Chapter Fourteen

The reaction was not what I expected; instead of looking surprised, thrilled even, Silver appeared horrified. He yanked himself away from me, forcing me to my hands and knees before him. Morty reached down and helped me up, pulling me back to my feet, but I was too focused on Silver to say anything. What was this look? Why did he seem so horrified when I was still around? Shouldn't this have been a beautiful reunion?

"You're horrible!" Silver yelled—no, screamed—at Morty, his face contorting as he spoke. "Don't you make fun of me over this! Over Lyra! How can you even use her memory like that, to make fun of someone? Damn it, to even think that I believed you for one second! That Lyra could really be back! But I shouldn't have trusted a ghost-type Trainer… you can recall your Pokémon now. No need to make fun of me any longer."

"It's not a Pokémon, you moron, it's Lyra! I'm not making fun of you!" Morty retorted, and I shook my head, giving up. Morty shouldn't have said anything to begin with, and now that he had, this was just ruining everything. We were better off just getting out before things got worse; Silver could tell the police that Morty had taken the file, and I didn't want things to get that far. Leaving now and allowing Silver to calm down might prevent that.

Silver just scoffed, and I pulled on Morty's sleeve, trying to force him to leave. "Stop it, Lyra!" Morty yanked his arm away from me, and I gasped, stumbling once more. "I am not leaving until Silver gets it through his head that you're still here. We need his help if we're going to solve your case. I did not come all the way here just to be insulted like this, and I will be getting his help." He walked closer to Silver, but the redheaded man stepped back, backing closer to the edge of the pier. "Get it through your head, I am not lying to you. I would never dishonor Lyra in that way, and if you don't want to dishonor her, then believe me. This is not a joke."

Never before had I witnessed such passion from Morty—not even during our most intimate of moments. He was defending me with all that he had, insulted that Silver even thought that he was making fun of me, and for this, I was grateful. Yet I couldn't be entirely happy with how this was playing out. I never wanted to upset Silver, and I had specifically told Morty to avoid doing that at all costs. This had taken too many wrong turns, and I couldn't handle watching this for much longer.

Morty took another step towards Silver, and I saw my friend's heel reach the end of the pier. I unconsciously reached out as he started falling back towards the water, grabbing the front of his shirt and yanking him towards me. Had he been falling faster, I would have tumbled into the water with him, but I managed to keep him up on the pier, pulling him with as much force and power as I could towards me.

Glancing up at him, and brushing his long hair out of his face, barely brushing his cheek, I shook my head. This was disappointing. He wouldn't believe it was me; since when did ghosts exist? Ghost Pokémon, sure, but no one really believed that human ghosts existed. All of those ghost stories… they were all just made up, fake. Like the boy who cried wolf, no one would believe in me now. Morty never should have thought Silver would listen. Not when he'd been lied to so often.

Yet, looking at Silver, I saw the face I had been looking for. Surprise lit up every aspect of his face, eyes widened with something different now—there was no longer any anger on his face, no bitterness, no disgust. Did he believe Morty? Did he believe I was there? What did this all mean? What did he think?

"Lyra?" he whispered, and I smiled, feeling so completely overwhelmed now. He believed in me! "Holy crap… Lyra!" He slapped his cheek, looking at Morty. "Oh my Arceus, what the hell? How come I can't see her? But… I mean, it felt like her. Her skin was always so soft, and she touched my cheek… it was her. Holy crap… The first time she grabbed my hands… I don't know. I couldn't believe it. But she just pulled me back. Any old Pokémon wouldn't have done that, but Lyra would have."

He reached a hand out, and I laughed to myself as a tear fell down my cheek. He really believed! I put my hand in his, and his fingers curled around mine. "Lyra, I can't see you, and I don't think I can hear you. But…" He looked over at Morty again. "At the funeral, you said all that stuff about her. She was telling you to say that, wasn't she? Why didn't you just tell everyone that she is still around? Damn it, Lyra, why didn't you tell me?"

I sighed. "I couldn't, Silver…"

"She couldn't. You would have just had the exact same reaction there as here. Everyone would have gone nuts. I can see her, and I didn't even believe it when I first saw her. There is no possible way that we could have told everyone and have it had ended nicely. It would have been chaotic." Morty shook his head, clapping his hands together once. "Listen, I'm sorry about this. I didn't mean to even tell you, but it was the only way I could get you to listen to me."

"You wouldn't have told me, Lyra?" Silver's focus was directly on me; I was thinking that maybe Morty's words were going in one ear and out the other, but the fact that he had built off something Morty said threw me off. I didn't know what to do or say at this point since Silver couldn't hear me anyways, so I looked at Morty to help me.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry. But she didn't need the extra burden. Now that she needs your help, though—"

"Burden? I'm not a burden, I'm her friend!" Silver narrowed his eyes, tightening the grip on my hand. "I don't even know why you're here. I get it, you can see her. But how the hell did you find that out, anyways? Why would she have gone to you first when she could have gone to me? I don't know what the heck happened, but it should have been me all along. I should have been the one to see her."

"She's not just important to you; she's important to me, too! And I can't tell you why she picked me because, honestly, I have no idea. But I'm glad she did, and I wouldn't have it any other way now." Morty walked closer to me, grabbing my free hand and yanking me towards him. But Silver's grip on my hand was so tight that Morty didn't get very far.

"Hey, boys…" I piped in, smiling weakly.

"Let her go." Morty's voice was dark, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "You can't see her, anyway."

