Chapter 8: A Timetraveller's Woe
September 24th 1993, 2pm.
“When were you supposed to meet him again?” I asked Leon while I slid our registration papers into a plastic pocket.
“Tomorrow morning,” he replied. “What do you think are the chances he’s home right now?”
Ten minutes later, we left the small hostel where we checked in for the night and made our way to the other end of the town. Cuora City, at the side of Tortoise Hill, was an old town tracing back well over 500 years. During feudal times it was known for its expertise in candle-manufacturing. This was still a staple in the town’s economic and cultural identity today. At least according to our travel guide.
But it didn’t lie when it granted the old town the title of ‘insiders’ tip’. Cuora was a lovely place, smaller than Cherrygrove and like it a fascinating mix of modern and historic city parts. The farther up the mountain we went, the older the architecture became. The wooden houses with its sliding doors and veiled windows slowly replaced modern buildings, until, high on the side of the mountain, the remains of the old castle stood, still keeping wake over its valley.
But Cuora was also home to a certain Hattori Yoshi, also known as Mr Pokemon. He was some sort of hobby-scientist who had good connections with the experts in pokemon studies. According to Lucy. Both Leon and I had raised at least one eyebrow at the mention of his… unusual nickname, but it seemed to be well established. And at this point, what did we have to lose?
About half an hour later we stood in front of his house, a small former mail-station at the outskirts of town. I had to admit; he kept the gardens lovely, with apricorns in different colours hanging ripe from the trees. After looking for a doorbell in vain, we entered the premise. A piece of paper was pinned to the front door, reading: “I’ll be back soon”.
We hung around for fifteen more minutes. But when we grew tired of watching the bug-types playing around in the flowers, we decided to make the best out of the rest of the day.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, I browsed through the ads on the town’s notice board. They were mostly communal announcements and holiday lets that were looking for long-term inhabitants willing to spend the autumn in the countryside.
“Hey Hana, can you believe that those lamps are not connected?” Rotom asked, phasing in and out of the lamppost next to me.
One ad caught my attention, and I shoved the paper that almost covered it up to the side to get a better look at it. Rotom, however, took me not replying as an invitation to tell me some more details about the technical intricacies of street lamps.
“Did you know that back at home, every streetlamp reports how it’s doing back to their municipality over the mobile grid? The Porygon that takes care of our lamps in Postwick is actually quite nice! But sadly, it sits in a dark server room in Wedgehurst. Not that it minds much.”
I had been nodding along to its explanation, but now I shot it a sceptical glance.
“I mean, it’s a little hermit, but those lamps here? They are probably quite lonely, having no one to talk to and stuff. I wonder…”
When Rotom fell silent for a second, I seized my opportunity to ask an ultimately pointless question: “Have you considered not messing with public property?”
The lamp only gave a dull humming sound. I sighed and shot it a stern look.
For a quick second, Rotom reemerged from higher up the post with an apologetic smile. “Not really. Oh, hey, what’s the boss doing over there?”
I followed Rotom’s gaze across the town square to find Leon standing in its geographical centre — the one place where he got in the way of the biggest number of people.
I frowned. What was he doing?
He might have been forgiven if he’d been looking at the historical buildings. Both of us looked like tourists and at least I had no shame in acting like one from time to time. He was hard to read with his shades on, but from what I could tell, he was more focused on the people that now had to walk around him.
Suddenly, a light above my head flickered.
“Hey!” I jolted around. “Rotom! Stop that!”
I tried to keep my voice and curses low, but Rotom didn’t care either way. It had fun flicking the streetlamp on and off and didn’t intend to stop soon. I could already sense people’s stares piercing my back. Okay, maybe I didn’t enjoy being a tourist as much as I had thought.
“Having fun?” A familiar voice asked. I didn’t even need to turn around. Leon was speaking Galarian again.
“Wh — no!” I focused my attention back on Rotom. “Stop it, please! People are looking!”
But the little ghost did not budge. Instead, the lamp only made a happy buzzing sound somewhere between its metal sheets. I heard the small crowd in my back whispering.
Next to me, Leon shrugged. “So what? Let it!”
I sent him a glare that I hoped covered up my growing desperation just enough to show my discontent. Leon shrugged again and smirked, but at least he turned his attention to Rotom and away from me.
One quick promise of a Cherry Drop and a “C’mon, get outta there” was everything that was needed to convince Rotom to leave the lamp alone.
I felt cheated.
The small ghost now stayed close to Leon, enjoying its treat and hoping for a follow-up. Leon shot me a long, unreadable look from behind his darkened glasses, while he ruffled Rotom’s plasmatic layer. I could imagine what he was thinking.
