"Gary Oak, are you really trying to sneak out of hospital again?"

Gary froze in place, completely incapable of appearing innocent. He had one leg straddling each side of the window. His left arm was still in a sling and the brace on his right foot made him lopsidedly heavy, which meant that he had to lean slightly to the left, which of course only furthered the appearance of a post-incident wooziness that his warden was ever-so-watchful for.

"Daisy, chill out already," he grumbled. He tried to smile, to reassure her, but Daisy was every bit as stubborn as the Oak name.

"Garrett," she said, and between the curly brown hair, the stern appearance and the tone, Gary's stomach turned to ice. He pictured his mother stood before him, looking every bit as disappointed as Gary feared she would be.

He blinked and his mother vanished, replaced instead with his sister. The vision unsettled Gary enough for him to swing his right leg back into the sterile-white room.

"You're impossible," Daisy said as she rushed forwards to grab and manoeuvre him back into the room. "What part of 'rest' don't you understand?"

"The part between the first letter and the last letter," Gary shot back, though his heart was in another world to his voice. He let Daisy guide him back to the hospital bed and - not for the first time - wondered just why there was a fully stocked and functioning hospital room out in the boonies.

"Gary," Daisy sighed. She sat down on the bed next to him and in that one movement seemed to utterly deflate. She was usually one to wear bright colours, often shades of garishly bright pink or red. Instead, she had a beige plaid shirt that was untucked and hung over the weather-beaten black shorts she wore.

"I can't stay here," Gary confessed. "I just can't. I have to do something."

"You're healing."

Gary grunted as he looked down to the floor. The pale, speckled lino seemed to match the chipped nail polish on Daisy's toenails. Her sandals were beaten and bore what appeared to be recent scorch marks.

Despite that, Gary was more concerned with the fact that she had yet to take advantage of his injured state to prank him. He could remember when his grandpa last broke his leg and was in a cast - Daisy had waited until he had fallen asleep and then painted each of his toenails in a bright, glow-in-the-dark shade of pink. She had yet to try the same with him, fill his cast with slime or even scatter itching powder in his sling.

It spoke volumes of how badly he had been injured, and it was the donphan in the room that they each refused to acknowledge.

"Give it at least another day," Daisy said. "Gramps is going to Vermillion tomorrow to investigate what he can there. If you sneak out now, he won't let you out of his sight."

"Weren't you just telling me to rest?"

She sighed. "And if you didn't know you had an escape route, would you actually rest?" When he had no answer for her, she nudged him in the side with her elbow. "You're my baby brother, Gare-Bear. I might want to protect you from the world, but I also know that you're going to poke the world until you get all of its secrets."

"It's not just that," Gary admitted. "It's…" His sigh sounded more like a growl, even to himself. His hands were balled into fists and it took a considerable amount of concentration to unfurl them. "This is the second time I've encountered them - that I know of. Both times Gramps has had to save me. The first time I was so hopelessly over my head that I nearly died before I knew what was going on. This time it was only because Shadow evolved that I didn't die on the boat - and then Gramps appeared again to save my sorry ass."

"Gary..." Daisy moved closer to wrap her arm around him and hugged him close. "You're ten. It was only a few months ago that you started as a trainer. The problem with being surrounded by legends is that you need to remember they were human too, once. Don't forget that Gramps has like a million years as a trainer." She laughed as she let go of them, and Gary said nothing about how fake it sounded. "Come on, Gare-Bear. Gramps is downstairs with your friend and the brainiac. With any luck, your friend has overwhelmed them with his innate charm and got them to finally stop brainstorming."

At that, Gary actually smiled. "Somehow I can't see that happening."

Daisy held out an arm for him to lean on to ease him off the bed. The moment she opened the door to the room was when their relative quiet vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Just because you don't like a theory doesn't make it less valid!"

Gary had no idea what was said in retort, but the followup was a loud, "You can't discount evidence just because you don't understand what it can be used for!"

Gary and Daisy sighed as one. It had only been a few days and yet, it felt like a lifetime.

