[Pokémon] The Rocket Revival

[Cutlerine]

Chapter Twenty: Crys

"Do you think Aaron's OK?" asked Thom, looking worried.

"I don't know," said Crys shortly, kicking a stone. I could see she didn't like it when things got outside her control; hopefully, this experience would teach her she wasn't the greatest after all.

"He'll be fine," I said soothingly. "I'm sure of it. Silver will find him and help him out of there."

"His Ursaring couldn't stand up to the Pinsir's attack," said Crys sourly, "even when it had two other opponents distracting it."

"His Ursaring isn't his strongest Pokémon."

"What is?"

"His Sneasel."

Crys gave a short, derisory laugh.

"A Sneasel! Yes, that will take down a Pinsir easily!"

"He won't be using his Pokémon anyway," I said. "If the Pinsir appears, he'll try and catch it again, then he'll get a few seconds to run away before it breaks out."

There was a creaking sound from the woods, then the sound of splintering wood followed by a heavy crash. All three of us were silent for a moment.

"What was that?" asked Thom.

"A tree falling over?" I hazarded. "Nothing to worry about."

"What if the Pinsir cut it down, and it fell on Silver and Aaron?"

"I'm sure that didn't happen." Actually, now I thought about it, it might well be the case. What if Silver was lying crushed and broken on the forest floor right now? What if...?

No! That was impossible. Silver survived everything; even in the short time I'd known him, he'd pulled us both through some impossible situations. He'd broken us out of jail, he'd beaten Gold... There was no end to his ingenuity. He'd survive this.

"What if—?"

"Please, just shut up!" I cried. "You're not helping at all!"

Thom recoiled as if stung, and looked hurt.

"Sorry," I said, more calmly. "But that kind of attitude doesn't help at all. It just gets on other people's nerves."

"I—"

"Look!" Crys pointed towards the woods, to where two figures were emerging from the gloom, one taller than me and one a bit shorter. The moonlight caught their hair, and I saw red and green. They were back.

"Are you OK?" I called to Silver and Aaron as they approached.

"Yeah," said Silver, looking tired. "Aaron ran the wrong way." The younger boy looked sheepish.

"You're OK!" cried Thom, looking relieved. For a moment, it looked like he might hug Aaron, but he ended up just standing there instead.

"I f-figured out why the P-Pinsir could use m-moves," Aaron told us. "It was f-feral. S-someone m-must have released it a-after training it."

"That makes sense," I nodded. Crys said nothing, just snorted as if she'd known all along. I ignored her and continued: "Good thinking, Aaron."

He smiled shyly, evidently unused to such praise.

"Don't want to interrupt," said Silver, and there was a tone in his voice that made me look up sharply, "but while we're literally out of the woods, we – well, we aren't out of the woods just yet."

Click-click!

It leaped out of the tall grass like a lion, the massive, spike-studded pincers glinting in the moonlight. The Pinsir crouched onto all fours, and I knew what that meant.

"Get out of its way!" I shouted, and practically threw Crys into the long grass, leaping after her as the Pinsir charged down the path with the speed of a cheetah, moving like a gorilla. I felt like I'd plunged into the sea; the snow and frost that covered the grass drenched me instantly, and I scrambled back to my feet, struggling for breath as I inhaled in shock.

Around me, the others were doing the same; briefly, I noted that Crys looked half-angry and half-shocked, and wondered what she would have to say to me later. The more important thing was that I could no longer see where the Pinsir was – and that made it deadly.

"Can anyone see it?" I whispered.

No response. I took that as a no. On the other side of the path, Silver brushed wet hair from his eyes.

Click.

We all started, and Crys cried out.

"Shut up!" I hissed. "It wants you to scream, to give away your posi—"

Then Crys screamed properly, and the grass rustled behind her as I heard something ripping; without thinking, I launched myself onto the patch of moving grass and landed hard on the Pinsir's back. It made a very un-Pinsir-like squeak and fell flat beneath me; for my part, I was winded, since its back was heavily armoured and I felt like I'd body-slammed a bollard.

"Monique!"

At the sudden noise, the Pinsir bucked beneath me, tossing me away as easily as a leaf; it leaped back onto its hind legs and turned to me, murder in its eyes. From where I lay amidst the grass, too winded to move and with pain tearing up my shoulder like barbed wire, I couldn't do anything; unable to even cry out, I watched the jagged fist rip towards my face—

—and bury itself in the earth right next to me, the Pinsir toppling over like a felled oak, part of the carapace of its head cracked and dented inwards. I looked up to see, of all people, Crys standing there, a rock the size of a grapefruit clasped between her thin hands. She looked like she was straining to hold it up, even with both arms.

"Th-thanks," I said, as she dropped the stone and offered me a hand up. I looked down at the fallen Bug and let out a long, shaky breath. "Tercier?"

He tugged at the leg of my sodden jeans, and I bent down to pick him up, replacing him from where he had fallen on my shoulder.

"Monique!" cried Silver again. "Are you OK?"

"I'm fine," I said, coughing. "Crys, what about you? I heard something tearing..."

"The Pinsir just got my coat," she said. Now that I looked, I could see a long tear down the sleeve, revealing a stretch of thin, pale arm. It was strange; I couldn't see any evidence of muscle beneath the skin, as if she had only bones.

"Boop," came a noise from my chest. I glanced down and peeled a flat Ditto from my shirt.

"Sorry," I said, as it slowly popped back into three dimensions. "I think I fell on you."

"Boop," the Ditto repeated, and, taking that to be a sign of forgiveness, I recalled it and put its ball in my pocket. I turned to the others.

"We really are out of the woods now," I told them. "Crys smashed it on the head with a rock."

"Make sure it's out," said Silver sharply, wading over through the grass. "It's got a thick shell, it might just be dazed."

I picked up the rock and hit the Pinsir again, hard, in the same spot. It squeaked again, bashed the ground with its fists and lay still.

"It's out."

I dropped the rock.

"What now?" asked Thom. "What do we do now?"

"Make camp again," Silver said. "Did anyone bring any of the stuff from your campsite?"

Thom and Aaron exchanged glances.

"I did," said Crys, holding up the bag she'd grabbed from the fireside. "Here."

"Good," said Silver. "We'll camp just inside the woods tonight, then, unless you want to walk all the way back."

The three kids shook their heads.

"All right, then. I'll take the first watch."

We were soon ensconced around a fire again, our clothes steaming in the heat, and Aaron and Thom fell asleep not long after. Silver glanced at Crys and me, from the other side of the campfire.

"You can sleep, if you like," he said. "I'll wake one of you up in a couple of hours for the next watch."

"In a minute," I replied, and he nodded. I looked at Crys, who was fiddling with a loose thread from her torn coat. "Crys?" She looked up. "Thank you. For hitting the Pinsir."

"It was nothing." She looked away. "Anyone would have done it."

"No," I told her. "Not anyone. I've met people who would have let the Pinsir break my neck – quite a few of them, actually," I continued, dismaying myself with the number of people I could think of. "But you didn't. And that means you're not as much of a brat as I thought you were."

Crys almost smiled then.

