male shouts, thrusting his billiards cue into his enemy's body of ice, “- I'm
The Hatcher!” Electricity explodes around them, power from a god borrowed by a baby and traveling fast from his cue into that same frozen sculpture. It's not the only thing to strike hard at his opponent, though; cover fire comes in the form of nine other Pokemon's attacks, cast from both in and outside of the shrine on orders presumably called by the Dex Holders that have come before him and those who have come after. They can destroy the body as many times as they want, he knows, only to watch it grow anew. A shame that wasn't what they were actually after.[break][break]
Celebi breaks free from its PokeBall of a prison, horror etched on the face of its now-previous trainer as he watches his one hope for resolution escape into time. Good news comes in the form that this is how it ends; there isn't another thing this mastermind can throw at the boy to stop him, and nothing short of another nine year plan can bring the time traveling Pocket Monster back now. Bad news, however, rears its head no more than a second later. The only thing that can protect a human from the extreme pressures found inside the shrine is the protection from the Rainbow Wing and Silver Wing, the key components of the ball that was used to trap Celebi just moments earlier. Now that the GS ball has been shattered, their effect is useless. Already, he can feel an invisible force crushing him from all sides, pain so strong he can barely breathe making itself welcome in every cell of his body. This is how he leaves this world – but that's fine. Crys will tell them all what has happened here, and the world will know soon enough of his sacrifices. They'll know that he is a hero.
They'll know that he was good enough.[break][break]
Music, soft and muffled as though song through a blanket fills his mind –
ripples on the waves, battles on the brain; can you ease my mind? can you erase the strain? – before he bids existence one final farewell.[break][break]
Rippling waves, rippling waves, rippling waves of love.[break][break]
...
[break]
Gold wakes up to find six faces twisted into shock, anger, and despair. Apparently, his fifteen minute long nap (
really, how does
he keep managing to escape these certain death situations?) was all the time the spikey-haired one needed to decide that helping to save the world wasn't enough to make up for stealing Professor Elm's Totodile and Professor Oak's PokeDex, and while Crystal pleas to the emotions, nothing seems to make him think otherwise. Worse, still, is that Silver's
okay with this turn of events. Fortunately for him,
somebody is not – and that somebody has a wanted ad for those thefts with a very different face than the red head's. He makes his re-entrance with a flair they all really should have seen coming, and in a matter of seconds, the air has gone from desolate to light-hearted. They've all survived to tell the tale, Lady Luck still proving to favor them above all others, and even when his rival tries to beat him to death for slapping what turns out to be his
sister of all people (
time will instruct that it is not
, in fact, his sister; it's all rather confusing, really) in the rear, he can't help but get caught up in the moment. It's been a long time since he's been this gregarious. Goodness, he may even go so far as to say that this stands out as a new record.[break][break]
The not-boy (
who has been pretending to be a boy up until now, evidentally; also rather confusing) in the straw hat, a voice on the other end of someone's PokeGear, and arguably the most esteemed League Champion of the last three decades threaten to ruin the joy of the moment with what the breeder quickly realizes is a battle quite unlike those fought with Pokemon, but
that's an easily attained solution if he's ever seen one. “Hi, Mom! It's Gold! Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.” he says into his own device, waltzing away from Silver's likely bruised fist and death glare to intercept this horribly awkward three-way conflict. All eyes shift from Yellow's poor trembling form to the hand he hooks around Red's unsuspecting arm, pulling him in as though to invite him in on his own blatantly one-sided conversation. “But I'm gonna be a little late coming home. The Pokemon League Champion is standing right next to me, and he's offered to teach me some of his battle tricks!” He hears the protests of the blonde Healer and the others a moment before his feet are moving, but the sounds of their voices are buried beneath him promising that he'll be home soon to feast on his mother's famous Salisbury steak and the cloud of dust the two seem to pick up when he forcibly tears The Battler away from the rest of the group. Hesitation only lasts a moment in his elder of three years, and when they're on their way, the latter admits that that
was quite the save. False as the story may have been, though, neither is opposed to making it a reality. As it turns out, Red had disappeared from the face of the media in order to recuperate on an ironically named mountain housing wild Pokemon stronger than anywhere else in either of the joint regions. If Gold wants to finally catch up with Silver in terms of battling prowess, there's no better place to go than to the highest peaks of Mount Silver.[break][break]
The duo leave on bike and scooter, leaving Johto to pick itself up from its debris and rebuild itself anew – smarter, stronger than before. For the first time since he left the loving embrace of Newbark Town, Gold truly believes that they'll be fine on their own.[break][break]
...
[break]
The mountain tops don't exactly scream the word “home” to him, but the hero with explosive hair can't exactly argue that the training he receives up on those peaks aren't worth the trek it took to get there or the trek it will take to get back down. There isn't the slightest doubt about it, however: Red is so far beyond him in battling skill, it's almost hard to believe that his senior only has a three year gain on him, and where he struggles against the frightening beasts that call these rocky grounds their home,
he seems to be most at home with what must be the only things on the planet short of another region-shaking catastrophe that can give him any sort of challenge. The first and most grueling order of business and a person would called “grinding up his Pokemon” had this all taken place within the world of a video game – but once Exbo, Aibo, Polibo, and the others are reasonably strong enough, his newly dubbed Senpai shifts their training to better accommodate them both. Higher up they climb, their enemies growing stronger with each step, and genuine strategy becomes required to down those who stand in their way. He's tag teaming with
the champion Red. It's a thought that strikes him as bizarre even after months of camping out under the starry night skies with him, roosting marshmallows and trying to throw them into each others' mouths. Oh, what the folks will say back home. He'll recount every waking detail to them, he thinks, when this little vacation comes to an end (
or, at least, every detail short of one particular mishap involving the hot springs and a wild Pokemon making off with his clot- alright, scratch that, he doesn't want to think about it anymore). [break][break]
Years seem to have flown by the time they part ways – or maybe it's only days, even though they haven't been on there for any fewer than four and any more than eight months with nothing but Mother Nature, their Pokemon, and their wits at their disposal – and he's more than a bit sad to say tell his teacher goodbye. Thankfully, he doesn't need to. Unlike the
last boy he had to fight against, this one can actually reach a sound decision with him, and it takes only a few seconds of would-be awkward farewells for them to decide that this won't be the last time they meet on this mountain. “Saur and the others get restless without a good fight,” Red says. “Yeah, yeah. And I still haven't even gotten close to kicking your butt!” Gold says. They laugh – they shake hands – they split.[break][break]
See you again in a few months![break][break]
...
[break]
For all of their differences, it would be hard to hold up an argument against the fact that Gold and Crys work surprisingly well together in battle. “Opposites attract” is a phrase often used in the romantic pursuits, but he can't help but think of it when the two are up against the stray wild Pokemon that can't be dealt with by the locals, Arcanine on one side of the battlefield and Sudowoodo standing proud on the other. Her preference for planning and her meticulous nature are evident in every order she calls and every second she wastes
strategizing; she's thrown into the fray, and while she'll never, not for even a second, panic, it's easy to see that she has to take a moment in order to formulate the best course of action. She can deal the decisive blows it'll take to win, often times punctuated by a kick of a ball and a Pokemon captured in the blink of an eye, but that doesn't always make up for the lulls in between that leave her open for attack. It's not to say that fighting one-on-one leaves her vulnerable. What it
is to say that, when paired with someone whose genius extends only as far as coming up with brilliant short-term plans in a second and finds himself at a lose trying to come up with a follow up once the immediate plot has reached its conclusion, the holes in not only
her offensive, but also his own are spectacularly filled. They've fought alongside one another long enough now for her to know how to prepare for whatever zany ideas he may vomit up, and together they work like well oiled clockwork. He acts distracts and weakens, and when he's down and out, she's had more than enough time to know when, where, and how to strike the decisive blow. Professor Elm commends them for their teamwork in the field on more than a few occasions, even the old geezer who gave them the encyclopedias that make them stand out from other trainers offering them high praise on a day he's lucky enough to see them fight side-by-side. Regrettably, the world internally groans, their system isn't so smooth in every day interaction.[break][break]
The Catcher is just as surprised to see him as he is her the day he shows up at Professor Oak's lab in Cherrygrove “looking for work” – it's a long story involving his gambling addiction, his mother's insistence on getting a “real job”, and avoiding the Daycare Woman's iron grip for as long as he can that he'd rather not delve into the specifics of – and while the arrangement only has them running into each other once, twice, maybe three times a week at
Elm's lab in New Bark Town, what was once easy going and quiet research quickly explodes into a battlefield fought only with words (
and maybe Crys' too-strong legs if he's enough of an ass to deserve it). It's simply in his nature to avoid busy work like this like the plague, and it doesn't take long for the girl who takes their jobs too seriously to have a fit over it. He slacks off, she screams at him, he “apologizes”; lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe this is payback for having a mom who never nagged him for all of his terrible behavior. If he's being honest with the world, he'd at least prefer the scolding from his single parental figure than from a kid no more than two years his elder. The only saving grace to be found is that they are more than well acquainted with each other's worth, and fight as they may, he still knows he can call her his close friend come the end of the day. He may be abrasive and have little control over his thoughts and emotions, but he's never insincere when it matters – and she, despite all of that nagging, has compassion beyond that of anyone he has ever known. When he falls, injured from one thing or another, she's always the first to rush to his side. When she asks him if he is okay, she's the first to say it in a way that doesn't imply that she expects him
not to be, that he's not strong enough to overcome it. She says it in a way that tells him that she wants him to be okay for his sake, not for anyone else's. She cares about
him, not his limitations.[break][break]
Moreover, just because she's been appropriately named the Super Serious Gal, that
doesn't mean they don't have a blast together between their bickering.[break][break]
They're out in the field one day, the tune to that song by DJ Mary about some boy and his Lapras and
rippling waves of love or something equally pretentious slipping passed The Hatcher's lips in a whisper and a sharp hush cutting over it in a futile attempt to silence what he calls “lightening the mood”. As it turns out, there are a lot more than the two hundred and so Pokemon the Kanto and Johto Pokemon Association had already confirmed, and despite Crystal's “completion” of Professor Oak's PokeDex, reports of Pokemon completely foreign to the joint regions have been flooding in water from a dam. (
When tragedy looms, the creatures start moving; if only anyone had just noticed the signs.) In a matter of moments, the duo have gone from examining a Pidgeot searching for food on a route that nothing stronger than a Pidgeotto has ever been spotted on to shielding themselves from a sudden onslaught from strange beings resembling dragonflies. When Gold reaches for his Dex, hopelessly scrambling for some scrap of information he can use to his advantage, all he earns is a picture, a name – Vibrava – and many more question marks than he could have hoped for in that moment.
