A.N.: Aright, now we're back on track with new content! Chapter 4, y'all!
Chapter 4
The next morning, Silver immediately made his way to the Viridian City Gym, expecting to challenge its Gym Leader, his father, once and for all. However, much to his dismay, he found the place not how he'd expected it to be.
As a sign on the door said, the Viridian City Pokémon Gym was closed.
"Damn it!" Silver swore, slamming his fist against the door, and drawing a slightly shocked look at his language at so young an age from a passerby lady. She ever so imperceptibly quickened her pace to get out of the currently empty square in front of the Gym.
"Kids these days..."
Silver ignored her as he began to think of what he'd do now. Maybe his father wasn't here? Maybe he'd be back?
Silver's thoughts were, however quickly interrupted by another passerby. This one was not quite so offended, and he came up to Silver very casually.
"Hey kid," he said "What's the trouble?"
The Passerby Boy who was talking to Silver was around his age but bit older. There was a suave, breezy air to the youth, but also a strong dose of cockiness. His voice, slightly nasal, seemed to mirror his personality: it had strength and composure at its base; but it was marred by a very jarring conceit.
In a way, this young man seemed like the exact opposite of the composed Silver. They both showed the same amount of pride; but it was expressed in radically different ways. Silver, who had led a life with more deprivation and abandonment than most, never spoke much, but was very tense when he did so; and he made a point of acting as superior as if he were as rich as he'd been before being abandoned.
This young man seemed to let his vanity ooze out over a casual demeanor.
Their social statuses were visibly opposed too: the stranger youth was subtly well-dressed, with well-groomed spiky brown hair. He overall looked like a well-to-do sort of individual.
Silver looked at him with the same serious eyes he always had as he made him an answer:
"I came here all the way from Johto," Silver said, with no visible emotion but contempt "And I'm looking for the Gym Leader of Viridian City.."
Then he gave a kind of sigh-scoff that was peculiar to himself.
"Humpf! But it seems he can't even be bothered to show up to his own Gym... What kind of an idiot is this Viridian City Gym Leader, anyway?" he stepped closer to the stranger youth:
"I don't suppose you know where he is?"
The stranger youth gave Silver a smirk.
He was definitely just as full of himself as Silver was.
"Calm down!" the stranger youth said jokingly "The Gym Leader might hear you, don't you know? And then he'd be pretty bothered."
Silver here got even more terse than before:
"I honestly don't give a damn whether he hears me or not; or how much it bothers him!"
Of course he didn't. The last thing Silver cared about was Giovanni's opinion of him!
The stranger youth raised an eyebrow, now crossing his arms and leaning against a nearby wall in an show of unaffectedness. The smirk was still on his face, though.
"You can fight me instead, if you like" he said.
"Are you a strong Trainer?" Silver asked rather bluntly "I can use the training before meeting the Gym Leader, but I don't fight weaklings."
That wasn't exactly true: after all, there was always a bunch of Trainers in Gyms before you met a Gym Leader, and they weren't always the strongest. And Silver usually fought them. But Silver was currently pretty annoyed with this strange young man, and wasn't about to compliment him, even implicitly.
Said strange young man didn't seem at all moved, though.
"I guess there's only one way to find if I am strong, isn't there?" he said.
Nonchalantly, he produced a Pokéball.
"So... Battle?"
"Humpf!" Silver said, sizing him up "I guess so."
The stranger youth's smirk now widened to a grin, and he straightened himself out.
"Alright," he said," Then let's do this!"