Pokémon: 19 Deaths: 3

"Do you know what was funniest?" Silver said, munching on one of the muffins he'd stolen out of the kitchen and sitting on the desk chair in Saylee's room backwards. "When that green-haired bitch asked what your favourite subject was at school and you were all 'I liked it when Professor Oak told us about Pokémon' and everyone was just staring like they had no idea what to say. Like they were thinking that you were dumb for not going to school but they didn't want to say it because they're so polite. I hate shit like that. They should just say stuff."

"It would have been rude, Silver," Saylee said, taking the back off a photo frame that Lucy gave her for her photo of herself and Red. "As is calling your aunt a 'green-haired bitch'. I don't think they quite get it. Lucy said that when she was growing up she heard that Kanto was a desolate wasteland with nobody living in it and it's only in the past couple of years that they found out it's not entirely lifeless, so nobody quite knows what to make of it. They don't get that stuff like school and television and radio aren't big things in Kanto like they are here." She clicked the frame into place and glanced over as Silver took a bite and showered crumbs all over the floor of her new room. "Greta's going to have my hide for that. Did you see how fast that woman got to the table when we were done eating? How does she do it? And why are you stealing food from the kitchen? They laid on a huge dinner for us!"

"I don't think eating that many vegetables is right," Silver complained. "Besides, there's food all over the place here, why wouldn't I eat it? They're rich as fuck, they can get more."

"Silver, I did give you a list of words that aren't considered okay to use in normal conversations, didn't I?" Saylee said, setting the photo frame on the bedside table. There wasn't much decoration in the room, aside from some faint marks on the light yellow walls from the adhesive backs of posters. The furniture consisted of a bed with matching yellow bedspread, a bedside table with some drawers, a desk and a wardrobe, all large, heavy old wood pieces that had probably been in the house for a few centuries. All of Saylee's things could fit in the bedside table, but she was trying to spread things around to make the room feel less oversized.

"I don't get it, they're just stupid words," Silver complained. "What's that ugly thing?"

"This?" Saylee held up the tangle of string and mementoes that made up her dreamcatcher. "It's made up of things I've been left, or given… see this spoon in the middle? It belonged to my Kadabra, Alan."

Silver leaned over the back of the desk chair to peer at the spoon. "Didn't your Charizard say he's dead?"

"He is," Saylee agreed, untangling the string to hang the dreamcatcher on the wall from. "I'll never forget him. This coin here belonged to his student, a Drowzee named Daisy. She died in a landslide when she was a Hypno."

"Why do so many Pokémon die around you?" Silver asked.

"Silver," Saylee bit out, gripping the dreamcatcher, "do you ever think that sometimes the things you say might hurt people's feelings?"

"What do I care? You hate me anyway," Silver said, finishing his muffin. "Everyone does."

Saylee stared at him, startled by how blithely he'd said that. "Silver… you piss me off a lot, but I do not and have never hated you. Even when I didn't know you were my little brother."

"Why not?" Silver said, staring. "You just said that I piss you off."

"That's not always a reason to hate someone," Saylee sighed, setting her dreamcatcher down on her lap. "I hate your mother for being violently abusive towards her child. I hate our dad for being abusively neglectful all around and also for being a criminal mastermind who's behind the suffering of countless people and Pokémon. I hate a lot of people who've murdered my Pokémon simply because they could, because we were in the wrong place, because they like to kill. I don't hate people who've killed my Pokémon by accident, who didn't want to…" she fidgeted with the strings on her dreamcatcher, making Daisy's coin and Sabrina's clink together. "You are a damaged little boy who says a lot of mean things as self-defence. I have found you annoying, but never hated you. If I saw any other kid like you, I'd hope someone would try and be there for them to give them a chance to not grow up to be a mean adult. You're my little brother, so I'll try and be there for you."

"Who says I need you?" Silver said, biting into another muffin. "An' 'm on'y y'r h'f-bruffa," he added around a mouthful of muffin.

