Chapter Text
The first time that he appeared, historically speaking, was outside of the Pewter City Gym on a particularly hot summer day. After Red had finished the gym challenge by the skin of his teeth, the weary challenger trudged out of the sliding doors with his backpack hanging off the tips of his fingers. The sudden rush of heat made him stall for a second. Conditioned air beckoned from behind. Pausing gave him a moment to appreciate the small town that he entered earlier that day as the cool air lapped on his back. Viridian Forest stood as a wall of nature between the southwestern part of the region, his hometown, and them. Only a few houses treaded towards the bulky area, though most left plenty of room between them and the tree line. Even still, gardens were eaten overnight by hungry bugs-types.
Few people walked around as the sun slid beneath the horizon. The smaller towns in Kanto were renowned, sometimes mocked, for their dead nightlife. Nine o' clock spelled the end of any grand activities. The gym behind him had its closing time at seven, giving him only five minutes to spare once his gym challenge was completed. Red had no problem with it. Growing up in an isolated town made him used to the placid flow of life. Even the pokémon seemed to get the hint as the only one milling around the town was a curious Jigglypuff who sniffed around the gardens. She wanted to find an audience among those already fluffing their pillows.
Across from the gym was a boy that hadn't shed the baby fat on his cheeks yet. Roving blue eyes seemed to be taking in the entirety of the scenery before focusing on him. The pokéballs attached to a belt on his waist jangled as he walked up with all the swagger new trainers had when looking for a challenge. His puny thumbs hooked around the loose belt loops. Red was already prepared to refuse the challenge. Even if the battle against Brock wasn't close, he wasn't going to push his team through more challenges when they'd been pushed through a gauntlet of trainers capped off by the hardest fight he'd ever been through.
"Oh my gosh, did you just win?"
Red relaxed. This wasn't the behavior of a trainer. It was a young boy enamored by actual trainers. The smaller mannerisms made more sense as Red took a closer look with that context. No way a kid that young, definitely too young to be on a journey, would have a full team of six that hung off his belt. False confidence was also all too common amongst kids who were emulating a trainer in their lives, generally older brothers. In Red's opinion, that was exactly Blue's problem with having a renowned researcher as his grandfather, a problem that hadn't been solved in the two weeks they'd been let loose onto poor, innocent Kanto. Ever since they left, Blue was making it a point to brag about every achievement he'd done just a day later. Red already was getting a headache thinking about meeting his friend on the route and getting raked through the mud about being slower in beating his first gym. It's not his fault that he waited around the ground-type gym, hoping that the leader would come back.
A simple nod was given in response. Not in a mean way. Red just preferred only talking when it was needed.
"Can I see your badge?"
He let his backpack drop to the ground and searched through it. It was a rectangular silver case that had a magnetic lock. The badge case flicked open with a satisfying click. The padded, black innards proudly displayed the Boulder badge.
Red frowned when he gave it a closer inspection. There was a smudge that he didn't notice on the upper part of it. Resolve coursed through him. The winnings would go to buying cleaning materials. The first step of his journey was not going to be smudged.
"Shiny!" the boy said, either too unobservant or too excited to judge. "That's so cool! Can I have your autograph? You look super strong! I bet that you're going allll the way!
Another rush of confidence flowed through Red. Already here he was, pushing through the last part of the forest straight into his first gym badge on the same day, being asked for autographs. He wasn't going through the gym circuit for fame, but the acknowledgement still felt good. Coincidentally Red had a pen and paper already on him. The tip tapped against the top of the page.
What did he want his signature to be? Would it be cool and confident, or would it be classy and refined? Reflecting what kind of trainer he wanted to be wasn't possible since he didn't know either. Writing down his name in normal print would be boring. But at the same time, he was never taught how to write in cursive. An idea came: writing in his best approximation of cursive would look enough like a signature that nobody would notice, least of all a random kid. His pen flew wildly around the page. The end result was a bunch of jumbled, exaggerated letters that bled into each other.
The boy took the paper, leaning as far into the tippy toe as he could without falling. The whole act was a little over dramatic in Red's opinion but he didn't say anything when the boy looked up at him with those big ol' enamored eyes. Red knew them well; it wasn't long ago that he felt the same watching those trainers on television.
"I'll be looking for your matches! I bet that you'll be awesome!"
The boy ran off deeper into the city, leaving Red alone. He let out a sigh and shouldered the backpack on. His pokémon were still hurt and he was dead tired from the pace that he set. Unpacking the day would be tomorrow's goal.