«How is this my challenger?»
I was not exactly… good with pokemon. Which was a strange thing to say for a competitor in the Championship Cup. But I had raised every single one of my pokemon from hand in our greenhouse since they were but a sprout, and somehow, we got along.
I had always dreaded the interviewers asking the inevitable question of what made my team so strong. Somehow, they seemed to love this question.
Hop would always answer something about ambition and willpower, maybe even passion — whatever his brother had said before. But all I had to show for were hours upon hours of training. Sure, I might have been able to spin a tale about perseverance out of that. But in reality, countless nights spent in the Wild Area weren’t as glamorous, no matter how one would twist it.
Leon was once again watching the people passing by. Now that Rotom was no longer causing a fuss, the small crowd had dispersed and people ignored us again.
“What were you doing over there?” I asked.
“Huh? Nothing.” As soon as he heard my question, he turned towards me and his sunglasses again prevented me from getting a good read on him. When I had seen his profile a second before, I could have sworn his eyes betrayed a strange melancholy.
There was a reason Hop only introduced me to his brother roughly a year ago. And it was those interviewers that I later learned to avoid. What should have been a relaxed family barbecue had been interrupted at least once by the Wedgehurst Courier — and that was just the one time I witnessed. Hop later told me that this had become standard procedure when Leon was home.
So being ignored must have been a new experience for him.
I turned back to the ads.
“You don’t miss it at all?” I asked casually. “Being in the limelight?”
Leon shifted from one foot to the other. “Hm… it’s… unfamiliar.” And after a long look over the town square he added: “But also kinda cool.”
So that’s what it sounded like when he lied.
Those were definitely not the words of the person who had absorbed every bit of media attention like my plants absorbed water and sunlight. In the end, it had been Hop who had to get rid of that Wedgehurst Courier reporter.
I almost wanted to dig deeper, but seeing how uncomfortable this question had made him, decided to change the topic.
“Here, have a look at this.” I pointed to the half-covered ad and tore Leon out of his thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, wow.” He inspected the paper closer. Mr Pokemon’s slide-show had been a week ago already, but it sounded interesting nonetheless. “‘Breakthrough innovation?’ The pokedex? Really?”
The sound of Leon’s incredulous voice made me laugh. “Right? I’ve seen one of those first dexes in a history museum once. They are bricks.”
Leon raised an eyebrow and turned back to the ad when Rotom reemerged from the lamppost.
“Should have asked me, hah!” it exclaimed. “I can do everything that pokedex can and more!”
“It says here that it’s got some tech from the space shuttle?” Leon said. Rotom’s eyes grew wide.
“Did you know that the computers on the first manned spacecraft had less power than even a regular smartphone today?” I asked none of the two in particular, but Rotom now flew a happy circle around me.
“And that’s saying something,” Rotom chirped. “I bet the Porygon on that mission must have been quite lonesome. Oh, Hana, if only I could have accompanied it! Just imagine the things I would have done with those solar panels up there!”
It snuggled up against my chest, its body swelling with pride at the imaginary deeds.
“You in space?” I shooed Rotom away when its quivering body started sending jolts through my jacket. “You eat through your battery like it was cake, and then you complain about my charger being slow! What good would you have done on that spacecraft?”
The little ghost hovered a few feet away and faced me with a challenging look.
“Because what you call a charger is considered a toy where I come from.” Rotom explained, an obnoxious smugness on its small face. “You know, even for the first moon landing, they had actual solar panels and not that square inch thing on your charger.”
I clenched my jaws to not say something very rude in return. Not that I had good ideas, anyway.
Rotom had been complaining about my solar power bank ever since I got it and I was even inclined to believe that its capacity was subpar. But Galar was so big on Dmax energy; it was almost impossible to get other forms of electricity. And also, it had the form of a Togedemaru and was a present from Dad, who sent it all the way from Kanto. So Rotom would be well advised to shut its cheeky mouth.
But sadly, it wasn’t.
“Oh, come on, Hana! You keep complaining, but who else here would have fixed that healing machine, huh?”
I shot it a glare. It was right. Still.
Upon seeing the anger on my face, Rotom hovered back and bounced into Leon, who was staring at an undetermined point somewhere across the square.
“Hey, Leon, back me up here!” Rotom demanded. “Smart Rotoms are the best!”
Leon only made a distant humming sound. Rotom promptly sanctioned this lack of enthusiasm with a quick Thunder Shock to his side, causing Leon to wince.
