PKMN2K10

by Mr. Dynasty

After a crushing defeat, Ash returns home to rediscover his ambitions as a trainer. Friends and foes both new and old surround him on all sides, but can he find the way to forge ahead and emerge victorious, even as the world grows darker and ever more sinister around him? Language/Violence

21. Chapter XXI

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Ritchie and Uranium work new angles, and revisit old ones. Deliah's facade slips, but will it disrupt all that she's silently suffered to preserve? Ghetsis offers advice to a young boy and his Onix, while Ash's next badge acquisition gets off to a shaky start. Will he trip over the starting line again, or has he grown some?

A/N: Welp, I did say I wasn't sure how long this would take, didn't I? I'm about fifty percent done with the core material that will become the next two chapters, but there's much madness going on in my life right now, so its pretty hard telling what that means as far as time-line. I was intending to cut the material up differently, and release it as two larger chapters, as opposed to three but I probably ought to stick to something closer to my projected 20k word chapters if I want to be updating this thing any more frequently than biannually. I figure that it's probably about time that I posted something at least.

I'm pretty sure I've covered with the whole M rating thing, but I'm gonna go pretty hard over these next few with the adult subject matter. This chapter will be the cleanest of the bunch, I think, so nothing immediate, but just so that we're clear. Thanks for reading, as always! I hope to be writing another one of these goofy-sounding author's notes before Christmas, so here's to hoping, right?

---

PKMN2K10

Chapter XXI

"Get Back"

Jaws dropped when she walked through the creme-colored double doors of the Pokemon Tech Appeals Club; each of the reactions overblown, and obvious.

It was true that Uranium was a stark contrast to her environment, but here was no good reason for their surprise, really, since she'd been here before, and a good half of them had to have known she was coming anyways. It was all part of the charade, she knew.

She'd stormed straight here from the baseball diamond, and she had no patience left, so she just let it play out as it would. It wasn't for her sake anyhow. She knew good and well what they'd done, but if they all pretended not to know and be affronted by her indelicacy and anger then it would just make them seem all the more innocent.

"Its okay," Giselle soothed as several trainers lining the long sides of the conference table scrambled to the top. "She asked me to come here."

She almost laughed, since what she'd done was tell Giselle she was coming with no regard at all for whether or not she was invited. Of course, nearly all of the appeals club's sixty members were here, either lining the wall, sitting at the table or gawking through the windows into the long meeting hall, so Giselle was obviously the more prepared of the two of them. The fact that Giselle obviously expected her to start a free-for all, did please her a bit.

Uranium hadn't come here to start a fight she had no hope of winning, though. Maybe if you had asked her a few hours ago, she would've said otherwise, and still, a big part of her did want to mount the table and snatch Giselle bald-headed like the bitch deserved...

She'd gotten a text message in the middle of the night, one week ago, from her Academic Guidance counselor, saying that her dormitory had been broken into. She'd climbed out of bed and flown home from South Mandarin on the spot. When she'd finally made back from the islands however, there had been a disaster waiting for her. The blow-for-blow feud had finally gone too far for Giselle and her following to stand, with the defeat of Ash Ketchum, their unwilling would-be champion. Her departure to the Elite Four training camp had been too ripe an opening to resist, apparently.

They'd wrecked everything, and she did mean everything.

Someone had evidently busted the lock to her room and turned their pokemon loose in it with abandon. Every stitch of clothing, every stick of furniture, every belonging she possessed that hadn't been on her during her trip was totally destroyed. If it wasn't torn to ribbons, smashed to bits, or burned to a crisp, it was soaked, or still frozen in solid hunks of ice, melting in rivulets down into the carpet. She carried most of what was important to her around on her back like any good trainer, of course, but there had still been an irreparable sanctity violated when she'd found her poster of Champion Lance, everything above the magnanimous smile charred to a flaky, black scraps on the floor.

The battling club was in much the same state, someone having busted out one of the upstairs windows then unlocked the doors from the inside. What little training equipment that the old members had deigned leave behind after jumping ship to the Appeals Club had been either wrecked or dismantled, and the entire battling floor had received much the same treatment as her dormitory. That was especially impressive, since the battling floor was designed to take that sort of punishment regularly. A hole that she was pretty sure had been put there by a high-intensity Hyperbeam still gaped in the roof, with a weeks worth of weather damage on the floor, to stand testament.

She'd left it that way. She wasn't about to clean up after Giselle or her goons.

Still, that club had been hers, and just thinking about it made her blood simmer. So, yeah, if she really wanted to-really, really wanted to-it wouldn't have been hard to validate leaping across there with a surprise left that would smash that stupid grin off Giselle's perfect little face.

But it wasn't worth what it was going to cost her, in the end. She knew something Giselle didn't.

Her release hearing all those years ago had come with an ugly little caveat, after all, it would brook no more mistakes on her part. The juvenile court arbitrator had long since tired of seeing her face, and the fact that she'd gotten out early for good behavior on a training charter had stuck in the man's craw, that much was obvious.

"A release is hereby granted by this court, with the juvenile record to be closed thirty days prior to the release applicants 18th birthday, pending eighty-four months without further misconduct. However, If this court, or any court should again find you accused of a violent crime, it will advocate conviction with all possible penalties and due prejudice," the verdict had rang out, followed by the loud smack of the gavel. At the time, all she'd wanted to hear was the part about being released to start her journey, but the reality of it had been explained to her later by her corrections officer.

"If you get in trouble again, they're going to have you tried as an adult. That means you go in the pen, not into this little cupcake day-care you've been staying at whenever you get into trouble now. Not only that, but they're basically saying that they'll convict you on the spot, and to the fullest extent possible without even regarding the evidence."

"Can they do that?"

"To a first or second time offender, no. To you? Odds are they could do just about anything short of lethal injection at this point. Plus, Judge Hastings really doesn't like you."

She'd almost reminded him that it all stemmed from the fifth time she'd gotten in trouble for fighting, and she'd tried to represent herself. Hastings had dismissed her from the defense chair after she'd used some fairly coarse language to refer to the aggrieved. It hadn't seemed all that great of a comeback, though, once she'd thought about it. Actually, now that she really thought about it, that death penalty quip had been a pretty black-humored thing to say to an 11 year-old girl.

Either way, that was the Mankey on her back. She had to take this one lying down, or they'd ship her ass straight back to Unova, and that would be the anticlimactic end to her pokemon training career. She sighed miserably. If only there were some way to arrange for Giselle to get the piss beaten out of her, without getting her own hands dirty...

"What did you expect would happen?" her own inner voice, colored with the relaxed intonations of her old anger therapist echoed in her head, as it often did when Uranium knew she needed to be told something aggravating true. "You came in and turned their lives upside down, why shouldn't they do the same to you?"

She'd always sort of hated that laconic quality of the woman, really, so it was ironic that she so often used it on herself. Why did therapists have to explain everything like it was all so simple and straightfoward? Just because it usually had been from a literal standpoint, hadn't made it any easier to stomach. Therapy had never really made her feel less angry, she realized now that she thought about it, just more able to deal with it.

Maybe, she considered, the therapy had never really been intended for her own personal benefit, but rather for the benefit of those around her. That was damned unfortunate, because it really did seem as though Giselle was getting the bigger end of the stick at the moment. Still, she did have one trump card left to play.

She sat down quietly, trying in vain to keep the front of her jacket down while she did, as though it were the hem of an abbreviated skirt. The large and still uncomfortably damp cola-stain on her slacks was still in full evidence, as sadly this was the extent of the formal-wear she owned, so she couldn't very well change out of it.

Circumstances dictated she dress in something other than the ratty hoodie and ripped-knee jeans she frequented today. What she was wearing probably didn't cut the mustard as a true formal ensemble, since it was the same thrift-shop suit that the state authority had put together for her when she'd gone to her release hearing; out of style and worn out before she'd ever come to own it, and having spent almost six years rolled up in a travel-trunk, at that.

"You look like you spilled something on your pants, sweetheart," someone noted immediately, and far from helpfully.

Gee, you think?

"Maybe you should just throw them out, already. I know black is supposed to be back in this year, but those look like they belong in a black and white photo."

Uranium only rolled her eye. It wouldn't have done any good to say that she wasn't wearing it to impress anyone here present. Instead she let it roll off her back.

"You do realize that neckties are typically worn by men, right? Why don't you try a nice cocktail dress, next time?" Another of Giselle's too-pretty cronies suggested behind a false smile.

Bitch, if only you knew why.

Uranium might've been impulsive deep down, but she knew what two full sleeves of visible tattoos would do to your professional credibility in very short order. Some secrets were best not coming to light too soon. Maybe it was time to put it all out there on the table, so far as this place was concerned, though.

"I'm leaving Pokemon Tech."

Giselle, brilliant actress that she pretended to be, gasped far too hard and too suddenly for the reaction to be genuine. "Dropping out? What for?"

She could've said anything, really. That she didn't belong, for one. That she was bored to tears with the curriculum, for another. What she couldn't say was that it was because Giselle didn't know when to quit, and had made life at the school insufferable. Well, she could've, she supposed, but she wasn't about to give Giselle any indication that she'd gotten to her on a personal level.

...Still, it was only fair that she got in her own parting reprisal, right? Maybe not the sort she would've liked, with her knuckles slamming into Giselle's perfect little smile and busting it all to hell, but she could make do.

"There's an opening in the elite four. I'm going to fill it." The statement was mostly bravado. The message she'd received via email from the champ had been more a chance to interview than an outright job offer, she was sure, and the message had said nothing specifically about an elite four position, but rather referred to several nebulous positions within the League hierarchy that needed filling. Giselle didn't need to know that, though.

Everybody knew that she'd been invited to the Elite Four training camp. Everybody knew her reputation. It was time that it garnered her the respect she deserved. Giselle didn't betray much, but even just the brief moment of true jealousy in her expression, and the half-second of stunned, slack-jawed silence was pure bliss.

Giselle's followup, if anything, was all the sweeter. Gathering herself, Giselle plastered that smile back on before delivering what she believed to be the closing thrust. "I would be happy to accept the Battling Club-"

Uranium could hardly contain herself, or her grin as she sprang upward so fast that the folding chair they'd readied for her alongside their own plush leather appointments to demean her went skittering away. "I just bet that you would!"

"The fact remains, however, that It's me who gets to decide who takes over the club after I leave, not you."

She bared her teeth and gums in a smile that was more a show of natural weaponry than gesture of mirth, and slapped both hands to the table. Some of the other coordinators were clambering to stand up again but she was already in motion, hurling the object of discussion with a mixture of fierceness and dark amusement.

The keys to the Battling Club Complex hit the table with a cacophonous sound, and skidded across the polished surface to fall into the lap of her chosen successor. Uranium didn't bother to say anymore. She only turned and departed, kicking the aluminum chair out of her way and giving the double doors similar treatment, leaving Joe baffled. The Appeals Club flew into chaos as she left it, and that satisfied her well enough.

She'd have liked it if her passage had been just that simple, but annoyingly, Joe came out after her as she was preparing to take off on Braviary for Indigo Plateau.

"I don't understand!" he complained.

"Yeah, well, life is just full of mysteries, Joe. Get used to it," she offered sardonically, tucking a ball back onto her hip.

"I mean, why me?" he demanded, voice full of tension and bewilderment. "How does that change anything?"

She paused, and offered a noncommittal shrug. "It doesn't really."

Joe blinked as she mounted the broad-winged bird pokemon, "T-then why?"

Uranium glared. She still really, really hated seeing the good in people, at times. Joe, as far as he was stuffed up Giselle's butt, couldn't have possibly known about her plot to trash her dorm or the Battling Club, she could see that in his expression. Still, she figured it was best to tell the plain truth.

"I don't want you to get the idea that I like you, because that's about as far from the truth as things could get. I don't like you, and I don't like what you do even more so. I'm doing this because out of all the people in this school, you were the only one who stood up and challenged me head on, after I became the battling club rep. Giselle, all the people she convinced and manipulated into doing her dirty work, all her coordinator cronies...only you had the guts to face me out in the open. In spite of everything else, I can actually respect that about you," she said openly.

"It didn't count for anything. I didn't beat you. I lost."

She could've explained that it didn't matter, that what really counted was getting your licks in while you could, making moves for the outcome you wanted with everything you had, even if-especially if-it wouldn't mean anything to anyone else, but she really didn't feel like giving life lessons to someone who'd openly stood as her enemy, and been the best of several bad options when it came to choosing a successor.

When Joe only gaped, she shrugged and lightly nudged Braviary with her heels. Her pokemon unfurled its total wingspan, beating the air in a few preparatory motions. "If you give the club back to Giselle, that's your business. I don't care anymore. I just had to find a way to be good with the way things turned out on my end," she said in parting, as the shifting sensation of lift gripped her stomach.

She tucked herself low to Braviary's profile as the massive bird took to the skies, lifting her briskly away from Pokemon Tech, a place where, if she had the slightest bit of common sense at all, she'd steer well clear of from now on.

She knew when she was beat.