The second time was at the entrance of Cerulean City. Admittedly, Red didn't notice him at first. Entering the city for the first time in years wasn't what left him so tired. It hadn't been his first time going through a cave. Going through the cave without leaving the same day? That was another thing entirely. Cold, dark, and his mind kept filling in stars on the ceiling when trying to sleep. Compound that with the weirdo criminals who stretched the trip for another day and he became so exhausted of battling that he was going to delay his gym challenge.
Everything about that was weird and it seemed to have bothered him more than anybody else. It seemed to be a joke among the trainers around the area, and the one time he scolded a pair for practically watching as he was ambushed had gotten him brusquely brushed off. The badge was a source of pride but he had no illusions of being the best trainer in the region. Being able to mow through so many of their grunts had him questioning the entire operation. The fossil that was stuffed into his backpack weighed heavily.
Suspicious glances gave him a piecemeal construction of the town. This was the biggest one that he'd ever visited, with a respectable suburb at the northern end while the southern half had a commercial district. 'Commercial district' itself sounded foreign to him. Houses, stores, and lab buildings were all built adjacent to each other back home. A straight split—Main St., as Kanto wasn't known for its creativity—went down the center of town that qualified each district.
Still, the old fashioned Kanto pace of life still persisted. Most of the roads were still made of packed dirt and the paint on cheaper buildings was chipping off from the sea breeze that was filtered through the hills that laid along the coast. Families walked the streets alongside pokémon that were hauling boxes around. None of the signs of Team Rocket were anywhere at first glance. When he gave a distant scene closer scrutiny, a team of cops standing in front of a house became clearer. The knot in the back of his head didn't go away.
He jumped when a person seemed to have teleported in front of him. The kid had slid underneath his attention, the cops in the distance being much more interesting than the gray shirt that the boy wore.
"Hi again! It's so strange that we met again so soon!" the familiar boy said.
Red relaxed at the familiar face. It wasn't that weird seeing the kid again. Because of how small the towns in the western part of Kanto were, they relied on each other a lot. Mount Moon was a serious obstacle, forcing the locals to know alternative routes that could be used to get around quicker. Those routes also weren't recommended by the rangers for having more aggressive pokémon. It all fit together in Red's mind. The kid was a local who borrowed his parent's pokémon when he needed to travel for supplies. When he finally went on his journey, the practical battle experience would serve well just as it did for Red.
Why didn't Red go through these back routes? Because that wasn't part of the journey. Who took shortcuts when the journey itself was the reward? Duh.
"It's good to see you again," he replied.
The boy's smile stretched wider. "I know it is! As your number one fan, it's now my duty to personally make sure that you're doing well on your gym circuit. Do you know the area?"
Red shook his head. It made his number one fan's eyes sparkle as his fingers wildly pointed everywhere.
"Over there is the bike shop. They're really expensive, but I've heard that you can get vouchers to get one for free. There's also some kind of thing that's going on down south. I don't know what it is, but you can't get into Saffron or something. There's a big training thing up north and a guy that made the PC system. You should check him out!"
Red nudged his head towards the police. "What happened there?"
The boy didn't even bother glancing back. "Oh, that? It's just people being butts. Anyways, you can get a lot of practice with the people that are fighting up north. I think that there's also a guy who came from your town up there? You're from Pallet, right?"
Red nodded again, mind now somewhere else. The scene was calling to him. He just needed to make sure. Once he confirmed that Team Rocket wasn't in the city, he'd be much less on edge.
"I can see that you're raring to go! Don't let me keep you! I won't be able to see your gym match but just know that your biggest fan is cheering you on!"
Though he was still a little put-off by the attitude, Red gave the boy a gracious nod before walking off. The whole situation had him jumping at shadows.
The third time that they met was when Red was just about to throw his hands up in the air, yell, "I give up!" and head back home. The sudden ambush of Team Rocket in the middle of broad daylight was just about the most that he could take. Granted, the grunts weren't all that scary. The nearest that he's been to losing (at all! He's been a lossless trainer!) was all the way back at Mount Moon where they were more numerous and hiding in dark gaps. Since evolving, Charmeleon had been essential in beating pretty much any adversary that Pikachu couldn't fight against. Saying that he enjoyed having to keep an eye on the surroundings for humans instead of wild pokémon would've been a complete lie. Red didn't care that they were weak. He didn't want people trying to mug him!
