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Chapter 5
Gary Was Here
"GARY OAK?!"
Both Sabrina and Giselle shout out in total shock, upon hearing Liza's revelation of Sabrina's "husband."
"That's right," Liza says. "Boy, he's not gonna be too happy that you came down with amnesia!"
"I have no interest in Mr. Oak," Sabrina says. "I never did, I never have, and I never will. I don't know why I would be married to him."
"I know a reason why…" Liza begins.
"And what would that be?" Sabrina asks.
Liza puts her thumb and index finger together and starts rubbing them. "Money," she says. "You wanted his money, so you went with him."
"That's preposterous!" Sabrina exclaims. "I would never marry for the money!"
"Come on, Sabrina," Liza says. "Why are you acting so innocent? You can't escape the truth."
Sabrina puts her head in her hands. "This is worse than I thought," she says. She then turns to Giselle. "This is all your fault!"
"Me?" Giselle says.
"If you hadn't pulled the chosen one from the machine, this would have never happened!"
"Excuse me, was I supposed to just let my daughter be destroyed before my very eyes?"
"One person dying is a lot better than what has happened to us!"
"Not when it's my daughter!"
Sabrina gets up from her chair. "Excuse me, I've got to step out for a minute."
As Sabrina climbs out of the basement, Liza turns to Giselle. "You know, it was sweet to beat you in the Pokémon League finals. It's awesome that I'm the final ever Pokémon League champion."
Giselle puts her hands on her hips. "Excuse me?" she says. "I beat you fair and square. In fact, I beat all three of your Pokémon with just my Cubone."
"Someone's still salty," Liza says. "From now on, you will call me *Champion* Liza."
"I'm not calling you anything!" Giselle exclaims. "You are delusional! I've had it with you psychics! All I want to do is go sit in the corner with my trophies and cry. I'm going to go find Sabrina so she can teleport me back home."
She climbs on out of the basement, leaving just Liza there.
"I guess I struck a nerve…" she says quietly.
Giselle meets Sabrina up outside the basement, sitting amongst the rubble and wreckage of the house.
"Well, if it isn't Miss Hope," Giselle says. "Thanks for giving me so much hope that things are going to get better. I hope you are preparing for a night out on the town with Mr. Oak."
"There is hope yet," Sabrina says. "I can feel it in me. I know that I'm not married to Gary. I know you're married to Joe. I know that Liza has a brother. What needs to happen is for us to find out more information."
"More information?" Giselle shouts. "Like what, Ash Ketchum is in charge of Team Rocket, Giovanni has been brought back to life, Wattson has been named emperor of Hoenn, and Cynthia is a sweet human being who is just a bit misguided? What else do you need, Sabrina? Our world is permanently screwed up, and going around asking people about their lives is just going to cut the wounds deeper and deeper."
"Well, then what do you suggest?" Sabrina fires back. "Would you rather just live out the life we have now? Would you rather just sit around and cry over this? Or would you prefer to go on out and find a solution? Remember, I used my psychic powers back when Giovanni was around in order to help defeat him. I think the only solution is to try to use my psychic ability to figure out a way to fix this mess."
Giselle sighs. "If that's the case, could you please leave me out of this? I just want to go home, sit in bed, pet my Cubone, and cry. I've lost absolutely everything. I no longer have a daughter, I no longer have a husband, and most importantly, I no longer am Pokémon League champion. Liza tells me she beat me."
"But don't you see it, Giselle?" Sabrina says. "None of those things are true. We are stuck in an alternate universe right now, a distorted one. If we can find a way to get things back to the way they were, none of those nightmares would be true anymore. I know I'm not married to Gary Oak. I know I was married to Will. I know we were raising a daughter named Roxette. Whether she was Karen's or mine, I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that this reality is not real. I reject it, and I'm going to do whatever's possible to escape it."
Giselle pauses for a second. "Wait a minute, you said *none* of those things are true, right?"
"That's what I said."
