Chapter Seven

Ash awoke with a start, surprised for a number of reasons. First of all, he wasn't dead. Second of all, he wasn't lying at the bottom of Team Rocket's tower, and was instead spread out across the back seats of a car, the seatbelt wrapped over his stomach. He propped himself up against the door, gazing at the moving landscape through the window opposite him as he tried to remember everything that had happened.

The last thing he had any memory of was being thrown through the window and seeing the street below, coming upwards to meet him all too quickly. At that he had closed his eyes out of fear and, presumably, passed out. Everything after that was a mystery that only the people in the front seats could answer. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite get a good enough look at them to tell whether they were old friends or new enemies.

Either way, he didn't have any choice but to stay in the car and go wherever they were taking him. There was, after all, no way he could just open the door, roll out and run off unharmed. This wasn't some kind of movie - the bloody scratches he had collected from flying head-first out of a window were enough to remind him of that.

"Where are we going?" he asked, realising that he wasn't going to find out anything by sitting in silence.

The person in the front-passenger seat poked his head round. At the sight of the familiar face, Ash felt a strange mix of emotions. Confusion, surprise, relief, as well as an old rivalry bubbling away at the back of his mind. "Ah, the prodigal son finally returns to the land of the living," Gary Oak said, with the same cocky grin Ash knew so well.

Ash gritted his teeth. There was still some tension between the two of them, albeit considerably less than there once was, now that they had both mellowed out a bit. But out of all the people Ash knew in Kanto, Gary was the last one he wanted to come to his rescue. "How did you find me?" he asked, letting his last question go in favour of the more pressing ones. "Did Misty call you as well?"

"What, are you kidding?" Gary asked, an eyebrow raised. "That girl still doesn't like me at all."

"She called me," the woman driving the car said.

Ash recognised the voice enough to know it was one of Misty's sisters, and the tuft of blonde hair he could see gave her away as Daisy. "Anyone else she asked for help?" he asked bitingly. "Should I expect Violet and Lily to show up too? What about Professor Oak, or Tracy? Or maybe my mum? Who else is putting themselves in danger for my sake?" He was aware that he was maybe being a little too harsh, especially considering those two had just saved his life, but he was sick and tired of people throwing their lives away just to help him. He never should have brought anyone else into this.

There was a moment of silence, perhaps as the others waited for him to calm down a bit. "For your information," Daisy said eventually, "Misty didn't ask for my help. She only texted me to let me know that she wasn't going to be able to manage the gym, and I worked out the rest from there. And make no mistake, I'm here for her, not for you."

"As for me," Gary interjected, "Daisy called up Gramps to let him know what she was doing, and he asked me to meet her here to help out."

Ash shifted uncomfortably, feeling rather ashamed of himself. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Where is Misty anyway?" Daisy asked. Even though Ash couldn't see her properly, he suddenly realised that she was hurting just as much as she was. How awful it must have been, to come all the way to Celadon only to find herself too late to stop her sister.

And now it was up to him to deliver the truly bad news.

"She's… she's still in the tower," he said, and Daisy made a pained noise, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. "Brock too. They were caught. But I don't think they're dead. Giovanni said something about locking them up."

Even Ash could see that Daisy was crying now. Her shoulders were hunched forwards as she leaned over the steering wheel, and Gary put a comforting hand on her arm. "Hey, don't worry," he said. "They won't hurt her. Giovanni's too scared of the league for that."

"How come you survived?" Daisy asked. There was a bitterness in her voice that Ash couldn't blame her for. After all, it had just been dumb luck. If skill had anything to do with it, he'd be dead and Misty and Brock would be in the car.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess it was thanks to their protection. And you two, I suppose. How did you save me anyway?"

"Well, we were standing outside the tower," Gary said, "contemplating whether or not to go in. That's when I saw you, falling towards us like a meteor. I couldn't tell who you were, of course, but I knew I had to do something, so I had Alakazam teleport you to safety. Imagine my surprise when I found you in his arms. Almost made me wish I'd let you fall…"

Ash might have laughed at that, but he was too worried about his friends. Instead, he turned his attention back to the window. It was then that he realised that they were driving past trees, and he recognised the road as the one he and Misty had taken earlier that day. "Where are we going?" he asked, suddenly alert.

"Pallet Town," Daisy said, and it was obvious she was struggling to keep her voice steady.

"But we have to go back!" Ash exclaimed. "Misty and Brock are in trouble, they need our help!"

Gary looked at Ash with pity. "There's nothing we can do. We need to regroup at Gramps' lab."

"What do you mean there's nothing we can do?!" Ash asked, the fury in him building. "We need to save them!"

"It isn't that simple," Daisy said. "There are… agreements."

