"...Arceus damnit, what are we supposed to do!?"

Pound.

He's receiving worried glances from the grunts as well as Rosa and Nate, but he doesn't care. Hilda's been taken for Arceus knows how long, and he's racking his brains out in searching for a way for her to be saved. It's been days since he's slept peacefully, and he's already collapsed of exhaustion numerous times, leaving his physical health status to be questioned. Yellow's tried her best to heal him, but her powers can only do so much for humans, and she's worn herself out with the strain on her body as well.

Hilbert isn't sure what to do. He knows that he has to calm down, and that letting his anger and frustration take ahold of him isn't going to help him in finding a way to get her back, but for some reason, he just can't calm down. He's been told so many times to sleep, but he can only think of her being tortured or something by the enemy, and knowing the idiot, she wouldn't tell anything about them even if it meant she would get hurt. He knows that she's weak, and oh my Arceus, there's a voice inside his head just berating him for his every move!

He doesn't really want to admit it, but he's scared. He knows that he's not a hero, no matter what his title is. Screw this whole Hero of Truth thing, he thinks. He's not even truthful most of the time, which makes the whole title absolutely useless! He's never been able to understand the whole Truth and Ideals thing, and he angrily mats his own hair when he can't figure it out! Maybe their supposed powers could help with the whole usurp of power! But Hilbert's so much of an idiot that he can't even figure such a stupid thing out! He doesn't have the ability to save anyone, let alone be a hero. The whole thought makes him kind of nauseous.

He's a coward.

(And deep inside, he's hoping that he will not be the one to try and save her, no matter how worried about her he is.)

So when the grunts suddenly let out a cry at an intruder, he almost has to drag himself away from the study, where he's spent most of this time. His head is pounding and his face has lost a bit of healthy colour, but he still makes his way towards the cry, although a bit slower than he usually takes. He's extremely surprised, however, when he sees the leader of Old-Plasma in front of him, a determined look on his face, and no weapon on him. He's never talked to Christoph (obviously). In fact, Christoph's left himself completely vulnerable with nothing to defend him and a kind of scared look in his eyes, and Hilbert's wondering why Christoph would ever do something stupid like that; and apparently, actively seek them out when he's the enemy.

"You're the Hero of Truth, right?"

Ah, again, that stupid title.

"Yes."

It's strange, and even though Hilbert wishes for an actual hero to save Hilda, there's still a disappointment yet also a relief rising in him when he realizes that he's not the one. Christoph changes his stance to a bow, kneeling on one leg, but never looking away. In fact, the boy (can he even call him a boy, when the boy is probably at most two years younger than him?) stares directly into his eyes, and Hilbert knows that this boy is going to say something truthful. The boy seems nice and determined, something that Hilbert would respect in different times-

"Y-you may be Hilda's prince, but I'll be her knight."

Oh this boy is really annoying, isn't he, just coming here and calling Hilbert useless!? What kind of insolent moron would say that directly to his face!?

There's a strange sort of pain that gathers in his chest when he replays Christoph- no, wait, Curtis's, words in his mind. The boy is hellbent on saving Hilda, that's for sure; but why? Rosa and Nate, along with Yellow (who was strangely silent for some odd reason as soon as she saw Curtis), were waiting in the captain's headquarters for a meeting with Curtis and Hilbert. Obviously, any plan is good to hear right now, and Curtis claims he has a plan. But by Arceus, Hilbert is racking his brains over why the co-leader of the Revolution would want to help his enemy-

...No, he already knows why. It's easy to see that the boy supposedly "loves" Hilda, or some nonsense like that, even if they've had limited contact at the most. It makes him angry, a bit, that some random stranger who barely even knows her is the one who vows to save her, but not the one who's known her her entire life. In fact, even if Curtis is the one to save Hilda, the only thing that will comfort Hilbert is the fact that Curtis would be the one with the least suspicion of treachery.

(It's not much of a comfort, but it helps somewhat, knowing that the only reason Curtis is able to do so is because he's the leader of the enemy.)

(Yeah, it's doesn't help that much either.)

Either way, Hilbert can barely suppress this feeling of loathing towards the boy, because really, Hilbert's a "hero" for Arceus's sake, even if it's just a hero. The boy across from him right now apparently shares the same sentiment, although Curtis seems to be more able in keeping his emotions in check. Argh, just staring at the boy across from him makes Hilbert angry, and the fact that Curtis actually seems to have a plan and is serious about Hilda makes Hilbert want to grit his teeth and tear something apart.

Oy, if the kid doesn't have a good plan, the kid's going away soon; it doesn't matter if he's nice or any bullshit like that! There is no way in Dimension World that I'm ever going to let this kid save Hilda if he can't think of the best possible plan or some crap like that!

