Thanks, RyuNoRainbow, and caring16… Reviews are the only encouragement I get for this story, and I appreciate you two taking the time every chapter to leave one. ^-^


Gold and N stared blankly at the pokeball, speechless. Silver leaned back nonchalantly against the wreckage of the PokeCenter, giving his friends an I-told-you-so look. They could only shake their heads in reply; this was too much, even for Luffy. Sparky twittered in confusion, looking back and forth between the two.

"I was going to get out, Gold! You didn't have to do that," Luffy grumbled after a while. "Now James is stuck somewhere in there…"

N blinked, running his tongue over his dried lips. "How could you not have had time to save James, but still be able to rescue your Cebi thing?"

Luffy shrugged, hugging Cebi tighter. She was in much the same position as she'd been in when the ball cracked open; squished against Luffy's red vest in an attempt to protect her from crashing debris. She occasionally let out an indignant shriek that was quickly becoming tiresome.

"Can you please let go of Cebi?" Gold asked, already sick of the noise. Luffy shook his head. "Please?" Another 'no'. "All right, then. Why won't you?"

"I can't." The rubber boy spread his arms wide, revealing that his pokemon was fused to his vest.

"In the name of Arceus…" Two boys face-palmed, while the third simply shook his head.

Looking around at his friends with a wide grin, Luffy finally noticed the rigid figures of the pokemon behind them. "Wait… what are you guys doing?"

His question was met with silence. Each little nakama stood motionless, unable to recognize the creature that looked so familiar. He reminded them of someone they once knew, but it couldn't be him. The creature they knew hadn't had a giant green bug attached to his stomach…

As they struggled with conflicting emotions, Luffy stupidly picked up Hypo and hugged him tight. "Hey there, little buddy!" Two seconds later, the Chikorita's leaf blade was pressed against his throat. "What… hey, stop!"

"Think we should help him?" N muttered as a full-scale scuffle broke out between the former partners.

"Nah. If he faints, we can always take him to a PokeCenter."

"And when he wakes up…?"

Gold blanched, his head unconsciously turning to glance at the smoldering rubble of the last PokeCenter the team had visited. "…Let's help him now."

N nodded, staying behind to think on the seemingly hopeless situation as his friends crept up on the flailing pokemon. If only he had James… And if only all the other pokemon hadn't come to this! What could they possibly do without their partners? How would Luffy become King of the Pokeman?

"Flaaaa~ff." The boy whirled around to see a confused Flaafy stumbling around in the grass with the trainers' brainwashed pokemon. Her dull black eyes glistening with sudden light, she perked up and focused intently on the raven-haired boy in the baseball cap a few meters away. At once, with a joyful cry, she leapt at him, bowling Gold over with an electricity-charged hug.

"Is that… Gold's Mareep?" Silver asked, looking away briefly from Luffy and Hypo to apply a Parlyz Heal to his shaking trainer nakama. A fierce tail wag from the Flaafy was enough to convince him, and he glanced back at the other pokemon thoughtfully while Luffy shot off down Route 30, Hypo hot on his heels. "Hey, N… if Sparky recognized Gold after she evolved, do you think it would work for the others, too?"

Gold struggled to sit up, glaring at the redhead. "No way you're getting Cinders to evolve! He's staying a Quilava forever!"

"He may have to do it," N sighed, disappointed with the fallout of the Luffy Hunt. "It certainly sounds reasonable, and it may be our only way. However…" Sparky rubbed against him then, and his hair stood straight up, charged with electricity. "How… ever…"

"N!" Silver ran to his friend's side, reaching for another Parlyz Heal. As he poured it onto N's smoking head, he watched Gold's wool pokemon trot off to burn down a tree with Thundershock out of the corner of his eye. Maybe Flaafy was a little too dangerous to be out and about at the moment… "Sparky! Come back!"

The instant the normal pokeball snapped shut, ten pairs of pokemon eyes locked on the redhead, all glowing dark purple. "Kill it, Murkrow," Kim hissed, goading the others into ready stances, prepared for battle. Silver shuddered. Apparently Luffy's bird remembered some things. Proton must have left deep, terrible memories in her heart through his training methods for her to remember only that phrase… But Kim would have to evolve before she would remember the good things, too. How was Silver going to manage it?

He bit his lip, backing away from the pokemon with his head down. If he didn't show any intentions of fighting them, maybe they would go back to fighting and evolve using experience points gained from defeating each other… After a period of silence, he looked up nervously. Only Cinders and Toto were still advancing on him steadily, their thin mouths twisted into sinister grins.

The redhead ran then, dropping the pokeball in his panic and darting down the path to the PokeMart. He could hear the heavy breathing of his pursuers not too far behind, which spurred him onward; away from his friends. Gold was calling after him, but he ignored it and ran even harder. At last he stood in a dead end; defenseless against the pokemon loping behind him.

