The voices in AJ's head repeated a lot of phrases; some were absolute gibberish, while others tip-toed the line between meaningful and incomprehensible. But from the very beginning, from the minute AJ first woke up on that fateful day, one statement echoed through his mind over and over.
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
It took AJ a little while to piece together where he'd heard the name Misty before. Eventually, he remembered having seen her on the news once or twice, a teenage girl with red hair, one of the Gym Leaders from over in Kanto. But why did she matter? What made her so special?
He initially wrote it off as just another one of the voices' seemingly-arbitrary obsessions, like their focus on some fossil he'd never heard of before. Most of what they said didn't make sense; why would this chant be any different?
As time went on, though, AJ noticed that some of the voices' predictions and demands came true. Even before he knew it himself, the voices had guessed that he'd get a Pokemon, go after the badges, battle Team Rocket grunts, have to chase around a Farfetch'd and awaken a Sudowoodo… Their knowledge of the future, of what challenges lay ahead, was uncanny. And sometimes, variations on the chant were used as just such a prophecy.
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT WHITNEY
And he beat Whitney.
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT JASMINE
And he beat Jasmine.
Not all of the events of which the voices spoke came true, of course. Much of what was said was simply too nonsensical to occur… although, just a few short days ago, AJ may well have said the same about the idea of leaving New Bark Town, beating Gym Leader after Gym Leader, and taking down Team Rocket, all while guided by inexplicable voices.
Usually, though, such specific statements, especially variations on that never-ending, all-consuming theme, rang true; usually, he'd find and defeat the Trainer named within a matter of hours, or even minutes. Yet throughout his travels all across Johto, while the voices screeched again and again that he needed to beat Misty, AJ never saw her, or heard anybody mention her, or even caught a glimpse of her on TV. She was the challenger that they spoke of most, yet for all that he could see of the world outside his head, it was as if she didn't exist.
It wasn't unusual for him to go a few days without hearing of the Kanto Gym Leaders, of course. He'd never thought about Misty or the others much before; they were just innocuous authority figures from a distant land, figureheads of a system that a New Bark homebody like himself would never have to encounter. But in light of the voice's fixation on Misty, her absence seemed suspicious. If beating her was so important, why hadn't she shown up yet?
There must be something different about her. Something special. Something that made her more important than all the other Leaders he'd faced.
Maybe all that the voices really wanted was to take down Misty. If her defeat was their main goal… maybe then they'd leave.
He beat all eight of the Johto Gym Leaders, became Champion of the entire region… and still the voices filled his head, still shouting that one phrase.
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
Once Elm gave him the S.S. Ticket, it all started to made sense. Taking the boat to Kanto, exploring the whole new region, defeating Gym Leaders one by one…
And, in the end, he had to beat Misty.
Cerulean City was an unassuming town. It wasn't like Lavender Town, which had been dark and gloomy even in the middle of the day, or like the vast and lonely expanse of the Ice Path. The sun was shining, the trees swayed back and forth in the breeze, flowers lined the paths, and the sound of Pidgeys chirping filled the air. In other circumstances, it might have been relaxing to spend time in this charming little village by the bay. But the voices in AJ's head and his own jumbled memories combined to remind him that this seemingly-ordinary town held a dark secret, one that he must now confront. The signposts that he had to examine multiple times only confirmed his suspicions.
Cerulean City. A quiet enough town, or so it seemed. But here was where Misty accepted all her challengers. Here was where it all would end.
In theory, anyway. But finding Misty proved to be easier said than done. He went inside the gym, but it was utterly empty, empty and silent. The voices made him leave and re-enter again and again in the hopes of something changing, but still nobody appeared. All that confronted him as he stood within the gym was the strong odor of chlorine and the din of the voices, echoing all the louder without noise from the outside world interfering.
GUYS ARE WE MISTY
misty is love misty is life
Misty's hiding. She took lessons from Koga.
STFU ABOUT MISTY
AJ was all too glad to leave the gym and head to Cerulean Cape, where the water smelled of algae rather than chlorine and he could hear Trainers chatting and Pokemon rustling around in the grass. But Misty was nowhere to be found, though the voices called all the louder for her.
MISTY OR RIOT
Misty doesn't love us
MISTY MISTY MISTY
He had to check the gym two, three, four more times. Something was wrong. Misty had to accept challengers as a Gym Leader, didn't she? And yet, his only companion was the mob, which seemed to be as confused about Misty's absence as he was.