Great. The two send out their full arsenal of Pokemon, neither one entirely sure what would work best against their unfamiliar enemy, but when each of their elemental attacks are shrugged off like an insect off a shoulder, the connection between these wild Pokemon and the dragon type becomes all too clear.
Even better. Still, despite their type disadvantages and the fact that they are outnumbers twelve to... well, too many for him to possibly count in the heat of the moment, it's enough information for them to get to work on putting them all out of commission. His battle commands and her unbeatable aim must have caught twenty of the darned things before the sea of green and yellow starts to thin, both a combination of their chipping away at the numbers and the natural movement of the swarm. With improved vision, however, comes sight of one outlier in the crowd. It's bigger than the rest, orange and blue against the vibrating tide of a color resembling vomit, and when they both raise their PokeDex to it, the first thing they notice isn't the name – Flygon – but the fact that the image on their screen doesn't quite match up with what they're seeing on the non-digital plane.[break][break]
“A shiny!” Crystal says, expression bursting from a grimace to a grin just bubbling with excitement. She explains the theories behind what these “shinies” are in a hurried tone, why they're named what they are and where the Professors believe they might have come from. Apparently, they're incredibly rare. (
Gold doesn't tell her that the third member of their broken trio not only has seen one before, but owns
one.) “I've heard so many stories,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper, “but I've never seen one before with my own eyes. We
have to catch it!” And just like that, she's bounced back from awe to business, retrieving a level ball from her pack and instructing him to draw its attention away from the rest of the crowd. Whatever a Flygon is, however, it's certainly a force to be reckoned with. His attempts at a “distraction” only prove to anger it and send it charging their way, and it takes more than just a few Solar Beams from his Sunflora to slow it down enough for his partner to get in a good shot. Not a second is wasted when that happens; her leg is already moving, kicking furiously at the level ball and watching it collide with the center of the Pocket Monster's forehead. It shakes once, twice – then it pauses before it shakes a third, and neither of them move,
breathe until a whole minute of stillness has passed to confirm the completed capture. When they
do, it's without thought, two arms reaching into the air and two flat palms slapping against one another in the form of the best high five Gold has ever given or received in his entire life, and all the way back to the lab, all they can do is laugh and recount the whole experience in exaggerations, each bigger than the last. Their work is not without praise, either. Professor Oak nearly chokes on his coffee at the sight of the massive sparkling beast they reveal in his front lawn, a species never before seen on Johto's fertile soil, and while Crystal's bonus for the day goes straight to Earl's Pokemon Academy, Gold's is immediately blown on coins for Goldenrod City's fabulous slot machines.[break][break]
It's a day that goes down in infamy for the two. In moments of reminiscing, they'll both fondly recall the day they both captured their first shiny Pokemon – together.[break][break]
...
[break]
To the surprise of literally no one (
except Crystal, but no one else is surprised by that
, either), Silver makes himself sparse to everyone but Blue once the Mask of Ice incident has been resolved. He inserted himself into the affairs of Johto and, unwillingly, the lives of the other Dex Holders from the shadows, and back into them does he recede once his life long goal has been completed, at another's hands or otherwise. And that's fine. Outside of the spikey-haired teen-turned-Gym Leader, their group of seven is just a touch too lively for someone as
dark and
brooding (
read: edgier than that one video game hedgehog) as he, and if he's more comfortable in his solitude than in their crowds, so be it. Despite all of that, though, Gold still finds himself huffing and puffing when he comes down from that mountain to discover that his rival hasn't shown his face even
once in all of that absense, and even though the capture specialist has supposedly squeezed his elder sister dry when it came to what his phone number was (
“It was... hard work. But as fellow Dex Holders, we have an obligation to make sure he's alright... wherever he is.”), she won't give it to the older male so he can call and demand the rematch he so rightly deserves. Complain all he wants to, but it will never be enough to persuade her to his side. This is how his first days back from the sliver of unaffiliated land between Kanto and Johto are spent outside of his home. Time marches slowly – but it doesn't disappoint.[break][break]
He's in the throes of predormitum when he hears a tapping on his window. It can't be any earlier than two in the morning when it first starts, and when his hazy mind doesn't immediately instruct him to rise and inspect, it starts again with more ferocity. Definitely not some stray branch. There's a grumble in his throat when he throws the covers off himself and it accompanies him the whole distance between his bed and the offending pane of glass in question. It clips itself embarrassingly short, however, when he's faced with a familiar face scowling at him from the other side, barely holding himself up on the outer window sill and begging to be let indoors without so much as a nod of the head. Dumbfounded as Gold may be, he's not so taken aback that he can't oblige. The window is slide to the left – and immediately he's being shoved passed, a shivering red head barreling his way through until he stops in the middle of the room and recollects his bearings. Evidently, he was passing over New Bark Town on his way to something he calls a secret base of his just East of Cherrygrove City when his Murkrow gave out above him, sending him, cold and tired, plunging headfirst into the neighbors' yard. “I wouldn't be doing this if I had another option,” he keeps insisting. The only thing keeping him from carrying on is the fact that the walk to the neighboring city is an hour or so at best, and neither he nor any of his Pokemon are in any shape to be traveling that sort of distance for so little sleep. In a moment of stupidity, the raven-haired trainer asks why he didn't just pay a visit to the Pokemon Center. If he didn't realize the error of his question immediately after it fell off his unthinking lips, the death glare coming his way would have certainly done the trick. He didn't pay a visit to the Pokemon Center because, safe from Green's not entirely but mostly unforgiving sense of justice or no, he's still a wanted criminal. Professor Oak has not really
given him that PokeDex as he did Blue, nor has Professor Elm made any comments that would imply that he's all too happy about the fact that one of his three beloved starter Pokemon is “doing the dirty work for a grade A thief![break][break]
The only logical conclusion, then, is to go to the one person in town who won't immediately hand him over to the police.[break][break]
They stand in horrible silence for at least a minute or two, as far apart as they can manage and neither one sure what they are supposed to be saying and what they are supposed to be doing. This can only go on for so long. A sigh breaks past Gold's lips, and without another word, he goes about gathering a blanket tossed carelessly on the floor here and another one draped over his chair there, gathering them sloppily into his arms and making it way for the door once he's done. When he's there, Silver still hasn't moved, not even to look up from what must be a
very interesting spot on the floorboards between his shoes. Man, this guy just doesn't get it. “Well?” the older boy prompts. “You gonna crawl into bed or what?” A gawk hadn't been the intended result, but hey – he won't complain.[break][break]
“Isn't that where you're sleeping?”[break][break]
“Nah, I'll take the couch downstairs. Unless, I mean -” He punctuates his word with a teasing wiggle of the eyebrow, and it's hard to hold down the laugh bubbling in his throat long enough to get the words out and see what they cause. “- you
want to get in bed with me.”[break][break]
It takes five minutes of pleading, apologizes, and hushed shouting (
his mom is still asleep, after all, and despite her endless expanse of understanding and what has
to be apathy, she still wouldn't take too kindly to a stranger breaking in at two in the morning and sleeping in one of her beds) to convince his rival to not leave then and there, and by the time Silver angrily flops himself onto the covers, no blankets and without taking off a single article of clothing, Gold, himself, is prepared to fall asleep on his feet. Thankfully, he's awake enough to make it down the stairs and into the living room, conscious long enough to flop face first into the lumpy cushions and half-heartedly cocoon himself in a pile of throw blankets retrieved from his room and the floor, too, here. It's impossible to tell when, exactly, sleep overcomes him entirely; from his perspective, he's only just settled down in a position as comfortable as he can get on a piece of furniture unfit for slumber when sunlight filtering through the windows comes clawing at his eyelids and his mother is hovering over him, inquiries of how and why he ended up
here of all places over the course of the night serving as a better alarm clock as any. As soon as he's out of her sight, he bolts for his room, part of him already suspicious of what he'll find – and even though he's guessed right from the first moment he was awake, it doesn't stop the disappointment that washed over him when he sees his covers crumpled, but uncovered. “I'm not making this a habit,” Silver had told him indignantly just the night prior, and the memory paired with his empty bedroom leaves a frown playing with his lips. Apparently, his rematch will have to wait a little longer yet.[break][break]
(
Only two weeks pass when a familiar sound comes pounding at his eardrum, and this time, he's up and out of bed immediately. “So much for not making this a habit,” he says like the loveable asshat he is, but all he earns for that is a downturn of the lips, a shove in the shoulder, and silence. His bed is occupied immediately this time, without the need for persuasion or unnecessary dirty jokes, and Gold resigns himself to his fate of sleeping on the couch every so often to his travel-weary opposite can invade his home. That's fair enough.[break][break]
In the morning, he's still not fast enough to catch a glimpse of a slumbering Dex Holder. What he does find, however, is a something that looks suspiciously like a phone number written on a card sitting on his desk.)[break][break]
...
