A few months passed by considerably better. Gary turned eight and Ash was the only kid he personally invited to his party despite his growing attention-giving "club".

Ash was, even if he prefferred to think of him as a nemesis, a friend and sort of rival he believed was real, even if sometimes they fought a lot; mostly over who'd be the best trainer one day and petty one-on-one competitions Gary won most of the time.

Gary was the top student, especially on Pokémon subjects, and many people and local companies wanted to sponsor him as trainer in hopes he'd become the champion one day. Pallet Town would get retribution thanks to that.

Of course Ash didn't like that, but it was fine for then.

Professor Oak felt bad about how he could still not be a proper parent for Gary... he didn't get as much parental attention as his peers, but as a grandfather who didn't have help raising two minors, he wasn't too bad.

However, he sometimes regretted not spending enough time with Gary, so he sometimes spoiled him too much materially. Sometimes the professor wondered how he could have become such a hard worker and had acquired so much security in himself to the point of arrogance. Then again, his field of expertice was Pokémon, not children.

Only Ash knew Gary wasn't all that fine because he was the one kid who actually knew him. They went to watch movies togheter almost every sunday with Ash's mom and Gary's grandpa, and Gary never laughed at the funny bits. Only smiled, at the most, but he usually had a serious face or a smirk at detective movies. But Ash never brought it up; he just noticed Gary wasn't a child who laughed easily like himself or most kids he knew. It was very rare to see him laughing.

Ash was fine most of the time, and had a fairly bigger friend circle than Gary; he was easy to approach and was nearly every teacher's favorite despite not getting such amazing grades. Gary hated that. But not that much; he liked company, but didn't quite need it, according to himself.

Time passed, and they'd both forgotten about the vicious attacks at the pond for a while. Gary read fluently now, as he was ten, and read about three more kids missing: one kid from Pallet he knew, and two others from Viridian. Their deaths, when they were confirmed, were pretty gruesome and Gary couldn't help but thinking adults were ignoring this case too much; they hadn't even told kids to stay safe. That was suspicious, right? He put the newspaper on his desk with some books he'd read later on.

The only person who would believe him if he said this weren't normal murders was Ash, but would he remember?

Ash was very proud the day he managed to read fluently and got the best grade in reading at preschool. So he wanted to practice just like Gary used to, and he grabbed a newspaper. Headlines about a child-murder case.

Something about the whole thing was familiar although too scary to be real... he had a blurry image in his head about him and Gary at the pond behind his house, Ash nearly drowning because he'd been chasing after his missing father. But was it a dream or not? The newspaper reminded him of the time Gary told him he was an orphan, and it all made sense: it all was real... but he had somehow forgotten; it got lost in his memories of last year... but how could he have forgotten that? How come adults never talked about all the dead kids?

Did Gary remember?

After a few days, he decided he couldn't be silent about this threat on children anymore.

He went to school as usual, and asked the teacher before starting the class what had been done about the case. She stood nervous in front of the class, suddenly out of words when she was one of the teachers that droned on the whole 45 minutes the class lasted.

-What do you mean by that, Ash? -she fiddled with her glasses-

-If they've solved anything about it -Ash replied firmly

-We're not to get our noses into police affairs, Ash Ketchum... I don't know, but I don't think you should play detective with those things. Shall we go on?

-But I just wanna know if...

-Mr. Ketchum, please refrain from bringing up morbid topics like child mutilation to my class, if you please!

The teacher was nervous about the topic, but stern and sure about not wanting to talk about it. That was strange, since she usually talked about topics other than her class's often.

Ash sat still, a bit disappointed when Mrs. Uckerfeldt finally broke eye contact with him,

-All right, open your books on page 29... today we are gonna talk about the cycle of water! Who knows what it's called when it's on ice form? Raise your hand!

Class droned on as usual, and next period was arts and crafts. He'd have it next to Gary's class, which was at sports class. Ash knew most of Gary's schedule without even trying; Gary just seemed to appear everywhere he was. Then again, Pallet Town Public School was pretty small, and they were neighbors.

Ash liked arts and crafts because he could be as dumb and as funny as he wanted and it was fine. His works were not very good, but they were full of color. He also enjoyed the fact you were allowed to talk to people in this class. He used it as another inspiration source.

The other kids talked about their lives and adventures, and sometimes, they had to make drawings of a story made by two people for the subject. Ash usually picked one of the girls as his team because they liked that as much as him. He also liked to share his they had to paint newspaper and wire sculptures they'd spent two classes making, so it wouldn't be a hard day... theoretically.

Ash decided to play tag around the classroom and crashed into the paint closet, made all the paint cans crash onto the floor and since nobody else was running like him, the teacher decided it would be best that he stayed during recess inside cleaning the paint, which had spilled quite far on the gray linoleum floor.

-I trust you, Ash; you wouldn't break anyone else's work, so you can clean during recess instead of after school when I can watch you... besides, it will be easier now the paint is wet. -Ash looked at the floor regretting all his sins as the paint got mixed in a mocking smiling face and spread on. He hated cleaning.

-Ok, I'll be back in a while; hopefully you're done when the bell rings!

That said, Mrs. Tachibana left and Ash grabbed a mop and bucket... and looked out of the window. Gary was making mopping pantomimes at him and made the shape of an L on his forehead while leaving his sports class. He probably had noticed the small disaster Ash had caused.

Ash sometimes thought Gary had a growing fixation with his successes and failures. Ash made a rude sign at him in return and turned his back on the window. He'd started humming a tune and daydreaming of his future Pokémon journey when he heard someone come in. Recess wasn't over yet, so...

-Hey, are you looking for Mrs. Tachibana? -Ash asked the four boys who entered

These people were Matt (Mattie was now Matt) from Gary's class and his friends from two grades above Ash; Tonfers, Peter and Markus. Nobody was really fond of them.