"Sure," Saylee sighed, scrabbling around at the bottom of her bag for a pin to attach her dreamcatcher to the wall with. "There we go…"

"So what's in that bag?" Silver asked. Saylee looked up in surprise. "Stop looking even dumber than usual and tell me what's in the bag!"

"Magic word?" Saylee asked, poking at the small cloth bag hanging off the bottom of her dreamcatcher.

"Please," Silver said, rolling his eyes and eating more muffin. "Wud iffit?"

"Hold 'em up to your ears," Saylee said, taking the little blue and red fragments out of her bag. "What do you hear?"

"Sea," Silver said, holding up the blue one. "And, I dunno, landslide?" He held up the two stones and stared at them. "These are weird. Where'd you get them?" he threw them back at Saylee. She caught them and put them back into their bag.

"I found them in the Sevii Islands," Saylee explained. "My Kabuto, Kaito, found this cave…"

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"Completely impassable?" Saylee said with dismay over breakfast the next morning.

"It'll be about three months until the path is safe to travel, yes," her grandfather said, not looking up from the news feed that he was reading from his pokegear's holoprojector. "And since the Dragon Clan last changed their ways around the time we learned to work steel, there aren't any teleporters in or out. They deliberately make it as hard as possible to get in, and don't doubt that when you do, you'll have to fight to get anything at all."

"Lucy goes every spring to train," Helen added, doling out pancakes onto their plates.

"They are strong, but I'm an ice trainer and they all train dragons, so I tend to hold my own," Lucy said proudly, accepting her pancakes.

"Three months… I think I'd like to train Gabriel," Saylee commented thoughtfully. "Do you know the best way up to the Lake of Rage?"

"Gabriel?" Helen asked, pouring some syrup onto Silver's pancakes. "What's wrong, dear?" she added when he looked disgusted.

"What is this?" Silver said, dipping a finger in the syrup. "It looks like snot."

"It's sweet, dear, you'll like it," Helen said. "What kind of Pokémon is Gabriel, dear?"

"The Gyarados I caught here," Saylee explained. "The one with the red scales."

"I saw that poor creature in Goldenrod," Pryce said sternly. "He is damaged. He is an out-of-control menace. Far too much power that he has no idea how to use. Are you sure that you can control him?"

"I've trained a Gyarados before, so I know how to handle and train their power," Saylee promised. "The Lake of Rage is his home, so hopefully it'll help him keep calm."

"Or it might freak him out more," Silver grumbled, licking tentatively at the syrup and briefly looking pleasantly surprised before consciously looking disgusted again. "It's where he evolved, stupid."

"That's what this is for," Saylee said, holding up the Lure Ball that she'd captured Gabriel in. "If he panics, I can return him." The rest of her Pokémon were eating in Pryce's cavernous—and freezing—dojo with Silver, Lucy and the rest of the Pryce family's Pokémon, and had slept there the night before as well. Nider and Zeb were the only ones who seemed to mind the cold; Chip and Chaz's internal fires kept them cozy; Tyra and Georgia didn't mind the cold; Gareth, Alec and Mag didn't feel the cold; and Siren, like all of the Pryce Pokémon, was an ice-type and loved it.

"Very good," Pryce said with a nod. "There is a well-marked tourist path to the Lake, it should be no trouble to find."

"I can show you the way there," Lucy offered. "I've heard about this guy, but I'd love to see him!"

"You'd better train on the far side of the lake from where the tourist attractions are, though," Lucy's mother Debbie said. She was a squat woman with short, light-green hair who worked as a teacher at the local high school and was constantly fretting about her students and her children. "Cleanup has been trouble enough for the boys as it is."

"Oh, can I help with that at all?" Saylee asked.

Helen shook her head. "Don't worry, dear. It's nearly done anyway and you're just out of the hospital," she insisted. "You go easy on your training, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Saylee said. Silver sniggered. He'd started scarfing down pancakes and somehow managed to smear syrup on his nose.