"What kind of agreements?" Ash asked, suspecting that he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Well, for starters, Giovanni has bribes on half of Kanto's police officers," Gary said. "The other half, he's blackmailing. Just know that, whatever we do, he has the law on his side."

"I don't care about any of that," Ash said. "My friends are in trouble. No laws are going to stop me from trying to save them."

"Just, please try to understand," Gary said. "Do you think that Giovanni really has any chance against the league? We're talking gym leaders, elite four, rangers, scientists. It would be simple to organise them all together."

"So why haven't you?" Ash asked.

"We have," Gary said simply. "But it's still not enough. Like I said, Giovanni has the law on his side. That puts us in danger. With enough strings, he could shut down everything. No more gyms, no more poké centres, no more poké marts. If he wanted, he could stop the production and selling of poké balls, or outlaw trainers altogether."

"Then why hasn't he?"

"Because the higher-ups at the league made him a deal," Daisy said. "As long as we don't interfere with him, he won't interfere with us. It's better for everyone. A war between the league and Team Rocket would be a mess. Both sides would suffer serious casualties. None of us want that. Do you understand?"

Ash did understand. Everything made sense now. Why Giovanni still had full control over the region, why no one had tried to stop him, why things had gotten so bad since he'd left. "Yeah, I get it," he said. "You're all a bunch of cowards."

Gary snorted. "Maybe so. But you're the one who ran away."

It wasn't said as a light-hearted joke. It wasn't even like the things he had said in the past, all his stupid, childish insults. No, it was the truth, plain and simple. And it hurt. A lot. Ash took to staring out the window for the rest of the journey, sitting in complete silence.

Gary was right. He was a coward. Maybe that's just what life did to people. Maybe being a coward was what it meant to be an adult. Misty and Brock hadn't been cowards, though. They had put everything aside – the league, their jobs, themselves – just because he needed them.

But look where that had gotten them. Locked up in a tower, with no hope of escape. And beyond that, they're bravery had damaged the deals the league had made. What was to stop Giovanni from killing them? What was to stop him from killing everyone?

Ash knew that being brave would mean marching up that tower and rescuing his friends. But he'd barely survived with their help. What chance did he stand on his own? And how much more trouble would that bravery end up putting everyone else in?

Maybe the league had the right idea. Maybe making agreements and compromises was the best option.

Maybe there really was nothing to do.

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Misty sat against the wall of her cell, her legs pulled into her arms and her head resting against her lap. It was difficult to stay composed, but she didn't want to give her captors the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

She was alone. Brock was in some other cell – she'd seen one of the grunts bring him down sometime after her own capture. She hoped Ash had escaped, although it admittedly seemed unlikely.

God, when she'd thought of breaking into the tower, this was not how she had planned it going. She had told herself repeatedly that their chances of actually rescuing Pikachu were tiny, but she'd never really believed that to be true. Hadn't they always won, no matter how low the odds were?

Suddenly everything had become all too real. Everyone had warned her not to mess with Team Rocket, from her sisters to her fellow gym leaders to Professor Oak. She'd never really paid much attention to them, though. Their words had just enough impact to stop her from trying anything to dangerous – it was abundantly clear that, even if she ventured into the tower and made it out alive, it would be the end of her career as a leader – but apparently not enough to stop her from getting her hopes up.

It was all Ash's fault. Even as broken as he had seemed, with those dead eyes and his sad smile, he had sparked something in her from long ago. Just being near him had made her feel so strong, like everything was going to be okay, no matter what. Maybe it was the same for Brock.

That was, of course, foolish. Ash had been no help at all. If anything, he'd made things worse. If she hadn't been trying to protect him, would she have even gotten captured?

She couldn't help but smile. There she was, stuck in a hopeless situation, blaming Ash for all her troubles. Maybe things hadn't changed as much as she'd thought.

Well, there was one thing that hadn't changed, anyway. Her feelings for him. No matter how much she told herself that he was long gone, that he wasn't the same man as he had once been, there was a small part of her that wouldn't listen.

Okay, maybe it wasn't all that small. Because sitting there in the dusty cell, her thoughts should have been elsewhere. She should have been thinking of how much trouble her and Brock were in, how badly she had damaged the agreements between the league and Team Rocket, how much danger her friends and family were in now thanks to her.

But she didn't. She thought of nothing but Ash, and her heart was beating heavily in her chest as she did so. At that moment, she didn't even wish to be free. She only wished he was sitting with her, telling her that everything was okay. That's all she ever needed, and it's all she'd ever need. And so, she sat there, running over old memories to distract herself from everything else.

Well, there was one other thought on her mind – how was she going to free herself from her prison. After all, it was impossible to think about Ash without feeling at least little bit more hopeful.