.—.—.
Five-year-old Gary Oak tied his brand new sneakers tight with a double knot. His grandpa had sat him down and taught him to tie his shoes forever ago so now he could do it all by himself! He slipped his necklace over his head. The necklace was a round stone with yellow and green swirled painted together like a yin and yang symbol and strung on a paracord. Daisy had given it to him on his last birthday. He slammed the door to his room closed and thundered down the stairs.
"Gary, stop running in the house!" Samuel Oak immediately scolded from the living room, voice carrying through the mostly empty house.
"Sorry, Gramps!" Gary shouted. "Ash is waiting! Is Lady still gonna watch us?"
His grandfather appeared at the doorway between the living room and the entryway. His usual white lab coat was missing in favor of a red lounge shirt. The older Oak sighed one of those sighs that Gary knew to mean he was annoyed but not at him. "She'll be at the corral. Don't bother the pokemon too much and listen to Delia. Understand?"
Gary nodded. "Sure, can I go now?"
The man sighed again but smiled. "Yes, go on. Be back before the street lights come on."
Gary grinned. "Thanks, Gramps."
The Oak residence was a two-story home directly next to the shining white lab the town was most known for. Gary flew through the front door and jumped from the porch. His feet touched the gravel and he was on his way. After a minute of hard sprinting, the large fences of the Oak Corral were in sight. As was a boy with raven black hair next to a giant arcanine and a brunette woman.
"Ash!" Gary called as he approached.
"Gary!" His friend smiled. "Hurry up! Lady keeps licking me! My shirt is wet!"
The accused arcanine barked in amusement as she nuzzled Gary's chest in greeting. The youngest Oak used both his hands to pet and rub Lady's massive head. She exhaled a warm breath on his arms as she yipped in a fashion one would expect from a growlithe. "Oh, she just wants some attention."
"Doesn't she always?" The woman next to Ash asked.
"Hi, Aunt Delia!"
Delia Ketchum smiled as she ruffled his hair. "Hello, Gary. Did you get all your homework done?"
"Yeah, It was easy." Left unsaid was that he'd had Daisy help him look up the answers in his history book. By her expression, Gary thought she knew that anyway.
Delia brushed some specks of dust off her dress as she gave Lady a pat on the shoulder. "Shall we let these two into the corral, Lady?"
The fire-type barked in agreement. Ash shuffled his feet before stepping forward and whispering something to the hound that Gary couldn't hear. The arcanine nudged him with her nose after a moment. With a deep woof, she lowered her body down to the ground until her usually massive frame was somewhat compact.
Ash grinned and hopped up onto the back of the overgrown puppy. Or he tried to but even a crouching Lady was far too tall for a five-year-old to easily climb up. Delia giggled as she hoisted Ash up and sat him between the shoulders of his mount.
Gary frowned. Lady never gave him a ride. That wasn't fair!
"Gary, come on! Get up here!" Ash giggled as Lady stood up slowly to avoid toppling him. "I can see over the fence!"
Gary scrambled to clamber up the flank of the giant dog before giving up and accepting help from Delia. The boys adjusted their seats and clung to the hound's thick fur as if it were their handles. Lady took a bounding leap forward and they shrieked in glee.
Wind whipped into their faces as they laughed. The arcanine raced to the gate of the corral with the two boys atop her back and Delia following.
"This is fucking awesome!" Gary announced to the world.
Ash laughed as Delia gasped from behind them. Lady barked and came to a dead stop.
Oh, right, Daisy had said he wasn't supposed to repeat that word.
.—.—.
Nine-year-old Gary Oak stomped up the stairs to his bedroom. His thumping footfalls echoed through the house and were punctuated by the slamming of his bedroom door. The door frame creaked and would have splintered had it been more than the strength of a nine-year-old closing it. The upset boy threw the object in his hands at his wall. It clanged and fell to the floor, but not before putting a sizable dent into the plaster of his wall.
"What do they know?" Gary sniffed as he flopped into his bed. He pulled his pillow into his face with as much force as he could muster. "I don't need them…I'm an Oak."
