A/N: I was away on Wednesday and Thursday so I had naturally planned to upload this on Tuesday. However Microsoft Word crashed for some reason and I ended up losing almost half a chapter. As a result of that I didn't have time to upload it on Tuesday, so I'm uploading it now.

So it eventually turned out that, while he was right by saying that Cynthia's idea wasn't a very good one, Lucian didn't really have an idea of his own on how they should deal with this. Not only did they not know what they should do; they also had no idea where to find Bertha's nephew to begin with, and finding him was obviously the first thing they had to do before doing anything else. While Cynthia and the other members of the Sinnoh Elite Four other than Bertha had never been to Pewter City even once before that day they already got the impression that Pewter City was a pretty big place. It looked like finding anybody there was going to be a rather difficult task, not to mention that the odds Jake had already left the city were pretty high.

"Gee, this sure looks bad." said Aaron at some point as they all sat in the living room and looked at the TV where pictures of Jake and Bertha were still being displayed. It was already evening, and to the relief of Flint as well as himself Melanie had already calmed down. Neither one of the two of them has ever had a problem with fans, even with the crazier and weirder fans, but there was a time and place for everything. Right now there were more important things that needed to be dealt with.

"People like them could really use a hobby." said Lucian with a sigh, referring to the paparazzi photographers. He probably wasn't the first one to say that paparazzi photographers seemed like people who were just bored out of their minds and had nothing better to do than to follow celebrities around and invade their privacy, but that didn't change the fact that he thought it was true. "I'd recommend either reading or pokémon training."

"What I still can't understand," said Cynthia, looking at Jacob, "is why you're friend is acting like this." She looked at the TV for a moment and then back at the young trainer in front of her. "He looks annoyed and even angry in the photos those leeches are showing on TV."

"Well, you can remove the word 'annoyed' now…" said Jacob with a sigh. He knew that, if Jake wasn't already angry, he would be quite angry once he found out that he was on TV and, if he was already angry, that he would be even angrier. One thing Jacob knew for certain was that one of the things Jake appreciated more than anything was being left alone every now and then. So, obviously, appearing on TV as well as being revealed as Bertha's nephew to the public was the complete opposite of that. "He's going to want to strangle me even more than he already does when he finds out about this."

"Can you please turn this thing off already?" asked Bertha eventually with obvious annoyance. This was the first thing she had said to them the entire evening. Melanie, who just happened to be the one holding the remote, immediately turned the TV off. The ground-type user of the Sinnoh Elite Four got up with a sigh, holding a hand to her forehead as she did.

"Where are you going?" asked Cynthia with a confused look. On one hand it was a relief to finally hear Bertha say something but on the other what she had just said wasn't exactly an indication that she was feeling any better.

"I don't know."

"Maybe you should go lay down." suggested Cynthia, "You've had a long and stressful day."

"You can use my room if you want." said Jacob, "Go down this hallway; it's the 2nd door to the right." Cynthia silently thanked him with a nod of her head before offering one of her hands to Bertha and leading her down the hallway.

"You know," said Melanie after they were gone, "I'd love to appear on TV." Everybody looked at her with raised eyebrows and confused expressions, causing her to scratch the back of her head nervously. "Under different circumstances, of course!" she added, realizing that what she had just said was a little tactless.

Jacob sighed and also stood up. "Sitting here isn't going to help us at all." he said, looking at Melanie. "You and I should go outside and look around a little. I mean, I know where most of the inns and hotels in Pewter City are. If Jake hasn't left he might be in one of them."

"Don't you think it's going to take a long time to check every single inn and hotel?" asked Melanie, looking quite reluctant about his idea. "I know there probably isn't one around every single corner, but still…"

"It's the only option we have right now." said Jacob, who also knew that his idea wasn't all that great.

"The three of us can help you out." said Flint, referring to Aaron, Lucian and himself. "If you give us some addresses we can also look. We've seen how he looks like on TV."

"That might not be a very good idea." said Lucian, who seemed to know exactly how Jacob was going to respond. "It will be quite hard for us to look if anybody recognizes us. And even if we do find him, he doesn't know us and probably won't listen to complete strangers."

"Yeah, what he said." said Jacob before looking at Melanie again. "So are you coming? I'll give you some of the addresses I remember and then I'll check the other ones myself."

"Alright." said Melanie, realizing that they didn't really have a better option. "Let's go."

