Sorry to keep you waiting. I had this chapter planned out a while beforehand, but it came up a bit short when I wrote it down, so some of the stuff I ended up improvising into the chapter.
In the outskirts of Driftveil City, Cheren stood glazed-eyed as he was forced to listen to the disgruntled rant by the town's Gym Leader.
"I don't trust that Team Plasmy bunch none, let me tell ya. Them varmints is plotting somethin' mighty dastardly, I'd wager." He grumbled in annoyance. "Varmints, the lot of 'em…"
"Yeah," Cheren responded without much thought, wondering when the gruff Clay would cease his seemingly endless yammering. He simply refused to believe that this was the price to pay for meticulousness and punctuality.
"Now if'n y'all could spare the time, I need some selfless youngin to investigate that there Cold Storage area."
Fortunately for Cheren, Grunter had finally caught up, panting out of exhaustion from the long trek across the Driftveil Bridge. The glasses-clad boy pushed his companion in front of himself, declaring, "I'm sure my friend here would be willing to investigate it on his own."
"That'd be mighty big of ya, son," Clay answered to the ex-Plasma man, before turning back to Cheren. "And while he's off doin' that, y'all can help me out with countin' my rock collection… I reckon I was up to fiddy-hundred and seven, last I remember… or was it seven hundred and fiddy?"
"So which way to the Cold Storage?" Cheren interrupted.
%%%
"Oy, huddle around me already, you shmucks! I'm freezing my tuckus off here, I am!"
At the behest of Zinzolin, the Plasma sage in the violet robes, the group of nine Plasma grunts – or rather, eight grunts and one Hilbert – gathered closer to their superior, pressing themselves against his bony self in an attempt to insulate him against the cold of the icy locker.
Even as he was slightly warmed by the scant heat of the others in the bunch, Hilbert was shivering. The intense cold of this space was making him just a bit miserable, and the worst part of it was that an effective source of heat was at his very fingertips, yet he absolutely could not use it.
The young trainer did not know much about that small, flying Pokémon that he had caught at the Liberty Garden, other than that it was quite adorable, but apparently harbored power so strong that it had to be confined to a remote room within the island's tower. What that power was, Hilbert could not say for sure, but by way of a private training session with just himself and his Pokémon, he had found out that he had caught himself a Fire-type Pokémon… as indicated by the fierce flames it used to almost scorch Hilbert's Snivy.
It goes without saying, of course, that fire would prove most comforting at this particular moment.
As far as any of the Plasma members knew though, the Liberty Garden mission had ended in failure, and the rare Pokémon had eluded their capture. That did put the boy in quite the dilemma; was it better to secretly hold on to the Pokémon, keeping it safe, yet within reach? Or would releasing it be the answer? Most likely it would flee to whereabouts that not even Team Plasma could hope to locate, yet the spry little thing seemed very lonely when they had first met, entering the Poké Ball with no protest.
But dealing with matters pertaining to the Pokémon would have to wait until Hilbert was alone… He didn't even know what Team Plasma was planning to do in this freezing, freezing place.
"Hey, what are we even doing here, anyway?" asked one grunt who had his stomach pressed against Hilbert's shoulders.
"Mmmmph!" What the boy had tried to say was that he wanted to know the same thing, yet the words could not escape his lips, which had somehow been frozen together. That mishap was enough to make him cry, were it not for the fact that to do so would freeze his eyelids shut.
With time – much, much time – the blistering cold was almost beginning to become bearable, before the door of the container burst open, revealing two forms of about the same height.
"Hmph, so Team Plasma was hiding here all along." To Hilbert's great surprise, he recognized that sardonic, condescending drawl. "I thought even they'd know better than to hide in here, but I guess I was wrong."
"Oh, a comedian, huh?" Zinzolin retorted from behind his human barrier. "You've got some chutzpah, you little whippersnap!"
"Mmphm! Mmphm!" Hilbert desperately tried to call out to incite Cheren's attention, but his frozen lips rendered his words inaudible.
"Taunting me? What a bother." Cheren chose his reaction to the situation carefully: a brazen display of his middle finger towards Hilbert and the other grunts, representing his resentment and defiance towards the ruffians. After having indulged himself with that gesture, he turned to his partner. "Now how about helping me to take care of them?" he asked.
The person standing next to his spectacled friend advanced, and Hilbert couldn't believe his eyes when he saw who it was.
Those sturdy, stylish shoes, that amazing jacket, and that hat… That glorious, magnificent red, white and black hat…
Those clothes were just like the ones he was wearing before-
"Mmmph!" Hilbert struggled against the others clustered around him; after all this time, he had finally found that guy who had switched places with him, and now that they were once again brought together – wait, why didn't Cheren realize this mix-up? Hilbert needed to know before they tried to get away, but the grunt in his clothes had already turned back to flee.
"You want to get Clay to handle this?" Cheren shrugged, following after the man in the cap. "Whatever."
Hilbert wasn't willing to let this opportunity escape his grasp, and he did something he thought he would never have to do…
Closing his eyes and thinking unrelated thoughts, he gave Zinzolin a smooch on his wrinkly cheek, thawing the ice that welded his lips shut. The grunts around him gave varied reactions to the boy's affectionate action, and in the confusion of it all, Hilbert broke from the huddle and left the container to pursue Cheren and the grunt.
After the initial shock of being completely nonplussed by that kiss from a grunt, Zinzolin uttered, "Oy vey…"
%%%
"Cheren, waaaait!"
