Friends, Rivals, and Lovers

Thanks to Defiant Vixen for reviewing! I'm glad you like all the little Gary/Tracey bits because I love writing those parts! : )

Chapter Four

A serene smile graced Misty's lips as she carefully set free the Goldeen she had just caught with her fishing pole, it was the third one she had caught and she had already seen several Magikarp and even a Slowpoke while she had been sitting in this spot. It was a nice place, she had decided. She wondered where Tracey had gone, knowing that he would likely enjoy this spot since he would be able to watch and sketch several different species.

Just as she thought of her friend, she heard a noise from hear right and turned to see Gary sit down next to her. Casting out her line again, she glanced over at him, only a bit surprised that he seemed more interested in his cell phone than in her. "What are you doing?" she asked curiously as she gazed out over the water.

"Checking the GPS on here… I'm betting that we're actually pretty close to Route Twenty-six since we've been on this one for four hours now."

"You have a GPS application on your phone?" Misty asked in surprise. Gary nodded quietly. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"Because I figured Brock had it under control. That was before I figured out that he has a map from seven years ago."

Misty sighed at his words and rested her chin on her hand while watching a few Poliwags play in the center of the pond. "He's usually more prepared than–" She stopped midsentence as they heard a shout echo from the woods that were nearby.

Gary finally tore his gaze from the phone in his hand and looked up, searching for the source of the sound. He knew that it wasn't Tracey's voice but he also knew that his boyfriend had gone in the same direction that the scream had come from. Instinctively, his hand reached for a pokeball and he called out Arcanine, something he had always done whenever something seemed off while he was traveling as a trainer. The large fire dog looked around in confusion, trying to figure out why he had been called out of his ball – he could sense the tension in his trainer and the girl next to him but couldn't see the source of worry.

Standing up from her position on the ground, Misty quickly reeled in her line and collapsed the fishing pole back to its traveling size. Following Gary's lead, she pulled a pokeball from her belt and released her Starmie. She could see that Brock had jumped up from his seat on the ground quite a distance away and had his hand hovering near his own pokeballs. There was a moment or two of tension until Ash burst through the edges of the trees with Pikachu in his arms and a furious Ponyta on his trail. Tracey followed a second later and darted over to Brock immediately as Ash made a break for the pond, causing Gary, Misty, and their pokemon to flee out of his path.

Ash stopped at the edge of the water, obviously hoping for an escape that clearly didn't exist; seeing the fire pokemon swiftly approaching him, he did the only thing he could think of and dove into the lake. The Ponyta skidded to a halt next to the spot where Ash and Pikachu had disappeared into the water, confused over the sudden disappearance of the two creatures that had bothered it. It could see the four other people about the clearing along with the two pokemon that had been called forth but didn't attempt to go after them – it knew it was easily outnumbered and out powered. Besides, these creatures hadn't done anything to it yet. Ash resurfaced near the center of the lake with Pikachu clinging to his hat, clearly annoyed by what his trainer had done. Pleased to see that the intruder was out of its territory, the Ponyta snorted and trotted off, leaving everyone rather confused.

All five trainers breathed a sigh of relief when it returned to the forest and Misty recalled her Starmie while Gary left Arcanine out of its pokeball as he was still wary after the sudden interruption to their break. "What in the world was that?" asked Misty as Ash began swimming back to the shoreline.

Gary merely shrugged his shoulders, relaxing slightly when he saw that the Ponyta wasn't returning. "No idea," he admitted. "Ponyta are usually much more calm than that."

An irritated groan escaped Misty and she stomped over to where Ash was now climbing out of the water. "What did you do this time, Ash Ketchum?" she demanded angrily.

Having been ready to give the boy a tongue lashing himself, Gary watched on, rather amused as the redhead proceeded to yell at him while Ash tried to stutter some excuse that Gary was certain had more to do with stupidity than anything else. He couldn't be entirely sure what his former rival had done and he had to admit that he didn't exactly want to know. Noticing that Misty's shouts were getting louder, Gary shook himself out of his thoughts concerning what Ash might have done and turned his attention back to the scene next to the lake. Ash must have said something particularly stupid, Gary assumed, because Misty shoved him rather suddenly, causing the teen to lose his footing and fall backwards into the water.

Gary glanced back at Tracey and Brock, wondering if one of them were going to break the two brats up. He met Tracey's eyes and then heard another shout; wondering what on Earth Ash could possibly have done in the split second that he turned away, he looked back at the lake to find a Poliwhirl standing in the water near Ash. Both Ash and Misty were dripping water and Gary could only assume that Ash had landed on the pokemon, inciting it's annoyance and causing it to use an attack on them.

Tracey and Brock both sighed, knowing that things had just gone from bad to worse. The older of the two immediately went over to Ash and Misty to separate them before they could kill each other while Tracey calmly went over to where Gary was trying not to laugh at the sight of a thoroughly pissed off and soaked Misty. "Never a dull moment," Tracey muttered when he reached his boyfriend, pausing to scratch Arcanine behind the ears as the dog leaned against him with a soft whine. "Aren't you glad I talked you into coming along?"