He didn't need a bunch of extras clinging around him. Losers, the lot of them. He smiled into his pillow. He was Gary motherfucking Oak, he didn't need any of those losers. Certainly not dirt-poor Lavern Vallan, daughter of the potato farmer. Her high point in life would be getting to even talk to him.
Yes. Gary was just better than her. He was better than any of the Pallet rabble. They didn't like his personality? Good! He didn't need them to. He had Gramps and Daisy and Cousin Samson. Oaks only needed other Oaks.
And Ash? Forget him too.
The Oakling sniffed as he eyed the object that had put a dent in his wall.
The half of a pokeball still teetered back and forth. It was likely older than he was and brittle from being at the bottom of a riverbed for Mew knows how long. When he and Ash had both reeled it up, they'd practically come to blows over who got to keep it. In the end, it broke in down the middle and they'd both gotten a half of it.
A draw, Ash had called it.
A loss as Gary felt it.
He could feel the anger in his chest dissipating even as he scowled, even as he knew he'd messed up. He shook his head. No, it was not his fault. It was Leaf's for putting him in a bad mood to begin with. It was Ash's for not just giving the pokeball to him in the first place.
Gary finally removed his face from the pillow and stared at his ceiling. It was just in time to hear the doorbell ring. Gramps was at the lab and Daisy was off with one of her friends, so he removed himself from his bed to go answer it. If it was one of the old man's assistants running to fetch something again…
Gary opened the door a crack and stopped dead. Ash stood on the porch, head down and fist clenched around something. It was too late to just close the door, so he opened it fully and scowled. "What?"
Ash frowned. "No need to be mean. Mom said I needed to come over and make up with you."
"Go home, Ashy-boy."
"Hey, I'm sorry." Ash thrusted his fist towards him and opened it. "Here, take it."
Gary identified the other half of the ruined pokeball immediately. The Oak stared at it. They'd fought over it just hours ago. "Why?"
Ash shrugged. "You seem to want it more than me anyway."
There was silence on the porch for a minute before Gary broke it. "Keep it, I'll have hundreds of pokeball filled with pokemon when I become a trainer."
Ash nodded. The silence returned but only for a minute. "Wanna go get some snacks and watch Dragon Trainer again?"
It was their favorite movie. Gary considered it before agreeing. "I think the Pallet General Store just stocked up on chocolate berries."
Ash huffed. "I still think those are too sweet."
Gary had to agree there.
When they finally flew onto the couch of the Ketchum household an hour later it was with two bags full of snacks and the scent of Delia popping them popcorn assaulting their noses.
Gary smiled under their makeshift blanket fort as the movie's intro rolled.
Ash was a good friend.
.—.—.
Fifteen-year-old Gary couldn't be bothered to stop the sneer that appeared on his face. Delta made quick work of their opponent. A final Water Gun spelled the grass-type's doom, the jet striking with a watery impact. The trainer opposite of him scowled as she recalled her unconscious weepinbell. Frustrated lines etched themselves into her forehead. He didn't know why she was surprised, her weepinbell was a d-tier combatant at best. Even an idiot could see the thing was next to useless. It was probably useful for capturing other pokemon in the wild with its vines and use of powders, but a proper trainer battle saw the plant flounder worse than a beached magikarp.
It was almost insulting. She really thought a grass-type would be enough to best his starter just because of the type advantage? The notion was ridiculous and worth a good laugh, so Gary did. The girl deepened the lines on her face and finally returned her grass-type's pokeball to her belt. He paid that no mind. He knew better than most that type advantages only covered the power gap so much, more so in the rookie level of trainer battles. Once a trainer reached the upper echelons, type matches didn't mean as much unless it was an outright immunity. How could Lance remain Champion when a single Ice Beam threatened to shatter his whole roster? No, it was a padding.
Gary rolled his shoulder as Delta let out a bellow announcing his victory. Could he even count that as a battle? A two minute bout that ended with a well-placed Water Gun? No, it couldn't. It was a one-sided curb stomping, nothing more. It wasn't like he was out on the Routes to target trainers that couldn't even get past the first Gym. She had two badges as well! He knew that the Rainbow Badge wasn't that hard to get if you tried for it, but Flint had been tougher than Gary had thought he'd be. Not that he would ever admit that. No one goes into their first Gym battle expecting an onix!
