The dark shadow advanced. A cry of fear echoed in his ears. A grunt. A whimper. No pain, for it was clean, and fast. Fear lingered in the air. The one thing that was worse than death itself, the cruellest way to end, was through fear.
Silver sat up with a jolt, his heart rate rapidly calming down as he took in his surroundings. It was early still. Too early for his liking. He groaned in annoyance at the fact that the nightmare had ruined his sleep, yet again.
He could not shake off his past, but he had learned to live with it. What was bogging his mind though, was the increase in frequency of those dreams. He thought he had grasped total control of it when the dreams suddenly stopped a few years back, only to realise that it had come back, clearer than ever, and growing stronger ever since.
The red eyes that pierced through his eyes, as if to say "you're next."
Yawing, Silver got up reluctantly from the hard cave floor. It was cold. He wished he could have found a warmer place to build his hide out, but realistically, it was worth the cold if he could have a remote and obscure location like the valley of Route 45. There's only so much one could ask for.
Finishing his breakfast silently, he made a mental note to buy more bread later today, and set down south with his pokémon on his belt.
It was an unusual routine by itself, that Silver wouldn't normally travel down the route during daytime, but he was convinced that is was too early for any trainers to wonder around. It was too early to do anything anyway, as he needed to visit the Pokémon Centre first before he could start any training.
His pokémon were low on health. He wasn't paying attention to the time when he realised that it was too late to go to the Pokémon Centre the day before. Not that it wasn't open, he just missed the rush hour when every trainer in the area would barge in, heal, and head home. He didn't like the idea of being the only trainer at the centre. The nurse was too friendly.
Fog lingered in the valley. The cold mountain air smelt fresh and clean. Thankfully no trainers were in sight. Silver hopped down the ledges with swift movements and it wasn't long until he reached the berry patch.
Most trainers regard berries as useless, unless their pokémon were pathetically weak. Silver wasn't one of them though. Who said berries were only meant for pokémon? he thought idly while plucking one off the tree and popping it into his mouth.
He pocketed the status healing berries, then scooped some fresh water from the nearby mountain spring.
It was the simple chores that Silver had unknowingly settled himself down to, after his travelling days ended. He had already assembled his team, and he felt that travelling around and exploring places wouldn't help much in chasing and catching up to Gold. Yes, catching up. The wording was no mistake, though he hated to admit it. After numerous losses and Gold being crowned the Champion, he had a bitter realisation that Gold was not the weakling that he had always pictured him to be – though there was one thing that he was always certain of, was that there was no way to tell that the little boy with a goofy grin could be the Champion of Johto. For people who hadn't seen him before, at least.
The roof top of houses came into view as Silver travelled back up towards Blackhorn, the steep ledges proven less of a challenge to climb up as Silver had grown taller. He could sense the bustling of people as the city began to wake up, telling him that it was a good time to head into the Pokémon Centre and start his usual regime for today.
Or so he thought.
"Concentrate, Slash!" Silver commanded. Feraligatr swiftly spun its body and delivered a critical hit on the hundred year old tree trunk.
"Again, same place twice!" Silver ordered. A more powerful spin followed by a twist of the body had landed two more critical hits to the trunk, at the exact same place as the first. "Spot on!" Silver could not help shouting out a small encouragement. Feraligatr swung its claws in the air triumphantly. "Don't get too cocky, I want to see it at full power," Silver said. "Keep going."
Feraligatr was about to strike again when it had to jerk away from a sudden attack from the side. An electric ball barely missed it and landed beside its feet with a hiss. Their good rhythm disrupted, Silver clenched his teeth and growled towards the shore, "keep your typhlosion on a leash, will you?"
Said typhlosion was frozen with wide eyes, one paw poised mid-air like it didn't know what just happened. Silver found the idiocy strikingly similar to that of its trainer, who turned his head to inspect the situation. "Don't worry, he's just practicing. He doesn't mean any harm," he assured, and turned back to yawn at the still water with a rod in his hands. "Who on earth invented fishing rods? Come on… Dragonair!"
Silver narrowed his eyes at the trainer, his long time rival. It was not the first time Gold was here while Silver was busy training. Once he found out Silver's training spot at the Dragon's Den, it was not unusual for Gold to turn up and just "hang out" with his old rival.
"It is doing harm even if it does not mean it!" Silver snapped back. "How can Feraligatr train with Typhlosion's stray punches everywhere?"
"A good fighter must always be alert to its surroundings, even outside of battles," Gold reminded him while turning his attention back to fishing, which caused Silver to roll his eyes.