Elsewhere

It had naturally taken Jake quite a while to leave the coffee house with all those people standing around him, asking him questions and blocking his way. It had also taken him quite a while to shake them off after finally leaving the coffee house. Of course, with his luck, that alerted some of those bored-out-of-their-minds paparazzi photographers, and he had to get rid of them as well. Luckily for him the photographers weren't very familiar with the city as he was, and after maneuvering through some alleyways he managed to lose them. In fact he would have been quite surprised had he found out that some paparazzi photographers knew the location of anything other than the houses of the celebrities they were tormenting by not letting them be.

Unfortunately, after getting away from those photographers, he was seen by another one of those ticks. So he had to get rid of that guy as well. Apparently the red jacket he was wearing was kind of a dead giveaway, so he took it off and shoved it into his backpack. It's true that changing from an unzipped red jacket and a white shirt to just a white shirt wasn't a very drastic change, but he managed to get to an inn without being recognized by anybody else. "It's a good thing these guys aren't very smart." he mumbled to himself after entering the room he had rented for the night and locking the door behind him.

He took off his bag and opened it, taking out his jacket and putting it back on. The four pokéballs containing his pokémon were also inside. Up until that moment he kept them all in their pokéballs so that they wouldn't get lost. Now that he was no longer out in the street, however, there was no reason for him to keep them confined inside the pokéballs. After letting them out Jake walked over to the window in his room and looked out into the street. There were mostly just regular people walking around, but every now and then he saw a photographer running around with a camera in his / her hands.

"Ugh, for the love of god…" He facepalmed and shut the window with a loud slam. After staring at the closed window some more he placed down a few plates filled with pokémon food and water. Even though he had fed his pokémon back at the coffee house he wanted to make sure that there would be some food ready for them in case they needed it in the middle of the night. Dratini, who immediately began eating, was soon picked up by his trainer, who looked at him with a smile and chuckled. "Don't you think you eat a little too much?"

"Dra!" The little serpentine dragon squirmed for a few seconds before letting out a yawn and staring at his trainer with his adorable, wide open eyes.

"I don't know whether the fact that you almost eat as much as Charmander, Flareon and Vulpix do combined is cute or just weird…" He couldn't help but chuckle as the baby dragon-type pokémon sneezed. "Well, I guess it's because you're growing up and what not." He gently placed the shiny dragon-type down before raising an eyebrow upon hearing somebody knock on the door. "What?" He walked over to the door and pressed his ear against it, seeing how there was no eyehole in the door.

"Jake, I know you're in here." said Jacob, who was standing on the other side of the door. "Open the door."

Jake sighed and facepalmed. He knew Jacob well enough to know that he wasn't going to leave. He facepalmed once again and unlocked the door, making sure to lock again it after letting Jacob inside. "I hope you're happy with yourself." he said with a frown after having locked the door, sitting down on the bed next to his Dratini and 3 fire-type pokémon. "Now I'm all over the news. I can't even walk on the street without having paparazzi photographers chase me."

"Oh, those pictures are still on TV?" asked Jacob with an expression on surprise on his face. He found it quite awkward that the pictures were still being displayed on that channel. Didn't people have anything better to discuss on a pokémon related channel, like the upcoming next phase of the Sinnoh League? Curious, he took the remote of the small TV that was in the room and turned it on.

Jake facepalmed. "Turn this thing off!"

Jacob, who was quite startled by the way his friend had just raised his voice, nearly ended up dropping the remote. "Sorry." He turned the TV off and put the remote away.

"How did you even find me?" asked Jake, obviously curious.

"I saw you in the street." said Jacob with a shrug. "I recognized your bag from afar."

"So, why are you here?" asked Jake after a short silence, not even bothering to remove his hand from his face.

"Why do you think?" asked Jacob, raising an eyebrow. He knew that his friend wasn't stupid. "You can't expect me to think that you don't know."

Jake sighed, removing his hand from his face so that he could look at Jacob. "I don't care where she is; I'm not coming with you."

"Oh, come on!"

"I have nothing to say to her." he said, as calmly as before, standing up and walking over to the window.

"Nothing to say to her?!" asked Jacob, unable to believe what he was hearing. "How can you say that? You two haven't seen each other for seven years, and now that she's here you're going to just ignore her?"

"Um… Yes?" said Jake bluntly, still looking out into the street. "Didn't I make it obvious enough?"

"You can't be serious! She's desperate to see you! You can't leave her hanging like that!"