"Very well," she said. "I can take a compliment."

"It's true, though. This is something you're allowed to be pleased with yourself about, for once. You obviously had trouble lifting that rock, but you still—"

"What did you say?" Crys snapped. Taken aback, I floundered.

"I said – I just said you had trouble lifting that—"

"You saw, didn't you?" Tears were budding in the corners of her eyes, but she wasn't sad – she was furious. "My arm?"

"Well – yeah, but—"

"Leave me alone!" Crys shouted, getting up and storming away, to the furthest reaches of the fire's light. She threw herself down on the ground, heedless of her wet clothes, and turned her back to me.

I glanced across the fire at Silver, who was staring at her. He gave me a look that told me he was just as confused as I was.

"Tercier? Any ideas?" The Smeargle shrugged, perplexed. "Crys?" I called.

No reply was forthcoming. Bewildered, and not a little troubled, I lay down myself, and gave in to sleep.

---

The sun rose late; it wasn't properly light until eight in the morning, and it was then that we set off, after a quick breakfast. There had been no sign of the Pinsir all night, but we still didn't want to hang around in the forest.

Crys, Thom and Aaron had, it transpired, come in through the Ecruteak entrance at about ten o'clock the previous morning, and wanted to head into the heart of the Park, the part to the northwest of Goldenrod. Hence, they were coming, for now at least, in the same direction as us. I wondered why they still wanted to go after the Pinsir attack, but didn't question them; in fact, we barely spoke at all, the tension between Crys and I ruining the mood.

They slowed us down a little, since they stopped several times to catch Pokémon; we ran into several Yanma, one of which Thom actually managed to hit with a Pokéball and catch, and Aaron literally stumbled across a baby Heracross with a polio-ruined leg, left behind by its mother to die. It was easy to catch, unable to put up a fight, and he spent the rest of the day carrying it in his arms, which seemed to earn him the baby's undying devotion. I decided I liked Aaron; he made a refreshing change from people like Gold and Lance.

By the time it started to get dark, we were at about the point where our paths diverged; we decided to camp there that night and split up in the morning. Crys still refused to speak, but Thom seemed to have got past the tense atmosphere she'd conjured up, and was trying to teach his new Yanma his name, much to Silver's amusement.

"Echo!" he said; the goggle-eyed dragonfly flew into the fire again and then zoomed away, smoking.

"Just like a moth," said Silver. "Look, Thom, Yanma are insects, they're about as clever as rocks. Give him a name with some 'z's in it, something he can understand."

"Like what?" Thom looked at him crossly.

"I don't know. Bzzzt." The Yanma swung around to hover in front of Silver's face, surprised at this human who could speak his language, and buzzed back. "Bzzzt." Bzzt, went the Yanma. "Bzzzt. See, it's easy."

Thom tried. "Bzzzt."

The Yanma flew into the fire and then away with a high-pitched, buzzing whine. I laughed, and Thom recalled it crossly.

"Stupid dragonfly," he said sulkily.

"Nah." Silver waved aside his complaints with one hand. "It's just your buzzing technique. Work on it."

"You're lying, aren't you?" I asked. Silver nodded.

"Absolutely."

We lapsed back into silence again, and I watched Aaron feeding his Heracross on the juices of a battered plum he'd found in his pocket. Far more intelligent than the Yanma, it already had a tenuous grasp of the word 'Aaron'; every time it was mentioned, it pressed its head into Aaron's chest.

That night, as I sat up by the fire, trying to ignore the wind and scanning the horizon for any signs of attacking Pinsir, I felt a cold hand on my arm. I almost jumped out of my skin, but it was only Crys, who had sat up behind me.

"Monique," she whispered.

"Yeah?" I felt like asking her if she'd forgiven me yet, but it didn't seem the time.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Well. That was unexpected. I didn't have Crys down as the type to apologise.

"Oh. OK."

"I – I'm ill." She sounded like she might cry; I turned around and put a hand on her arm, trying to comfort her somehow. "I was born... most of my muscles..." She dissolved into tears, and I drew her close like I had done with Silver when he broke down after leaving Zane's house.

"I'm sorry," I said, patting her shoulder. "It was thoughtless—"

"You didn't know," interrupted Crys. "I shouldn't have lost my temper." She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I'm so stupid," she said, sitting up and pulling away from me. "I shouldn't get worked up so easily."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I mean, you're only – what, thirteen?"

"Fourteen," she corrected.

"Right. The point is, you're still just a kid. You're allowed to have tantrums once in a while." I sighed. "In fact, I think if you did – if you stopped being so controlled all the time – people would like you more."

Crys picked at her fingernails; quite a few of them were broken, and she pulled at the flaky edges.

"I don't suit being a Trainer," she said abruptly. "I want to go home."

"Why did you come out here, then?"

Crys gave a cynical little smile.

"I know my own shortcomings. What would you do with me if I was your daughter?"

"Point taken."

I felt guilty then: it was only yesterday that I'd thought I would put her up for adoption.
We sat in silence for a little while, then I thought of something to say.

"Why did you tell me all this?"

"I don't know," Crys said, and then she smiled properly, like a normal child. "I was sorry, I suppose."

"That's a start," I replied. "To being more likeable. Oh, and smile more. You have a pretty smile; boys will like it."

This was a lie. At the age of nineteen, I had yet to ever have a boyfriend, or even to kiss anyone. Before I stopped going to school, I had had my eye on a guy called Scott, but he moved to Hoenn before I worked up the courage to talk to him. It seemed to work, though, because Crys smiled again, blushing slightly.

"I'll try," she promised; I knew she would, for a short while at least, before she slipped back into her old ways and became a little brat again.

Maybe that was pessimistic; children change more easily than adults, after all, and Crys probably had as good a chance as any. Perhaps Crys could be normal.

"Do that," I said, patting her arm again. "'Night, Crys."

"Goodnight, Monique," she said, and lay down again. I wondered if she was cold, and decided she probably was; even with the fire, we had no blankets between us thanks to leaving the bulk of the camping stuff back in the woods. For a moment, I debated whether or not to give her my coat, but decided against it in the end. I was cold too, and besides, she was Crys. I couldn't imagine her deigning to accept it, even after our little heart to heart.

I shook my head, trying to ignore the pain it incited in my shoulder (I didn't yet have the courage to have a look at the wound), and woke Thom for the next watch.

 

[Cutlerine]

A very short chapter today:

Chapter Twenty-One: Interlude

The next morning, we bade farewell to the three kids – or intended to.

"I want to go back," said Crys. "Take me with you."

"What?" Silver didn't appear to quite understand, so I came to the rescue.

"We had a talk last night," I told him. "Crys... wants to go home."

"So I will travel south to Goldenrod with you," Crys said. Then she seemed to remember something, and added, "Please."

Silver looked like he'd been hit with a brick.

"Uh – OK, I guess." He looked at me. "Monique?"

"She can come." I turned to Thom and Aaron. "You two are still going on, yeah?"

Thom nodded.

"Bye, then. Nice to meet you. Crys, give me that bag of camping stuff."

She did, puzzled, and I handed it to Thom.

