Pokemon Fan Fiction / Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Friendly Fire ❯ Private Party ( Chapter 1 )

I saw him across the room, which was crowded with small groups of people talking to each other. I was alone, until that moment. So was he. I walked over.
“You’ve got some nerve showing up here Lance” I said. He smiled, knowing it was a joke. He was arguably the most important guest and a good friend of mine for several years.
“What has Adam Wyle got against me? Is there just one incident you have in mind or is it my entire behaviour through my life that annoys you?”
“I can’t watch you every minute. So I’ll forgive you for what you‘ve doubtlessly done in my absence. You look good by the way.”
“At least you didn’t tell me that I look the same as ever. That’s the only thing worse than having changed since the last time I saw you.”
“So, if I ask you how you feel about retiring, will I receive a frosty clear, lots of complaints, or mad raving about how happy you are?”
“Have you ever heard me raving madly?”
“No, just the first two things I mentioned.”
The party was a celebration of the fact that Kanto now had a new head of the elite four; a replacement for Lance Santini. So it was also a last chance for him to say goodbye to the other elite four members, gym leaders and other distinguish trainers he’d met during his time at his old job. Any trainer who wins a league match can become an elite four member but to be put in charge of them he must spend several years proving to the gym leaders of his nation (Kanto, Johoto or Hoenn) that he is worthy to command the committee that decides the laws of that country. The people elect the gym leaders, they select the elite four’s chief, and he leads the group of four who decide the laws of their realm. At least that’s how it worked on Lance’s last night at the front of such a political system. Many others forms of governing the Pokemon world have been tried over the years. Like democracy, it was the least worst political system of it’s time, rather than the best. His replacement was a few minutes away from arriving, his name obvious because he’d been working under Lance for years.
“I enjoyed my work but it’s not as if my résumé isn’t enough to assure me of work in the private sector. I’m not devastated. However I do not approve of my understudy,” Lance said in answer to my earlier question.
“Is it because he’s younger, more popular and more handsome than you?”
“I think my thirty seven year old body dazzled so many drivers on the way here that most of them are being taken to hospital after crashing their cars into each other. The rest are planning a parade in honour of my brilliance. You understand?”
“So what’s your problem with him?”
“He does not believe in my ideals. I feel that Pokemon is about settling differences without the use of excessive use of violence that there was in the past. That it’s about proving that you are the best at what you do. He is more interested in gaining the admiration of millions. Take this grand revelation ceremony. We already know who it is anyway. I would have gone around the room discretely introducing my self. In fact I did. Not him. In the old days, he would have been despised as an elite but now all the great trainers who uphold the traditions I respect have been replaced by this new generation. You for example.…”
“Lance, I though we decided a long time ago that this road only leads to the destination of the city of the several-hour-long-arguments. Never discuss religion, politics, or Pokemon.”
“Conversation on Kanto would get very boring if everyone didn’t talk about Pokemon.”
“I mean the ideological side of it.”
“I’ve never understood how you can take the position that greed or fame is a good reason to become a trainer.”
“I take the position that we need to be open to new ideas. He could give us that. I leave other positions alone.”
“Is it more useful to get another point of view than to get a point of view which is selfless?”
“I…”
I couldn’t finish. Previously music was fed, through speakers, into the room:

Now there’s a wall between us/Somethin’ has been lost/I took too much for granted/I got my signals crossed