Jake turned around upon hearing the word 'hanging'. For a long moment he simply stared at Jacob, who was still looking at him with an expression of shock and disbelief. The tension was so palpable that one could cut it with a knife. "Leave her hanging?" Jake eventually asked. He sounded calm, but it was a rather unnerving sort of calm (kind of like the calm before the storm).

"Uh…" Jacob rubbed the back of his head nervously and then looked at him again. "Yeah?"

"I can't leave her hanging?!" Dratini, who had up until that moment been peacefully chewing on his own tail, let out a startled squeak and buried his head in Flareon's fur. Jacob, who was starting to consider the option of running away as fast as he possibly could without looking back, became even more confused when Jake began laughing.

"What's funny?" asked Jacob (after a very long hesitation).

"I happen to find what you just said to be very ironic." said Jake, ceasing to laugh altogether and looking at Jacob with a blank expression. "Um… So where were we? Oh yeah… Get out."

"No. I'm not leaving."

"You're not?" asked Jake with a fake look of disappointment. "Oh no… Oh well, people don't always get what they want. Especially you. Bye-bye."

"I'm serious."

"Fine." he said, taking his jacket off and shoving it into his backpack again. "I'll leave." He picked Dratini up in his arms and then looked at his other 3 pokémon. "Come, we're leaving."

"Jake, for the love of god!" Not knowing what else to do, Jacob took the door key out of the keyhole to prevent Jake from unlocking it.

"Give me the key."

"No!" For once Jacob was determined to stand his ground more than anything else. "Listen, I understand that you're mad at me for shoving my nose where it doesn't belong but you and Bertha are still a family! So you need to get over it and go talk to her!"

"How am I supposed to get over Bertha running off to Sinnoh?" Jacob, who had obviously expected a different, angrier response, looked slightly surprised. "She was supposed to hear about what had happened, come back a-and take care of me so that we could live happily ever after. Only that it wouldn't have really been 'happily ever after' because, come on, who the hell am I trying to fool?"

Jacob stared at his friend with a look of shock as he sat down on his bed without saying another word. "Wait…" he said, finally putting the pieces together, "So you're not mad at me, you're mad at Bertha."

"Of course I am mad at Bertha!" said Jake with a shaky sigh, holding Dratini close like his life depended on it. "A 10 years old kid is supposed to go to school and socialize with other kids, Jacob, not to work day and night for a living! I just… Things weren't supposed to turn out this way…"

"Um… Can I say something?" asked Jacob after a long silence. Jake silently nodded. "When I first talked to Bertha and mentioned you she thought I was lying. When she first saw a TV report about what happened to your parents and sister it was mentioned that two adults, a girl and a boy were killed."

Jake's expression remained unchanged, but somehow Jacob was able to tell that he was thinking about it. "Oh, yeah… I remember that boy." He sighed. "We used to be classmates."

"Well, um… She thought that the boy who was mentioned on the news was you… She thought you were dead."

"That's cute." said Jake sarcastically. "What about this thing called a funeral? How about a memorial? You know, the annual occasion?"

"Okay, fine."

"What?" asked Jake, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

"You're right." said Jacob with a sigh of defeat, handing the key to his friend. He hadn't imagined that he would end up switching sides, but after finally hearing Jake's reasons for refusing to see his aunt he couldn't help but realize that changing his mind would be impossible (for Jacob, at least). "I'll go tell her that you have no desire to see her and that your decision is final." Regardless of how upset he knew Bertha was he knew that he couldn't force Jake into doing something he didn't want to do, especially when bringing the fact that Jake had a good reason for refusing into consideration. "Do you… do you want me to tell her why?"

Jake, who was still a little surprised, shook his head. "No. If she really doesn't know then I don't see a reason to bother."

"Okay… So what are you planning to do now?"

"I guess I'll spend the night here and try to leave tomorrow." said Jake with a sigh. He was exhausted and, even though he wanted to leave Pewter City as soon as possible, leaving was going to have to wait. "Hopefully I can avoid the paparazzi until this whole thing calms down."

"Would you like it if I came with you?"

"That would be nice."

Later

Jake was just about to finally fall asleep when once again somebody knocked on his door. Thinking that it was Jacob again, he unlocked and opened it without really bothering to ask who was outside. It really was Jacob, like Jake had expected, but why did he come back?

"I'm really sorry." said Jacob, causing his friend to raise an eyebrow.

"…What?"

"She forced me."

"…"

"Alright, that's enough of this nonsense." said Cynthia, who was standing in the hallway. She walked past Jacob and entered the room, getting a blank expression from the sleepy-looking trainer who was in it.