"Pay up," Gary demanded smugly when he finally addressed his opponent. "You insisted on a triple bet, so you better have enough."
The girl's face flushed an angry red. With a mutter of an insult he couldn't hear, she withdrew the bills and threw them in the air. She stomped off back to…wherever it was that the cannon fodder usually came from. Some suburb town of Celadon with a ridiculous name, he thought.
Gary didn't care. Why should he bother to remember the names of every person he beat? He logged the battles with the League as was required before shoving them out of his mind. The great Gary Oak had better use of his vast brainpower.
A warm glow highlighted the discarded bills. They carefully floated to him as he collected them with a grin. North's Psychic was coming along nicely. She was somewhere nearby, but he couldn't see her in the dusk lighting. The natu had flapped off to look for some proper seeds and berries to snack on the second they'd made camp. She was always back before too long and roosted in the canopy of trees surrounding their little camp. Gary let his team have pretty loose constraints when they had some down time, which wasn't too often.
So long as they weren't burning down the camp or making him a wanted fugitive, they were in the clear.
Growlithe yawned from his position near Gary's tent. The growlithe had been watching from his point on top of the stump Gary had made camp near. 'Tent' was probably stretching the word a bit, he admitted. What he had was really only a tent in the barest definition of the word. Just because he was traveling the region didn't mean he had to be uncomfortable.
The fabric was made from the finest ariados silk and could fit half a dozen people inside comfortably. The portable air conditioner was also a nice touch, and he couldn't forget the full-sized inflatable bed. It didn't have a heater, but Kanto still had warm weather. By the time it was cold enough to worry about catching a chill, Growlithe would be far enough along in training to heat an entire building on his lonesome.
The puppy pokemon had been a gift from his grandfather, grandpuppy of the old Oak's own arcanine. Keeping alive the family tradition of gifting a pokemon to the trainers of the family, the aged man had said, just like his father had done for him and he had done for Gary's father. Gramps hadn't had the chance to keep it alive with Daisy when she'd run off to…wherever she was, so it was up to him. Even before that his sister hadn't been all that interested in becoming a trainer anyway. A researcher, maybe. She had gotten along with Elm apparently.
Gary smiled to himself. If his parents couldn't be there to give him a pokemon, then Gramps was more than welcome to step in. The Old Oak had always been more of a father to Gary anyway. He may have never told the older man such but he knew. There wasn't much Samuel Oak didn't know. Which is why he was sure the man knew where Daisy was, even if the two didn't talk, and that she was fine.
Gary would probably feel bad about robbing the man of his grandparenting if Ash hadn't stepped into the role of surrogate grandson. Which he absolutely did, despite what Ash or the old man himself would say. Didn't matter to Gary much. He and Ash were practically raised as brothers since they were in diapers. Who knows, he was pretty sure his father and Ms. Ketchum had been of similar ages. In another reality, maybe he and Ash were brothers.
A brother to replace an absentee sister, he thought darkly.
Gary could scarcely remember a memory of his youth without Ash by his side, best friend and sidekick to the end. Well, Ash would always insist Gary was his sidekick rather than the other way around. Ash was wrong, obviously. He was Gary motherfucking Oak, he didn't do sidekicking. He'd admit that if he absolutely had to choose to be a sidekick for anyone, knife to his throat, Ash would be his choice. Better than the other rabble that called Pallet home. Ash was a far better companion than the Johtonian annoyance that Ethan tended to be, and leagues better than Leaf.
Gary scrunched his nose as Leaf popped into his head. He wasn't sure why they didn't get along. The people of Pallet had long since given up on making the two of them become friends. They were cordial–outside of their admittedly frequent arguments–given they shared the same clique but that was all.
He knew his temperament and overall approach had been…prickly in his youth. A bad first impression left lingering aftereffects. His first impression with Leaf had been less than stellar when he'd made fun of her, insulted her family, and mocked their economic shortcomings. Mew, Gramps had nearly whooped him for that one. Sometimes Gary wished he would've because his grandfather was damn good at verbally dressing him down and making him reflect on his actions. Both of which sucked. The old man didn't get angry much but when he did it was a silent, suffocating feeling.