Okay, now it was enough.
I grabbed Rotom and pushed it down and behind me, with a look that should make it very clear to the small ghost that this debate had ended ten seconds ago already. It seemed to understand and contended itself by sending occasional jolts into the palm of my hand and cooling its plasma to match the sensation of frozen jelly.
Ready to apologise for Rotom’s misbehaviour once again, I turned around to Leon, but he was lost in thought. Something was up with him ever since we got back from Mr Pokemon’s house. I sent Rotom one last admonitory glance, then searched my brain to strike up a conversation.
“What phone do you have?” was the best I came up with.
“Me? An MCT 6000s,” he said, not taking his eyes off his undetermined spot.
My question might have only got me a brief second of Leon’s attention, but Rotom’s was now peaked. “An MCT?” it asked. “Ha! Their voice assistants are some AIs of the stupidest variant. A short-circuiting Porygon1 in a toaster could do better than that!”
I again pushed it behind me. “Hush now!” The answer came in the form of angry sparks around my fingers.
Rotom wasn’t wrong. The 6000s was the flagship of Macro Cosmos’s conventional smartphone line and worth more than what I could save up in two years, but still leagues behind a Smart Rotom. I used to have its predecessor’s smaller cousin before Mum bought me Rotom because she was feeling guilty, and Rotom was the better VA, by far.
Leon was again back in his thoughts. Was it because of the limelight-thing I mentioned earlier? I tried one last time.
“Why not a Smart Rotom? Aren’t you the brand ambassador for Macro Cosmos?”
“Huh? Me?” Leon finally got his eyes off the square and onto me. “No. Raihan’s got the promo-contract for the Smart Rotom. I’m not even that MC affiliated. But that’s business talk. We’re basically on holiday here, right?”
“Right.”
And that was as far as that conversation went. But at least it got us going.
Now that we were here and had the entire afternoon to waste, we had figured we could as well visit whatever made this city an ‘insider’s tip.’ And so we made our way up the hill again to the historical castle.
At least that was where I was going. Leon was going… everywhere except there. I was sure he’d get himself lost on a straight street. In fact, he would have twice by now if I hadn’t stopped him whenever he was about to turn off into some random back alley. I had suspected that him being ‘directionally challenged’ was embellished as some sort of media stunt. Today, however, he proved this gossip more than correct. His sense of direction was a disaster, and today more than ever.
The cobblestones glistered in the afternoon sun. As we left the town’s centre behind, the streets got less and less crowded. Soon we were alone, save for some residents working in their gardens or the occasional car passing by.
It was so rural here. The town clung to the side of a mountain on the border of a national park. SUVs and pickups were a common sight here. And yet, somehow, it was more worldly than Postwick had ever been. What a stupid, boring, small town…
Next to me, the only reason Postwick was even known to the wider public made a frustrated sound, and I almost expected him to have run into another dead end. Instead, I found him struggling with his cast.
After a short while, he admitted defeat and contented himself with rubbing his temples and ruffling his hair with only one hand. But now that his glasses were off, he looked exasperated.
“Is everything okay?” I asked when he snapped out of it and now looked around for a direction.
“Argh. It’s nothing. I’m just all over the place today.” He shook his head one last decisive time. “Say, have you ever thought about what would happen if they did listen to Rotom?”
I looked at him, confused, while Rotom yelled a gleeful “Good things!” in response. After a few seconds, Leon continued on walking.
“Like, Rotom, you probably know why these first dexes were bricks, right?” he asked.
“Of course!” Rotom exclaimed. Happy to spill its knowledge, it continued: “So, the algorithm they used for their image recognition is… well, not good at recognising images. It’s simply the wrong one. The Mistralton Institute of Technology brought out an implementable version of a deep learning algorithm around 2001. That’s the one you’d want to use. Oh, and those grainy cameras didn’t help the case either. That’s why you had to get a real good close shot of the pokemon if you ever wanted to identify it.
“And don’t even get me started on those chipsets they used. I could play golf in there, it’s so spacious. Also, why even use touchscreens when instead you can have more buttons?”
Despite being a ghost and not reliant on oxygen, it seemed like Rotom ran out of breath for a second. Leon seized the opportunity.
“See what I mean? One Rotom would save the world twenty-six years of painful development,” he said, while he patted Rotom’s core affectionately. “Can you imagine how different life would have been?”
This was a specific and at the same time very far-reaching question, and I did not know how to even begin answering it. But the way Leon looked at me was demanding an answer.
I shrugged. “Pretty sure my selfie-pose would be on fleek if I had practised it ever since I was a baby.”