The divergence between the hospital room and the rest of the house was still as strange as ever. It was disconcerting how the sterile room led into a hallway with a plush black carpet and pale green walls. The other rooms in the hall were locked, and the consequences for trying to pick them had already been impressed on Gary.

So there was little other choice than to head downstairs, towards the familiar argument.

"Good, you're here." The human hurricane that was Bill grabbed the both of them before they had even fully walked into the kitchen and dragged them towards the dining table, where Silver was sat, a scowl etched into his face. "Children, please explain to this one that you cannot ignore evidence that does not fit your hypothesis!"

Gary sighed as he took a seat at the oak table. It was big enough to fit a family of six, yet so far as Gary knew, Bill was the only person who lived in the house. The kitchen was magnificent, larger than some apartments people lived in. The counters were filled with every type of gadget and device and gadget that any chef could dream of using and yet, not one of them seemed to have been used.

All except the coffee machine, which Professor Oak was utilising without shame.

"An absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence," Daisy said as she took a chair beside Gary. She smiled as she took a mug of coffee from their grandpa. "Just because we haven't seen anything lately, doesn't mean that nothing is happening."

"I know," Silver grumbled. "But that doesn't mean we have to stop living our lives just because some idiots with delusions of criminal grandeur didn't kill us."

"Our enemies are smart," Bill said. He was pacing again, which Gary had learnt meant that he was frustrated. "I wouldn't deign to call them intelligent, because that implies some semblance of free thought, which they seem to not possess." He ran a hand through his long, curled dark brown hair and left it an unkempt mess. "They will have realised by now that you did not perish like all the others. They will have also evaluated their losses in that I was not at home, and nor was I on the Anne."

"Bill," Professor Oak said. He placed a hand on Bill's shoulder and got him to stop pacing with the gesture alone. "I understand that you're frustrated and frightened. We all are. Team Rocket has been a scourge on our nation for longer than we care to admit. They were nothing more than stories told around a campfire for so long, but now they're making louder and more public appearances. That means one of two things; either their leadership has changed in person or ideals, or they are so close to an end goal that they don't care about discovery anymore."

"Be that as it may Samuel, that doesn't bring us closer to discovering either the leader or the end goal. We are the two most intelligent people in Kanto and yet, we are still no closer to answers, despite all five of us in this room having suffered personal encounters with Team Rocket."

Gary managed to hide his sharp intake of breath but failed to stop himself from staring at his sister. She stared down at the mug cupped in her hands and refused to look away. She had never mentioned it to him before - it left him with more questions than answers, yet again.

"I agree," Professor Oak said. He sighed as he leaned back against the kitchen counter. One by one, he met each of their eyes before staring at the ceiling. "There was a time in my youth that I would have been able to meet this threat head-on. I cannot do that anymore, as much as it pains me to admit. I've already lost too much to their schemes, and yet Team Rocket still wants more. Owen and I are going to begin our scourge of Vermillion tomorrow, though I doubt we'll find anything. They've had too much time to clean up after themselves."

"So help us," Gary said. "Train us - you became a Champion, all that time ago. Aunt Aggie became an Elite. You know how to train and raise strong pokémon - why don't you pass on that knowledge to us?"

"If I had more time, certainly." The sigh that followed betrayed his grandfather's age. "But Garrett, how happy would you truly be if I told you the way to train your pokémon? If I gave you a booklet on the best ways to do everything, you may reach the goals you set yourself but eventually, the doubt will set in. You'll question if it was a dream you achieved on your own merit, or if it was achieved because you followed the path outlined by another. I would be giving you a short-term benefit for a long-term loss."

Gary wanted to retort, but deep down he knew his grandfather was right, as much as it pained him to acknowledge even in his own head.

"Then let me brainstorm with you," Gary said. "You've saved my ass twice now, Gramps. I don't want there to be a third time."

"This is all well and good, but this is not a topic that brute force and displays of pokémon power will solve," Bill said. "Brain is what will win this fight for us - we need more evidence, something that we can use to form more relevant hypotheses." He started pacing again. "With the way they operate, whoever leads them has to be in a position of authority. This is if it is just one person who leads them. We don't know enough of their goals to discern if they align with the patterns of one person planning and executing, or if there happens to be a team at the top. My best guestimate would place a member of the Elites, the Gym Leaders or someone of similar influence at the mantle, but each and every one of them has solid alibis for each and every event - and believe me, I have been over the information countless times."