Gary had always left a bad taste in some people's mouths, and that was to put it mildly. How Ash ever stood by him when he had been such an ass was beyond him. Young Gary was a snobby little shit, present Gary knew that. He'd been egotistical as hell as a kid. Thankfully his grandfather had curbed most of those traits early enough before they turned worse. He was still a little snobby and egotistical—he was Gary Oak, so he obviously had a right to be to a degree—but Ash certainly helped smooth him out, as did his interactions with Ms. Ketchum who was about the only female role model he had after Daisy left. Maybe not a motherly figure but…close.
Gary lifted his eyes as Growlithe lunged forward from his resting position to stretch his back. The speed at which he did so almost made Gary's head spin. Lady, the affectionate dog she was, had always been the quickest pokemon in Pallet Town and the fastest in Indigo when she was in her prime. Speed was apparently a trait she seemed to have passed down to her descendants.
The Oakling remembered the fire-type being snippy at first but the little shit came around pretty quickly. Gary suspected the canine just liked the fact he allowed him to have free roam when they weren't actively training. Not that he tended to roam much of anywhere, the lazy pup prefering to find a sunny patch of grass and sunbathe most days instead. Every once in a while though the hound would race down and roast a pokemon for his dinner. The fire-type had unceremoniously rejected any pokemon feed Gary offered. The last spearow the growlithe had chased and shot down with an Ember had been devoured nearly whole. Now that had been a night he had spent without a fire and constantly jumping from nearby spearow calls and rare fearow shrieks . The puppy was at least more careful with his targets since, lest he bring down a fearow flock on their heads.
At least the canine wasn't causing unnecessary chaos. Unlike a certain normal-type. Raticate gave her trainer an offended glare and gnashed her teeth as he recalled her. Gary took it on the chin. The rat had already stolen food from two trainers just on Route 5, which was not fun to sort out, and Gary hadn't missed the looks the pokemon had been giving the nearest camp's bags. The little shit could use a timeout for the night.
Well, not little. The rat was massive but his point still stood.
Scyther was still in his pokeball. The bug-type was still wild at his core and remained in stasis when not actively training or battling. They had made progress from their initial meeting in the deep heart of the Viridian Forest. The mantis had only tried to behead him once since then so, hey, progress.
Gary kicked dirt onto the remaining embers in his fire pit. Seeing the final embers snuffed out, he returned to his tent and retired inside. Growlithe followed him in, giving a mournful look to the fire he'd created. The Oakling snorted. The fire-type liked to rest in the fire on days where the coming autumn chill was a little harsher than usual. Flash Fire was really something.
Delta had made his way to his waterhole. Gary reflected that the idea was one of his best. He made one of his pokemon dig a large hole on a rotating basis every time they made camp. After it was dug out, Delta would work on his water reserves by filling it up. The wartortle preferred slumbering in the waterhole when there wasn't already a pond or lake close to their camp.
Gary scrolled through his pokedex as he usually did before going to sleep. Most of it was dull as usual. Rainfall estimates for Kanto's yearly wet season that would drown the southern portion of Kanto, a message from Daisy, a League notice of—wait, what?
Gary sat up from his reclined position and rubbed his eyes before checking the device again. The notification remained unchanged. For the hell of it, he shut his device down before turning it back on. Still, the new message alert blinked at him in what Gary took to be a patronizing manner.
How had Daisy even gotten his contact information? She'd refused to talk to Gramps for years–despite everything the man had done for the both of them–so who else had given it to her? He wasn't even sure who would have that information. Even he and Ash hadn't bothered with the messaging system of the pokedex since it had a few days of delay on any message sent. Gary himself had only used it to send an update to Gramps once or twice when he couldn't get access to an actual phone. The Viridian Forest, for example.
He supposed how she got the info was probably less important than why she wanted it. She hadn't bothered to send anything as small as a postcard in years, five years, so what did she want now? He glared at the message in his inbox and willed it to tell him without him needing to read it. He considered ignoring it, just deleting it and moving on, but he couldn't force himself to do it.
