If I owned Pokemon, I would be in it.
This is my longest chapter yet, and now, at 00:19, I have finally finished it!
"No."
The simple, single word is spat out like a knife, like the bitter taste of a tempest that is about to begin. It nearly knocks him from his chair, does knock the mug from his hands, and it smashes on the tiled floor, flying shards the colour of the sun.
Gary curses loudly and snaps his cell shut. "Are you alright?" he asks him.
Ash nods vigorously. "Yes. Um..yeah." He scrambles to get the dustpan.
The other man snatches it from his grasp. "I'll deal with it." He grabs the broom from its lazy position, leaning against the wall, and swipes its stiff, coarse twigs over the floor, sweeping the broken shards into the dustpan.
Ash watches him, a tad anxiously. His face is set like plasticine. All he has to do is put pressure on any one part of it, and the facade will crumble.
"Who...were you talking to?" he asks, finally, after a long internal struggle that sends his face twisting into strange expressions.
Gary glances up at him. There is a guarded look in his eyes, guarded and exhausted. "You don't know him."
Ash shrugs. "I don't know anyone at the moment. Even the nice lady next door, who has, apparently changed my diapers."
"It isn't anyone important."
"He, or she, seems important to you."
If glares could be held responsible for painful, torturous, scorching murder, Gary would have been sentenced to life. "He is nothing of the sort."
"Who is he?" Ash presses, throwing caution to the wind, along with common sense and self-preservation.
Gary squeezes his eyes shut, mouths something that doesn't seem polite, and opens them again. "Get a move on," he snaps, heading towards the door.
"Where are we going?"
"Bring the sleeping geezer you call a Pikachu. It can stretch its legs a little."
Ash picks the Pokemon off the counter. "So where are we going?" he repeats.
Gary rolls his eyes. "Just move it."
It is already dark outside, and the silence whispers all about them, present in the pressure of the cold air against his neck, in the mute whisper of night. He shivers despite himself, and cuddles Pikachu closer to him. It murmurs sleepily and shifts in his arms, its tail batting at his face.
He looks up ahead, and he frowns. "Isn't that your grandfather's lab?"
Gary snorts. "So the Pokemon Breeder's history lessons are actually of some use."
"Why are we going there?"
"To shut you up."
He brightened. "You're going to show me something, a picture of him?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Gary doesn't seem to have heard him. He jams his hands into his pockets, takes them out again, and jams them back in. It's like he's playing that sort of the game, the one that goes: He loves me. he loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not.
"Hello?" Ash prods.
"Oh..yes. Don't you want to meet all your old Pokemon?"
"My old Pokemon? I have old Pokemon?"
Gary stares at him with cynical curiosity, exactly as one would stare at a person one deems is mad. "You are a Pokemon Master." He jams his hands into his pockets again, but this time, he draws out a bunch of keys.
He selects the right one without so much as a glance, and inserts it into the padlock. He pushes the gate open, and it makes just the slightest creak, the pained sigh of an old ghost.
They go up the pathway, and with another turn of another key, they enter the home of a legend.
The inside of the house is simple, almost Spartan. Ash squints at Gary's silhouette somewhere in front of him. "Can't you turn on the lights?" he asks, wanting to see just how the greatest Researcher who ever lived had gotten through daily life.
"No reason to."
They traverse through a maze of rooms and corridors, far too quickly for him to soak in, finally emerging in the largest and most spacious room yet. It is also the most eerie.
The walls are lined with humming shadows, and each shadow is populated with trembling balls of light that blink at him solemnly. There is an air-conditioned feel to the room, set to such a degree that his teeth rattle rather loudly, and Pikachu wakes up.
Gary switches on the light.
Ash breathes a sigh of relief.
The shadows are merely machines. And the balls of light are only lightbulbs, glowing a common shade of red.
"Pikapikachu." It doesn't seem the least bit impressed.
Gary retrieves a white coat from a hook and shrugs it on. He heads to one of the machines, presses a blinking bulb, and quite suddenly, a tinny voice bursts forth. Trainer: Ash Ketchum. Total Pokemon in storage: Three thousand and fifty-two.
"What?" Ash yelped.
He smirks at him, and gestures, much like a circus master inviting the show to begin.
"Take a good look, Ash. It's everything you ever were."
Review, pretty please?