"Then… I will see my daughter again! If it's not true that I no longer have a daughter, I'm going to get her back!"
"Don't be so sure," Sabrina replies. "I have hope, but not for her. She's gone."
"Oh, sure, you say you have hope, but then you deny your own hopeful statement! Don't you get it, Sabrina? There's either total hope or none at all. We need something, or someone, to believe in. We can't just give up on one thing but hope for two others. We've gotta have faith."
Sabrina sighs. "Maybe you're right," she says. "Maybe your worst nightmares and my worst nightmares are one and the same. We've got to stick together, Giselle. You and I will get to the bottom of this hell of a universe, and find a way back up into our old reality."
Giselle gently slaps Sabrina's back. "That's what I want to hear!" she says. "Synneva will be in my arms again – no, not in my arms – in our arms. Joe and I will be married again and we will have our daughter back. And you will have everything back too. We gotta believe, you know."
As Giselle is saying this, Liza walks up and out to where the two are talking.
"Whatcha talking about?" she wonders.
Sabrina sighs. "About life. About our reality, and whether it's real or not."
Liza laughs. "So, you still don't want to admit defeat? That sounds like the Sabrina I know."
"But where do we go from here?" Giselle asks. "Last time I checked, we don't have any wormhole creators sitting around that we can use."
"And my machine was ruined by your pulling out the chosen one too early," Sabrina says.
"I've got an idea!" Liza exclaims.
"And what's that?" Sabrina asks.
"Simple. You need to spend some quality time with your husband. Come on, join me on the road to Viridian City!"
"But-" Giselle starts to say.
"Come on, let's go!" Liza shouts, grasping both Giselle and Sabrina's hands. The three then teleport away, out of Saffron City.
"Where the hell…"
Giselle looks around, seeing trees all around her. "Is this the Viridian Forest?" she asks.
"It is," Sabrina says. "Liza, why did you take us here?"
Liza puts a finger on her chin. "I seemed to have miscalculated," she says. "I guess I need to work on my teleportation skills!"
"Well, how about you start by teleporting us to where Mr. Oak is?" Giselle asks.
"Nonsense!" Liza replies. "I'll just get him to come to us!"
"Huh?" Giselle says.
Liza pulls out a Poké Ball. "Go, Delphox!"
The Fire-Psychic Pokémon comes out of its Poké Ball, holding a fiery torch.
"When… where… how…" Giselle begins to say.
"I know what you're thinking," Liza says. "Literally. You're wondering how I got this Pokémon. Well, while Sabrina was captured by Cynthia, I took a trip out to the faraway land of Kalos and captured this. I think I caught it like a week before Judgment Day."
Giselle puts her hands on her hips. "Well, why the hell take it out now? Just to show off that you're supposedly the Pokémon League Champion? Now's not the time to use that."
Liza turns to her Delphox. "Light the trees on fire," she tells her Pokémon.
Delphox begins running around the forest, setting fire to every tree. Giselle shakes her head in disgust.
"Do you even realize what you're doing?" Giselle asks. "We just got finished with fixing the atmosphere, now you're going to ruin it all over again!"
"I know what you're thinking, Liza," Sabrina chimes in. "And while I agree that it'll work, I still think it's the wrong way to do it."
"What's she thinking?" Giselle says. "You two have your own secret network going on here. Let me in on some of the action!"
Liza grins. "Do you want me or Sabrina to fill you in?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Fine, then, I'll go," Liza says. "My goal in setting the forest on fire is that it draws out Gary, who probably does not realize yet that the atmosphere has been fixed thanks to Sabrina's super-awesome machine. Such extreme heat will cause anyone to try to escape."
"That machine isn't super-awesome," Giselle corrects her. "In fact, it's the bane of my existence."
"Liza has it right," Sabrina says. "The goal is to sniff out him out, because the more people we find, the more of a chance we have of correcting our world."
"The problem is, I don't know where he lives," Liza says.
"And I don't have a clue either, since he isn't my husband," Sabrina says. "So, this is the best option to get him out."