He wanted to know so many things. He wanted to ask so many questions. Maybe she had finally decided to tell him everything after half a decade. There was only one way to find out and he was nothing if not curious. It was an Oak trait. Gary resigned himself and opened the message. It loaded slowly, line by line, until a fully fleshed out message was on his screen.
Hey, baby brother.
Congratulations! I'm proud of you! That's the first thing I wanted to say to you, to make sure someone told you.
I won't drag this out with excuses, you're too smart for that and you don't deserve it. I'm coming back. I'm in Hoenn right now doing some work and still need some time to wrap everything up here, but I'm planning on being in Kanto by the time the next Indigo Conference happens. The same Conference I know you'll make a name for yourself in. I'll be watching you take home the gold!
I'd like to see you, Gary. I've missed you. I'm so sorry for never calling. I'm so sorry for anything I ever said. I'm sorry for not being a good sister. I'll tell you everything you want to know, but please wait for me to get there. It needs to be face to face.
I love you,
Daisy Oak
Gary sniffed.
He was a storm cloud of emotions in that instance. He wasn't sure whether to cry or scream. Both seemed a good option. Daisy left and he'd moved past it, end of story.
He guessed not.
He didn't know if the tightness in the back of his throat was from rage or if he was going to sob. No tears fell, so maybe he had his answer. Shouldn't he be crying? He felt like he should cry, like this was the perfect situation for tears, but nothing came. A warmth nuzzled his foot and Growlithe tilted his head.
"Growlithe, you know Gramps. Did I ever tell you about my sister?" Gary spoke and the tightness in his throat eased a bit. The growlithe gave a light woof. He had heard of her then, at least enough. "Daisy left so long ago. I was ten. Nine, actually, it was a month before my birthday."
He hesitated, as if saying the next words aloud would make them truer than they already were. "I can't remember her face."
It felt as awful coming out of his mouth as he felt to admit it to himself. Gary couldn't remember his own sister's face. What did that make him? He'd not looked at a picture of her in so long. Years. When his birthday passed a second time without her there, without even a call or a card, he had locked all his photos of her in his trunk under his bed. That trunk was in an extra closet somewhere collecting dust, pictures along with the necklace she'd given to him stowed in it. He hadn't much liked looking at either.
He remembered Daisy in small parts. She resembled their mother, if Gary could believe those old photos he'd always gazed at with wonder for a mother he'd never known. Her hair was like their mother's though a shade lighter. Their eyes were different, Daisy's eyes were green. Or were they hazel? Brown maybe?
His throat tightened when he couldn't decide.
Gary resembled their grandfather, plain to see. Same eyes, nose and hair. A younger Samuel Oak was a ringer for Gary. He probably resembled his father too, though he'd never really seen a good photo of him. Gary had always found that odd, there being photos of various Oaks all over the house but never one of his father, the son of the great Professor Oak.
Gary remembered Daisy's voice too. How could he not when she'd screamed at him as she left home, when she'd yelled inches from his face about how he looked so much like "that bastard!" He'd never understood. Why did his own sister hate him? Why did she hate their grandfather? Gary resembled their grandfather, sure, but why was that such as sin? He'd sent messages for the first two years before he'd stopped. The number had long been out of service anyway. She never responded and Gramps never talked about her anymore.
He sat there, unmoving, until Growlithe's whining broke Gary from his internal battle. He smiled as he scratched behind the ears of the puppy pokemon. "Sorry, just thinking. Let's hit the hay. Long day looking for an abra tomorrow."
With that, Gary closed the device and set it aside. He laid back down and slumped into his bedding, Growlithe circling paths on the blanket and nudging it with his nose before settling down near the middle of the bed. Gary closed his eyes.
He'd waited half a decade, Daisy could wait on him this time. He just wanted time to think. To process. None of which he wanted to do at the moment. Gary pulled the blanket up to his face, over his nose and just under his eyes, and made a realization he didn't appreciate.
The Oakling sniffed again as he found himself wiping hot tears from his cheeks.
.—.—.
"Fuck the rain." Gary spoke the words like a vow. Delta enjoyed the weather but wisely stayed silent. The rest of his pokemon agreed though.