That at least brought a smile to his face. “Right? My highlight would be GPS. Oh man, that would have saved me some walks. And the cabbies some headaches. It’s kinda hard explaining your location to somebody when all you know is ‘between three trees.’”
Leon seemed to be back to his usual chatter, and I nodded along.
To imagine a world where we had smartphones as early as 1993… A lot of things would have been different, for sure. Saffron would have developed a lot faster than it already did. Maybe even Postwick would have caught up to the modern world. And Mum and Dad wouldn’t have to decide if they wanted to move to Galar or to Kanto, and could instead have a long-distance-relationship for a while.
“Hey, and maybe they’d used those twenty-six years on actual good capturing technology.” Leon’s subsequent sigh made me look up. His carefree expression had vanished again, gone as fast as it came. “Who am I even kidding, I’d still suck at catching pokemon. But maybe, if we got better balls, I might have caught Eternatus…”
At the mention of its name alone, I could feel a knot grow in my throat. Maybe he was right, maybe he could have contained it, but…
“... and we wouldn’t be here,” I finished his trailed off sentence.
“Exactly! Right?” I could tell that Leon wanted to be upbeat, but somehow, he didn’t quite manage.
“As in, we would have never met,” I said. “Did I ever tell you that my dad works for Silph?”
Leon looked at me, quiet, and I could tell that he was following my every word.
“Let’s say they could make and sell something like our phones earlier… I’m pretty sure things would have gone a bit differently. I imagine Silph would be big in that business. Dad moved to Circhester because they offered him a leading position in one of their new branches there. But with smartphones suddenly booming... I’m sure he would have taken a position in Saffron.”
“Oh. So Indigo League for you then, huh?”
I looked at him and had to blink a few times. Could this man even think outside of his League world? But before I could say anything, his expression grew thoughtful again. Absent-mindedly, he started kicking a pebble around.
“But I get what you’re saying. If things like smartphones catch on right away, and if Silph outsources its plants right away and exactly like they do? — did? — will do? — whatev’s, then my parents would have never moved to Galar.”
“Your parents?”
“Grandparents,” he quickly corrected himself. “Imagine this. No Champ Leon, no Rose who got his hopes too high and no Darkest Day.”
With one well-practised motion, he kicked the pebble away. It sailed through the air, only coming to a halt at a tree a few hundred yards down the road. I watched it bounce off the bark and roll a few feet until it vanished in the sparse grass, then I sighed.
“And no Rotom to pitch that idea to Silph in the first place.”
He nodded. “Which brings us back to a Champ Leon and a Darkest Day. Pretty stupid loop if you ask me.”
The knot in my throat grew tighter and I could feel my heart beating faster. Leon had found himself another stone and balanced it on the tip of his foot, unconcerned.
But what if that did happen? What if we did something to start this loop? Would I then be forever stuck between here and the Darkest Day, flipping back and forth in a matter of seconds? Would I have to see—
«Deep breath in. Count to ten. It’s okay, you are not there. This is not happening.»
But I wasn’t sure any longer. For a moment, dark crimson clouded the edges of my vision. And somewhere, at some point in time, the Darkest Day might still be happening.
It was Rotom’s voice that banished those thoughts, if only for a brief second. At first I was happy to hear it, but then the panic in its voice told me Rotom had very similar ideas.
“Wait, does that mean we would just… disappear? Or also turn to stone?”
“Who knows?” Leon said, ruffling through Rotom’s mantle. This time, it didn’t reform itself right away, and his hand left a long streak across its ethereal body.
For a moment, I wanted to scream at him, disregard any manners, and ask him how he could be so casual about all of this. As if our lives didn’t depend on it. But then I noticed my chest had become too tight to even breathe.
Darkness in purple and crimson was again about to take my world. If we would disappear, that would be one thing. Sure, we would never make it home, or even get close to stopping the disaster from unfolding, but it was still better than— than—
I wanted to go home. If I did nothing, I would see myself as a baby again in nine years, and then continue to make the same mistakes. But what could await me if I did the wrong thing… No!
A paralysing fear overtook me. It felt so familiar, so awfully familiar that my body again became so light and then…
Leon grabbed my arm. His hand was firm and warm on my skin, and he could easily wrap his fingers around my wrist. But mostly, his hand was steady. And real. I tried to focus as much of my thoughts and attention on those feelings before this little gesture ended way too soon.
“Hey! So far we haven’t pitched Rotom’s brainpower to anyone, have we?” Leon’s eyes were again hidden behind his sunglasses and his smile the perfect bright smile I would expect from him.