Seeing Gold had no intention of refraining his beast, Silver sighed and walked towards Typhlosion, who was now sniffing at the grass after it thought it was off the hook. "Come on Typhlosion," Silver grunted as he pushed the confused beast towards another patch of clearing besides Gold. "Aim your punches – there," Silver pointed away from where Feraligatr stood, "and stay – here," he pointed at the ground beneath his feet. Hopefully Typhlosion understood his instructions, stupid or not.
"Silverrr – " Gold whined in the background, rocking his body back and forth, "help me get a dragonairrr – "
Looked like Gold's patience was dying, not that it was surprising. It took great effort for Silver not to swear at him. "Why – do you need a dragonair?"
"I need to complete my PokéDex!" Gold said. "I promised Professor Oak!"
"Yeah, like I care," Silver waved him off.
Gold whined some more about how he couldn't let Professor Oak's hope down after swearing completion of what the previous data collectors failed to complete, at which point Silver had already turned away and went back to his training.
"And you won't believe how hard it is to find legendaries," Gold said regardless. "Catching them is even more impossible! Hey, do you know the old gramps in Azalea who makes the pokéballs?" Seeing no reaction, Gold rambled on, having nothing better to do than waiting for a bite. "I have to ask him about a GS Ball thingy that I'm supposed to have before I can meet a certain legendary, but he's been away for some time and I just can't find him for some reason… Oh, yes! Here it comes!"
Apparently Gold had finally landed a pokémon. Silver watched him chanting "dragonair, dragonair, dragonair," as he reeled it in. As it turned out, it was just a magikarp.
"Are you for real? I'm using a super rod, you dumb fish." Gold wailed despairingly as he took the hook off its mouth. Silver snickered.
"Do you know that what you hook up reflects upon the kind of a person you really are?" he asked.
Gold turned sharply towards him and glared, throwing the fish back into the water with a plop. "Wow, I didn't know that," he said sarcastically and took a deep breath. "That's it. I give up. I don't care anymore! Come on Silver, let's go somewhere else. This is boring," he said while putting away his fishing gears, then attempted to grab Silver by his arm.
Silver jerked away. "Get lost."
Gold stepped back and put his hands up to surrender. "Fine, your loss." He made a face, and called out his newly caught lapras ("check out this baby," he boasted earlier when he arrived on its back). "I'll be around, so don't miss me!" he called back as he eagerly jumped onto Lapras. It was only because of Typhlosion's panicked cry from ashore that reminded Gold to return it back to its pokéball before he surfed away.
Silver could only shake his head at the whole ordeal before resuming his daily routine.
He had once again over trained his pokémon. It was already dark when he left Dragon's Den. Figuring that he wouldn't want to waste more time like this morning, he grudgingly head towards the Pokémon Centre.
"Good evening, you're out late," the nurse greeted him. "Would you like me to heal your pokémon?" she asked.
Silver resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the rhetorical question, and merely nodded. The nurse blabbered on as she worked the machine. He just zoomed out into dream world, hoping the process could be more bearable.
"Thanks for waiting, Silver, your pokémon are fully healed. We hope to see you again," she said cheerfully while handing his pokémon back.
I wouldn't want see you again if I could help it, Silver thought sarcastically as he clicked the pokéballs back on his belt. It was only when he was several metres out of town when he realised that the nurse knew his name.
Oh, damn. He knew he should have avoided the Centre more often. Once a nurse knew your name, that's it, not even Amnesia could make her forget.
He was just deciding that it must have been Gold who told her his name when he heard a rustle in the bushes. He had a feeling that he was being watched since the moment he stepped out of the Pokémon Centre, and was hoping that whoever it was would give up after Silver enter the big maze of Dark Cave on his way back.
The rustling didn't stop, and Silver couldn't help but think of how pathetic it all seemed. He already had a vague idea of who it must have been, and Silver could only had so much patience. He stopped walking and shouted "stop following me!" at the direction of the bush. "You think I'm stupid?" he taunted.
No answer. Typical of Gold with his poor attempt at stealth.
Silver narrowed his eyes and walked towards the bush, telling Gold to get lost, but got a nasty surprise when a puff of smokescreen shot straight onto his face. "What the hell?" he said as he realised that he had made a complete fool of himself. A koffing floated in front of him, not Gold as he expected.
The koffing let out a screech. Silver quickly covered his ears at the sharp sound. Okay then, if it wanted to fight, then Silver would give it a fight.
"Go, Alakazam! Use Psychic!" Silver called out his pokémon, who easily knocked out the koffing, gaining a measly amount of experience. "What a waste of a PP," he said, then saw more koffing emerging from the smokescreen. He cursed at the number of enemies. Psychic wasn't the best move to have for battling a lot of pokémon at once. Ignoring the rules of battling, he called out Crobat and Gengar for help.
