[Catherine]
<<img01_12-15-18 14:08>>
About to get my first gym badge, wish me luck >:9
I picked a fire starter so it might be tough
Any tips???

[Palmer]
Looking adorable, Kit!
And hmmmm.
Maybe use the lapras you have? >:? But I’m only champion, so who knows.
Seriously though, still kinda risky, isn’t it? With the security.

[Catherine]
Eh, Silver’s usually a decent logical compass and he doesn’t seem to mind.
Doubt surveillance has crossed the border yet.
Not as far as Pewter anyway.
What’s up on your end?

[Palmer]
The news probably has, though.
I get it, just, be safe? And..
<<img01_12-16-18 8:08>>
Francis says hi.
[put image here]


Pewter reminded her of Mahogany in some ways - the entire town rustic and fairly quaint; unhurried to progress beyond what it really needed. The air laid itself calm and a touch heavy, mud smeared as patches of brown where the snow didn’t quite reach.

On the bright side, the museum had central heating.

On the other hand, it hadn’t done much to warm up Brock’s expression when he caught her — them, Silver hovering just far away enough to count — in the new fossil exhibition.

It’d been a few years since graduation, and when she saw the gym leader last, but she knew that he had less of a resting bitch face than her father, that his posture was never so stiff.

“Catherine,” he’d asked without preamble, didn’t even give her the chance to make a joke about how his face could split rocks. “What’re you doing here?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Just seeing the sights while I’m in town! I saw Aunt Jade just the other day, figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and continue the reunion, you know?”

“You figure,” he echoed, a hand on her arm and tugging her away polite yet firm. She caught a glimpse of Silver following in step, a casual sidle to appraise a fossil from the side. “Seriously, you’re lucky I’m the one who found you, I don’t know what they’ve been putting into your head over there but it’s despicable of them to make a young girl do this for whatever they’re planning. Are you alright?”

Catherine considered what would be the kinder option. The smarter option. “Of course I am? I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

“Cath.” His frown deepened. “Don’t mess around, the notice for Loki’s arrest has already gotten around. Do you know what you’re doing? What trouble they’ve roped you into?”

She couldn’t help the laugh. “It’s alright. I’m alright. I appreciate you caring, but I know what I’m getting into.”

“Do you?” he asked. “I know you’ve messed around with the training --”

“For eight badges, yeah.”

“Eight badges, exactly. You don’t get to shrug off the accidental Focus Blast if it veers a little too close to you now. Or let’s go a little less extreme, a Rock Slide or a Rollout.” His eyebrows furrowed. “It isn’t the place for a woman, Catherine. It’s too dangerous. Imagine if you got hurt.”

“It’s the same they ask of every man my age, to be fair,” she pointed out. “And there seems to be no issue with women spectating the matches.”

“With a glass wall between the spectators and the arenas that’s built to withstand the force, yes.” He took put his hands on her shoulders, near pleading, face twisted in frustration. “We both know Red’s a good guy, but you know how hardheaded he can get — the entire family’s like that. You don’t have to let him strong arm you into throwing your future away.”

“I was doing that at the dance hall.” She crossed her arms. “I know what I’m doing, Brock.”

He sighed. “I really doubt it, Catherine. You sound like my baby sister when she tries bathing a Geodude.”

She shrugged his hands off her shoulders and sneered. “Good thing neither of you are the one doing it then, huh?”

A tense silence hung in the air as the rest of the museum patrons ambled around and murmured to themselves, as they paid no apparent heed to the gym leader and his cousin with their standoff in the corner, their tantrums just below the security camera. Brock gave in first.

“Hardheaded as the rest of them,” he muttered, and slouched. “I should report you now, but I won’t, because I care about family. But if you care about us even the slightest, then you’ll understand why I’ll have you to leave the city by tonight. That’s all I can do for you.”

“Oh?” She rocked back on her heels, voice sweet. “You’ll still go down either way.”

 He didn’t bite. “Of course, but I’ll try to soften the blow where I can. At least this way if when you’re busted it won’t be in my city.”

“So much for family, huh?” A despondent sigh. “When the champion’s endorsing it, you’d figure it’d be okay to support, Brock.”

“He’s not quite a dictator, I’m afraid. And even if he was, gym leaders aren’t. The family isn’t. You know why your dad left Kanto in the first place.” He dropped his hands into his pockets. “Not everyone can risk throwing away their careers that they’ve spent years building up for a whim, Cath. I have a family at home to feed.”

She almost pointed out that the rest of the family would help, if he really did lose it all. Knew that was hardly a consolation when it was offered to her, let alone for a breadwinner like him. “Alright. I can do that much.”

Defeat hung quiet on his face as he bundled her up in a hug. She almost didn’t return it out of spite. “Just think on what I’ve said. Stick outside or in the stores, where you don’t have to pull your hood down or your hat off. The glasses only work on a passing glance.”

If only Loki eventually ghosting around wasn’t part of the plan. “I’ll see what I can do.”

When he let go and looked at her one last time before he departed, it wasn’t warmly, or with a smile. It was with defeat and worry and just enough pity to nearly make her snap.

But there were better places to do that than a crowded museum.

Catherine hummed, and didn’t look when Silver joined her side. They both admired the piece of amber sitting on its pedestal, alone and eternally pristine in its glass display.

---

Her ears started buzzing on Route 3, a subtle hum she mistook at first as proximity to Pewter, as the general ambiance of a summer night. Something the snow was supposed to help muffle. Something that shouldn’t have crescendoed steadily from her ears to a warm, but not unwelcome tingle when she stepped over the boundary between the Route and the entrance to Mt. Moon. Strong echoes and vibrations from the cave, maybe.