"Why don't we just take the fight to them?" Silver asked. "I'm not going to sit around and wait to be attacked. If we know where they operate from, we can charge in, take them out and find something there."

"Therein lays the problem, my boy," said Professor Oak. "We don't know where they operate from. They had an operation in Mount Moon that we foiled recently. Bill's retreat near Cerulean was raided. The SS Anne. Ash mentioned he encountered two humans and talking meowth who claimed to be part of the organisation - I dismissed him at first, though if this was genuine, then we can include an assault on Viridian as part of this."

"Fuschia," Daisy added. "Saffron. Goldenrod and Violet cities over in Johto. That's where I found them before."

"Either they're spread over KanJo, like rats in tunnels beneath the ground," Bill said, "or they're being strategic. Attacking everywhere to make it seem like no place is safe. That would imply that they would also attack wherever they are situated. Logically, I would attack distinct points away from my home base, but do so in a random manner so that if someone did attempt to decipher a pattern in the attacks, they would find none."

"The problem there, my boy, is that you're assuming our enemy thinks like you," Professor Oak said. "If our enemies thought like you, I daresay we would be under their total control already."

"If you're done stroking each other's egos," Silver growled, "none of this is helping us now. Are you really expecting us to hide out in the Sevii Islands forever? I don't plan on spending my life cooped up in a fancy house, afraid every time the doorbell rings that my pizza delivery guy might also be here to kill me."

The sound of the front door slamming shut dropped them into a sudden silence that set Gary's heart racing and simultaneously left him with the grim thought that it only proved Silver's point right.

Bill was the only one without a hand to his waist when the kitchen door was flung open and Lieutenant Surge strode in. Gary felt the gym leader's eyes rest on him before they moved quickly across everyone else, one by one.

His assessment of the room took less than a second. When he was done, he threw his head back and laughed. "The lot of you are really on edge, huh? I'm the only outsider with a key." He sighed. "Room full of geniuses and they still act like frightened kids," he muttered. He made a beeline towards the coffee pot and growled at the lack of coffee left for him.

"Anything new, Owen?" Professor Oak asked. He sipped calmly at his mug, his previous unease a distant memory. "Do we have any leads?"

Surge sighed as he set the coffee pot to brew. "The League ate up the idea of tournaments, just like you said they would. I'm hosting the first of them in Vermillion tomorrow. It'll give us a good reason for why so many powerful trainers have flocked to the city. The Power Plant still isn't getting any new activity, and I'm worried about what could have drawn them there in the first place.

"I've heard nothing relating to you gremlins either," Surge said, a grin on his face as he pointed his chin at Gary and Silver. "Media don't think you're dead, which means Team Rocket knows you're alive. I don't doubt they have a way to check the battle logs from the various gyms - if neither of you challenge any for a while, it'll look like you've either given up or gone dark." He shrugged as he snatched the freshly-brewed coffee pot, took the empty mug from Bill's hands and poured a new drink. "Buncha kids in town were telling people the woods were haunted, but from what the locals say, the brats are known for crying wolf so they aren't putting much stock in it."

Gary sighed as he stood. "Well, as fun as this sounds, I don't want to sit around and listen to you old geezers talk about your plans for righting the world's wrongs. I'm gonna go into the town myself and see some sunlight."

"Garrett -" Professor Oak started.

"Gramps," Gary hissed, "I'm just going to be walking. If this place is so unsafe then why would Bill have set up his holiday home here?" He pointed at Bill, who shrugged in a manner that very much said 'well he's not wrong'. "I want to get stronger. I want to be able to not worry about Team Rocket nearly killing me whenever I encounter them. But I'm not going to do that if I sit around indoors all day, and I'm really not going to do it if I end up going stir crazy!