"You've got some training to do too, young man," Helen said, handing a napkin to him pointedly. "Your table manners!"

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The public side of the Lake of Rage had been cleaned up quite impressively, and they passed several people and Pokémon at work repairing the speedboats used for water sports. As Saylee, Lucy and Silver walked around the lake, though, they started to pass more and more debris. They had to climb over fallen trees more than once and had to forge entirely new paths through the trees around new pools created by craters filled with rainwater. The most unsettling things were the random items that the raging winds had blown up from Mahogany town. Saylee couldn't help staring at a little pink tricycle half-buried in mud. It reminded Saylee unpleasantly of some of the personal items that could be found in "ghost towns" in Kanto. Lavender was a literal ghost town, but there were others—abandoned towns apparently in the middle of nowhere with not a living human soul in them but personal effects scattered all over the place. Some were probably abandoned during the civil war as the humans in them fled, but others had clearly been left empty later, the human occupants all killed off by some epidemic or hungry Pokémon.

"What're you staring at, you idiot?" Silver said, giving her a push. "C'mon, I wanna see this Gyarados again, he blew the top off the Radio Tower, that was kinda cool."

"I think we're probably good to train here," Lucy said, brushing some moss off of a fallen tree and spreading her jacket on it so she could sit down. "I'll send Sera into the water to tell anything down there to clear out. Don't want to freak out your Gyarados, right?"

"I don't think he's very stable, so that's probably a good idea," Saylee agreed, taking out Gabriel's pokéball. She watched Lucy's Dewgong dive elegantly under the water. A couple of flashes of rainbow light suggested that something below needed to be driven away.

"Show-off," Silver muttered, releasing Tyra. "You're way better than some stupid, girly Dewgong."

"I'm a girl too, squirt," Tyra growled. Mag gave a buzzing laugh at Silver's foul expression.

"Are you going to tell me that knowing your Pokémon's gender makes you weak, now?" Saylee laughed. "Lucy, do you think it's clear now?"

"Clear enough," Lucy said, giving Saylee a thumbs-up. Saylee stepped forwards, trying not to slip on the muddy ground, and released Gabriel into the water.

It was the first time she'd seen him clearly. He was small for a Gyarados, only about eighteen feet long. He roared unintelligibly when he first appeared, but then paused, looking around and sniffing slightly. Then his snarling mouth stretched into a smile, and he sank down into the water, dipping his head into it and humming.

"Gabriel?" Saylee called. "One of the other Magikarp said that your name's Gabriel. It is Gabriel, isn't it?"

"Gabriel," the red giant murmured, pulling his head back out of the water. "That's me. I'm Gabriel."

"I'm Saylee," Saylee said, reaching out a hand to him. Gabriel peered closely at her.

"You're little," he said wonderingly. He looked around. "The trees are so little. They were big before… why are they little now?"

"You're a lot bigger now," Saylee said softly. "You're a Gyarados, Gabriel, do you know?"

"A Gyarados?" Gabriel looked down at himself and roared. "Not blue!"

"You're a very special Gyarados," Saylee said. "But you're not used to being a Gyarados yet, are you?"

"No…" Gabriel looked back at his tail, splashing it in the water. The merest flicking of his tail had enough force to send waves as tall as Saylee splashing at the edge of the lake, nearly knocking Saylee herself over. Silver quickly scrambled up Tyra's back as the water lapped at him. "Look! Waves! I made waves!"

"You're very strong now that you're a Gyarados," Saylee said, still holding her hand out to Gabriel. Despite his deep, booming voice, Gabriel had a childish quality to his speech that unnerved her somewhat, and he seemed slow on the uptake despite having a lot of raw power. "Do you know how to use your power?"

"Power?" Gabriel wriggled his whole body and then roared. Blue fire spat haphazardly from his mouth. Saylee ducked, raising her arms above her head. "Power! Fire! Look!" He swung his head around, randomly spraying blue fire about.

"Make him stop!" Tyra yelled, firing a blast of water at one of the blue fireballs before it hit her. "You idiot! Control him!"