---

Ritchie still felt a little like he was a ghost. Something about how he'd left the islands had filled him with a new, and all-inclusive sense of confusion. He didn't understand why he was holding yet another letter of invitation in his hands, he didn't understand girls, and he was beginning to feel like he didn't really understand the world in general.

The League Headquarters at Indigo Plateau was the largest and foremost battling complex of it's type. Here was the place where the best and brightest assembled under the very best and the very brightest. Here was where all the power and influence in the battling world laid it's head and made it's home. Here was where bright marble columns and capitals held up the figures of men who might as well have been gods. Battlers who's names and faces cast long shadows down the annals of history had clashed here.

So, it felt a little odd to be here, such as he was, invitation in hand, standing in what seemed to be a mighty exclusive club, from the looks of things. People who'd walked away with tournament victories and who's faces he recognize milled in the glass-fronted foyer, sharply dressed and smartly appointed. Jon Dickson, Tyson, and several others who'd made big waves regionally. Auspicious leaders from private gyms as far away as Hoenn, noteworthy trainers from all over the mainland.

Was this really the crowd he'd put himself in?

He'd done well in the Silver Conference. Really well, in fact. Better than he'd imagined he would, at any rate.

He'd never been the type to sell himself short, but the top two placement hadn't really felt like permission to consider himself firmly planted in the upper crust of battling society. His showing during the semifinals hadn't even been a breakout performance all things considered. He'd come up against a strong trainer, whittled him and his pokemon down bit by bit, and eventually won out. It hadn't been titanic clash of trainers who were larger than life; just a competition between two battlers there to compete with their all. He'd lost badly in the finals anyways, so the whole thing was sharply remembered through a filter of incertitude.

He'd known good and well that Lance's invitation to Mandarin had only been a favor for Silver, who'd set it all in place for him, anyways. He hadn't really felt flattered or overwhelmed with the situation, as he'd stepped onto the field with the Champion and his Elites-at least not in the way someone else there had-but that was because it had all seemed more like a contest he'd won, a lucky thing that had happened simply by astronomical chance. Nobody but the best of the best got to do what he'd been allowed to. Uranium had gotten there on achievement, if the tales told were true, but it had been a special exception his case, a one-in-a-million lottery ticket which had entitled him to it, in the form of a friend with league contacts.

This was different. He knew it shouldn't have instilled so much doubt in him; made him feel like he was out of place the way that it did, but he just had to wonder...

Was he really standing here because of what he'd done, or was it because of who he knew? Lance would've looked right over him when he was hunting for up-and-coming battlers to train with, if Silver hadn't dropped his name, that Ritchie did not doubt. Really, though, how big was the gap between him and all these people? Did the gap even matter? Did it even exist, or were all these people also here because they networked well with the right people, too? Didn't he deserve to be here, even if that wasn't the case? Why did he have to feel so mixed up about it?

He really didn't know. Maybe it was just cold feet. All he knew for sure was that he felt very strange in a tie. He'd never owned a suit before and it had taken all day to get properly measured for one. That, and it had taken pretty much all of the cash he'd had to pay for the damn thing. He could never wear this in anything like a normal setting. It was much too restricting and uncomfortable to train pokemon in even the most temperate climates, much less on the tropical southern islands. Yards and yards of gray chalk-line wool might've made a person look pretty professional, but it sure as hell didn't make them any better of a trainer-so he was at least equal to everyone in the room in that respect. Well, except for Jeanette Fisher, who was in this slinky black number he had to keep remembering to looking away from.

Speaking of things he had to remember to look away from, that got back to another subject he'd just now been coming to terms with, that being the massive Donphan in the room, and person he'd been pretending not to notice in a much more overt way than he was pretending not to notice Jeanette's cleavage, for some time now. He'd been there for a few hours already before Uranium showed. She must've thought she was terribly slick, leaning against the ionic column closest to the entryway, with her I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything-in-this-room expression on, but the longer Ritchie felt himself standing there unable to turn his head beyond the forty-degree mark, the madder he got.

Well, go talk to her!

He wasn't sure when the gasket had suddenly blown, but before he'd had the good sense to stop himself, that tiny little voice was already spurring him in motion, sweeping aside one or two people who'd blocked his path with little more than an "excuse me." She caught sight of him, faked surprise, which was obvious from the way she oversold it, then, oddly, looked him up and down.

He felt like he skidded to a halt in front of her, all the self-righteous indignation grinding to a dead stop when he finally faced off with her. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but it felt like he was trying to talk around a fist-sized wad of gum. He stammered uselessly while her look went from appraising to evaluating to something that Ritchie wasn't quite sure he felt comfortable about: Hungry. He'd seen that look before, or at least some mockery of it.

With a mixture of discomfort and frustration, he pointed into her face. A low whisper coming out in place of vengeful hollering, given the close proximity they shared with the other occupants, but his own embarrassment glowed hot. "What are you doing here?"

"Same thing you are," She smirked and tweaked his finger, bending it in that same just-a-little-too-hard-but-not-quite-hard-enough way she had on that night a week ago he was still trying to place in his memory between Traumatizing and Formative.

Trolling for suckers seemed more like what she was doing, if his past experience was anything to go on. He jerked his hand back, and shook the sting out of his digit, with a frown. He wanted to retort angrily, but a tiny little voice cut in, then and stole his bluster.

Damnit, Ritchie, what are you doing? Play it cool, man. This is not how you're supposed to act.

That voice must've been something like his conscience, he supposed, but really it was an inner voice that had only started talking in just the last few years. And it never seemed to be telling him the difference between right and wrong. In fact, just recently, it had sortof done the opposite.

So, either he'd developed an advanced form of schizophrenia since hitting puberty, or this was his dick talking. Which made sense, considering this little voice didn't seem to give a rattata's ass about whether or not Uranium had ditched him, or what the circumstances were about her sudden return, or any of that. Instead, it seemed to be centering in on that devious expression, and looping through the events that had transpired the last time he'd seen it, on instant mental playback.

The natural thing to do, he supposed, would have been to ignore this stupid little voice, and carry on as he'd intended. But then again, he remembered some of the things that had happened that night too, and both he and that voice were not against seeing them happen again. His frustrations softened into agreement, and those too melted away into a warm sensation that numbed even his harshest grievance.

A bit zombified by the feeling, Ritchie leaned back a bit, and thrust both hands into his pockets. "No, I meant like, after..." In a suggestive show that Ritchie would've smacked himself for in any other moment than this, he popped both eyebrows to load the innuendo.

She rolled an eye at him, but that grin came out in full force. "Why wait till after?"

Aw yeah. Smooth, Ritchie. Very smooth, my man.

Uranium's slight crook of the neck and growing smile cemented it. Whatever this voice was, he would follow it anywhere.

---

There were no more leaders left in the world. No more rulers. No more power, really, save that which belonged to Pokemon.

Since mankind had first learned to harness the incredible power of these creatures, their conflicts and conquests were owed to them alone. Human power-structure was built on the backs of pokemon, and remained so to this day. Pokemon-comprised armies had swept across the world in times of antiquity so that today Power Companies could harvest electricity from Electric pokemon, and sell it billions of dollars in profit for themselves.

An entire industry, culture and way of life was built around the capture, captivity and control of a kingdom of organism that was every bit as collectively entitled to live peacefully and without interference from others as any human. Ghetsis knew this. It was a hard truth in this world that had become so hell-bent on dominating this supposedly lesser species and excusing it as companionship and friendship, but it was a plain truth.

Every year, children by the thousands poured out of cities and towns into the wild, a new generation of "trainers" to further distort the continued perception of this travesty, to continue the work of their predecessors and keep the foundations of this disgusting, perverse society from crumbling.

He'd done so much work in his life, given so much to the cause of separatism, that at times he felt hollow, and still the columns that held the likes of Charles Goodshow and his faithful following stood firm. He'd broken himself on the rocks of society many years hence. The loss of his son had been a great and terrible sacrifice to make, and in the end it had proven fruitless.

They had only swept it beneath the table, like so much else, to keep their ship afloat. They'd swept Tojou under the rug as well, masterfully, it was true. But things would soon pile too high for even their slick-talking like to dismiss so easily. The PLF was untouchable, so long as it presented no target to strike at, and they could bide forever if need be, while the League suffered nicks and pinpricks against them.

And even still, Ein's great work would eventually be done; the truly damning weapon with which he would strike a fatal blow. The setbacks he'd faced still tasked him greatly, but in the end, the League and everyone in it would be broken, by that, at least. Broken in the same way that he'd been broken, and beyond.

"Sire." a tall, cold figure to his left addressed, breaking his train of thought. He glanced aside.

The two remaining shadows were men, at least in some sense of the word. What they were other than that, he could hardly guess. Much like the black, occult rituals that had made them into what they were, there were no true names for them, and they had never been given any. Not until one of them had broken away, and taken up the mantle of a traitorous dog named Kazuo, had they ever been anything but lurkers in the shadow, nameless as they were formless, enigmatic as they were deadly.

It had shaken his faith somewhat in those three, to be betrayed so openly, but that was in the past. Kazuo had simply mistaken loyalty for the memory of his son, N, as greater than his loyalty to the father. The other two would not make that mistake; each had vowed to kill the other, if they strayed down the same path as their brother.

"Yes?" he answered at last, regaining himself from miserable recollection.

"The crew has nearly completed their task. Shall I inform them you will be returning aboard?"

Ghetsis sighed. "No, not yet."

For all the comforts the Explorer One offered, fresh air and blue skies were not among them. "Just a bit longer."

The two didn't argue. They never did.

So for now, he would enjoy it as the sky overhead yawned wide with the deep colors of summer blue. The weather was almost uncomfortably hot in comparison to the nuclear-powered air-conditioning offered by Explorer One. He could almost forget where he was, and imagine himself back in his homeland, a place he rarely showed his face anymore, if he looked straight out to sea and ignored the foreign skyline behind him.

Well, he almost could, anyways. The two junior trainers battling out on the pier were an unwanted distraction, flaunting their vulgarity for all to see. He sighed and reclined on the park-bench, decided to simply look at the horizon, and distant skies of the sea.

That was, at least until one of his protective shadows caught the line of his sight. "Shall we remove them, sire?"

"No." The battle was already drawing to a close, so there was really no need for a show of force. In fact, as it ended, the losing trainer walked dejectedly down the pier towards them.

Ghetsis, once his shadows vanished, must've seemed a very innocuous presence to these foreigners, much as a Galvantula's web must've seemed harmless at first, to many errant bug-types, so it was really no surprise that the boy and his Raltz came to sit next to him on the park bench. It was a very wide bench, and he only just took up the end of it. Once he'd commanded a very imposing presence, but he'd long since given up the robes and regal finery and he was ostensibly a very slight, even if tall old man without them, so why shouldn't the boy sit down beside him?

Max rubbed his face, and tried to stay focused, even though all he really felt like doing was giving up. "This doesn't make any sense," he muttered to himself, while he bounced his knees anxiously. He should've wiped the floor with that trainer. A Poliwag and a Luxio should have been short work for his pokemon, but Raltz just couldn't take down both, and Onix had again balked from giving him any help at all.

It had been over a week since his battle with Bugsy, and things had not improved so far as Onix was concerned. On the contrary, they seemed to be growing worse. Before, Onix had only ignored Max's commands, but now Onix would often behave so objectionably that Max would often have no choice but to withdraw the rock-serpent from battle, in order to avoid collateral damage or bodily harm.

"Something troubling you?"

Max looked up, noticing his seated companion for the first time. He didn't really know what to say, at first, and so only shrugged. His parents had taught him not to talk to strangers, just the same as anyone's parents might've he supposed, but this old guy didn't seem like he could do any real harm. Max didn't want to seem rude, so he answered.

"I'm uh, having trouble with my training, is all."

Though he hadn't expressly meant it to be a brush-off, Max didn't really mean to hold a proper conversation. It shortly turned into one, however.

"Onix doesn't seem to like you much," the man said, with uninvited frankness.

Max bristled at first, but then settled. It was true, however sharp the point might've been, and he didn't really have the right to deny it. The sad part was that Onix seemed to hate him more and more as things went on.

"I thought that I'd come to an agreement with Onix but it doesn't seem like he thought the same about me."

The old man arched a thick gray brow at him, his lips pursing with condescension. "He?"

Max blinked at the sudden question "M-my Onix, I mean."

The other brow rose to meet it's partner. "This is the same Onix you were just battling with I assume?"

Max nodded, a bit stupefied, but then his eyes flew wide at the man's sudden scoff. "It's no wonder your training isn't going well, then."

He felt anger roiling in him, and turned to express it, until the old man pulled the rug out from under him by pointing out his own ignorance. "Your Onix is female."

Max shrank back into his seat. "Oh."

A very long, very uncomfortable silence started, then, giving Max plenty of time to wrack his brain to the point of utter bafflement. It happened in just a way that he was completely, almost desperately receptive when Ghetsis spoke next. That was the point after all. Ghetsis had sown his rhetoric in this way many times before.

"Let me offer you some advice..."