[break]
Routine is what has him waiting at the foothills of Mount Silver on the first Tuesday of every other month for his senpai to arrive and hand him his rear end on a decorative platter for two weeks before their trainer reaches its unceremonious end. Routine is what wakes him up at eight in the mornings on weekends to show up at Professor Elm's lab, Gameboy in hand, and spend the next five hours pretending to file reports and fill out data while he saves virtual worlds with heroes far less impressive than himself. Routine is what has him showing up at the pool hall every night at eight o'clock sharp, and routine is what has DJ Mary's song hour blasting from his radio at the same time
every single evening. He's even bit as volatile as the flames that surround Exbo's fiery neck, fickle as a child who wants to try everything but can't pick a favorite, but now that life has settled itself down into patterns, he finds himself growing bizarrely attached to them, wild as he may be
outside of them. This is why he swallows hard when his senpai never shows up for their mountain climbing adventures, even if logic should tell him that the guy just forgot. Show up again tomorrow to give him a hard time, start a day late, and leave a day late – only Red doesn't show up
then, either, and no matter how many times he tells himself that's fine, it doesn't keep the darkest corners of his mind from telling him that maybe The Battler, too, has given up on him.
Whatever. In a week, he'll get an apologetic call, and
next time, they'll be up on that mountain together, battling like old times. (
Red wouldn't just give up on his without saying anything... right?)[break][break]
He doesn't think anything beyond his senpai, however, until he gets a call from Crystal specifically asking if he has heard from the Pokemon League Champion. That's... odd. As it turns out, Professor Oak has been bizarrely absent from his post in Cherrygrove despite the fact that his most recent scheduled visit was an entire week prior, and any attempts she's had to get into contact with his grandson have earned her nothing but voice mail. Yellow, she says (
it takes him a moment to connect the name with the not-boy in the straw hat from what must have been a year ago now) answered just four days ago when she tried to see what was happening, but for the last two, the youngest of the Kanto Dex Holders has been uncharacteristically silent, as well. There's worry laced there in her tone when she concludes how she hadn't a clue what Blue's number was, and while she would have asked the tricky teen's “younger brother”, he
never answers her calls, emergency or otherwise. And it
is strange, he'll agree, that Oak hasn't shown his face or spoken a word in at least seven day's time, but the fact that not one, not two, but
three of the original quartet have gone silent brings him to a different conclusion than to what it is she must be thinking. These regions are a danger magnet, regardless of what anyone says. Give it another week, he assures her, and they'll be hearing news reports of a crisis averted by three fifteen-year-olds and a thirteen-year-old just a region over.[break][break]
For what feels like the first time in his life, he's
right.[break][break]
He sits shoulder-to-shoulder with the twin-tailed researcher at her desk, radio set mere feet from their faces as it drones on about the recent attacks on the Sevii Islands just South of the Kanto region and a band of heroic children who protected Vermillion City from what could have only been a catastrophe. The news elicits a shout of victory from the child with black hair and a sigh of relief from the child with blue, apprehensive lips now loosened into two very different, yet distinct grins on each of their faces. The four's sudden disappearance has been explained and Kanto has been saved from what appears to be the
third attack from Team Rocket forces. All that they have left to do is wait for the call that brings with it apologies and first-hand recounts of all of the adventures that went on while the Johtoans sat on their rear ends, oblivious to the danger. So they wait. And they wait.
And they wait. Gold is fast asleep when Crystal's PokeGear finally buzzes to life, but on the other end isn't Red or Yellow or even Silver.[break][break]
It's Professor Oak.[break][break]
...
[break]
“What I'm about to show you... might not be easy to look at.”
This is the first time that Gold has ever been to Kanto. It was a thought that clung fiercely to the back of his thoughts on the trip over, arranged by the world renowned researcher himself and pulled together as quickly as they all could manage. It had been an easier thing to latch his thoughts onto, after all, than any of the possible alternatives. There's something gut wrenchingly suspicious about how quiet everyone's been as of late, and the fact that the old geezer's first words to either of them in more than a week's time was sudden and unexplained summons to his home in Pallet Town, grim tone and all, don't speak of good news at all. In the best case scenario, this is all an elaborate surprise party to celebrate another victory for the increasingly famous PokeDex Holders. At worst, the “resolution” of conflict over in Kanto is anything but, and every trainer that can be summoned (
Silver, he thinks, is still absent; despite the fact that he
gave Gold
his number, he sure as the Distortion World didn't pick up the one time
he tried to put it to use) will be necessary to put it down for good. Whatever it is, though, he hadn't wanted to let himself think on it too long or too hard. Worrying accomplished nothing but self harm, and with the few hours long drive completed and out of the way, all they had left to do was look and listen to whatever it was Oak couldn't bring himself to tell them over the phone. He's led them into the far reaches of his lab, hand wrapped tight around the door handle to his left and mouth pressed into a thin line as he says, “Even so, I thought you two deserved to see it with your own eyes.” The door swings open and light is shed down on what he quickly realizes is an old, spacious closet. Objects that have likely been abandoned for many years, layers of dust betraying to their untouched age are scattered across shelves barely screwed into the walls – but whatever they were all that time ago means nothing to him. In fact, he doesn't even noticed they're there. It'd be hard to focus on anything but the brilliantly sculpted, life size statue of his four senior Dex Holders standing proud in the center of the room.[break][break]
But this doesn't make
sense. The professor hangs his head as The Hatcher takes a few strides forward, inspecting the details of a sleeping, stone Yellow's belt and the way a shirtless, also stone Red's fingers clutch almost life like around her waist. All of this build up... and for what? A statue? A glance cast backwards shows that the mood has not lightened, that the boys and girls depicted before him haven't jumped out of their hiding places behind the counters of the lab to share this moment with their two confused juniors – and that's when he sees it. Behind Blue, there is another figure, crouched low to the ground and looking just a touch out of place compared to the four heroes of Kanto. It's because he's a hero of
Johto.
Silver. Crystal sucks in a pained breath behind her, one that she holds for a very,
very long time, but Gold can't help the smile that pulls on his face as what he thinks to be understanding finally dawns on him. “Oh,
I get it, old man. You thought we'd be upset because they forgot to include
us, right?” Not that he'd be wrong in thinking so. Some part of his heart tugs at the knowledge that he's been omitted from a piece of art dedicated to what he's stood for and what he's fought for alongside these five frozen faces – but no, no, that's not right, because when he turns around, there's something wet glittering in the corner of Crystal's eyes and the man he who gave him the single most useful item in all of history on that rainy day by the river
still won't catch their eye. Golden hues flicker between stone and flesh, confusion leaping over his pupils like puddles as his brain scrambles to find some bridge between what's in front of him and the reactions of those behind him. … And then he
really understands.[break][break]
“... No. N...
No! You're not trying to tell me -”[break][break]
Words die in the back of his throat in the same moment that a sob tears itself from Crystal's. Together, they stare, mortified and awestruck, at the solid corpses of those who have died to keep their region from harm. (
Whoever did this, he thinks when the English language returns to him, is going to pay.)[break][break]
all's fair in love and war - don't get so bent out of shape!
Gold is twelve when his best friend dies, and it isn't until he's thirteen that they finally discover a way to bring him back.[break][break]
Well – alright, maybe it's a bit too soon to call him his
best friend, or maybe even a friend at all, but it's easy to mix up the specifics in his mind when its so frazzled by the fact that the combined effort of the Professor's near endless expanse of Pokemon knowledge and Crystal's all nighters spent looking into the various myths of the world and whether or not they have any foothold in real life have found what may very well be the only way to reverse death. As a personal rule, he likes to believe that
wishing isn't a very sound part of a good strategy, and one that relies solely on praying to some higher being for a stroke of luck (
expecting it, on the other hand, is another story entirely) is probably better scrapped the second its brought to life than to bother entertaining it. At first, he's incredulous that they'd suggest such a thing at all. Once all has been explained to him, however, realization sets in that wishing is the best option they have left. “Jirachi,” his best
living friend begins, and it's the first of many times he'll hear the creature's name, “is a Pokemon who can grant any wish asked of it.” Myth speaks of heroes who have returned barren wastelands to fertile soils of ages even older, of villains who would try and fail to wish for endless youth or wealth for themselves and no one else. What they are shocked to find that the being itself is no myth. Better yet, their statistics show that it's going to be showing its face to the unsuspecting region of Hoenn in just a bit over two months' time, allotting for
more than enough time for the three to prepare for its arrival and the – with any hope – revival of the five petrified Dex Holders. To make matters even better, Hoenn already has a duo of children who the foreign Professor
Birch has entrusted two of Oak's PokeDexes to, and it sounds as thought a tenth gifted child is on the way to aid them in their most bizarre quest yet. Waiting games are the only ones he finds himself a frequent loser of – but if that's what it'll take to see the whole gang back together and
breathing again, he thinks he'll just have to fight harder than he ever has to claim his victory.[break][break]
“We'll have you good as new, Senpai, just you wait,” The Hatcher says on the day they're set to be shipped out to Hoenn, hiding in plain sight as “real statues” in the Battle Frontier slated to open on the date of Jirachi's arrival. He's walking around Green's slightly bent form to meet Red in the “eye” (
part of him still trying to figure out what, exactly, happened to make him lose the shirt and hat), pausing briefly before his heroic stance and Yellow, who he holds in his arms, before changing targets altogether. It takes a great deal of restraint to keep himself from staring too long at Blue or the mini skirt she has, regrettably, decided to swap out that little black dress for, but it becomes just a touch easier when his eyes finally land on the hunch over form of the boy behind her. “You, too, Silv. … Don't think for a second I'll let anyone get away with doing this to you.” He stares maybe a bit too long – one of the workers prepping the group for movement coughs at him, and all of them don't seem to understand why he's talking to a bunch of stone figures like they're actual people – before he breaks away to stand next to Crys. “Safe travels,” she bids them quietly. Bizarrely, she doesn't seem to complain about the way their shoulders brush against one another, nor does she protest the hand he's daring enough to place silently on her shoulder. There are three others like them somewhere out there, and thousands of lives have been spared at the cost of only five. Why does it feel like they're the only two survivors of some horrible catastrophe?[break][break]
“We should get going, too, Gold.”[break][break]
There are places to be, special moves to master, a woman named Ultima on an island named after the number Two who has been so “gracious” as to pass on her secrets to them. If all goes according to plan, it will ultimately be a wasted trip. Considering the fact that it never does, they take to the skies with determination beating loudly in their chests. They've got two months. (
To Gold, it feels like two years.)[break][break]
...