I swallowed the thoughts and memories down, pushed them back into that dark corner of my mind where they belonged, and tried to mimic his expression.
“Right.” My voice sounded so weak, I hated it. But at least I wasn’t crying, was I? When I slowly let out my breath, it was only shaking a bit.
“Right.” I swallowed once more. Somehow, talking helped get my brain on track. Even if I didn’t like the nonsense that would pour out of my mouth. “And it’s probably best to keep it that way, huh?”
Leon chuckled a bit. “Hey, you’re the engineer’s daughter. Maybe you know how stuff works, but I can only tell you that my phone has transformed from a brick into a real brick. No need to worry on that end.”
False modesty didn’t suit him at all, and it was sheer luck I caught myself before I told him that straight to his awfully cheerful face. Instead, I tried for a rational thought.
“That’s not true. You can probably ‘predict’ every single League battle between now and… well, back home, simply because you know how they’ll end. Or screw that. By saying ‘Chairman Rose is planning something’ you could write the entire thing out of the history books.”
«And us right with it.»
“He is around already, right?”
The knot in my throat wasn’t entirely gone, and my breathing still strained. In fact, it was only getting worse the more I followed this rabbit-hole of thoughts. And I could tell that Leon was tense, too, even if he tried to hide it. But somehow, he didn’t want to let this go.
“Sure,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. “I’ve been thinking about this, too. But then we’d have another loop, right? I mean, I’d give it a try. If only I could come up with something simple to test it on first.”
“You — what?” My voice was way louder than I had expected and made me almost recoil in shock. “I don’t think experimenting blindly is a good idea.”
Leon gave me a long, quiet look, then the next pebble went flying towards a tree. The silence that followed was so tense it was almost tangible.
“I need to set things right.”
“But you can’t simply…” My breath was only coming in small bursts from my lungs. If I didn’t watch it, I would lose my countenance for sure. “Leon!”
At the mention of his name, he jumped a little, snapping out of the place that his thoughts had taken him. For the quickest of seconds, there was a startled regret on his face, before it was replaced by a smile and well hidden under sunglasses.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my mouth shut, promise, cross my heart!” A wink and a smile, and his attentive, accommodating self was back. I only now realised how dearly I had missed it.
He didn’t give me much time to ponder, however.
“Hey, by the way, Hannah, do you know where we are?”
Startled at his words, I looked around. We were… at the edge of a forest? The town was a good distance away, up the small track that we had followed for quite some time now.
“No,” I had to admit, confused about what had happened. “I was following you.”
Leon laughed, and this time it sounded natural. “Y’know, I’m honoured, but in general, that is a bad idea.”
* * *
The way back was nothing but banter and a few jokes at my and his expense. When we were back in town, Leon aggressively picked every wrong option and I was sure that this time, he played it up to keep me occupied.
But despite his best efforts, my mind wandered here and there.
Leon and his knowledge were a threat, as was Rotom. But what about me? I couldn’t bring any stunning revelations about tech or anything to the table, really. I could mess around in my parents’ lives, but that was about it.
Or, well… I could still tell people that Rose, despite all he did for the region, all his philanthropic efforts, would in the end only bring doom to Galar. And for what it was worth, I could also tell people to watch out for that ten-year-old prodigy under his mentorship, who would become an unwitting tool in Rose’s scheme.
And who I had to apologise to, at least in my mind. He might miss the spotlight and the attention, but he could have got it any time by now. It was as easy as proving that we were from the future, which our petrified phones would stand testimony for.
But no matter how gratifying that would be — it wasn’t worth the consequences.
Chapter 8.5: Of Birds, Bees and Other Misunderstandings
September 25th 1993, 6am.
When I woke up, I purposefully kept my eyes closed, holding on to those fragments of a dream for a bit longer. I had dreamt of home, of my pokemon. The mattress was harder than my own and the fresh breeze coming in through the wooden, rickety window carried the scent of unfamiliar trees with it. But Whimsicott’s weight on my stomach assured me that everything was fine.
Wait.
That was not my Whimsicott on my belly, that was Leon’s cap. That had suddenly come to life with small, regular breaths and an ever so slight snore.
“You again!” This time Sentret tried to offer me a cherry drop.
* * *
A mechanical sound accompanied the phone receiver as I hung up. “Lucy says there’s no other Pokemon Center between here and Violet." The news interrupted Leon’s and Sentret’s one-sided discussion about the ownership over that pack of knock-off cherry drops.
“Then I guess she’s going to stay with us until then.” I nodded. Sentret didn’t seem to mind at all.