Finally, not a moment too soon, they dragged him away from Cerulean City, away from the gym, away from Misty's hometown. Yet their refrain remained the same. As he fled east into a route filled with hills, their focus remained the same.
GUYS CAN WE ACTUALLY BEAT MISTY SOON
I THINK MISTY GOT SCARED OF US
MISTY WE COMING FOR YOU!
And, try as he might, AJ couldn't help but think of Misty himself. Why was she away from her gym? Jasmine had been, admittedly, but she'd had a good reason. Was Misty off being a hero somewhere, saving the life of a Pokemon or a person while he stumbled past hills? Was that the kind of person that the voices wanted to take down at all costs? Or… AJ had read the news about Giovanni, Viridian City's Gym Leader who was forced to resign three years ago after word got out that he'd abandoned his post to lead Team Rocket. Maybe she, too, was trying to take over the world, or at least manipulate it for her own ends. Maybe the voices were trying to take her down for the betterment of the world, one force of manipulation and power struggling against another.
The speculation was fruitless, of course. The voices alternately called Misty a saint and a demon, a true god and a false one. Some demanded marriage, others demanded her death. AJ knew her only as a distant figure seen in newspaper clippings and TV snippets. What made her important could be her goodness or her malevolence or something else entirely. There was only one way to find out.
But first, the voices spent hours upon hours making him climb and jump off a single ledge.
It wouldn't have been difficult to navigate the ledge normally, of course, even if the path was a bit on the narrow side. But for some reason, the voices always made him fall down to the dusty path below before he could reach the other side. He scraped his knees so often that they became torn and bloodied. His legs ached, begging for a rest that the voices would not allow. And somehow, though he was running towards caves and the gloom of Lavender Town, running far away from Cerulean City and the horrors within, the mob kept calling Misty's name, feuding over her presence and defeat as often as they argued about their inability to conquer the ledge.
Finally, he managed to walk past the ledge to the area beyond. There was a small river, its waters flowing quietly, and tall grass that seemed to be an especially vibrant shade of green. Silver barrels lined the edge of the river, the sun glinting off the small bumps near the middle, odd patches of mud covering their base. He could just barely see the red roof of a Pokemon Center in the distance, his view mostly blocked by the rocky mountain which separated him from Lavender Town.
Just as AJ started to relax, enjoying the sight of something that wasn't the same dull brown cliff face, he was led back to the ledge and jumped back down, tripping and faceplanting against the dusty ground.
It took several more hours before he was able to clear the ledge once and for all. And once he did, once he'd walked past the hills and the barrels and ridden on his Feraligatr's back to the building down the river, he wasn't quite sure that it had been worth the effort. Some guy yammering about how the power in Kanto wasn't working right, but hadn't they already known that? And why was it his problem? What did it have to do with this mysterious Misty? Was she the one to blame for the power outage, or was she working to fix it? Yet again, AJ's mind was filled with many more questions than answers.
The voices barely gave him a moment to see the Rock Tunnel entrance before they whisked him back to Cerulean City, a mercifully short and relatively painless journey. It was night now, the sunset having passed while AJ had been too busy climbing and falling to notice, and the clouds hid the moon. The native Pokemon were sleeping, the town residents had gone home, and the air was still. Only the voices spoke, still babbling the same old phrases about Misty, beating Misty, always beating Misty.
After a few minutes of bumbling around the city, he entered the gym yet again. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the bright lights of the gym, which was why he hadn't noticed the man in the Team Rocket uniform before the two rammed into each other.
The man spoke up immediately.
"Oops! I so sorry! You not hurt, okay?"
Being knocked to the ground this once was far from the worst of his injuries, but the man didn't express any further concern, though AJ knew that he must have looked like a mess.
"I very busy. No time for talking with you."
And yet, the man in the Rocket uniform kept talking, throwing words together in an illogical fashion. The two made eye contact for a brief moment, and the man stepped back and immediately stepped towards AJ again, the only instance in which he paused for breath. AJ started twitching and fidgeting, turning this way and that as the mob in his head grew impatient, but the man kept up his strange speech. The grunt didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong with AJ, which was a first. In fact, given how fast he rattled off his short and awkward phrases, he barely seemed to acknowledge that AJ was presumably supposed to be participating in the conversation as well.
"Hey, you! Forget you see me, okay? You see, hear, know nothing, okay? Bye, kid! Nothing! Bye-bye a go-go!"