Now it stopped. For a moment, I could hear the thunder from the storm outside. Then it was replaced by an announcer’s voice.
“Now the person you must have all been waiting for, since this party is in his honour, has arrived. Introducing the new head of the elite four, Gavin Wright.”
Everyone’s eyes turned to the room’s large double doors. Only Lance and I glanced elsewhere. His eyes moved, exaggeratedly, towards the ceiling so he could suggest that he thought his substitute was a shameless egotist. My orbs looked towards him, because I was interested in seeing his reaction to the newcomer. Then I turned to Gavin, who I had not met yet, being away from the Pokemon league headquarters for so long. I saw a tall man, more impressive in stature than my own 5 foot 11 was. He was thin, with wire frame glasses and had slicked back, black hair. He was like a yuppie at a black tie restaurant. He was twenty-six that year, 2045. Lance was totally different. His hair was also black, but curly and very long. His features were very dark and Mediterranean. He was short and though he had to wear very formal attire too, his clothes looked moulded on to him, rather than hanging off his frame as they did on Gavin‘s. Lance had a little red wine spilt on his white shirt but that wasn’t a regular part of his aesthetic makeup. I was different again. I tried to comb my straight, brown hair but it’s so think it’s think it’s hard to do anything with it. My best feature is my large blue eyes, like those of a romantic hero in a matinee. If I had to make a choice about what is the least desirable part of my appearance it would be either my paleness or the ridiculous thinness of my body. In addition, a conservative dress code hardly suits me. Many people were trying to engage the host in conversation now but he kept walking towards us, telling everyone that he had someone he wanted to see first.
“Here he comes to gloat” Lance muttered.
“I don’t think that entrance was spectacular enough,” Lance said sarcastically to Gavin when he reached us.
“You’re correct. I should have included fanfares” Gavin replied, with an equal, but less vicious, sense of irony than the one bestowed on him.
“This is Adam Wyle. If he seems pleased to meet you it’s only because he doesn’t know you as well as I do.”
We shook hands.
“I don’t know where you get this fantasy, that I’m evil, from” Gavin said to Lance.
“My problem isn’t with Stalin; it’s with him being given ultimate power over his country. Understand?”
“I’m hardly a dictator. We have a constitution. I can always be stripped of my office.”
“Did you know that a forest fire isn’t necessarily a bad thing? It can burn away the dead wood and clear room for new growth?” I asked.
“Your comparing me to dead wood?” Lance inquired incredulously.
“Adam is implying that sometimes a change, even if it’s feared by the old establishment, can lead to something better.”
A lady came up to us. She was probably in her late twenties, with black hair tied back into a ponytail. Her face was dark but not too much, as if she was a native of Kanto but from a family used to living in a hotter climate. Her dress code was obvious; make it simple and make sure it isn’t colourful. The “Ultimate Goth” style as I christened it.
“Excuse me, I need to speak to Lance for a moment,” she said to Gavin and me.
“This is Philippa Marshall, a new gym leader. She’s also someone who needs my assistance, so you’ll have to excuse me a minute.”
“Bye” she said as they walked off.
“She was a little…abrupt, don’t you think?” Gavin asked.
“I guess it’s just us for a few minutes then” I responded.
“Listen, I know Lance is your friend and I respect that. Everyone needs a few of those. So if you want me to back off I respect that too. However, I need one of these friendship things and we seem to see eye to eye so far. Many people feel, for various reasons that, I’m wrong for this position. More about that later if we both end up getting more out of this conversation than an elevation of our boredom. I need someone to back me up, especially since the old elite’s head is against me. I don’t want you to turn him into an enemy of mine or anything. Just say ‘All right, Lance is a good man but out with the old and in with the new. Gavin Wright could easily be his equal if given a chance.’ What do you think?”
“If you know Lance well you’ll know he considers anyone who isn’t with him one hundred per cent to be an…opponent. That’s putting it politely.”
“Let’s just work the party together. You’ll hear my arguments and I’ll hear yours. I just want to talk. If you still wish to walk away at the end, I won’t try to stop you. You‘ve been outside our circle for a long time. There‘s new people you‘ve only seen on TV. You‘ll like them.”
What Gavin meant by “You’ve been outside our circle” was I quit Pokemon training a few years before the party. I was a gym leader once but then I retired from it. More on that later. So I was, at best, used to seeing TV reports about my brethren. Lance, obviously, had to know me when I was in charge of an official Pokemon institution because I helped to enforce the laws he and his three colleagues invented. So he invited me, knowing that I wanted to meet old friends again but I didn’t want to deal with Pokemon anymore if that was the price that I had to pay for seeing old acquaintances. I don’t have any Pokemon left in fact. I gave them to my girl friend, or at least she was my girl friend at the time. Erika Green.
“Ok but I’m not betraying anyone,” I said to him as we started to make our way round the room.
“Good because I’m not asking you to.”
“Lance sees things differently to us.”
“No. We see things differently to Lance. It’s not the same thing.”