It was beginning to drag on his nerves. When did the fights become too intense? At what point did he accept that Team Rocket was too big of a threat for him to continue his journey? The grunts weren't giving him trouble, but continuously getting his journey interrupted by them suggested they weren't a random gang with piddling resources (reminiscent of the Argonauts, a gang that lasted two years whose only rule was that they could only train ghost pokémon, 'scientifically' the best since they had only one weakness and multiple attacks made ineffective against them. It was made of disgruntled college kids who couldn't pay for their books and ended when the leader was expelled and fell into depression. Kids even in the current day call each other 'Argonauts' as slang for being useless.). Red's mind kept spiraling. Eventually a pro trainer who wanted a quick buck would be his opponent. Then what?
Those thoughts clouded his normal appreciation of the simple beauty of nature that usually made his travels enjoyable. A little incursion of mountains into the typical plains of southeastern Kanto only had a single pass that allowed you to cut through. Route Eight was known for its diverse environment. Flowers that couldn't be found anywhere else lined the sides of the road while trees broke roots through the craggy surface of the cliffs. He stormed through the pavement—the first route that had an actual road to his memory—until he slowed to a stop. A herd of Vulpix stood at the face of a cliff, looking down at the two humans. Only two. There was nobody else. Red noted that it was most likely due to the group of Team Rocket that turned away anybody that would normally be traveling. Somehow they'd done it to everybody except a single boy.
He approached carefully, glancing around for any sign of a trap. Leaves crunched underneath his feet, the trees in the area shedding early. Flowers were trampled as he stepped off the road and into the little campsite with a flickering lamp acting as the campfire. Floating embers of dust reflected the sunlight around the boy. A single eye cracked open. Red realized that the boy's pokéballs were lazily scattered around.
"It's you again," the boy said.
A chill ran up Red's spine. This wasn't the same tone as the starstruck fanboy. All the same signs were there, from the genial smile to the innocent way that his fingers hooked into his pants, but the voice wasn't the same. It was the same when Blue thought he had the upper hand. One of his hands brushed past Charmeleon's pokéball.
"Did you know that Team Rocket was up there?" Red asked, forcefully.
"I maaay have known that there miiiight have been a ceeertain criminal group who was stealing from people," the boy said, putting a finger on his chin. "I saw your entire fight! You were so heroic, beating them all up."
"Cut the jokes," Red said.
"Jokes? There's no jokes. You're acting really paranoid right now, y'know? Threatening a kid that you have an entire head on his height~," the boy said.
The fingers slipped off, hanging loosely at his sides. Despite the nature of the situation, Red acknowledged that he was being unusually confrontational. They wouldn't accept a child's help, he reasoned.
The boy smiled at the action just a little wider. "There we go. Now we can talk like civilized people. Like civilized people, we can come to a consensus. Here's one: I may have talked with Team Rocket."
Red felt like bringing out Charmeleon just to cut through the word games.
"What do you mean?" Red said. His teeth grit to try and relieve some of the anger that he felt towards a child. It didn't help much, and made him look tense.
"Let's just bring up a hypothetical situation: let's say that a young boy was waiting for his idol to come around to Route Eight so he can be given a sitrep, when these terrible people come and try to steal his pokémon. Naturally, he can't beat them since he's too young to properly know how to battle. Naturally, he also doesn't have any pokémon that are worth anything. Instead, he gives them a proposal to knock two birds—erm, Pidgeys, flying-types, what have you—with one stone. He suggests that they hide up in the trees at the beginning of the route so they can eventually fight against the boy's idol."
The boy tapped his hands against his knee as Red tried to parse through the information. It all sounded too deliberate for his liking, too many of many things that he couldn't think of many of them at all. The whole thing now seemed too suspicious for him to let it go. Why the kid chose him out of any other gym challenger was now grating against each fold of his brain.
"Of course, this is all hypothetical. The boy that we're talking about doesn't actually exist. He only exists in those goons' heads because they're pretty dumb, fo' real. What we have here is a simple case of good timing. You just happened to come through as I was relaxing. Isn't that crazy?'
Red withdrew a pokéball and held it in front of him.
"I challenge you to a battle."
The kid's head rolled onto his shoulder. "Really? Do we have to? Your number one fan isn't nearly in the position to give you any challenge."
When he saw that Red wasn't budging, his hand groped for any of the balls that were laying behind him. The first one that his hands wrapped around flew out in front of him as Charmeleon's ball cracked open. The flash of light that came with the ball opening always sent a thrill through Red's veins. Now he coldly watched as Charmeleon swiped its claws at empty air in anticipation, waiting for his opponent's ball to fall, fall, fall, bounce, bounce. Disbelief colored Charmeleon's growl as his pokémon warily stepped back.