"Besides," he said with a smirk, "it's not like I'll be going on my own. I know Silver's itching to get out of this house, and it's not like Daisy is going to let me wander around alone at the moment." He motioned to his broken foot with his sling-bound arm.

"He's correct in his assessments," Bill said.

"I'm aware," said Professor Oak, "but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Samuel," Bill said with a huff, "were we not just discussing how you cannot ignore evidence just because you don't like what it means?"

"Oh boy, here we go," Surge groaned. He leaned back against the counter and took a sip from his stolen mug. "Get going whilst you can, brats. If you're not back before it gets dark, I'll be letting my 'mons drag you back by your pinkie toes."

"Relax," Gary said, "it's not even noon, no chance we'll be out until-"

He blinked and the world seemed to fuzz.

He was outside. The night sky was a thick, oily black painted above him. The moon seemed far too close for comfort. The tops of the trees appeared to brush against its pale yellow surface.

"-Dark," Gary finished lamely.

There were no sounds of pokémon. Gary lifted his injured arm, found it still to be in a cast. When he looked down, the grass around his feet seemed withered, covered in ash.

"The hell happened?" he shouted into the darkness.

The trees remained silent. Instead of answering, they seemed to move closer to each other. Gary rubbed at his eyes and swore. His mind had to be playing tricks on him. He had to have eaten something strange. Maybe touched something weird.

It seemed like he had gone from Bill's retreat to the woods in the blink of an eye. But he knew that was impossible.

When he reached for the poké balls at his belt, his hand came back empty.

"That's… not right," he said. There was no way he would have gone anywhere without his team with him. "Daisy? Gramps? Silver?" He got no answer. There was not even a whistle of the wind to keep him company. "...Bill?"

He saw movement in the trees. A branch buckled under a sudden weight. Laughter from above.

From in front.

From behind.

"Who's there?" Gary demanded. He spun on the spot, found nothing but empty blackness waiting for him.

The laughter echoed from below.

Gary hissed as he jumped backwards. The blades of withered grass turned to ash at his touch.

"This isn't funny guys," Gary growled. "I swear when I figure out what's going on, I'll-"

"Gary!"

Daisy's voice. Her scream cut through him.

"Daisy!" Gary's throat hurt with how loudly he called into the darkness. There was another short, blood-curdling scream.

Rain began to fall. Thick, dark red drops splashed down around him. Each of them hit the ground with a small whimper that sounded like Daisy.

"Garrett!"

His grandfather's voice. Gary spun on his heel. His cast slipped from underneath him. Gary fell to the wet ground. His fingers were stained red when he looked at them. His heartbeat was throbbing in his ears. Gary lurched forwards, crawling towards the sound.

"Garrett, quickly!"

"Gramps!" Gary screamed. He whimpered at the red stains on his hands and tried to wipe them clean. It made the blood-like substance grow thicker in response.

"Gramps, where are you?" Gary yelled into the darkness. He lumbered to his feet and stumbled forwards. "Daisy? Where are you guys?"

There was the sound of water splashing. Gary looked down and saw an ocean of red beneath his feet. He gasped. The moment he registered he no longer stood on solid ground, the world around him twisted and turned. He fell into the endless red depths. Gasping for breath filled his lungs with a heavy, oily substance. Gary groaned as he tried to swim closer to the surface. The more he swum up, the darker everything seemed to get.

His lungs were burning. His throat felt like he had sandpaper rubbing against the edges. His injured arm had come free of its sling. He tried to use it to help swim faster. Each movement was agony. Each breath not taken made his vision grow darker.

Finally, Gary broke the water's surface. He coughed, spluttered and tried to pull himself up onto solid ground.

When he opened his eyes he saw himself. His twin stood over him, a feral grin on his face. Gary could see the fangs in his twin's smile.

'They're going to die, you know," he said.

Gary's world spun. The words hung on the air. He had no idea who had spoken - was it him, or his twin?

His twin gestured to the bubbling forest floor behind him. Gary heard people screaming. The roars of gyarados echoed all around him.

The sounds of waves crashing against each other engulfed his ears. The ground beneath him rocked like a boat on the sea. He looked down and suddenly the ground beneath his feet was metallic. He looked up and saw that he was on a boat, lost in an endless red sea.

