Chapter Text
Gary goes into the lab on Tuesday morning at 7:35 when he realizes he left his external hard drive plugged into his office computer. His flight to Sinnoh leaves in less than two hours, and the detour leaves him in a sour mood as he slips through the door to Oak Laboratory, sipping absently at his drive-thru coffee.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to the airport?” Tracey asks, bemused as Gary shuffles past his workstation.
Gary shoots him a withering look. “I just need to grab a few things. Stop looking smug.”
Tracey’s eyes widen a fraction, giving off an illusion of innocence that Gary knows from experience can’t be trusted. “The great Gary Oak forgot something?” He gasps, like the unrepentant drama queen he is. “I guess even gods bleed.”
Gary rolls his eyes at the watcher as he slows to a stop in front of his office door, pulling his keyring from his pocket to thumb through the keys one-handed. “You know, someday I’m going to find a loophole in that contract Gramps gave you,” he calls over his shoulder. “And then I’m going to take great satisfaction in handing you your termination letter.”
“Oh, planning to break up with me by letter, Oak? I didn’t think you were that kind of gir—oh, hello! Welcome to Oak Laboratory. What can I do for you today?”
Gary spares a glance back as he unlocks his office and wanders inside, smiling a little when he catches sight of a middle-aged woman in a pantsuit herding a young blonde girl toward Tracey’s desk. She keeps getting distracted, pulling away to check out a pokemon wandering by or an especially impressive-looking (read: has lots of lights and buttons) bit of equipment along the way. She’s oohing and ahhing over one of Goh’s inventions when Gary swings the door closed behind him.
His hard drive is exactly where he left it, sitting in front of his keyboard. He yanks the cord from the port in his monitor, chuckling as he mentally recites Goh’s outraged rant about safe disconnects and corrupted data—a spiel Gary has heard so many times that it’s forever committed to memory.
He slips the device into his pocket as he wanders back out to the main lab, raising an eyebrow at a harried Tracey who appears to be doing his best to avoid looking directly at the little girl peering over his desk, her puppy-dog eyes at full intensity. “I’m really not supposed to make exceptions.”
“But Mr. Tracey,” the girl says, in tones of tragic (and mostly manufactured, Gary bets) anguish. “This is my dream. I just have to have one! How are little girls supposed to believe that they can achieve anything when the system is rigged against them from the start?”
Gary openly laughs at that, setting his coffee cup on the edge of Tracey’s desk as he approaches the trio. “What seems to be the issue here, Tracey?”
“Oh, Professor Oak, there’s no issue,” the girl’s mother is quick to assure him, mortified by her daughter’s theatrics. “She’s being a little stubborn about her starter, but one of the three usual is fine.”
“She wants a pikachu,” Tracey adds, weary.
“Professor, please!” the girl turns her pleading gaze toward Gary, her hands clasped together in front of her. “I’ve gotta have a pikachu! I’ve just gotta! I’m old enough to get my trainer license today, and I’ve always wanted to start with one.” She looks down suddenly, cheeks tinged pink as she admits, “li-like Master Ketchum.”
Tracey groans. “Oh, here we go.”
Gary magnanimously ignores the other researcher, crouching to eye-level with the girl. She’s cute in that generic way that most kids are, her blonde hair pulled into pigtails under her hat—a baseball cap with an embroidered thunderbolt on it. “Are you a fan of Master Ketchum?”
The girl peeks up at him from under her hat brim, jerking her head in a small nod. “He’s really strong. And-and really nice!” she says, painfully earnest this time. “I wanna be just like him!”
Tracey and Gary both snort.
“Well, maybe don’t aspire to be just like him,” Gary says with a wink. “He’s a bit of a slob. And he loses things the moment he sets them down. And he’s far too reckless with his personal safety. But I guess he’s all right.”
The girl’s eyes widen. “Do you—do you know Master Ketchum?”
Gary nods. “I do, very well.” He taps his watch with a grin. “Well enough to know you’re thankfully more punctual than him.”
Tracey snickers from where he’s filling out the girl’s licensing paperwork.
“Do you know why Master Ketchum has a pikachu for a starter?” Gary asks.
“Because they’re best friends!” she tells him, the silent ‘duh’ at the end clearly evident.
“Attitude,” her mother warns, but Gary waves her off.
“Actually, he got a pikachu because he overslept and all the regular starters were already taken.”
The girl’s resulting gasp is scandalized. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“It is, I was there,” Gary says, lips twitching. He loves telling Ash’s adoring fans this next part. “He showed up in his pajamas begging my grandpa for a pokemon—any pokemon. That pikachu was the only one left.”
“But they were still friends,” she insists.
Gary nods. “Eventually, yes, but it wasn’t easy. He really had his hands full at first. Pikachus aren’t easy to train because they have big personalities—”
“And even bigger attitudes,” Tracey mutters.