[break]
Things do
not go according to plan. The one man who could have possibly stood in their way interrupts Emerald's attempts at catching Jirachi, direct aid from the capture specialist back at Oak's Hoenn branch doing nothing to earn them the wish granting beast. To make matters worse, it's that same man, the one in the armor, the one they call Guile Hideout, who eventually claims possession over the Wish Maker. They can stall for time, seeing as he still doesn't know what it will take to have his own wish granted, but they've only got two more days, and the information can't stay hidden forever.[break][break]
(
Fortunately, they're all smart enough by now to know to plan for failure in the grander calculations.)[break][break]
Ruby and Sapphire arrive at the Battle Frontier. Gold and Crystal set out to arrive in the evening. Guile wishes the sea to life so that it may swallow the planet whole – and
still, their goal is just twenty-four hours away.[break][break]
...
[break]
The only ones who mistake him for Guile when he makes his entrance at the Battle Tower are the ones he's trying to protect. Wave after wave comes crashing against even the highest floors, water threatening to wash everything inside out and away, and an activated security system puts the three Hoenn trainers (
and, unknown to anyone but the duo in question, the two Johto trainers) at risk of being trapped inside while the ocean devours them whole from the outside. The wild girl punches him out when he grabs for her hand to pull her to safety, but it's
him who manages to save Emerald from a closing door that would have split him in two, and for a moment, the trio seem too shocked to deny his aid. Even this little gambit doesn't seem to hold up for much longer, though. His intention had been to steal Jirachi right from under the enemy's nose, the fake suit of armor he wears a costume meant to trick the evildoer's Surskuit and Tentacruel into following him long enough for his partner in crime to snatch the legendary away for their own purposes. What he
hadn't factored into the equation was that Guile himself would be the one to spot him first, and Gold hasn't been reunited with his juniors for any longer than five minutes before his brilliant scheme is being sliced in half –
literally. (
As if this man has any right to call him
an imposter. All's fair, they say, in love and war.)[break][break]
Despite their close vicinity with their number one obstacle, the two thirteen-year-olds manage to accomplish exactly what they have set out to do in this building. First, the situation and plan in full is exchanged. No, the remaining five Dex Holders are not coming to save them. No, those are not actual statues. No, Jirachi cannot only grant one wish – there are three spell tags on its star-shaped head for a reason. No, they may
not use one wish to save their elders and another to reverse Archie's destructive wish, and if they're going to glare at
anyone, let it be Scott, who demanded they spare one wish for him, or the Professor, who was insane enough to grant him that request. Second, Crystal takes Ruby and Sapphire to the invisible room she has constructed for the explicit purpose of training them to learn the ultimate moves, the likes of which have become their only hope of stopping the not-quite-Kyogre battering this way and that at each ten minute interval. Third, Silver is fitted with his own means of learning the move despite the fact that there's still a very real chance he'll never be alive again to make use of it. (
“I'll set you free in a minute, buddy,” Gold whispers, and if his hand lingers a little too long on that of his one-sided friend, no one has to know but himself.) And finally, the gambler imparts on the boy with the croissant hair exactly what role he needs to be playing: Emerald is the one who has to make the wish. Jirachi has been awake and about for six days in total now, and while this is the first day that the other four remaining Dex Holders have come in contact with it, it has watched Emerald fight to save its life at each and every turn. If anyone has a chance of opening its heart to them, it's the shortest of them all. “I'm your guardian,” he says simply when asked what
he's still doing here. “So c'mon – just do it!”[break][break]
The set up is perfect. Emerald knows what he has to do. Jirachi is already warmed up to him. Heck, the darned thing granted
Guile's wish, forced to or no, so it should have no problem restoring life to heroes that have fallen in battle. Everything should go perfectly.[break][break]
But it doesn't work.[break][break]
Panic settles slowly on the newest addition to their five member party, but when it does, it shows. Green eyes flash back and forth between the still-stone figures of their seniors and the Pokemon who has clearly not granted his wish, and very quickly does he start spewing nonsense about how he has to
try to think of a reason, how he has to
try to make this
work. And Gold, despite all of his idiotic ways, finds that understanding of the heart comes to him as quick as a strike from Aibo's tail; it's not a matter of Jirachi failing to open up to
them, but a matter of Emerald not being able to open himself up to
it. He's not thinking that he
can find the reason or that he
can make this work – there's doubt in his heart, doubt his Johtoan body guard is all too familiar with, that's keeping himself from being honest with it and everyone else, himself included. This isn't something that words or actions from others can help this boy understand, though, and leaving Ruby and Sapphire to train and Crystal to battle against the force of an entire sea alone while he sits around waiting for something that's not going to happen isn't the ideal way to spend his time. Instead, he tells Emerald to meet up with the others down in their invisible room. If he can't make the wish now, the least he can do is work to try to fight back against what's looking to be an unstoppable opponent. In the meanwhile, he rendezvouses with his blue-haired friend in the skies, carried through the air by Ribo, his pool cue, and a swarm of water-firing Remoraid while they work together to keep their enemies' attention away from the weaker trainers below. This isn't something they can keep up for long.[break][break]
Thankfully, they don't have to.[break][break]
Ruby and Sapphire help him where The Hatcher never could, their time spent just outside the Tower not only teaching each of their starters the three elemental moves, but also giving The Calmer the time and information he needed to come to terms with himself and what it was he lacked. The five come together again, the older two of the group wounded, tired, and sopping wet; the sight of a fallen Crystal seems to set the blond on a rampage that only serves to push his already beaten Pokemon even further down the hole. While Guile taunts them all, speaking of the worthless of Pokemon who cannot fight and humans who cannot breathe with a punctuation of the steel of his sword hitting against the stone of Silver's head, it takes every ounce of self restraint Gold has and the twin-tailed girl's hand pulling him back and away to keep him from lunging out uselessly.
No one calls his buddy a waste of space – and to Emerald, no one gets away with calling his Pokemon that, either. “I don't like Pokemon battles!” he screams in a moment of passion, and the golden-eyed breeder is more surprised at the fact that he's the only one
not surprised by this than he is that these words are being spoken at all. “I like
Pokemon!” Words carve themselves into the second of the Wish Maker's spell tags, Professor Birch's beast of a daughter hearing five muffled PokeDexes crying out beneath the sudden beeping that the ones in their own hands suddenly let out, and as the sound of pebbles colliding with sea salt stained floors rings clear in their ears, they all realize at once what has happened. Rock becomes flesh, eyes carved open blink, and
ten of Professor Oak's Pokemon encyclopedias scream at one another to herald the first gathering of all of the old man's chosen children. Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Silver – they're
alive. The PokeDex Holders that Archie so fears have all been gathered in one spot... and it's about time they pull the curtains on this little show.[break][break]
It's them against an army of every rental Pokemon the Battle Frontier has, driven mad by the influence of an equally mad man, in addition to a beast made in the image of Kyogre, but so much
worse. It charges head first at them once again, nearly throwing the unwitting Kantoans out the back window. There's no thought in the way he takes Crystal's hand in his own, fingers wound tight together in a hold that wouldn't loosen for the world. In the other, he grabs onto Silver's shoulder with a force that could bruise, holding on like a lifeline when the ocean attacks again and not once loosening when dry air slaps them in the face. These are his two favorite people in the entire world, he thinks to himself, the two that he absolutely
will not stand to see broken and defeated. Standing here with them both in hand takes him back to the last time he had felt like this: adrenaline pumping through his veins, the enemy staring him down and his mind screaming at him that together, the three of them were standing up against the entire
world.[break][break]
He hadn't wanted to let them go then. He doesn't have to now.[break][break]
It's Emerald's brilliant idea – a combination of Gold's quick thinking and Crystal's slow strategizing, he can't help but muse – and he and Red's perfect execution that rip Archie's suit from his body, and in the time it takes to stop his swarms of chaotic slaves and put an end to the man in the armor, Ruby and Sapphire have assembled every starter and ever other Dex Holder into battle formations. They know from experience that a strong enough attack can cleave an unfixable hole straight through the sea monster, and if they all fire their special moves at once, they
might have a shot of freeing the world from it once and for all. There's a hiccup involving the former Team Aqua leader trying to pull him down into the ocean with him, but Wild Girl's strength and a broken part of Peculiar Boy's robotic get up free him and earn him a place with his nine equals. They fire all at once, and with the extra damage from Yellow's bizarre powers and the electrical attack she stirs up in the pair of Pikachu and their spiky-haired son, the false Kyogre is no more in a matter of minutes. It explodes into rainfall so thick, it
stings when it strikes their skin. Ten Dex Holders. Twelve Pokemon. All of their moves combined. They're a force to be reckoned with, clearly – but even
that doesn't seem to be enough to put a halt to Guile's schemes
completely. (
He's a murderer, he admits to them; killed his rival in cold blood so that he could have a chance to live on in a suit that would grant him immortality.)[break][break]
That fake armor from earlier comes in handy after all. It stalls the man long enough for his body to fall apart in a burst of blinding white light, taking his Surskuit-turned-Masquerain, his sword, and his armor with it. The opposition is gone, and they have all survived to see the end.
