Finding Red

29

"Ow, ow, ow! I swear!" Crystal said, hopping one foot.

Blue laughed somewhere off in the distance. "I know you said you were training, but I certainly didn't expect a spectacle out of it."

Nuria squeaked off in another direction. "Cyn! Cyn!"

"Hey," Red said from behind Crystal, "you're supposed to be quiet. It's not my fault your trainer is bad at training."

"Well excuse me for being brand new at this," Crystal huffed.

She heard a rustle ahead of her, as Blue walked. "Typically people train the Pokémon, not the trainer. And they certainly don't try to burn themselves while doing it."

"Please," said Red behind her, "he's done plenty of training for himself, so don't even listen to his nonsense."

"You know you're not supposed to be talking during this training," Crystal replied to both Red and Blue.

Red responded, "Oh yeah, and you're not supposed to be so abysmal at it, so neither of us is doing their job, are they?"

"I mean," Blue responded, "it's so unconventional, how could I not comment? Where did you learn this training Crystal?"

"It—" Crystal began, without knowing how to finish.

She knew she couldn't tell Blue about Red, but she didn't know exactly what to say to him. She had to lie, and it had to be believable, something that Blue wouldn't know about. And it had to be something easy to remember, because something in her told her that she would need Blue's help in finding out what happened to Red in the future. It could be possible he knew details of Red's past that Red did.

"When I used to work for professor Elm," Crystal began, "sometimes people would visit the lab or we'd go to think tanks. And, well, there was this trainer there. His name was uh—"

She paused for a moment, as if to think. There was a name on her mind, but it was pretty ridiculous, and Crystal wasn't sure that was the right way to lie to Blue.

"His name was?" Blue asked to Crystal's pause.

She lowered her head. "I can't remember, to be honest. I just remember the way he was with Pokémon. He was different, as if he understood the Pokémon themselves. He told me he was a naturalist. That he could feel the Pokémon. And I guess that's the way I've decided to go about training."

"I see," Blue said, and there was something about the intonation of his voice that didn't seem right to Crystal. "How long ago was it?"

She had only been going to think tanks for a short amount of time, so she had to be careful what she told Blue.

"In the past year or two, why?" Crystal responded.

His voice has that same quality. "You remember what he looked like?"

"Crystal, tell him you don't know," Red said. "I have a hunch about this."

"Not really," said Crystal, listening to Red's instructions. "I was captivated more by what he was doing."

Blue quieted for a moment. "I see. Well, I just thought I'd ask. Your style of training reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago."

The air felt somber as Crystal continued to train. She took step by step forward, willing herself to feel something, anything in the air around her. However all that was there was emptiness, and the slight sound of the wind blowing as she walked on by. It was disorienting and slow to take each painful step forward, and Crystal couldn't help but wonder how far Blue and her had actually travelled using the method she was using.