Six angry gyarados glowered down at the boat. They were not in the water like one would expect. They were coiled in the sky, whiskers and fins swaying on a phantom breeze.

They breathed in, roared as one. The sound hit Gary like a shockwave. He slammed both hands over his ears and winced. It only made the sounds worse.

"Gary!"

He froze. That voice. It was impossible.

It was real.

The hand that touched his belonged to his mother. His mouth opened and closed several times as nothing more than a whimper emerged.

"Mom?" he whispered.

"Gary." She swept him up in a hug. "I've missed you. So much."

He could feel the heat of the gyarados' breath. It felt like there was a miniature sun growing behind him.

"Don't look," she said, grabbing his cheeks. She kept him focused on her. "Don't worry sweetie, it'll be over soon."

"It's just a show of force." It was his dad, who appeared by his side, yet seemed to have always been there. "They don't really fire."

"Oh, they will."

Gary turned at the sound of his own voice. The gyarados were frozen in time. Prismatic lasers boiled in the open maws of the pokémon. Gary's twin stood atop the largest gyarados. His black cloaked billowed in the winds without presence. They were miles apart, yet Gary swore he could hear every breath his twin made, see every movement of his face.

"They're dead and gone." His twin's chuckle was a dark, evil thing that made the skin on the back of Gary's neck crawl. "And the more you chase this, the more people you care about will die."

Time restarted.

The gyarados fired.

Gary screamed as the hyper beams washed over him. Impossibly, they did nothing. He saw the boat explode beneath his feet. His mother was vaporised by a beam of light. Shards of boat skewered his father.

Gary's scream was soundless.

He tried to look away. Instead he saw his grandfather, arms spread, facing the hyper beams dead-on.

Gary tried to shout a warning. It was too late. His grandfather turned to ash before his eyes.

He heard Daisy scream once more. He looked up to find her falling from the sky. He tried to reach out to her. The largest gyarados snatched her out of the sky.

Gary flinched at the sight of the blood. He heard his own demonic laugh echoing.

"You'll cause the death of everyone you care about, just to prove nothing to a bunch of dead people."

He saw Ash getting sucked into a whirlpool. Misty screamed as a gyarados picked her up. She stopped screaming when it slammed her into the ground.

He watched Agatha get torn apart by the shadows. His team burst into flames, one by one, in front of his eyes.

In the end there was only himself and his twin left, floating in an endless void of inky blackness.

"Everyone," his twin said, holding out a hand. A miniature Silver shrieked as he appeared in the outstretched hand. "Will die."

Gary's twin crushed Silver in his hands. Gary fell to his knees as the blood poured out.

"You're wrong," Gary whispered. It took all his self control not to vomit. The images played in his mind again on a loop, paradoxically fast and slow at the same time. "I'll stop them," he said.

He forced himself to his feet. His twin's black cloak had a bright red 'R' on the chest. Gary gripped it with his good hand and hissed as it burned his palm.

"I'll stop them," he said, "I'm stronger than you think I am. I'm strong, I'll show you!"

His voice cracked, changed.

He blinked and suddenly he was in the Viridian gym's battleground. Giovanni stood across from him, a sneer on his face. The titanesque body of his nidoqueen blocked out the light behind him.

"I'll show you." Silver's voice came out of his throat.

He gasped and looked down at his hands. They were mostly uninjured. When had he become Silver?

Or had he been Silver all along, and Gary was only a figment of his imagination?

"Weak," Giovanni said. The disappointment in his voice reverberated around the arena. "You dare call yourself my son. No child of mine could ever be this pathetic."

Silver huffed as he rolled his eyes. "Really? That's the best you've got?" He scoffed. "I remember you saying worse to me when I was still in diapers. Maybe you're the pathetic one, thinking that scaring a child into submission is some sort of demonstration of power."

"You dare speak to me in that way, boy?"

His father grew. His monstrous form stretched until it reached the ceiling above them. The roof rumbled, rubble rained down amongst them. His father's nidoqueen merged with him and they continued to stretch towards the heavens. Silver's neck hurt from looking up.