This is true victory.[break][break]
...
[break]
Things change between them after that. It starts when Silver tells him that he'd been conscious the entire time that he was trapped in stone just after the five are freed – it's meant to explain why his Feraligatr masters the Hydro Cannon attack literally seconds after it returns to life, but that's not at all what Gold is thinking about when he says it – but that is just a prelude to the flurry of hugs and noogies and punches that come after Emerald's week-long trial at the Frontier finally reaches its conclusion. Crystal is forgiving enough to save her scolding until
after she's scooped him up into her arms, and even
that seems to be only a fraction of the fit she could be pitching in what must be sympathy for the months he's spent caught in limbo. As for Gold, they're back to being “bitter rivals”, and neither one makes any mention of the fact that the word “buddy” had been used or that something Blue would have called “steamy hand holding” had transpired before their wish was granted. This is where the noogies come in sparingly and the punches come in in spades. He can hear their female companion groan in exasperation when
one little comment about his elder sister's “smoking hot outfit” dissolves into a fist fight, but more than that, he hears the sound of relief in her puff of air. The fact that they can be rolling around on the ground at all, clenched fingers colliding with a jaw here and a knee making good friends with a gut there, is nothing short of a miracle. By the time they've arrived at Professor Oak's lab in Cherrygrove, exhaustion has claimed residency deep in their bones, and the motherly one of their trio has just barely set out makeshift beds when they collapse onto one another in one sleeping friend pile. (
He wakes up briefly to bird song in the earliest lights of the morning, Crystal curled up over his legs and a dark fleece jacket covering a rising and falling chest functioning as the best pillow ever
. Sleep overcomes him again quickly, but the image stays fresh in his mind when he wakes up to a missing rival and a flustered lab assistant come noon.)[break][break]
Despite the fact that dying changed nothing at all in the red head's less-than-perfect living habits, they manage to keep tabs on him by forcing him to keep in touch at least one day out of every week. It's to ensure that they know when something demanding their attention has happened, The Catcher insists, but they all know that it's more for the peace of mind of those who cannot travel so freely. The red head in question objects at first – but something in her eyes must be stronger than his resolve, and weekly stops at Cherrygrove become part of the routine to see how Silver is doing out in Kanto or Johto or
wherever it is that his run for the law and his own personal quests take him. This goes on for only so long before they get a call telling them that his father has gone missing, and if he has any hope of finding him again, he's going to have to cut out all distractions from the equation...
including his fellow Dex Holders from Johto.[break][break]
It physically pains him to have to agree, but Gold knows how it is when it comes to missing fathers and the focus it takes to find missing family members. For now, the two aids can only accept his first genuine “goodbye” over the phone as compensation for the unknown amount of time that will spent in silence from the other end. It could be weeks, or it could be months.[break][break]
(
An entire year has passed, and each ring of the phone in that laboratory brings Silver's image to mind; it's never him on the other end of the line.)[break][break]
...
[break]
Gold is only fifteen, but his childhood dream of growing up to be quite the teenaged heartthrob is finally starting to come to fruition. Years spent gambling away all of his money at the slot machines at the local Game Corner – or, better yet, the massive one in Goldenrod – never really earned him much attention from the affectionately named “ladies”, any and all attempts to swoon the opposite gender earning him a roll of the eyes or a kick in the... er,
pride. He'll settle on pride. Now that puberty has come to pass, though, there's no doubt that eyes have
finally started to turn his way. The downside is that his mother finds reason in reminding him that he looks more and more like his father every day, the likes of which only stirs old emotions mixed with new ones involving an absent rival and the quest for his
own father, but it's quickly “forgotten” in favor of the numbers he adds to his PokeGear from cute girls he's met at the pool hall or while making his way to the Daycare Center south of Johto's largest city, each one seemingly prettier than the last. He learns quickly that his job helping the Daycare Couple to hatch all of the eggs they find doesn't exactly earn him any points in the game of love, but bragging about his victories in Johto and Hoenn earn him the title of “hero” from more than a few strangers, and working as a part time aid for both Elm
and Oak does the trick when he needs to
pretend to be humble. For all of the girls he's dated and a dumped within a week, though, there's only one girl who ever sticks around long enough for him to give much of an after thought. Come to think of it, these are the first few days (
excluding the first one where she was just some motor mouthed prissy girl) where he's really seen her as much of a girl at
all.[break][break]
She's Crys,
Crystal, the one who's always there to tell him when he's wrong and pick him up when he's down. What she
could be, though, is that and
so much more.[break][break]
It takes a long while before he comes up with an answer, albeit shaky, to the question of whether or not he even
wants her to be more in his life, a few days to determine what would be the best location for an outing, and
weeks to screw up the courage to ask her out on anything even
remotely resembling a date. When he goes to her, he starts it out simple, asking her as he would have Red or Emerald if she'd like to take a trip up the mountain side of Mount Silver. The Pokemon there are ferocious, they both know, but what
he knows that she doesn't are all of the places the mountain holds that are draped in unspeakable beauty. And hey – at the very least, there are those hot springs that his senpai had to recuperate in after the battle against Kanto's Elite Four five years ago, and if swimming and the prospect of catching wild Pokemon that outwit all others in both neighboring regions don't catch her attention, he's not sure anything will. For a few heart stopping moments, it sounds as though she's going to turn him down, eyes lingering too long over her stack of unfinished paperwork (
the likes of which, he must add, are all for the following month, and all of the work she has already done is far ahead of schedule) before she makes her decision. To his relief, she accepts.[break][break]
“So... it's a date, then. Right?”[break][break]
These are the sort of comments that get the pool player slapped across the face at best and an earful from the girl standing dumbfounded before him right now at worst. There is no filter to keep the runaway thoughts in his head from spilling out of his mouth, and the repercussions, while strong, are just never enough to pound the lessons into his mind.