"I'm your trainer, Toto," he whispered frantically. "Come on, you can't…" As the Croconaw kept approaching, Silver was struck by the wrongness of the situation. "Please evolve… I know if you were normal, you would be hurt more than me if you attacked…"

Her purple eyes narrowed into slits as the brainwashing struggled to maintain control, but the color was already changing back to bright red. A gentle glow washed over the Croconaw, and her trainer looked on breathlessly as a new form took shape. "Toto…"

"Ferr-aaaa~!" A seven-foot creature towered over him, slightly crowded in the narrow alley. "Rawr?" She leaned over to let Silver rub her glistening snout, then turned, alert to the nearing threat.

Cinders had slowed down upon seeing Toto's evolution, but he was still bent on destroying the human who had broken the Mareep's hypnotism. The redhead had seemed somewhat trustworthy at first, but the betrayal had revealed him to be evil, as all humans are… The Quilava had hoped it was only the old man in the scary 'lab' place, but this boy had confirmed his fears by subjecting an innocent sheep to the tortures of remembering its cruel trainer! Trainers are people, and people do nothing but lie to pokemon…

"Grrrrrr… QUILL!" He feints for the Feraligatr's leg while sending a Swift at its head, calculating the distance his attack needs to travel and adjusting the force behind it accordingly. Jumping back, he watches it land square in the center of his opponents face in a critical hit. "La-la-lava!"

The deceitful redhead gazes down at Cinders with a wounded look in his eyes. "You hit Toto! She's your friend… Why would you do that?!" The Quilava only hisses in response. Trainers that pretended to care for their pokemon are even worse than ones who don't; they are easier to fall for, and they have far less compassion than what they initially show.

"Please, listen to me, Cinders. I know you probably don't remember us, but surely you feel there's something wrong with hurting friends?" Cinders nods slowly. He must be careful in his responses, for he doesn't know what the boy is leading up to. At least the battle has paused… Now Cinders doesn't have to think of a way to attack Redhead while fighting a losing battle.

"…Okay. You don't like me for some reason?" Nod. "Why?" Cinders starts to shrug, but then, "Wait, you can't answer that… Is it because of the pokeball Gold caught you with?" What is a Gold? The Quilava frowns. It sounds terribly familiar, but he can't think why. He shrugs uneasily. What pokeball is he talking about, anyway? He hasn't been caught by a pokeball… He's in the same pokeball as he was when Professor Old Guy gave him to… to…

"Qui? Qui…"

Silver shuddered, looking down at the pokemon he nearly had to knock out. Why had Cinders recovered he self-awareness? Had it been something he said? "A-are you okay, buddy? You wanna play with this Soothe Bell?"

As the Quilava rolled around in the alley with the plaything, Kim swooped down from above to hover around Silver's head. "Stop that! I'm busy, you stupid bird. If you can't leave me alone, it's off to The Box with you!"

The boy below her shuddered, tears forming in his crimson eyes despite himself. Kim was referencing the abusive treatment she had suffered under Proton… Had all her pleas for attention received this response? She was just like him, then… Dad never paid him any mind, letting a five-year-old Silver wander the fields and run rampant through tall grass; sending him to the PokeCenter when he was beaten up by wild pokemon; blatantly neglecting the child when he was hungry; forcing Silver to grow up in a cold, merciless world.

And Kim had been through the same thing… Silver reached up, holding his arms out to the bird with a pained smile. "It's all right, Kim. I won't send you away, and neither will Luffy… Remember him? He accepted us when no one else did… So come on, and let's go back to Luffy together!"

"K-Kim? It's all right, Kim…?" The Murkrow faltered as she repeated the words, letting herself drop into Silver's embrace. In Luffy's voice, she whispered, "I'm going… to call you… Kim…" Her eyes glimmered bright purple before fading back to red, and they locked onto the ones gazing down at her with concern. "I'm… Kim?"

Silver nodded, crying freely then. Too relieved to care about her use of the first person, he carried the bird back into the city with Cinders and Toto trotting proudly behind. "Oh hey, N. Now, what were you saying about only solving the memory loss with evolution?"

The boy glared at him, rubbing his frazzled hair haughtily. "If someone had let me finish, I would have said that only the trainer can tell their pokemon to evolve… but I see you've figured that out already," he added, glancing at Toto.

"Well, since we have Kim back, let's fly Luffy to Cianwood City," a voice growled from the ground near the trainers. Gold was wrestling Luffy to the ground, and Sparky was holding a crackling Hypo a few meters away. "There's said to be a physician who can heal the craziest illnesses, and if Cebi-connection isn't one, I don't know what is."

Silver nodded. "Sounds like a plan." He scanned the other pokemon, who now all have normal eye color except for Sluggy and Chuck. "I'll take care of those two, and then we'll go!"


Sorry… just, sorry… Motivation was hard to come by, but it's nobody's fault.

Oh, but while I was writing about Toto's evolution, 'Africa' started playing on the radio. And the singer/band's name is Toto… There's your crazy coincidence of the day! ^-^

Oh, and check out the song. It's really good.