Before AJ could process what had just happened, the Team Rocket grunt ran out the door.
So he was hiding something. Team Rocket always was, weren't they? But he'd broken up the remnants of Team Rocket back in Goldenrod, or so it had seemed. Perhaps trusting that the executives were being honest about giving up the enterprise had been too much to ask. But he hadn't seen or heard anything about them since that Radio Tower rescue…
What if there was something more going on here than another far-fetched Rocket plot? AJ's mind started racing. He'd been found in Misty's gym, which was still completely empty, its Leader shirking her duties further. Why would a grunt enter the building in the first place? He couldn't very well be challenging Misty, not while he advertised his criminal allegiance to all onlookers; that same outfit ruled out every other sort of legitimate business that the man could be trying to conduct in the Gym. If it was meant to be a Rocket meeting place, then others should be present; if he had been manipulating the Gym for nefarious purposes, then something should be out of place, while AJ could tell that nothing had changed since his last half-dozen visits.
Only one other possibility came to mind: The Rocket grunt was trying to find Misty, just as AJ himself was. But she wasn't here for either of them to find. The grunt had to be doing it for official Rocket business, too, or else he wouldn't have worn the uniform. Misty must be hiding from him, not from AJ…
Unless… Misty was gone from the gym, and now the grunt was gone too, clearly in a hurry to be somewhere else. She could be running from him, but the two could easily be running to the same meeting place. The mob had taken down Team Rocket before; maybe they were out to take down its new leader now, a Leader hiding in plain sight, her appearance as a bubbly teenage girl merely a front disguising her malevolent nature.
One last thought kept to mind as AJ wandered around the gym. The man's speech was short, nonsensical, rushed. He clearly had some trouble speaking and was trying to convey his thoughts as fast as possible, ignoring all rules of grammar in the name of getting his message out as quickly as possible. He must have been in a hurry, but though he professed having to move on without talking, he rambled on nonetheless. And combined with the stepping back and then forwards for no clear reason, the second of hesitation that had accompanied that unprompted movement, and the lack of clear reason for his being in the gym in the first place…
Nonsensical words rushing out in a few brief moments between utter silence. Moving back and forth without an explanation. Going somewhere without any clear reason to be there. This pattern was all too familiar to AJ now.
No. No, it couldn't be. His mind had been free to accept all the crazy and convoluted theories that he or the mob had generated before, but this last one was too much to handle. It had to be a coincidence. The grunt was trying to meet with Misty to consult her as Rocket leader, or else to capture her as part of a Rocket plan. He was a grunt, an ordinary grunt. He had to be.
And yet, his uniform was dirtier than any he'd seen a grunt wearing before. And yet, no grunt had spoken in such a rambling and unfocused way before. And yet, when they'd locked eyes, just before the grunt had stepped back… his eyes hadn't been the cold, dark eyes of the other Rockets he'd met. His face was as blank as the others, but his eyes were filled not with determination, but with uncertainty.
AJ wondered if his own eyes looked the same way.
His jumbled train of thought was disrupted by ramming into a big piece of metal that had been sitting next to the water, the metal scratching his skin. He picked it up and examined it for a moment before throwing it into his now-overflowing bag. The voices called it a "machine part". Was this the part that the Power Plant man had been missing, then? Was it the Rocket that had dropped it off? And why?
Maybe he had been in a hurry and the gym was the only place to abandon the part nearby. Or he left it for Misty, either for her to pick up and use as she would, or framing her for its theft. The mystery deepened.
He wandered out of the gym and onto the bridge north of town where he had been once before. The sun was just starting to rise, and he could see it reflected in the water.
It was here that he found the grunt again, standing silently on the wooden bridge. Misty was still nowhere in sight, as much as the voices clamored for her appearance.
"Hey kid! Me am a Team Rocket member kind of guy! Come from another country, a trainer number one, me!"
On he went, giving his life's story and explaining his mission all while claiming that his mission was secret and couldn't be spoken of. Saying what couldn't be said. Fighting to talk to somebody, to find one soul with whom to connect. Perhaps the grunt sensed that they were, in some way, kindred spirits.
The battle came unexpectedly. The man claimed it was a fight to reveal his secret, the one that had already been given away. The grunt's move choices made sense, with at least a vague strategy evidently being used, and he never bothered looking through his items or examining his Poke Balls all too closely… and his rambling speech, though fast-paced, showed no signs of being forced to a premature end. Though his confusion remained and his theories were as many as the voices that now controlled AJ, he was glad to find that at least one possibility, the worst possibility, appeared to have been ruled out.