This time, however, he's planned out his words oh so carefully. They've been rehearsed in his head a thousand times to get the job down all while sounding like the thoughtless ventures that he usually submits her to. This is what will make or break this whole thing, and the look of incredulity that colors her face makes it seem as though she's leaning more toward the latter. And then, in one fantastic moment, she softens. The words are hesitant, but they're there, and once they've been spoken, he feels like he can
breathe again. “... Yes. Yes, I guess it is.”[break][break]
Camping supplies have been expertly strapped onto the back of Megaree, clothing and the smaller supplies shoved tight into their backpacks as Exbo carries them through Newbark Town, past Route 38, and up the foothills of the mountain that the breeder once called home for months at a time. So far, everything has gone according to plan. The weather is fine and slated to stay that way for the next week or so, nothing has been forgotten or moved out of place, Kurt's latest batch of PokeBalls came in just in time to make it along for the trip, and she's even let him hold her hand for a whole ten minutes without nagging at him about personal space or something equally bothersome. Really, when she's not trying to pretend to be his mother, he's not sure there's a better girl out there for him, and if all goes well, this may just be the first step in scoring himself a girl he'll
want to stick around. Unfortunately for them, however, they aren't the only ones who have decided to pay the warm slopes of Mount Silver's lowest elevations a nice little visit. They haven't even been on the darned thing a whole twenty minutes when they come across an unsuspecting duo comprised of Yellow, who's exhausted from communicating with the local Pokemon, and Red, who had had the bright idea to bring her along to see his favorite training place in the entirety of Pokearth. The thing about Red and company is that he never has a problem with inviting in more, and the problem about Red and reading the mood is that he
doesn't. There's tension in Crystal's shoulders, though, that he hasn't noticed until it leaves at the site of the blonde-haired girl in the straw hat, and it only then dawns on him that she's been horrendously nervous about this since they've left the lab. A few hours with his senpai and the their other senior... certainly wouldn't do them
bad, he supposes, and if Red would realize the lovey dovey eyes the fisherman (
fisherwoman?) makes at him whether he's looking or not, one could almost consider this a double date. A bland one, but a double date none the less.[break][break]
Plans both in and outside of their world-saving endeavors don't seem to go his way, though. Their party of four is crashed by the addition of Blue no more than an hour later, having learned of this little get together on the mountain side via an interrupting call to Yellow just thirty minutes prior, and she'd taken the liberty of inviting the Hoenn trio, one of which “couldn't make it” and the other two of which show up a little later in the morning. Come one in the afternoon, their number totals seven (
just like after the Mask of Ice incident), all of them present save for Ruby, who has scoffed at the idea of spending a day on “that filthy mountain”, Green, who was too wrapped up in the gym and likely not at all interested in the shenanigans they were all bound to pull, and Silver, whose whereabouts are only known by his sister and are to be shared with absolutely no one else under absolutely no conditions. (
Despite the fact that he knows he's never showing up, Gold can't help but keep his eyes on the horizon whenever he can, part of him hoping to see a familiar head of red break over the line between land and sky.) What had started as a quiet adventure for two has become an explosive party for all, the Meganium already holding their few days' worth of camping supplies becoming a coat hanger for spare clothes and swim suits, and they all pitch in to set up camp just a hop and a skip away from one of the largest hot springs Red could recall off the top of his head. Sapphire begs Red to show her his best training techniques, and his pupil, despite hoping to pull his would-be
date away for a moment's worth of privacy is no-exactly-reluctantly pulled into a demonstration of their best tag teaming efforts from training days long passed. Crystal ends up showing them all an expertise in Pokemon capturing that, even after lengthy explanation after lengthy explanation is still beyond them all. Yellow and Emerald work together to calm a hoard of Golem that come tumbling down the mountain and pose a threat to their setup of tents and campfire wood, and between the impressive display and the safety of their camp once all is said and done, not a soul is complaining afterward.[break][break]
At some point, Blue insists on calling up the only missing Kanto trainer at his gym, and all seven are surprised to have caught him in the midst of a Gym challenge. “If you'll excuse me, not all of us have the amount of freedom that you do,” the Gym Leader says icily through the phone, but something in the back of Gold's mind tells him that the only reason he paused the challenge the answer the phone at all was because of who the caller ID was telling him who it was. Rather than hanging up, however, she puts her PokeGear on speaker and holds it up to the other six Dex Holders present, the likes of which hoot and hollar good luck wishes his way (
and Emerald, who may or may not have wished death upon the poor challenger; they can only pray the stranger can't hear their pandemonium through the Oak's speaker).[break][break]
“Good luck to you both!” Yellow says cheerfully.[break][break]
“Show 'em what we're made of, Green – for all of us!” Red chimes in after.[break][break]
“Kick their ass so hard they can't sit down for a week!”[break][break]
Those who had the forethought to bring along swimwear take a plunge into the springs after Green unceremoniously hangs up on them – and it's
not at all related to Gold's ass-kicking comment, he
swears – and they throw water wars with each other until the sun is swallowed up behind the jagged fangs of the mountaintops and the juniors have passed out by the water's edge, having to be carried back to camp and tossed sloppily into the only two tents available. The remaining five take to sleeping out under the stars, sharing stories of places they've been and things they have seen between the acts of heroism that force them to come together. To neither his nor Crystal's surprise, there's much more to the story on the Sevii Islands than the radio had told them two years ago, and the
only slightly exaggerated story comes from Blue's mouth (
with helpful input from Red and Yellow to fill in those parts that Blue wasn't awake or around for!) for what seems like hours and
hours. As it turns out, Silver's hunt for his father goes beyond just trying to reunite with his family. Yellow looks ashamed when she unthinkingly tells them the truth about Giovanni and his relationship with the silver-eyed thief, afraid that she has shared information that he'd knowingly kept from the two, but the two shrug off the information as seemingly only they can. Silver is... Silver, despite what blood runs through his veins. The Hatcher doesn't think he could name a single person out there who would like to see Team Rocket eating dirt for an eternity than
that guy, and if there's one person on the planet who could make the group's leader see the error in his ways, it falls on the same teen. “Story time” comes to a close when Yellow falls asleep on Red, who then proceeds to fall asleep on
Yellow, both of which have their picture taken by Blue who then announces that they'd all best sign off for the night, themselves. What with the way his eyelids have been refusing to cooperate, he can't find it in himself to argue. (
He's lulled to sleep by the sound of a nearby Noctowl hooting in the night, kept warm by the heat that his blue-haired friend radiates less than a foot away from him between two sleeping bags.)[break][break]
They all part ways come the morning, no one but the Johto duo having prepared to stay any longer than an evening, but it's easy to see that Crystal's getting antsy to return home come dinner time, and even more so in the morning after when they wake up to no one but themselves, their Pokemon, and the wide hand of Mother Nature. They call in early, descending the mountain with twenty new Pokemon on hand and a lightness in his mind that wasn't there on their way up. As it turns out, camping trips are not the ieal place to take your first date, particularly when your teacher, his not-quite-girlfriend, and the rest of the available “squad” show up as soon as the opportunity presents itself to crash the whole thing. When they stop at the doorstep of the lab to drop Crystal off, though, the moon slowly inching upward in the sky, there is a wide, genuine grin that paints her face. “I had a lot of fun,” she tells him, and while he's more than a touch certain it's not entirely, or even
mostly thanks to him, he can take at least a shred of the credit for being the one to invite her out in the first place. If he's being honest with himself, he doesn't foresee a second date rearing its head in the near future, if ever in the future at all – and for some reason, that thought feels so
liberating. Maybe he's just not ready for the commitment a relationship with a girl like her would take. She doesn't appreciate the “superficial” compliments he tosses her way (
and that
way, and that
way, and really in any direction that there's a girl that can move), nor does she care for just about all of his dirty habits and lifestyle, and if they were to ever truly settle down, he'd have to give up more than a bit before she could ever be truly comfortable with him. It's a thought that reminds him that he's only fifteen years old. Fifteen-year-olds, he decides, should not have to give up that much for an artificial relationship that could fall through at any given moment. So he bids her goodnight without a kiss on the lips, or even a kiss on the cheek, instead waving happily and telling her that they (
and he means they, all
of them, because when they were up on that mountain altogether, there was a warmth in his chest that he feels ever so faintly when he's around her, but that much more
when everyone else is there with them, too) should do this again soon before she's closing the door on him and he's left staring at the dark of the lab's front door.[break][break]
“This love stuff,” he tells Aibo, who sits dutifully on his cap for the duration of the walk back to Newbark Town, “is
way too complicated for me.” He'll settle, he thinks, with building a monopoly of numbers from the Game Corner.[break][break]
...
[break]
Two weeks have passed since what he's started to refer to as his “platonic date-turned-camping party” with Crystal when his PokeGear buzzes to life at his desk, tossed there carelessly when he abandoned it in favor of playing his Gameboy on his bed and only noticed when the vibration nearly sends it toppling off the edge and onto his floor. The trainer lunges for it, catching it a second before imminent flight, and speaks into the microphone in a voice that fails to betray the action movie-like catch it took to get him here. “Y'ello?” There's a pause on the other end, and there's a silence on the other end that hangs heavier than that which has reigned over his room for the past few hour. When it breaks, it is by a voice that is loud, but uncertain. A voice that causes his heart to catch in his throat.[break][break]
“... Hey.”[break][break]
If there was a warmth that settled in his chest on that day up on the mountains with six of the other nine Dex Holders, his chest is on
fire now, set ablaze by a single word spoken by lips that have not spoken to him in what must be inching toward a mark of two years. Had it not been for Blue's reassurance, they would have thought him
dead. As it turns out, he's very much alive (
and this proves to be only the first of many calls they would come to exchange over the next year – but he doesn't know that yet.)[break][break]
“Hey, buddy!” Gold says despite the excitement threatening to choke him, because this time, he doesn't
care if Silver hears him call him that. He isn't ashamed that they're friends now, not just rivals, and if the better trainer of the two tries to tell himself or anyone else that he doesn't think of the raven-haired teen as a friend, then he's as filthy a liar as he, himself, has been over the last four years.[break][break]
“How've you been?”[break][break]
it's frustrating when no one expects anything outta you
Gold is sixteen when he befriends the God of their universe.[break][break]
No, no, this time he really means it. They're not petty words pumped full of lies to charm some unintelligent girl out of her dress, and they're not falsities tossed about to convince the Professor once and for all that he's just as good as the other Dex Holders – he is sixteen, he stares down death once more in the form of the Alpha Pokemon that created the universe, and when they part ways, he won't claim to be on such good terms that he'll remember to buy the thing a birthday present (