I stared at the little critter from across the breakfast table. “How did she even get here?”
“I think she hid in the backpack. I wanted to ask you about those scratches yesterday, but you were already asleep.” Leon put the sweets away and instead handed it a dried fish. Sentret devoured it . “But hey, we are now officially Professor-Magnolia-sanctioned to go into tall grass.” Looking at the remnants of Sentret’s first messy encounter with rice, I doubted that statement.
* * *
An hour later we again stood in front of Mr Pokemon’s house. The note was still where we had left it yesterday. We exchanged a glance.
Leon knocked on the door, only to find it unlocked. I sat the backpack down. “Hello?” Reluctantly, we entered the dark house. “Mr Pokemon?”
The inside of the house would have been quite spacious if it hadn’t been stacked full with boxes of material. Their content was hard to make out in the dim light that broke through the rolled-down window shades. Somewhere farther back the steady sounds of a machine, rotating fans and something like a reel could be heard.
“Hey Rotom!” Leon whispered. “Check that out!” A happy buzzing sound followed Rotom as it left my bag and zapped over to Leon.
“No, Rotom, wait! That’s not—” A loud cracking sound interrupted me. I jolted around.
The house was completely quiet again. I tried to scan my surroundings for anything that might have caused the bang. But there were only books over papers over used tea cups. Then I saw it: A flower pot had fallen from the windowsill and now laid cracked on the floor, the soil spilling on the parquet.
“What was that?” asked Leon from the other side of the room.
I squinted my eyes. There were no movements. Or were there? I stepped closer to better inspect the pot and then it looked at me: A gardener’s worst nightmare come alive — sentient weed!
The little dandelion-root looked at me with its two yellow eyes on its round, pinkish body as if it hadn’t just eaten a perfectly fine house plant. And it seemed to understand my thoughts. The next moment its expression changed and it flopped over to me, aggression in its little face.
Its head felt remarkably soft when it hit my knee, though I sensed the stubby hair on its leaves. Paws skittered across the floor when Sentret rushed to my side. She could also only look on in bewilderment as the pink pokemon collected itself and bumped into my knee once more.
“Hoppip, the Cottonweed pokemon,” Leon read as he closed up to me. He flipped through the pages of the travel guide. “Grass-Flying type, very light, can be carried away by the wind if it doesn’t pay attention.”
Another pounce against my shin. More as an experiment than anything else, Sentret tried to scratch at it with her claws. Hoppip yelped, let go of me, and hopped over to Leon. Sentret followed.
“Oh, look what it reads here,” Leon said while the little plant pokemon attacked him. “It is also known for its vicious hunger for human flesh.”
That wasn’t even worth commenting on. I threw a pokeball in his direction and Leon managed to catch it with the travel-guide still in his one hand.
“Hey, you’re supposed to catch it, not me!” He threw the ball back at me. Another scratch, another yelp, and Hoppip again made its way over to me.
I knelt down to look at it. It was a cute little guy; I had to admit. “I’m Hanako. Do you want to join me?” Instead of an answer, it tried to headbutt my face to no effect.
I dropped the pokeball. It collided with its round head, opened and immediately turned the pokemon into a wave of energy, sealing it away. The ball twitched twice, then came to rest on the ground. Hoppip was caught.
I took the pokeball and got up. “Human flesh? Really?” I looked at Leon. He was way too proud of that one. “You couldn’t come up with anything better?”
A voice from the other side of the door cut short whatever excuse he had.
* * *
“So you are waiting for Hattori, too,” the young man said after five confusing minutes of introductions. Or making sure that none of us was about to rob this place. “I was supposed to meet him yesterday, but he seemed to have left shortly before our appointment.”
The wiry young man now switched the lights on and cleared some space on a desk. He had introduced himself as Marcus Elm. After he put his messenger bag down he again turned to us. A clueless expression replaced the rather hostile one he had before. He was about to say something, but then stopped himself, as if a new thought had come to his mind.
After a while, Leon and I exchanged a glance. “Is… it unusual for Mr Pokemon to stay away that long?” I asked.
Mr Elm looked up, startled. “Oh, sorry. Yes, it is. Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
“Do you know where he could be right now? We’re kinda on a schedule,” Leon asked before Elm could drift away in his thoughts again.
“No, sadly not,” Elm responded. He seemed to become a bit more rooted in reality the more we asked him. “He is a very active old man and going for an impromptu field trip fits him. But letting so many people wait is indeed unusual.”