The amused smile faded from Gary's face at the question. "It'll take more than a mini stampede and a Water Gun attack to make me happy that I came." A small beep from his cell phone sounded suddenly, indicating that the GPS had finally received a signal that would, hopefully, tell them where they were. He glanced down at the screen, doing a double take when their coordinates appeared on a map before rolling his eyes when he realized where they were.

"I forgot that your new phone had that… Maybe we should have used it since the beginning."

"Where are we?" Misty demanded, causing both boys to jump as they hadn't noticed her sudden appearance at their side.

"At the edge of the Viridian Forest," Gary replied, without missing a beat.

"What?" Misty gasped as Tracey rolled his eyes. Gary's tone may have been believable but that slight gleam in his eyes couldn't fool Tracey, not after living with him for several years, and certainly not after dating him for the past year and a half.

"You were wrong about still being on Route Twenty-two, Trace."

"What do you mean?" Tracey asked, his curiosity suddenly sparked as he noticed Gary's sarcasm fade in the boy's second comment. Wordlessly, Gary held the phone out to him so that he could see the map. "What am I looking at?"

"Well, this right here is us." Gary pointed to the large red dot showing their position, causing Tracey to sigh.

"I kind of figured that, Gary."

"You asked. Over here is Route Twenty-two," he continued, scrolling the image on the screen to reveal the land quite a bit further north of them. "And over here is Route Twenty-six." The image was moved again, this time to show some rough terrain and a large lake to the west.

Tracey took the phone out of his boyfriend's hand and studied it closely for a moment. "How did we get this far south?" he asked of no one in particular. The only response he received was a shrug from Gary while Misty looked back and forth between them before demanding exactly where they were and how badly they were lost. Tracey shook his head slightly at Misty's questions and called Brock over. "As long as Gary's phone works and we have signal, we're not technically 'lost,' Misty," he reasoned as Brock came over to them. "We're way south of Twenty-two – about a third of the way through the southern portion of Twenty-six actually –"

"We're not on Twenty-six," Gary hissed impatiently, taking his phone back and snapping it shut to preserve the battery power. "We're about two miles east of it. If we go about another mile south and then maybe a mile and a half west, we'll come to big lake that we can cross to get onto Route Twenty-six. There's a rest stop for trainers three or four miles south of there too, if we leave now and keep going without any interruptions," he paused here and glared at Misty and Ash, the latter of whom had just come over to see what was going on. "We should be able to get there fairly soon."

"It'll be dark in an hour," Brock pointed out, barely glancing at Gary as he pulled out his map again.

Frustrated by the way the man was still depending on his map that was obviously not helping them, Gary yanked the paper out of Brock's hands, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it over his shoulder. "If your map was actually helping us, we wouldn't have ended up three miles south of Twenty-two without realizing it! It takes twenty minutes to walk a mile – one mile south, two miles west, and another four miles south. That's seven miles we have to go to that rest stop. It'll take us two and a half hours if we stop for a break somewhere in there. No more than three hours."

"He has a point, you know," Tracey said thoughtfully. "It gets dark in an hour but we do have Umbreon with us; she can light the way with no problem. Two hours in the dark isn't a big deal, not if we can spend the night at a rest stop – they at least have vending machines and indoor places to set up sleeping bags."

"Not to mention showers," Misty added.

Brock groaned and stepped around Gary so that he could retrieve the rumpled map. "I don't like the idea of crossing a lake in the dark," he admitted.

"Then you can take Skarmory across it. Ash has his Staraptor that he can fly on, Misty has her Starmie –"

"And Gyarados," she interjected, earning a glare from Gary.

"Even better," Tracey spoke up before Gary could say something to her for interrupting him. "Gary and I can ride Blastoise and we'll all get across in one piece."

"Have anything to add to this, Ash?" Brock asked, realizing easily that he was being overruled.

Ash shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I guess it's a good thing Gary decided to come along," he finally said grudgingly. "I just hope your phone doesn't die."

A smirk crossed Gary's face while the five of them made their way over to the area where they had all ditched their bags. "So, it's settled then?" Tracey asked calmly as he pulled his backpack on.

"Yeah, Gary's the navigator until we get a new map," Misty agreed before Brock or Ash could say anything.

"Come on, guys; we're losing light," Brock pointed out, hoping that they could hurry and get to this rest stop. He remembered the rest stop, they had stopped there on the way into Johto the first time he, Misty, and Ash had gone to the region and he knew that it was essentially the halfway point along that route. The original plan had been to camp somewhere at the western end of Route Twenty-two or the northern end of Route Twenty-six; and that had been a rather optimistic plan. It had been far more likely for them to camp somewhere along the middle of the first route; making it halfway along the latter route would put them several hours ahead of schedule – far better timing than they could have hoped.