it's probably already raked in enough, seeing as it has existed before Pryce's coveted time was a concept that held any meaning), it's still on better terms than most any human being alive in all of time and space can boast. But that's him getting ahead of itself; it's not as though it drops down on Newbark Town's front lawn looking to impress. No, no, the reality of the situation is
much worse.[break][break]
He's the bench warmer of the Dex Holders before he is their shining star. Five years in the business has packed experience onto him tight, but even while there are only a select handful of trainers out there who could possibly match or defeat him in battle, no one seems to
expect anything out of him. Elm only summons to the lab on one of his days off after the pair of researchers had failed to get in contact or secure a meeting with the more level-headed Johtoans, and the only reason The Hatcher is forced to set aside his now full-time work as a Pokemon breeder for the Daycare Couple is because he was quite literally their last option for carrying out this specific mission. There's a man waiting for him at the Pokeathlon with a name he recognizes from Yellow's horror stories about her battles against the Elite Four and their plans to destroy all of mankind as well as Silver's retelling of their own battles against the Mask of Ice (
as it turns out, the man on the other side of that PokeGear all of those years ago is going to be meeting him
face to face for the first and possibly last time), and if he has truly turned over a new leaf as he claims, he's willing to impart knowledge on any Dex Holder Oak will send to aid in stopping a reviving Team Rocket's evil plan. One would think that they would give up after what must be four failed attempts, always with the same memo:
Get the legendary, conquer the world. When will they ever factor in that there will always be a child half their age to come knocking at their door and sucker punching the poor sap unfortunate enough to open it? As fate would have it, he is the lucky sucker puncher this time – although, can it really be called “lucky” when he's practically been told that he's the least reliable of any of the original seven Dex Holders?[break][break]
He takes the five courses offered there by storm, even when pitted up against the powerful forces of Johto's Elite Four (
all of them adversaries at one point or another, but none of them direct adversaries of his), and he tells them that it was to impress the stranger who never arrives for their meeting.[break][break]
It's certainly not something he has to prove to
himself to patch a wounded ego. Absolutely not.[break][break]
Whereas Lance is not kind enough to show his face at their intended meeting place or even call in to postpone the whole ordeal, what appears to be his rampaging Dragonite is enough of a gentleman to pay its respects to the Dome. Hyper Beam after Hyper Beam come raining down on the unsuspecting patrons, and the only thing that finally manages to restore peace to the chaotic area is the breeder's fast thinking, a pool cue, and a PokeBall containing his gutsy little Togepi shot straight into an oncoming blast. What the Koga and Will call a risky move,
he calls the decisive blow, and both partners high five one another despite their battered frames. While none of them will say that they're especially grateful for the destruction of the Pokeathlon Dome's outer court, however, there is a saving grace to be found in the tattered piece of fabric it carries in its bloodied claws. Between Bruno's recollection of his time spent under Lance's command and the behavior of the massive dragon-type before them, it doesn't take long to piece together just who owns this mighty beast, as well as the fact that its trainer's absence and its own battered appearance can leave them guessing that the man that is supposed to be present was attacked on his way here. Gold snatches the piece of the cape for himself to show to the Professors when he returns empty-handed – but there's a place he wants to go and people he wants to see before he shows up at the lab in Newbark Town. Whitney can berate him all she wants, but a villain getting attacked is none of his business, and if he wants to pay the Kimono Girls of Ecruteak a visit, Arceus darnit, that's what he's going to
do. As it turns out, it's all for the better. His arrival there allows for him to meet up with three unlikely people: first, the city's Gym Leader, who, mistaking him for someone else, offers to use his future sight to pinpoint where the owner of the cape can be found; second, Silver, who he immediately pulls into a neck hug and cannot possibly fathom an explanation for their unannounced reunion; third,
The Alpha Pokemon itself. Gold has only just started to take the liberty of introducing his best friend to Morty when the friend in question pulls away, bringing all of their attention to the rumble growing in intensity around them. Had it not been for that, he thinks in hindsight, they all may have been destroyed in the massive beam of energy that swallows half of the gym whole.[break][break]
Arceus stares him, the only conscious survivor of the attack, down with eyes that sing of unspoken sorrow. When it takes to the skies, he's quick to abandon his friend and his mission in favor of pursuing it.[break][break]
The Ruins of Alph have been beaten and bruised by time, but five years have done nothing to change so much as a speck of dust from the memory in the gambler's mind. Up until now, he has had no reason to show his face around this area. Even if the urge to revisit old times and old place had ever struck, the place was always crawling with archeologists who, for their own asinine reasons, functioned under a strict
look, don't touch policy and warded away any traveler who may have wanted to pass through. The area is desolate and empy now, however, save for the massive beast who lands overhead, a Typhlosion, its trainer, Bugsy who's unwillingly tagged along, and – assuming the picture scribbled furiously by that Morty fellow holds any truth – Lance himself. Whatever it is with this dragon master and his habit of greeting people with ferocious Pocket Monsters that lash out at everything in sight, Gold doesn't think he much cares for it. Worse than that, though, is when he finally gets his chance to accept the information about Arceus and Team Rocket's plans to use it to call upon their missing leader Giovanni and the powerful trainer has the audacity to tell him that he's not good enough for the job. “Your Togepi obviously isn't very attached to you,” he says, and teenaged fists curl up into balls at each of his sides. Why wouldn't Togebo be attached to him? Anyone with eyes can see that they're cut from the same cloth, the same look of fiery determination set ablaze in their eyes. If he's going to take this from some guy he's known for all of five minutes, though, he's battier than the villains he's fought in their final moments of desperation. If there's a God to be calmed, he's going to calm it, and nothing said under the ruins can convince him otherwise.[break][break]
Four unfamiliar faces attached to bodies sporting bright red “R”s on their chests are the first to appear at the scene, and it doesn't take much longer for steel-faced Silver and a barely standing Crys to show up over the horizon. Prepared as they all are for a final confrontation, Arceus itself has other plans. One minute, the sun is glaring down at them from above – and in the next, golden eyes are getting an uncomfortably close look at a blanket of snow. This is what myths have fondly referred to as the Sinjoh Ruins. It is here that the seven witness the birth of legendary Pokemon before their very own eyes. Everything the three have done since this entire fiasco began have only served to further the plans of the four Rocket Executives before them, between Silver collecting the sixteen plates used to unleash the God's full power, Crystal warming its heart to them enough for it to lead them to Sinjoh's otherworldly entrance point, and Gold's own seemingly futile struggle opening the door that lead them all here. Now, with chains in hand and a stage to begin their play of destruction, the four intend to create three creatures of Sinnoh myth that will solidify themselves as the strongest force in all of Johto – perhaps even all of the
world. What none of them understand, however, is that Arceus, chained or no, bows before no man. A fierce battle frees the Alpha Pokemon, reunites it with its plates, and seems to quell its anger long enough to halt the reformation of Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, but hardly enough time to let loose a sigh of relief has passed before Creation begins anew. Arceus, Land had told him, had lost its faith in humankind. For a creature with the means to wipe everything off of the face of the planet, the only logical conclusion is to assume that it plans to do
just that.[break][break]
...
[break]
“That's amazing! It's almost as if you and your Togepi have a symbiotic relationship with one another!”[break][break]
“Ha ha! Well, of course! I've known Togebo since it was still an egg.[break][break]
“It's skills are top notch!”[break][break]
How long has it been since he tore his path to victory alongside his partners at the Pokeathlon? A day? A week? A month? Everything had seemed so
easy back then, his Pokemon knocking away the competition without the need to take direct orders from their trainer like their opponents on the field, and the shock that colored the crowds' faces when his little Togepi conquered over all was fresh with each new victory. It's a stark contrast to now, all seven of them knocked down and away with each swing of Arceus' massive legs. As they battle, Silver and Crys work alongside Lance, Pryce, and Giovanni to distract that three smaller legendaries, leaving The Hatcher alone in his quest to help the massive being see reason. He's never been a very good talker, his heart bursting with emotion that his mouth just can't ever keep up with, but he's grownup knowing that actions speak louder than words, so when appealing to the emotions with pacifism does him no good, he settles on attacking with everything he's got. There isn't a thing in the world he gets along better with than his Pokemon, and if its the greed and hatred between human beings that has turned Arceus away from them, showing him how he and his party run like clockwork is the only thing he can possibly think of to cool what looks to be an unstoppable anger. The only problem is that Arceus isn't looking at Exbo or Aibo, at Sudobo or Sunbo – he's looking at
Togebo, the one who isn't attached to him yet, and its counter attacks become more and more violent with each second. He tries to recall his normal-type to its PokeBall where it can't be hurt and where it can't combat his cause, but it breaks loose with a stubbornness rivaled only by his own.[break][break]
Gold
knows it hates to be undermined because of its supposed strength, because it
looks weak, because it's got guts where it doesn't have thought and a heart where it doesn't have a brain. (
“They even kind of look like each other!”) He watches it get knocked on its face and pick itself back up each and every time, and he finally understands exactly what Lance had been trying to tell him. How can he expect others to believe in the little guy when he hasn't been believing in it, himself? And if there's anyone who knows how frustrating it is to live life where no one exacts a thing out of you, it's none other than the loud mouthed Pokemon Boy himself. “I know it's too late now, but... Please fight Arceus for me. And promise that you'll give it everything you've got!”[break][break]
Togebo evolves once – and then it evolves
twice – and it throws itself at Arceus with a strength so powerful the legendary beast
staggers. It's a Pokemon he's never seen before, one he wonders if even Crystal has managed to capture at some point to add to her ever growing PokeDex, and he stares, dumbfounded, as the new wings sprouting from his partner's suddenly
huge back carry it down to the earth to sit at his side. His expression molds even further when the assault on his party comes to a screeching halt. There was sorrow in those bright yellow eyes that seems to have disappeared at the sight of Gold finally opening his heart to one of his most treasured Pokemon, and, seemingly appeased, it casts the three monsters it has created off to go their separate ways – and takes to the skies itself, returning the group of ten back to the Ruins of Alph before disappearing off into the distance. Some part of him wonders if maybe the creature of legend had already accepted them to begin with, moved by the kindness of The Catcher, the resolve of The Exchanger, and the words of The Hatcher and only staying behind in order to help
him realize the error of his ways. He'll never know one way or the other, but that doesn't stop him from cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out to a deity already long gone:[break][break]
“Thanks a lot, Arceus!”[break][break]
...