“That’s why we don’t usually give them to trainers as a starter.” Gary smiles at her. “Most new trainers can’t handle them. Master Ketchum managed because he’s a stubborn fool with ridiculous luck. Hardly a basis for consistent results.”
The mother coughs politely to hide her surprised laugh. “Maybe you should consider picking one of the regular starters. You can catch a wild pikachu once you have enough experience to handle it.”
The little girl squares her shoulders, tilting her chin up to pin Gary with a determined look, and oh boy, Gary’s definitely seen that expression before. “I can handle one now. I can! I know it!” her bottom lip wobbles as she adds, “please, Professor Oak. Please give me a chance!”
Gary tries not to show how much his insides melt at the sentiment, but he probably isn’t all that successful if Tracey’s exasperated sigh is anything to go by. “All right, kiddo, here’s the deal,” he says. “We have a few recently-caught pikachu in the basement. They haven’t gone through basic training, so they’re not terribly used to being around people yet. They aren’t as beastly obstinate as Ash’s though, so it’ll be tough, but they should learn to listen to you pretty quickly. Are you sure you’re up for it?”
The girl nods so hard Gary’s briefly concerned she’ll give herself whiplash. “I can handle it,” she repeats.
“Then let’s go,” he says, standing up and jerking his head towards the back of the lab, beckoning her to follow as he heads toward the stairwell. She skips after him, pigtails bobbing with each exaggerated step.
“Lydia, make sure you listen to Professor Oak,” her mom calls, tone long-suffering. “And for the love of god, don’t touch anything!”
The little girl—Lydia, apparently—rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I know!”
“And don’t—” The mother’s next warning is cut off when Lydia slams the door to the stairwell closed behind her, expression all innocence as she follows Gary down to the lower levels of the building.
“You know, you’re going to miss her fussing over you while you’re on the road,” Gary tells her, biting back a laugh at the disgusted face she makes.
“If you say so,” Lydia says, clearly dubious.
Gary shakes his head, lifting his wrist to check his watch.
7:57.
Good. He’s still on time.
Sure, he’s technically in a hurry, but he can never say no to Ash’s fans. They’re always so earnest and passionate, bounding into the lab with so much enthusiasm that it practically radiates off them. Most of them remind him of Ash when he was that age, and he feels the wistful tug of nostalgia as he glances back at the small blonde hurrying down the stairs behind him.
“Here we are,” Gary says when they reach the third sub-floor, flicking on the light switch by the bottom of the stairs to illuminate the rows of shelves along the walls and the clusters of outdated equipment on the floor.
Behind him, Lydia shivers. “It’s cold down here,” she complains. “Are you sure the pokemon are warm enough?” Here she sounds genuinely concerned, and Gary can’t help but smile. It’s rare to hear someone her age show so much consideration—further proof of what Gary already suspected when he met her earlier: she’s going to make one hell of a trainer.
“Absolutely,” he assures her, leading her to the shelves along the far-left wall. “Their pokeballs protect them from most outside stimuli, including the cold. They’re perfectly comfortable down here.”
Lydia frowns, a brief hint of insecurity flashing in her eyes before she smothers it under more of the generic cheerfulness from earlier. “Do—am I supposed to keep them in their ball most of the time, then—"
Gary makes a mental note to check in on her himself periodically after this—his only recourse for motivating underconfident trainers with untapped potential now that he’s too old to fall back on his previous methods of goading them into success.
Or so Goh says.
Gary’s not convinced.
“Some trainers do. Others hardly ever use them, like a certain pokemon master and his shoulder ornament of a pikachu.” He winks at her as he pulls down one of the pokeballs from the shelf. “But you don’t need to know all this right now. Tracey’s getting a rotomdex registered to you as we speak, so you can always ask it any questions you have during your journey.”
“R-right,” the girl says, fingers tightening on her backpack straps as the magnitude of the responsibility in front of her seems to hit her all at once, like it does with so many other kids right before Gary hands them their starter.
It’s a reminder of the importance of Gary's trip to Sinnoh—of just how much he's trying to change. She looks so painfully young against the tall, vaulted walls of the sub-floor, and he wishes he had something better to offer her than empty platitudes about a pokedex being any actual replacement for adult guidance. He can't help her—not yet—and until then, he offers her the only other support he has. “And you can always call me if you need to. I may not look like much now, but when I was your age, I was Master Ketchum’s rival.”
Lydia’s eyes widen, then narrow. She opens her mouth to undoubtedly express more skepticism (which Gary might be tempted to find insulting if it wasn’t so hilarious) when the entire building shakes, the floor rocking enough to make them both stumble to keep their footing.
Gary looks up when he hears a loud crack, horror blooming on his face as he watches the plaster start to fracture, a large fissure snaking to life along the ceiling above them. “Look out!” he screams, pushing the little girl to the side a mere moment before the crack splits fully open, and concrete and rebar rain down on him.