"You got it," Liza says. "I don't know anything about this other future, but I'd sure like to have a brother! That's why I'm sticking with you guys."
The Viridian Forest is now completely up in flames, and Liza teleports Sabrina and Giselle out over to the destroyed Viridian Gym.
"This is where I thought you were taking us in the first place," Sabrina states.
"Hey, occasionally even the best of us mess up," Liza says. "Even the defending Pokémon League Champion."
"Would you stop it with that crap?" Giselle says. "Look, I don't know what you are trying to do, but it sounds stupid to me."
Just then, the girls see a person climbing up out of the wreckage.
"All this smoke," he says. "What the hell?"
"That's exactly what I'm asking," Giselle says. "Who are you?"
"Can't you see?" the person responds. "I'm Gary Oak."
Sabrina hides her face from Gary, while Giselle stands there indignantly.
"Come on, Sabrina," he says. "I know you're mad at me for what happened last time, but I am a changed man."
Sabrina looks thoughtful as she turns to Gary. "What happened last time?" she asks.
"You know, how I told off your old friends Silver and Gold. Those two guys were a joke. But I realize now that I was being a jerk, and I regret it now."
"Regret what now?"
"Don't you remember? I disagreed sharply with their plan to revive the Pokémon world. And now that I see that I can breathe up here, I have to admit it: they were right."
"They were right?!" Sabrina exclaims. "I'm the one who fixed this Pokémon world, with my machine."
"Yeah, and with my daughter," Giselle chimes in, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Gary laughs. "I don't know what the hell you are talking about. I can tell you this: they knew what they were doing."
With Sabrina and Giselle fuming, Liza steps in.
"Gary, I think we need to have a nice long talk," she says.
"Not until I put out those flames. I can see them coming from the forest."
He pulls out his Blastoise. "Luckily I still have all my Poké Balls on hand. Blastoise, you go and take care of that forest fire. You three, come with me into the Oak family house."
As Blastoise heads off toward the forest, the three girls follow Gary as they climb down a ladder and into his underground home.
"Okay, I get it, but yet… I don't."
Gary looks frustrated, having heard from Sabrina her side of the story, as the four of them sit around a square table.
"What you're tellin' me is that you were married to Will, the guy from the Johto Elite Four. Then you were minding your own business when Cynthia, the Sinnoh Champion, came over and captured you, tortured you, and supposedly killed you – but you used a Ditto to fake your death."
"That is accurate," Sabrina says.
"Okay, some of that I get, some of it I don't," Gary says. "I know that Cynthia brought on Judgment Day from Arceus, and I can see that you and Will are both psychics and have a connection there. But the rest of it doesn't make sense, including the fact that you say you're not married to me. 'Cause there's no way you'd resist my charm."
"Fat chance of that being true," Sabrina says.
"In any case, the rest of this story is where I have a hard time believing you. You say that you created a machine that would open up a wormhole to draw forth the legendary Pokémon Giratina, and you needed energy from a 'chosen' person. You got that person, then you used that machine and somehow fixed the radiation problem – but everything else about the world is now distorted."
"That's right," Sabrina states.
"As for you, Giselle, I couldn't have been happier the day Liza here upset you in the Pokémon League championship match."
"She did not beat me!" Giselle shoots back. "But you are right in calling it an 'upset.' I would be a clear 3-to-1 favorite in any match against her."
"Why don't you tell our reality to these two?" Liza asks Gary. "Maybe that will help them come to their senses."
Gary nods in agreement. "Fine, then," he says. "You – Sabrina – and I got married, and then in the two years afterward, Cynthia went and captured you and tortured you, then presumably killed you. Luckily, I had worked with Duplica in breeding a Ditto that could completely match everything about you, and by using that Ditto, you were able to escape."
Sabrina's eyes light up. "So you do believe me! That's almost exactly what happened – only that it was Will who worked with Duplica, not you."