"You can keep that," I said. "You'll need it."

"Thanks," Thom replied, looking puzzled, "but – doesn't Crys want it?"

We all looked at Crys. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and gritted her teeth; I'd never seen anyone prepare so much for so little.

"No," she said at length, "you can have it."

It was now Thom's turn to sport the 'bricked' look.

"Oh – er – thanks!" he said, sharing a disbelieving glance with Aaron. "Well – goodbye."

"Goodbye," added Aaron, quietly.

"Bye," Silver and I said, starting to walk away.

"Goodbye." The last, sharp word came from Crys; after that we were silent, just walking south down the long, grassy path. Thom and Aaron stood there for a while, watching us go – I think they expected more of a farewell, even from two people they'd known for less than forty-eight hours. I glanced back after five minutes and saw them standing there, looking kind of lost; I hoped they'd be all right. The Park was large and full of dangers, and they looked small standing there in the middle of it.

We walked on, making good time now that we didn't have to stop at every wild Pokémon that appeared; I saw a couple more Caterpie and a slow-moving Weedle with the red nose of the confirmed alcoholic, but nothing as impressive as the Scyther and Fearow I'd spotted on the first day. I must have been lucky that time.

A little after noon, when we stopped to eat what was pretty much the last of the supplies Zane had given us, Silver took the opportunity to ask me, in his own words, 'what the hell is up with Crys?'

"We had a talk last night," I told him, "and I think I convinced her to try and mend her arrogant ways."

"I love your way with words." Silver grinned. "You write well, don't you?"

"I don't know, I've never tried."

"Maybe you should." He glanced over to Crys, who was looking curiously in our direction. "Talk to you later."

The rest of the day was uneventful, and the night was long, cold and full of the gnawing annoyance of hunger. Silver and I both had a bite or two of food left, which we donated to Crys, since she was younger, less used to hunger and also ill.

It was Silver who came to speak to me at midnight that night; he was curious to know more about Crys. I told him everything we'd said the night before, and he nodded slowly, pondering.

"That's weird," he said. "She doesn't seem like the type to pour her heart out like that." He frowned. "Do you think she might have recognised us, and be going to turn us in at Goldenrod?"

I hadn't thought of that, but now that Silver mentioned it, it sounded reasonably likely. Then again, Crys had actually cried last night – and given her proud nature, was it really feasible that she would lower herself so much in front of me? Besides, how many fourteen-year-olds could cry so well on command?

"I don't know," I told him. "Could she really cry like that if it wasn't real?"

"Maybe," Silver mused. "Some people can cry on demand. Blue always could. She was a great con artist." His face fell, and he looked in need of a hug, so I gave him one. "Wha – oh, you didn't have to do that."

"You looked like you needed it." I paused. "You're also really warm, which is nice."

"No, you're just cold. Get off, your fingers are like ice blocks."

Reluctantly, I pulled away and drew my coat more tightly around me. Silver looked at my face and sighed.

"Oh, go on then. Warm yourself on my glowing flesh."

"Thanks." I threw myself onto him and rested my head on his shoulder, absorbing the warmth. "How are you so warm?"

"Rapid metabolism, I guess... does it matter?"

"No."

We sat there for a while, looking out over the snow-sodden grass. For a few minutes, everything seemed good; I don't think I'd just sat and enjoyed someone's company since the accident. It was beautifully tranquil; Silver's presence soothed me in a way no one else had since I'd lost my friends.

Was it then that it started? That night, under the cloud-bruised sky, the cold, wet grass all around like frigid polar seas? I've thought about my time with Silver over and over again, and I keep coming back to that night; I'm sure it was then that I realised I'd fallen in love with him. It had happened slowly, a gradual process that overtook me a little more every hour, every day. We'd been acquaintances when we went to save the Red King, friends when we were arrested by Lance, and from that point forth I think my feelings deepened, like the waves depositing sand on the shore to build a beach. Silver was handsome, intelligent, courageous; he broke us out of prison, he outwitted Lance and Gold, he saved us from the feral Pinsir. By anyone's reckoning, he was a hero – and in true storybook style, the hero won the heart of the heroine.

But all of that's in the past now. Silver is gone now; he left, and is never coming back. He left me his locket and moved on, and nothing I said or did could stop him going.


Note: Since I have a new idea for a story, and this one is seriously starting to depress me, I think I'm going to try and wrap this up within the next week; I'll stick to an update a day, and that should finish it off in time, since I've already written ahead up to a point close to the start of the Radio Tower finale.

 

[Cutlerine]

OK. I think I need a break from this to pursue something more light-hearted, so this will be the last update for a while. Not that anyone's reading, but...

Chapter Twenty-Two: Goldenrod

The next day, we reached the Goldenrod Park entrance at around noon; it was another whitewashed building, as nondescript inside as it was outside. We passed through – and into the famous Yatzin Terminal.

Goldenrod took my breath away; it was as big as they say and bigger still. Tall buildings shot up and pierced the sky all around; they were dominated by a great Gothic toad of a train station, crouching like a tiger directly across from us. From behind it came the clatter of the bullet trains, and massive blue buses coughed their way out of the Terminal like asthmatic carpenter bees.

Then there were the people: they ebbed and flowed like water, a human tide that coursed through the sea of the streets. They clattered and chattered, walked, ran and jumped; their mobile phones buzzed and their headphones thumped faintly. A hundred tame Growlithe barked, and a thousand Meowth mewled back from the rooftops; a million Spearow fought for control of the bus-shelter-tops, and a billion Rattatta scuttled silently through the alleys and the sewers.

This was Goldenrod: modern, dynamic, and utterly terrifying for an out-of-towner like myself. I read recently that its population just reached 13 million, surpassing even Tokyo Metropolis; it was a true world city, the only one in the Grand Pacific Cluster. It was the only place in Johto where you would commonly find foreigners; every nationality was represented. Japanese, English, American, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean... people from all over the world came here, and all partook in the crazed, the frenetic life that throbbed in the city's veins; everyone danced to the eccentric rhythm that beat in the streets.

"Impressed?" Silver said, smiling. I nodded dumbly and stared around; I'd never seen so many people, so many buildings, so many Pokémon, so many vehicles – so many anything. And then, I'd never seen any foreigners, except for the English exchange students years ago at school, nor had I seen any skyscrapers or segmented buses. "Thought you might be. What about Tercier?"

The Smeargle sat on my shoulder, looking dazed; one glance at his face told me he'd fallen hopelessly in love with the metropolis at first sight. I poked him, and he didn't do more than half-raise one hand, too enraptured by the city to care.

"Monique?" asked Crys. I looked down at her. "Can you take me to the Pokémon Centre? I am capable of making my own way from there."

I turned to Silver, who looked surprised.

"You don't need my permission," he said. "The nearest Centre is somewhere on Bronze 88."

"Is that a real street name?" I asked, disbelieving. Both he and Crys nodded.

"It's famous," added the younger Trainer.

"What for?"

"Statues," explained Silver. "You'll see when we get there. Come on, it's on our way." He took a few steps out onto the square, somehow avoiding being swept away by the crowd, then stopped and came back. "Monique. How much money did Zane give us?"

