Chapter Text
Today, Gold was bored.
He was sprawled on the most comfortable of the couches in the lounge room, lazily turning the pages of the newest romance novel he’d picked up. His favourite reading buddy, an espeon named Vivi, a lilac-coloured cat with large pointed ears and a forked tail, was napping on the second-most comfortable couch with her tail and paws occasionally twitching in her sleep.
It had been a good nine months since Gold had arrived at Blackthorn, and almost eight since he’d moved in with Lance instead of living in the trailer that was still parked out in the yard. It’d been three months since Silver had caught pokérus and nearly died, and one since he’d gotten better and gone back up into the mountains to train.
Gold had very insistently bullied his-rival-slash-best-friend into taking a phone (one that he’d paid for) with him this time. It hadn’t been easy to convince the guy to take it, but he was at least checking in every few days now, even if that amounted to a single I’m fine text to keep Gold from flying out there on his boyfriend’s dragonite.
Gold flicked over another page, although his mind was definitely not on the current heroine’s struggle between the successful, celebrity boyfriend and the dark and broody newcomer that drew her attention the moment he walked into the room. He wasn’t sure if he was bored of the book or just too preoccupied with his own thoughts to give it a fair shot, really. There was so much to think about.
He’d earned his last Johto badge from Clair some time ago. She’d given him a bit of shit over it, which he’d later figured out was as much because he was dating her cousin-slash-big-brother as it was that she’d lost to a stranger with a cute pink pokémon almost as big as he was. They were on much better terms now, at least. Some days they even trained together, both obliquely studying each others’ techniques while they chatted about life in Blackthorn and dragon taming as a whole.
Silver’s insistence on spending so much time training in the mountains had lead to Gold getting decently ahead of him in travel and badge count. It had given him a lot more time to rest and recover, as well. He’d been pushing himself hard the last couple of years, determined to prove that he was, in fact, perfectly capable of keeping up with any able-bodied trainer that anyone wanted to measure him against. He didn’t even need to beat Lance to know he’d proven himself, making it to the Indigo Plateau and fighting him there was going to be enough.
And, well. Win or lose, he was going to be able to come back home and make out with Lance about it. The thought of that made him smirk a little.
The other concern Gold had was getting too far ahead. Silver was a pretty powerful trainer despite the hurdles he kept tripping on, but it would be far too easy for Gold to push himself way past a point where Silver could hold his own. The guy was already struggling with the fact that he kept losing (no matter how hard he insisted his losses were flukes), and Gold steamrolling him the way Lance had could end up scaring him off entirely.
Scaring him off had never been the plan. There was a good heart buried in there under all that anger, someone just needed to coax it out. It might not even be Gold who ended up doing so, but he was determined to at least put enough foundation in there for the next person who tried to reach him to have an easier time. The cracks were already forming, if Silver’s crobat’s recent evolution had anything to say about it. Silver was trying, and it was beginning to show.
There was another, more recent thought flitting through his mind around the other thoughts, too. It was about a text Lance had sent him about an hour ago.
Which raised a lot of questions, but Lance was a big boy and also the current Indigo League champion, so whatever was going on was probably going to be fine. It did make him wonder what was going on, though. Lavender was a bizarre place to cause trouble. Even with the new radio tower on the coast, there was almost nothing there.
Gold sighed, flipping his book over to glare at the cover. Maybe it was time to admit defeat and come back to it later. He couldn’t even remember the main character’s name.
Almost immediately, his pokégear began to ring. Gold jumped, then scrambled for it in the pocket of the bag he’d left sitting by the coffee table. He’d half expected Lance, but the caller ID was... Elm? He hadn’t heard from the professor in at least a month.
“Professor, hi,” Gold said. “What’s up?”
“I’m... Not sure, actually,” Elm replied. “There’s something weird happening with the radio broadcasts. Have you heard them? They’re talking about Team Rocket.”
Gold frowned. “Like, reporting on them, or...?”
“That’s what’s weird. It almost sounds like they’re the ones broadcasting.”
“I’ll... call you back.” Gold hung up without waiting for a response, immediately flipping to the radio setting and tuning into the Pokémon Talk frequency.
“It’s been three years but we’ve rebuilt the team and restructured! We’re proud to announce that we’re back!”
He switched frequencies, bouncing to the Lucky Channel. He listened to it for a moment, then hopped again to the Variety Channel. The same message seemed to be broadcasting on a loop on all of Goldenrod’s stations.
Gold flipped back to the phone setting, pulling up Silver’s number and opening a message window.
He snapped the device closed, grabbed his cane from where it was resting on the side of the couch, and hauled himself upright with a groan. He already knew he wasn’t going to be able to take his assistance pokémon, a large, bull-like tauros, through the radio tower’s narrow halls and winding staircases. He was just going to have to shove anything he could carry into his usual backpack and hope for the best.
He loaded the pack with whatever seemed useful, mostly medicine and some backup TMs. His pokémon were fine, and when he called Vivi over to put her in her pokéball for the trip, she bounded over with great excitement.
Gold put his hat on, and shouldered the pack. He was going to regret the carry weight later, probably, but there might not be backup this time. Better to be prepared to heal his team on the run. He paused for a moment as he ran a mental inventory on what he’d gathered.
...Better take the heavy-duty first aid kit, too. The only reason nobody had gotten shot at Mahogany was the big orange dragon that followed Lance around like a huge puppy. Gold didn’t think his luck would be that good this time, with his less intimidating pokémon team.
Packed and as dressed up as he ever got, Gold slipped out of the house, locking the door behind him, then paused to pull his pokégear back out of the pocket he’d shoved it into. He found Lance’s name in the contacts list and texted him, too.
He called out his togekiss Grace, and the great white bird obligingly grabbed him by the shoulders and launched them both into the skies in the direction of Goldenrod.