I shook my head, hoping to clear my thoughts. “Excuse me, Sir, but you seem to be a friend of Mr Hattori, right?” Elm nodded. In the corner the machine got louder. I raised my voice a little to cover the noise. “Then, with your permission, maybe we can find some clues where he is somewhere around here?” I made a broad gesture that included the entire mess that this room was.
“Last time we talked he said something about his devices registering an energy spike. If you can find something about that…” Elm turned around and picked up a stack of papers, sifting through it.
«Oh god, please don’t let Sonia end up like this!» I thought as I exchanged again a worried glance with Leon. The mechanical spinning in the room's corner got louder again. Leon sat down on a box and picked up an alibi stack of paper while keeping his eyes on Elm.
“So, an energy spike, huh?” Leon asked casually, while I made my way over to Rotom and its machine.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure he wanted to show me those measurements. Hattori can become quite excitable whenever he finds something,” the man went on.
I knelt down beside the humming machines. There were two of them, as big as a fridge and even though fans were cooling the things, they emitted quite the heat. “Rotom, what are you doing?” I whispered.
“I’m helping you, of course,” a voice somewhere within the machine said.
“How? What is this even?”
“Magnetic tape drives, Hana! To think that I’d ever see something like this! This is so vintage!” Rotom was very excited. When it saw the confusion on my face, I was sure I heard a machine sigh. “Just think of it as an ancient computer. He’s also using a voice recorder. The last cassette in here says he wanted to investigate rumours of pokemon behaving strangely in the Dark Cave.”
“Wow.” I was speechless. That was actually really helpful. I thought for a moment. “Is there anything in there about that guy?” I pointed my head to Elm, who was now telling Leon in vivid detail about his research work.
“Give me a minute!” Lights flickered as Rotom passed through the circuits. Soon after, the sound of several cassette tapes rewinding and fast forwarding rang from the box. I picked up one of the rectangular cases from the floor and turned it in my hand. I had only ever seen cassette tapes in movies, and I wasn’t even sure how they worked. There was this brown tape going from one reel to the next. And what was that about magnetism? I tried to understand what Rotom was doing there, but it was in vain. It was simply too fast.
“So, you specialise in Pokemon evolution? The process or—” Leon was still keeping the conversation going.
“No, more the taxonomy side of things. I’m trying to classify the pokemon in this region and generate a sort of family tree.” Leon gave an approving ‘hm’ so convincing that I couldn’t tell whether he was actually interested or faking it to keep Elm talking. “That’s why I wanted to talk to Hattori, actually. I think I made a grand discovery.”
“Here!” My attention was back to Rotom. “Mr Pokemon says he looks forward to Elm’s visit. That was, let me see…” Again the winding sound of the tapes. “scheduled for yesterday.”
“So he could be telling the truth,” I whispered.
“He is a bit weird, isn’t he?” Rotom asked. I nodded. At the other end of the room, they now threw around a lot of very scientific terms.
“Hey, do you have something about who he is?” I asked. The machine flickered with the new task at hand.
Leon’s voice in all this science talk made me turn around. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I know, right? It’s an amazing discovery!” Elm was very excited about whatever he had just told Leon. Too excited to realise the anger in Leon’s voice.
“He is a doctorate,” Rotom’s voice buzzed through the spinning of cassette tape. “Currently he works on his thesis on pokemon evolution. And— oh!” Rotom’s mechanical voice sounded surprised. “His dissertation supervisor is Professor Oak himself! Hey, Hana, wait—”
Rotom hadn’t quite finished its sentence when I was already back to the two men. Leon shot me a glance and his eyes once again had this dangerous glister. I noticed he tapped his toes.
“It is the first one of its kind we’ve ever found!” Elm looked at the object in his hands with reverence. It was a pokemon egg, the yellowish shell covered in pink spots. “It was hidden under some rocks north of the Ice Path,” Elm said. “I wanted to hear Hattori’s guess before I’ll show it to my boss.”
“Guess about what?” I couldn’t decide if that undertone in Leon’s voice was anger or desperation.
“About what it is, of course!” Elm seemed to almost glow with excitement as he now turned to me, presenting me with his rare discovery.
“It’s a pokemon egg, for crying out loud!” Leon screamed out, at the end of his patience. “And I’d bet money that it’s a Smoochum.”
His sudden outburst took both Elm and me aback. Leon immediately bit his lip.
Elm took a moment to process things. “Wait, you’re saying… Do you study pokemon evolution too? How come I’ve never heard of those studies? What university do you belong to?”
Leon covered his mouth with his hand, slowly shaking his head. “No, I’m just not from around here—” He bit his tongue again.