"About 60,000 dollars, I think."

"We'll take the train," he decided. "After all, that's the only way to travel in Goldenrod."

"Is it?"

"Yeah," he said, grabbing the hands of Crys and myself and dragging us into the square, "Goldenrod is huge, yes? It grew out of the five original cities of Puceton, Honeygrove, Goldenrod, Magentopolis and Tealian, which expanded into what is basically a conglomeration of twenty-three cities that coexist under the banner of Goldenrod. If you live here, you can't know the whole city, it's impossible – so most people travel around by railway, and just know various areas around each train station." He ducked and somehow transported us around three buses without breaking stride; I stumbled, but regained my balance. "Cyclists are also fairly common," he remarked, suddenly stopping us dead as a fleet of cyclists cut across our path. "There's a lot of air pollution from the cars in this city, and bikes are cleaner."

He pulled us into the interior of the train station, where it was cool and brightly-lit, but still very crowded; people flowed endlessly back and forth through the turnstiles, either forwards towards the darkened other end of the room or back towards us, to emerge into the sunlit square.

"This way." Silver's voice echoed in the vast space as he pulled us out of the crowd, towards a complicated map made up of a great many interlinked coloured lines, with circles on them that represented stations. He examined it for a few moments, then nodded. "OK, I worked out where we're going. That turnstile there." He indicated one about two rows away from us. "Monique, we each need 300 dollars for the ride."

"That's... cheap," I said, as I pulled money from my bag and handed it out.

"It has to be," Crys pointed out. "Very nearly everyone uses it, at least twice a day. It has to be affordable."

"OK. Silver, help me, since I'm from little old Mahogany, where they don't have any trains." He smiled and led me over to the turnstile in question, somehow finding gaps in the crowd to tug me through; he fed a 500 dollar note into the slot in the turnstile and passed through, collecting his change on the other side.

"See? Simple."

I followed, and annoyed Crys by taking too long to pick up my change; when I'd got it all, I found myself standing in between two barrier rails. Silver beckoned us further along, and we descended into a downward-sloping corridor, dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lights.

"I thought trains went above ground?" I asked as we went down. Silver smiled; I think he found my ignorance cute, in the same sort of way as the ignorance of small children.

"Some do," he said, "but these don't. This is the underground network."

"The Goldenrod Metropolitan Underground Network," Crys clarified.

"Yep," Silver agreed, "but you just call it the Net."

We were caught up in a crowd that surged down the corridor behind us; Silver snagged my hand again and steered me to the left as we came to a split in the tunnel.

"It's divided, East Platforms and West," he told me, mouth close to my ear to be heard above the clamour of the crowd. "Eastward platforms are always on the left, and we want to go east to Bronze 88."

"What if you want to go north or south?"

"You take a different line," Crys told me, "one that goes north or south rather than east or west."

"Oh." My head was spinning; this was all so new. "This is really confusing."

"After we stop the..." Silver tailed off, glancing at Crys. "After we finish our business here, I'll take you all over Goldenrod, and we can see the sights. You'll get used to it then, it only takes a couple of journeys to get the hang of it."

The platform was uncomfortably warm after the cool air outside, and consisted of a long, crowded strip of concrete that projected out of the wall of a circular tunnel. Below and beyond the edge of the platform, the rails snaked out of the darkness at one end and into the darkness at the other.

"Net trains usually arrive every three to five minutes on busy lines like this one," Silver told me. "In fact... here we go."

The clicking and clacking of wheels on tracks reminded me uncomfortably of the Pinsir; I think Silver and Crys had the same thought, because we all shared an uneasy glance before the train itself roared into the station, doors sliding open even before it had stopped moving. Immediately, a steady river of humanity poured off, everyone leaving in one huge burst, and then Silver dragged us on board, one step ahead of the surging crowd behind us.

There were no free seats, so we had to stand; the train was so packed that slim, short Crys looked in danger of snapping in half like a twig. Silver put her up against the wall and stood in front of her, bracing his arms against the handholds, so that no one could crush her.

"Is it always like this?" I hissed. Silver considered for a moment.

"Not always," he answered, after a while, "but often."

The train was loud, hot and fast; when it started, it accelerated so much it almost threw me from my feet, and when it stopped about three minutes later, it did the same thing.

As we joined the tide of disembarkers, I asked Silver if we couldn't have walked the distance, if it had only taken three minutes. Crys laughed, a sound that started off as a sneering snigger and which she hurriedly changed into something less condescending.

"No," she said, before Silver could answer. "The train moves as the Murkrow flies, while we have to walk along the roads. We also walk about ten times slower than the train goes – and even that meagre speed is impossible in Goldenrod's crowded streets."
"What she said," added Silver, and took my hand to guide me through the crowd and up the stairs.

It was a blessed relief to get outside again; even if it was cold, it had been far too hot and crowded down in the Net tunnels. We were now at one end of a long, broad, pedestrianised street, old-fashioned Johtonian townhouses in the Asymmetric style rising tall on either side. However, the street's most striking feature was the line of statues that ran down the centre.

They had to be seen to be believed: colossal bronzes, none of them under fifty feet tall, mounted on great plinths of the golden sandstone that gave Goldenrod its name. I wandered up to the one closest to us and stared; it was the eponymous hero of the Johtonian epic Lazula of En, and his massive leg stretched up and away from me for an almost unimaginable distance. In fact, I couldn't see much more of him, and had to step back about twenty paces to truly take Lazula in. He gripped the severed head of the demon Andromalius in one hand and a sword in the other; for any other hero this would have been a victorious pose. In this, however, his head was bowed, turned towards the viewer who stared up from below, and huge metal tears rolled down his cheeks, for the demon had been his brother.

"That's amazing," I breathed, staring up at it. "It's... huge."

"They're all down this road," Silver told me. "Eighty-eight of them. Hence the name, Bronze 88."

Tercier uttered a heartfelt sigh; I glanced at him and watched his eyes flame with artistic fervour. If there had been paper around, I didn't doubt he would have started drawing immediately.

The crowds were here in as much force as they had been in Yatzin Terminal, and it was a battle to get anywhere; with Silver's talent for slipping between the gaps, however, we managed to progress about eight hundred yards down to the Pokémon Centre.

"It's not usually as bad as this," Silver assured me as I half-fell into the lobby, exhausted. "But Bronze 88 happens to be really good for shopping, and I think it's Rail Day."

Rail Day: one of Johto's few national holidays, which celebrated the anniversary of the opening of the Magnet Train line between Goldenrod and Saffron, linking Johto and Kanto in a way that had never happened before; it was something akin to the opening of the Channel Tunnel between England and France, though I'm not sure if that warranted a holiday in either of those countries.

"I think it is," I agreed, counting the days in my head. "It's the 26th of February."

We turned to Crys, ready to say goodbye, but she wasn't there; I looked around and saw her at the front desk of the Centre, talking to the receptionist – and pointing at us.

"****!" exclaimed Silver, turning on his heel and running towards the door, "I was right!"