His father looked down at him, clad in a suit the colour of a nidoqueen's skin. Though his father's face was above the clouds, Silver could somehow see it perfectly.

"You are nothing without my blessing, boy."

Silver raised an eyebrow in response. "You know," he said slowly, "I recall leaving Bill's house. There was a girl in the street, in a little pink dressed that was ripped and covered in grass and dirt stains. She said someone had been kidnapped and taken to the forest. I remember getting there, then suddenly I'm here, facing you."

He tapped his hip, where he knew his poké balls were supposed to be. "I've spent a lot of time around Hunter. Mom taught me a lot when I was growing up too. It's easy to look between the lines and see the psychic that's trying to control the illusion."

The gym flickered. The concrete walls appeared as trees for a second. Instead of his father's face looming over him, he saw a golden swinging pendulum.

He smelt grass and dirt beneath him. His fingers flexed. He felt tiny stones bite into his skin.

"You're clever," Silver said. He was no longer looking up at the looming spectre of his father's face. He moved his gaze to the side, where he saw a nidoqueen's face stretched across his father's shoulder. The image flashed and instead he was greeted by a leathery yellow face with a long nose.

Reality flickered and he was at the base of his family dining table. It stretched up to the heavens. His parents were sitting at the table, their faces shrouded in shadow. He saw them pass a piece of paper between each other. Their disappointed sighs echoed all around him.

"Second best, once again," his father said. "You'll forever just be Silver."

"Even silver is wanted," his mother added, "and has worth. This," she said, as she shook the paper, "shows him to not even be that. Silver?" she scoffed. "Imitation silver more like. We should have called him Nickel and left him for the Orre wastes."

Silver growled as he clenched his fists. He ground his teeth together and forced himself to take a breath. "This is what you do, isn't it? Beat people down with what you think are their worst nightmares."

He chuckled darkly. Memories of his father's 'training' ran deep. He could recall the labyrinths his claydol made him wander. The baltoy that would deprive him of his senses mid-battle.

His mother had impressed upon him the importance of shielding his thoughts from psychics. The key, she had said, was not to purposely avoid thinking about something, but instead to focus entirely on something else, a thought that you wanted to share. The more you wanted it to be known, the harder it would be for the psychic to ignore.

It was exactly what Silver did. He focused on all his memories of 'training'. He thought of the fear, the uncertainty. He thought of the way he approached each day wondering if it would be the day where his father kicked him out.

Silver threw out his arms and smiled. "You want fears? Have a look at what I've experienced and tell me if you think you can do better."

He felt the psychic's brush on his own mind. It felt like the unholy combination of being watched by an unseen figure, an itch under the skin that was unable to be scratched and a feeling of uncertainty with no plausible explanation.

Reality crumpled around him.

Silver gasped as he sat up. His vision swam. Blood rushed back to his head. He groaned as he placed a hand to his temple and screwed his eyes shut. Each breath sounded like a foghorn in his own ears. Each pulse of breath showed him his father's disappointed face staring down at him.

Silver opened his eyes to find Gary and Daisy on the forest ground beside him. Their eyes were closed, their breathing quick and panicked.

A flash of gold caught Silver's eye. He glanced in its direction and found a hypno staring back at him. Its yellow skin seemed almost sunburnt. The fur collar around its neck was stained with what could have either been clay or dried blood. Its pendulum was chipped, and its nails were long, cracked and black.

"That girl was you, wasn't it?" Silver asked. He could recall her now - how he had found it difficult to look at her face, how his attention had always slowly slid off her. It had seemed imperative to go to the woods and find who she had lost - but for the life of him, Silver could not remember just who had been taken.

He glanced at Gary and could vividly recall the roars of the gyarados. He remembered watching unfamiliar people die. The heartbreak had felt so real.

He wondered if they had seen what he had seen. Yet it was only Gary's he had seen - Daisy's were a mystery.

Silver felt something like curiosity. The hypno was crouched in front of him. It watched him without blinking, seemingly waiting for something to happen.