Now I finally realised! “Mr Hattori is in the Dark Cave!” I blurted out. At least it got me Elm’s attention. Now I had to keep it. “Yes,” I stumbled, “he made some notes about pokemon acting all weird and stuff.” Elm still looked at me like I had twisted into an alien. “He made a voice recording about it yesterday.” I pointed over to the machine while I watched the young scientist closely. I could almost see his brain work behind his forehead. Finally, there was the moment I broke his train of thought.
I felt something nudge my hand and looked down. Leon was trying to hand me the travel guide.
“Dark Cave… and he hasn’t returned yet?” Elm said, his gaze floating somewhere over the machine. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Right! That really doesn’t sound good,” Leon said with newfound vigour as he stood up. “I think we should inform the police.”
“No, after his last three spontaneous excursions they said they only want to be called when he’s been missing for four days or more.” Elm was now deep in thoughts, mumbling incoherent words to himself. Leon slowly and quietly slid the door open while I flipped through the guide.
“All of that is very mysterious,” Elm concluded. “I’d like to look deeper into it. You two wanted to see him as well, right?” I nodded. “You sound like pokemon trainer. Could you go to the Dark Cave and look for him? I’ll try to get these things here in order.” Elm looked around the room and I could see him forming a plan. “He probably had his Rapidash with him,” he went on. “Otherwise he couldn’t have made it there so fast.”
I caught Leon’s questioning look and held up two fingers. He didn’t seem too happy.
“On the other hand,” Elm said as he pulled up the curtains and finally let air and sun into this mess of a place. “I’d really like to discuss my findings with you. Maybe you could—”
“No problem,” Leon interjected. “Dark Cave is on our way, anyway. We’ll look for him and send him your direction.” He was already out the door before Elm could even mutter his thanks.
“The Dark Cave can be dangerous,” the young scientist said in a now surprisingly grounded voice while he put on the kettle. “Please take care.”
I could see Leon waiting for me at the gate. “Ah, Mr Elm?”
“Yes?”
“Are you the researcher who is about to open that lab in New Bark Town?” I asked.
He laughed. “Well, first I have to finish my thesis. But yes. It’s about time that I get back home again.”
“I actually wanted to ask you something.” He now looked at me with genuine interest. Outside, Leon was holding up the backpack. “Ahem, it’s something rather complicated. Can I call you back or something?”
“Oh, yes, of course!” He rummaged through his pockets. “Where is it?” He moved over to his messenger bag and looked there. “Because I’ve got one of those new phones… here it is!” He pulled out an ancient looking mobile phone. I could almost feel Rotom’s excited shivers through my waist bag.
Elm wrote his number on a piece of paper and double-checked it with what he saw on the monochrome display. I quickly thanked him and said my goodbyes, reassuring him I’d call him back as soon as possible.
* * *
“Thank you. Man, that was close. Thanks so much!”, Leon burst out when we were far enough away from the house.
“Anytime,” I said, while I took the backpack off his shoulder.
“If we meet him again, just pretend I’m dead or something.” Leon’s breath was actually shaking. I adjusted the backpack’s straps and handed him back the travel guide.
“Ok, so much does this really cost us?” Leon asked after a while, much calmer.
“Two days by foot from here to the Dark Cave. But it’s somewhat in the right direction anyway, so it’s only going to cost us a day in total.” I pointed at Leon’s pocket. Without a word, he handed me the map. Leon was in the privileged position to wear cargo shorts and actually look good in them. Because of that, a lot of our on-hand gear was stored there.
“Do you really want to do this?” Leon nodded. I unfolded the map and looked around for signposts. “In that case, it’s this direction. We’ll have to go into the Silver Mountains National Park, so say goodbye to a nice bed for a while.”
We headed north, following the road in silence for about ten minutes, until Leon couldn’t hold himself back any longer.
“How could they not know about breeding 26 years ago?” I had to laugh. Hearing him say it like this, I suspected that eight of the ten minutes went into scrapping all curse-words from that question.
“I mean, they knew about it, but I think that whole classification thing was new,” I got out between laughs. Thinking about it, he had said nothing PG-rated or higher, even when he lost it with Elm earlier.
“What’s so difficult to understand about that?” Leon was more confused than angry. “That’s birds and bees levels of biology. If mummy and daddy love each other very much- What’s so funny?”
“Are you contractually bound to not use swear words?” I asked, trying to keep my laughter down.
“I’m—” Leon looked at me for a moment. “That’s stupid.” He pouted for a while after that, but I had way too much fun at his expense to let it slide.