Growlithe barked and made a show of shaking himself to try and dry his fur without much success. The droplets sprayed into the feathers of North who squawked and, with an annoyed flash of rose red energy, sent the fire-type back into the downpour with Psychic. The yelp was instant and the canine raced back into the coverage of the tarp. The growlithe glared daggers into the beady eyes of the natu but was more mindful where he shook himself a second time.
Raticate and Scyther were resting in their pokeballs. The rat had decided she wanted to be a shit and run through the forest and disturb the locals. The locals being the damn pokemon he was trying to capture. So, the rat could sit in stasis until he finally tracked down an abra that didn't teleport when he got within a mile of it. Scyther was another case. The bug was just bored and didn't want to go out until training resumed.
Gary rolled his eyes at the thought of the duo. Boneheads, both of them.
Mew, was that what Gramps felt when he and Ash pulled some stunt or another?
Gary cringed as the thought of some of said stunts came to mind. Why had they thought trying to ride Dragonite was a good idea? The dragon-type, being the utterly too patient pokemon she was, had entertained them until a lab assistant had dragged them by the ear to see the old man. There were worse targets they could have chosen. Maverick would have just huffed and made them return to the lab with less hair than they'd started with.
He didn't even want to think about the time they had thought using Nico as a jungle gym was anywhere near reasonable. Gary could laugh now, being as removed from the incident as he was, but the nidoking had been far from impressed. Arcanine had shuffled them away from the poison-type quickly but Nico never did take naps near the house again.
A chirp alerted him to North's presence again. Gary watched her fly from under the tarp and circle above them. The rain had broken, finally, and it seemed the natu had sensed their target.
Gary wasted no time as he followed her, Delta and Growlithe trailing him. An abra was close and he'd not let it slip through his fingers again.
.—.—.
Gary groaned as the abra teleported away in a flash. This had to be the dozeneth time they'd tried to capture the damn thing. He couldn't even tell if it was the same one or if there were multiple. I didn't matter how many there were, they were all fucking with him. The psychic-types were driving him insane. It had been days of slogging through the rain to get to the place where the psychic was just for it to teleport a half mile or more in the other direction.
He was wet, cold, and hungry.
The Oakling could take any of those individually but he was not going to take all three together. That was a recipe for making him pissy which does no good for anyone. He was strongly considering pausing the hunt and heading towards Celadon. After he destroyed Erika and hit up the city, he could return and try his luck again. If he wasn't having any luck out here, then no one was.
Growlithe stopped dead in his tracks. The pup inhaled deeply through his nose and glared into the tree line. A low growl made Gary stop behind the fire-type. "What is it?"
It answered for the hound by stepping out of the trees. Golden yellow fur darkened by rain and dirtied by mud, two long bundles of hairs sprouting from above its mouth like a mustache. Gary had seen this pokemon far too many times in the nights spent reading its entry in his pokedex.
The kadabra met his eyes as Growlithe barked. A spoon of tarnished silver appeared in its hand with a violet shine. It pointed it at them.
It was challenging him.
The Pallet trainer felt himself grin.
.—.—.
He locked eyes with the newest member of the team.
"You really want that as your name? It's forever, you know." Gary tried to impress the importance of the choice on the kadabra. "It's…long."
The psychic-type shook his head in stout disagreement.
My Life-Giver-Clutch-Layer found it to be a worthy epitaph for one of her spawn. I shall hence be known as Golden-Arcane-Mystic-of-Wooded-Plains.
Gary hadn't known it was possible to find a pokemon more unyielding and stubborn than he was. Gramps had always told him he would one day meet his match.
He sighed. "If you're sure. I'm not saying all that every time I need to talk to you. I'm shortening it to Myst."
Golden-Arcane-Mystic
"Mystic. No more syllables."
Golden-Mystic
Gary rolled his eyes. What kind of negotiation was this? "Plain."
The pokemon winced.
Mystic shall suffice.
.—.—.
Celadon City was both everything like Gary had expected it to be and nothing like it should be. Erika was a breeze to get through. Growlithe and Scyther took her grass-types without needing his third. The Rainbow Badge was more colorful and eye-catching than his other badges, so the Oak would give Erika that. A Plain Jane she was not.