I followed hastily, just as a few nearby Trainers who had been lounging around looked up, overhearing Crys; the last I saw of that Pokécentre, blue flashes were going off like crazy.

"That *****!" I raged as Silver dragged me through the crowd, pushing now as well as weaving, trying to get as far away as possible. "I – she promised she was going to try and change!"

"Maybe she meant that," growled Silver, "but she didn't promise not to recognise and betray us."

"If I ever see her again—"

"Save it," hissed Silver, "you need your breath to run. Recall Tercier, he's too noticeable."

I did, ignoring the Smeargle's protests, and suddenly heard someone scream behind us; I glanced back as I stuffed the ball back into my pocket, and caught a glimpse of three or four Beedrill buzzing over the crowd, bulbous red eyes scanning for us.

"They won't catch us with those," Silver told me, catching my sleeve and motioning for me to follow him into an alley between two buildings. "They've got bad eyesight."

There was a loud sniffing sound, and some more cries of alarm, and a large, triangular head poked its way into the alley entrance. It was adorned with a moustache that stretched out a full foot on either side, and attached to a small, slim body with a massive fluffy tail. In one hand, this strange apparition clutched a spoon: it was a Kadabra, and it gave a warning sniff as it stalked down the alley towards us.

"That, on the other hand, will track us easily," said Silver. "Mercury!"

The ball opened in his hand, before he had even thrown it; the blue light streamed out towards the Kadabra, coalescing into a talon for just a second, tracing black lines through the air and across the Kadabra's face, before dissolving and retreating into the ball. The Kadabra recoiled, head spinning around in a full circle and trailing blood, before collapsing where it stood, knocked out in one hit.

"Keep moving," Silver said, and, grabbing my hand, pulled me deeper into the alley.

"What was that?" I demanded to know.

"A sort of Night Slash mixed with Quick Attack," he replied, apparently not out of breath at all. "I call it Sucker Punch. Took a lot of practice to get it so fast that we could use it like that. Only really works on fragile Pokémon – but Kadabra is one of the most fragile out there."

The other end of the alley led onto another shopping street, but without the statues; once into the heart of its crowd, Silver deemed us safe and let me stop to catch my breath.

"We had too much of a head start for them," he said. "Though I'm pissed about Crys."

"Not as much as I am," I replied. "I was the one who trusted her."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. We're OK now." Silver glanced left and right, as if reminded to check for followers. "But the cops will know we're here now. Of all the people... Why did Crys have to recognise me?" He sighed. "Come on, let's get out of here. We need to get to the tower and do some skulking."

We took another Net train and changed at Antoine's Cross to get to Tower Road. Here, there was less traffic, and there were fewer pedestrians, too; the buildings seemed to be mostly offices and suchlike. The street was dominated by the spire of the Radio Tower, a swooping, tubular edifice that soared upwards like a rising eagle; it was the crowning glory of a horrendously ugly building that housed the Johto Broadcasting Company. It wasn't just radio, of course; they broadcast television from there too, but old names die hard, and it was still universally referred to as the Radio Tower.

"This is it, I guess," I said, craning my neck to look up. "The Radio Tower. The goal."

"It felt like we were never going to make it." I had to agree with Silver. It had taken just a few days to get here, but it had felt so much longer; Gold and the Pinsir had conspired to fill the time so that I was sure it had to have taken us a month. That was leaving aside the issue of Lance, who had recently been conspicuous by his absence from our lives.

"Do we just sit out here and wait?" I asked.

"For as long as it takes," Silver affirmed. "They won't wait long, not now Lance has worked out where they're based. First, though," he continued, brightening, "let's have lunch. We've got money now, and Goldenrod is full of restaurants."

He strode off confidently in a random direction, and ended up at a café a block away. From the window tables, you could just about see the front entrance of the JBC building, and that was where Silver and I sat and dined on piles of absurdly small pork sausages, each the size of the first joint of my thumb. Neither of us had eaten properly since leaving Zane's, and we fell upon them like ravening wolves; for a long time, all that passed between us was the sound of clinking forks.

No one appeared at the Tower during our meal, and afterwards, replete, we strolled back to take the guided tour. This was to be, as Silver put it, our reconnaissance of the area. Something about the way he spoke struck me; his voice sounded slightly odd, with something indefinably different about it. I thought that perhaps our proximity to our goal was getting to him, that the knowledge that we were close to stopping the resurrection of his father was causing the stress and strain on his mind to build up.

"Are you OK?" I asked as we climbed the short flight of steps to the JBC building entrance.

"Yeah," Silver replied, nodding. "Just... we're so close now. The Rockets are right here, in this city." He looked around, stopping on the top step. "Maybe they're watching the building right now." He took a shaky breath. "Maybe someone's coming to kill us. But whatever the Rockets are doing, it's... almost time. They're really going to – to bring him back."

I thought for a moment, Silver's earnest eyes locked on my face; I wanted to make my next words good ones. In the end, I couldn't do it, and settled for these.

"We're going to win," I told him, taking hold of his hand. "We're going to win, Silver. You know that, right?"

He looked at me uncertainly for a moment, then smiled.

"Of course," he agreed. "No question." He looked towards the revolving doors in front of us. "Shall we?"

"Yeah."

We went inside; the lobby was paved with wide, flat tiles of elegant variegated marble, and the walls had delicately carved coffers inset into them. There were about four other people standing around, obviously tourists by their large cameras and faintly bored expressions.

The receptionist was a pretty young woman with tan that matched her smile in that it was about as genuine as Mawile tears.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes," said Silver, suddenly acquiring a Hoennian accent, "what time is the tour?"

His expression and posture had suddenly shifted; he seemed smaller, weedier and vaguely annoying, though I couldn't tell you exactly how he'd done it. Presumably it was a trick he'd picked up somewhere during his wanderings.

"There's one starting in ten minutes," was the reply. "If you like, you could take a brochure while you wait."

"Thank you," Silver said, looking like he meant it with all his heart and soul. "I will."

He plucked one from a rack, and we retreated to the seats beyond where the four tourists were standing.

"How'd you do that?" I asked.

"Blue taught me," he replied shortly, and flipped open the brochure. I winced at my own insensitivity; of course Blue would have taught him – she had been a con artist, after all. "Look," Silver said, interrupting my thoughts, "there's a floor plan."

He spread out the pamphlet and we pored over the map for a while.

"This could be useful," I said. "Especially this."

I jabbed a finger at a door on the ground floor marked Basement: Storage/Generator Units, Strictly Off-limits.

"If it came down to it, we could shut off the power," Silver noted, seeing what I was driving at. "That would stop any transmissions, at least for a little while. Then maybe we could use the confusion to attack the" – here he inhaled deeply – "the Mask of Ice, and get him arrested. Or kill him, of course."

I couldn't quite tell whether he was joking, and didn't dare ask.

"Wouldn't the other Rockets stop us?"

"Nah," replied Silver. "I think that if Karen, the Mask and the Mastermind were out of the way, they'd be pretty much useless. They usually are without their commanders."

"Who's the Mastermind?"