---

Neither had been called over the PA system and he supposed that was a good thing, since she'd dragged him out of the waiting room, with promises that she'd make up for ditching him in the islands and he was in no position to object to an apology like that.

She was vacuum and gravity and magnets, and he didn't know or care how to get free of the pull. The inside of her mouth was hot and wet and thrilling, and she kissed and licked and sucked at him like she never wanted to forget the taste. He shrugged off the jacket as she worked her way down his arm, leaving swollen pink blemishes in her wake.

Ritchie's off hand grappled with the door to the supply closet, desperate to find a locking mechanism that didn't exist, while she swallowed the middle two fingers of the other clear to the second knuckle. Ritchie felt her coax him to probe deeper until their tips passed the weft of tongue and flirted with the fleshy slick of throat, but she neither recoiled nor choked. She just held there, clutching his wrist and a handful of his shirt, where she knelt, giving him strong and desirous eye-contact he could neither break or ignore.

At times it had been difficult to tell just what that single uncovered eye was trying to tell him, such as it was, but this time she made it very clear. Letting his two fingers gradually slide free, sloppy and glistening, she looked up at him.

"That's what I'm gonna do to you," she insisted, lapping one final time at the sensitive web between his digits and leaving a string of drool behind as a keepsake.

His fingers curled meekly, and he could keenly feel the wetness between them as he tried to catch his breath. His face felt like a hot griddle, and he was sure his breath was coming out in clouds of steam. He knew he was going to collapse in a sweltering heap if this kept on, but that little voice kept telling him how awesome this was, and how he should just let it happen. He couldn't quite enunciate a response anyways, so that was just as well. All his sore feelings seemed like nothing next to that sort of apology.

"Take off your pants." she instructed, leaning back a bit on her haunches, smile still bordering on sinister.

It was weird to do it while she was watching, he found, as he pulled his belt out, and held the retainers, feeling uneasy about letting go. Before, it had all happened in the pitch dark, but now... Well, he supposed he could have asked her to turn the closet light off, but it didn't seem all that likely that she would oblige and the little voice he had kept telling him to sack up, anyways, so he went ahead and did it.

He didn't really know how he stacked up in terms of other guys. He wasn't even really sure what other guys entailed in this instance, really. He was sure he wasn't setting any world records in any department, but he'd never felt like he was small, certainly. Still, Uranium seemed like she was pretty experienced. The way she acted, the things she did to him. Was she going to laugh at him? He certainly couldn't imagine her being awed by it.

Now that he considered it, just how many guys had Uranium been with before? Where in the hell did he even place along that line-up? She couldn't just be making this up as she went. This was pretty dirty stuff and she was acting like none of it was a big deal, like some porn-star or something.

Was this really a good idea?

The thought seemed stupid, but still it flew up in front of his face like a traffic caution. Really, it opened up a whole other door of concerns, didn't it? Rationality struggled to break its way into the situation. He felt his expression mess up for a moment, kink out of the shape his mask of arousal and bewilderment had molded it into, but then there came that voice again.

Don't be a pussy, Ritchie. She's totally into you, dude. Don't fuck this up for us.

Uranium, whether she'd seen better or not, only smiled that ornery smile, and set to her apology with candor. At that point, it was all moot anyways. Ritchie didn't believe he'd have been able to summon up the fortitude to stop her if he'd tried.

---

Deliah struggled to keep her eyes focused, hoping neither that she would or wouldn't succeed. It was an interminable period of not knowing whether she should be sad or angry, and not certain even then at whom she should direct those feelings. She felt herself hiccup, and it felt close enough to a sob that she accepted it as such. It didn't make the pain go away, but at least if felt normal.

Twenty years ago, she told herself, twenty long years ago you made that promise, and dammit, you've got to stand by that promise more than ever, with things as they are.

She'd swore that she'd never stand in Silver's way; that she would never stand opposite of his ambitions and force him to chose between her and them. Whenever she thought back on that time, and compared it to her life now, though, it all seemed so naive and facile. A compromise made to a dying old woman who didn't like the little tart who'd stolen the love of her son. In that light, it was only oath sworn to someone who was dead and gone and had hated her guts to begin with.

Ma Ketchum had been sick since well before Deliah had come into the family. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease had already turned the once proud matriarch into a burdensome, often irrational and demented shadow that hung over the Ketchum family and inflicted herself on everyone. The old Ketchum family, full of good sons, faithful husbands and loving brothers had bared her for far longer than Deliah had, and the suffering, though silent and masked with tenderness, was obvious. Deliah had always resented the old woman for that, till the day she died; that was the reason her promise had been as much an oath that she would never allow herself to become that same sort of shadow, as it was anything else. She would never be a burden on her family.

So even if it was a lost promise to a person that didn't matter anymore, it still affected her most cherished loved ones in a way that meant she would never risk breaking it. In the same way that she couldn't be a pall that hung over this family, call all the shots and make all the decisions, she couldn't let herself be a passive threat to their desires, either. She couldn't say no, even if she said it in a way that made it sound like something else. She had to force herself to not matter in her husband and son's eyes. Somehow, every time, she managed that. She wasn't perfect, granted. She had her lapses, even if she mostly kept them to herself. She had to shrink her heart down for them when it was time to do it, and it hurt like hell, so it was only natural to feel a little miserable.

That was why when Silver came to her, almost immediately after this venture out to meet with Lance, and confided in her that he'd decided to head to the orange islands, battle with and possibly capture a Moltres, as posthumous fulfillment of his partnership with Chikorita; an effort to complete the goal they'd set themselves toward all those years ago, she had grinned and nodded and accepted whole-heartedly his need for satisfaction, for closure. He needed that, and she would give it to him. She would allow it no matter how long and uncertain she knew that journey, and her consequent term of solitude would be.

Then again, maybe that was also why she'd waited until he'd stepped out to visit the professor one last time before his departure to smash a set of dinner-plates and gulp down half a fresh fifth in a quiet conniption of anger and remorse that seemed to have no real beginning or end, just fits and pauses.

Now she sat at the kitchen table resting her bleeding hand and aching head on the same damp dish towel, and trying to think up a good excuse to feed Silver once he came back in, while Mimey swept up the broken shards all around her with subdued confusion and a healthy dose of caution.

She had tried to pull herself together almost at once, but it hurt so bad that all she could do was sit there in a daze and hope that the bourbon would eventually dull down to the pain in her heart to the same comparatively minor annoyance as the cut on her palm. It wouldn't happen, though. She didn't think a person could drink away hurt of this particular caliber. Still, she gave it the benefit of the doubt, and took another swig straight from the bottle. She let her eyes close and tried not to think of much of anything for a good long while.

She looked up again when, with a murmur of discretionary sympathy, Mimey quietly provided her with a glass. Deliah thought was a nice gesture even if it was a bit permissive, but she opted against it, too unsure of her ability to fill it, properly, and with a rapidly onsetting awareness of the passage of time. The momentary thought made her feel a bit alarmed actually, and she recapped the bottle at once.

To her infinite dread and shame, she could hear Silver working at the lock on the front door. She didn't dare stand, but instead slipped the bottle off of the table, and laid it on the pushed-in seat to her left, hoping that it would remain hidden beneath the surface of the table. Silver didn't expressly disapprove of her imbibing, but he would certainly know she'd had far too much if the evidence was out in plain sight, and if he knew that, she was sure that he'd want to know why she'd been drinking.

She fumbled a bit on the release, but managed to get it done even as drunk as she was; which was a miracle in its own right. Without any real frame of reference she tried to mold her features and expression back into some semblance of normalcy, and she was sure that the facsimile was imperfect as Silver stepped around the corner, bag slung over one shoulder.

He paused for a moment against the entryway. and looked at her hand, clamped in the dish towel, slightly pinkened by blood. His brow quirked, and bless him, Deliah thought, he asked what must've seemed a completely innocent question at the time.

"Are you okay, sweetpea?"

Any thought she might've had of concealing her true temperament was blown over by that question, toppled under what felt like, in that moment, a category 5 hurricane of ignorance and pig-headedness, and insensitive crassness aimed to hurt her and mock her pain and sensitivity and throw everything she had sacrificed for him right back into her face. Some one may as well have dubbed a great-big "fuck you" over what had actually come out of his mouth, because the perfect storm of bad timing and poor word-choice took out a decade and a half of patience and restraint with no less severity or speed. Even as she was doing it she knew it wasn't fair, and that it wasn't his fault, but it was all bubbling to the surface and she was too damn drunk and upset to stop it now.

"NO I AM NOT OKAY!"

The look on Silver's face as the bottle came hurtling at him end over end changed from a look of stark confusion and surprise, a real I wish i had never come in here sort of look, to one that just might've flirted with terror. He wasn't sure he'd ever, even once, seen Deliah reach a level of anger that could be referred to as anything more severe than "rather cross". This seemed somehow nuclear by comparison, he thought as he threw himself sideways.

The bottle shattered on the wall next to him, and though glass burst out in all directions, he was more stricken by room-temperature booze than sharp fragments. He stood there, quite shocked and evidently too uncertain about a followup volley to risk making any moves in one direction or the other.

"I am not okay! I am not okay!" Deliah repeated, slamming her hands down on the tabletop over and over until they were pink and abused. "I am not okay, and I don't know how to be okay, and I don't want to keep pretending that I'm okay! I hate it! I hate this! I'm so damn mad at you for doing this to me! I am sick to death of-of-everything!"

The worst part, Deliah felt, was that Silver didn't yell back. She wanted him to yell back, even if it was only to get her to button it up. She wanted him to holler and scream and tell her to shut up and stop being so insane, and maybe grab her by the arms and shake her until she cried like one of those actresses in old black and white movies, and let herself be embraced miserably after a brief struggle. Silver didn't do that. He just kept standing there and taking it, leaving her no choice but to keep giving it, and all the while she just felt more miserable as the things she said got more and more hurtful and vicious and untrue, like some terrible vomitous evil that had been festering inside her, becoming more malignant and terrible as more and more time went on without ventilation. It just went on and on and on and on. The problems with their marriage, the issues she took with his career, their slowly dissolving family, all of it just spilled out with ten times the venom than she'd ever meant it to..

Maybe that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was almost certainly be what would happen once she got done telling him all these secrets that she had slept on over the years; secret misgivings and grievances mutated into horrible lies that had almost no foundation but what her own misery gave them. She stood there weeping when she was done, throat raw and trembling hands flat on the old oak table, not really sure there was any point in hiding her face, since she'd already put it all out there. She would've liked to have taken whatever rebuttal Silver might've had to offer standing up straight, and with a little more dignity, but now she felt like she just might throw up. The sensation was at least as much liquor as shame, but it was mortifying all the same.

There was a very long period of silence, ruptured only by the half-hearted sweeping of poor Mimey, who was now very uncomfortably trying to siddle in next to Silver and clean up the mess she'd caused without drawing too much attention. When it went on for so long that she had to look up, Silver grimaced like he was having his nipples twisted, pushing his shoulders forward, and his chest back. "I guess this is a really bad time to ask you to come with me, huh?" He held up two St. Anne 2 round-trip Orange Archipelago Cruise tickets, with a bashful expression.

"...Arceus." she coughed, bringing her hand up to cover one eye, her lips trembling. "No-I..." she swallowed. A menacing little part of her wanted to tell him that yes, it was in fact a really bad time, and that he should've mentioned this sometime before she'd started flying off the handle, and saved them both a ton of trouble, but she was so undercut by the question that she just didn't have it left in her to be sarcastic. Instead, brain scrambled and wires crossed she laughed, feeling miserable about what she'd done, and cried, feeling giddy with relief. She knew it made her look insane, but she didn't know how else to handle it.

After a while, she found the presence of mind to sit back down. "Can we just f-forget everything that happened since you came in the door?"

Silver, seeming more than happy to do just that, took two steps back around the corner, then re-emerged., feigning innocent curiosity. "Are you okay, sweetpea?"

"I'm fine," she said forcing out the lie she'd originally planned on, though her voice was strained by tears. "I just dropped a plate, is all." She'd hoped to hide her emotions with a more convincing excuse, though, so she went on to add: "It was some of your mom's old china though. I really loved those p-plates. Such a sha-a-haa-ha-a-ame!" the words welled into sobs just as conveniently as she'd planned, allowing her to dump her emotions in a less destructive way.

Now, though, the facade was Silver's to maintain, and dutifully, he did so. It was just the same if he pretended to have never seen her outburst, anyhow. He'd have known the lie for what it was. Silver knew that Deliah didn't give a damn about anything that his mother had left to them, much less some stupid dinner plates. Still, it was his turn to let her do a little leaning, after leaning on her for these past weeks. And his duty ran deeper still if even a small fraction of the aches and pains that she'd expressed to him were true. "It's alright," he mused. "It's just a plate. Just invite one less person for supper, and it'll work out."

She didn't fight him when he came to her, like one of those actresses in old movies. She fell into him face-first and held his jacket in wadded up fistfuls. She was crying her eyes out, but still tried to keep up the facade of candor. "A t-t-trip sounds nice."