[break]
The Pokemon House, as the residents of New Bark Town call it, has never been a particularly quiet place. His mother is fond of blaring both radio and television at a time, humming her own tunes as she works on house chores here or works at her desk there, and between she and the dozens of Pokemon that fill the void her son leaves when he's off saving the world, they give plenty of cause for someone to call the police on them for noise pollution. Or they
would, assuming they had any neighbors close enough to care, much less any neighbor who wasn't already a personal friend of the household. It comes to a surprise to him, then when the volume has been turned down to a near inaudible level when he drags Silver through the front door for the first time. His poor, unaware mother thinks that this is the first time he's had a friend over, and despite the fact that any vision of order in this building has already been shattered from those nights that the younger teen has already slipped in through their window and invaded their privacy,
she doesn't know that. So she puts on a face. Cooks up a fancy meal. Sends the Pokemon off to Professor Elm's lab so they don't bombard the two. This is all probably for the better, though, seeing as the first thing the red head does after introductions have come and gone is make a bee line for the television. The only
real reason why he's here and entering the home like a normal person is because the old Goldenrod Radio director's children show airs on television for the first time tonight, and Gold promised to let him use his television to watch it in exchange for a favor or so. He knows he shouldn't expect him to hold up an act and pretend like he's interested in anything other than Proteam Omega's highly anticipated pilot, but that doesn't stop a pout from forming on his lips all the same.[break][break]
Those favors end up being cashed in immediately, and no sooner than dinner has been finished does the breeder pull his friend out of the house and onto the streets of his hometown. There aren't many places of interest to be found here, he admits, but they stop at each and every one, starting with the small vendors in the downtown area and finishing their tour with the pool hall that started it all. DJ Mary sings to them a song about a girl and her Fletchling, and when the sound is cut short from a thieving Murkrow outside, all he can do is laugh. It's about time he upgraded to a new radio, he explains when he makes no move to remedy the fact. Another billiards ball rolls into its desired hole as The Exchanger looks on in silence. (
The air around them is full of comfortable quiet; this wasn't a trip wasted.)[break][break]
“You know, you don't always have to make yourself a stranger,” Gold says. Honchkrow flaps its wings expectantly, impatient to get on the road again and confused as to why its trainer hasn't given it the order to go, but two pairs of eyes made of precious metals meet each other then, and he knows that his friend is really listening this time. “My, uh... mom really likes you. She wants you to come over again soon.”[break][break]
Giovanni's son takes off into the night in a flurry of cherry hair and jet black feathers, off to some nearby hideout from which he'll likely depart in the morning to disappear off the map once more. Still, the Pokemon House's only child closes the front door with a grin, heart feather light in his chest as he calls it a night. Against the quiet of a darkening New Bark evening, it had been impossible to hear those parting words:[break][break]
“... I'll think about it.”[break][break]
...
[break]
The Daycare Couple move their base of operations out of Johto and into the distant region of Unova. There's competition to be found here where there isn't any on the faraway continent, and while deep down he'll admit that he's sad to see them go, he knows that it's for the best. Business, after all, is still business. He kisses Johto's beautiful head farewell for as long as it will take to get them situated and then some, boarding for the first time in his life a boat and paying his first visit to the furthest region from the mainland there is. From what he's heard, there are even Dex Holders out here, although the odds of bumping into either one are incredibly slim. (
He wolf whistles at a girl in black and white, pony tail high and short-shorts “smokin'”. It's impossible to tell at the time, but the Unovan Dex Holders may be closer than he'd originally thought.) In the meanwhile, he gorges himself on the local Castelia Cones and helps his party with the heavy lifting the elderly company simply cannot do. Complaints fill the air the whole way, but he doesn't fail to notice the way the Daycare Man's smile is a little fonder, the Grandma's whacks upside the head a little less rough.[break][break]
Gold is the sort of teenager that parents would sooner be caught dead than passing their children over to, but anyone who has seen him with actual human children or especially the baby Pokemon he helps raise is quick to to find there's no reason to. He's had enough practice from living at home to know what care a growing child regardless of species needs, and what's getting on six years (
and a whole slew of unexplained natural talent) helps to work out the finer things that change depending on what it is he's helping to care for. Fun as it may be, though, to play with “the youngin's” and watch them grow from infancy to an age where they can make it on their own, nothing in the world can compare to what it feels like to be the first thing a newborn Pocket Monster sees upon entry into the world. All they know how to do is cry and be happy – it's up to the three of them to teach them how to stay strong in a world as unforgiving of their own. (
He sees himself in every egg he has ever hatched, starting from his eyes on Togebo and his hair on little Pibu's head all the way up to the saunter in this Girafarig's step and the grin on that Sneasel's face. He used to wonder if it was his mind over complicating things, projecting himself onto those he helped bring into the world, but the couple tells him that they only go to him for a reason. These Pokemon are stronger than they would have been under anyone else, fiercer in their determination to survive and thrive and gentler in their hearts when it matters. They'll miss him when he leaves. They hope he'll continue to keep his profession alive on more familiar soil.)[break][break]
The Hatcher's luggage is twice as heavy leaving than it was on entry. He's packed every souvenir he possibly could, stuffing until the sipper threatened to give out beneath his tugging fingers. Nothing material, however, can compare to the warm embraces they give him when they part ways. He'll never see them again face to face, but the training and the knowledge they've imparted with him will live with him far longer than they will. Maybe he'll open a Daycare of his when he returns, he thinks once he's on the ocean. Maybe...[break][break]
...
[break]
“You think I could afford this old place?”[break][break]
Professor Oak's two aids stand shoulder to shoulder as they make their way out of the Goldenrod city limits, passing a half-melted shake back and forth that they take turns sucking on. (
“Does this count as an indirect ki-” the male had started at the female's first sip, only to be interrupted by a foot to the face cutting him short.) To their left stands the old Center, as old and rickety as the ones who'd once lived there and, miraculously, still up for purchase. Golden eyes stare at it longingly as they pass. So intent is that stare that it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that his partner has stopped walking beside him.[break][break]
“Assuming you stop squandering all of the money Professor Elm pays you at the Game Corner,” she says, and the underlying chastising doesn't go unnoticed. There's a pause before she continues thoughtfully, “... But if you're serious about this, I don't see why the Professors and I wouldn't give you a
bit of a loan...”[break][break]
...
[break]
There are feather light kisses being pressed against the bare flesh of his collarbones, hands roaming up and down his sides and breath hot against his chest. Every movement, even the slighest ones send a shiver running down the length of his spine and his back is arching up from the bed further and further by the minute. This isn't something new to him by any means – he's eighteen years old now, but he's been smooth talking his way with “the ladies” for at least a year's time now – but no one has ever been quite as good at pressing all of his buttons in just the right way as
this lady. His eyes must be closed since he can't see a thing, but that doesn't stop him from running his fingers through long, soft strands of hair. When he dares to open them, however, he's greeted with a shock of bright cherry red.
Familiar bright cherry red.[break][break]
Gold wakes with a start. He's in bed –
alone, thankfully. That doesn't mean it takes any longer than a whole five seconds before he realizes that he's impossibly excited, and
not in the good way. (
This is just the first of many horrific nights that pass like this: jerked awake by a phantom boy on top of him and regret weighing him down like water in the realm of the living.)[break][break]
“
Holy shit.”[break][break]
rippling waves will be me home
It's an act of cowardice, and he knows it – but that doesn't stop his feet from carrying him away, off from the old daycare and its promise of a humble future and the faces of the friends he has made along the way. It would have been so easy to brush it off as a simple dream, a belly too full before bed, an imagination run wild, but it's
not, it's not just one dream, its the entirety of the years they've spent together. He loves his mother. He loves Crystal. He loves Red. He loves
Silver. A year ago, he'd thought them all the same. Now, he's not so sure.[break][break]
Lyeant is different from Johto in ways much that Unova was, with its flashing lights and pandering ways, but he feels more at home in the big cities here than he'd ever during his stay in Castelia or Nimbasa. The air smells more like home, the Pokemon more docile, the countryside more reminiscent of the sleepy hills of New Bark Town. There's a game corner in Neutrift City, supposedly, but he hasn't taken all of two steps into the region until he's bumping into a face achingly familiar to him – and just like that, all of his illusions of solitude and self meditation (
as though he'd really ever resort to that) are shattered in an instant, broken to bits by the war hammer that is Crystal Demien, in the flesh, combing the Lyeant countryside for Pokemon. But this is fine; they gawk and they gape at each other, amazed by the odds and the strings of fate that simply
must tie they together, have been since they were eleven years old and up against the world, but part of him sighs its siren song of relief. Only days into his trip to the new region alone and he could already feel the boredom creeping into his bones – and
Crystal, at least, isn't the one he's ultimately trying to avoid.[break][break]
Is it for better or worse that they're there, then, together, as Lyeant goes up in flames?[break][break]
Surely it's for the better, Gold would like to think. The Dex Holders are renowned for saving the day, armed only with the friends at their side and the hope for something better in their hearts, and this poor, poor breeding ground of evil had no eleven-year-old trainers of its own, armed with rare technology and destined to rise up against the evil that is Imum. But maybe the question isn't of whether or not it is for “good” or “bad” at all. No, no, the question he should have been asking was whether or not it
means anything in the end. He's there in the thick of it all, battling with all the strength he'd mustered against the Mask of Ice, against
Arceus itself – and perhaps it's a testament to age, to rusting abilities, but he doesn't feel like he made a goddamn
dent. Is this what heroes are for? Standing around and lapping up the limelight while innocent people continue to do?[break][break]
(
Imum crumples beneath the weight of a region's population, but still, he can't help feeling so useless.[break][break]
(
He'll rebuild, then; stick around until people don't have to worry where their next meal is coming from, or panic over the decline in wild Pokemon. He couldn't protect them all then – but Gold is a young man of comebacks
, if nothing else, and he sure as the Distortion World isn't going to fail them this time.)
?[break][break]
*
