I'm not sure if a lot of people noticed, but there was another SA reference in the last chapter. Read Gold's debut of SA then reread his debut in SL.

It seems that there were some clarity issues on the requirement of becoming a faithful reviewer. It's probably my fault (whoops). The requirement has been reworded to remove any issues.

Also, for those who want to see the hostage problem that Crystal was involved in, SR #021 will be based on that. It was a chapter that's been in the making for a while (never got to completing it though), as it was supposed to be SE #034. It didn't quite work out for SE, as it basically had no pairing worthy scene.

Segment: Gold & Crystal.

Chapter 9: Unwanted Interference

April 21, somewhere in Johto, 6:00 am…

Silver woke up from his sleep when something hard suddenly fell onto his face. He opened his eyes and saw his Weavile looking down at him from the small table next to his bed with a terribly apologetic expression. Silver took a quick look around and spotted a hard-covered book lying next to the bed. He noticed that it was the same one he had been reading before going to sleep the previous night. He picked it up and saw some scratches on the cover… It seemed that the Weavile was playing with it and accidentally dropped it on his face. But more importantly, the Sharp Claw Pokémon had put lots of scratch marks on the book he had borrowed from Blue. It was her favorite book, and Silver had borrowed it to see why she liked it so much (he still had no idea despite reading over 75% of it. The book was boring as fu-).

"This book is not a toy," the Johto Dex Holder said with a stern look. "This is sis's favorite book, and you put scratches all over it! She's not going to be happy!" He reached into his bag and took out a book that Gold gave him the last time he saw the goggled boy. Silver didn't even bother opening it. It was some guide book about picking up girls. Silver would've tossed it in the garbage if Gold didn't want it back. He also would've returned it immediately if the goggled boy didn't demand that he take at least 3 days with the book. Silver tossed the book to his Weavile. The Sharp Claw Pokémon caught it and by doing so, accidentally punctured the covers with its claws. "Play with that. Make as many scratches and cuts as you want, but leave it in one piece."

Silver glanced at the clock and proceeded to go back to sleep. He still had two hours until his normal waking time, and he intended to use every second of it sleeping.

Unfortunately for him, he woke up an hour later. But this time, it was because of a nightmare. In that dream, he watched Blue as she was kidnapped again by Ho-oh. She fought back this time, and managed to free herself… right next to the top floor of the Tin Tower. Silver could only watch as Blue plummeted to her death, but thankfully, he snapped awake just before she hit the ground.

Silver quickly calmed down his breaths. It was just a dream… a horrible dream. He glanced at the clock again and tried to sleep until 8. But this time, he couldn't sleep because of that nightmare. With a sigh, he shut off his alarm clock and got out of his bed.

"Stupid dream," he grumbled silently as he made his bed. "This is going to be a bad day…"

Silver contemplated in calling Blue to make sure she was alright. After that horrible, horrible nightmare (he did NOT like thinking about anything bad happening to Blue), he felt it was important to talk to her. But since it was still 7 in the morning, he couldn't call her, as she would still be in deep sleep. And the Kanto Dex Holder was not very kind to those unfortunate beings who would dare wake her up from her "beauty sleep".

Silver finished making his bed and cleaning up all traces of his visit in his hideout in a classified location in Johto. He was about to pack up and leave for breakfast when he spotted his Weavile. It seemed that it had accidentally torn Gold's book into three pieces, thus inadvertently breaking his order to keep it in one piece.

There were pieces of torn paper lying strewn about on the floor. Silver sighed and returned his Weavile so it wouldn't harm any more books. He didn't really care about Gold's book being shredded, but he did care about having to clean up all those book pieces. After all, he didn't like leaving ANY trace of his visit anywhere, in case someone tried to follow him. Paranoid? Perhaps. But with an experience of being kidnapped AND being chased by police (not to mention the possibility of someone from Team Rocket stalking him), Silver didn't like taking any chances.

After cleaning up everything again, Silver put the three large chunks of Gold's book in his bag. He was going to give the pieces back to their owner and let the idiot tape it up on his own time.

Silver's determined schedule was quite simple. He was having a bad day so far, so he was going to limit his interactions with human beings. After breakfast, he was going to go somewhere and train all day long. Route 45 seemed to be a nice choice, as it wasn't too far from a city, but isolated enough to be completely alone.