Silver chuckled, and patted her back, hoping that she would just cry herself sober again, and be back on her feet. She took her time about it, wailing like a child, and the was he saw it, that was just fine. Misery required a little company, to run its course after all, and he owed back-pay on that. When she was done, she just rested, breathing into his shirt, and groaning. "I didn't mean any of what I said."

He was pretty sure she meant at least a little of it, and he was certain that much and more was fair, and would require his attention in no uncertain terms, but he acknowledged her all the same. "I know, sweetpea." He gave her a brief hug. "Just out of curiosity, though, how much have you had to drink?"

A small gulping sound came up, like maybe the beginning of a hiccup or worse, squashed down by his tight embrace, before Deliah moaned plaintively at the state of herself. "Oh, a whole, whole bunch. I suggest you don't squeeze too hard."

---

He didn't know what sort of face he was making, but he was sure it wasn't a very good one; what with his eyes half-way rolled back and mouth pursed around an open vowel sound that hadn't quite made it all the way out yet. As she eased him slowly back off his tiptoes, he swallowed.

Then, so did she.

It was too much. He couldn't take it. Where the hell did this girl come from? He felt like he would faint, if he didn't find some solidarity soon. He put his hand over his eyes, certain that he was scarlet, and almost positive that he would wake up from a dream if he just interrupted this bizarre stream of consciousness.

"So how was it?" she asked, still quite real in spite of his best efforts to rouse himself.

How did he answer that? Did he say it was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen, felt or even heard of? Did he say how frightened he was that she was some man-eater who'd scratched 'in a janitor's closet' off her list of exploits? Did he say how empty-headed and stupid, senseless and giddy it had made him feel, or did he describe the gut-churning dread that these encounters gripped him with?

Did he flat out tell her that she drove him crazy, or...well, the same thing, but with a different inflection?

"Speechless, I see. Is my apology accepted, then?"

Too blown away to say anything, he just gave a shaky nod. He wanted to sit down, unsure if his weak knees would be able to hold him up much longer, but he needed to put his pants back on first. He rubbed his face some, and then looked for them, but they weren't where he'd left them. Instead, he looked up to find Uranium working her hips back and forth as she hoisted them on, in place of her own.

"Arceus, Ritchie. Do you have no butt? How do you fit into these things?" she asked, casually trying to stuff her dress shirt down into the sagging crotch. They weren't that different when it came to size, but she fit his pants in all the wrong places. Still, after a few moments she'd gotten it looking decent enough, even if it was mismatched to her jacket.

At first he wanted to laugh at her but then he felt an inkling of concern breach through the foam. "What are you doing?"

"Borrowing these," she said simply. "You can wear mine, if you want."

Before he could protest, Uranium turned to give him the briefest one-eyed wink, before cracking the door, glancing around, and stepping out without any further comment. Ritchie felt his face bunch up into an incredible caricature of confusion. He grasped a handful of his own hair in impotent frustration. "What-Why-I don't even..."

With a great huff of exasperation, he took the only course he could. He pulled on her pants-which was a monstrous undertaking in and of itself-because he couldn't very well march back out there with his business all hanging out. The legs were so tight he was pretty sure he could see his pulse, and while they were disconcertingly roomy in the rear-quarters, they left absolutely no room for error in the front. A slightly sticky feeling of lingering moisture on the thighs completed the whole arrangement as poor to intolerable. Still, he could hear them calling Uranium's name over the PA, which meant his wouldn't be too far behind it. It wasn't like he had any choice now.

Closing his eyes and shaking his head, he proffered a question to that little voice inside, sarcastically. "So how was it, sucker?"

It didn't answer back.

He pushed his way out of the closet, sidestepped the first person who quirked a brow at him, and tried to find Sparky, to play it off like nothing had happened. Sparky didn't buy it, unsurprisingly.

---

"Goldenrod City sure is huge, isn't it?" Dawn said with a wondering grin, as she and Max sat underneath huge umbrella that provided shade to the outdoor seating. Max glanced up for his part and forced a smile, before looking back down.

They'd posted up in town today, which was slightly unusual for Brock's typically rough neck approach to traveling. Brock himself had a bit distracted, though, having to run some errands in town and communicate the results via long-distance phone-call for his brother-mostly financial issues, he'd explained-which involved talking to various people at the bank, who were likewise communicating long-distance with Kantonese branches in the firm. It was in order to do his part to get the Pewter City Gym up to snuff for upcoming PIA inspection, and they'd understood that. He'd left them to their own devices for the time being.

"Dawn, uh, you've got mustard on your face."

Max watched from the corner of his eyes as Dawn looked momentarily mortified, wiped her face with a napkin and then went on in her own beautiful way. He snapped his gaze back down when she seemed like she might look over at him. He didn't want to seem as though he'd been too aware.

They'd separated early in the day, under the agreement that they would meet up again here for a late lunch. Brock was still off handling his tasks, and Dawn assumed that Max must've seen to his. She didn't imagine that the young trainer had already made his attempt at a Plain Badge, or at least if he had, he'd not been outright successful. Maybe that was why he seemed so glum.

She wanted to ask him, but her mouth was still full presently, so she kept chewing. Annoyingly, Max got a word in across her, before she was done, in a way that was distressingly off-putting.

"So, what did you do all day?"

She looked at him and said nothing for a moment, wondering if he would just revert back to silence if she didn't elaborate, and shrugged. "I dunno."

The mall here was huge, but there really wasn't much in the way of coordinating going on here, at least not at the moment. She'd put her name in for a contest at the weeks end, which would actually merit her second ribbon for the region if she could pull out a win.

She'd tried not to steal too much of Max's limelight on what was his debut journey, so she hadn't even mentioned the contest performance she'd thrown together in New Bark (which had been the whole reason for her rush to Johto in the first place) but she was hoping that Max and Brock might come to see her in this one. Hopefully Max would be able to get his badge challenge in by then.

She'd spent most of the rest of the day eating, actually, out of sheer boredom more than anything. Her first idea had been a light snack in the mall, because Brock's proposed lunch time had seemed way too late. The soft-pretzel had been followed by a smoothie, and then later on, a sack full of jelly beans from a candy-shoppe. Later still, she'd had a hot-dog, and then went back to the candy store for the peanut clusters she'd been eyeballing earlier, but had previously decided against.

She glared down at the club sandwich, suddenly feeling like a glutton. "Nothing really," she finally concluded, unwilling to divulge much. She sharply eyed the empty spot in front of her male accomplice. "Why aren't you eating?"

Max looked up only slightly, before rubbing the side of his head, and then resuming his stare at the table. "I'm not that hungry."

Dawn sat the sandwich down on her plate, and moved it just a few inches from herself. Regaining her composure, she tried to push her considered line of questioning. "So what did..."

Max, again, strangely subdued, glanced away from the table, and from her completely as though he were searching for something. Max had always presented himself as pretty reserved, at least inside of her notice, but this seemed off, somehow, even the normal shyness. Besides, she had thought—or at least had hoped—that they had worked their way past all that at Azalea. She let that question die, thinking of another, instead.

"Is something wrong?" she asked after long time had passed in paranoid silence.

At her words, still without looking her in the eyes, Max lifted his hand to the top of his skull, and almost as if trying to collapse himself, pulled his own head downward between raised shoulders.. His other palm shoved itself upward under his glasses and covered both eyes. He looked like he was in pain, almost, his teeth set and bare, but he didn't sob or sniffle like she might've expected, instead he just held that pose, clutching his head from both sides, knees bouncing anxiously.

"...Yes," he answered finally, voice wavering.

Dawn felt her eyes widen, and a sudden panic welled in her. What had happened? Was it something serious? Would she be able to handle this? What should she do?!

She swallowed and clutched her own thumb, wringing her worry out. A quick scoot around the spiral bench brought her over next to Max, and she put a hand on his arm. He'd already made it pretty clear what his physical boundaries were, but he didn't shrug her off or flinch away, so there was that at least. "What's the matter, Max?"

"I did something that I wish I hadn't, but now I can't take it back." Max answered quietly, relinquishing his grip on his face, and settling into a slump, his head thunking against the polymer table-top. He didn't look at her, but at least he wasn't hiding his eyes anymore. "If I wasn't such a screw-up, this never would have happened."

Dawn let her mouth hang open. That just wasn't true! Max, despite his relative lack of experience was a talented battler, and if you were talking book-smarts, she was pretty sure Max could give anybody a run for their money. Maybe he lacked a little social skill, but that was no big deal! "Hey, listen, there's no reas-"

"I released Onix." Max said, with sudden and sharp clarity, seeming to be chilled by the self-recrimination."I just didn't know what else to do."

She tried. Arceus, she tried so hard not to do anything stupid like let her mouth hang open in shock, or stare at him like he was deranged, but it just sortof happened on it's own, and Max went back to holding his head and not crying, which was somehow more painful-looking than the real thing.

---

He caught her again on the steps leading out, and tried to give her a piece of his mind, but failed miserably.

"Oh, stop whining. It all worked out in the end, so what difference does it make?" she countered, waving off his protests

He supposed that was true, all things considered. He and Lance had talked for some time, then he'd been briefly brought before Koga and Lorelei, who shared a few words with him, and a few more quietly to lance, before he'd been clapped on the shoulder and given his new charge, without a word mentioned about his tight pants. He didn't really want to let it slide, but the total shock of the situation still had the better of him. He couldn't believe it, really.

The Elite positions had gone to two people he'd never heard of before: Will and Karen, both of whom had ties to the league in one way or another, and one of which who'd apparently been sniped from Mr. Goodshow's personal staff. That did somewhat cement his earlier notion of it not being "what you know" but "who you know", he supposed, but since he'd walked away with his own league commission in the bargain, he could hardly complain.

"Cinnabar Gym." he said quietly. It was all his now. Blaine, apparently having stepped down as the leader to work as a league consultant, had left the position open. With Ritchie's propensity for island-hopping and love of the islands in general, it had all seemed a natural choice, they said.

"You'd better work hard. This makes us rivals, now." Uranium quipped, slapping the letter of station in her hand against the one in his, as though he'd never voiced a grievance at all. Vermillion gym would go from having a drill instructor for a leader, to having something that seemed-to him, at least-much more troubling by comparison. Surge had retired as well, leaving to handle the administration of the Pokemon Corps full-time. Ritchie had heard of the Corps before, but he didn't know much else about it. All the same, Uranium would take control of one of the region's central gyms.

"How you figure?" Ritchie asked. It didn't really seem like there would be much rivalry between them. They would work together to challenge up and coming trainers seeking entry into the pokemon league tournament. That made them allies in a united cause, ostensibly.

"There's a gym-leader tournament toward the end of summer, before league starts," Uranium stated matter-of-factly.

He did remember Lance saying that they were gonna start something like that this year, now that he thought about it. Uranium had obviously been listening more closely to that part than he had. "Yeah, but that's just friendly competition, right?"

Her look told him firmly that she didn't do friendly. He shrugged it off. "I'll try and prepare myself, I guess."

"Did you see who they gave the Viridian Gym to?", Uranium asked as they cleared the last step, his stride a bit protracted by the tight garment that gripped his legs.

"Yeah, pretty wild." Ritchie nodded, trying to ignore it.

He'd seen that distinctive purple hair on the news quite a bit lately, so it was a bit strange to see that particular individual leaving indigo plateau clutching an identical letter to theirs, especially since said individual looked none too pleased about it. He brushed it aside for the time being.

Now that all the business of the day was done, he thought maybe it was about time he asked Uranium a few questions. Maybe they could talk all this out over dinner, or something? He wasn't sure how this sort of thing was supposed to work. He just knew that it was high time he had some concrete answers about what was going on between them, so that he could at least put all his feelings about her in their proper place, instead of being a complete mess.

Uranium evidently had other plans. "Well, I guess this is it, then." She said with a smirk, already casting out her Braviary. "Seeya 'round, Ritchie."

As if she were making a marked attempt to leave before he could stop her, she was gone again and he was left with no more answers or certainty than before. Perhaps, he seriously considered, even fewer than before. He put his hand across his brow for a while, and tried not to curse.

Eventually, he settled with calling for his friend, and getting a move on. "C'mon Sparky, let's go," he said dolorously. Girls, particularly that one, and all the confusion that they caused would just have to fester for another day, he supposed. On the other hand, his trip to Cinnabar and his new Gym wouldn't wait forever...

That said, it probably would have gone a lot better if the first stride hadn't ripped the groin of his pants.

---

Ash smiled when he held his present in his hands. Really smiled, in a way he hadn't in what felt like forever. He knew that, because it sort of hurt his face. "Oh yeah. That's what day it was yesterday!"

How had he forgotten his own birthday? Arceus, he'd been so busy.

"Do you like it?" Misty asked, letting him take the hat from her.

He tested it on his head before responding. It felt a little thick, and he was almost sure the black cotton would make his head crazy-hot if he wore it out too long in the sun, but it was a comfortable fit. He took it off to look at it again. The blue wave-pattern on the front was really neat, but...

