A/N: Had planned something a little less reflective, but the prompt shaped it into this. Prompts have a way of doing that after all. Enjoy!

After Being Blue
Poke-Ball 11: Unpaid

Agatha's meeting was sort of like an omen. Before he quite knew it, he was turning left past the gate to Saffron and was heading towards Vermillion instead. Maybe it was that almost prophetic tone. Sabrina was prone to the same.

He passed through the underground tunnel and remembered the little girl who'd lost something along the way. He hadn't stopped to help: he'd been too fired up about the upcoming gym battle and thinking that someone careless enough to lose something should go through the effort of finding it himself.

Now he felt slightly differently. If only because he was searching blindly for something himself and was unable to find it, but he felt different nonetheless.

And he hadn't heard anything from Red either, which was an oddity. Last time, they'd practically been tripping over each other at every town. Then again, Red was the Champion now. He probably had better things to do than challenge all the Gyms again – unless that was a Champion's duty or something. He wasn't sure. He didn't know because no-one had read the rulebook to him before Red's challenge had come. He hadn't even gotten comfortable.

And then Red won and took over the Championship and it was no longer Blue's business what a Champion had to say or do, because he wasn't it. He didn't even get his first pay check. In a way, he could say he'd never been the Champion. He wasn't in the Hall of Fame either, after all. And those sorts of things were the important stuff. The lasting stuff. Sure, the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four knew, but that was it. Oh, and Red. And some administrative people he'd probably never see again…

But to everyone he passed on the road, he was just a regular trainer with strong Pokemon that demolished almost everyone who challenged them. It wasn't like the thrill of travelling the first time round, catching new pokemon and battling people who were roughly his level – but even back then, he'd won most of the time. The bitter taste of defeat was one he'd barely sampled, before that Championship match.

But just winning again wasn't cure enough. Unless he rechallenged the league and Red for his title – and Red might just throw the match to get himself out of the job he wasn't too keen on doing. But Red just wasn't that person. He fought to win every battle regardless of the outcome, because he was just that sort of battler. He was just that passionate. And he wanted to change the League from within and no-one was paying him to do that – hell, there were few who'd thank him for that at all. People liked stable lives. People, old people like his grandfather, still remembered the war. People like Surge who'd become one of the names and faces of the war.

Blue wondered if he still had the pokemon he'd fought in that war with. Maybe those would provide a challenge, because they had to be strong, to win a war. And the trainer behind them had to be tough as well?

He'd answered Agatha's question so easily, that he didn't want to get involved in a war. But was that the truth? Hadn't he been somewhat eager to help Red in his insane goal? Or was that only because it was a challenge, an excuse –

Then again, he wasn't accomplishing much in his little walkabout. Though maybe it was just that and not Agatha and her creepy Gengar and speech that saw him detour to Vermillion even with the gates to Saffron now open.

Or maybe it was just fated timing, because Vermillion was in a panic when he entered it.