Arden frowned and scrunched up his nose as he rode over the water on Gimpy's back. It was cold and misty on the ocean, and Gimpy couldn't swim nearly as fast as a normal blastoise. Arden had expected them to reach Cinnabar in short order, using the speed at which his brother's tauros could pass over waves as his reference point. Needless to say, he was gravely disappointed. An island appeared on the water and Arden leaned forward on his pokemon's shell.

"Is that Cinnabar?" he wondered aloud. "It's so small… I don't even see a town.."

Gimpy raised his eyes out of the water. "Blaaastoise."

"Hey!" said Arden, kicking him in the back of the head. "Just focus on swimming faster! Get your head down and stop dallying!"

"Toise," murmured Gimpy, submerging his head once more.

At length, they reached the shore of the little, rocky island. Arden slid from Gimpy's back, onto the gritty sand, shoving his hands in his pockets. "But where is Cinnabar town?" he muttered, looking around at the completely deserted island. There was another isle, not far off, separated by rocks and rough water.

Gimpy frowned. "Blastoise," he said quietly, limping along the shore. He turned his great blue head from side to side slowly before turning back to Arden and holding up his hands. "Oooise!"

"Eh?" said Arden as the pokemon began to pantomime something. "What's that? A book? No? A… A map?"

"Blastoise!"

"You think I should check my map?" asked Arden. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a many-times folded piece of paper which was becoming tattered at the edges. "Let's see… We left from Fuchsia and this is the first place we've stopped…" He turned the map over in his hands. "And then… Ah so we should be… And if that blue stuff is water… …it is water, right?"

The blastoise nodded.

"Okay then," said Arden, furrowing his brow. "I really hate maps… Let's see… We should be in… Cinnabar."

"Toise?" said Gimpy, titling his head. He hunched over his trainers shoulder and, with an exasperated sigh, pointed one claw at the map. "Blastoise."

Arden blushed. "Oh," he said. "I must've missed that part." He folded up the map and shoved it, once more, into his back pocket. "Then this island and that island over there—these must be the Seafoam islands."

"Blas," said Gimpy, nodding.

Arden gritted his teeth and wheeled around toward the pokemon. "Don't nod like that! Like you knew it all along!" he said, sharply smacking Gimpy's nose with two fingers.

"Blas!" Gimpy winced and covered his nose with one hand. "Blas blas toise blastoise."

"I guess we need to keep on surfing," said Arden, turning his face toward the ocean. He looked at the sharp rocks jutting up from the depths and the water swirling violently about them. "Can you get through that?"

"Blastoise!" said Gimpy, shaking his head roughly.

Arden frowned. "Then how…?" The boy bit his lip and said, "I guess I could try to fly there on Fang, but if he gets lost there might not be anywhere we can land…"

"Toise!" said the blastoise, poking his trainer in the shoulder and pointing toward a rocky outcropping with one stubby claw. Arden looked, raising his eyebrows.

"A cave?" he said. "Argh! No! Caves are dark and scary! I don't want to go in there…."

"Blastoise," murmured Gimpy, looking at his trainer as if to say, 'but what choice do you have?'

"No!" said Arden, smacking Gimpy's nose again. "You can't make me go in there! Besides, we don't even know if it lets out somewhere on the other side of those rocks! It could let out underwater for all we know. And then we'd drown!"

Gimpy cocked his head to the side. "Blas-toise?"

Arden sighed. "I just hate caves," he said, rubbing his arm. Slowly, the young trainer made his way toward the entrance and, as he reached its mouth, he shivered. "It's cold in there… This cave must be haunted!"

"Toise?"

"Haunted!" said Arden, wheeling around to the blastoise. "We're going to go in there and it's going to be full of ghosts and bad luck!"

Gimpy stared at him flatly. "Blastoooise," he said. "Blastoise blast."

"Shush! Don't look at me like that!" said Arden, smacking the pokemon's nose again. "There are ghosts everywhere you know. There are…"

With a sigh, Gimpy shook his head and started, slowly, into the cave. Arden grumbled and followed him, hunching his shoulders. The tunnel was dark and chilly, and Arden pulled the collar of his jacket tight about his ears, shuddering. "I get a bad feeling about this place," he said. Gimpy nodded, looking around. Ice coated the walls and ground thinly, and everything was damp. Arden twisted his head around, searching in the darkness. "Do you hear… running water?"

Gimpy nodded. "Blas toise-blast."

"An underground river?" said Arden, squinting into the shadows. "Urgh. I hate water… Why's it always have to be water? It's gonna be all cold and wet—and it sounds like it's really fast, too."

The blastoise nodded as they started toward the sound. "Blastoise," he said.

"Maybe we'll be able to follow the river out of here…"

After a few moments of following the rough and curving path around the icy rocks, they came into sight of the river—and enormous, rushing body of water covered with white froth which crashed loudly around jagged rocks. Arden raised his eyebrows. "It's huge!" he said.

"Toise," agreed Gimpy.