Breakfast… didn't go so well for him either. Having no food in his bag, Silver had no choice but to eat at some food place. Though the meal wasn't bad, someone had accidentally tripped and spilled hot coffee on him. His crappy day had just become crappier.

The training session he had wasn't bad. Sure, his Feraligatr missed every single Aqua Tail attempt (Waterfall was definitely better, apparently), but the session wasn't terrible. Lunch was awful. It seemed that wherever he went, some clumsy guy was there with him. This time, said clumsy customer tripped and spilled iced coffee on him.

After that lunch, Silver returned to Route 45 for more training. This time, he was chased by a huge group of Gravelers, which were all very pissed off from the Johto Dex Holder's ruthless pummeling of so many of their kind. Silver had to fight for a couple of hours to get away from them.

When the group of Gravelers finally backed off, Silver found himself back in Blackthorn City. It was only 4 pm, but the Johto Dex Holder wanted to do nothing else but sleep. So far, he had a book dropped on this face, had a terrible nightmare, had to clean up his secret base twice, had two 'showers' of coffee (one scalding hot, the other icy cold), had a quite unproductive training session, and got chased around by a huge angry mob of Gravelers.

With a long sigh, Silver prepared to go to his nearest hideout to sleep when his Pokégear started to vibrate. He looked at it and noticed that Crystal was calling him.

"Yeah, what is it?" he asked in a tired voice after a sigh upon answering the call.

"Hi, Silver. It's Crys calling," Crystal said with an equally tired voice. "I… um… need some company. Could you come over right now?"

"Listen, Crys," Silver said with another sigh. "I'm having a terrible day so far and I-"

"Please, Silver," the Johto girl said with a sigh of her own. "I… was held at knife point today and I really need some company."

"… Alright then… I'll be there shortly…"

Silver hung up and sent out his Honchkrow. Though he wanted to go to his secret base and just sleep, since Crystal apparently needed him for comfort (though he wondered why she would ask him and not Gold), he had no choice but to go and cheer her up. Maybe she would feel better if he told her about his crappy, crappy, day.

…

An hour later, Violet City, 5:00 pm…

…

Crystal stared through the windows in her bedroom, waiting for Silver to arrive. He did sound a little worried when she told him of her hostage event. She didn't tell him the real reason why she wanted him over. If she did, then Silver would surely stay the hell away from her at all costs. After all, her plan did involve dragging him into a mess that he would absolutely hate being a part of.

Before long, a Honchkrow started to land in her neighborhood. Crystal simply watched Silver as he returned his aerial transport Pokémon. She wondered whether her friend remembered where she lived. He had been in her home once after that Arceus event a year ago.

She smiled when Silver started to glance around. It seemed that he didn't know where her house was after all. But it was funny watching him wander around aimlessly. Crystal soon headed out of her house and waved at Silver to get his attention. She led him into her house and towards her room.

"So… you were held at knife point?" Silver asked as he sat on a chair.

Crystal sat on her bed and looked at him. "Yeah… An attempted murderer broke into the orphanage I was volunteering at and tried to hold me hostage."

"So… are you okay?" her friend asked with a worried tone. Crystal nodded but didn't say anything. "If you need anything, I'll gladly help out."

The girl smiled at him as she nodded again. "I do need your help, Silver."

"Okay, what do you need?"

"It's not related to the hostage event though," Crystal said. "And it's why I called you over."

Silver saw her serious expression and nodded. "Okay." He did wonder what she was about to tell him, though he did have a sinking feeling of what it was though…

"I want you to keep this a secret at all times, alright?" Crystal said nervously. "I'm… in love with Gold," she mumbled out as her cheeks turned bright red.

Silver looked horrified. "This is going exactly where I think it is, isn't it?"

Crystal rose to her feet and started to take a few steps towards the door. "And I really need your help here. He doesn't know that I love him yet, but I can't tell him either."

Silver attempted to run towards the door but Crystal had already blocked the doorway. It appeared that she had predicted him fleeing and had prematurely moved off of her bed so she could 'trap' him. "Why me, Crys?" he asked her with a groan. "Why not get sis to help you?"

"Blue can't help me here," Crystal said.

"If sis can't help, what can I do?"

Crystal took a deep breath to calm herself down first. "I do have a plan, but I need your help and no one else's."

'I have a bad feeling about this… If she wants me to go spy on Gold or get me to talk to him and lead the conversa-'

"Gold is on a date with some girl," Crystal started.

"And you want me to sabotage the date?"