"Don't you remember?" Silver raised an eyebrow. "The guy behind the Saffron experiments three years ago?"

Of course. I remembered that; it had been the biggest news of the decade. The architect of the ideas, and of the Rockets' downfall, had been a former Rocket Executive and, once, Giovanni's second-in-command; he had also, more unusually, been a talking Meowth from distant America. Since no one knew his name, or even if he had one, the media had dubbed him 'the Mastermind' – and the moniker had stuck.

"If you recall, I told you that Will told Lance he was involved," Silver continued.

"Yeah, I remember. Although... that doesn't quite make sense. I thought he wanted to kill Giovanni?"

The Mastermind's goal three years ago had been, according to Russell Curtis (the private investigator who had solved the case and beaten his scheme), to torture Giovanni to death as slowly and painfully as possible; this didn't seem like the kind of guy who would want to bring him back from the dead again.

"He did. I've been wondering about that myself."

"Excuse me!" came a high, upper-class voice. I looked up and saw that the group of tourists had increased to a reasonable size, and a petite, somewhat elderly woman had materialised amongst them. A badge on her lapel proclaimed to the world that she rejoiced in the singularly unlikely name of Havoc. "Excuse me, would everyone taking the tour please gather around!"

Silver folded up the pamphlet and we joined the group. When we were all gathered, Havoc began talking.

"The Radio Tower," she began, "or, to give it its full name, the Johto Broadcasting Company Spire, was built in 1952, when the French entrepreneur Marcel Fournier brought radio technology to Johto. Just three months after the work was completed, the government forcibly expelled Fournier from the country and set up a company of its own, the Johto Broadcasting Company. This company still exists today, and occupies the same headquarters." Havoc looked around at her guests with an eager smile. "Now," she said, "I'll be taking you around just the radio half of the building; the television part is larger and has a tour to itself, which you can catch at half past three. We're going to go to the recording studios, the technicians' area and, unfortunately for those of you who don't get excited by paperwork, the administration and production centre. However," she added, smiling, "I will also show you to the actual broadcasting machine itself to make up for it – so don't worry!"

There was a murmur of laughter throughout the group.

"Now," said Havoc again, "let's make our way to the studios up on the first floor. For those of you who don't want to climb the stairs, the lifts are just over there." She began to walk briskly off towards the stairs, shoes clacking on the marble floor, and the tour group drifted along behind in the vacuous way tour groups do. A few elderly and very fat people took the elevators, but the majority of us followed Havoc up the stairs, which had a strip of rich, ruby-red carpet running down the centre and a gilded teak handrail. I ran my fingers up it tentatively; I'd never seen anything as sumptuous as these decorations before.

The stairs took us up to a long corridor, one wall made entirely of soundproofed glass above waist height; through it, I glimpsed people wearing headphones, sitting in front of microphones. The doors on that side of the corridor all had red and green lights above them, and most of them had some lit up.

"This is where the magic happens," grinned Havoc. "From here, all of the JBC shows are broadcast. Just take a look through here" – everyone crowded closer to look through the nearest window – "and you'll see Buena of Buena's Password."

A plump young Spanish woman was talking animatedly into a mike; she glanced up at us and smiled for a moment before resuming her speech.

"That's Buena herself," Havoc assured us, and the awe in her voice surprised me; she must have seen Buena hundreds of times, but she still loved to see her, loved to see the magic of radio at work. I decided in that instant that I liked Havoc very much. Someone so dedicated to, and enthusiastic about, their occupation could only bring happiness into the world. "I'll let you in on a secret," she added conspiratorially. "Today's password is Zuppenkrab – the Steel Crab Pokémon from Germany."

Several members of the tour group smiled involuntarily; Havoc's enthusiasm was infectious.

"If you move along a little – yes, that second studio's not currently in use – then in the third studio you'll see Ted from the Variety Channel; I think he's doing a radio play at the moment, that's why there are those three other people in there."

The voice actors were all crowded around Ted, an old man with a face crumpled by his grin. He stood head and shoulders above the rest – in fact, he was so tall he reminded me unpleasantly of the Mask of Ice, and briefly I wondered if they were the same person. Scripts hung all around him from wires on the ceiling; each was open at a different page, presumably so that they didn't have to be touched and no rustling got onto the recording.

"Yes, it's a play," confirmed Havoc, checking something written in esoteric techie-speak on the studio door. "It's an adaptation of In Ilex We Rode. But moving on," she continued, rushing over to Studio Four as if she were the excited tourist rather than the guide, "we've got the Lucky Channel. I've never won," she added in a confidential tone. "In Studio Five, we've got DJ Ben and his Music; today we can look forwards to marching tunes, I expect, or something of that kind."

I peered through the glass, curious to see what DJ Ben looked like; I'd often heard him on his show, before my radio broke. He was in his mid-twenties, with a bristly beard that was the result of not shaving for a week; upon his nose were perched spectacles with thick frames and thin lenses. He was speaking into a microphone with all the fervour of Cicero delivering an important speech.

"This next studio is currently being used by some of the scientists overseeing the Pokémon Index Project, or Pokédex. They've just discovered a new species, I believe." Havoc studied the sign on the studio door. "Yes, that's right. It's called Fureech, and it's been called the Shriek Weasel Pokémon by its discoverer, one Ethan of New Bark."
Havoc paused dramatically before the final studio, savouring the moment of anticipation before revealing its contents.

"In here," she said in hushed tones, "in here, is Professor Oak himself."

Everyone turned to look, and there was even a little pushing and shoving; Oak was one of the most famous men in the Grand Pacific Cluster. Before the trade in evolution stones was restricted by law in the late '60s, he'd been a hotshot Trainer specialising in those Pokémon that evolved via the stones; after that, unable to legally expand his collection, he'd set up a laboratory to study Pokémon themselves – the first in the Cluster. After his discovery of a potential military application for the fine powder from inside Nidoqueen spines, the Kantan government had been eager to support his research in any way possible. Now, Oak had all the grants and evolution stones he needed, and was in charge of a massive, rambling institute with over 800 staff in the Kantan town of Pallet.

"He's recording a brand new show," Havoc said, as I wormed my way through the crowd. "It's to be called Prof. Oak's Pokémon Talk, broadcast across Johto and Kanto, informing Trainers of the current locations of the rarer Pokémon of the region."

I reached the front and stared through the glass. Oak looked younger than I thought he'd be; if I hadn't known he was older, I would have thought he was in his mid-forties. He had a kindly, lined face, and he wore a grey suit and white lab coat – just in case anyone failed to recognise him as a scientist, I supposed.

"So this is the world-famous Professor Oak," muttered Silver next to me. "He looks younger than I thought."

"Yeah," I agreed.

We all stared in for about three minutes before Oak looked up and noticed us; his face suddenly assumed, as if of its own accord, a broad, showman's smile in the style of the old-fashioned gentleman. I couldn't see the appeal of it myself – and Oak was way too old for my taste – but it made the old ladies of the group swoon, one of them almost literally. That one was, predictably enough, our tour guide, Havoc.

When she'd recovered, she continued with her talk.

"Er – yes, well. Let's continue, shall we?"