The mountain was less claustrophobic than she expected, than Dark Cave and the Icy Path, practically an open space fenced in by rock that reached towards the sky, but never swallowed it completely. Powder sugar stars somehow twinkled brighter than they were just a few steps ago, and a fat and swollen moon only helped things become all the more visible.

Catherine took a moment to appreciate it, to surely inhale more than a healthy amount of moon dust in the air, before she composed herself and continued onwards. “Keep your eyes peeled and watch out for any stray meteors crashing, huh? Lot of cash if you avoid the concussion.” And then, when she felt a distinct emptiness, turned and tilted her head. “Silver?”

The ginger was still stuck all of two steps into the mountain, perturbed eyes frozen to the sky — snapped to her and caught up in two long strides. “Looked different on the outside, is all.”

“Yeah, I think things just look brighter because everything else is so dark, maybe,” she said, fished the flashlight out from her purse just in case. The travel guides mentioned there were some subterranean portions. “There’s… there’s a lot to take in.”

“Something like,” he said in an odd way, and she moved on thusly.

“Thanks for coming with me.”

“I had to.”

“Oh?” she said, purring. “I appreciate the necessity, but you don’t need to flatter me like that. Lance convinced you so well?”

“Don’t.”

“What? I wasn’t blind,” she said. “Mahogany was practically a tragedy for him. If only it weren’t for Palmer, he would’ve…”

“Oh,” said Silver with revelation, with relief, and she perked up because oh —

“Oh?”

“Don’t.”

She put a hand her chest. “But you had to. Held at gunpoint.”

“The friendship feels like that sometime, true.”

Catherine snorted and elbowed him gently, and he was only vaguely a brute when he shoved her off. “Or held at horn point, maybe. Your cowlick kinda looks a horn, and then… mm.”

“You’re losing me.”

“It was gonna be a joke about your horn and Nidorans, but I couldn’t quite land it.”

“I see.”

“And Lance’s horn, if you catch my drift.” She laid it on thick with an eyebrow wiggle that Silver didn’t seem to appreciate.

He just rolled his eyes and sighed, discomfort permeating off of him and she felt almost a little bad. She tried for greener pastures. “Up for a battle now that you’re here, by the way? Looks like no one else is around right now, plenty of space.”

A half-hearted shrug. “Don’t know. Kinda not feeling it, this place is weird.”

“It’d be so romantic though, a reverie under the stars. Make your skin all tingly.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Unless, I mean, you want to save that for Lance, there’s no issue with that —”

“Catherine. Don’t.”

Silver was always snappish in the same way Catherine was always [s]smug[/s] [s]smarmy[/s] confident. It meant snappish was a default that she let slide over her like a water on a duck, the bare minimum security check so any old fool couldn’t cash in. But now he was [i]stubborn[i], and he only got that way so often.

“You never did tell me what made you run away from home, you know. And I’d done everything you told me to. You can’t fault me for taking the hints you drop and running with them,” she said instead.

Silver grunted. Ugh, fine.

“I’m sorry for pushing.”

Silver relented. She felt a little better when she watched Silver sigh down from extra-tense to regular-stiff. “It matters this much to you, huh?”

“You matter to me, so I want to know about that, yeah,” she said. “I like to think I matter to you too, unless you’re just stupid generous instead?”

“Unfortunately the former,” he said all beleaguered, and she giggled over the ringing in her ears, the odd prickling on her skin.

They walked further into the caves as the moon didn’t seem to move from its prime spot in the center, always the center, no matter how far they wandered off to one side of the mountain or the other, no matter the couple of hours it surely took them to amble through the dirt and holes and ladders.

And then abruptly, “Once we’re out of Mt. Moon.”

“Oh?” Catherine hummed, and jostled the Cleffa in her arms that had joined them since. (Far from the only one, but Clefairy were heavy, and honestly the amount staring after her had her more concerned than anything. She’d put it back before she left.)

“Yeah,” Silver said. “We can battle, and I’ll kick your ass, but then — yeah. It’s only fair.”

“Kick [i]your[/i] ass y’mean, gingersnap.” She perked up. “Hey, since you’re doing this grand cross country thing, maybe you could sign up for the Challenge legally now? Sure, it’d be out of season, but at least it’d be legal this time. You could get another starter! Might not even have to return the one you stole?”

Silver’s deadpan look spoke volumes as she tried not to crack up, still nearly got a swarm of Zubat on them if she hadn’t been quick with sending Chiffon out. Truly, Typhlosion had a lot of utility.

“Would you rather have ghosts or the Zubat, though?” she asked.

“At least the ghosts are useful before they evolve.”

Catherine sniffed. “Yours, maybe.”

And then they heard the THUNK from further ahead.

The static on her skin only grew stronger the further they went in — had peaked they’d stumbled over their own little meteor in front of a small shrine to Cresselia, obsidian bathed in moonlight and still smoking from its descent. It had enveloped her like a blanket, warm and smoothing and a little hazy, left the air tinted sweet with sugar, coaxed her to keep her eyes on the moon above, a drunkard waxing poetical classic —

And then Silver tugged on her arm and brought her back to standard. They didn’t dawdle much longer, and picked up a handful of shards for souvenirs and pocket change, took a few photos before they continued on.

Catherine [s]could feel[/s] let herself breathe normal once they’d moved past it, then the rest of Mt. Moon, Route 4 humid and cold but lit up on the far end up Cerulean’s city lights. Tried not to blanch at the slight wave of nausea that replaced the pleasantness from before. The normality.