Note: Sorry for the slight lateness; been a busy week. Hope you enjoy the update~

Follow Me

A Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver Story

Chapter Sixteen

Assurance

Neither of them spoke for the space of a minute. Their eyes remained glued to the pin, and then Silver took it from Soul when she offered it to him. He turned it over in his hand, feeling the chips and scratches in the supple metal. Shining the light more closely, he scrutinized it more carefully. At the base of the R's slanted leg was a tiny letter "G," engraved into the golden back.

"...It was his..." was all he could muster to say.

Soul stood breathless, her mind atwitter. They had found a clue! Just when they were starting to feel hopeless, a small trace of Giovanni found its way to them. She watched Silver expectantly, hoping to see some trace of a smile, a bit of eagerness in his eyes. She unfortunately received no such indication; Silver continued to look sincere, pondering.

"Where did you find this?" he asked quietly.

"Here," she said, taking his arm and directing him to the back of the cave. "The moss had grown all around it, and it was stuck in there pretty good."

Silver stroked his chin slightly and paced, not speaking. After a minute of this, he finally spoke in a quiet voice. "Best case scenario...this has been here maybe a year, six months at the least..." He paced some more. "Worst case scenario, it's been here even longer, years and years, which makes us finding this irrelevant." He stopped and turned to her; in the low-lit cave, she could just barely make out troubled facial features. "But which is it...?"

Soul's brain whirred, and then she brightened. "Mr. Baoba! The night we stayed at his mansion, at dinner...he said the Safari Zone is a little over a year-and-a-half old but the construction for it began over a year before it opened—over two years ago. What if—" her voice was growing steadily more excited—"What if your father was hiding out here two years ago, but when the construction started, he left so he wouldn't be discovered?"

There was a small pause, and then in a rush, Silver was on top of her, hugging her tightly. "It's brilliant," he said into her shoulder. He pulled away and held her at arm's-length, shaking her. "That makes perfect sense; it's true, it's a long shot, but...thinking about it, it seems to fit." He turned around with new resolve, holding the pin in the sunlight that sneaked through the water curtain. "This is the perfect place for him to hideout for a while; it's removed enough from people that he wouldn't be stumbled upon easily, but not so far away that he couldn't go to town for supplies when he needed to." He seemed to notice his sudden, uncharacteristic gusto, because he coughed and turned, pocketing the pin. "R-Right, so...this doesn't tell us much about his current location, but it does give us insight into where he's been, which is the first step, right?...Right?"

Soul was still reeling from the sudden burst of affection, blessing the darkness for concealing her crimson cheeks. She brushed her hair behind her ear and nodded, adding a small, affirmative grunt.

"Right..." Silver said, nodding. "In any case, let's get the hell off this island; I'm tired of being here, and there's nothing keeping us here, anyway."

"Okay," Soul said, nodding as well.

The Surfing trip from Cianwood was much more pleasant since they had something positive to discuss. It took roughly thirty minutes extra to Surf back to the mainland rather than to Fly (which took about an hour usually), but Silver mentioned something about not wanting a repeat and if she fell he was letting her ass drown; she hit him. And since the ferry had already made its last run for the day...they were stuck Surfing. Flagged by Bog and Silver's Feraligatr, both released for an enjoyable swim, they glided through the rough waves on Rosa with little difficulty. They reached the shores of Route 40 just as dusk was starting to overtake the day.

"We'll need to find a place to stay," Silver said. "Do you want to make camp here on the beach or head for the Center in Olivine?"

"Actually, the Battle Frontier's Center is closer," Soul said, indicating the building at the far north end of the beach. "We can stay there tonight. Besides," she added, regarding some brooding clouds on the horizon, "it looks like rain, anyhow."

They trudged up the beach, Chocobo, finally released from his Pokéball after all the water antics of the day, toppling over a few times on the uneven ground. Soul strolled a few strides ahead of her companions, checking her bag and regarding their supplies crossly. She'd have to make a stop at the PokéMart first thing in the morning; their food stocks were getting pitifully low. She was so preoccupied with digging a notepad out to formulate a list that she didn't see the boy exiting the Frontier entrance at a blistering pace.

THUD! Soul fell to the ground and landed on her butt, Poké Balls and Max Repels rolling out onto the pavement, at least one Hyper Potion smashing on the ground in a colorful puddle of medicine and shattered glass. Silver and Chocobo came running to her side as she looked up at the boy, who stood before her looking slightly flummoxed.

"Whoa, sorry about that," the blond boy said, smoothing his ruffled hair into its usual airy spikes. "Guess I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Damnit, boy, haven't I told you not to run ahead of me like that?" an agitated voice called from within. The boy stepped aside so a man in a long, sweeping green coat could emerge, regarding the lad sternly. The man was blond like the younger trainer, and they bore some resemblance to one another. "Tch, did you run into someone again?" he muttered with a scolding suck of air through his teeth. Glancing down at Soul, the man's face lightened, and he grinned broadly. "Well, well, well, look who it is! Fancy seeing you again!"

Selected quote from the next chapter:

"Video games are a waste of time and energy."