The battle went by in a flash, AJ's Pokemon handily defeating the grunt's Pokemon, sheer force proving enough to overcome mediocre strategy. The grunt shook his head and slumped to the ground as AJ returned his Pokemon to their Poke Balls.
"No, no, no, believe it I can't!"
The grunt told of the machine part, the one AJ had already uncovered. So it was indeed his doing, taking it in the name of Team Rocket, though his garbled speech still gave away little regarding the exact motives behind this plot.
"But forget you will not! Beat you for sure will Team Rocket!"
The words that stumbled out of AJ's mouth to explain his victory against that villainous team were not his own, though the confusion they expressed was certainly not alien to him.
"… You say what? Team Rocket bye-bye a go-go?"
He nodded.
"Broken up it is says you? Oh, no! Should I do what now on from, me?"
The voices didn't have an answer, and neither did AJ, even if he could have freely given one. He certainly wasn't the best person to give advice about existential crises right now. At least the Rocket had the freedom to go where he pleased, and as he babbled on about his plan to return home and work out his future from there, AJ felt a pang of jealousy. He would love to return home. He would give anything to go back to New Bark Town and try to figure out what to do with his life from there. But if the voices were right, if all he had left to do was beat Misty, then maybe freedom wasn't so far off.
The grunt ran off into the distance without any fanfare or farewell, and AJ found himself alone again. Well, as alone as he ever was these days.
He walked back to Cerulean Cape, evading the kids playing with their Pokemon, some of whom he'd already proven his battle prowess to firsthand. The voices had made him come to this spot before as part of their vain search, but as he approached, AJ noticed that something was different here. There was a couple standing on the beach, their feet straddling the boundary between the sand and the water, the two gazing at one another and smiling broadly as they held hands. One of the two was a man with dark hair, a few years older than AJ was. The other member of the couple was roughly the same age, wearing a pinkish jacket and one-piece swimsuit, and red hair tied back in a ponytail…
It took AJ a minute to comprehend and accept what he was seeing, but if his vague memories of newscast snippets and grimy newspaper photos hadn't been enough to confirm it, the roar of approval from the voices certainly was.
MISTY MISTY MISTY
WE FOUND MISTY
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
The search was over. Misty was here, really and truly here, right in front of him.
AJ's hand instinctively went to his belt, to the nearest Poke Ball. One fight, that's all it would take, right? One fight, and their demands would cease. One fight, and it would all be over.
But, of course, it wouldn't be that easy.
Misty noticed his presence and broke her gaze with her date to look over at AJ. The man's face turned red, and he sprinted away towards the city. Misty watched her date as he fled, shook her head, and walked over to AJ's side.
"Why did you have to show up and bug us now?"
AJ couldn't help but think that the better question was why Misty hadn't shown up before. He stayed silent, figuring that the effort in calling her out for this hypocrisy would be better spent on their upcoming confrontation.
"Do you know what they call people like you?"
Oh no. She'd noticed. She knew…
"Pests! You heard me right, pest!"
Oh. She was just talking about him breaking up her date. Not that he'd been trying to… not himself, at least. The voices, however, had a strong opinion about Misty's date and the suitability thereof.
Misty is cheating on you dude I'm sorry
Misty everyone's waifu
Misty doesn't love us
He opened up the backpack, about to rummage through it and find more items to toss, when one of the side pockets split open, his badges spilling onto the sands of the cape. He bent down to pick them back up, but Misty snatched them up, holding one up to the dim light of the rising sun.
"Those badges you have… Are they Johto Gym Badges?"
He didn't respond, but her examination was enough of a response. She gave a satisfied grunt and returned the badge she had been looking over into the palm of the hand which held the rest.
"If you have eight, you must be good." Misty handed the pile of badges back to AJ, who threw them into the main pocket of his bag, not caring if they got mixed up with the useless junk that accumulated within. He was Champion now, somehow, even if this girl didn't seem to have gotten the news; nobody else should need to see his badges for him to prove his worth.
"Okay, then. Come to Cerulean Gym. I'm Misty, the Gym Leader in Cerulean."
And before AJ could give voice to any of the millions of questions which filled his head, Misty had left.