"What does Hanada mean?" He ran his fingers across the white embroidered print that ran from front to back on the left side.

"It's the traditional name of the city," Misty said, not at all surprised he didn't know.

Ash shrugged. Suited him well enough, so he rendered his verdict. "It's really nice." He plopped it back onto his head, thankful for at least something to cover his haircut. "Thanks."

"Happy Belated Birthday," Misty said, grinning, even though she looked tired. Oddly enough though, she was the one who asked him if he was feeling okay. "Hey, are you sure you're alright? You look really ill."

Ash shrugged. "I'm fine." Maybe all that crap Baily had talked about was finally catching up to him, but there was no way he was gonna let it slow him down. She didn't look like she was entirely satisfied with that answer, though, so Ash told a little fib. "I think I might've gotten a little bit of a cold from being in the water."

He'd told her the story of what had taken place over these last weeks, with the caveat that she was never to breathe a word of it to his mother. She'd agreed to that much, but she'd still sounded a little alarmed to hear about Melody's role to play in things. Ash wasn't really sure why that was, but he was thankful he'd at least had the good sense to keep the finer details to himself. He was embarrassed enough by them without bringing another person into it.

In turn, she'd told him about all the goings on in the gym. The ins and outs of her new training, how she'd hired on additional help, and her recent win-streak. "I'm still undefeated."

He gave her a thumbs up. "In how long?"

She shrugged. "Since the renovations were completed, the gym is at sixty-four wins, zero losses. You?"

Ash felt a bit of jealousy tug at his heart, but he smashed it away. He still had yet to get out there and properly flex his training skills since they'd last saw one another, so who was to say how well he might've done? "Oh, I dunno. I don't think I've lost any since you saw me last, but I haven't won that many either."

With a smirk, he glanced over towards her. "Are you sure you're counting our gym-battle? You got beat then, remember?"

Misty, like she'd been expecting to hear that, deflected him easily. "In your dreams, you beat me," she scoffed, deciding it best to leave it unsaid that their match together had occurred before renovations were done, at any rate, since it would likely do more to bolster his point than hers.

"As good as," he countered. "I had you on the ropes and you know it."

"Are you saying you want a rematch?" Misty asked with a derisive wave. "Because I can stomp you again whenever you want."

Ash rolled his eyes. "Well, I still need that cascade badge, don't I? How about right now? We can decide it fair and square."

Misty stopped, pulling her lips to the side. The truth was, she couldn't right now. Her challenge schedule was already full up, and would be for the next week. Still, if she just out and out said that, Ash would think she was putting him off.

"Still need a cascade badge? Ash, you already have a cascade badge." Misty remarked, instead choosing to attack the problem for the opposite side.

Ash frowned, annoyed that Misty was feeding him the same line Surge had. Of course, Surge had also explained that he couldn't give Ash a new Thunderbadge, because he was retired as head of the Vermilion Gym. "You'll have to make do with the old one, corpsman! At least until Lance appoints a new leader to take over."

Misty wasn't retiring though, he knew that much. "I know I still have the old one. I need to collect a new one!"

Misty didn't seem put off of her argument at all, though. "I gave you a new one, you dimwit!" Okay, so maybe gave wasn't the right word. To jar his memory again, she reached out and snatched it from where it rested over his chest. Tightening the chain, a sharp jerk downward brought him face to face with it by force.

He blinked at the small blue teardrop affixed to the front of the bike-lock. "This is a genuine cascade badge. Why would I decorate my own stuff with fake badges?" Misty questioned, hoping that it would go without saying that she'd given it to him in exchange for a good fight, not for an outright victory.

"Alright, alright, I get it jeeze!" Ash managed to shrug her off and tried not to let on that the chain-marks now indented into his skin smarted all that badly, but he held onto the lock and chain all the same, wearing it like a heavy necklace. The effort of standing back straight again made him ache a little, but he wasn't about to let her think she'd gotten the best of him, even for a moment.

Instead, he asked about Kingler, and she about Psyduck, and both had good news to report, insofar as that was concerned. Kingler was guillotining his way through challengers left and right, and he counted his efforts with Psyduck as real progress, even if it wasn't progress of the most orthodox kind.

They walked and talked for a bit, eventually coming to her office, where they sat and talked some more and Misty even dug some plastic silverware out when he offered a bit of the boxed cake his mom had sent him. He didn't really expect her to take him up on the offer, much less cut herself the huge unladylike portion of the slightly melted cake that she did.

She pointed at the slightly distorted "A" on his slice, the only part of the lettering still legible. Neither of them could really tell whether it was supposed to be the one in "Happy", the one in "Birthday" or the one in his name. "Extra icing for the birthday boy, right?"

"I don't think I'm the birthday boy anymore since my birthday was yesterday." Ash rolled his eyes. "Besides, your piece has way more icing than mine."

In response, she simply swiped a finger across the top of his piece, and stuck the heavily coated digit into her mouth. "No," she chortled around her knuckle. "Now it has way more icing than yours."

He wanted to pay her back in kind but his gloves were still on. Luckily, he still had his pikapal to back him up. The little yellow rodent shot up the back of her chair, leapt and snatched a fist-sized hunk of the gooey cake from the plate in Misty's hand, and hit the floor running. Ash laughed, of course, and though she pulled a considerable frown at first, eventually she started laughing too.

He ate only a bit of the cake. It tasted really good, but it was hard to muscle it down. He'd felt pretty queasy since waking up this morning, actually, and the sugary confection wasn't making things any better. Misty simply wolfed hers down with spare compliments to it's taste, and singular intent. Somehow Ash ended up being the one with chocolate on his face when it was all said and done, though.

"So where are you off to next, Ash?" Misty asked, taking his plate and tucking her own beneath it, before tossing the lot of it in a bin.

He shrugged wiping his face with the back of one glove, then wiping his glove on the back of his pants. He hadn't really thought about it expressly. To him, simply going away from Vermillion had seemed like the ultimate goal. "Saffron?" That was as good as any option open to him, and a next logical choice.

Misty nodded, then shuddered a little, remembering the terrible mess they'd all gotten caught up in with Sabrina. "You remember the Pokemon Tower?"

Ash shrugged. His memories of that place were understandably different than hers, but it seemed like a decent opportunity to seem untroubled and casual about something that had scared her when they were little, so he feigned ignorance. "Sort of. I hear they've turned it into a radio tower, now, though," he explained with overwrought nonchalance.

Misty rolled her eyes, wise to his ploy, but said nothing.

It was getting to be time to go, though, both of them eager to get back into the swing of things in their own way, Ash especially so. She gave him a slap on his back, and sent him out ahead of her as they walked back toward the lobby.

Misty could've done without hitting her sisters in the entryway, honestly, since the moment the saw him, they were all over Ash like a cheap suit, pawing at his hair and pinching his arms at the bicep, in a shamelessly apparent effort to draw her ire.

"Hey loverboy," Violet and Lily called, right off the bat, drawing a snarl. She hadn't said anything about Ash being here this morning, so now of course she was going to be hearing about this "tryst" for the next week.

"So rugged and handsome," Daisy cooed, leering at Misty the entire time she caressed Ash's close-cropped head.

"And look at this-" Violet had begun singsong, but quickly frowned and glared at Ash when she brushed a hand flirtatiously across his midsection, then felt what was really under there. "Okay, like, what's your secret?

Misty was sure her face was scarlet when Lily brazenly lifted his shirt, and traced her finger across his abdomen, but she wasn't sure it was entirely in anger. "Seriously, what do you eat, Ash? I could break change on these abdominals."

"Uh, food?" Ash said rather forthrightly, but Misty quickly overcame all of them with a enraged bark.

"He was just on his way out, and he's in a huge hurry, so stop getting in his way!" She swatted at her sisters hands and jerked Ash, who was thankfully none the wiser to the intricacies of what was happening, right along behind her. Of course, her sisters made catcalls behind her the whole way, but eventually she did make it out to the front step without dying of mortification.

When she turned, Ash was looking down at his stomach, shirt lifted and brow quirked. "Is there something wrong with my belly?"

She tried not to look at the tone and definition that the Corps had left him with, telling herself that there was no reason to be interested anyways. They were just stupid abs. She crossed her arms and frowned, to made it evident how little they impressed her. The heat that lingered in her cheeks told her that the color was not going to leave her face anytime soon, though. Infuriated, she slugged his arm hard, and he thankfully dropped the hem of his shirt to rub at it. "Knock it off," she hissed.

"Knock what off?" Ash complained, letting his pain show before h e had the chance to hide it. "That really hurt!"

"Oh grow up." Misty spat. "You can't take one lousy punch from a girl?"

Ash didn't think the punch was really all that lousy, but there was no way in hell he was gonna say so. Still, his mother had raised him not to hit girls. She'd also raised him to say nothing if he had nothing nice to say, but the fact of that matter was, his mother wasn't here to stop him. "It might be different if it wasn't coming from a great big Kangaskhan-sized girl like you."

Just as he predicted, Misty howled like she was out for blood, but he was already taking flight down the stairs. Her legs were very very long, and she pursued him for a fair clip, but in the end, he was still the faster. He laughed and waved as she fell behind after a few nearly-missed grabs for his jacket. "Seeya around Misty! Thanks for the hat!"

Misty slowly strode to a halt, and Pikachu made a wide curve around her from the rear, "Pikachupii"-ing his own farewell. In spite of her flaccid anger, for some reason she was waving.

When thoughts of toned, cut musculature crept into her head, though, she spun on a dime and stomped back to the gym. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she ranted the whole way.

---

"Saffron?"

Lance crossed his arms. "Is there a problem?"

"You want us to look for an unknown terrorist in the middle of the largest city in Kanto?" Holiday asked, eyes narrowing in a strange mixture of distaste, and if Doc wasn't mistaken, satisfaction.

They were sitting in the back of Lance's stately limo, all frowning at one another. Lance because he was annoyed, Doc because he was worried and Holiday, because he liked to frown.

It didn't seem to bother him at all that Lance was the foremost leader in all of mainland Kanto. In fact, it seemed to make heckling the man all the more enjoyable to Holiday. He'd spent the last half hour doing it, after all, and it seemed as though if Lance didn't kick him out soon, he would really go on a tear.

"I want you to dredge up any PLF, or Team-related activity here, using any means you believe reasonable." The Champion explained, tone growing uneven.

"I assume going around asking people on the street whether they've read any good separatist propaganda pamphlets lately is out of the question." Holiday drawled.

"Strictly." Lance advised, now seeming to be unable to look directly at Holiday, lest he boil over.

Holiday smacked his lips. "Any leads?"

Lance, in perhaps the closest thing to an outright insult he'd ever given in his career, rolled his eyes. "If I had any leads in Saffron, I would hardly require assistance from Cipher to pursue them."

Holiday seemed not to hear the rebuke. "Okay, so city of three million. Maybe one guy-who's evidently eluded detection from the people who have the most motivation and funding to find him-hiding out among them. Then again, maybe he's not here at all. That's what you're telling me?"

Lance, now brusquely dismissive, popped open the car door, and gestured for Holiday to exit. "You see why I cannot afford to devote any more of my time to the task."

Holiday didn't budge at first. Instead, he just smiled, and Doc expected a big row to get started. With a snort of derision and a jut of his chin, however, Holiday slid noisily out of the plush leather seat, and Doc tried to send a pleading look Lance's way as he followed, as if to say I'm not really with this guy, we just work together. Lance already had fingers pressed firmly to the bridge of his nose, eyes squinted in what looked like the beginnings of a migraine, though.

When they stepped out, the limousine wasted no time at all in departing. In fact, it seemed to make a definite attempt to sideswipe the taller, more annoying of the two admin as it left. Holiday only dug in his ear with a fingertip and looked around, as if he were already hot on the trail of the elusive terrorist.

"So what do you think?" Doc asked, measuringly.

"Shh." Holiday made a sinching gesture toward Doc's face, and continued to look for something, only further reinforcing the impression that he was onto some holmsian trail of auditory clues. Doc waited for some explanation, but instead Holiday asked him a question.

"Do you know why we're here, if all the real leads are in Johto?"

"Johto?"

"Yeah, apparently, there was an eyewitness sighting of the man himself in Goldenrod, just two days ago."

"Ghetsis Harmonia?!"

"Tippy top of the league's most wanted."

"So why are we here, if he wants us to root out the PLF?"

"I asked you first."

Doc considered the possibilities for a moment, and then answered with a frown. "He doesn't want us to root out the PLF."

Holiday snapped gloved fingers; a dull sound. "Got it in one. You and I, my close-cropped friend, are on a snipe-hunt."

"Why?" Doc queried, bewildered, but Holiday again held up a finger to silence him.

A pregnant silence passed, with Holiday once more glancing around cautiously.

When he finally spoke, it was in a rapid deluge. "He zeroed in on us at Cape Cerulean, busted into sales records for that boat we rented, and backtracked it to my credit card. Of course he couldn't really get anything out of that lead, since it's under a fake name, but, it did mean he could follow us from the purchases we made, and he did, right up until we split at Vermillion. He apparently put a tail on you, but he lost track of me, and you never panned out into anything threatening, so he just let it go."

