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"It’s not a battle unless someone attacks first," she replied, eyes narrowing. "You’re not planning on picking a fight, are you? Last time I checked, you don’t have an exceptional track record when it comes to battling me."

She felt torn, unsure of how this could end. On one hand, she didn’t want to see Red arrested, and she’d be willing to battle alongside him for his freedom. But on the other hand, she was so close to home, and could she really do that to her mother? 

Not only would he be putting himself in bigger danger, but getting Dawn involved would make him feel like a bad person, especially when she had already tried to help him earlier, even offering to take him to her hometown. Red just couldn't repay her that way.

Sighing, he lowered his hand, clipping his Pokeball back to his belt. Once it was out of the way, he slowly lifted both of his hands now, holding them up in a sign of surrender. "I," he started, having to stop before continuing the sentence fully. "I don't want to give in, but I don't want you to have to get involved either, even if you'd do fine."

He took an almost uneasy step forward, shooting a small smile in Dawn's direction as he did so. "I'll be fine. Besides, I'm basically a stranger-- you didn't have to be so nice to me, but... I'm grateful. You should go on so you can do what you planned." Meeting her mother, finding her friend.. He really hoped she would get to do those things.

"Saturn," she said, disdain dripping into her words, "I didn’t know it was illegal to walk around the region now."

Taking a few steps back out of surprise, he reached for one of his own Pokeballs, grasping the sphere in his hand as his thumb instinctively hovered over the button. Red wasn't going to leave her alone with this, but at the same time, if this guy was as big as she played him out to be (not to mention, he wasn't wearing the same uniform as the grunts), he didn't want her to get into trouble, either.

"Well, one of the gym leaders here abandoned his gym," she replied, looking back down at the ground in front of them. Volkner’s departure was still fresh on her mind and stinging. She hadn’t caught up with him yet, but she’d heard by now that he’d left Sunyshore. "I’ve thought about looking for him, but I don’t even know what I’d say if I got to talk to him. All of the other gym leaders just seem kind of caught in the middle— er, except Fantina and Byron."

Everyone knew Fantina was helping to lead the rebellion and Byron had been in jail, recently breaking out.

She nodded, understanding his situation. Well, not the exiled from home part, but being unsure where your best friends are and worrying about your family. She knew that feeling too well.

"Punch him," Red said calmly, nodding as if, yes, that was the best solution, and to him, it was. Someone who was so important to the region's future just abandoning their post was awful, even if he stopped himself from being so surprised about it. "Or, at least, that's what I would do." Who ever said you couldn't punch someone for having opposing views if they were awful? No one. No one important ever said this.

Ah, despite living in a hole (literally), he had heard enough about some of the gym leaders, namely those two. "I feel... as if it must be hard, but I'm sure they'll make the right decision. And you and I both know what that is." He wasn't actively working with the rebellion at the moment, but he had always agreed with what he'd heard about it.

Hearing that he wasn't the only one with missing friends was somewhat calming in a sort of twisted way. He felt bad about it almost immediately, as he wouldn't wish this on anyone, but at least he had found companionship and a potential friend for now. "I'll help you find him, if you want. Galactic seems like, uh, a big pain, so it's best to have as many as we can, ri--"

"Yeah… The gym’s probably aren’t the safest bet, what with them being watched all of the time and all." She pouted, crossing her arms against her chest. "The gym leaders here are good people, really. Or, at least they were before the takeover. I know some of them are being forced into cooperation, but I’m always worried that maybe they don’t care…" Even if she’d already battled and defeated them, Dawn still looked up to the gym leaders for the most part, and the idea of her assumptions of them being wrong was disheartening. 

She shrugged again. “Well, sometimes it’s fun trying to mess with the grunts, but it’s mostly just a nuisance unless I run into one of the commanders. The grunts are pretty harmless for the most part.” It was true— they were usually around her age with much weaker Pokemon. It occurred to Dawn finally that Red was really the champion of Kanto before everything went down. She pursed her lips — she’d like to challenge him, but it wasn’t really a viable option right now.

The idea of gym leaders not caring about the situation made him a little worried as well and a whole lot of irritated. He didn't show it on his face, but Red would never understand how someone, especially someone with their position, just couldn't.. care. Not after what some people were facing. Besides that, his childhood friend and rival, Green, was a gym leader and to think that there was a possibility that he, out of all of the league members, didn't care was something he immediately tacked as stupid.

"I'm sure they care," he insisted, scratching the side of his cheek. "Even if it doesn't seem like it, even if it's not because of the big picture, I'd be really annoyed if people came in and invaded my privacy, watching me and my gym all of the time." Of course, there were worse things, but he had avoided the gaze of the teams for a while. Maybe he'd gotten too used to that sort of security, even if it was lonely.

She noticed him following her actions, looking wherever she did whenever she did. It was almost amusing. “I think we’re okay now. It doesn’t look like there are any members of Galactic following us.”

"So, I’m assuming you must have spent a lot of time in Oreburgh, huh?" She paused, pursing her lips to keep from grinning. Hopefully he could take a little teasing. "Jeez, no wonder you’re so pale." 