"I guess most of the heroes that fall for your prank haven't led quite such shitty lives, huh?"

The feeling he felt in response seemed almost like a disagreement. Silver felt as though they hypno had seen worse, but something was different this time.

"Was it because I stood up to you directly?"

Again, a feeling that Silver was only somewhat correct. He got the impression that others had.

He saw flickers of all manner of people. Some young, some old. Some had been travelling for years, others weeks, some months, some only days. When they had been trapped, the hypno had feasted and fled. Only a handful had seen through the illusion. Even fewer had found a way to shelter themselves away.

Silver was the only one to turn the tide and force it to see the memories he chose.

"Huh," Silver grunted. He touched his waist and felt no small measure of comfort when his fingers brushed the familiar poké balls. "Tell you what. I've got an idea."

He glanced at Gary and Daisy and after confirming that they were still asleep, he enlarged an empty poké ball and presented it to the pokémon.

"Join me," he said. "I'm going to be the strongest trainer there is. I'm only willing to let strong pokémon be a part of my team. Are you willing to join me, to prove to the world that you're more than a parasite living in the woods, feeding off naive heroes?"

The hypno narrowed its eyes at him. Silver felt the way the indignation and anger were boiling together in an attempt to cover up the begrudging admission of how right Silver was.

"Your choice," Silver said. "Join me and be stronger, or I'll just assume you're too weak to rise to the challenge."

There was a flicker of indignation once again. The hypno met his eyes, almost daring him to try something. When Silver held its gaze and gestured with the poké ball once more, the hypno appeared to almost roll its eyes before it pressed a finger to the ball.

The moment it exploded into red light and was sucked into the ball, both Daisy and Gary stirred.

"My head," Gary moaned. "What hit me?" He groaned as he rolled over and grunted as he opened his eyes. "Alright, why am I in the dirt? Last I remember-" He gasped as he tried to leap to his feet. He hissed as he put too much pressure on his injured foot and fell over, onto his injured arm.

"Gary!" Daisy grabbed him and cradled him, almost like a child. "I was so worried. There was a fire, and then Pallet, and then-"

"An illusion," Silver grunted. Both Daisy and Gary turned to him with equal confusion in their faces. "All of it was. A hypno was luring people into the forest. It was just a parasite, leeching off their dreams and fears to feed."

"But," Gary whispered, "I saw. It felt so real. The boat, the sea. Mom. Dad." He gasped as he looked at Silver. "I saw your parents. They-"

"It doesn't matter," Silver said quickly, cutting him off. He looked up at the sky. The trees cut most of the view away, but it appeared to be almost dusk. "Surge said he'll start hunting for us if we're not back by dark. I don't want to be dragged back by whatever monster he sends after us."

"Alright," Daisy said slowly. She was pale, wide-eyed. Her hair was unbound and there was a tremble in her bottom lip. She sounded as convinced as she looked. "But what about the hypno? What happened to it?

"Hunter and I chased it off," Silver said. He crossed his arms over his chest, tried to hide the wince as he pressed too hard on his bandaged ribs. He hated the fact that Team Rocket had surprised them on the boat. He hated that they had lost, that they had been injured.

Acknowledging the pain felt like admitting weakness.

"It won't be coming back," Silver said.

She nodded as she stood. As she guided Gary back to his feet, Silver saw the way Gary looked at his waist and the poké balls on his belt. His face betrayed the fact he had noticed there was one more ball on there.

Silver expected many things to happen.

What he was not expecting was for Gary to nod slightly. "That's the last time I'm playing hero," he said.

Silver hid his relieved sigh beneath a curt nod. He wanted to ask questions, to know who the people in Gary's darkest fears were.

More than that, he wanted to know how the hell the hypno had linked them so easily and just how many of his own secrets the pokémon had revealed.

They were questions for later, when he could let the pokémon out in secret. It had shown Silver just how weak he truly was. It left a sour taste in his mouth.

His path was obvious; master the pokémon, take its strength and make it his own. He would take down Team Rocket and make them pay for everything they had done to him.

Only then would he face his father, and he would make him eat each and every one of the soul-destroying words Silver had endured.