The trek back to Cerulean didn't take long, and as the sky filled with brilliant colors as the sun rose, AJ felt that, for the first time in over a week, this was going to be a good day. Today would be the day that it all came to a head. Today would be the day that he finally beat Misty.
After seeing the gym empty and quiet so many times, it felt surreal to see it filled with energetic young swimmers. The air was now filled not with silence, but with giggles and splashes. The only one standing still was Misty, a haughty look on her face as she oversaw her underlings.
AJ had seen his reflection in the waters he'd passed before, but as he stood still next to the pool and handily beat each of the swimmers who worked for Misty, he had time to notice every detail about his appearance. AJ could barely recognize the person staring back at him from the water. He was absolutely covered in dirt and grass and pebbles, with not even a speck of his clothes or skin poking out from underneath the layer of filth. His knees were starting to heal, but still had splotches of red that stood out from the rest of the debris. His clothes were torn nearly to shreds; it was a miracle that nothing had fallen off yet. His arms were skeletal, his eyes sunken into his face. Every step he took while wandering in circles left a footprint made muddy by the thin film of water covering the floor.
Misty, meanwhile, was still in her fancy pink jacket that she'd worn on the date and didn't have a strand of that bright red hair out of place. As he struggled to reach her, going forwards and backwards and sideways and making very little progress, she just stood there, arms crossed, smiling. Other gyms had taken longer to cross, but after trekking across routes over and over to find her, even one second spent waiting and dragging his feet and staring at that smug smirk on her face was one second too long.
He ended up having to ride on his Feraligatr to reach her. The splash of his Pokemon hitting the water caught Misty's attention, and she turned around to face him. Misty wrinkled her nose as he approached. She smelled of flowery perfume, AJ noticed. He didn't even want to consider what he smelled like.
AJ jumped off his companion's back and grabbed onto one of the pool walls, slowly pulling himself out of the pool and standing up. The section of the water where he had landed was noticeably dirtied by his brief presence, he noticed, and several of the swimmers were now glaring at him. It was a foolish gesture, perhaps, but he wanted to look his tormentor in the eye, stand face to face as he accomplished this final goal.
One hand went for a Poke Ball, but he made the other point at her, though the arm shook violently as he did, and mouthed one word.
"You."
"You." she echoed. "I was expecting you, you pest! You may have a lot of Johto Gym Badges, but you'd better not take me too lightly. My Water-type Pokemon are tough!"
AJ tried to speak up, to ask her more questions, but the voices silenced him, their own noise more than making up for his lack thereof.
WE NIDSTY BISTY MISTY
MISTY HYPE
Time for Misty!
Catch Misty and throw her into PC
GUYS, WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY!
MISTY WILL YOU MARRY ME
Guys, we're beating Misty!
FIGHT MISTY
BEATING MISTY
One voice in particular, one that spoke loudly and often, had a message that rang all too true.
This is it. We've struggled against the odds through two adventures, making our way through countless difficult obstacles through sheer dedication to get to this point. Our entire journey has led up to this point, and we are on the edges of our seats. The long-anticipated time has finally arrived at long last. It has now become absolute truth that GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
He could feel Misty's disdain as the voices made him dig through his bag again and again, picking up one piece of junk and then throwing it back into the pile only to grab another. Misty rolled her eyes as his Raticate fell to a single blow from her Golduck. It would be an uphill battle. But then, the important ones always were.
AJ started to reach for another Poke Ball, but his Feraligatr, still surfing in the water, climbed onto the battlefield. Feraligatr… they called him Lazorgator, or Atta, but AJ just thought of him as his beloved Feraligatr. The first Pokemon he'd gotten, the one they'd stopped from evolving for so long, the strongest member of the team… The two had fought side by side in AJ's very first Pokemon battle, the one near the very beginning of this strange and terrible journey. Here, too, they would fight side by side and beat Misty, the journey's end paralleling its start.
His Feraligatr summoned mighty waves that flooded the battlefield, ones so mighty that two of her seasoned Water-types fell to the force of the waves, then chilled the room with blasts of icy air that caused the top of the pool to split into icy chunks. The swimmers fled the freezing pool while they still could, leaving AJ and Misty alone in the gym.
Her Lapras, accustomed to such low temperatures, stayed in the water and sung a soulful, somber tune, one so eerie that AJ tried to run away from its sound, but found himself lodged in place. His Feraligatr was shaking and shuddering, and while the voices quarreled AJ let his Feraligatr return to the calm of its Poke Ball. He was already being tormented by noise refusing to leave his head; much as he wanted to end the Misty battle with the Pokemon with which he had started his strange and fateful journey, AJ wasn't going to let his beloved starter suffer the same fate.