Cheren had almost reached the door of the warehouse, but Hilbert was not so ready to let his friend escape; his will helped him to forget he was running along a floor of thick, slippery ice. Reckless as he was in his motions, Hilbert at least managed to avoid slipping on the frictionless surface and landing face-first on the cold, hard ground.
At the sound of his name being called, Cheren turned to see his brown-haired friend, shivering and clad in a Team Plasma uniform. He grunted an uninterested "Hmph…" as though Hilbert was just playing some immature prank of some sort. Narrowing his glasses-clad eyes, he continued, "What do you want?"
The boy answered with desperation in his voice, "It's me, Hilbert! Don't you recognize me? That guy you were with… that wasn't me, that was-" Before he could finish, Hilbert gasped at an odd sensation of warmth that seemed to be coming from behind. Swiveling his head, he saw at his boot-clad feet a squat, orange Pokémon with stubby yet thick fists and a snout that poured steam like a kettle. If he had not been quite confused by what was happening, he could have more quickly recalled its similarities to Cheren's Tepig, the very first Pokémon obtained by the raven-haired boy.
"I can see that it's you." Cheren sighed, while coming in closer to Hilbert and the pig Pokémon. "I can't believe you would betray me, Hilbert. Were you so tired of Bianca and I that you decided to go and use Substitute, only with another person instead of a plush toy?" Visibly irritated, Cheren tapped his feet on the icy floor. "And as if that wasn't bad enough, you went and joined Team Plasma… and you didn't invite me! What do you have to say for yourself?"
Hilbert couldn't bear to see his friend so angry with him. "But-"
"That's enough out of you! Now, Pignite."
The orange Pokémon nodded, and blew a thin stream of fire from its snout, melting the ice at Hilbert's feet. It didn't take long for the boy to be ankle-deep in frosty water, which quickly hardened back into its solid state once Pignite had ceased its fire.
"I hope this teaches you a lesson," Cheren remarked. "Never do things that annoy people."
With those harsh yet profound words, he and Pignite left Hilbert to cry frozen tears as he fidgeted in vain against the frozen fetters that locked him in place. With numbness already beginning to nip at the tips of his toes, Hilbert didn't have much of a choice now. He reached in his pockets to pull out the Poké Ball he needed most.
"Viiih!" The small, wing-tailed Pokémon didn't seem to mind the bitter cold, as it floated about, orbiting like a satellite around Hilbert and observing his woeful state. Seeing its trainer partly trapped in the ice, the Pokémon took pity and set itself upon the cold ground, and began to bloom with an intense, but controlled flame; it was hot enough to melt and then evaporate a goodly amount of the ice bed, yet the blaze did not even singe Hilbert, much less cook him to a crisp; the power a legendary Pokémon could exercise was indeed well beyond his comprehension.
"Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Kissy Face!" A voice came from behind Hilbert, but that greeting didn't seem to come from Zinzolin; as far as Hilbert could tell, it was a woman's voice.
The boy in the Plasma uniform remained silent as he faced the speaker, one of the grunts who had accompanied him to the Cold Storage. With an ear-to-ear grin, she pulled a tube of lipstick from her pockets, red as a Boldore's gems, liberally applying the make-up to her lips.
"I saw you smoochin' with ol' Mister Zinzolin back there, and I gotta say you did a pretty damn fine job at it. You must have a stunning pair of lips on you, hehehe." The flirtatious grunt chuckled to herself; her entrancing behavior seemed to keep Hilbert still, as though he were still bound by the frozen bed of ice. "But if you ask me, you're wasting those bad boys on kissing old men. How about you put them to use on a pretty little thing like me, baby?"
Subtly as he could, Hilbert backed away from the grunt as she advanced, puckering her lips; it didn't look like hers were frozen together, so kissing her seemed quite unnecessary… he wasn't particularly interested in her anyway.
So concerned with avoiding her was the boy that he had almost forgotten entirely about the Pokémon he had summoned, who had decided to surprise him by floating to place itself between Hilbert and the grunt, squealing "Vih viiih!" as if to introduce itself.
"Hmm?" The Plasma grunt stopped in her tracks as Hilbert's Pokémon intervened. "Well, well, what do we have here?" After realizing just what she was looking at she turned to Hilbert, mischievously sneering.
"I… I dunno." Even as he had long since taken the Pokémon into his care, Hilbert still had no idea what it was called.
"So you found Victini in that Liberty place all this time and you didn't fess up…" The woman chuckled. "Everyone thought the mission was a total bust."
"Victini?" Hilbert asked, prompting the small legendary Pokémon to excitedly spin in place at hearing its name spoken.
"That's right, pretty-boy," she continued. "We have some pretty big plans for that little guy, and hoarding him like that is pretty selfish of you… how naughty, tee hee." The grunt attempted to reach her gloved arm out to pat Victini, but in a panic it flied away, latching on to Hilbert's shoulder from behind. Sensing the tension of the situation, the grunt had come to a realization. "You know, you'd probably get in a whole lot of trouble for something like this… What if I ratted you out, heh heh?"
Hilbert took a step back, glaring at the smug woman. "No! I-I won't let you!"
"Then I suppose the only way to keep me quiet… is to seal my lips, if you know what I mean."
In spite of the Cold Storage's temperature, Hilbert began to sweat. Presented with a painful choice, he knew the one he had to make.