Torinoko Hall of Games

[Meryck]

It was a swift movement. All Red did was turn around and grab Silver's wrists. Simple, really.

And then his voice returned.

"Don't touch me."

Splash!

The Ancient walked away from the lake and the Rival now within it, as if nothing happened.

[Glyph]

Honestly? He'd been expecting as much to happen. Honestly? He didn't really give a damn.

He just wanted to take it out on someone.

The water was shallow, where he was standing, anyway, but it was enough to darken his jacket and waterlog his running shoes.

And it was enough for payback.

Springing to his feet in an instant, Silver whirled, eyes aflame. Having a Water-type as a starter had taught him plenty about fluid dynamics, but none of that crossed his mind. Instead, he reverted to the tried-and-true tactic every small child has used at some point or another in their kiddie pools.

He scraped the flat of his foot across the surface of the lake, sending a sheet of water crashing down across the shoreline and back of the retreating trainer.

[Meryck]

Red didn't even flinch in his step as the water hit him, not particularly caring. His voice, however, slowly changing from the whisper to something close to a normal- if hoarse and garbled-sounding- tone;

"How childish."

[Glyph]

"Our entire existence is childish. Get used to it," Silver spat out a mouthful of lakewater savagely, flopping his sopping bangs out of his eyes so to better glare at the Trainer, "Everyone else has."

[Meryck]

A simple, broken, glitched laugh was the reply, as if there was so much more than that.

"Yes. As long as the people who toyed with us were young, we were childish. You got lucky. You were Forgotten before you found out what happened when Young Ones grew up and got bored...."

Without another word, he vanished into the shadows.

[Glyph]

Perhaps he hadn't experienced them first hand--that was Gold's burden--but Silver had seen plenty of glitches in his time. Corrupted eggs that send the world in spasms, whole PC boxes of Pokemon traded for items that multiplied like Rattata... And sometimes, a darkness, cold and complete.

The horror hadn't stopped after he'd been Forgotten. How could it? How was learning that your life was a lie concocted for the entertainment of children, of realizing that every trial you'd been put through had been planned all along--that you'd had no free will, no personality, no family, no nothing--how was that lucky?

Silver stood in the lake, fuming long after the trainer had disappeared. This guy had definitely been one of the old timers from the First Generation, and the thought only served to infuriate him more. The very idea--that he had been created to replace him--was disgusting.

But so was the idea that he, too, had been replaced.

"Lucky?" He finally seethed to the empty shore, shaking, partly in anger, partly from the chill that was beginning to cling uncomfortably to his soaked clothes. "You don't know what lucky is."

Eventually, Silver wrestled enough sense back from his temper to stagger out of the water and back onto shore. His body responded immediately with a violent shiver, but the boy ignored it stubbornly. Instead of leaving for warmer climes, he stopped at the first dry patch of ground he found and plopped down on it, wrapping his arms around his knees and drawing them to rest beneath his chin while he glared out over the rippling water.

[Meryck]

A rustling from the bushes. "Oi, Silver, PLEASE tell me you weren't silly enough to come here to--"

Another boy with a baseball cap- this one normal colored, aside from the gold eyes- bounced onto the scene. He blinked, wide eyed at the drenched red-head.

"....Dude. So. What happened to you?"

[Glyph]

Silver sucked air in through his teeth, chilling them and glaring at the sound of Gold's voice. While he didn't hold the same, cold grudge against his Rival as he had in the past, he wasn't exactly thrilled by the boy's presence. It had always seemed like, where ever he'd gone, Gold had materialized in some way or another just to put him off. At first, he'd attributed it to the fact that they were Fated to meet by the ones who'd created them.

After they'd been Forgotten, he'd quickly come to the realization that Gold was just that annoying.

"It rained." Silver finally snapped, irritably and without even glancing at the other trainer, "Can't you tell?"

[Meryck]

Gold rolled his eyes skyward. Silver always was cranky.

"I mean why are you in a lake when the last time I checked, you didn't do the whole 'graceless, bumbling spaz' thing?"

[Glyph]

"Maybe I felt like going for a swim." Silver retorted with a glare, his bad mood written all over his face. So not helping, Gold. So. Not. Helping. "What's it matter to you?"

[Meryck]

Gold sighed and decided to brush it off. He plodded into the mud, lillypads, and water before stopping and offering his hand to the cranky redhead. "C'mon, let's get you out of there and dried up. From what I heard, there's gonna be a Glitch running around down here, and he doesn't sound like someone you could stick around without being chucked into next week."

[Glyph]

... Glitch? Silver pondered that bit of information for a moment and then shook his head. It didn't matter. Payback was still payback--whether or not its recipient was still human or not was of no consequence to him... But at least it explained the funky voice and the static.

Ignoring Gold's hand with a disbelieving snort, the redhead rose, brushed the mud off his hands on his pants, and tromped off for the trees.

[Meryck]

Although Gold was taller, Silver was stronger and more pushy- the poor boy barely managed to keep standing as the redhead shoved past him...as usual.

He ought to have been used to this by now.

Innocently and quietly, Gold took to plodding after his old Rival, looking somewhat like a confused puppy.

[Glyph]

Silver paused mid-step, long enough to stare back at the boy trailing him before continuing on.

"Why," he began slowly, "Are you following me... Again?"

[Meryck]

"No reason." Aside to bail you out if you do something stupid. Again. "Just thought I'd tag along." The boy's shoulders shrugged, nonchalantly.