He instead sent out his Dragonair, her scales glimmering against the ice, and then his Espeon as the Dragonair nearly fell to a ferocious flurry. His Espeon's bite barely managed to graze the Lapras' fin, but the Lapras gave one more note of its soulful song and sunk to the ground, unmoving.
One left. Only one Pokemon left to take down. This was it. He could do it. They could do it.
Misty's final Pokemon was a Starmie, a battle of two psychics. Though the Starmie splashed water onto the Espeon, its onslaught lacked the strength of his Feraligatr's attack, and the Espeon easily stood its ground. It retaliated first with a psychic attack, then a ferocious bite that tore out a chunk of the Starmie's glimmering gemstone, leaving it flat against the melting ice, its glow fading as it slipped into the water.
And just like that, it was over.
The voices reached a crescendo, and AJ's head pounded as it never had before, eclipsing all the aches and pains that he had gathered along the journey.
GUYS WE DID IT WE BEAT MISTY HOLY SHIT
BITE THAT STAR
HELLO OLD ENEMY
GUYS WE BEAT MISTY
YEAH WE GOT HER
MISTY YOU SUCK
GUYS WE HAVE BEATEN MISTY
FINALLY WE MANAGED TO BEAT MISTY
He could barely hear her mumbled concession speech over the din inside his head.
"You really are good… I'll admit that you are skilled…"
Empty words. Empty, meaningless words of praise after such a quick and resounding defeat. Her handing the Cascade Badge to him barely registered in his mind. None of what she said, what she did, mattered anymore. He- they- had beaten Misty. They- he- had won.
The voices quieted down after a minute, as AJ knew they would… but as he continued standing there awkwardly, the cacophony that had threatened to split his skull settled not into silence but into a dull roar. They were hushed, yes, but not gone, as his mindless playing of Hoothoot's cry in the Pokedex proved. He still couldn't walk away, couldn't go to sleep, couldn't go back home and pretend this had all been a bad dream. He had beaten Misty for them. What more did they want?
The chant kept going.
GUYS WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
GUYS WE STILL NEED TO BEAT MISTY
WE NEED TO BEAT MISTY
Had he done something wrong? There must be something he was missing. Maybe he needed to beat her again, beat her somewhere else, beat her with different Pokemon …
Misty had lost, but she was still smirking as he frantically pressed buttons on his Pokedex. AJ turned to her, his hands still moving of their own accord, and said one word, one word that he hoped would express all that he could not say.
"Why?"
She arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean, why? You beat me, you got the badge. Aren't you done here, you little pest?"
He shook his head, pacing back and forth now, his head facing the Pokedex but his eyes still trained on her.
"I don't have anything else for you. I ran out of TMs, not like I'd give them to a pest like you anyway. Just get out so I can start cleaning up the mess you made here, alright? Unless you're planning on helping…"
GOOD JOB GUYS!
END OF THE MISTY AGE
THE INTERNET IS OVER. WE BEAT MISTEY.
"I… beat you…"
Misty rolled her eyes again. "And I still don't get how that happened."
"The voices…"
PRAISE THE SUN
WE DID IT
BITE IS GONE
HEAL HEAL HEAL HEAL
"They won't leave…"
The smirk left Misty's face in an instant.
"The voices?" she said. "You're hearing voices?"
He could manage only a weak nod as the cries of various Pokemon he met played on.
"They made you fight me?"
Another nod as he kept pacing, spreading even more muddy footprints all around the gym floor.
She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "There was another Trainer like you. A boy named Red. He fought me, and after he became Champion, he told me he'd heard voices too."
Red… another Trainer he'd heard about from the news, the Champion of Kanto from a few years back. AJ couldn't even remember what Red looked like, or how he sounded, only the name and the title.
"You're AJ, right? I didn't recognize you before. Congratulations, I guess. And I'm sorry. But you'll make it through this, you got that? If Red could do it, so can you!"
Misty kept talking- she was saying something about Johto, something about traveling to Johto- but AJ walked out the door without being able to give so much as a backwards glance or a smile. The voices were bumbling around again, some still talking about Misty, others arguing over various names and places to check out.
Through the din of the mob, one cry came through clearer than all the rest:
Guys, we need to beat Red!