"Stop it, Gabriel!" Saylee yelled. "Gabriel, you have to stop! STOP!"

Gabriel didn't hear her. He was roaring too loudly as he happily spat dragonfire. Saylee raised the Lure Ball and returned him.

"Good job, liar," Silver said sarcastically. "Your Pokémon's retarded. Absolutely mental."

"Silver, be nice," Saylee said automatically. "It's not his fault. He was forced to evolve too soon… he's like a big child who doesn't understand what he's doing."

"A big child with enough power to burn down the whole forest," Lucy said, directing Seraphine to put out some small fires in the trees with jets of water. "He's either going to have to learn to control himself, or not come out of his pokéball. Did you see the waves building up from him flapping his tail? If he gets agitated, he could start tidal waves!"

"I'm going to let him out again and try to keep him calm," Saylee said.

"Well, I'm getting back a few feet," Tyra said, reaching up to check that Silver was secure and then taking several scuttling steps back. Lucy also climbed up the fallen tree trunk a little, sitting on the roots sticking up into the air. Sera dived below the water.

Saylee released Gabriel and stepped back. He reappeared in the water, looking confused.

"I put you in your pokéball," Saylee explained. "I'm going to do that any time you get out of control. You could really hurt someone by shooting your dragonfire around like that."

"Hurt…? I hurt someone?" Gabriel said, looking around frantically.

"No, no, no," Saylee said soothingly. Gabriel set his head down in the mud next to her, looking sad. "It's okay," Saylee said, stroking the crest on his head gently. He closed his eyes and hummed. "Just be careful with your fire, okay?"

"No fire?" Gabriel asked sadly. "I liked fire…"

"You can use your fire," Saylee promised, "but you have to learn to control it so you don't hurt anybody, okay? Do you want to hurt anybody?"

"Wanted to hurt the sound," Gabriel murmured. "The bad sound. It hurt. Wanted to hurt it back."

"You did," Saylee promised, reaching out to pet the dark red crest on his head. "You did. So, you wanted to hurt them, and you hurt them. Did you want to hurt me, or Silver?"

"You don't make the bad sound," Gabriel hummed. "Nice… you're nice. Don't want to hurt you. You're nice."

"You did, though," Saylee said softly. "Back then. You couldn't focus. You couldn't only hurt the sound. You hurt me too, and my friends, because you couldn't control your power."

"I hurt you? Didn't want to hurt you! No, no, no…" Gabriel reared back, shaking his head. "I just wanted to hurt the noise! No… I'm bad…"

"You're not bad, I know you're not, it was an accident!" Saylee yelled. "I'm going to help you, I promise…" Gabriel wasn't listening again, though; he was starting to thrash about in agitation, shaking his tail as well as his head, and the waves were getting up again. Saylee was buffeted backwards by a wave taller than her. She picked herself up and returned Gabriel.

"So… how many goes are you going to have at this?" Lucy asked. Saylee spat out a mouthful of water she'd accidentally swallowed and wiped some wet hair off of her face.

"As many as it takes," she said. "He seems good. I don't want to abandon him to forever in a pokéball."

"Like it's gonna work," Silver grumbled. "The same thing happens every time. You try to be nice and he just freaks out at you. You've gotta be stupid to keep trying. What makes you think it'll ever be different?"

"Same thing that keeps me trying with you," Saylee said, wringing out her scarf. Tyra and Mag laughed while Silver gaped. "Okay, let's see if that's calmed him down again…"

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Now introducing Gabriel the Gyarados as the new teammate! Initially ingame I picked a Staryu over him because I'd never used a Staryu before and wanted to try it… that lasted all of five minutes until a Rocket Raticate got a lucky crit _ So Gabriel it is.

(I named him way back before I started watching Supernatural… now the name kinda makes me giggle :P)

Also, everyone everywhere should go see two moves: Pacific Rim and The World's End. They are extremely very good. This has been a public service announcement.