The first person we met was actually Philippa. Lance was just starting to walk away as we approached.
“I’ll see you later” I called to him. In retrospect, this might have been a mistake. He turned to me and both puzzlement and a strong resentment showed in his face as he saw who I was apparently walking around happily with. Philippa was talking to me by then though, so I decided to deal with my friend’s feelings later.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that Ms. Marshall.”
“Call me Philippa. I said sorry about the lack of introduction earlier. I had a problem with one of my new recruits, so I went straight to the boss.”
“I’m sure being called that would take the sting out of my attempt to nickname him ‘Deadwood’ earlier,” Gavin said.
“Your recruits?” I enquired.
“You’d call them junior trainers. The people who work under me in the gym. I’ve only recently been given one,” Philippa answered.
“Well the best advice I can give you is don’t be surprised if some unimpressive looking ten year old with a weird name comes along and beats you in thirty seconds. That always seems to happen around here.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Why you can guide me with such an obvious knowledge of gym leading is another matter. Who are you?”
“I belong to the same great institution as you once. Though that was a long time ago.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I couldn’t get used to the amount of paper work I had to do.”
“No, why did you really quit?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“My intuition tells me you’ll soon be tired of saying that.”
“What do you think of the notion that Adam joins our alliance?” Gavin asked her.
“Your alliance?”
“Yes Adam. Philippa is already a member of my growing army of worshipers.”
“You wish” Philippa muttered sarcastically.
“So?”
She turned from Gavin to me, attempting to emphasise the importance of her next pronouncement.
“You should unite with us if you have faith in our cause. If it’s just a question of loyalty, then stick to what you’re best at, keeping others happy. No one has happiness in a war, just good intentions.”
“I agree with Mr. Wright’s ideas,” I said.
“Then welcome aboard” she said, then left.
“You remember when she told you to call her ‘Philippa’?”
“You want me to call you Gavin?”
“You got it.”

Gavin spotted someone near by that he wanted me to speak with. Even I could recognise the heavily built man, in his mid thirties, with very close-cropped black hair and stubble that he never let develop further than that because he knew it made him look dangerous the way it already was. Bruno Grisham, Lance’s third in command. He stood talking to another man, who I vaguely recalled from the media. He was a white man but Asian in appearance because he was lightly built with shiny black hair. He had a goatee, and was in his mid twenties. The youngest man that I had visualised so far.
“It’s our new commander,” Bruno said as we approached.
“Thanks but I think that Gavin is more suited to leadership” I joked.
“You I recognise…,” the man with Bruno said, pointing at Gavin, “…You I’ve never seen before” he finished, pointing at me.
“Then we’re in the same position. Fortunately I’m perfectly willing to talk to strangers.”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to do that?”
“Yes but I never listened to her. How do you think I got in this sorry state?”
“Christian Blair. Since you obviously have a talent for humour, I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Adam Wyle. Since you don’t seem to dislike me in instantly, I’m equally pleased to meet you.”
“That’s most of the introductions out of the way. You can call me Mr. Grisham, you can call me Your Honour, you can call me sir, or you can call me Bruno if you insist. Anything else you want to call me will have to be when I’m out of the room.”
“Mr. Grisham is fine with me. I already know Gavin” I said.
“Then enough about names. You are, I presume, the former gym leader of Celadon City?” Bruno asked.
“Yes, until I gave it to my ex, Erica. She made a worse mess of it than she did of our relationship.”
“The same former gym leader who had to take me on eight times before he finally beat me?”
“It’s tough going up against the third most powerful professional trainer on Kanto.”
“Alas I am no longer the third. Christian has moved up the chain of command to replace me. That seems to be the theme for tonight.”
“You mean I need to fight you now Christian?”
“Not now, right here. However there’s a nice back alley near by that we could go to in a few minutes time.”
“No thanks” I said.
“Regrettably we have a lot of guests to attend to. Please excuse us,” Gavin said.
“Ok. I’ll find a good-looking girl to talk to. Looking at this crowd I estimate that it should only take a few weeks” Christian said as we walked away.
“I promised Morty that I’d see him tonight. He wants an appropriations bill passed to fund research into the legendary dogs. He’s over there.”
“Yes. I recognise him.”
He was a sharp featured, white haired Englishman in his early fifties. He was talking to Bill the Pokemaniac, who’s real last name is now forever lost. It goes without saying that I knew Bill by sight. Firstly, he couldn’t stand to be out of the public light for more than a few weeks at the most. Secondly, his appearance was flamboyant to say the least. He had a round face framed by untameable, black, thick, curly hair. He was dressed about two hundred years out of date for this centaury, in a startling array of contrasting colours. His bulk also made him stand out. He loved to be noticed but right then, to my surprise, I found he’d stopped talking for a moment so Morty could have the limelight. However, it has to be said that no one else clustered around them at that time.
“So my theory is Ho-Ho burned the tower down as he was leaving it behind,” Morty was saying as we approached. Then he and his companion spotted us.
“Speaking of old things that have been placed in fire at least once…”
“Morty, can we forget that for tonight?” I pleaded.
“What are you talking about?” Bill asked.
“Great. Go ahead and explain it to him. No, even better, find a megaphone and tell the entire room about it” I said with fierce sarcasm.
“Sorry. If you hear gossip you rarely consider how much the person it’s about must hurt,” Morty said with genuine guilt in his voice.
“I shouldn’t have overreacted so badly.”
“Actually I think you over reacted very well. If I ever need someone to perform that task for me you’ll be the first I call on,” Morty said, trying to lighten the mood.
“You know what always liberates me from the total agony in which I live? Getting drunk” Bill said.
“I have something to discuss with Morty anyway,” Gavin said.
“I need to do one more thing, then I’ll meet you at the bar” I told Bill.
“Sure. I’ll try not to consume their whole supply before you get there.”
“What about my little proposition?” Gavin asked me.
“I’ll come and see you tomorrow. You shouldn’t be hard to find. Your in the big building in Viridian with ‘Pokemon league headquarters’ written on it right?”
“I’m glad you’ve been paying attention.”
So I went off to find Lance.