Then came the second ball. It too bounced on the ground without anything happening. Red was starting to lose the glare due to disbelief when the third one didn't either. Finally the fourth one opened up, taking shape into a strange creature that had no legs and a drill on its tail. The tiny wings looked incapable of lifting it up, and Red would've thought it flightless if it didn't hover in the air for a second to give a timid cry. Charmeleon, again, looked back as if his trainer was crazy. Red was starting to think that the whole excursion was a waste of time when the boy hadn't even bothered to stand up.
"Alright, Dun Dun Dun~," he sing-songed, lightly singing the familiar theme of a dramatic reveal, "get it going. Coil."
The pokémon cried as it wrapped around itself. Red didn't recognize the move or the pokémon, but wasn't about to throw the match even if the timid pokémon looked like it wanted to run (fly?) away.
"Charmeleon. Use Ember!"
Fire spat from his pokémon's maw without question. The blaze grew to be barely bigger than his pokémon's head, withering the grass as it flew at a surprising speed into the enemy's face. Dunsparce cried as the blast was enough to make its face involuntarily recoil.
His trainer whistled. The boy finally got up to run into the middle of the battlefield, kneeling down to get a better look at his face.
"Yup. That's burned," he concluded. The pokémon gave a single sad whine before it was enveloped back into the pokéball. "I forfeit. That was close!"
"Send out another pokémon," Red spat.
"No can do. All the rest of these balls are empty." Just to demonstrate, he crouched low and started throwing the pokéballs that were around. They all clattered to the ground, lifeless. "Not really the battling type. They're just to give the illusion that I am. Keeps creeps from messing with me, y'know? Didn't work this time though."
The whole situation was giving Red warning bells. And the conclusion that he came to when the money for winning was being pressed into his hand? He didn't care. As long as the boy existed as far away from him as possible, taking Team Rocket along with him in the best case scenario, he didn't care. The day wasn't half over and Red wanted to collapse onto a real bed. His fingers wrapped around the money. It didn't feel clean.
Without asking anymore questions, he started continuing down the route with Charmeleon taking as big steps as possible to keep at the heels of his trainer. Considerations of ending his journey aside, standing in the middle of a mountain range wasn't going to get anything done. He could make it to the next town and start thinking about what his long-term goals were. Battling was fun, but it wouldn't be fun if strange things continued happening—like the footsteps that were certainly not Charmander's next to him.
Red looked to his side. The kid was keeping pace with him, hands behind his head. All the equipment that he had scattered around had been packed in record time into a little knapsack that bounced with each step. The lantern hooked around his belt, still flickering even when the sun was still up. Red's brow furrowed.
"Go away."
"But my biggest hero defeated those guys so manly-like. I need to see for myself how you train, feed your pokémon, keep that mindset going, and keep butting heads with them so accidental-like." The kid winked. Red didn't feel right in his own skin. "Name's Lane, Lane Rand. Pleased to meetcha. I'm a historian by trade."
"You can't be a historian when you're this young," Red said.
"Of course you can! Everybody is a historian 'cause we're all making history."
Red didn't feel the need to dispute such an absurd statement. "Aren't you too young to be all alone on Route 8?"
"I'm a battling prodigy. My parents let me do whatever I want as long as I call every now and then. Then again, we're in this region where they think it's fine to let children loose on the world with battle monsters. Perhaps I don't even have parents. Hm. Have you ever thought about that?" Lane said.
"Didn't you just say that you weren't a battler?" Red shook his head. It was the only sentence that stood out in that word vomit. "Nevermind."
Past the skepticism, Red was thinking about what Lane said. He didn't recognize the pokémon that the kid threw out and it was absurd thinking that a kid that young walked around the entire region without supervision. The whole situation was giving him bad juju.
His own pokémon were just a single throw away. A random kid setting up an ambush with Team Rocket didn't help him to relax. With hindsight, those earlier praises of his ability were annoying. Red tried chewing away his discomfort on a piece of gum, imagining his problems as the formless pink blob that gnashed between his teeth. The wrapper depicting a Ditto turning into a bubble was crinkled as his fingers restlessly rubbed against it.
"Can I see the rest of your team, hero?"
"No."
"Pleeease?"
"No."
"Pleeeease?"
"No."
They went on like that for quite a while.