"Crobat, Wing Attack! Gengar, Shadow Ball!" Silver commanded. The koffing were taken down one by one, but not as fast as Silver wanted them to. He made a mental note for more training tomorrow.
After some struggle, Silver caught a slight change in the smell of the smoke. Smog, he thought, and quickly recalled Alakazam. Crobat's Wing Attacks would have dispersed the smog easily!
Silver called for retreat, as he was starting to feel uneasy about this battle. Koffing weren't native around Route 45, and they were just too strong for an average wild battle. It was not worth the effort.
He ran, calling Crobat and Gengar to run too. What was even stranger though, was that the group of koffing did not stop attacking him.
As he broke out of the smokescreen and smog, he took a deep breath of fresh air, and noticed a large flock of pidgey using Whirlwind around the smoke, confining them within the area.
It was a trap, Silver realised. A trainer was attacking him. Things didn't add up if it was a wild battle. He looked around but couldn't find any trainers, which made him feel even more alarmed. Silver could not think of whom or why someone would want to attack him. Those were not Gold's pokémon, and Team Rocket didn't exist anymore. Even if they did, it was not their style to attack in groups and hide behind the scene…
There was no time for thoughts as the flock of pidgey spotted his escape, and started to aim their attacks at his direction. "Confuse Ray," he ordered both his pokémon. While the pidgey were dazed by the attack, Silver quickly scooped up Gengar into his arms and ran for the entrance of Dark Cave. The koffing mob chased after them.
It was pitch black inside the cave, but Silver knew the layout like the back of his hand, and Crobat could easily follow him using its supersonic senses. He could hear the koffing piling in, and ejecting poisonous gases at large quantities.
"Wing Attack, Crobat," Silver tried to hold them back while he switched Gengar with Feraligatr and started to surf through the underground lake.
It was quite dangerous, surfing at high speed without vision. Droplets of cool water sprayed onto Silver's face as he trusted Feraligatr to navigate through the water ways, turning sharp corners and jolting with each stroke.
Silver was confident that they have gotten rid of the koffing, though it was quite hard to tell over the sound of water splashing. He told Feraligatr to slow down a little, as he was starting to lose his grip around its neck.
When they landed on the shore, just a few metres away from the secret cave exit, Silver felt as if the ground was turning and jolting like he was still surfing. Looking towards the last of the sunlight coming through the exit, Silver knew something was wrong.
As his adrenalin died down, his visions began to blur and his head started to spin. A wave of nausea washed over him as he realised that he had inhaled too much of the poisonous gas. It was not good.
He took a few steps forward, reaching the rocky wall for support. Feraligatr came to his other side to help, and he stumbled upwards. The passage was steep, and it was getting hard to breath. His heart was pounding in his ears. Every step he took became increasingly tiring. If only he could made it to his hideout and grab a few berries he stocked…
Half way up, his knees couldn't hold up his body weight any longer and gave away. Crobat flew over with concern as Silver leaned onto a rock, catching his breath.
"Crobat," Silver panted, "can you go and bring the bag of berries here? From the hideout?"
Crobat dipped its body in acknowledgement and quickly flew out of the cave. Feraligatr looked back with worry.
Silver couldn't find any more strength to speak. He didn't want Feraligatr to worry over him. He was not one to be worried over for. He fumbled with the pokéballs and called Feraligatr back.
He slid down the rock and sat, screwing his eyes shut to will the dizziness to go away. The temperature of the cave plummeted with each second Silver sat waiting. His heart was pounding hard. He could feel his whole body pulsing with blood flow. Silver clenched his stomach to stop himself from throwing up, but couldn't stop the shivering no matter what position he tried.
He though he was going to black out when he felt a gentle blow of wind on his cold sweating face. He tried to regain his senses and find the source of the wind. Eyes blinking in effort to focus on the purple creature proved to be futile.
A soft bag was dropped onto his lap. Silver fumbled it open with his numb hands and located the right berry.
Sweet, juicy and soft, PZNCure berries were Silver's favourite fruit. It was a bit of a pity that Silver couldn't enjoy its taste in a situation like this.
As Silver's vision began to clear, he started to regain his normal breathing pattern. He felt his body warming back up and the dizziness slowing fading away. He slumped back against the rocky wall with a deep breath, glad that it would be over soon.
Crobat landed softly beside him and looked over. "Thanks," Silver whispered, "nothing to worry, Crobat." He patted its head before recalling it back to its pokéball to join the rest of its team.
Silver sighed and closed his eyes, taking his time to recover. Today just wasn't his day. Gold had disrupted his training, the nurse knew his name now, a group of koffing and pidgey tried to kill him, nearly died of poisoning. What's more, he had forgotten to buy tomorrow's breakfast.
Oh, joy.