He was standing in a porch on the outside of the building the gathering took place in, the town hall of Celadon City. He was staring at the rain, which he was protected from by the wooden porch’s roof. His hands were in his pockets. I knew that pose. It meant he was upset.
“I was just talking with him. It doesn’t mean anything,” I said.
“Firstly I know you. If you weren’t interested, you’d have shown it. Maybe not deliberately but your very bad at hiding it when you don’t like someone. You become distant. Secondly, I know him. He showed you around. You know why? Firstly, he wanted to have time to work his charm on you. Secondly, he showed you off like a flashy gold watch he just bought. He knows he has you. He does doesn’t he? You came to ask my permission to enlist with his little army. Fine. So ask.”
“Lance I’m sorry but I think he’s right about a lot of things.”
“Don’t you apologise to me” he shouted.
“Lance, I…”
“Don’t you apologise to me. What good does that do, apart from remove you from guilt? It means nothing to me. Do what you want. Be decisive even if you aren’t loyal.”
My next sentence was spoken with a little of my own fiery passion.
“This isn’t a war. There is no my side and your side. I’m not turning away from your kindness. Since when do I need you in my corner anyway?”
“Don’t you see Adam? Your turning against something of my: my beliefs and what I stand for.”
“No, I’m just making you realise that I won’t play your game of survival of the most popular.”
“What game to you think he’s playing?”
“You know what? I came here to say sorry. I even postponed getting drunk for you on a night where everyone seems to want to open my own wounds just when they were starting to heal. Now I regret it. You’ll get nothing more from me.”
“Go to him. Fine. I’m not one of those guys who says ‘See if I care’ then sulks in a corner till you return. I’ll just say this: you’re going to burn and it won’t be me who’ll do it to you. I hope you’re ready for it because right now I don’t know if I’ll be inclined to help you when it happens, or laugh at you.”
“Goodbye. I hope you realise it’s your attitude that keeps you alone.”

I returned to Bill, the bar, and the drink he was part way through finishing.
“Have you dealt with whatever it is you left me for?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m ready now” I responded, and I sat next to him.