After he spoke, he relaxed again, even going so far as to laugh lightly under his breath. "I... actually, I've been avoiding gyms a bit, but I was there for a bit, yeah. It's not like I'm completely clueless, so I am suspicious of... some people." Maybe his childhood journey had conditioned him to trust Nurse Joys too easily because the PokeCenter never struck him as dangerous despite probably being easy to manipulate by any of the teams at this rate.

He briefly wondered what Twinleaf Town was like. Dawn had said that she had grown up there and Red couldn't help but wonder if it was anything like where he had grown up back in Kanto. The idea made him a little sad, but things were... different now. He had to move on, even if it meant not thinking about family and close friends for a while.

He…didn’t even have a plan. It almost sounded like he was just going on vacation. Dawn sighed and grabbed his wrist, dragging him towards the exit. Looked like they were both just going to have to brave the storm.

"Come on, I’ll take you where I’m going. I was going to finish the walk tomorrow, but we should probably go now… Just to be safe." As they exited the Pokemon Center, she looked around, making sure that there weren’t any Galactic Grunts still lurking, and started walking. 

He looked around whenever she did, wanting to stay on top of things now despite his seemingly aloof... well, everything. The thought of getting into more trouble than he already had before was really something he didn't want to consider twice and, although they say ignorance is bliss, Red was pretty grateful for her company at this point.

"Ugh," he muttered, as if the whole idea of Team Rocket was a nuisance. He wrinkled his nose and kept his gaze ahead after that, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the rain (because he wasn't stupid enough to wear his signature hat, at least), but it didn't really help at all. "Yeah, that's fine, I think. I'll follow your lead from now on." At least temporarily. He wouldn't want to become an eventual burden.

His name sounded familiar to her. It took a second for it to register in her head, and once it did, her eyes widened. In a second, she was already taking a step closer and glaring up at him in concern and whispering. “What are you doing hanging out in a Pokemon Center out in the open like this? That’s dangerous!”

She looked towards the exit with a sigh. “Come on, we need to get you to wherever you need to go.”

So she was concerned.. He couldn't say that that he wasn't at all, but Red seriously hadn't been expecting any trouble to come from this trip. First of all, a lot of people couldn't judge him from appearance, only name, as far as he could tell. Maybe it was a little stupid to just give his identity to her off the bat, but that was something to worry about at a later time.

Second of all, well, he had been keeping low for such a long time that one short visit above couldn't really hurt, or so he thought, but this girl probably had a better grip on the situation than he did. Racking his brain for any information regarding her, since he didn't figure a normal person would freak out over him like this, it took him a moment before a few things clicked. "Oh-- you're. You're that Dawn, huh."

He had only heard of her vaguely before (there had been something to do with freeing Cyrus, he knew that much), but it was enough to assume some things. Nodding in agreement, he began to head towards the exit, pausing at the automatic doors to peer out at the rain.

"Uh, I don’t anymore," she finally said, shrugging with a sheepish smile. "I haven’t been on my journey for a while, and I’ve lived in Sinnoh my whole life… There’s one on the wall over there." She pointed to their left, then saw all of the kids crowded around it, probably eager to find their way to the next town.

Red's gaze followed to where she pointed and he couldn't help but sigh. Children. He nodded once she noticed the issue and looked back, shrugging his shoulders and tilting his head briefly to show his defeat when it came to that map. He had given up on it a long time ago.

It wasn’t very often that Dawn felt comfortable returning to Twinleaf Town and her mother. She knew that Team Galactic had no reason to pick a fight with her at the moment, but they were still keeping their eye on her, and she hated the idea of them invading her mother’s privacy. But with the reemergence of Lucas, she needed to head home and take a chance on Barry showing up for once.

The return from Sunyshore was long and time consuming. She was finally reaching Eterna when the rain hit out of nowhere. 

"Ugh, I don’t have time for this," she complained, wrapping her sweatshirt tighter around her and lifting the hood over her head. It was getting dark, and she knew there was little chance of her being willing to continue on in both the dark and the thunderstorm she could tell was approaching. 

Dawn groaned and checked her Poketch for the nearest PokeCenter, rushing in as soon as she found it. She sat in one of the waiting chairs, shivering from the cold. 

Once he had located one, Red had immediately taken shelter inside the nearest PokeCenter and, after a bit of investigating (see: reading a sign), he found that he was in Eterna City. Luckily enough for him, he had been here before, but not-so-luckily, he didn't actually know what the closest town was or which way he needed to go in order to get there.

It was customary that almost every PokeCenter had a map of the region hanging somewhere on the wall, but just as he was thinking of going to check it out, it seemed to get fairly busy (suspiciously so, if you ask him-- it was so sudden) as some preteens (who he assumed to be trainers on their journeys, or something) crowded around his only indication of where to go. Oh.

Well, that left him with two options: 1) wait it out or 2) ask someone else. While Red was normally a pretty patient guy, he had places to go and people to see. So, upon deciding to go with the latter solution, he turned to the closest person he saw (who already didn't seem very happy about getting soaked by the rain, but he was willing to push his luck) and spoke up.