We headed towards the stairs up, and arrived in a long, high-ceilinged office area, filled with cubicles containing workers dutifully tapping away on keyboards. At the other end of the room was an office with frosted glass walls.

"Here is the production and administration area," Havoc said quietly. "In this room, we write shows, discuss what new shows are introduced and what gets cut, and manage the rest of the JBC building." She smiled. "We also pay the bills, or pretend to."

That got a few laughs, but not me: a strange feeling had just overtaken me, a sense that something was wrong. I didn't see anything amiss – to the left, there were cubicles; to the right, there were cubicles; ahead, there were cubicles – but something about this floor set the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

"Something's up," Silver whispered to me. I nodded.

"I feel it too," I replied. "Something isn't quite right."

The tour group moved quickly and quietly through the office, trying not to disturb the workers; we paused briefly at the other end, next to the frosted glass wall.

"In here," Havoc told us, "is the woman in charge of the whole floor, Ms. Prendergast. I'm sure she won't mind if we pop in a moment to say hello." She rapped on the door and opened it a crack; speaking through the gap, she nodded and turned to us. "If you'll go in, Ms. Prendergast will take any questions you have regarding the production side of things – something I'm not so well up on myself," she admitted.

Dutifully, we filed in, to see a business-like young woman seated behind a desk. She had long, black hair and wore thick glasses that obscured most of the upper half of her face. The sense that something was wrong here whirled in my head, growing stronger and stronger – but I still couldn't see what the problem was; there was no one obviously dangerous around, no lurking Rocket assassins.

"The *****!" hissed Silver in my ear. "She's right here!"

"What?" I looked at Ms. Prendergast, then at Havoc, then anywhere – but couldn't see what he was talking about.

"Prendergast," he whispered. "She's Karen."

As soon as he said it, I could see it: the hair was dyed, the sharp eyes just visible through the glasses. Even cloaked in lipstick, the tight, sneering lips were recognisable.

"What do we do?" I asked.

"Nothing. She can't do anything either since we can unmask her, too, and besides, she hasn't seen us yet."

Silver pulled me further towards the back of the group, just in case, and I vaguely caught the tail end of someone's question:

"...a day?"

Ms. Prendergast – Karen – gave an answer that I didn't pay any attention to; I was too busy trying to think why she was here. Were the Rockets using her to scout ahead? Or was she to be their mole, the person who would give the signal to unleash the attack? Perhaps then she would attack from within, while the Rockets invaded from the outside; a neat pincer movement that would leave the Radio Tower firmly in the grip of the Mask of Ice. I voiced this theory to Silver, and he nodded in agreement.

"It'll be something like that," he said. "We must have got here just in time; if Karen's here, the Rockets must be close to making their move."

The questions over, we retreated gladly from the office, eager not to be spotted by the master Dark user. Havoc led us all over to the next set of stairs, and once again pointed out the lifts for those who wished to use them.

On the third floor was another large open space; this one, however, was full of computers, banks of screens and switches everywhere. Technicians rushed back and forth, pressing buttons, or wandered casually around, glancing at the monitors; the whole impression was that very little got done in that room.

"Here is where all the technical aspects of the broadcasts are taken care of," Havoc said unnecessarily. "These machines over here control the frequencies each show is broadcast on, and these ones are basically giant CD players – they play back pre-recorded shows. Those big round ones..."

Silver unfolded the map and started scribbling the locations of each type of machine on the third floor. I supposed that Team Rocket had probably created their Giovanni-resurrection signal back at Mahogany, and that they would just be using a pre-recorded disk here; if that was so, it would be worth knowing which machines to destroy in order to stop it being broadcast.

"Now," Havoc said, "the fourth floor is all offices, including that of the Director of the JBC. For security reasons – and because it's boring – we won't be going there today, but we will go up to the top floor, the observation post at the very top of the radio mast. Please follow me."

We crowded into two lifts that moved so fast that they seemed to be racing each other to the top; if I hadn't been so firmly wedged between Silver and a fat guy in a pink shirt, I probably would have fallen over when they started moving. When we emerged, it was to a large, circular room, with the lifts set into a central column that held up the roof. The walls were entirely made of glass, and the view took my breath away.
Goldenrod stretched out on all sides, a living blanket of bricks and mortar, rippling with traffic, groaning under the weight of humanity. It seemed to hold the whole world in its glittering towers; I looked from every pane of glass on the observation deck, and couldn't see the outskirts. We were hundreds of metres up – and still the city cloaked the landscape to the horizons, and beyond.

"Wow," I breathed. "This is amazing."

"It's beautiful," Silver said, joining me. "And ugly, and alluring, and terrifying; it's fantastic and horrific, full of freedom and full of traps; a fount of wisdom and a fool's paradise. It's the city, the greatest and the most terrible invention of all time."

I looked at him admiringly.

"That was good," I said. "Did you make that up?" He nodded with a smile.

"Yeah, but I've had it ready since I decided we'd take the tour, because I knew this would happen."

I suppressed a laugh.

"Did you want to impress me?" Silver nodded again.

"Of course," he replied. "I always want to impress you. It keeps you nicely in awe of me."

I smiled and shook my head, and we turned back to look out over Goldenrod again. The notion of kissing him popped into my head, but it exited again as fast as lightning and the moment passed.

After a while, Havoc drew our attention back to her with a series of polite coughs.

"Well," she said, "I hope you've enjoyed your trip around one of Goldenrod's most famous landmarks. If you'd like to see the areas where the television shows are produced, then please come back at half past three or another day. Thank you so very much for attending."

The tourists, Silver and I clapped politely; one or two of them offered her tips, which she accepted graciously. Then she somehow managed to clear us all out of the building in under thirty seconds, and to this day I don't know how she did it.

As the tourists scattered, fanning out and dissipating into the background of the street, Silver led me to a bench across the road; here, we sat, and discussed a plan of attack.

"If Karen is already in there, and we, Lance and Gold are all on their tail," Silver said, "then it's safe to say the Rockets are probably coming to the Tower very soon, yeah?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Plus, Gold and Zane are probably already in the city, if Zane managed to drive them down here in one piece."

"Lance is also likely to be here," Silver said. "Since he can Fly on pretty much all of his Pokémon, and he knows the Rockets are here. So, everyone's here. All the pieces are on the chessboard."

"The Rockets are playing white, I guess," I said. "We have to wait until they make their move."

It was Silver's turn to look at me admiringly.

"Did you make that one up?" he asked. I nodded.

"But unlike some people, I didn't have to do it in advance," I told him. "I guess I'm just smarter than you."

He laughed.

"Maybe one day, Monique. Maybe one day. Anyway, back to the Rockets."

"Yeah. When they arrive, what do we do? We can't stop them from actually taking over – there are only two of us."

Silver stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"We could always strike up another alliance with Gold and Lance – but I don't think either of them will accept it after what happened last time. Besides, we can't count on their support."

"Zane will be here, though," I pointed out. "We'll have his help. By the time we all meet up, he'll have to either openly support us or keep going with Gold – and he'll definitely choose us."