"We'll toss that one aside for the moment," Gary says. "Here's where things get off the rails. Judgment Day happens, and you and I went into hiding down here under the Viridian Gym. In the years to come, Gold and Silver from Johto go start creating a machine that can draw forth the three legendary beasts. If they could get all three to appear, they would have a chance at fixing the world and removing the radiation."
"That sounds almost like what I was trying to do!" Sabrina says. "It's just a bit off. It was I who created that machine and tried to bring forth Giratina."
Gary shakes his head. "No, you've been hiding with me for the last nine or so years. I don't ever remember you running off trying to make some machine. And boy, have the nights been fun down here!"
Sabrina puts her head in her hands. "This is awful!" she cries. "And it's all your fault!"
She points at Giselle. "If you didn't ruin the chosen-"
"I don't want to hear any of this 'chosen one' crap anymore!" Giselle says. "All I want is to go home and cry. Can't you allow me that one bit of comfort?"
"Are you sure your home even exists, Gravelpot?" Sabrina says, getting more emotional by the second. "How do you know you even lived on Indigo Plateau? Maybe you lived underneath the Game Corner in Celadon City! You've got nowhere to go!"
"And where have you got to go?" Giselle asks.
"I think the solution is obvious," Sabrina replies. "We have to go find Gold and Silver. If they were creating a machine similar to mine, then maybe they have the answer to our problems."
"You can go ahead," Giselle replies, as she kicks her feet up on the table the four are sitting around. "I'm staying here. Bye-bye, have a nice trip!"
Sabrina shrugs her shoulders. "Come on, Liza, let's go," she says.
"Wait, what about me?" Gary asks.
"Yeah, aren't you going to bring your husband with you?" Liza asks.
Sabrina turns to Gary with a cold stare. "Gary, I divorce you. Right here, right now. Get that in your head."
Gary shrugs himself. "Fine, then," he says. "All of the Professor's money will belong to me, then. We agreed to that in our prenups. And he doesn't have millions – he has billions."
"Good for him," Sabrina says. "Giselle, if you want to come, now is the last chance."
Giselle shakes her head. "No way," she says. "Every bad thing that has happened has come because of you. Even your very existence has caused this. If Cynthia wasn't hell-bound on killing you, none of this would have ever happened. I am divorcing you! Good riddance!"
"Fine with me," Sabrina says. "You can go to hell with your money and your trophies. And you-"
"I know I'm not going to hell," Giselle breaks in. "Not sure about you, though."
"Screw you!" Sabrina yells. "Come on, let's get going, Liza!"
Liza gives a cheeky smile to Giselle. "Bye-bye, runner-up!" she says, as the two teleport away.
As the two psychics disappear, Gary turns to Giselle.
"Hey, you're not welcome here!" he tells her. "The only reason you got to come here is because you were with my wife. Well, she's gone now, and so will you. Get out!"
"That's fine with me!" Giselle replies. "In fact, you're not kicking me out; I'm leaving on my own accord! You were overrated as a Pokémon trainer, and as a Gym Leader. You suck! I hope the Viridian Forest burns your little cottage here to bits."
"Blastoise probably has it all put out by now," Gary replies.
"Good for him!"
Giselle climbs out the ladder and out of Gary's underground home. She begins walking toward the Viridian Forest, seeing that Blastoise has successfully put out the fire. She shakes her head in disgust.
"What a waste," she says to herself. "Now, where am I going to go from here?"
A lightbulb appears over her head. "I know!" she says. "I'm going back to where this all started. I'm walking back to Pokémon Tech. Halfway between Cerulean and Vermillion… let's see, about a two-hour walk. If there's anywhere I can find answers, it's there!"
Giselle begins her march through Kanto, even as the sun goes down. Meanwhile, back in his underground home, Gary is having a conversation.
"Yes, that's right," he says. "Of course. Sure thing. Absolutely."
He then puts down the object that was in his hand – a Poké Gear, which appears to be brand new. He turns it off, then grins.
"Everything is perfect for your return, Giovanni."