"Well, let's see where it leads, I guess," the boy said, putting his hands on his hips and looking around for an easy path to the water's edge. A rock rolled from beneath one of his feet and he swayed. Gimpy lunged forward and caught him as he fell, pulling him close, but the momentum was too great and they both ended tumbling down the rocks, into the river. Arden gasped along with his pokemon as they were jolted by the icy water. Swiftly, it bore them downstream, sputtering and thrashing about. Gimpy pulled Arden close and tried to battle against the current, but he could not. Arden coughed and jerked about at Gimpy tried to lift him as high out of the water as he could, finally managing to pull the young trainer onto his shoulder. Wrapping his arms tightly around one of the blastoise's cannons, he pressed his face against Gimpy's cheek.

"Th-thank you," he breathed into the pokemon's ear weakly. "You saved me…"

The pokemon smiled faintly, as if he'd been waiting a long time to hear it and, yet, as if he didn't care one way or another if it was ever said. To Gimpy, that was what 'friendship' meant.

They crashed into a large rock which broke through the water. With a grunt, the blastoise turned and, fighting the river's powerful current, he pushed himself to the shore and scrambled up onto it. Arden coughed and sputtered and clung to the pokemon tightly for a few minutes, even after they were free of the water. At length, his grip relaxed and he stood on his own feet.

"I'm completely soaked!" he said, pulling off his jacket. "Gah! I'll bet my map turned to mush, now! Ehnk! And it's cold in here and I'm all wet!" He shivered and rubbed his arms, leaning against Gimpy.

The blastoise flattened his ears and looked down at his trainer sympathetically. "Blas." To Arden, it sounded a lot like a 'sorry'.

"Have I ever told you," said Arden, looking up into his pokemon's eyes. "Just how much I hate Kanto? It's not a small amount of hate."

Gimpy nodded. "Blastoise," he said.

Arden sighed and looked around. As his gaze fell upon a ladder leading upwards through a hole in the roof of the cave, he frowned. "What's a ladder doing in a place like this?" he asked, and Gimpy could only shrug.

They ascended the ladder, Gimpy having quite a bit of trouble between his weight and his twisted and deformed foot. The ladder let out on an icy floor full of rocks, similar to the one they'd left but sans the rushing river. Holes littered the ground, and enormous boulders stood here and there. Arden put his hands on his hips and looked around as Gimpy climbed up after him. "But this won't help," he murmured. "If there's an exit as this level, we won't be able to get down…"

"Blast," panted Gimpy, looking around as well. He leaned against a boulder tiredly. With a creak the boulder rolled forward and Gimpy fell onto his shell. "Oise!"

"It moved because you're fat," said Arden flatly.

Awkwardly, the blastoise got to his feet. "Blas-toise!" he objected.

"It did, too," said Arden, putting one hand on the boulder and leaning his weight against it. "See? Doesn't budge when I touch it."

Gimpy grunted and tapped the boulder, sending it rolling away, down a hole. With a yelp, Arden fell to the ground. "Hey!" he said, standing up. "I was leaning on that!"

Gimpy crossed his arms and stuck out his broad tongue. "Blaaaas."

Arden scowled and turned away. "Those holes are really dangerous," he said. "I didn't even know that one was there. We'll have to be careful…"

"Blastoise…"

The young trainer peered over the edge of the hole, into the shady floor below them. The boulder Gimpy had knocked down had landed in the river and was slowing the water somewhat. Arden frowned and bit his lip, watching it. "Hey," he said slowly. "If we could knock some more boulders down into the river, we might be able to make it calm. Then we could use that like a big ol' highway outta here."

"Blast?" said Gimpy.

"Hey! Get to it!" said Arden, smacking him in the nose again. "Come on! Start using that big fat body of yours and pushing rocks down the holes!"

Grumbling to himself, the pokemon complied. He went to the nearest boulder and pressed against it. It rolled easily under the blastoise's weight. As Arden watched, Gimpy limped to each of the boulders within sight and knocked them down through the holes. As they landed in the river bellow, he could hear a faint splashing sound. Arden knelt down next to one of the gaps in the rock where he could see the lower level and looked at the now-calmed river. "Perfect!" he said. "I am so smart! Yeah, I'm clever as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

With a sigh, Gimpy shook his head and started back toward the ladder. "Blastoise," he mumbled. "Blas blas blas."

"That's complete gibberish to me, and I've told you that," said Arden, following him. "You need to learn to speak words. I mean, you're obviously capable of speech if you can say 'blastoise' and 'wartortle' and 'squirtle'… Eh—come to think of it, if you could say those other ones before, why can't you say them now?"

"Blas," said Gimpy, climbing down the ladder with a shrug.

"I still feel like I'm the only one in the whole world who's not in on the joke," Arden said, following him. "Other trainers seem to understand their pokemon fine. I've seen Gaius have whole conversations with Quen. It's like they've all got some secret language and they never bothered to tell me what it was!"

With a soft thud, he set his feet on the rocks below and turned his face toward the still river. "It's cold in here," he said. "When we get outside, I'm going to have to hang my pants up to dry; they're killing me."

Gimpy slid into the water and Arden climbed mutely onto his back. Slowly, the great blue pokemon started off as his trainer shivered violently. If Arden had looked up then he would've seen, on a high crag far above them, a great and beautiful bird pokemon with flowing blue feathers which shone like crystals, watching them with intelligent and graceful eyes.

But he didn't look up.

Silently, they rode on.