Chaser and the Silver Shadow

Chaser and Silver

It was a familiar place to him. He'd visited on more than one occasion himself. The Cerise household was a wooden structure with two stories and a storage shed in the back from before the Professor had the dedicated storage space in the new Research Lab to store all his materials. Goh himself remembered going through all those containers for books containing all sorts of interesting Pokémon facts with Chloe at his side, but the home was no slouch, either. Compared to the Lab it was quite small, but compared to Goh's family's apartment, it was a lavish mansion.

He still remembered his early trips here, excited to see the Pokémon that lived in Chloe's house. Yamper took some time to warm up to him, but eventually the pup would play just as well with Goh as he would Chloe herself.

It was with memories like this that Goh tried to distract himself from the pain he was now in. The adrenaline of the fight with Felix now drained out of him, he felt battered and bruised with a consistent throbbing in the back of his head where it had met the sidewalk. But despite looking like he had been trampled by every Pokémon that lived in Cerise Park, he knew that he had to tell Chloe what had just transpired.

And given that she wasn't answering texts nor phone calls, Goh was forced to head to the Cerise home on foot, since he also wasn't familiar with the bus routes from Felix's home. He was given his share of strange looks, but teens getting into fights like that wasn't the most uncommon thing in the world, so he was given a wide berth as he walked.

If there was something that felt off, it was that he was doing all this walking alone, with neither Ash for conversation nor Grookey for companionship. Hopefully the chimp was still following Goh's request and keeping Chloe company.

He walked up the steps and knocked on the door, waiting for it to be answered, hoping it was his friend who turned the knob.

Staring back at him as she opened the door was Chloe's mother. Her jade-colored eyes widened in surprise from behind her glasses as she took in Goh's appearance. "G-Goh...? What are you doing here?"

"Hey," he said, giving as polite a welcome as he could, given the circumstances. "Chloe's here, right? May I speak with her?"

Chloe's mother looked at Goh, grimacing. She turned to shout up the stairs before thinking better of it and turning back. "Goh, are you sure you should be here and not getting all of..." She gestured to his entire body. "All of that looked at?"

He still had the lingering taste of his own blood in his mouth, but from what he could tell, most of the cuts had since crusted over, so he wasn't actively bleeding onto the ground in front of her. So he shook his head no, saying "I just wanted to tell her that she can call off the favor she's been doing for me, that's all."

"That's all...?" she asked. "You came all this way, looking like that, just to say this? Why didn't you just call or text her?"

Goh chuckled darkly, though if there was anyone he was irritated with, it was himself. "I tried," he said, taking out his phone from his pocket. "But since she never responded, I just had to be sure that the message got to her somehow."

"When she got home, she seemed pretty upset," her mother continued. "I tried to ask, but she just slammed the door in my face... That's probably why she wasn't answering you, but I guess I wasn't that different when I was a teenager..."

"That's... probably my fault, too," Goh admitted. "But as long as she knows, then that's all I need. Thank you, Mrs. Cerise, and have a good evening."

He gave her a half-hearted wave and turned on his feet to leave.

"Wait a moment!" she called. "Let me go try and talk to Chloe one more time, okay? If you came all this way... it's the least we can do, right?"

He gave her as gentle a smile as he could manage while looking as beaten up as he did. "Thank you."