Jake yawned. "Who are you?"

Cynthia, who was used to being recognized by almost anybody as well as unaware of Jake's vast lack of knowledge in the pokémon world (especially when it came to famous trainers like Gym Leaders, etc.), was slightly surprised when the teenager in front of her asked her who she was. "My name is Cynthia. I'm a friend of your aunt." Obviously she hadn't reacted well when Jacob had returned to his house earlier and said that Jake didn't want to see his aunt. A few seconds later Aaron, Flint and Lucian also entered the room, which wasn't very big to begin with.

Jake sighed, realizing that it was time for yet another lecture about what he could, couldn't and should do. "That's lovely." It wasn't too difficult to understand that the 3 men who had just entered the room were also Bertha's friends. "Get out." While he hadn't recognized Cynthia by appearance he did remember hearing her name a couple of times.

"Excuse me?" asked Cynthia, raising an eyebrow.

"Wasn't I clear enough?" asked Jake as he sat down on the bed next to his pokémon. They were all awake with the exception of Dratini who was sound asleep. "I think I was. You're wasting your time. I'm sure Bertha will be just fine. She's been fine for 7 years. Now why don't you all go home and take your stupid photographers with you?"

"Look… Jake, is it?" she asked, not getting a response. Obviously the better option would be to try to do things the easy and calm way. "You seem like a reasonable person to me. I'm sure that this whole problem, whatever it is, can be understood and solved if you just come with us and explain your behavior." Jake let out another sigh and leaned his forehead against his hands. Why did everybody have such a hard time realizing why he was so angry? It wasn't that complicated. Realizing that he wasn't going to say anything, Cynthia continued. "Look, I'll make you a deal. We're both pokémon trainers. Let's have a match. If you win we'll leave you be, and if I win you'll come back with us."

Jake looked up at her with a raised eyebrow and a look of disbelief. She wasn't serious, was she? "You're kidding. You're kidding, right?"

"What?"

"Do you really expect me, a trainer who barely knows anything, to take on a… What are you again? A Gym Leader? An Elite Four member?"

"What are you trying to say?"

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, um, no!"

Cynthia, who was starting to lose her patience as well as to realize that talking things through wasn't going to work, frowned. "Look, I was trying to be nice, but it looks like the only option you're giving us is to drag you over there by force."

"I'm sure that would do for a juicy article about you." said Jake, who knew more than well that she wasn't going to carry out her threat. "After all, it's illegal. Listen, it's really simple." He stood up. "When a person says no, he means no! So no! Do I have to say no in other languages or is English good enough for you?!"

"Look, maybe you two should just calm down…" said Flint, who was noticing that they were both losing their patience.

"And who the hell are you supposed to be? Ronald McDonald?" Jake obviously had no idea who he was talking to, but at this point knowing probably wouldn't have made a difference. "Just leave me be! All of you! I'm sick of this!"

"Fine, you win." said Cynthia with a look of disappointment on her face as the trainer in front of her turned his back on them, waiting for them all to leave. "I never thought anybody related to Bertha could be so thoughtless, but I guess you can't judge things before looking into them."

"Cynthia!" exclaimed Jacob all of a sudden, getting the attention of her and her friends. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" asked Cynthia with a raised eyebrow, "It's true."

"I'm thoughtless?" asked Jake, slowly turning around. There was complete silence for a few seconds. Remember the time I said that Jake had only been really, really angry only a few times in his life? Well, this was one of those times. "I'm thoughtless?! Did Bertha say that?!"

Jacob facepalmed. "Oh boy…" Unlike Jacob, who had seen this coming, the others looked slightly taken aback by the enraged expression on his face.

"Take me to her." he eventually said, after a long pause. He sounded calm all of a sudden, but they could all tell that he wouldn't stay that way for long if they didn't do as they were told. So they all went back to Jacob's house, somehow not encountering any paparazzi on the way. Jacob unlocked the door and they all went inside.

"Where is she?" Jacob pointed in the direction of his room and Jake walked angrily towards the door, followed by his 3 fire-type pokémon (who looked quite worried). "I'm thoughtless? I'll tell her who's thoughtless!"

He opened the door before his expression of anger was replaced by a look of confusion. "What the hell? Is this some kind of a joke?!" he asked, looking at the others.

"What is it?" asked Jacob. He and the others were in the living room so they had no idea what Jake was talking about.

"She's not here."