He cackled as he hit the jackpot, the second of the night in the Game Corner. With that last pile of coins added to his sum, he should have enough for his intended target. The attendant made him go through some paperwork and review his Trainer ID, but Gary walked out of the gambling den with a voucher for a TM and a shiny new pokeball that held his newest team member.
The newest psychic-type was freshly hatched if the Game Corner attendant was to be believed. Gary's hand itched to release if then and there but he tempered it with logic. They needed to meet in a more controlled environment one-on-one. A young pokemon would attach itself to the first person it saw, but a pokemon like his newest psychic-type would do so with more vigor than most. It would need special attention as it grew in order to be the formidable fighter he knew it could be.
Ideas and techniques played in his mind just thinking about the future.
Gary was very eager indeed, but he had one last thing to take care of. He needed to be in the best headspace he could be when meeting his newest partner and something was hovering over him like a shroud.
Daisy,
I'll be in the Conference on my own merits for my own goals whether you're there or not.
Do what you want and so will I.
Gary Oak
Registered Indigo League Trainer
Sponsored Trainer under Professor Samuel Oak
Recipient of Kanto Starter for Academic Excellence
Pallet Trainer Academy Class Valedictorian
Gary read it one more time. His thumb hovered over the button that would send it but the digit refused to lower. He breathed deeply. Maybe it was too brisk, but when you contact someone after years of radio silence you don't get the luxury of familiarity. Instead you get every title he could fit to further impersonalize the message.
Gary read it one more time. His thumb pressed send. He exhaled. The weight of a burden lifted from him. North chirped and glided to his shoulder. The mental weight was replaced by physical one but Gary didn't mind. They went towards the Department Store to cash in his voucher and get the team some new moves. Afterwards, it was back to the grind, back to traveling, back to fighting.
The road towards Saffron was his target as he took his next step.
.—.—.
I did not expect to get this out this early but inspiration kicked me. I feel like my foreshadowing and hints are a bit heavy handed so maybe you all will pick up on some things or maybe I'm delusional. Probably the latter. Gary is a character I enjoy writing, maybe more than Ash in a certain aspect. Next chapter will be the actual next chapter but it still may take a bit. Gary's team so far is below so that there is no confusion.
-Delta (Male Wartortle)
-Growlithe (Male)
-Raticate (Female)
-North (Female Natu)
-Scyther (Male)
-Golden-Arcane-Mystic-of-Wooded-Plains (Male Kadabra)
-? (Pokemon from the Game Corner)
Next Chapter: Ambition
Reviews are appreciated!
Dman09: Thanks! Unown finally joining the team was a slow process but satisfying to write. Dark-type dogs are weirdly common (houndoom, mightyena, mabosstiff), I never noticed that.
ThunderBasilisk: Thanks man. I can honestly say I have no intention of giving Ash a sandile, mostly because there is one prominently featured in Challenger and I don't want to overlap there.
RegulusCetus: Glad you liked Ash's route to specializing. Next chapter there'll be a lot more on that topic. Thanks for the kind words.
HDK315: Ash's growth into his path has been fun to write. In universe, it's definitely common to find an affinity for a type and sticking to it. Gary and Ash will have some fun interactions in the next chapter, that's for sure. Ash's interaction with his team and the, admittedly over focus at times, on interactions is both fun to write and a good way to make them feel more connected.
Speed Reader: Thanks! Ash being a specialist is something I've been working on for a bit now. Cerulean is going to be fun to write when we get there, I have a good number of ideas I want to include and I'm not sure I'll have the word space haha. As for canon strength, that depends on Ash a bit but he is determined to challenge himself.
Joro-Sensei: Thank you. The history is something I've not had a great chance to touch upon, but Unown being around is going to give me far more chances for it.
BJJPanda: Thanks! On Superpower, it works a slight bit differently in the story than in the games. We'll get to see it at a later point, but Ash calling it a 'boosting' move was more of a (very large) oversimplification of what it does. Unown does take a spot on the roster, but Ash had eight he can carry as Oak's sponsee so he's not worried.
Gouravsilentreader: Thanks, glad you liked it. Dark-type specialist Ash is gonna be a fun journey to cover.