"No. But I do feel a little… jealous. What I want to do is see if Gold would feel the same way. So… I want you to pretend that you're going out with me in front of Gold so that I'll be able to check whether he likes me at all."

Silver put a hand on his head as he groaned again. 'This is worse than I thought!' "This day just keeps getting worse!"

"Please, Silver," Crystal begged in a cute voice.

Silver stared at her in horror. She was biting her lower lip a little and… batting her eyelashes. She was using Cute Charm against him… Silver let out another long groan and proceeded to lightly pound the wall with his hand in agony.

"… I knew I should've stayed in bed this morning…" he grumbled out.

"So will you help me?"

Silver avoided eye contact. "Two conditions."

"And they are?"

"One, sis must never find out, and two, you will not ask me to do serious things."

Crystal thought for a second before she nodded. "Okay. Deal." She stopped using Cute Charm and simply walked up to him and hugged him. "Thanks, Silver." Her friend remained frozen. "Loosen up. Consider this to be a practice for the real acting."

Silver groaned again and moved his arms up to hug her. His motions seemed almost robotic and ridiculously awkward. His embrace had no warmth whatsoever and Crystal noticed that his expression was absolutely rigid. She released her embrace and took a step backwards.

"Why won't you relax, Silver?" she asked. "If you're like this, then Gold is going to find out that you're only pretending."

"Uh… sorry? I just… never thought something like this could ever happen."

Crystal put her arms behind her back and looked into Silver's eyes. His eyes met hers for a split second before he looked away. He eyed the windows, trying to guess its thickness and height off the ground.

"Do you think I'm… pretty?" Crystal asked. "Do you think I'm attractive?"

Silver began to lightly ram his head into the wall. 'What a day! Could this possibly get any worse?!' Crystal pulled him away from the wall and forced him to face her.

"Well? Answer me."

"… This isn't fair, Crys," Silver groaned out. "Don't do this to me…"

"Just answer," Crystal said. "If you don't answer, then I guess you don't think I'm pretty or attractive. I guess that's why Gold doesn't like me."

Silver let out a long sigh and ran his gloved hands through his hair. "How did I get mixed up in this?!" 'Ah, the hell with it.' "Yes, I think you're pretty and attractive."

The girl grinned. "Well, great then! Let's go find Gold right now!"

"Say what?"

"Gold is in this city somewhere with his date. He said that she was waiting for him in the Pokémon Center, and knowing Gold, he won't go too far from there. And I think I know what restaurant he went to. I want to see his date to see exactly who I'm competing against, and this will be a great time for me to check whether he's jealous at all."

Silver stared at her with his mouth open in shock. "… Today? But… that wasn't a part of the deal! I thought I'd have time to prepare myself!"

"You'll have time on our way there. So let's go! I have to test this before Gold falls for that other girl!"

Without even waiting for him to respond, Crystal grabbed her bag and headed downstairs. Silver slammed his head on the wall again before he reluctantly followed.

"Something tells me this deal is going to get worse and worse…"

No, for once, I did not end a segment in an evil cliffhanger way. Enjoy this non-evil ending while you can. Because the evilness will be back!

Note: for Silver's nightmare, I said Tin Tower. I am well aware that in HGSS games, it's called Bell Tower. But for the same reason as SA (and everything else too), I am sticking with Tin Tower. It was Tin Tower once in GSC, and it'll ALWAYS remain as such for me. And just like I said in SA, we already have a Sprout Tower. We don't need a Bell Tower because Bellsprouts suck horribly. Stupid acid spewing… bean sprout thing…

Also note that in Silver's training session, I said that Waterfall was definitely better than Aqua Tail. That's because I freaking hate Aqua Tail. Accuracy 90 attack… hits 4 times on 10 tries. It's like a weaker Focus Blast. For those who played the 4th and 5th Generation games, you'd know that Focus Blast never hits anything despite having 70 accuracy. As such, whenever I can, I take Waterfall over Aqua Tail. 10 less power for 100 accuracy and a chance to force the opponent to flinch.

And as of this chapter, S-EARL has reached 90 chapters in total. Holy crap! And the chapter counts of S-EARL are at 36, 27, 18, and 9, forming the pattern of decreasing multiples of 9 that I was aiming for since the end of SR's Containment series. Now the fast updates are OVER! Expect nothing until 2013.

Next up: an even numbered chapter. "You know the music. Time to dance."