Doc gave his partner a bewildered look.

"He was intending to contract outside help in order to look for Ghetsis, because league involvement would automatically mean league interest, in the eyes of the media. Better to seem like the issue was beneath their notice, than make that investiture. When he sought private investigators from Cipher and we showed up, though, everything came full circle. Now he doesn't know who he's dealing with. Before he thought we were involved with team Rocket, or some old Plasma syndication, but now he's not sure. Doesn't know whose side we are on. He figures it will be better to put us on a wild zangoose-chase here, so that he knows what we're up to at least, while he gets someone from the g-men to look into Goldenrod."

Doc, now plainly confounded, grabbed his partner by the arm. "How do you know all that? Did he say something in the car, that I missed?"

Doc wondered if there had been some element of innuendo in Holiday and Lance's byplay that he'd been oblivious to, or if Holiday was one of those people who could tell your whole life story from a glance. That would certainly have explained some things. He'd been with Holiday the entire time since they'd landed, so it wasn't like he and Lance could have had a private conversation without him

Holiday, however, only favored him with a piteous look, as if to say he was slow on uptake, and tilted his head to one side, indicating the tiny earpiece in his ear. "You'd be surprised at the things people say when they think nobody can hear. I bugged his limo right before we got out. Slid the reciever down into the seat cushions while he was looking the other way to keep from punching me in the face. He just explained everything to some guy named Will. The driver, I'm guessing."

"Ah, so you were just being a dick to distract him."

"No, I was doing that because I'm a dick, but it's six of one, half dozen of the other."

"Oh. So, what, then, you're gonna keep track of where he goes, now?"

"Nah. This is Champion Lance we're talking about. He'll find that bug before it-" Holiday suddenly winced, a shrill noise exploding into his earpiece before so loudly that even Doc could hear it. Swearing, Holiday pried the tiny button-like device out of his ear and tossed it to the ground.

Doc watched him step on it, with a small chuckle. "Think he was mad?"

Holiday snorted, quite pleased with himself despite the temporary deafness. "Real mad," he responded, just a bit too loudly.

Holiday nodded in the direction of downtown, and Doc followed, folding his hands behind his head. He had a fair amount of respect for Lance, unlike Holiday, but it was a bit relieving to be out of his presence. Lance was an old associate of Bruno's and Doc still felt a bitter tightness in his throat whenever he thought of his old sensei. "So what are we gonna do, if Lance just dumped us here to waste our time?"

Holiday shrugged. Honestly, he was still steamed over being ripped away from his research at Realgam, but that was a matter for which Kazuo was responsible, and the man was competent enough, whatever else he was. Plus, the CEO already conceded that he would need be kept under advisement, and would call Holiday when he needed further information or instruction. "Lance expects us to come up empty-handed. Why disappoint him? No sense in working ourselves to the bone trying to find something that isn't there. Let's go stir up some trouble."

"What about Ash?" Doc asked, cutting through the prospect of fun and enjoyment with a reminder of their other task. "Boss said we're still supposed to keep track of him. Lure him away from training." An unspoken statement in Docs eyes said that he clearly still held a lot of reservations about Ash Ketchum. "And there's still that other shit we talked about."

Holiday shrugged, and produced a small aerosol from his backpack and sprayed himself down with it. "Whipped up a new batch of this. Put some on." From the sinus-irritating smell, Doc presumed it was Max-Repel, as he begrudgingly applied some. "For now, all I'm worried about is that Pikachu of his. We'll focus down the other shit later." He glanced down at his transceiver, and poked at it a few times. "Sat-tracker says he's close to town. He can come too, I guess." Holiday shrugged.

"Too? What, he's just gonna pal around with us, instead of training pokemon? That's your big plan for throwing him off course?"

Holiday put a soothing hand on Doc's shoulder. "Come on, bro! Off the top of your head, what is my greatest ability?"

Doc couldn't resist. "Poor taste in clothing."

"Impeccable, was the word you were looking for-and no, the other ability is the one I was talking about."

"Being an impossibly huge douche-bag."

"The other other one."

"Eating. Napping?" Doc ventured. "Stop me if I get it right: Whining. No?"

"Being a bad influence! Being a bad influence is like, my super-power, man." Holiday finally snapped.

Doc thought about it. It sortof was true. All he really had to do was look at his own life, to say that was a strong talent in Holiday's repertoire. He made an appreciative face, and nodded his acceptance of the assertion.

"Now C'mon. Lets find a place to crash. I still need to sleep off this jet-lag." He insisted, before a buzz on his wrist gave him pause to look down at an incoming text message on his cross-transceiver.

New Message: oi holly its roxie. this is this still ur mobile number right cunt? show tomorrow in lavender. kanto tour. be there yeah?

Holiday barked with laughter. That would do nicely for a means of entertaining themselves.

Be there, he snapped back.

---

Ash bent over and braced himself, hands to knees. The trip had gone well, not even taking as long as he might've expected, but he was still absolutely exhausted from the road by the time they made it into Saffron proper. He took the chance to sit down, granted by a street corner bench, and shrugged off his backpack. taking off the straps felt like digging meat cleavers out of his shoulders.. He tried to rub the soreness out, and it did dull a bit, but it just wouldn't leave.

Pikachu leaping up into his lap, did turn his frown into a smile, though.

"I'm alright. Just a little worn out," he assured, as Pikachu trilled his concerns.

Pikachu harped on anyways. "Pikapi pii pikachu!"

Ash guessed he could understand the worry. He'd lost his balance and fallen a while ago-not that odd, really, given his track-history-until you considered that he'd been motionless at the time, simply reaching out to point towards their wayward destination. as it crested the hilltop before them. He'd tried to be more careful with his footing, as they went on, though it was more out of embarrassment than anything.

"I'm alright, really," he said, this time with a little more conviction.

Pikachu's ears lowered for a moment with concern, but then the tiny yellow rodent scrambled out of his lap and around his side under one arm before he could react, to dig around in his backpack. He went to turn, but a sudden crick in his neck stopped him cold. He could feel Pikachu rummaging around, the bulge of the backpack contorting on the bench beside him, but it wasn't until Pikachu scampered back around in front of him, holding the item he'd been burrowing for, that Ash realized what he'd been after.

The huge hunk of cake, now a melted glob of sugary homogenized confection, held together by many layers of shrink-wrap was offered by tiny hands for his consideration. The sight of it triggered two simultaneous, and incongruous reactions.

Mentally, he realized that he hadn't eaten in a full day, the last bite he'd endured being of the same cake during his impromptu birthday ceremony. It had been very good, actually, in spite of how poorly it had kept.

Physically, though, he was consummately repulsed. His stomach turned over like he was falling, and his mouth watered in quite the opposite of anticipation. He swallowed and reflexively looked away, pushing the offering down gently.

"I'm not hungry," he declared with surety.

Pikachu softly chuued in sympathy, and perhaps a bit of disappointment.

Ash, feeling like he had to pull himself together, as much for Pikachu's sake as for his own, stuck the wad of cake back into his pack and threw the thing back on with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He was careful about getting back to his feet, so as not to upset his partner any further with another incidental stumble, and nodded down the street, indicating that Pikachu should lead. He vaguely remembered where the Saffron City Gym was, and he didn't want to delay any longer.

Valiantly, he made it six blocks before changing his mind. The sight of a Pokemon Center rearing around the corner, and the alternative prospect of eight more blocks of dense, loud and cramped inner-city travel softened his resolve.

He checked himself into a Pokemon Center at three in the afternoon, dropped his backpack as soon as he was in the door to his room, flopped onto the bed and fell asleep with his shoes and jacket still on by three ten, with Pikachu curled onto his back.

He woke up sweating and thirsty from a confusing dream that he forgot as soon as he opened his eyes, twelve hours later. He kicked off his shoes, clawed his way out of his soaked hoodie and jeans, pushed away the bedclothes, even shrugged away Pikachu's uncomfortable heat. Too tired to get up, he ignored his thirst as a minor discomfort, and fell back into an exhausted unconsciousness.

At four in the afternoon the next day, he woke up to the sound of his 6AM phone alarm still going off, and he was trembling and dizzy when he tried to sit up, but his determination, fresh from more than twenty four hours of bedrest managed to get him into the bathroom where he took a cup of water, drank half of it, then threw the rest into his face.

He realized, as he looked up at his own dripping countenance, that he felt like burnt out buildings looked, but that he had to make his reflection look normal at least. He owed this gym battle to Pikachu and the rest of his pokemon, and he wasn't about to let some stupid flu, or whatever the heck this was stop him. He rubbed the fatigue out of his eyes, and tried to massage the pained look on his face into a more relaxed shape. He kept at it for nearly a half hour.

It was like trying to build a sandcastle at high tide, his efforts washed away by waves of discomfort and drowsiness, but he kept at it, until eventually he looked something like what a human was supposed to, and emerged.

He put on his clothes carefully and gingerly, strapping on his backpack which felt somewhat lighter than it had yesterday, thankfully. He collected Pikachu, who was still sleeping and looked as though he'd been catching up from a pretty restless night with Ash's tossing and turning, for at least as long as he'd been in the bathroom and allowed the poor pokemon to have the bed to himself.

His best friend didn't hesitate to hop to, when it was time to go, however. Together the pair made their way back into the lobby, where Ash' turned in the key to his room. He hesitated at the desk, though, thinking back on his Corps training.

He was it awful shape, and he knew it. All the brave faces and reassuring smiles he could give wouldn't make nearly as much difference as he would've liked to believe. That said, this battle with Sabrina was important, and he couldn't put it off.

He had to make sure they could go into this fight with the best possible circumstances and advantages in order secure a win, but he was not the only one stepping into this conflict. Truthfully, his role, though integral, was relatively minor in terms of the total picture.

I am not the ship, but only it's captain.

He turned back to the counter, and addressed Nurse Joy. "I'd like to use the Pokemon Storage System, please."

She directed him to the Kiosk with a smile, and helped him set up the transfers that he wanted. He tried to withdraw pokemon well suited to the upcoming battle, and retain those that would have their own unique advantages.

He tried not to take forever deciding, but after a time he concluded it would be best to place Tauros and Snorlax in reserves. He could use them in other fights, and they weren't especially well suited to face off against Sabrina's pokemon.

In their place, he withdrew Totodile and Torterra, both of whom, aside from being tenacious battlers, had nasty Bite attacks that would be very useful against Sabrina's team.

It was tough to swap out Bulbasaur, especially since the little powerhouse had saved his hide so many times in the Corps, but there was another pokemon who's strong type match up would be of greater benefit to the team, and space was at a premium. Heracross, with whom he hadn't battled with in a long time was a welcome addition to the team, in Bulbasaur's place.

Charizard, he decided, he would keep for a little longer, before sending him back to his training in Charrific Valley. He might need the dragon in this battle, after all. If he couldn't win with strategy and type advantage, he was sure that Charizard's brute strength would get him out of a bind.

Psyduck, he was stuck with for better or worse, but there remained the possibility that this battle would be a good proving ground for the goofy water-type, and a chance for his repressed psychic abilities to be put to the test. He wouldn't deny Psyduck that opportunity, if it came.

Pikachu, of course, wasn't going anywhere.

He withdrew the new pokeballs from the receptacle and clipped them onto his belt. Feeling somewhat renewed by the cathartic nature of the process, he smiled wanly, and departed, quite intent.

The trip did not come as hard as it had the day previous, though it did still drain him. He stood before the strangely umbrella-shaped stadium, thoughts focused, even if his body wasn't so cooperative and willing, and with Pikachu by his side, he felt like he could do anything.

He hadn't expected to find himself in this situation, but then life was full of the unexpected. He pushed open the doors, and went inside.

Sabrina's life, however, was not full of the unexpected. On the contrary, things usually happened just the way she expected them to, to the letter. Therefore, it was not even remotely surprising for her to see Ash Ketchum come through the doors to her Gym. She'd been there to meet him, after all. Ash, perhaps was a bit surprised to see her waiting for him there, just inside, and certainly seemed so when she snagged his elbow and turned him directly about, but to her, it was all certainty.

"Supper," she said, walking straight beside him, without so much as a glance into his eyes. In fact, she barely regarded him at all.

She didn't need to. She knew what that expression of confusion and growing irritation looked like, and not simply because she remembered him as a boy five years younger. She knew without seeing the sag of his arms or the painful rigidity of his back that he was desperately tired and worn, yet ultimately too full of hope and ambition and hunger to rest. She felt it all, knew it all, because it had always been laid out that way in her mind. This moment, this very moment, and all of it's intricacies had always been waiting for her. She'd had her entire life to contemplate it, so she didn't need to soak in further detail, now.

"I-but-I-well-I'm not really all that hungry-" Ash began to protest, but then his stomach snarled something fierce. His feeling of nausea the previous day had lessened somewhat, and he felt hungry for the first time in several. "-Oh." He still felt a little green, but apparently his stomach was raring to go again. All the same, he was here for a reason! He dug his heels in, and Sabrina did stop, but not to turn around.