...Hilbert realizes that he may be overreacting a little, but he decides to continue acting like that, to save face.

Curtis seems to steal glances at him a lot during his plan, speaking quickly because apparently he only has an hour or so before he has to return to the castle headquarters. Apparently, he always stays out for an hour starting at three o'clock in the afternoon, so no one suspects him. Hilbert hopes that's true, because despite his dislike of the boy, he still wants Hilda to get out safely. Yancy as well.

It's a simple plan, but effective nonetheless. Curtis says that he'll use one of his Pokemon (a Spiritomb? It looks like it's traded though, and for some reason Curtis kept on staring at Rosa when he was talking about his Pokemon) to infiltrate the dungeons and let the two out. While that's happening, Curtis'll dress up like Hilbert (Hilbert scoffed at this, because seriously, Curtis probably wasn't as good at makeup as he thought) and fight off Hugh while Rosa and Nate would try and leave the castle with Yancy and Hilda in tow. Hilbert would probably be fighting the most in the background, hiding away but still using his Pokemon to make sure that the four would have an escape route.

Hilbert is just a tiny bit angry that he's gotten the least important job to the mission. Curtis, however, smiles at him, saying that without fending off the grunts, the mission would be impossible.

(You little asshole, then why couldn't you fight them off instead, huh!?)

...Yellow seems passive as ever, staring at Curtis, and Hilbert notices belatedly that she seems to be mulling over something.

Once Curtis is done speaking, he looks quickly at everyone, gauging their reactions; he seems to look at Hilbert the most, and Hilbert doesn't really understand why. Still, it's as good a plan as any, and relatively easy to follow through with. Curtis says he knows a hidden route to N's Castle, that would make it easy to infiltrate without being seen. Apparently, there's a new route that wasn't there when Hilda and Hilbert traveled the region, and a summer beach town apparently is where it starts from, making it easy to appear like vacationers.

Even though there are no new vacationers, old ones weren't allowed to leave, so the plan would still work.

However, soon, a loud shout shook Hilbert out of his musings, and soon, Curtis apologized for having to leave so quickly.

While Hilbert was fine with the plan, he had to actually think and plan it out even further, so as peacefully as he could (just maybe having a death grip on Curtis's hand during a goodbye handshake) he bid farewell to the boy. Nate and Rosa seemed to linger a bit as they bid goodbye, and Curtis seemed to as well, but while there was familiarity in Curtis's eyes, there was confusion in Nate and Rosa's.

Yellow stayed silent, but just when Curtis was about to leave, she shouted out.

"Stay safe, Curt!"

Hilbert watched confusedly as Yellow stared at the boy. It appeared that something in Curtis was invoked as well, because suddenly his eyes grew much wider, although his Dragonite took off without his orders. The Dragonite flew off quickly, probably using Extreme Speed (he wondered where Curtis would get it, because that's a talent only Johto Dragonites have), although he could hear some faint words screamed by the boy.

Er, besides the hollering for his Dragonite to slow down, Hilbert could've sworn that the boy had called Yellow "Sis".

Oh.

Oh.

Well, awkward sibling moment aside, Yellow appeared to be fine. In fact, it appeared that she was better than before, so Hilbert guessed that at least the kid was good for something at least.

Not wanting to delve deep into sibling territory, the four of them started discussing about the plan Curtis said they could take. They had to have some communication device of some sort, but it would be easily discovered if someone noticed something weird about the co-leader's room. It might still take a much longer time to free Yancy and Hilda, and even though Hilbert didn't say anything, he was definitely worried about their conditions.

...He hoped that at least Curtis could spare some mercy on Hilda and Yancy.

He probably could.

Yeah, he better have.

A/N

I'm really sorry. I have no excuses. I've...lost kind of where I'm going with this. Yeah. I'll definitely update faster; er, it's just that I've actually been on vacation for the last two months, and, well, I haven't started summer homework at all so I'll have a shitton of homework, but I'll definitely update faster. Er, but I actually don't like this story very much. It's really horribly written, and I've kind of really lost motivation for this, but I'll definitely update faster... I'll definitely rewrite the whole thing again, maybe years later or something, when I'm done with it. (Ah, but hopefully it won't take a year to finish it. I'm kind of rushing this...) Ah, I hope I'll have improved by the time I rewrite this...

And, well, it's kind of obvious, but I'm not really used to writing long stories. I'm strictly a oneshot person on other websites, so that's why everything in this story and my other story seem to jump around and such. I'm not really suited for writing long stories. Er, yeah, so, bye!