"Either way, you were right before. We'd probably be able to get past all the standard Rocket goons – but then we'd be too weak to fight the Mask when we got to the centre of operations."

"Would we have to?"

Silver shrugged. "The Mask will want to set the signal off himself, I expect. Wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so."

"Then he'll be guarded heavily as he does so; Rockets will be posted around the building to stop the JBC employees from escaping, and to stop people like us from interfering. The Mastermind will probably be with him, since this plan was his idea and he developed it, and Karen... I don't know where she'll be. Either in charge of guarding the place, or helping with the necromancy signal, since Will said she was in charge of the necromancy research."

"Basically, you're saying there'll be way too many for us to stop them taking over."

"Essentially, yes. In order to guard the building that heavily, I guess most of the Team's Trainers and gunmen will be here."

"Well then," I said. "Let's turn off the power. The generator's in the basement, right? We don't need to break very far in to get to it."

Silver looked thunderstruck.

"That," he said slowly, "is brilliant!" He swept me up in an excited hug and planted a kiss on my forehead, which made me feel vaguely faint. "I knew there was a reason I brought you along!"

"Er – thanks," I said, feeling somewhat flustered but in no hurry to disentangle myself. "You did mention it before—"

"Yes, but I'd forgotten – and besides, you thought of it first. You keep having really good ideas," Silver told me. "Like when you figured out how to get us to the middle of the Lake of Rage." He gave me another squeeze, then let go of me. Reluctantly, I pulled away as well.

"Um, like I said – I suppose I'm smarter than you."

"I guess you are," Silver agreed. "But back to your plan. If we can just break into the lobby, then, we can get to the basement – in fact, we can send Tercier and Mercury down there to break the generator, then get to the Mask and Mastermind and tell them they won't be able to broadcast."

"What's the point of doing that? We could just break the generator."

"No!" Silver cried, slamming his fist into his knee. "No, I need to – to confront that man."

"The Mask of Ice?"

"Yeah. I won't..." Silver broke off; when he resumed talking, his voice was calm, collected and as cold as the grave. "I have to confront him. He showed up like a ghost, Monique, and turned me back into a kid again, scared and crying at the foot of the stairs while my mother's corpse cooled at the top."

I stared at him; he had never mentioned this before.

"I've never feared anyone as much as him. He stole me from my home, from everything I thought I knew and loved – though that turned out to be a sham, too, didn't it? I thought the past was behind me when I escaped; when Blue said things were all right now, I believed her. I really thought that the Mask was gone forever.

"Then he turned up then – me. And I realised that the past hasn't gone away, and it won't until I make it. So I'm going to catch him, when he comes to the Radio Tower to broadcast his spell. I'm going to rip that mask off and take away the only thing I can from him: his secrecy. If I can see him as a man, not a monster – if I can see past the gargoyle face – then I can break him, I know I can, Blue!"

His impassioned speech had filled his face with colour and his eyes with fire; his fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles strained white against the skin. Once again, I was entirely thrown, and had no idea what to say to him; the only sounds were the rumble of traffic and the clatter of footsteps, the background music of the city landscape. All I could think of was: Did he just call me Blue?

Silver stared at me for a moment, eyes unfocused; suddenly, they snapped back to normal and he started apologising.

"Sorry!" he cried, leaping up and turning to face me, back to the Tower. "I'm sorry, Monique, I didn't mean to – to say that..." He might have been crying then, I wasn't sure; his eyes were full of anguish, as if all the sorrow he'd kept bottled inside him since Blue had died was threatening to burst out of him, kicking and screaming.

"It's OK," I said softly, taking hold of his hand and pulling him down again. The words came out of my mouth without any input from me whatsoever; it was as if I'd always known what to say, had had these words ready for a long time, just waiting for this moment. "It's OK, Silver, I understand. You need someone to talk to, right? A friend, an older sister, whatever. Blue was that to you and more, and now you've found someone else who can do something similar and everything's starting to come out again..."

Now I was sure Silver was crying: the tears were flowing freely down his face, his facetious, confident façade utterly demolished; he was no more than any other kid then, like me, like anyone who's seen the world and tells everyone they can take its worst blows, when in fact all they can do is pretend not to care as the pressure inside their outer shell grows stronger and stronger. Silver's shell had cracked when the Mask spoke to him under Mahogany; a chip had fallen from it when he had learned of the Rockets' scheme; now, he had involuntarily shattered it, and his real self – bereaved, alone, terrified – lay revealed for the world to see.

"I'll be Blue for you," I whispered in his ear as I drew him close, remembering that he was younger than me; remembering that, ultimately, he depended on me. There must have been others on the street, pedestrians on their way around the roads of Goldenrod, but whenever I revisit that memory I don't see any of them: there's just the long road, empty and gloomy in winter's thrall, and Silver and I in the middle of it, two lonely figures in a vast, unfriendly world.

My watch had broken a year ago and I'd never had the money to have it repaired, so I've never known how long we were there; it seemed like the blink of an eye, but the sky was darkening when I next looked up, and the romantic in me likes to think sometimes that we spent hours together there, aware that something had changed but not sure exactly what it was.

"Monique," said Silver after a long time, his voice very quiet.

"Silver," I replied.

"What must you think of me?" He sat up, rubbing his face on his sleeve. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what – what came over me."

"I do," I told him. "You came over you. The you who has emotions that need releasing now and then, not the Silver who slides from one situation to the next, as slippery and uncatchable as an eel, with an answer for everything." Silver's face twitched into something that was almost half a smile.

"Did you make that one up?" he asked quietly. I nodded. "You are smarter than me," he said. We were both silent for a while. "You're right," he said eventually. "You're just like her."

"Blue?"

"Yeah." He stared out at the other side of the road, at the Radio Tower. "Did you mean what you said? About being Blue?"

"Yes," I answered, more strongly than I'd intended. "I'll help you, Silver. Always."

He looked back at me. "You're one of the best friends I've ever had," he said with feeling. "But... you've known me for what, about a week? Six days, maybe? How – how did we get here, best friends, closer to each other than to anyone else in the world, and so utterly different from when we started, with me stealing your money in the snow in Mahogany?"

I didn't know. It was a question that no one could answer; the reason was lost somewhere in the middle of our time together. This week with Silver felt as long as the whole of the rest of my life, and I had no idea why.

"I don't know," I said at length. "I want to say it's magic, but I don't know."

Silver smiled properly then – and not the mirthless one he usually used, but a real, human smile, such as I hadn't seen on his face for, it seemed, aeons.

"I'm willing to believe it's magic," he said. "No other explanation, right?"

"Right," I agreed, and a police car pulled up in front of us.

 

[sandersjake16]

Please don't let this die, it's an amazing story, and in terms of the games shows you everythings not black and white. I need this :P Pleaseeeeee

 

[bobandbill]

Sorry, but you cannot bump threads that are over a month old since the last post. (That and all reviews have to be constructive too and say something specific about the story - you are kinda doing that but it's more a 'please continue' sort of post overall).

I'll close this as per fanfic rules - Cutlerine, if you want to post another chapter in this just PM Astinus or myself to open it for you again.