"You're here for a Marsh Badge. I know," she offered quietly to the air, still not regarding him at all.

She closed her eyes. Ash believed he had one goal only, but everything else would have to fall into place too-and it would, regardless of what either of them did. Yet, she realized that she needed to spare him that brief acknowledgment, if only to make it easier to understand. For him, this was all chance, all sudden, all confusing, she forced herself to remember. For him, this moment was just like any other, his course unclear and her goals, certainly nebulous at best.

"I knew you would be here," She allowed, turning slightly to glance at him for the first time. Her hair fell in a curtain-like shroud across her cheek, with only the slightest red glimmer behind it to suggest she was seeing him at all.

Ash didn't think that was so amazing a prediction, so he pointed back toward the gym. "Sure, so lets batt-"

"You're not ready yet," she offered simply. "We need to talk first."

If he wasn't so baffled by the statement he might've been angry enough to protest when she indicated for him to carry on in the direction he'd come from. For some reason, perhaps only because he didn't have suitable strength to mount a proper resistance, but more probably because he was suddenly starving, Ash did fall into step beside her, though. Sabrina didn't seem surprised by that, because she wasn't. This was already determined, just so.

Ash just watched her as they went along, trying to keep pace without tripping or stepping on Pikachu who scampered along behind him, unable to do much else.

Sabrina was taller than him, but not so tall as Misty. Slim and almost lanky, in that same way, but with more of wispy and fragile quality than the Cerulean trainer's more athletic aspect. He remembered Sabrina as being to closer to Brock's age when they'd first met, perhaps even older, but even then her peculiarity had made her seem much older in an ominous and sinister way.

Out here, in the sunlight, she seemed bizarrely normal to him, even if it was in the way of a foreigner from some dark land in a strange locale of sunlight and people. She walked with the bearing nearly as tired as his own, and that did belie some element of what he'd remembered, but she did not seem quite as old as Brock, now that he saw her out in the open. An adult, definitely, but only barely. Maybe not so much older than him, even.

She led him down the busy street, her hand tucked into the crux of his elbow, certainly not in the manner of a boy and a girl accompanying one another to a meal, but in the manner of a guide who had become pressed for time. Her manner when they did at last reach the small corner restaurant didn't seem to change any, at least so far as he could tell, but she let his arm go, and allowed him to simply stand beside her as she waited for her turn to take a seat.

Normally, a maitre de or hostess would have led them there, but Sabrina was well enough known in Saffron that nobody bothered trying to lead her anywhere, evidently. Ash imagined, that much like now, she would appear when and where she was needed and not a moment or millimeter to either side of it. When the party in front of them was moved to a table, Sabrina simply moved to the next open booth, and waited for the bus boy to finish wiping under the salt and pepper shakers to seat herself.

Sabrina gestured for Ash to be seated across from her, but he just stood there, slightly bewildered.

She needed to be a little more personable, she realized, with a sigh. It was hard for other people to understand her perspective. People often found it repugnant when she treated them like game pieces, and she supposed she could understand that. She smiled; a rare sight. "Are you feeling well?"

Ash did sit down, but it was still with a frown. "I feel a little-"

"Sick, I know," she finished, unable to stop herself. "Thats alright. You're going to feel better for a while. It will come and go."

Ash felt his brows wiggling, as he was unable to find the right emotion to express to her. "I'm confused."

"I know."

He wanted to slap his own face. This was getting redundant. "Should I just let you talk, then?"

Sabrina sat back in her seat. "No, it's better if we both talk. Is there anything you want to ask me?"

Ash thought about it. She was a psychic right? There most certainly were things he wanted to ask her. "Will I-"

"Yes, definitely," she cut across him, leaving him stunned for a moment. He'd meant to ask an either-or question, but he supposed that answered it in the most general sense. Still, his mind reeled for another big important question.

"If I go-" he began.

"No, but she won't either."

Ash wasn't really sure what that answer meant, but he pressed on. "Should I-" he tried instead.

"Yes, but only on days that start with the letter t." She offered, with a roll of her eyes, which he wasn't quite sure how to take.

Drawing in a breath, he asked the most important question of all. "How-"

"For as long as it takes," the psychic concluded, lending none of the weight he'd imparted the question with to it's answer..

It was Ash's turn to lean back, in appraisal. She stared back just the same, her expression giving away nothing.

"Is there anything else?"

"I'm thinking of one to stump you."

"Ah." Sabrina replied, not bothering to deny the possibility.

After a while of coming up dry, Ash seemed to forget the notion anyways. "So does everything you say come true?"

"It's not really like that. It's more prediction than wish fulfillment." She said, folding her fingers.

"But, I mean, how do you do it?"

"A psychic reads certain energies to make accurate predictions. Aura, among others. Anybody can read the words printed on a page, Ash. I do no differently."

He nodded his head to make it seem like he understood. That didn't really seem to compute, though. At least, not any more than what he'd said. Aura was definitely a thing, he'd accepted that much, but he didn't see as how anyone could predict things from it. "I don't think I could do it."

Sabrina shrugged. "Not true. In fact, a great reserve of aura, like that which you have, might indicate an innate psychic ability." She seemed to consider him for a moment, and he almost laughed.

Him? A psychic? He shrugged back at her, deciding to roll with it. " Might? Wouldn't you just know, like, automatically, being psychic and all?"

She laid her hands on the table, one over another, and looked directly at him for a long second, which made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He would have been highly skeptical, had he not already been made crucially aware of Sabrina's true psychic ability first-hand, and though he didn't get any directly unsettling feelings from her look, it was difficult to look unbothered in the path of a stare which he knew was penetrating him to the core.

"You're a very powerful individual, Ash." She said, after a moment, her wide-eyed, empty stare becoming a look of demure reservation once more. "There's a lot about about you that even you don't know, or understand. You are still coming in to your own, and that's to be expected, since that was the point of this journey from the start, and it is not yet complete, correct?" She turned her head aside questioningly but apparently the poorly hidden look of certainty on his face was all the confirmation she needed.

"So, I could tell you that something is true about you today, that may be untrue tomorrow. A month ago, you were not the same as you are now, true? Likewise, If I were to say that, 'No, Ash, I do not sense that you are psychic.' I may later have to eat my words. The many ley lines of Aura that intersect with you obscure much, and even my saying so one way or another could have an effect on the eventual outcome. Not until you rein them in, and those ley lines become more substantial will anyone truly know for certain what you are capable of."

"But, I'm not a psychic." He raised an eyebrow, when it seemed like she was going to have to double back on her explanation. "-At least, not at the moment, right?"

She shrugged her shoulders again, and turned down the corners of her mouth, to say that that was more or less the case, but offered, "There is a simple way to find out."

The waiter came by, then, and Sabrina ordered for both of them, unsurprisingly selecting just exactly the items he wanted, down to the particulars, including the extra ketchup for his pokemon partner. He handed his menu over before giving her a small smile and a roll of his eyes, suggesting he was duly impressed.

"How's that?" He asked out loud, turning back to face her.

"Well, just make a prediction." She insisted.

"I will become Pokemon Master." He said, almost instantly, inciting a giggle that sounded rusty with disuse.

"Not like that. Something simple. Something within the next 5 minutes or so." She swatted the air as if to chastise him.

"The milkshake I ordered will be delicious." He said, quite seriously, after a moment of thought, causing Sabrina to let out another soft chuckle, and dysfunctional smile.

"For five Pokedollars it ought to," she managed collecting herself after a moment. "Something based a little more on chance."

" Uh..."Ash racked his brain, and looked around the dining room, but gleaned nothing, even after almost a full minute of searching. "Give me an example."

"Alright." Sabrina cleared her throat, and sat up straight in the booth. "Look through the window behind me."

He leaned over a bit, to look past her shoulder. He could see the street outside, and the Saffron City traffic.

"The next car to pass by will be blue." Sabrina said simply, causing him to look away and to her, for a moment. When he glanced back, sure enough, a blue sedan was passing.

Ash smiled. "Okay. What about the next one?"

"Gray."

It was gray. He nodded. "The next one?"

"Red."

Of course, true to form, her prediction was accurate. He leaned back in his seat, a bit, as their drinks arrived.

"Okay, you try." She commanded. "Then you'll know."

Ash mimicked her posture as best he could. "Alright, I guess." He felt sort of silly. "Should, I like..." He fumbled for the right words, not wanting to seem like he was mocking her. "Close my eyes, or something?"

She smiled kindly, evidently unoffended, which he was thankful for. "If it makes you feel more comfortable. Just go with your gut instinct."

He found that it did make him feel more comfortable, or at least, less uncomfortable, if he did close his eyes. He cupped his hands around the angled glass of his milkshake, and bit the inside of his lip.

"The next car to go by will be..." He searched his mind for an answer, but nothing seemed any more likely. The first color that came to him was yellow, because Pikachu bumped his arm at that moment, but it didn't seem very likely that there would be a yellow car going by.

"Gray." He said, mimicking one of her answers, having noted that gray cars seemed to be very frequent in Saffron. He cracked open one of his eyes to see if her look would suggest whether or not he was right or wrong, but it didn't. He closed it again.

"The next one?" She asked, neutrally.

Hell, why not, he thought, coming back to the color of his Pokemon's fur. "Yellow."

There was a long pause, and just when he was about to open his eyes, she prompted him again. "And the next one?"

He thought frantically for the next few seconds before repeating himself, having drawn a complete blank. "Yellow." He shook his head, scornfully, before opening his eyes. One yellow car would have been pretty rare. Two was just stupid.

Sabrina just looked at him calmly, and smiled. "The first one was Yellow. But not the last two."

He opened his mouth to exclaim that that had been his first thought, but he stopped when he realized that she probably already knew. He just laughed. "Probably not psychic, huh?"

"Probably not. Not today, at least." She said, offering just the smallest smirk.

"Alright," Ash conceded finally, as the food arrived. His milkshake was delicious, so even though he wasn't a psychic per se, he wasn't all that disappointed. Sabrina's "usual" oddly enough turned out to be a hard-boiled egg, which she left in the cup, untouched. "So...what was it that you wanted to talk about."

Sabrina's slight smile faded. From a humanitarian standpoint she'd been hoping that Ash would be the one to open up to her. Logically, she'd known that he wouldn't, of course. This wouldn't be quite the conversation he was hoping to have, she was sure, and it would certainly be a marked departure from the discourse so far. "You're going to have to learn to use your Aura." It wasn't as much command as it was certainty, but he could take it either way.

Ash sucked in a breath, which unfortunately turned out to be mostly burger. After coughing, hacking and slapping the table for several minutes, he finally managed to offer an angry retort. "No," he hissed. "I'm a trainer and that's all."

Sabrina didn't so much as bat an eyelash. "That's just the thing. You're not just a trainer. You're a trainer and something else. It's the something else that I'm chiefly concerned with now."

Ash felt his face contort into a snarl, but then another cough ruined it. He wasn't going to join the Guardians! He had things he needed to do! "I'm going to continue with my journey, and nothing you say is going to stop me."

"I have no doubt you'll try." Sabrina offered, yet her look still spoke volumes as to the truth of the matter.

Ash gripped the edge of the table, teeth bared. She was asking him to lay down his dreams and surrender! He was through being nice about it. If it would settle this matter, then fine, he'd just come right out and say it! "I'll never use Aura again," he swore, and barely able to keep his voice level, "and that's final." His proclamation finished, he slipped back into his seat, and rubbed his eyes. "...I don't even know how I did it the first time."

Sabrina too, eased back into the booth-seat, her point made, and inexorably true no matter what argument Ash intended to level at her. She saw no need to validate his counter by offering riposte. He would swallow his oath. Not presently, perhaps, but on a day not all that distant. Her role was to ensure that his potent Aura would be put to good use when the time came.

"I do," she offered. "I can show you how."

Ash squeezed his eyes shut, absently scratching Pikachu. "I don't care. I'd rather know how not to, honestly."

"I can show you that too." It was a ploy in truth. Teaching him the inverse would insure that the correlating lesson got across just as well. She could work with that. Sabrina let a smile show again, for his sake. He looked up from Pikachu, however slowly, but the expression on his face let her know she had him straight behind the eight ball.

"...Yeah?"

"Yes." Sabrina assured. She didn't need to dangle the idea in front of him. She knew he would accept that offer. "But first, there is something I need from you..."

---

Brock raised both hands in protest at Dawn's impatient hiss of annoyance.

"No, I mean, what is it that you want me to do about it?" he asked quietly, trying not to let the matter escalate into a screaming match. Max was still over in the next room of the pokemon center, after all, and the walls in such places were notoriously thin. He'd gone silent a while ago, his muted groans of misery phasing into the stillness of sleep, but there was the always the possibility he was listening.

Dawn felt like she could have shaken Brock by his collar. She empathized with the fact that Brock had been out all day, and was very tired from a tedious and lengthy chore that had reaped no real personal benefit. His generosity had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but still, this was important-really important! Max was their friend, and letting him suffer this way just seemed cruel.

"Something," she snarled. "Anything."

Brock harrumphed, and considered shutting off the light and dismissing her from his room, but he sighed after a moment of frowning. Honestly, it had been a long day already, and if the coordinator wanted to go to bed thinking he was heartless, then that was just fine with him. That damage he could repair tomorrow after some sleep.

The fact of the matter was that Dawn plainly just didn't understand the situation, and if he just kicked her out of his room then surely she would take the matter into her own hands. Brock was sure that would be the absolute worst result, and thus resigned himself to continuing this argument, conversation, whatever the heck it was, for at least as long as it took Dawn to understand that there was nothing either of them could do for Max, except wait it out, and let him recover all on his own.

"I am open to suggestions," Brock offered, hoping that he could very concisely explain why each of her ideas wouldn't work. He sat up a little against the headboard, laid down the trashy paperback he'd been reading to unwind, and gave her the pretense of his full attention.

Dawn slumped back onto the bedside chair, eyes smoldering, but said nothing for a while, as if she were truly considering how to tackle the problem. When at last she did speak, it was nothing constructive. "Why are you giving me such a hard time, Brock?"

Brock flung his hands up again helplessly. "Its not that, Dawn. It's just, well, what is there to do?" He started ticking off his fingers. "He released Onix, which says to me right there that there was plenty and enough reason, however he feels about it now. Does Max seem like the kind of person who makes snap decisions to you?

"No, he doesn't" He answered for her, impatiently, and then ticked off his next finger. "Onix did in fact leave when he released her. That tells me that this was a two-sided issue, and not just a matter of Max doing something because he was coerced into it by this...guy, whoever he was.

"And lastly, this is a hard, emotional issue for Max, because it's a hard, emotional issue for anyone," he concluded after ticking off his third finger. "Sometimes things in life are painful because they're meant to be and you trying to change things is just-"

"No, no, no, shut up!" Dawn shouted, actually shouted, pulling a pillow off the bed and sending it sailing across the room to clatter noisily against the blinds. "I'm done with everyone feeding me that everything can't be the way you want it bullcrap! Ash was one thing, but this is completely different. Things changed the other day in Azalea! For the better! I'm not going to just sit by and watch all of that come apart! You can if you want! I don't know why you're being such a jerk about this, but if you don't care enough to help Max to help him now, when things are hard, then I don't know why he'd even want to travel with you-"

Brock, who was covering his eyes in consternation and embarrassment, tried to cut back in, but he was repulsed by her aggravated snarl as she snatched up another pillow, this one from behind his head, causing his shoulders to thump against the headboard. She hurled it into his face, and by the time he recovered, she was already marching back out the door.

He groaned and threw on his jeans. "Damnit, Dawn," he hissed, as he got up and followed her, hopping on one foot and pulling at the heel of his left sneaker. He met her in the hallway, just as she was re-emerging from her own room, pack strapped over her shoulder and stride fierce. He blocked her path. She didn't say anything at first, only glared, eyes becoming narrow slits that vented a coal-fire of emotion.

"Just tell me what it is you hope to accomplish."

Dawn's features screwed up briefly. "I don't really know yet," she admitted. "But that's not the point!"

She tried to press past him, but Brock hooked her elbow and spun her about gently. "You can't just go off all half-cocked here and hope to make this better, Dawn. Listen to me for a second."

Dawn shugged him off and stomped both of her feet. "No, I'm done sitting here. I'm just going to go back to Union Cave, find Onix, and catch her myself if that's what it takes to get her back here."

"How does that solve anything? Don't you think that's just going to make things worse?"

"Auugh!" Dawn shrieked, knowing he was right. "I can't just do nothing, Brock. I don't work that way!"

Their argument screeched to a halt as Max joined them in the hallway, emerging from his room, rubbing one eye. He had a look like someone had grabbed him from both ends and wrung him out. Vacant somehow of all those properties he'd seemed so stuffed with just a few days ago. He looked at both of them, sucking in a breath, as though that would help him stand taller, and look a little more normal. Raltz, peaking around the edge of his leg, did the same. "Hey", he offered, pushing his glasses a little further up the bridge of his nose.

"Er, hey." Dawn managed

"Hey bud." Brock mumered, trying not to look clandestine.

"Well?" Max asked, obviously talking to Dawn, but unwilling to make direct eye-contact. They noticed he was bedecked in his traveling gear, even though they'd all conceded to going to bed. "Arent we going?"

Brock groaned. "You heard all that, huh?"

"I'm nearsighted, not hard of hearing." Max said with a sigh. "You don't need to argue with each other. I was going to go on my own after you two fell asleep."

Brock made a face, wondering just how Max had hoped to pull off a twelve hour trip before they woke up and came looking for him, but Dawn let out a little cheer, and grabbed Max by both shoulders before he could ask. "We're gonna bring Onix back together, alright?" she assured.

Max looked at his feet, then looked up at her. He couldn't deny that he was thankful that Dawn was so ardent and optimistic, but, that just wasn't how it was all going to work out. Onix wasn't coming back. She'd jumped on the opportunity to part ways, and things had never quite gotten right between them. There had been understanding, maybe even willingness to cooperate between then, but never friendship.

That wasn't exactly an easy pill to swallow, but he needed to get past it. Max needed pokemon he could count on, and Onix... Well, he just needed to see. Maybe it was a spiteful thing he was doing, but he just needed to go there and see Onix one more time, to know that it wasn't him who was the one who'd failed to meet the grade. He'd done the best he could! How much better could Onix do without him, and why did he feel so terrible when Onix had essentially been the one who'd forced him cut her loose?

Maybe there was a little piece of him that hoped that their split could be on more amicable terms, and that part was truly thankful for Dawn's upbeat attitude, even if it was misguided. That was probably why he didn't contradict her, outright. "Let's go then."

---

Ash felt himself rubbing the back of his neck, once she'd asked for her favor, feeling uneasy. "Shut down the Kanto Radio Tower?" As far as reciprocated favors went, that one seemed fairly extreme.

"Yes." Sabrina replied evenly, feeling a moment of impatience before she remembered that not everything was so obvious to Ash. She decided not to explain, however. "You'll need someone else's help to do it."

That much seemed fairly obvious, since he didn't know the first thing about radio signals, or anything of that sort. He got the feeling that he was being asked to do something that would prove far more difficult than the straightforward request made it seem. He opened his mouth to explain just that, but then closed it again at her expression, realizing that she already understood how clueless he was about how he'd fulfill her request.

"Whose help?" he asked, instead of any of the obvious questions, of which there were many.

Sabrina leaned back in her seat, and if Ash didn't know any better, he might've imagined Sabrina suppressing a shudder. "You already know two of them. A third and somewhat more integral one will come later."

Ash tried to think of people who made him want to shudder. He could tell from the suddenly sympathetic look she gave him that the two which first sprang to mind were certainly the ones she was talking about. When she gave a further piteous glance at him, then over his shoulder, he knew his fate was sealed.

The young trainer swerved in his seat a little to avoid Doc's meaty hand coming down to clap onto his shoulder, but it only put him well into noogie range of Holiday, who was quick to take advantage of Ash's short haircut by grinding gloved knuckles into his vulnerable scalp. "Hows my favorite little turd been? Did you miss me while I was gone?"

"Like hell I would. Get off!" Ash hissed in response. Instead of thrashing to get free, he reached up and grabbed a hold of Holiday's earlobe, twisting viciously in a bid to force the admin to relent.

Doc watched the brutal stalemate go on for many long seconds, each party spitting whispered insults at one another, too stubborn to back down, even as tears were beginning to well in the corners of their eyes. Just when he thought that either Holiday's ear was about to get wrenched off in a gush of blood, or Ash would have permanent furrow worried into his skull, the girl Ash had been sitting with spoke up, drawing a cease-fire.

"I'll leave you to it then," she said, reaching out and setting her hand over the one hand Ash didn't have vice-locked to the side of Holiday's face. She didn't even seem to notice the two others standing there. "I'll be in touch."

Without explanation, she withdrew her gear, popped the uppermost button of her jacket and snapped an incomprehensibly sultry photograph of herself, with smoldering eyes, and angle adjusted for maximum visible cleavage down her casually opened collar. Without asking him what his number was, she sent the picture message and felt his own gear buzz in his pocket. She was a psychic, he realized, she didn't need to know his number to call him.

Ash stammered a response, but Sabrina tucked herself out of booth, and was halfway out the door before he could string two words together. He let go of Holiday's ear and was then relinquished in kind. Unseen behind Ash's back, the admin cradled his purpling ear, and made a silent grimace of anguish, but Ash for his part, didn't even acknowledge the raw streak on the top of his head. Instead, the trainer watched Sabrina go, obviously troubled.

Doc wisely did not comment to either party. Pikachu, oddly, didn't seem to notice the two goons, and went about his business of lapping at the ketchup bottle left unguarded. Holiday, with none of the tact anyone else present possessed, and twice the belligerence, commented without hesitation. "She's cute, I guess. Not a complete dog, at least. I think you're a little too young for her, though."

Ash turned, his irritation plain, though he was confused as well. "Too young for what? What are you talking about?"

Doc, bolstered by his partner, felt it was safe to join in on the ribbing. "He means she wants the D."

"Totally." Holiday high-fived his cohort, while Ash tried to piece that puzzle together.

Once it hit him, Ash blanched, and straightened in his seat. "You guys are gross."

"You're the one she's sending cheesecake to, Ash." Doc countered, finally taking a moment to slide into the booth across from their teenage mark.

"Yeah, old girl red, back in Cerulean? She's gonna be pissed if she finds out," Holiday noted, sliding in beside his hulking companion. He frowned momentarily at the hardboiled egg, before pushing the cup aside, with an extended index finger in plain distaste. Doc, however seemed more than happy with it, and shelled it with rapacity before stuffing it into his mouth.

Ash didn't bother to remark further on the subject, since it was so far outside of the realm of credibility. He'd had enough experience in rising to the bait when someone was obviously trying to provoke him, that he recognize the crack about Misty for what it was. His rivalry with Gary had given him that much, at least. A little age and temperance didn't do much to ease his irritation, but he could still take a little satisfaction from the bluish bruise on Holiday's ear, and that was enough that he didn't need to pop off at the mouth.

"What do you two want?"

Ash was beginning to regard them as a strange sort of malady, to be honest. Like a fever blister that cropped up every so often, and simply had to be coped with until it went away, since any effort to drive them off just seemed to exacerbate the problem. They were like Team Rocket in that way, he supposed-though he hadn't actually seen those three goons in months now. He wondered what they were getting up to. Hopefully bothering someone else, since he certainly didn't need Team Rocket showing up and adding to his problems, with these two still around. Honestly, though, Team Rocket was a more simple problem to deal with, even if their antagonism was more overt. He almost missed them. Almost.

"Oh, nothing much." Doc mused aloud. "Just killing time before the show tonight."

Annoyingly, Holiday didn't even bother to wait for him to inquire the details, which was probably the admin's only real option, since Ash was sure he didn't give a damn either way. "Donphan. Tonight. Mudkip Cellar Theatre," he explained, as though the statement carried great weight. "You're coming, right?"

"No. I've seen a Donphan before, moron. I own one." Ash snorted, trying in vain to finish his burger without further interruption.

"Not a Donphan. Just Donphan. Donphan the band." Doc explained. "Yanno, Donphan." It seemed like this was something he couldn't believe Ash wasn't aware of. In fact the very notion of it seemed distressing to Doc, which Ash assumed was probably due to the fact that Doc always seemed to be the last to know anything about what Holiday was up to, and couldn't believe it was someone else this time. "My bro snagged us all backstage passes."

Not letting on that he had no idea what Doc was talking about, since he knew it would just draw him further in, the young trainer shrugged. "No thanks." Ash muttered around the kaiser roll stuffed in this mouth. "Not interested."

Holiday didn't seem all that bothered, even as Doc gave him a look that conveyed his doubts in the plan. There was still an ace up the lanky admin's sleeve, however. "You know their lead guitarist was runner up against Paul in the Sinnoh League finals, right? Daniel Ichabod Malinois? Danimal the Animal?"

Ash flinched, and sat rigid in his seat. It was only after a few seconds of him bucking in the seat and slapping the table that they realized he was choking again. A huge-handed slap across his back from Doc got him talking and breathing, though it was mostly in breathless insults and dark murmurs.

He wasn't about to deny that he wanted to meet with that person, to learn everything he could about that league finals encounters, but still, he didn't think hanging out with Doc and Holiday on any level that could be considered "social" was a wise idea. That said, it wasn't like he had much choice. Sabrina wanted him to go with them, for whatever reason, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn't going to get a battle out of her until he did.

He massaged his brow with both sets of fingertips and tried to ease away a malingering sense of dread. He managed that much, but the irritation remained.

"Fine."

---

A/N: So there it is. I'm gonna keep steaming through this next bit, which I'm pretty stoked about. I hope everyone will still be here once I get it all finished up!