The merciless winds of Mt. Silver howled, just as they had for thousands of years, just as they would for thousands more. Red would often listen to them during breaks in his training, to remind himself just what he was fighting for.
If anyone asked, Red would have told them it was because there was no one strong enough left to challenge him, save for the wild Pokémon of the mountain. It wasn't a lie. He was the best, after all – And after you had beaten everyone worth beating, what was there left to do? Retire at sixteen years old, or sit at Indigo Plateau and wait for the odd challenger to come along as Champion? Not likely. He'd would rather die than stagnate.
He'd had to use this excuse once before, on the only person he didn't get the benefit of the doubt from on account of his fame. Green. Just thinking about him made the trainer want to hit something. With his hands. Three years and he still pissed him off. He supposed he had become arrogant, so that such a thing as his rival trying to tell him "no" was enough to get him riled, but... it was Green. Any emotional response was completely justified. He had said it was stupid. He had said it was suicide. It had come down to a battle to settle the dispute, and fifteen minutes later, Red was on his way to Mt Silver again.
It was impossible for Green to have won. He knew that. Red knew that. But maybe they had wanted one more battle, for old time's sake.
Red's response at the time had been silent and stoic, as always. But now that he was away, sometimes it was all he wanted to go back and tell Green exactly what he thought of him. Like he never had during the years they had been in each others' company. If you could call it that. It was something about the mountain, he reasoned – The harsh environment and solitude stripping away the layers of his carefully constructed facade as easily as it had reduced his Pokémon into mewling, shivering kittens for the first few days. But unlike his Pokémon, Red had yet to acclimatize. It didn't get any easier to maintain control the longer he was at the summit.
So why did he stay?
If anyone asked, Red would have told them he remained because there was no one strong enough left to challenge him, save for the wild Pokémon of the mountain. It would have been a lie, and arrogant to claim it was truth. There was always someone worth challenging, always someone who had worked their way up to his level. Always some rising star whose eyes reminded Red of the person he once was.
The merciless winds of Mt. Silver howled on, just as they had for thousands of years, just as they would for thousands more, regardless of Red's presence. It was comforting, in a way, that there was something out there that wouldn't cut him any slack. That there was something whose respect he'd never earn. The mountain would never forgive him, and the mountain would never forget. The mountain would always be there to challenge his skill and his authority, make him doubt himself, make him wonder if he could go on. The mountain would always be there to make him grow. The mountain had become the rival Green would never be again.
And that was why he stayed. Whenever he started to doubt himself, whenever he wanted to go back home and have a cup of his mother's hot cocoa or argue with Green or help Professor Oak, Red would listen to the winds of Mt. Silver. They would remind him that if he turned his back now, he'd risk his life in the one way that wasn't threatened if he stayed. The death he'd die in civilization was one much more terrible than the mountain could ever dream up; a long, slow death by stagnation.
He had started to see it in Green, and it was frightening. After it had become apparent that he couldn't beat Red anymore, after he had finally earned his respect, his rival had took a step back. He had stopped trying as hard to surpass him. He had started to let himself die. Green acted almost... friendly towards him, and it wasn't even the sarcasm Red was accustomed to. Like he thought they'd reached some kind of common ground, and that it was enough for him to rest on his laurels. To see that in his rival was more threatening and horrifying than anything he faced on the mountain, be it death by falling or freezing or starvation.
Red would rather die than let that happen to him.
Above the howling of the wind, Red heard a sound that broke him out of his thoughts. The crunching of footsteps in the powdery, icy snow that coated the summit. He lifted his head quickly, defensively, eyes wide like a wild animal who knew it had been spotted. But he already knew the footsteps in the snow weren't those of a wild Pokémon; they didn't come in sets of four, nor were they heavy enough to belong to the large bipedal species Red shared the mountain with. No, this was no Pokémon. This was a human, a real, live human being.
"Hey. Are you Red?"
That voice. Arrogant. Assertive. Young – Not much older than the speaker's addressee must have been when he started his journey. It reminded Red of his own, despite the slight foreign accent he knew belonged to Johto. Too much. And yet, it had been anything other than the mirror image of his own, Red wouldn't have even acknowledged its presence past a cursory suspicious glance.
"Your buddy Green sent me to get you."
Red got up from his perch at the edge of the cliff and turned around to get a better view of the trespasser, and it was a human alright – A young trainer, brimming with confidence, fire in his golden eyes.
Red stared back at them with his own brown set, and didn't say a word.
This seemed to throw the newcomer off a bit, because he gave him a quizzical glance. He quickly got over the momentary confusion, though, because his cocky grin was quick to return to his face.
"Is that a no?"
Red's eyes narrowed and he felt the flicker of a smile cross his face.
This. This was something the mountain couldn't offer him. For as strong as they were, the wild Pokémon of the mountain could never match the strategy and drive of a trainer. This was something he had forgotten during his months of training here, and had only remembered when he saw the face of a challenger.
Red took a beat-up Pokéball out of his vest.
"Okay, I can roll with that. Bring it on."
Author's Note: Ha, just rambling. I was listening to a song entitled ...sou through the entire thing, though, which is a parody of the Vocaloid song "Eh? Ah, Sou."
/watch?v=crJPfB0KuIA
Stick that at the end of a youtube url if you want to hear it. It's not translated though.
Should I continue gaiz? :D