"Hello! Can you guys both let go?" I tried to speak up, though it didn't really make a difference at all. No one—or, I supposed, Morty—was listening to me right now. "I feel like I'm going to get ripped in two pieces in a minute here. So, if you don't mind, I would like to just—"

"No way. She obviously—"

"Obviously nothing. I'll have you know that she didn't want to tell you at all, even if she does need your help. She was pretty upset when I first started telling you that she was even here. So, how does that make you feel? Knowing that she wanted to leave when I started telling you? Knowing that she didn't want you to know?" Morty dropped my hand, but only so he could cross his arms, waiting for Silver to let go. "She wants you to let go, too. She says she doesn't want to be ripped in two."

Silver shook his head, but he let go of my hand, too. I stretched out my fingers, rubbing my palms together as I stared between the boys. "Yeah, so, Team Rocket. Want to get started on that before you both kill each other? I'm not entirely sure you'll come back as ghosts, so I don't want to be left all alone here!"

Morty gave me an amused look before uncrossing his arms. "Sorry." He held out a hand to Silver. "Let's start over, please, for Lyra's sake. She's getting quite flustered, and we need to start working on solving her case and getting your name cleared. I don't think we're going to get very far if we're always fighting."

Silver looked hesitant, but he shook Morty's hand, forming a truce that would hopefully last until we got the information we needed from him. I didn't want to make it sound like we were using Silver, but I had intended to get the information from him and skedaddle. There wouldn't be any bonding, no information shared on our part, and yet all of that had (sort of) happened. Maybe I had originally planned on using him, but I didn't want to make sound like that.

"Okay, thank you. I'm sure Lyra appreciates it." Morty looked over at me, and I smiled weakly, nodding. Sure, I appreciated it. But this was still not going anywhere. "Okay, so let me explain what is going on. There are three planes that the soul travels on, but the only two we're concerned about at the moment are the Plane of the Living and the Plane of the Dead. We, as living beings, are on the Plane of the Living. Lyra's soul is supposed to have moved on to the Plane of the Dead, yet her soul is stuck wandering here on the Plane of the Living. So, we need to get her to move on to the Plane of the Dead, where she's supposed to be."

"But if we get her to move on to the Plane of the Dead, she won't be here anymore. Why would we want to do that? Lyra belongs here with us. She was never supposed to die—she didn't deserve to end her life short. Someone else did this to her! She should be able to stay here," Silver argued, but Morty shook his head.

"I know it's hard. Trust me, I know." Morty gave me a pained look, and I bit my lip, averting my gaze. How dare he throw that guilt trip at me now? It wasn't my fault that he was living and I was dead. I would have chose living over this, and I certainly would have chose to be with him forever if I could. But I couldn't. "But she can't stay here. This isn't the right plane for her. If she doesn't move on, everyone else around her will eventually die, and she'll be all alone. That isn't fair for her, either."

Silver clearly didn't like it, but I didn't either. How was there a way to like death at all? It was something that people didn't understand, and even if someone could wrap their head around it and figure out what it was all about, I didn't think they even got the right idea then. Death was never what I expected it to be.

"She can't stay here. So, we need your help in getting her out." Morty bumped my arm with his, and it was all I could do to keep my gaze focused on the ground. I couldn't make myself look at him. "Lyra was murdered, as we know, by a Collector in Olivine. We've ruled out that it was someone she knew, and we've ruled out that he did it because she was Champion or anything like that. We think—or Lyra thinks, at least—that it was because she stopped Team Rocket."

Silver crossed his arms. "Yeah, so what? I don't have any affiliation with that group. I've never had any affiliation with them. Just because my father was their leader doesn't mean that I know anything about them. They're disgusting, and if you're suggesting that I have information on who killed her, I don't. I don't know who could've done it."

"I'm thinking that there's a database with the record of the members. If we can pull up that database, we should be able to access something that gives a list of names and rank. I'm assuming that it's someone in a lower rank." Morty looked surprised by my guess, but I had reason. "An upper rank person would be bitter about my stopping Team Rocket, but that happened years ago. If they were planning something about me, then they would have carried it out a long time ago. Plus, I doubt they would have been as messy about it; in other words, they wouldn't have taken my Pokémon."

"Are you sure?" Morty asked, raising an eyebrow. He didn't think I was right, and I smiled at this, nodding. Silver just looked confused. "She says that she thinks a lower rank member killed her. Do you know if there is a database anywhere that has a list of the members and their ranks? If we can get into the system, we should be able to narrow down our search."

"Database?" Silver shook his head. "I have no idea. My father was pretty organized in his work, but I'm not sure he would leave something like that behind. However organized it is, it's still messy to have that available where people, like us, could hack into it."

Damn. That was a good point. There had to be something that would help narrow down the search. I didn't know what that would be exactly, but I was positive that there was something out there that was going to help us. But now I felt bad—and disappointed—that we had come found Silver. We had gotten nothing out of it, and Morty had told my secret.

Silver sighed, trying to think of something. "But you know… I think—"

"Well, well, what do we have here?" a voice asked, and I turned around, watching as a man in a dark blue police uniform stepped onto the pier, recalling a Pokémon back to its ball. Uh oh. "Gym Leader Morty and… oh, look. Just the man we were looking for." He pointed at Silver, and my eyes widened. I knew exactly what was happening here.

"You're under arrest for the murder of Champion Lyra."

Author's Note: Uh-oh. This isn't good. (But you know what is? Fast updates! :D)

If you didn't notice, I haven't mentioned how many chapters are left until the end for this fanfiction. This is for a few reasons. But the main reason I'll mention is because this is sort of like a murder mystery. If you know the end is coming, you know you're getting closer to figuring out who it is. So, I'm not telling you how many chapters until the end. :)

I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon.