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If your pokemon talk to you from inside your video game console. If the espeon that killed your father adopts you to his clan. If you-- and everyone else on planet earth-- have turned, inexplicably, into pastel-colored monsters.
You may have entered--
The Wide, Wide Worlds of Pokemon.
These pages contain the beginnings of stories. Their remainders are left as exercise for the readers’ imaginations.
CW: graphic depictions of violence, strong language, major character death "Pokemon Go to the Polls" [Oneshot]
“Pokemon Go to the Polls!” said Hillary Clinton.
And so they did, to the utter surprise and bafflement of a world that had previously considered them the fabrications of a Japanese video game.
Election day proved beyond all doubt that the moniker “electoral circus” was well applied, as out of nowhere hundreds of millions of not-quite-animals showed up to cast their ballots. And yet, they had their voter identification, valid addresses, and proof of citizenship, so what else could we have done but let them participate in our democracy?
Of course, many disputed the validity of the election, given almost half its voters didn’t seem to exist prior to it being held. But the economists, for once, came through. It all made sense, they claimed. The Laffer curve, the invisible hand of the market, trickle down economics-- all ideas that made perfect sense in theory, but in practice had failed, for the reason that theory had never managed to account for a few hundred million pokemon participating in our economy, just out of sight.
Many doubted the economists, of course, but the population’s aversion to math kept us from checking their numbers too closely. And anyways, it didn’t seem particularly prudent to tell, say, a Charizard that they didn’t have the right to vote.
(Ironically, relatively few Charizards actually chose to vote. Most were content to drink beer, mow their lawns, and proclaim to all in earshot that they “just wanted to grill.”)
Other Pokemon were not so apolitical.
En masse, the Sentret, voted for Donald Trump, as did the Gurdurr and Timburr. Watching out for foreigners and building walls were very much in their wheelhouse.
The Nidoqueen, meanwhile, corralled their evolutionary line to vote for Hillary. Something about ruthless political cunning just drew them in.
Other pokemon, of course, had their own pet issues and deep-seated beliefs, some of which were familiar to humans (for example, the struggle between the Coalossal mining magnates and the Venusaur solar-energy proponents) while others were utterly baffling (who knew Magnemite cared so much about the layout of buried cables?)
Regardless, fewer than 3% of them bothered voting for third parties, as even those with the strangest moralities didn’t want to throw their votes away.
Ultimately, the election favored Hillary Clinton, as her prescient get-out-the-vote attempt had been what had motivated Pokemon into revealing themselves in the first place.
Donald Trump got the last laugh, however, as an army of Gumshoos was swift to declare him their eternal leader and install him as the dictator of Venezuela.
Tim Kaine, meanwhile, stayed out of sight and out of mind. So utterly bland and forgettable his contemporaries simply forgot about him. History, on the other hand, would remember him as the first Zoroark Vice President. Though, unless the CIA’s archives are unsealed, we’ll never know if he was the last.
The image focuses on a young man. He sits on his bed, an ordinary four-poster affair. The wall behind him is blank, although the remnants of tape and sticky tack show where posters had once been hung up.
He begins to speak.
“I have a special ability. I can talk to pokemon. Sounds awesome, right? Well, there’s one significant caveat. That being, that Pokemon is a franchise first released by Game Freak in 1996.”
“Everyone I ever told thought I was crazy. So I stopped telling people. In elementary school, I was that weird kid obsessed with his imaginary friends. It might have been okay in kindergarten, but while everyone else grew up, I was still talking to my game console like it could talk back. By the time middle school started, I thought I was crazy too.”
The young man clears his throat, obviously uncomfortable to be saying this, but perhaps also a little relieved.
“So I open up my gameboy advance for what I thought would be the last time. I tell my team that I can't play with them any more. I set down my console, and resolve to be perfectly, absolutely, normal. And for a week, it almost works. But I’d always been isolated from my classmates, and my social skills aren't the greatest. I start getting bullied; nothing serious, nothing physical, but one day, I duck out of class and run home crying. I turn on my gameboy. I apologize for everything, and my team forgives me. We have a long, honest talk, and at the end, as sort of a joke, I ask if they’re willing to help me with my math homework.”
“Of course, none of these guys have received any formal education, but they’re pretty smart anyways. So they say they’re game. I start teaching them. It becomes routine. Every night, we have a few battles, and work on homework. Somewhere along the line, though, Blaster-- my Alakazam-- starts correcting me. I stop needing a calculator, because he can multiply twelve digit numbers in a matter of seconds. That’s when it really starts to sink in that I’m not crazy. I considered the possibility that I was some sort of schizophrenic savant, but I did other tests to confirm what was happening.”
“Still, long habit kept me from telling anyone. Until now.”
The young man pulls out a red and white orb. A pokeball. He clicks a button on its front. A red beam shoots out, and an enormous yellow rat-- a Raichu-- materializes. It squeaks, and the young man elbows it in a jocular fashion. There's a crooked grin on his face, now.
“I know there’s been a lot of panic in the last few days. Lots of questions, but no answers. I have--” he hesitates, searching for words “-- a part of the puzzle.”
“It all started a few weeks ago.”
~oOo~
A shooting star flashes across the horizon, leaving glimmers in its wake.
“Game Freak” appears, white letter on a blue field.
The familiar chiptune jingle begins to play, before I unceremoniously cut it off by hastily pressing the ‘b’ button.
It takes a few more seconds for the game to load up. My avatar is at the same place I left it-- just outside of bill’s lab. I check my pokeballs. All six have corrupted data; a sign that my pokemon are out and about somewhere. I go inside, for no particular reason.
"Feel like checking out some of my rare Pokémon on my PC? Go on, check out my PC."
Bill repeats the same, rote dialogue as always. I’d long since found out it was only the pokemon that could “think”, but for some reason I kept thinking maybe this time I would be wrong.
It had to be eerie, for them: cities filled with empty husks, enormous, but largely empty structures.
Of course, according to them, that was perfectly normal. I was the weird one, for coming from a world where buildings had to be built, and humans weren’t soulless near-statues.
“Is anyone around?” I asked. I didn’t have the gameboy microphone, but somehow my pokemon could hear me anyways.
“Hey, Z-man, over here!” And of course, it turn, I could hear them. Not through the crappy gameboy speakers, but as if they stood right next to me. Or in this case, as if they stood about six feet in front of me.
I move my avatar forwards, step by step.
“Warmer, warmer, there!”
Raichu’s voice gets louder as I get closer. He doesn’t show up on the screen, but I can hear the click-clack of his nails as he skitters excitedly on the wooden floor of bill’s lab.
It’s a little bit like being in a very dim room. My eyes aren’t super useful, but my hearing tells me everything I need to know.
My avatar stands right in front of one of Bill’s teleporters. I’d suspected they’d be here. “Blaster, you around here?”
“Yup.” The voice comes from above me; the Alakazam is likely floating above the machine, performing fine telekinesis.
“Have you guys made any progress?”
“Oh yeah, like you wouldn’t believe!” I can tell Raichu’s bursting at the seems to tell me what they’ve discovered.
“So?”
“Well, after you told us all that stuff about stacy currents--”
“--AC”
“And ind-whatsit--”
“--inductance”
“I had this great idea about hooking up the magnet donut to the my tail to--”
“--tokamak, you irritating little rodent. Shut up and let me explain this.” Alakazam, fed up with Raichu’s poor attempt at explaining the situation, intervenes.
“As Raichu was trying to say, after you bought me that physics textbook, I was able to discern the underlying geometry of the spacetime manifold generated by the antimatter-reaction catalysing tokamak by running electric fields through the intervening space.”
“I made those electric fields, by the way. Just thought you’d like to know.”
I laugh. Raichu never gets tired of ribbing Blaster. “So you guys are one step closer to getting it operational?”
“Actually, we are several steps closer to getting it operational. All we need to do now it--”
For a while, Alakazam babbles incomprehensibly abstruse engineering and physics jargon. I ignore him and check my phone instead. (He’s really doing this for his own benefit anyways. He calls it the “rubber Farfetch’d technique.”) When he winds down and finishes his rant, I ask him, “So what do you still need?”
He takes some time to consider the question. “I still l need to get my paws on a few mechanical odds and ends, but currently my main blockers are that I still need a way to deliver about two megavolts at a hundred and twenty thousand amps for three consecutive seconds, and that I still need to find some sort of dimensional anchor.”
“I can handle the first problem!” Raichu boasted. “Though I will need a little bit of help from my friends.”
“And as for the second problem, I might have a lead.”
“That’s awesome! Maybe figuring this out will finally shed some light on why your world is so weird. How long do you guys think you’ll take to finish this up?”
Alakazam verbally shrugs. He probably also physically shrugs, but of course I can’t see him to verify my suspicion. “If everything goes well? Maybe a week.”
I laugh. “You’re always just a week away, aren’t you?”
~oOo~
The raichu jabs the young man in his side, good-naturedly.
“Hey!”
The raichu chitters, briefly, and he rolls his eyes. “I know, I know, you told me so.”
He looks back at the camera. “Anyways, a week passes. I forget about the conversation. We battle the league a few times because Raichu wants to practice his thunder. We take a cruise on the SS Anne, do a bit of item hunting, blah blah blah. Just dumb stuff to fill up the time while Blaster’s cooped up in the lab. Then one afternoon, I come home from school, and see that .”
The young man gestures outside his window, looking away from the camera. It’s possible he’s oblivious to the fact that the camera isn’t positioned at an angle to see whatever he’s pointing at, or maybe he just expects the viewer to know.
“Yeah, you better believe I was eating crow.”
“But hey, you gotta admit-- this might just be for the best.”
The crooked grin is back. He gets up to turn off the camera. Raichu leans over and waves.
Amidst the sirens and alarms, the blinking lights and blaring klaxons, Nuclear armageddon is averted by the barest happenstance. One ICBM operator turns his key. The other, turned into a Meowstic, a feline barely two feet tall, cannot reach the keyhole.
By the time he figures out how to use his psychic powers to telekinetically manipulate the key the alarms have stopped blaring, and the order to stand down has come through secure channels.
~oOo~
Light.
A tunnel.
The afterlife?
I open my eyes. My surroundings are pitch black. I don’t freak out-- yet.
I feel pin pricks as my claws dig into my paw pads.
What.
What.
I flail wildly, as I tangle myself up in some sort of shroud. The distinctive sound of tearing cloth mixes with my confused vocalizing. Not screaming, exactly, but the kind of squeaks and grunts you make an hour into trying to troubleshoot a software issue.
Several disjointed scenarios race through my mind. Reincarnation? A nightmare? Insanity? A part of me is annoyed that I’m panicking. The rest of me panics without reservation.
As I struggle against whatever holds me captive, a thick mane of hair falls off of my face. I can once again see the ceiling, dimly lit by the street light filtering through the blinds.
This takes my panic from an 8 to a solid 6, and I regain some level of coherency. My eyes focus, and I realize I’m still in my dorm room.
On my roommate’s bed, a dark, indistinct blob groans while turning over.
I take my glasses off.
On my roommate’s bed is what is unmistakably a Noivern-- a batlike dragon (or dragonlike bat?), dark grey and purple.
“Dude? Are you okay?” Richie asks, bleary.
“I’m fine,” I reply on reflex.
“Great, then shut the fuck up. I’ve got an eight o’clock final.” He turns over and goes back to sleep.
Panic level down to 3, I finally start trying to figure out what’s going on. Item of interest number one: how the hell did I take off my glasses with paws?
~oOo~
Eventually, I remember what woke me up in the first place: my bad habit of drinking lots of water right before bed.
The feeling of my clawed fingers scraping the bedframe as I push myself up is bizarre and unsettling. I hyperfocus on each movement of the alien digits.
I realize I’m missing a finger on each hand. Up until that point, my arms had been moving on autopilot. I’m briefly paralyzed. I count my fingers one-by-one. Six fingers, two dewclaws.
Feeling my panic rise back up, I try to focus on something completely unrelated. Item of interest number one: what the hell is up with my nose? I can see it even if I’m not cross eyed, which is incredibly distracting, now that I’m focused on it.
Before I know it, I’m on the ground. I land, light on my feet. My elongated legs absorb the impact with ease.
I’m starting to get the hang of my new body. All the muscle memory is there; just, translated somehow into my new form. As long as I don’t think too hard, I move on autopilot.
Though, ‘not thinking too hard’ is easier for some actions than others. The less said about my trip to the bathroom, the better.
At some point, I realize I no longer need my cane. Something that hasn’t been true since sixth grade.
With the fur on my paws still damp from my attempt to wash my ‘hands’, I’m hesitant to use my laptop. I take some time to think.
Instinctively, the first thing I want to do is run outside and try to use an attack. The old, childish desire to have immense magical powers at my beck and call; to lay waste to all before me.
Pragmatism wins out. I don’t know nearly enough about what’s going on.
It could be that I was transported in an alternate universe where everyone had always been Pokémon, and Game Freak made a fighting game where you trained teams of “Humans” to fight each other. It could be that I was still in my own universe, but the only people turned into pokemon were me and my roommate.
It could be a localized effect, or a global one.
Or I could just be nuts.
I’d long been of the opinion that a delusion indistinguishable from real life is real life, but had never been in a position to put that belief to the test.
What could I do to convince myself this really was real? What would I do if I found out it wasn’t? I at least knew I wasn’t dreaming.
My paws were still damp, but dry enough that I could use my laptop.
I waited anxiously for it to boot up. Out of habit, I navigated to Reddit.
The euphoria of being not-crazy mixed with a sense of dawning horror.
If there were any humans left, I wasn’t finding them there.
~oOo~
One of my roommate's wings handles a spoon, delivering oatmeal from his bowl to his mouth. The other wing holds his phone, which he looks at while idly eating breakfast.
I’m flabbergasted.
“Do you-- do you seriously not notice what’s going on?”
“I notice.”
“Holy shit man, you’re a fucking Noivern!”
“And you’re a Zoroark.”
He yawns.
I briefly wonder if I’m going crazy. If the news articles were lying and reddit was playing a practical joke on me. Were we always pokemon? Was being human just a delusion or fever dream? I decide to ask him. “Were you-- were you a Noivern before today?”
“No. Of course not.” He gives me a flat look. If looks could talk, this one would say “dipshit.”
“Then how are you not freaking out!?”
He shrugs. “I’ve got an 8AM final.”
“What, you think anyone’s going to bother to show up?”
“Either the professor shows up, and I fail if I don’t, or he doesn’t, and I don’t lose anything. Anyways, I’m already awake.” He frowns at his cup of coffee. In a quieter voice, he says, “and if I didn’t have something to distract me, I’d probably go insane.”
I don’t respond verbally. The sombre look we trade is enough.
I try to put on some pants, but give up quickly. If bulbapedia is correct I’m pretty tall for a Zoroark, but I’ve lost almost half a foot in height. Instead, I put on some shorts. They threaten to fall off, so I fasten them around my waist with a belt.
A brief look in the mirror confirms my suspicions-- I look positively ridiculous. I decide not to put on a shirt. No point compounding the stupidity.
With my wallet, phone, keys, and pocket knife stuffed into my pockets, I finally venture outside of my dorm room. The hallways are empty, but I can hear muffled freakouts happening in other rooms.
Midway through my walk down the stairs, the relative peace is interrupted by an ear-splitting shriek. On a higher floor, one of the windows shatters.
Finally outside, my thick black fur blown about by the early morning breeze, I’m at a loss for what to do.
I can see a few other people wandering around in similar states of confusion and distress.
One stands apart, figuratively and literally: an Alolan Raichu standing on the tips of her toes. I wonder what she’s doing.
The world flashes pure white, and I stumble back. When I reopen my eyes, the Raichu is on her back, laughing helplessly. The area around her is scorched black. “Holy shit, that was awesome!” She yells, then resumes giggling.
For lack of anything better to do, I approach. “What was that, Thunder?”
She takes notice. “Naw, Thunder’s a little risky, on account of being so inaccurate. That was just a Thunderbolt.”
“Hell of an attack,” I say, impressed.
“What about you?” She asks. “Tried any attacks yet?”
“Uh, no, not yet.”
She nods. “Okay. Well, as a Noivern, you probably know-- uh, gust? Wing attack? Maybe Aerial Ace? I’ll have to check--”
“Wait, Noivern?” I blink, and look back down at myself. I can still see my black fur and claws, but overlayed are the translucent, batlike wings of a Noivern.
I pinch myself, and the illusion shatters.
“Neat,” says the girl.
I re-assume the mental state I’d been in just after her Thunderbolt. Yellow fur shimmers into place around my own.
“Neat!”
This time, I can dismiss the illusion without pinching myself. I have an inkling of how the ability works, but for now it’s mostly just instinctual.
For a little while after, we stand in awkward silence. I’m flipping my illusion on and off, and the girl is thinking about who knows what.
Finally, she speaks up. “You might want to step back a bit, I don’t have very good aim with this.”
I comply; no sense getting shocked.
The panic fades as I watch her. From a safe distance, of course.
Yeah, the world has gone crazy. But it’s not like everything is worse now. I feel a familiar itching in the soles of my feet, one I’ve felt for years, but not been able to act on. At least, without shooting pains going all the way up my spine.
I want to run. So I do.
~oOo~
A news broadcast.
A Watchdog holds the microphone. He’s chosen to wear a suit, although it of course looks ridiculous on his prairie-dog like body.
“...President Trump has so far declined to make a public appearance, but the Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, will be speaking on behalf of the executive branch.”
The press pool, depleted as it is by no-show reporters, breaks out into murmuring as Kelly reveals himself. The secretary is a Flareon. Large for his species, but still short compared to many other fully evolved pokemon.
There’s an underlying note of hysteria-- to see such a powerful man reduced to a three foot tall, bright red-orange canid is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. The camera microphone picks up a muttered reference to “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”
The secretary coughs into the microphone. When the murmurs fail to fully abate, he bursts into flame.
The crowd shuts up.
The fire extinguishes, and he begins his speech.
“The United--”
He adjusts his stance, having a little trouble getting his muzzle lined up to the microphone.
“The United States, its people and its government, are in shock. Not in a hundred, or a thousand, or even a million years could we predict anything remotely like this would happen. And I’ll-- I’ll be blunt. We don’t know why this happened. We don’t know who or what caused it. And we’ve only just confirmed the scale of this event.”
The secretary looks nothing like he used to, but his voice is crystal clear-- a perfect match for every prior recording of him.
“Everyone. Yes, everyone, without exception, has been turned into what is known as a ‘Pokémon’--” (he pronounces this ‘Poke-ee-mon’, which is a fair approximation, but not quite on the mark) “--which are a kind of character from a popular Japanese video game franchise.
“This situation is terrifying. We understand that. But to the citizens of this great nation: Don’t Panic.”
Some of the reporters chuckle. Kelly smiles, revealing the reference to be intentional.
“We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this. It doesn’t matter if this phenomenon is extraterrestrial, paranormal, religious; whether it can be explained with science or falls into the domain of the supernatural. We are exploring every possible avenue to find out what caused this, and how to fix it. Our diplomats are in contact with the Japanese government and the Nintendo and Game Freak companies-- the creators of Pokemon. We are mobilizing every asset available to us, including the military, NASA, and the American public university system.”
“So for now, let’s all do our best to keep society running. The president has declared the remainder of today to be a federal holiday. I encourage everyone not performing emergency functions to take the chance to meet with your families and neighbors, to help them through this crisis, and to seek their support should they need it. To our firefighters, our policemen and women, to our ambulance drivers and to all of our emergency personnel who have worked through this crisis, you have this nation's deepest gratitude and admiration. And tomorrow, I urge everyone to return to their workplaces and schools. To keep America running, no matter how difficult that might be.”
“We have, collectively and singularity, overcome every single challenge that faced our nation. We will stand, one nation, indivisible, before this one. God bless America!!”
His parting words are met with applause, first scattered, then thundering. Some clap in a traditional manner, bringing together hands or paws. Others stomp the floor, and the rare functionary slaps flippers together.
The camera cuts to a news studio, picture-in-picture still showing the reaction to the speech. The news commentator, a surprisingly thin Slaking, begins to talk.
The panic has ebbed, but in its place dread rises. The question on everyone’s minds is, “how are we going to deal with this?”
The question on my mind is, “how does Dad fit in that car seat?”
Turned into an Incineroar, he’s both taller and broader than he used to be, and he wasn't a small man to begin with.
The former-man-now-large-bipedal-cat looks uniquely uncomfortable driving his SUV. Luckily, very few other cars are on the highway, so his discomfort isn’t compounded by jackasses swerving wildly between lanes and soccer moms road-raging in their minivans.
Normally he’d bother me with bad jokes and complaints about the other drivers. His mustache would wiggle like an overturned caterpillar, and his thick brogue would be comedically overemphasized. But the air is awkward and silent. In the backseat are three other college students who also live in Omaha. I don’t know any of them, but either they’re no longer capable of driving their own cars, or their parents aren’t.
I miss the bad jokes, despite myself.
To pass the time, I play with my illusion ability. Mile after mile of corn and soybeans pass by as I experiment with different fur colors and textures.
Under regular conditions I’d be on my phone, like the Hariyama in the back seat. My phone is in my backpack, uncharged, as it has been for a few days. Capacitive touch screens don’t work well with fur or keratin.
The ride back home passes slowly. By the time all the other students have been dropped off and I make it home, I’ve moved on to simulating scales and feathers. I hold off on making illusionary skin. The few times I’d tried, it had looked off, somehow.
Greeting my family, now a small menagerie of different pokemon, I’m heartened to see that our dogs still recognize me. I must still smell the same, at least.
Unpacking goes quickly. I’d donated most of my clothes, seeing as they no longer fit me. I wonder if they’d ever get sold. Few people had decided to go totally nude, but just about nobody still looked good in human clothes.
Speaking about ‘deciding to go totally nude’, here comes Richie. Like, I get that shirts don’t fit over bat wings, but would it kill him to put on some boxers?
No cop cars come screaming around a corner when he lands in my front yard, which evidently he feels vindicates him. “So I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to go.”
“I literally just got back,” I say, in disbelief.
“Like, literally literally, or figuratively literally?”
“Figuratively literally literally.”
My dogs run out to greet him, woofing and wagging their tails. He takes some time to do the standard baby-talk-to-pets thing, which I don’t begrudge.
When my dogs lose interest, he turns to me and says. “So I’ve found a car for the trip. It’s a big grey van my neighbor’s selling for cheap; doesn’t need to drive when he can teleport.”
“Is it--”
“No, it’s not a VW camper bus.”
“Aww.” I say this mostly for dramatic effect, but I am, in fact, a little disappointed that we couldn’t have our summer road trip in the most iconic summer road trip vehicle ever. “How much?”
Richie grins. “You won’t believe it. Six hundred bucks.”
“What, really? Shit, that’s crazy low. Is it broken down or something?”
“Not as far as I can tell. It’s just that car prices have flatlined-- a lot of people can’t drive them, and even more don’t need them.”
“I can--” I look towards my house “--I’ll have the money ready in a few hours.”
Richie tries to hide it, but I can tell he’s a little crestfallen. I feel bad about brushing him off. I know his relationship with his family isn’t the best. He’s had internships the previous two years of college on the east and west coast respectively, and when his internship for this summer got canceled he jumped at my idea for a road trip.
I fix the situation by inviting him in. “Hey, we’re about ready to have dinner, you wanna eat with us?”
He flashes me a grateful smile, and accepts.
My dad says grace. I bow my head, but I’m not as religious as the rest of my family. Or at all. After my accident, I started doubting God. And a few years on, I stopped believing entirely.
I wonder if he’s in heaven, laughing at me.
I wonder if he’s a big man with a big grey beard, or a grey horse invested with elemental power.
Later, when the plates are cleared and our bellies sated, I head up to my room to grab the money.
My personal stash of money is hidden, not inside my mattress or under a floorboard, but in the same box as my decade-old pokemon card collection. An old habit, stemming from when those cards were my most valuable possessions.
I’d started squirreling away cash a little after the surgery, when my parents were having frank talks about money and the economy and our insurance. Nothing had come of it, thankfully, aside from my father working overtime for a few weeks.
Inside are the earnings from the jobs I’d held throughout middle school, high school, and college. From lemonade stands and mowed lawns; from selling popcorn and tickets at the movie theatre; from mopping supermarket aisles and stocking shelves.
My parents had tried to convince me to put it in a bank, but I’d been adamant about having the cash on hand. It was some sort of totemic protection, I’d felt, against the unexpected and catastrophic.
With the freeze on withdrawing paper money, I’m glad to have it. I take out the full six hundred dollars. Richie’s good for half, but doesn’t have the cash on hand.
I go downstairs and hand him the money. With a “thanks!” he takes off into the sky. Today, I’ll get my things ready. Tomorrow, we’ll get the van ready. And then we’d be off on our trip. Or quest, really-- to see if we could find a legendary or mythical pokemon to answer for what happened.
There’s no reason to expect we’d succeed, but hey-- there was no guarantee we won’t.
~oOo~
May 8th, 2017
Le Monde
‘Macron: le premier Pokémon président de la République’
New York Times
‘France Elects Macron President, But Will He Want to Keep the Job?’
Other newspapers, national and international, have similar headlines.
They irritate Macron; a reminder that his plans for domestic reform are now completely overshadowed. Sure, the current situation has given him something of a popularity boost compared to his rival (becoming a short, orange, aquatic weasel hadn’t been in any of his plans, but at least he’s not an enormous purple millipede), but he’ll have to focus on it to the exclusion of almost all else.
Or maybe…
Yes, he snaps his fingers. That’s the way forward. No longer a Jupiterian presidency, but a Napoleonic one. There was a historical precedent for a powerful, if diminutive french leader, and France needs a steady hand at the wheel more than anything else.
France is already under a state of emergency, and has been since the November 2015 Paris attacks. He will simply have to seek further emergency powers. Congress will comply; they will understand as well as him that this country needs extreme action to keep the ship of state afloat.
And perhaps he’ll have a chance to implement his domestic policy after all.
~oOo~
Elsewhere in France.
The shop is packed. The sign on the door says “closed”, and the shelves are pushed to the side.
Two Grotle-- twin turtles, enormous even before taking into account the shrubs on their backs-- take up much of the space. A Carnivine, green and endowed with a jaw wider than her body, is also a prominent member of the congregation. But of the people in the room, the one with the most commanding presence is, of all things, a Cinccino.
The fluffy grey and white rodent wears a simple t-shirt, cut and folded to not look ridiculous.
There’s a Heliolisk-- a bright yellow lizard, three feet tall-- tied to an exposed pole. The ceiling is exposed, and what natural light comes through it reveals a dingy, disused space.
“Hit her,” Instructs the Cinccino. She has a high-pitched, soprano voice. Airy and unthreatening.
The Carnivine does. A vine whips forwards, leaving a shallow gash on the Heliolisk’s face. She cries out in pain. The gash weeps blood freely onto her miniature hijab. Perhaps it was taken from a doll?
Towards the back, a Vespiquen seems to be ignoring the spectacle, the slender insect on her phone instead of paying attention. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, she’s surreptitiously filming everything.
“I think,” says the Cinccino, “that I’ve been very accommodating. I’m not asking you to give up your god. I’m not forcing you to stop speaking your language. Hell-- I’m even tolerating your accent. And don’t even think of accusing me of being racist.” Here the Cinccino indicates at herself, and then the crowd. She laughs, a jarring action. The crowd laughs with her.
“But this shit--” the Cinccino tugs harshly at the hijab “--is unacceptable. This is a crisis. Everyone’s gotta pitch in to keep the community together. And by wearing that, you’re telling us that you don’t think you’re part of the community. That you’re somehow better than us.”
Jeers ring out from the crowd.
“But hey-- I’m not gonna force you to take it off. Liberty comes first, right? So I’ll let you exercise the liberty to either stop wearing these stupid rags or get out of our country and go back to where you came from.”
She indicates towards the Carnivine. “Cut her loose.”
The Carnivine whips another vine towards the bound woman. The vine cuts through the rope and the woman’s skin alike. Sobbing, she runs out of the nightclub, to the cheers of many of the onlookers.
Police cars are parked outside. Their occupants, inside.
It’s not exactly a secret that the Pokemon regions map to real world locations.
Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh each correspond to regions of Japan. Unova and Alola map to New York and Hawaii respectively, and Kalos resembles France. There were other regions as well, introduced in the spin off games, but they’re not important for our purposes. That being, finding a legendary pokemon.
So that meant, if we wanted to stay within the United States, we’ll need to look at the Alolan and Unovan pokédexes for inspiration.
Relatively speaking, they’re jam-packed, especially if you count the ultra beasts. (We don’t.) But since we can’t afford to go to Hawaii, the Unovan legendaries are our best bet.
If we wanted to be reactive, our best bet was to wait another month until tornado season and go chasing thunderstorms in the hopes of finding Thundurus or Tornadus. We don’t plan be reactive, however, and after living in the Midwest our whole lives, we don’t feel like confining our road trip to it.
That leaves the Swords of Justice (Virizion, Terrakion, and Cobalion) with “known” locations. That is, fixed places they appeared in the video games, that we can (hopefully) correspond to real-life locations. They aren’t exactly A-List legendaries, but I figure that just means there’ll be less competition to find them.
The tricky part is that they each had two different locations, depending on whether you play Black & White or the sequels.
More dedicated hunters are probably, at this moment, trying to find equivalents for both. But seeing as we don’t even know if the legendaries exist, we don’t want to waste time going down every highway on the east coast. And anyways, if that’s where the legendaries are going to show up, someone else will find them first.
So that just leaves us three places to find equivalents for: Mistralton Cave, Victory Road, and Pinwheel forest.
Of course, that’s a long way in the future. Starting from Omaha, Nebraska, we have several days before we reache the east coast. In the meantime, a more pressing concern is entertaining ourselves through the monotony of Iowa cornfields.
Which is easier done than said, albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons.
“Ready?” I ask. When no response comes, I bang twice on the roof of the van.
I get two thumps back.
“Feeding line!”
One paw stays on the steering wheel. The other begins unspooling rope. The rope goes through the passenger side window, and then upwards.
I hear Richie’s claws disengaging from the roof of the van.
I look in the rearview mirror, more than a little worried.
A few seconds pass, and then Richie starts whooping, exhilarated.
I laugh. At the top of my lungs, I yell “How’s the weather up there!?” I’ve been waiting days to use that one; long-delayed payback for middle-school teasing.
His response comes loud and clear, the sonic abilities of his species handily trouncing the wind’s attempt to drown him out. “Great! The farther away from you I get, the better it is.”
Touché.
“Gimme some more line!”
I do. Ten, then twenty, then thirty feet of rope. I can finally see him in the rearview mirror, an enormous purple kite attached inexpertly to the van.
I’m soon out of the range where I can talk to him. The reverse isn’t true, and he gives me a constant stream of unwanted commentary.
“To the west, corn! To the east, corn! In all directions, corn! Inside men’s hearts, corn! All we are, in the end, is corn! The mark of a successful society is how successfully it can farm this pernicious vegetable--”
“It’s a cereal grain, not a vegetable, you idiot,” I mutter. I know he knows, and he knows I know he knows. He’s intentionally getting it wrong to fuck with me. Okay, I’ve been a little anal-retentive about this kind of stuff since I started my Agronomy major. Sue me.
“From the Japanese to the ancient Babylonians, all great empires have sacrificed their children at the altar of-- COP CAR AHEAD”
My heart leaps into my throat, and I almost slam on the brakes. Luckily for Richie, I keep my presence of mind and slow down more gradually. By the time I pass the cop car, I’m down to 90 miles an hour, an almost reasonable speed.
My efforts don’t stop red and blue lights from appearing in my rearview mirror, as the police car roars out from its niche on the side of the highway.
By the time I stop completely, I’m hyperventilating. Unbidden memories rise of another set of red and blue lights, and a leg bent in completely the wrong direction.
Richie lands next to the car, respooled rope in his claws.
The policeman approaches us. She’s a Glaceon, a light blue fox with dark blue ‘hair’ on top of its head. Small, even for an eeveelution, I find myself wondering how she even manages to drive her vehicle.
There’s no perceivable hesitation in her step, which I suppose makes sense. We might be bigger than him, but Richie has a double weakness to ice. Meanwhile, I’m not exactly in the best frame of mind to start a fight, even if I wanted to.
“Hello, officer--” begins Richie.
“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” interrupts the officer in a deep, contralto voice.
Richie makes a show of looking around. “Unfortunately not. I seem to be missing my speedometer.”
This startles a laugh out of the police officer.
“That may be the case, but I hope he can find his.”
This last part is directed as me. I nod meekly.
The officer sighs. “Look, I know there’s barely anyone else on the road right now, but the speed you’re driving at is just unsafe.” She looks at Richie. “And I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but I doubt the FAA would be happy about it. So please, reign it in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we reply in tandem. I’m significantly quieter than Richie.
She sighs. “Alright. I’m going to let you two off with a warning this time, but just keep what I said in mind, OK?” Then she’s back off to her car, not waiting for our thanks.
After that, I stick exactly to the speed limit, no matter how much Richie cajoles me to go faster. It’s more than a little demoralizing. For the first time in years, I’d finally felt like taking risks, and this early on in the trip, I’m already getting in trouble for it.
~oOo~
We had originally planned to refill on gas a little before Des Moines, then detour around the city. But the gas stations just off the highway are closed more often than not, and we’re forced to stop in the outskirts.
We finally find a gas station that’s operational. The neighborhood is totally desolate except for us. It really shouldn’t be, on a weekend afternoon as beautiful as this one. The city is still in mourning.
The skyline, modest though it is, still bears the scars of yesterday’s rioting. A police helicopter flies past cracked glass and burnt concrete. It’s accompanied by a Charizard, who’s been hastily spray-painted olive drab.
~oOo~
We make another pit stop in the vicinity of Iowa City, but the remainder of our trip through Iowa is largely uneventful, save for a few day-old car crashes we need to navigate around.
At least, until we get to the Mississippi.
The bridge is intact, but we balk at the idea of driving over it.
Our van putters to a stop.
In front of us is a Wailord.
“Yup, that’s a Wailord,” comments Richie.
I’ve seen blue whales in museums before, hung from the ceiling or on enormous, pride-of-place displays in the center of vast galleries. This wailord is only about half as long, which is still long enough to entirely block the bridge.
A Machamp steps out in front of us. Both sets of hands are steepled in front of him, and there’s an irritatingly smug expression on his face.
“Five bucks to pass.”
“What the hell?” says Richie.
“That is literally highway robbery,” I remark.
The Machamp shrugs. Having two sets of shoulders accents the motion.
“A man’s gotta eat. Either you hand over the money and I’ll lift my associate here out of your way, or you can add another twenty minutes to your trip by detouring to another bridge.”
“Or we could call the cops,” Richie threatens.
The Machamp scoffs. “Go for it; the 911 operators still aren’t working.”
We stew on that, for a little bit. The Machamp waits patiently.
“Fuck it,” I growl, and turn the van around.
Twenty minutes later, in front of another bridge, our path is blocked by a Steelix. The enormous steel snake has coiled itself around the concrete structure.
I groan as I slow the van to a stop. Taking out my wallet, I pull out a one dollar bill and a five dollar bill. I memorize how the 5 dollar bill looks, then put it back.
“Five bucks to pass,” squawks a chatot. I hand him the one dollar bill. It won’t stand up to close inspection, but I don’t plan to stick around.
The steelix moves out of our way.
Afterwards, I stew on what happened.
“Cheer up, man. I got it all on camera.” Richie taps his gopro with one wing. “They’ll get what’s coming to them eventually.”
“Where’s you get that, anyways? I indicate towards the camera.”
“It’s been sitting in a box since last christmas. Never had a reason to use it.”
“Huh.”
My mood doesn’t take too long to clear up, after that.
~oOo~
Another car zips past us, going in the opposite direction. An Arcanine races behind it, leaving fiery footprints and burnt asphalt in its wake.
~oOo~
When we settle down for the night, it’s deep into Illinois, on the side of the road off a desolate highway exit.
Richie rolls out the blankets, while I focus on making my most difficult illusion yet.
I add scratches and discolorations to the van’s paint job. Blotches of rust and chipped paint. The two tires that face the road no longer seem to be there.
When that’s finished, we hook up our electric camping stove to the battery we’ve been charging all day using solar panels placed on top of the van.
Our beans are lukewarm at best, but as I lay on my back and watch the sunset, it’s the most satisfying meal I’ve ever had.
~oOo~
My parents send me a voicemail sometime during the night. My dad is encouraging, my mom worried. I send them one back.
Richie gets a text message from his sister. He frowns when he sees it.
~oOo~
The video is grainy, but not blurry.
Instant ramen cups are scattered around the room. The waste bin is filled to overflowing with energy drinks.
A figure hunches over a table, furiously drawing
The speaker is Japanese, but some fan has taken the trouble of subtitling the video in English.
“--So since I’m writing a slice of life manga set in what is at least nominally the ‘real world,’ I was completely at a loss for what to do for my next chapter,” says the artist. He’s an emolga-- a diminutive rodent that resembles a flying squirrel. He’s nude, aside from his signature ‘Hanshin Tigers’ baseball cap.
“Some of my colleagues have decided to keep going like before, reasoning that since the real world is insane, it’s actually more realistic to have everyone stay humans. But not I!”
With a flourish, the artist displays his work.
It’s a sketch, black and white. Six characters, three views each. Front view, back view, and three-quarters headshot. Each one is labeled with a name.
For comparison, the artist holds up an older picture, a glossy, full-color print.
The difference between the two is stark. The older work features humans; the newer one features Pokémon.
But there are similarities, too. The author has made a more than fair attempt to translate each of the characters into their new bodies. The leading man, distinctive for his sharp eyes and thick glasses, has become a glowering Pancham. The dark, panda-like rings around his eyes playing the part of his eyewear. The leading woman, with her dyed-blond curly hair and kitschy earrings, has become an Amaura, the same open, trusting smile on the dinosaur as on the girl.
“To my wonderful fans, thank you for your support! As long as I am able, I will continue working hard to draw a warm, happy world that everyone can smile in!”
“Just FYI, your illusion fell off as soon as you fell asleep,” says Richie.
“Huh.”
Richie’s driving today, which leaves me free to experiment with my new abilities. So far, I’ve only been able to spin up convincing illusions on 2D surfaces.
I have several pictures arrayed in front of me: printouts of photographs taken throughout my years of high school and college. Some show me at school events, others show me camping with my family (and occasionally Richie.) In each picture, I stand as straight as I can manage, hands and cane hidden behind my back.
Which is frustrating, because right now I’m trying to recreate my hands.
I can see why artists always complain about drawing them. I’m having a devil of the time crafting realistic illusions.
There’s a dull roaring behind us as a low-slung motorcycle speeds past us to our left. Then it seems to change its mind, brake light flashing as it slows down to match our speed.
On it is a small figure, wearing a fluttery white dress and a motorcycle helmet. I have to do a double take before realizing she’s not a human, but a Kirlia.
The Kirlia pulls out some sort of flyer, waving it just outside our window.
Richie and I trade confused glances.
“I don’t trust this,” he says.
“You don’t trust anyone,” I rebut.
Honestly, I’m a little weirded out too, but I proposed this road trip because I finally felt like getting out of my comfort zone. Retreating only a day in would be a waste.
“C’mon, roll down the window.”
Grumbling, he does.
The Kirlia carefully lines up with the window, then throws in the flyer.
With a purple flash, barely indistinguishable in the bright sunlight, She disappears, taking the dull roar of the motorcycle with her.
I grab the flyer and take a look.
“Blade Runner Pizza Delivery: Serving Chicago, Springfield, Davenport, Minneapolis, and other midwestern cities. Visit our website for full list of locations.”
“Pizza in 15 minutes or we pay you!”
~oOo~
“Hey Richie, have you noticed how we can just instantly tell the gender of anyone we’re looking at, even though nobody’s human anymore?”
“I had very carefully avoided noticing that, actually.”
~oOo~
Our last stop before Chicago is in a small town called Rochelle.
The highway exit could have been anywhere in the midwest; a gas station right next to a cornfield, with low-slung buildings all along the road.
The street is packed with semi trucks, but none are mobile. Instead, they line the shoulder of the road. Some have been overturned, but by and large they seem to be there on purpose.
A gaggle of people, perhaps two hundred, are congregated in a soybean field just outside the gas station. Richie flies over to see what’s going on while I fill up the van.
He comes back as I’m screwing the gas cap back in.
“So, what’s going on?”
“You notice the trucks we saw coming in?”
“No, I’m blind and brain damaged.”
“I’d always suspected.” Richie nodded sagely. “Anyways, the day of-- the day we turned into Pokémon, obviously lots of people were panicking, which somehow lead to far fewer crashes than it should have, but more than enough to get the police department to pull people off the roads.”
“All the people over there--” he indicates towards the congregation by pointing his nose, a new habit he was picking up, “--are the truckers and motorists stranded two days ago. Or at least, the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t drive, run, or fly back home. They’ve been teleporting or flying them out, but it’s slow going.”
“Huh.”
As Richie gets in and turns the key, I screw up my courage and say, “We should see if any of them are going towards Chicago.”
“Really?” Richie asks, frowning. He hesitates for a while before giving an answer, chewing it over. Then he shrugs. “Sure, Okay.”
We’re both silent for a little bit, staring each other down.
Meekly, I ask him. “Can you do it?”
“Oh for the love of--” He rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
He turns the van off, goes through the rigamarole of taking off his seat belt (which was very much not designed for someone with wings), leaves the van, and flies over.
I’m more than a little embarrassed to ask him to do that for me, but he’s always been the more outgoing of the two of us. Even before my accident.
He claims he’s just inherently a more sociable person, but I’ve always suspected it’s because he’s always had to seek validation from people he’s not related to.
Richie returns with a Gastrodon, a three foot tall blue and green sea slug. I can immediately understand why it had been stranded; there’s no way it’ll be driving a truck again anytime soon.
It’s nude except for a backpack, possibly filled with personal effects.
“I’m mighty glad you folks are here to help me out; I was pretty far back in the line,” the Gastrodon says. “Anyway’s, th’ name’s Cedar.”
“I’m Richie.”
I mutter my own name sotto voce. Cedar doesn’t ask me to repeat myself, which I’m grateful for.
Cedar nestles down on the pile of stuff we’d fit in the back of the van. We’re briefly stumped by how to belt Cedar in, but then Cedar reveals its mastery of the Sticky Hold ability and we leave it alone.
About fifteen minutes into our ride, my curiosity is too overwhelming to leave alone, so I break the awkward silence the van had previously fallen into.
“Hey Cedar, I’m really sorry if this comes across as rude or insensitive, but--”
“It’s the hermaphroditism, isn’t it?” Cedar says this casually, not seeming to take any offense.
“Hermaphroditism?”
“Yup.” I see Cedar nod in the mirror of my sun visor. I contort to look backwards; this line of questioning was going to get personal enough it felt rude not to look it in the face. “Slugs are hermaphrodites,” it adds, just as nonchalant as before.
“And are you-- uh, OK with that?”
“Yep. More than OK, actually. I miss m’ human body, but this’s an improvement, any way I look at it.”
“Huh.”
“Y’know, I’m not sure if this is related, but I’ve been feeling something sort of similar.” I turn to look at Richie, who’s still thankfully focused on the road. “Like, I don’t think I’d have chosen to turn into a pokemon of my own volition, but if I have to be a Pokémon, a Noivern isn't such a bad one to be. Flying is pretty neat.”
“Yeah, I totally get that, actually” I say. “Zoroark is part of a really small pool of Pokémon I’d have been OK with turning into.”
This breaks the ice, and we’re soon comparing our experiences since the mass transformation.
“Oh! You gotta see this video. Richie, can you pull it up?”
I do. My own, tinny voice comes out of the laptop, muffled by the wind.
“Feeding line!”
I hadn’t seen the video before, and it’s fascinating to watch it from Richie’s perspective. It’s a little like watching the takeoff of a jetliner, but instead of doing it through the lens of a fixed, static porthole, Richie turns and maneuvers freely as the corn fields blur into each other and become solid rows of green, neatly arranged.
Cedar oohs and aahs at the appropriate moments, and is generally very appreciative. It’s gratifying.
When we get to the part where Richie spots the cop car, Cedar belts out an uninhibited belly laugh. I can barely remember the panic I’d felt at the time; even though only a day has passed, the event already seems to take on the aura of nostalgia.
“Boy, it sure does sound like you’ve been on an adventure already. Where did you guys say your destination was?”
“New York,” we reply in tandem. “We’re hunting for a legendary,” I add.
“Which one?”
“Whichever,” responds Richie. “We’re not picky.”
“Well, good luck! I’d love some answers m’self.”
We talk some more about we’re we’ve been and were we’re going.
Later, Cedar relates one of its own stories.
“See, this guy’s just utterly hysterical. We’re all trying to calm him down, ‘cuz, y’know, we get it-- shit’s crazy. Even after a good night’s sleep, shit’s crazy. We all emphasized. Empathized? Empathized.”
“And let me just emphasize again, he’s big. There was actually another guy, same species, also waiting for a teleport. They’re both loch-ness-monster lookin’ fellas, they both had this trailer-bed wide shell on their backs, but the guy I’m talkin’ about is at least twice as round as the other one. Eighteen doughnuts stuffed into a twelve donut box, if you catch my drift.”
“So we’re all utterly at a loss for how to calm him down. And then I get the bright idea to just ask him why he’s so hysterical. See, we’d all just assumed he was angry at being turned into-- y’know-- the loch ness monster, but it turns out, that wasn’t exactly the problem.”
“The entire reason the guy’s so distraught is, get this, because he thinks the missus will go absolutely nuclear on him when she finds out how much weight he’s gained.”
I laugh, and so does Richie.
There’s laugher in Cedar’s voice too, as he continues. “Now, fair enough, he’s probably put on a few pounds. Turnin’ into a dinosaur’ll do that to ya. But man, considerin’ how much she’d have had to feed him to turn him into such a lardball in the first place, it’s probably a safe bet the missus prob’ly liked a bit of meat on his bones. A little bit more wouldn’t be any more distractin’ than having four flippers.”
~oOo~
We eventually drop off Cedar in Platteville, a village a while away from Chicago proper. He’d made Richie promise to start uploading the videos he’s taken as a sort of informal documentary of our travels, so we mooch off his home wifi to get a youtube channel started.
We meet Cedar’s partner, an Azumarill. To the joint surprise of me and Richie, the rotund aquatic rabbit is golden, instead of blue. She explains that she was melanistic before the event.
Cedar tells us to show her the same video we’d shown him. The third time through, I notice something interesting in the background-- someone’s flying, far to the south. Their figure is barely visible, an indistinct red-orange blob. It streaks across the screen in the matter of seconds. A Charizard? No, Charizards didn’t fly that fast. Maybe it was a single-engine plane, a crop duster or small transport.
We stay for about an hour. When we leave, it’s with bellies full of warm food, and hearts full of warm thank-yous.
Blood freely mixed with tears and mucus as it dripped from Arcanine’s face.
Still, the warrior rose for one last time.
Only a few, cracked plates of ceramic still covered his body. The rest of his armor was strewn around the forest. The armored spikes that had once adorned him had been chipped away. Three corpses lay in front of him, charred and blackened, but one enemy still stood.
The Espeon in front of him was diminutive, a small purple fox with a forked tail. But where Arcanine had been worn down over the course of days, the Espeon looked like he was fresh from a bath house. Even the mud of the water-soaked road seemed to avoid the psychic.
Arcanine roared, a deep bass rumble speaking rage and hatred.
Espeon bowed his head in acknowledgment.
Arcanine took a slow, agonized step forward, like lifting his paw was the hardest task he’d ever performed.
A motion-- nearly imperceptible. The espeon tilted his head, and a tree branch whipped through the forest to pierced into Arcanine’s side.
Still, Arcanine advanced. A red dot appeared in his mouth. More tree branches pierced his sides, but he seemed to ignore them, intent on his purpose.
The orb grew, first to the size of a cherry, and then to the size of an orange.
The espeon took a step back, even as his psychic power made the forest swirl around him like they stood in the middle of a hurricane, rather than a bright, pleasant day without a cloud in the sky.
The Arcanine’s wounds bled freely, each one certainly fatal. He tilted his head back, the final precursor to his attack.
A branch pierced him through the throat.
The Arcanine fell, the fire in his maw sputtering out.
The forest went silent, except for the pathetic mewling of a Growlithe-- the Arcanine’s pup.
The Espeon stepped forward, as if to double check that the Arcanine was dead. He was. Already, his eyes grew glassy, and his body cooled from the enormous temperatures his breed could sustain while alive.
Then, the Espeon turned his attention to the Growlithe.
A puppy, barely four years old. Dressed in what had once been a fine silk vest, and was now, courtesy of furious travel, nothing more than a mud-stained rag.
The Growlithe cried in terror and sorrow. Then, to her surprise, the Espeon smiled. It was not a malicious smile; it did not portend any evil. It was a kind smile, completely open, and perhaps it was even empathetic, in the Espeon’s own, meagre way.
“I mean you no harm, little one. Be at peace. I killed your father, but I had no enmity towards him, and I hold none towards you. He died a magnificent death, and I would honor that by taking you into my own home.”
Had anyone else been there to see it, the scene would have been almost perverse. A killer, comforting the daughter of the man he had murdered.
~oOo~
I swore under my breath as I dodged. Each narrowly-avoided stone merited another curse.
Every unavoided stone resulted in a wince on my part, and a tiny, smug smile on Uncle’s part.
I’d been getting better, but I still wasn’t good enough.
Eventually the training session ended, and I limped off, battered and bruised. I had only two saving graces-- that my fur was thick, and would hide the bruises at the formal dinner Uncle would be hosting later today, and that Uncle followed the eastern traditions, rather than the western. Bamboo mats were much more pleasant to sit on for hours on end than hardwood, especially when Uncle had hit my behind with a real doozy of a throw earlier today.
The servants bowed as I passed, a duck of the head and a raised forepaw below their chins. They were predominantly Eevee and Vulpix, pretty fox-girls one and all, catering to Uncle’s tastes. Mature women in their own right, but none had gathered the experience, whether in life or in combat, to evolve.
Art adorned the walls. Elegantly, but perhaps not tastefully. Woodland scenes in black ink on tapestries were interspersed with extravagant paintings in the western style of scenes of battle and orgies and grand debates. In one painting, dragon-kings of the land of sunset held court before a throng of bespectacled bureaucrats. In another, Infernape fought as their republic burned around them.
I paid my quick, quiet respects to the shrine I had for my father as I passed it. A scrap of fur, a spike of ceramic, long-faded memories, and Uncle’s stories were all I had left of him.
Two sigils adorned the entrance to the bath, one to the left, and one to the right. Uncle’s sigil was an eye with a triskelion for a pupil. Mine, a sun contained within a triangle.
A servant informed me that my bath had already been drawn to my usual specifications. I thanked her, and entered the room.
After shedding my harness and weights, I eased myself into the baths.
For a few minutes, I luxuriated in the heat of the boiling water and billowing fire. Then, with a sigh, I set myself to the business of making myself presentable.
With the ceramic comb built into the side of the tub, I removed all the knots from my fur. With shampoos and oils, I made it shiny and lustrous, so that it gleamed in the dull light of the flames. Perfume I used only sparingly; it had been imported at great expense by the amphibious merchants that occasionally swam this far inland, and it would be months, if not years, before they ventured here again.
Finally, I was ready. An effete princess might have chosen to apply makeup and dyes, but I felt that I had made enough concessions towards femininity. After all, I was first and foremost a warrior.
My formal wear reflected that; my vest was dyed a light hazelnut brown, reminiscent of the armor all fire-type warriors wore. My sash was silver, to bring to mind the blades that were the hallmark of my Uncle’s fighting style. (At least, when he wasn’t fighting fire types.)
The sashes that I tied around each paw were green. These were a concession to modern fashions, and nothing more.
Finally, I was ready.
My bruises still stung, somewhat, but I held my head high as I entered the room.
I sat down just in time. Almost as soon as I had made myself comfortable, the bamboo doors opened, revealing the woman I hated most in the world.
The servants bowed as low as they could, heads to the floor. The Marowak entered the room with precise, mincing steps. She wore a beautiful summer kimono, adorned with butterfree and beautifly. But as the saying went, you couldn’t put lipstick on a tepig.
Her bone mask was covered in scars, some minor, some major. Like the scorch mark that surrounded one of her eye holes and the gaping ruin of flesh underneath.
Uncle had been the instrument of my father’s death. But the woman before me had composed the symphony of his demise. Taiga of house Karen.
Uncle and I bowed. I did so in perhaps a more perfunctory method than was polite.
“We live to serve. We die at your behest.”
I stumbled on this part of the greeting. Partially because I didn’t really believe what was coming out of my mouth, but mostly because I’d used it so rarely. Taiga didn’t venture to our hall often, preferring to spend the bulk of her time politicking in the capital or intimidating the neighboring countries.
Taiga reciprocated our bows. “It’s been too long, Umbreon.”
We sat. I was to Uncle’s right, and both of us were directly across from Taiga. Between us, a bamboo mat served as our table. (Here, I’m a little annoyed that Uncle followed the eastern traditions. I personally took my meals from an elevated wooden platform.)
Almost immediately, servants bustled in with platters of food tied to their backs.
Uncle levitated the platters off the servants, before dismissing them.
We ate before talking, as etiquette dictated. Uncle and I crunched through roasted beetle topped with pillbug puree. Taiga’s plate was dominated by a leafy salad with still-alive caterpillars and mealworms on it. Gross.
We finished eating, and the business of the evening finally began.
“On my journey here, I noticed the banks of the river were overflowing. Have you been having any troubles with flooding?”
Or at least the small talk portion of the evening began. Bleh. I zoned out, bored, as Taiga and Uncle talked about the weather, grain prices, commoner unrest near the capital, and in general topics that I knew were important, but had no interest in. I did pay attention to her quick remarks about our nation’s foreign stance, though.
“We still have a significant lead in military forces, but it isn’t as big as it once was. Revanchist elements in the bordering states may prove a problem if they decide to form a coalition, but I very much doubt that gaggle of backstabbing incompetents will manage to pose a threat to us any time within the next two decades or so.”
Finally, she got to the part I was interested in.
“.. and that brings me to why I’m here.”
(“And here I thought you just wanted to gossip,” I grumbled, not quite under my breath. This got me a sharp look from Uncle.)
Taiga laughed; a peculiar whistling noise filtered through the exposed bone of her skull plates.
“You have spirit. I like that in my soldiers.”
I couldn’t help but think that her smile looked more like a rictus grin than anything containing a semblance of warmth.
“Tell me, Growlithe. What do you know about court politics?”
“Enough.”
“Don’t play dumb. It isn’t becoming of you,” scolded Taiga.
The silence stretched on awkwardly, until I broke down and gave her what she wanted.
“Well… starting from the top, King Yuuto of--”
“Stop,” ordered Taiga. “I can already tell you’re gearing up to give me the same asinine spiel any commoner could tell me about our nation. What do you know about the current conflict? And don’t make me ask you a third time. I can tolerate a bit of spirit, but I absolutely cannot tolerate rebellion.”
Sufficiently cowed, I began again. “There are three major factions competing over the succession. The most powerful faction is the moderate faction, mainly composed of sub-kings like yourself, that support the king’s daughter, who’s set to succeed under current elective and successive law. They win if the status quo holds. The most numerous faction is the ‘republican’ faction. They want to change elective and succession laws to both enfranchise high lords and allow them to be elected king. If they succeed, Ursaring of house Zvezda is by far the clear favorite to win the succession election on the King’s death. Obviously high lords tend to flock to their banner, but they also have support from the three matriarchs, because high lords tend to be a little less cynical and a lot more religious than sub-kings, as a rule.
After a moment of though, I amended my statement. “There’s also the royalists, who support the king’s son, and want to change the succession law to… I paused here, trying to remember the term. “Primogeniture? To guarantee the monarch’s firstborn always inherits. I don’t think anyone believes they’ll get their way, though. Obviously they’re packed with the prince’s direct vassals, friends, and toadies. And there’s also a bunch of minor factions and holdouts that haven’t been swayed into joining the main parties yet, but the sicker the king gets, the fewer of those there are.”
Taiga nodded. “A reasonably accurate, if rather bland depiction of what’s going on. So tell me. What faction am I in?”
I didn’t have to give this question any thought.
“Your own.”
Taiga gave me a calculated look. “Perhaps you aren’t as dense as you look. Who do I support, then?”
Again, I already knew the answer. The way she’d spent thirty years consolidating her power, ensuring completely loyalty from her vassals, and establishing a reputation as an utterly ruthless and utterly pragmatic political and military operator pointed towards only one thing-- a bid for the throne.
Of course, she couldn’t propose herself as the successor. She was too old, at this point. The entire reason we’d adopted an elective monarchy was that a chain of short-lived rulers had nearly shattered our nation. We would only accept a ruler young enough to grow into their position, healthy enough to not fall sick and die, and politically well connected enough to avoid getting assassinated and throwing the realm into turmoil.
But that just prevented her from directly assuming the crown. An indirect method was also available.
“You plan to support your son’s bid for the throne,” I said, confidently.
Taiga looked surprised. I almost grinned at her expression.
And then she started laughing. Not the restrained whistle of earlier, but a full-on belly laugh. Uncle smirked. They knew something I didn’t.
“My son? That simpering, limp wristed homosexual? He couldn’t even handle being on top of another man, much less a country.” Taiga snorted, derisive. “But I suppose I can’t blame an inexperienced puppy for coming to that conclusion. In fact, I should be thankful that my efforts to hide my familial shame have worked so well.”
“You’re welcome,” interjected Uncle.
“Then, who do you support?” I forced myself to ask.
“That’s my business, not yours. But,” she added, “I can tell you who I oppose.” The levity slipped out of her tone. “The moderates and the republicans? They play by the rules. Liege and vassal divide themselves across political lines, but it remains a merely diplomatic war of favor trading and influence. The royalists, however, are largely disjunct from the other factions, and united against all outsiders.”
Taiga let that sink in for a moment. “I fear civil war.” Blunt, to the point. The hallmark of all her most famous statements.
I felt a pit in my stomach. My instinctual reaction was to reject what she was saying. After all, the enemy of an enemy was a friend, right?
She continued, heedless of my internal turmoil. “Now, there is hope. I can’t dismantle them outright. They have too much power, in the aggregate. But I don’t need to. I just need to keep them from reaching the tipping point, where they think they can win a war, long enough for one of the two main factions to gain an obvious lead. To that end, I need to strike at their fundamentals of their power base. What do you think of the current king’s reputation?”
At first, her last sentence seemed like a non-sequitur. But then I realized where her line of questioning was heading. “He’s incredibly popular. He’s expanded our borders, he’s fought off invaders, he’s staved off famines and built roads across the entire length and breadth of our nation. He’s known for always having time to listen to the woes of the commoners, and for works of charity and gestures of solidarity. The power base of the royalist faction is.. the common folk?” I screwed my face up. I’d made an intuitive leap that I knew was accurate, but couldn’t justify.
Taiga saw my consternation, and finished my thought for me. “The king’s daughter is a master at intrigue and diplomacy, and competent at military and administrative manners besides. But she doesn’t have her father’s head for manipulating the hearts of the common folk. And while Ursaring is renowned across the land for his personal heroics and success on the battlefield, he has very little experience transferable to managing the affairs of a nation. His personal holdings are left in the grasp of a competent steward, and he has a very light paw in their management.”
“Some would say that delegation is one of a ruler’s most important skills,” Uncle said, as a playful aside. His management strategy wasn’t quite as laissez faire, but he too preferred to have a lighter paw over the management of his borough.
“Regardless, while he receives unquestioned support from many of the military-minded lords of our nation, common folk are not so sure he should be king. But while the prince has inherited no particular administrative, military, or diplomatic capability, his silver tongue perhaps surpasses that of any ruler since the Founder. And using it, he’s claimed to be the inheritor of his father’s best qualities, as the child that knew him for longest.”
Taiga sniffed dismissively. Obviously, she didn’t agree with that notion.
“It’s an appealing argument. We use the same one, or variants thereof, to justify the familial inheritance of all titles besides that of king to the common folk. That blood is necessary and sufficient to carry on a legacy. It’s a convenient lie.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but quelled my words at a sharp look from Uncle. But still, how could she not believe in such a foundational element of our nation? Every person in this room was here because the nation recognized that bloodlines were the most reliable way to determine whether a child would grow into greatness or mediocrity. They weren’t a perfectly reliable indicator, of course, but if bloodlines were ignored, all three of us would probably be wasted on farming dirt or herding insects.
“But no matter how loud he yells, the prince cannot reach every commoner in the realm by himself. So he employs a network of rabble rousers to do his work for him. And irritatingly enough, he seems to think he can send them wherever he likes, including my demesne.”
Taiga withdrew a piece of paper from her sleeves. “This contains four names. I expect to see a matching number of heads, sans body, within the month. Each name corresponds to an agent of the prince.”
Then, to my surprise, she handed the paper to me, rather than my uncle. I bit down carefully on the delicate paper, and inserted it into a pocket on my vest.
“I can see what you’re thinking. And it’s true-- initially, I planned to give this assignment to your uncle. But I realized, during this conversation, that perhaps I could make better use of my resources. You’re something of an unknown quantity. Espeon vouches for you, which carries weight, but I remember what your father did, and I stayed my hand from executing you only because your guardian personally guaranteed your future loyalty. This will give you a chance to prove yourself.”
“I-- I understand.” I muttered.
Taiga nodded. “Chin up. I won’t force you to do this for free-- although that would be well within my rights.” A pointed reminder of where we stood. “I have a fire stone that’s recently finished its recharging cycle. Should you succeed at your task, you will be allowed to use it.”
I blinked. I didn’t know how to process that. Dull anger warred with hope.
“My retinue is quartered in the barracks. Choose two of them to accompany you. They will aid you in your task and keep an eye on you. They will also have the execution warrants and descriptions for your targets, as well as money to pay for traveling accommodations and other necessities and contingencies. Go.”
A little disbelieving at her sudden, curt dismissal, I got up. Bruises I had forgotten about in the heat of our discussion once again became noticeable, and I had to suppress a wince.
~oOo~
The trip to the barracks was brief, but gave me enough time to read the sheet and process my orders. None of the names were familiar to me, which was good, but I understood what she was doing. Forcing me to bloody my paws at her behest; the start of a pattern. Plus, this would tie my reputation with hers. I’d permanently be making enemies with everyone in the royalist faction, cutting myself off from people I potentially had a common enemy with.
But I had no way to refuse. I wasn’t strong enough to flout legal orders. My father hadn’t been, either.
Regardless, by the time I reached the dormitory, I was in a poor mood.
I opened the door.
Five soldiers were in the barracks. A Miltank and a Persian played cards. A Rhyhorn was reading a book, and a Kangaskhan whittled at a branch with her claws. On one of the beds, a Munchlax slept.
Everyone (save the Munchlax) flinched when I opened the door. A testament to Uncle’s stealth training.
They scrambled to salute me.
I sized them up without talking, forcing them to maintain their salutes.
Persian was recently evolved, perhaps a decade older than me. A southpaw, by the looks of it; his claws were duller on his left side. He had no armor on, and I didn’t see any that fit him.
I couldn’t tell Miltank’s age at a glance, although I could see that she hadn’t had any children yet. Her armor sat disassembled on one of the bunk beds, large plates of curved steel. On the same bed was what I assumed was her weapon, a halberd slightly taller than she was.
Rhyhorn, meanwhile, seemed to be younger than I was. Sixteen or seventeen years of age, if I had to guess. He didn’t have armor, and didn’t need it. The book he’d been reading was emblazoned “A Treatise on the Theoretical Construction of Flying Machines.”
Kangaskhan, meanwhile, seemed to be several decades older than me. From the stretch marks on her pouch to the wrinkles on her face, I could tell she’d had at least one, and perhaps several children.
Munchlax was still asleep.
None of them had any obvious scars, and none wore a captain’s sash, confirming my suspicions. The bulk of Taiga’s retinue must have purchased board at the town inn. She hadn’t brought her veterans. She’d brought minions for Uncle’s use, which translated to ablative armor, according to his doctrine. Not that these soldiers would have been told that was their purpose. (I felt a little bad for Kangaskhan’s family, knowing that.)
Still, it was concerning that she’d brought them at all-- she was expecting these rabble rousers to pose some sort of threat, even to Uncle.
As I completed my brief survey, I caught Rhydon’s eyes widening.
“Wait, you’re--” he gasped. “Holy Mew, I never thought I’d get a chance to work with the daughter of the Iron Boiler! My mother used to tell me about working under your father! I’ve heard so many stories about his unit’s work on the eastern campaign. It was a real shame about the treason.”
Rhydon smiled a goofy grin. I should have been annoyed at his flippant reference to my father, but I found him slightly endearing, to be honest. I immediately decided he would be coming with me.
That left me with just one more person to take.
I blinked once, slowly. Rhyhorn’s smile grew slightly uncomfortable. Then, I spoke.
“Taiga has a mission for me. I was told you had the documentation.”
My voice was carefully flat, both to maintain a professional aura and to avoid showing how much my bruises ached.
“Oh, uh--” Rhyhorn started, looking around wildly.
Kangaskhan produced a scroll of paper, and handed it to me. The wax seal holding it closed had the imprint of Taiga’s house emblem; a diamond, bisected vertically.
I nodded my thanks as I accepted it.
As I put the scroll into my vest pocket, I made a snap decision as to who the second member of my retinue would be. Maybe it was dumb, but I didn’t want to command people obviously older and more experienced than myself.
Looking back up, I said “Rhyhorn, Miltank, you’re temporarily being transferred into my retinue. I expect to see you by the main gates sunrise, tomorrow.”
I turned around, not bothering to look at their reactions. Today had been an extremely long day, and tomorrow would not be any better. As soon as I left the room, however, I had second thoughts. They were below my station, but they would still be my comrades.
But by then, it was too late. Showing indecision now would destroy any chance of them respecting my authority. Unbidden, the munchlax came to mind. I’d assumed he’d been sleeping, but perhaps he’d already judged me, and found me lacking.
I went to bed in pain, and in a bad mood. Apprehension about my first ever mission mixed with dull hatred for Taiga. And in there somewhere was hope-- that I’d succeed, and get to use a fire stone. That I’d get to experience a full evolution in the prime of my life, rather than wasting years, or even decades to mature fully.
But even that hope was tainted by suspicion. My family-- my biological family, that is, not Uncle-- had had a long and storied history. Even the decades-long decay of our power that had ended with my father had only served to consolidate our lands and wealth. But I had almost none of my birthright to call upon. The lands had been distributed among the commoners, the wealth seized by the crown, and possessions valuable in and of themselves distributed across Taiga’s supporters.
(Uncle had received his own portion of those possessions, but had kept it in trust for me. He was a murderer, not a thief.)
So the fact that Taiga dangled a single use of the fire stone as bait infuriated me, when in all likelihood the stone was rightfully mine.
Eventually, however, my exhaustion outweighed my anxiety and anger, and I fell into a fitful sleep.
~oOo~
A servant woke me an hour before dawn. I woke up blearily, and stumbled through my morning ablutions. With some embarrassment, I noted the scorch marks on my bedspread. At least I wouldn’t have to put up with yet another lecture about ruining Uncle’s furniture; I planned to be gone before the servants had a chance to inform him.
I read through my mission scroll as I ate my cricket porridge. (High in protein, low in taste.)
There were four people I needed to kill. “Fights Rivers” the Raticate, “Big Slow”, the Muk, “Lickililly” the Haunter, and a curious-looking foreigner: “Claude” the “Dewott.”
Taiga’s information was extremely limited-- a description, a drawing, a nickname, and a general location. The dewott was going to be my last target; I’d prefer some more experience before I took on what was obviously a water type. The other three were trickier to decide between, but eventually I decided to go for Haunter first. Her species was known for being slippery; the information on her location would be obsolete faster than anyone else’s, and then it would be a lot of extra work to track her down.
Thus decided, I got all my gear in order; my armor, some trail rations, a small purse, and various other essentials all went into my saddle bags.
I arrived at the gates precisely at daybreak. The early morning sunbeams stirred something within my soul, and for a moment, my anxiety fell away.
I smiled, fierce.
Rhyhorn and Miltank stood at attention. I gestured at them. “Let’s go.”
And we did.
A full description of my journey would be an exercise in tedium. We ran swift over the forest road, muddy and dusty by the time we stopped to rest for each night.
The road stuck close to the river, and we took our midday meals by its banks.
Occasionally, a fishing village or trading barge broke up the monotony, and we used them as opportunities to restock our rations and listen to gossip.
But eventually, we took a fork in the road that lead away from the river, and another, and another.
Four full days from the start of my mission, deep in the forest, we reached our destination.
Twilight City. Perpetually on the border between night and day.
Here, there were as many pokemon in the air as on the ground.
Many of those flying were birds: pidgeotto and noctowl. But others were bug types, and some were ghosts. It was obvious why the haunter, Lickililly, had chosen to come here.
We entered the city without our armor, but still we attracted furtive glances and naked staring. It must have been obvious, whether by our bearing, our gear, or something else, what we were here for.
I glanced around, momentarily lost. Low, squat buildings littered the forest floor, shops and businesses. In the tree branches were the tightly packed, conical homes of flying pokemon.
I sighed, then, suddenly feeling the effects of days of hard travel.
Reasserting control of myself, I strode confidently forward. “We’ll look for an inn, first. Then there’s a contact of Espeon’s I want to talk to.”
Lucario eyed his erstwhile travelling companion somewhat dubiously. Tales of valor often had secondary characters to accompany the hero, true. And, after all, dramatic monologues were always better when given to an audience that could “ooh” and “aah” appreciatively at the right moments. But somehow, he’d always imagined he’d be trailed by a gorgeous gardevoir, or a stolid stoutland, or perhaps even a genteel grovyle.
In no case did he ever expect to be travelling alongside a bidoof.
But, in any case, perhaps the situation could be salvaged. Taking in the rounded face and poofy fur of his newfound compatriot, he found himself warming to his fellow pokemon. Yes, a “bawdy” bidoof would serve adequately, comedic relief from his own more sombre nobility.
“Sooo... are you going to say anything, or just stare at me? My name’s Sancho, by the way.”
The bidoof interrupted Lucario’s reverie, and he gasped, chagrined. He bowed as low as he could while still walking.
“My deepest apologies, good sir. I beg of you to forgive my transgressions against good manners.”
Sancho eyed him strangely, but nevertheless forgave him.
“Then, I will introduce myself: I am Lucario.”
“... Yeah. I mean, your name, not your species. Like, I’m a bidoof, but my name is Sancho.”
“Well, I am a lucario, and my name is Lucario.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. It is the custom of my people to name our children such, to serve as a reminder that the actions of one of us reflect on all of us.”
“But what did people call you when they needed you specifically, instead of any other lucario?”
“Dipshit.”
Sancho blinked. “I see.”
Lucario forcefully suppressed his memories of the judgemental, gossiping harpies that made up his village. He was on a capital H, capital Q Heroic Quest to defend good and strike down evil, and that meant he had, indeed, shown them all!
That perhaps sounded a little villainous, so as an afterthought, he appended “...the error of their ways” to his previous statement.
With a look of naked gratitude, he glanced at the one responsible for it all. In that moment, he wished for nothing more than the ability to convey his feelings to the human in their own native tongue.
Indeed, he would have to put all his mental faculties towards becoming conversant in the human tongue, to remove the need for bidoof-- for Sancho, that is-- to serve as an interlocutor.
He remembered their meeting like it had happened yesterday (although in truth, it had happened barely three hours ago.) Already, it took on the faded color of myth in his memories; how the human had asked (through Sancho) for his help in defeating this dastardly “Pokemon League” that so oppressed his people. How the human would teach Lucario the secrets of his people in return for Lucario’s assistance. How he had (through Sancho) zealously pledged himself to the human’s cause (only to later find out that Sancho merely understood human, and regrettably could not speak it). How their contract had been finalized through his entry into that fascinating globular device Sancho called a “pokeball.”
How--
A strangled noise escaped Lucario’s mouth as he tripped over an exposed roof.
Seeking to salvage the situation, he acted as if he had merely been bending down to inspect the nails of his paw.
Sancho did not comment on Lucario’s ignominious stumble, and Lucario was suffused with gratitude for his traveling companion. How he wished he could reprimand past-Lucario for his lack of faith in Lady Luck’s choice of traveling companions.
How loyal his comrades! How rosy the future looked!
This, he knew, was the true beginning of his story!
(This, he knew, meant that no one could ever scold him for daydreaming when he should have been harvesting orran berries again. Ha!)
I am Hope Conquers Fate. I fight for honor. I am a professional Lucario.
I sniffle. No! None of that. I slap myself across the muzzle and repeat my mantra.
“I am Hope Conquers Fate. I fight for honor. I am a professional Lucario.”
The face in the mirror has no hope and doesn’t look like it could conquer its way out of a paper bag.
“Fuck you!”
I punch the mirror, shattering it into shards of glass. And then I start to sob.
“Fuck, dammit, fuck-- pick yourself up! C’mon. Just one more try. C’mon!”
I heave myself up from my seated position. Take a swig of potion to numb the pain.
The motel room is trashed. I definitely won’t get my deposit back.
But the joke’s on them: my check’s gonna bounce anyways.
I fumble at the doorknob, vision swimming as the narcotics in the potion take effect. I push open the door with a grunt and stumble outside.
The moon is out, and so are the streetwalkers-- a human, a couple Jynx, and a Sylveon. Castelia fuckin’ City. Caput Mundi. Where everything’s on sale, including your soul.
They lean against the motel, not far from my doorway.
I take a deep breath. Look up towards the moon.
Then bend over and barf my guts out on the sidewalk.
That draws their attention. One of them speaks up. “You OK, hon?”
It’s a human woman-- silky hair, well dressed, legs up to here. The kind of girl I’d seen in Hustler magazines I’d stolen from my cousin Love Proscribes Simony. The kind of girl that made me fantasize about committing unspeakable blasphemies against Keldeo (peace be upon him). The kind of girl I’d gotten myself exiled from the commune over.
So I look at her and say: “suck my red, dog dick.”
My ma always told me that when it came to the Stream of Life, you got what you put in. So, as she said, “put in kindness.”
That had all been bullshit. Peer reviewed studies proved that Aura could be measured and quantified, just like any other form of energy. There was no metaphysics to it; no cosmic justice. Just energy, expelled from my body like any other voluntary excretion.
Seeing the infuriated expression on the Sylveon’s face, I decide to start excreting that energy like it’s dodgy Chinese food.
With a burst of aura-augmented power, I’m careening away from the motel.
“Shitbag!” yells one of the girls. I laugh, because cavalier assholery is easier than self reflection.
One more motel I’m banned for life from.
The streets are deserted, so I can stretch my legs a bit on the freeway. Running clears my head a little, and the side effects from the potion taper off. The analgesic effects wear off too, though, and soon I’m wincing with every step. Dull pain radiates from my ribs, but the greater annoyance is the bandages chafing against my fur. I give into temptation and tear them off. The pain from my ribs intensifies, but I power through it like I’ve done a hundred times before.
I’d canceled my Netflix subscription a month ago and my onlyfans subscriptions a week ago, but the one subscription I’d kept paying for was my membership to a chain of 24 hour gyms. Given how often I’m homeless, I’d found it invaluable to have a place to take showers, store my shit, and lift heavy objects until I couldn’t think about my problems.
I make a stop at my usual gym. A couple of the regulars are working out, even at this hour of the night. Joel, an aspiring bodybuilder with a self-destructive appetite for sweets, and Citrus, a male gardevoir who’s spent the last eight years regretting the evolutionary path he chose.
They give me commiserating looks. I nod in silent reply, and they return to their exercises.
My locker has the essentials-- a makeup kit, fake fur, and superglue. I retreat to the bathroom to cover up my most recent injuries, and de-emphasize some of my old scars.
There’s a trick to it, I’d discovered. Scars are like an advertisement and a resume all at once-- you have to have a few, to sell new trainers on the idea that you’re a grizzled veteran. But too many and they started thinking you’re maybe too grizzled and too veteran. The successful fighters eventually make enough money to retire. I haven’t.
Social armor applied, I make my way out of the locker room.
Joel’s looking at himself in the mirror, pinching some of the flab around his midsection with a frown on his face. Citrus curls ten pound dumbbells, conspicuously looking in the opposite direction. He’s seething, I can tell; Citrus would kill to look as masculine as Joel does, flab included. Not that knowing about Citrus’s envy would be much of a comfort to Joel. Plenty of women are into the dad bod aesthetic, but it’s not going to win him any competitions or modeling contracts.
Citrus notices me leaving. “Good luck, champion,” he says.
I give him a sardonic smile. “Lift heavy.”
Our ironic ritual complete, I make my way out of the gym and back into the city. From there, it’s another few minutes of running to make my way to the Sherman building.
The Sherman building, headquarters of the Federal Trainer Match Program in Castelia State, is a squat, three-story office building in a dilapidated art-deco style, built by the Works Progress Administration all the way back during the great depression. Most of the jobs programs from that era have been shuttered, but the FTMP shambles on thanks to funding from sin taxes and donations from Federal League champions that went pro.
I push through the double doors and greet the receptionist.
“Shay, how’s it going?”
“Fate!” her face lights up, and I once again have to suppress the urge to inform her that my middle name is my personal name. Humans never seem to get that the verb is the important part, which is why I invariably get called either ‘Hope’ or ‘Fate’, and any time I call Proscribes he bitches about how his coworkers at the oil rig keep calling him ‘Simon.’ I’d wasted too much time and lost too many opportunities stubbornly correcting people.
I am Hope Conquers Fate. I fight for honor. I am a professional Lucario.
--but until I get fired from yet another team, I’ll just have to suck it up and pretend like I enjoy being called whatever inane nickname my trainer thinks up.
“It’s good to see you again!” She winces. “Well, not good-- of course--”
I wave off her verbal misstep. Water off your back, Conquers, water off your back.
“--but we’ve got a three-badger who desperately needs an interpreter.”
“You mean, right now?” I asked, confused. “Or in general?”
“In general. His grace period ends in four hours. I’d really appreciate it if you went over.”
“Sounds good!” I force a smile. “Where is he? I can go see if I’m a good fit for his team.”
I don’t bother adding the additional caveat, “if I’m interested in battling for him.” I’m always interested, because with the job market the way it is, I can’t afford to be anything else. Even with the FTMP subsidies, there’s always more pokemon looking for trainers than trainers looking to fund a team.
Honestly, I should be thanking my lucky Minior. I’d just been hoping to crash on one of the FTMP’s folding chairs until the line for applicants opened in the morning. Getting a request like this off-hours means that this trainer has to be desperate. And probably subject to some major malfunction or other, if they hadn’t been able to hire an interpreter at any point in the previous seven days, but I can’t afford to be picky.
“Here, let me just--” Shay types a a few commands into her computer, then grabs a piece of paper, jots something down, and leans over the desk to hand it to me.
“Thanks, Shay.”
“No problem. Good luck!”
I check the piece of paper. It says, “Room 2031. Andrew Krawczyk. Liepard, Mandibuzz.”
Reading between the lines here, the missing team member is probably a Scrafty, Zoroark, or Bisharp.
I understand now why Shay is so relieved to see me. Thanks to Lyndon B. Johnson, trainers are required by law to have at least one member on their team capable of translating between human and pokemon speech. But most interpreters are psychics, and this kid is clearly Dark. Chances are he’s been having trouble scrounging up a pokemon who can read, write, and fight, since usually pokemon who’ve received an actual education are in a position to make their living in ways other than bloodsport. Usually.
I make my way through the building, dodging the other pokemon walking and flying through the halls. Nocturnal species taking advantage of the other services the FTMP offers. Most of them have sullen looks on their faces. Tough economy.
I reach room 2031 and repeat my mantra one more time.
I am Hope Conquers Fate. I fight for honor. I am a professional Lucario.
Game face on, I enter the room.
“Andrew?” I ask.
He jerks to attention. He’s wearing a designer watch and new sneakers. The finery looks out of place on him, seeing as he’s maybe 16 at the oldest. An out-of-touch rich kid, obviously, but I’ve learned to make do. With the yearly cuts to the FTMP’s budget, rich kids are the only ones left in the Federal Circuit.
Dark circles surround his eyes. At his feet is a Liepard. Gangly and graceful at the same time, in the way only a teenage cat can be. His starter, probably.
She cracks open an eye, but otherwise doesn’t move. I eye his belt. The Mandibuzz is in a pokeball, taking a nap. He’s eying my muzzle. “How did you...?”
“Aura speech,” I explain. “Fighting type technique. Unique to Lucario and Sylveon.” And also Medicham, but I wasn’t going to mention that. It was a bit of a sore subject, and anyways it rarely came up since they were all telepathic anyways. “Without it I sound like this:”
I let my aura disappear and say, “She sells sea shells.” The Liepard flicks her ear, obviously irritated at my barking.
I engage my aura again and say, “I hear you’re looking for an interpreter?”
“Yeah!” He practically jumps at the opening. The Liepard startles, and looks at him reproachfully.
“I’m here to apply for the position.”
“Great! What do you want to know about us?”
I’m surprised he’s asking that already-- usually this is the part where the trainer interrogates me. But I suppose he’s too desperate to properly interview me. Still, I’ve been around the block enough times to know what trainers want to be asked. Trainers want to feel like you chose them as much as they chose you. And specifically, they want you to ask questions that make them look good while demonstrating that you’re a go-getter. So I say, “well, I want to know how your team fights. Are you up for a spar?” I direct that last bit to the Liepard, but make sure I’m still using aura speech so Andrew can understand me.
“Now?” she asks. “Are you crazy? It’s the middle of the night.”
I shrug. “If you’re too tired, that’s OK. I just figured, since I came from the gym, there should be enough of a handicap for you.”
“Handicap?” She scoffs. “Oh, you’ll be handicapped all right.” She gets up.
Ah, feline pride, works every time.
I look at Andrew. “She says she’s interested in a spar.”
He smiles. “I can tell. Is there anywhere we can spar around here?”
I knod. “Yep, though it’s a bit run down. Follow me.”
I lead him down to the basement, ignoring the envious glares of the pokemon in the halls. There’s a basketball court there, though its hoops are bent out of shape and the once-polished floor is filled with gashes and scorch marks. I flip on the lights, and Woobat and Swoobat roosting in the rafters screech invectives at me. I inform them that I fucked their mothers. Obviously, I make sure Andrew can’t understand that bit.
The liepard sniffs. “They really need to maintain this place better.”
“Your tax dollars at work,” I say. Not that this kid pays taxes. Not that his parents pay their fair share, knowing this country’s godforsaken tax code.
The kid nods. “Yeah, the government can’t do anything right.”
Yeah, I figured that would go over well with him. Like I said: out-of-touch rich kid.
The Liepard and I face off on opposite sides of the court. The bats take interest. They cheer for neither of us: Liepard are one of their natural predators, and after the hotdog incident I’d totally lost interest in mending bridges with the sky rats. Instead, they heckle the both of us, and I have to dodge a few splatters of guano. Disgusting, uncivilized little parasites.
I make sure to think that last bit really hard at them, in case any of them are reading my mind.
I shoot Andrew a grin. “You ready?”
“Yeah! Let’s do this. Boudica, cypher six!”
Andrew widens his stance, and the fight is on.
“Ze!”
The Liepard, Boudica, glows with the dark-type energy Andrew pushes into her. He’s strong, I can tell. A cut above most trainers in terms of capacity, if he can push out this kind of energy output while sleep deprived. I won’t be able to count on the same kind of power boost when I fight for him, though. The genetic mutation that makes some trainers type specialists decreases their affinity for every other element.
Liepard are naturally faster than most other pokemon, including Lucario, and Boudica takes advantage of that fact to rush me. I’ve fought enough Liepard to know she’s trying to hit me with a Fake Out. Predictable.
I step back with one foot, and thrust forward with both paws. My antennae flare to the sides of my head as I project aura in front of me to form a short lived barrier.
Boudica bounces off my Protect, and starts to circle around me. My antenna stand on end as I sense a sudden surge of fire-type energy.
Burning Jealousy? Seriously? Unless Boudica was the kind of go-getter that obsessively researched moves, Andrew would have had to pay the beaucoup bucks to get her a tutor from the Isle of Man.
I whip out a paw in front of me, forcing aura into my strike, and the air cracks. My Vacuum Wave nails Boudica center mass, knocking the wind out of her and robbing her of her momentum. I follow up with a quick, low-power Aura Sphere and she aborts her attack to dodge it. It hits her anyways, because that’s what Aura Spheres do. She obviously hasn’t fought a Lucario before.
She yowls at me. “Hoser!”
So she’s Canadian. Huh.
Andrews is staying quiet for now, a good sign. I’ve worked with micromanagers before, and it’s beyond insufferable.
Her next approach is more cautious; she’s looking at my hands now, instead of my eyes. That’s a classic quadruped mistake. She should really be looking at my feet.
She pounces, claws extended, and I dart forward to slide under her. I hit her in the belly with another vacuum wave, and she tumbles when she hits the floor.
If this were a real battle, this would be the part where I take advantage of her misstep to beat the snot out of my fallen opponent. But trainers tend to get squirrely when they find out a prospective team member is significantly stronger than the rest of their pokemon. They pretend it’s about “potential discipline issues” and “unruly high-level pokemon,” but really they just don’t like feeling inadequate.
So instead, I launch a few more low-power Aura Spheres. Even that would have been enough to knock Boudica out of the fight, given the type advantage, if she was fighting alone, but the power Andrews is pushing into her gives her enough strength to get back to her feet.
I’m probably selling myself as a special attacker, which isn’t really the impression I want to give So despite the risk of getting my stitches torn open, I force myself to close to melee range.
“Ko!” yells Andrew.
Boudica lashes out as soon as I get close, scoring a Sucker Punch to my muzzle.
My teeth clack together, and I bite my tongue. I let loose an involuntary “Ah!”
Big mistake, cat. Now I’m angry.
I start whaling on her. I launch her into the air with a kick and, just to show her how much better I am than her, I jump after her and kick her back down just as she reaches the apex of her short-lived flight. Some real anime shit, y’know?
The Swoobat screech in approval. For frugivores, they sure love to see some blood.
Boudica bounces off the gym floor, and I’m on her before she can get up. I pepper her with Mach Punches, just to let her know that, yeah, I know how to do them. None of them are particularly powerful because I never learned how to do them well, but I know for a fact she’s going to be nursing some unpleasant bruises for the next few days. I manage to catch myself before I can let loose with a Close Combat, though; I’m trying to teach her a pointed lesson, not put her in the hospital.
Andrew’s shouting commands in his cypher and burning through enough power that the Dark-type energy in his aura is visible with the naked eye.
Not good; I don’t want him collapsing before he can hire me. This fight needs to end.
I hit her with another kick, and this one sends her tumbling off the basketball court.
I close my eyes and breathe through clenched teeth for a moment, trying to control my anger.
“Boudica!” Andrew cries. I can hear him run towards her. “Are you OK?”
I can hear her labored breathing as she pushes herself to her feet. “Hands off! I can still fight!”
I open my eyes and look towards the two of them. “Not after you’ve been knocked out of bounds, you can’t.”
“Bounds?” Boudica looks at the floor. “You mean these stupid lines of paint? We didn’t agree on that.”
I look over at her with a critical eye. She’s upright, but barely, buoyed only by Andrew’s support.
Alright, I can work with this. I force a smile. “I like your grit, kid. You’re not there yet, but you could be.”
I make sure to say that with aura speech, since it’s for Andrew’s benefit. Boudica looks at me with a dubious expression; for all her bravado, she understands exactly how hard I just whooped her ass.
I look at Andrew. “I’ve seen enough; I think I’d be interested in joining your team.”
Take the bait, take the bait, take the bait, take the bait.
“Really!?” he asks, surprise written across his features.
Yes!
“I can tell you’ve trained Boudica well; I don’t know how you got her to learn a fire-type move but it would have been lights out if she’d hit me with it. By the time we beat the fifth gym, she’ll be where I am now.”
That was a blatant lie. I’m a seven-badger six times over, and the only reason I didn’t have any eight-badge wins under my belt was that idiot trainers kept firing me before I got the chance to really strut my stuff.
I look towards Boudica. “After that, I might actually work to stay ahead, huh?” I morph my smile into a sly grin, as if we’re sharing a joke.
She spits, and I’m perceptive enough to see the red tint of blood in her saliva. “As if I won’t have surpassed you already.”
Hook, line and sinker. With an appeal to pride, some backhanded flattery, and the right frame for a conversation the world was your oyster. It had taken me half a dozen trainers to realize it wasn’t enough to prove I was good. I had to play the office politics game; convince them I was a good ‘culture fit.’
It had been a frustrating and sobering lesson.
I start to walk towards him. He tapers off the supply of Dark-type energy he’s feeding to Boudica, which forces her to lower herself to the ground, no longer able to stand under her own power.
“What do you think?” he asks her.
She shrugs her shoulders. “Not like we’ve got any other choice,” she says. Then, because she knows he wouldn’t have understood her, she nods.
I take note of the fact that he doesn’t pull out the Mandibuzz to ask for her opinion.
I try not to make it obvious that I’m sagging in relief. Hopefully this arrangement will last long enough (and pay well enough) for me to get out of the pit of credit card debt and bank overdrafts I’d once again drank and whored my way into. If I was really lucky, I might even make enough to pay for a rental the next time I was between jobs. I’ve lived in homeless pokemon shelters before, but no one in their right mind wants to eat government-supplied kibble.
“So,” I say. “Teammates?” I reach up towards him with a paw.
He grins, takes my paw, and gives it a firm shake. “Teammates.”
And then it’s as good as done. We’ll still have to go through the paperwork and the salary negotiations, but professional battling’s one of the few places where a handshake still means something. Where humans are humans, pokemon are pokemon, and if someone swears something on their honor, they’re not going to go back on their word and ratfuck you.
He withdraws Boudica into a pokeball, and then we’re off, side by side. I try to tamp down on the optimism that’s swelling inside me. I’ve been here too many times before, and been let down every time.
But I can’t help it, y’know? Lucario are just like that. Suckers for sentiment, the lot of us.
“So, uh, Lucario…” I blink twice, dispelling a half-formed daydream as Andrew addresses me. “Which gym are you affiliated with? I didn’t think there were any fighting type minor gyms in Castelia.”
“I meant, I was at a 24 Hour Fitness.”
“...Oh.”
This idea has more potential than the other stuff in this collection... If you enjoy it, keep your fingers crossed because I might be continuing it.
the whole series, a rather candid analysis of what would happen if the world switched from human to 'mon was a fun jaunt. From the political upheaval, (and what the politicians turned into, I'm guessing you didn't show Trump to avoid backlash, still leaving it unsaid does lead to some rather... fun... possibilities) to the more frantic "I'm just trying to get through my day, exams!" of the noivern at the college, to the raichu student who was like... we got powers, AWESOME, it all felt real to life.. as much as the idea could be. Even though you've no intent on finishing thanks for sharing what you have thus far, it was fun.
Crossposting from SB. This one's ongoing, so I'll move it to its own thread if it gets to 10 chapters.
Reincarnated into a Pokémon world, I have a second shot at life. And I’m going to use it the same way I spent the first one-- studying to get a good, stable job, and then working to keep a good, stable life.
But my omnicidal, battle maniac Pokémon have other plans for me.
My Little Riolu Can't Be This Violent - 1
Two years ago, to the day, the human boy had clapped Riolu on the back and told him to “keep it one hundred.”
Clenched fists. Tense arms. A deep breath, and a square stance.
Riolu screamed at the top of his lungs, and launched his first punch of the day.
“One!”
Two years ago, to the day, the human boy had waved his goodbyes, walked onto the schoolbus, and left the Everglades Reservation for good.
“Two!”
Every year the humans came. Every year the humans left. Every year, all the Riolu jostled for the attention of the human schoolchildren. Hoping to leave enough of an impression to one day get picked as a starter.
“Three!”
The cypress tree shuddered. Dead leaves fell from its canopy.
Most of the Riolu had gravitated towards the loudest, rowdiest children. Hoping that one day they’d be equally energetic as trainers.
But Riolu had found himself inexplicably drawn to a quiet, observant little boy. Who’s hung behind the rest of the group to mutter to himself and take notes in a pocket journal.
“Four!”
The encounter had changed Riolu’s life.
“Five! Six!”
Heavy blows knocked dead branches free. Though a rain of debris fell from the tree, Riolu paid it no mind.
“Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!”
The Rez was a dead end. Only the laziest, weakest Lucario stuck around. And Riolu was neither lazy nor weak.
So yeah, he’d been looking for a trainer. Just like all the other Riolu.
And something about the boy had drawn him in. Some hint of cutting intelligence, of hidden depths, had pulled at Riolu with an irresistible force.
“Eleven! Twelve!”
Two years ago, punching padded bags had made Riolu’s knuckles bruise and bleed. Now even rough bark felt pillows against his hands.
“Thirteen!”
The boy had deigned not just to play with Riolu, but to train him. To double-check his stance, to show him how to throw a proper punch, and to drop tantalizing nuggets of wisdom Riolu had still only partially unpacked.
“Fourteen!”
Two years ago, Riolu had still been scrawny and weak. An easy target for bullies. He’d confessed as much to the boy, and the boy had responded, “Just dodge.”
Just dodge.
An infuriating reply. But intentionally so.
At first Riolu had been ready to abandon the boy as quickly as he’d approached. But some instinct, some inkling of deeper meaning had forestalled the rash action. And that hesitation had paid dividends over and over again.
“Dodge,” the boy had said. To dodge was not to simply avoid negative stimuli. It was to see an attack as it came, and then move elsewhere with maximum economy of motion. To perceive the thrust of a bully’s attack, whether verbal or physical, and move just slightly outside their reach.
He could not be pushed into a locker if he was in front of a water fountain. He could not be insulted for his bastard parentage if he made snide remarks about his manwhore vaporeon father before they could.
“Just.”
Implying not only a principle of minimum action and non-retaliation, but justice. Implying a focus on defending other victories before seeking retribution.
Riolu’s withdrawn personality had not made him many friends over the years. But the few he had were thanks to his policy of putting himself between the bullies and their other victims.
Just Dodge.
To stand still was to be nothing more than a slab of meat. In all things, action.
“Twenty-three! Twenty-four!”
He infused more and more aura into each punch, until even the ground quaked at his blows.
“Twenty-five!”
Two years ago, to the day, Riolu had complained of his insecurities. Of he’d always felt set apart from his peers by his parentage, by his small stature, and by his crooked teeth.
The boy had carefully considered his words before making a reply.
“Skill issue,”
And it had been. His parentage, stature, and teeth had been excuses. His insecurity a product of weakness. Now he was skilled. Now he was strong. Now he was proud.
“Fourty-five, forty-six!”
He punched faster and faster, until the tree was practically vibrating.
“Fifty!”
Riolu had paid close attention to everything the boy had said-- had analyzed and implemented every little bit of wisdom.
“Sixty”
And above all, had followed, in the absolute strict sense, the boy’s final piece of advice.
“Seventy.”
The boy had told him: “keep it one hundred.” An enigma of a phrase. A riddle spoken in an encouraging tone. Riolu had spent weeks pondering the boy’s meaning. Then: enlightenment. The boy had been saying-- why do one of something, when you could do one hundred?
Ten sets of one hundred pushups. Ten sets of one hundred situps. One hundred sets of one hundred punches. One hundred kilometers, ran. And one hundred more, swam. Every single day. One hundred times as much effort as any other Riolu on the Rez.
“Ninety-nine!”
Two years to the day, Riolu had asked for the boy’s mailing address. Two weeks ago, he’d sent the boy a formal request to be selected as his starter.
This morning, he’d received a letter back.
Riolu would be leaving the reservation. Riolu would be joining the boy. Riolu would be going on a journey-- to see the world, to meet new friends, and to become the very best, like no one ever was.
“One hundred!”
With a blast of power, he snapped the tree’s trunk. He stepped out of the way as it crashed into the ground.
Then he moved to the next tree, and started again.
Imagine living a short, but full life. Imagine learning, working, dying. Imagine being brought back to yourself, to your body, when you were three years old.
Imagine all of that plus, inexplicably, Pokémon.
Let’s talk about the mundane stuff first.
My college savings are invested in a basket of technology stocks. I've collected a small stockpile of bitcoin. I have a modest following on youtube, thanks to my ability to rip off memes that haven’t been created yet, and a major following on twitter, thanks to an uncanny ability to predict world events.
(For some reason, people kept DMing me to ask if I was an Absol.)
But, again, Pokémon. I can’t rely on bitcoin blowing up. I can’t rely on the stock market behaving as expected. And sooner or later, my memes are going to get dated and my future knowledge will run out of currency. What if Kyogre floods Tokyo? What if Eternatus wipes Hawaii off the map?
So I made myself a backup plan. And it goes a little like this:
Six badges, at a minimum. Eight, if I can swing it. A few rounds on the lower-level ace trainer tournaments, and then a graceful retirement into coaching and teaching.
It’s a good plan, I think. And it all begins with my starter.
Riolu the Riolu.
Well-- he has a name in the Lucario language, of course, but apparently it’s some sort of faux pas for a human to even attempt to pronounce a Pokémon’s true name. So I’ll have to think of some sort of nickname.
And I’ll have to think of it in the next… thirty seconds. I’ve had two weeks to consider one and so far nothing has come to mind.
In my defense, I’d sort of forgotten he’d existed. We’d had an end-of-the-year field trip to the Lucario Sanctuary in sixth grade. And… I mean, I’d had a good time. It had been fun, wandering around what was basically a tiny patch of a foreign country in the middle of florida. But the Riolu had glommed onto me basically as soon as I’d gotten off the school bus, and refused to leave me alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t disliked the little tyke. Like every other kid there, I’d had ambitions of convincing one of the Riolus to be my starter. And having one instantly take a shine to me was more than a little gratifying. But I’d figured-- minds change easy, and most Lucario end up learning to speak English and working regular people jobs. So I’d spent basically the whole time trying to exhaust him with training so he’d go away satisfied and give me an excuse to go talk to the other Riolu.
It hadn’t worked. He’d spent the whole time babbling at me in his incomprehensibly foreign tongue, only managing to slip in the occasional sentence fragment into staticky aura speech. I’d done my best to pretend like I understood him, while at the same time working on a homework assignment I had due the following day.
But apparently my strategy of bantering with him whenever it seemed like he was complaining about the training had paid off. Two years on, he’d sent me a letter asking to be my starter, and the rest… well, the rest was about to play out.
A knock at my door.
I took a deep breath, smoothed the expression on my face, and opened the door.
And didn’t see anything.
After a second, I looked down. And there he was-- still short, still unreasonably excited… but boy oh boy had this kid managed to fill out in the last two years.
No, like seriously. Like, holy shit.
The largest land vehicle ever created was the RWE Bagger 288, a 13,500 ton excavator. Riolu could probably have bench pressed it.
He bowed to me. “Greetings,” he said, in much more comprehensible aura speech than I remembered.
“Um, greetings,” I replied, bowing too.
We straightened up at the same time. He gave me a quick look over.
I somehow felt underdressed in my white t-shirt and skinny jeans, despite the fact that Riolu was literally naked.
“Well… come in?” I said, moving out of the way of the door.
He hoisted his gym bag and entered my house. As he did, he sniffed at the air. I cringed, now remembering that I’d meant to clean.
“Your parents are gone?” he asked.
“Yeah-- in Bali,” I said. “Since I’ll be out of the house anyways…”
I felt suddenly unsure. Riolu had asked to be my starter, but really, he was still free to change his mind. And if he did, at this late junction, I’d be forced to either buy an animal, hire help, or ask the neighbor’s retired police growlithe if she felt like one more go at the gym circuit.
I didn’t want to use any of my last resorts, which meant that I had to impress Riolu. Somehow.
Riolu looked around the house. I tried to surreptitiously put myself in between him and all the scattered video game paraphernalia I’d been dicking around with.
Yesterday, I had the brilliant idea to completely reorganize my collection of N64 games. But the organization was a process, and being in the middle of it was probably giving him the impression that I was a slob. You fucking moron, I told myself. You absolute fool.
Politely overlooking the mess, Lucario said, “Bali. For a business trip?”
“Ah-- vacationing. They’re retired,” I said. “We made some good investments in the stock market.”
I’d convinced them to divest from the stock market just before the 08’ crash, and then told them when to buy back in. Cha-ching!
He nodded, with a placid expression on his face.
I tried not to cringe. I could already tell I was screwing this up. Lucario had a heavily honor-based culture, right? He could probably see right through me, to the grabby, greedy child that lay at the center of my being.
This was not going well.
///
Riolu was trying his best not to show how nervous he was. This was it. This was the big day. This was his one and only chance to impress the genius trainer in front of him.
Don’t screw it up. He told himself. Keep it one hundred.
But it was hard to remember the sage advice when the carpet he was standing on was probably worth more than he was.
Riolu was really not used to wealth. On the Rez, either you worked for the government, or you supplemented a minimum wage job with welfare payments. Which basically worked out to being the exact same thing-- dependency on handouts from a foreign population that didn’t want you to die, but also didn’t particularly care if you lived.
Going on a Pokémon journey was his only chance of escape. Of making something of himself. Of proving to the world, and to the people back home, that he was more than a bastard child with a Napoleon complex.
And he was already screwing things up.
Riolu hadn’t missed how the kid had said, “we” when referring to the investments his family had made. He was like one of those corporate raiders-- those hedge fund geniuses that manipulated the global economy like financial Machiavellis. This kid was fifteen and already more successful than anyone Riolu had ever met.
And Riolu had introduced himself by bowing. Americans shook hands! It was the one thing the teachers drilled into them every single year in every single class.
He breathed faster and faster, trying not to panic.
Okay. Okay. Keep it one hundred, he reminded himself. Don’t make up for a mistake once. Make up for it a hundred times.
But-- how?
The boy motioned for Riolu to follow.
“You can drop your bag here,” said the boy, indicating towards a well-appointed room. “...if you’re planning to stay the night, anyways.”
Riolu didn’t trust himself to speak, so instead he nodded. Just once-- not a hundred times. A hundred times would have been weird. Right?
Maybe it was a test. Maybe he should have nodded one hundred times. Shit.
He brought his bag into the room and dropped it on the ground.
His weights smashed into the floor with an earsplitting crash, cracking the floorboards beneath them.
Shit.
///
Shit. Like seriously. Holy shit.
Apparently the gym bag had been filled with weights. Weights that Riolu had been carrying around as if they were nothing. Weights that had nearly obliterated the sturdy hardwood floor of our house when dropped from even Riolu’s modest height. (Very modest. Riolu was a little more than two feet tall.)
I reordered my priorities. Recruiting him would still be great, but my number-one goal had to be not pissing him off.
Humans had some sort of innate power that massively reduced the damage we took from pokemon attacks, but I seriously doubted it would be much help against those weights smashing into my legs.
“Um.” My throat suddenly felt very dry, so I cleared it. “I’ll call in someone to fix that. Lets, uh, talk about our upcoming journey?”
Riolu nodded again.
Why was he so silent? Was he judging me? Had he already decided to hate me?
Shit. Okay. I’d-- make a leap of faith-- assume he just preferred to be quiet. The strong and silent type. If he already hated me, there was nothing I could do to change that. But if he was still reserving judgment, I acting like a coward wouldn’t do me any favors.
But what could I say or do, to impress him?
My mind whirled as I tried to figure out a plan of attack.
Okay. I would begin with countering my initial bad impression. If the N64 games had convinced him I was a slob, I would have to show him that, at the very least, I could be minimally organized.
///
The kid led Riolu to a fancy, western-style dinner table, one with high chairs and a lace tablecloth. The Rez had one and only one fancy restaurant-- an Olive Garden, that Riolu had always dreamed of being able to afford. Of being able to take his mother to.
Not even the Olive Garden had lace tablecloths. This was some seriously high-class shit.
Was he supposed to have brought a bib? Riolu clambered up one of the chairs and tried not to fidget, hoping he wasn’t somehow screwing up an etiquette rule.
The kid brought out a laptop, and turned it to face Riolu. It had a powerpoint presentation already displayed, one entitled “Route Option Overview - 2012.”
“I’ve put together this--” The kid stopped talking. “Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Raphael. Do you have or want a nickname I can call you by?”
Riolu looked away from the laptop and towards the kid-- towards Raphael, shocked. A nickname? Already?
No-- this had to be some sort of test. Nicknames were only earned for two things-- for loyalty in service, or for valor in battle. Riolu didn’t have any feats by which to claim the right to a nickname.
But-- he did want one.
“I will accept a nickname when you decide on one for me,” he said, hedging his bets.
Raphael tilted his head and looked towards the ceiling. Then he looked back down at Riolu, and said, “Then if you’re okay with it, I’ll call you… Vator.”
“Vator?” said Riolu. Surely he misheard. What was a… “Vator.”
“Yes,” said Raphael, not clarifying.
Vator. Wait, not. Vader. Like, Darth Vader. The chief servant of an emperor.
Riolu felt the hairs on his back rise.
Rafael’s ambition was staggering in scope. And he was promising to make Riolu not just his subordinate, but his trusty right hand.
If he earned the position. Rafael would call him Vader. But it was not a nickname yet.
“Vader,” said Riolu, nodding. Agreeing to Rafael’s implicit offer.
“Great,” said Rafael. “Okay, back to the powerpoint.”
Then began the most important cram session of Riolu’s-- of Vader’s-- life. The human sped through a dizzying array of timetables, maps, battle advantage tables, gym challenge statistics, and metagame analysis.
Rafael casually referenced topics that Riolu thought even most humans, with their superior educational systems, would consider arcane. What in the world was a CDF? Who was Bayes and what was his law? What arcane magic did it take to produce a multivariate analysis?
Vader scrambled to keep up, trying to give the impression that he understood even half of what Rafael was saying.
At Rafel’s advice, Riolus had spent the last two years studying history, politics, and martial arts. Had sped ahead of his less-motivated peers, gone beyond what the teachers taught in class, and gained some measure of self-confidence in his education.
Only now did he realize that he was a frog looking up from the bottom of a well.
“That about wraps it up,” said Rafael. “If you want to review this presentation, I can send it to you by email. Or if you don’t have a laptop, I can give you my spare and put the powerpoint on a USB drive. Are you interested in joining me?”
Give him a laptop. Vader found himself staggered by Rafael’s generosity.
He would review the slides, Vader promised himself. He would decode their meanings one by one. He would train his mind as hard as he’d trained his body.
“I’m in,” he said. And this time, he remembered to offer his hand.
Rafel reached his own hand out, and shook.
Vader smiled ear to ear, feeling the warm glow of pride in his chest.
This was the beginning of something new. Something great, he told himself. Something almost fantastic. And he resolved--
No. He swore. That we would keep it one hundred.
///
On the plus side, I had my starter Pokémon.
On the minus side, I was now afraid for my life.
Riolu-- that is, Vator-- wore an absolutely feral smile.
“Then, you should go and… do it,” said Raphael. “I’ll watch.”
“Yes!” said Vader, with just as much enthusiasm.
A straightforward test. Vader resolved to give it his all. Though-- one look outside told him this was not the kind of residential neighborhood that tolerated tree-punching. He’d have to shadow box instead, and hope he made an impressive enough showing.
Vader went and grabbed his weights, then marched outside.
To his surprise, Raphael didn’t join him. Instead the human chose to remain inside, and watch Vader from behind the obscuration of a screen door.
Raphael tried to peer through the door, to judge Raphael’s expression. But the sunlight shining off the screen door made it almost a one-way mirror, that hid the human’s expression.
Ah, now Vader understood. No teacher graded a test as a student took it. Vader would not be receiving feedback from Raphael until he was already done.
Vader positioned himself so as to give Raphael the best visibility possible.
“One!” he shouted, punching the air. “Two!”
As he went through his regimen, Raphael pulled out a box, and began to pull… video game cartridges from it?
N64 cartridges, specifically.
Vader knew what an N64 was. The Rez’s rich kids-- the mayors’ children-- had a small collection of electronic hardware. He’d twice been invited to their birthday parties…along with everyone else in their grade, of course. Which meant he’d had two chances total to play video games. Two chances that had ended in miserable failure. During one party, the mayor’s son had beaten him almost instantly in some sort of ninja battle game, and during the second party, the mayor’s daughter had defeated him in a game that revolved around knocking heroes off platforms.
He’d found both experiences invigorating. The mayor’s children had dominated him technically and intellectually, and then sent him off with sportsmanlike bonhomie and not even a hint of bad blood. It had been a major contrast to his treatment at the hand of the bullies, to whom ‘defeating’ someone meant physically assaulting them and then injuring or humiliating them.
Ever since, he’d had a great respect for video games and the people who were good at them.
Raphael’s collection of video games was absolutely immense. Vader judged him as probably being very good at them. Raphael rearranged the cartriges in the box as Vader worked. Was there some sort of special meaning to how he ordered them?
Probably, Vader decided. Doubtless it was some sort of mnemonic ordering, used by Raphael to keep track of his thoughts about Vader’s training.
Vader continued to punch the air, hoping he was making an impressive showing.
///
I scrambled to finish reorganizing my N64 games. Having the mess around was proving to be a liability to my mental health.
In the time that it took me to do so, Vator punched the air probably several thousand times.
He was indefatigable. Seriously. He literally did not fatigue. It was crazy. I put away the N64 games, then got on my laptop.
As soon as he finished with the punching, he switched to running in tight circles. Then he started to… crawl over the dirt? Like he was trying to do a freestyle stroke, except with no water. Did Riolu learn Dig?
While he did that, I reviewed the notes I had on Riolu training.
It turned out that Riolu did, in fact, learn Dig. Though only by technical machine. How had he managed to afford one of those?
A quick check of youtube revealed that he probably hadn’t. The technique for Dig didn’t look anything like what he was currently doing.
It was a good effort though. Impressively speedy.
I ordered a Dig TM off amazon, hoping it would make a good present. I chose the “Next-minute shipping” option figuring that-- as expensive as it was, it was still only a tiny fraction of the TM's cost.
As promised, a Porygon popped out of my laptop screen a minute later, holding a shiny disc.
“Thanks!” I said. The Porygon bobbed in place.
Hmm. I wondered.
The Porygon began to sink back into my screen.
“Wait!” I said. “Can you accept tips?”
The Porygon beeped at me, and spun in place. Then it printed a bitcoin wallet into my command line.
I sent it a few fractions of a bitcoin. It beeped happily, flashed a bright light, then evolved into a Porygon-Z on the spot. “Thanks mate!” it said. It burst into a swarm of voxels and disappeared into my wifi router.
Neat.
I spent some time hunting down my TM reader, finding it finally in a pile of unopened boxes I’d gotten from amazon.
(So I’d let the money get to my head a little. Sue me. My family had been comfortably well off in my last life. In this one we were rich.)
I previewed the Dig TM while Vator belly crawled around the yard.
Hmm. The TM was… okay. But I could tell, just looking at it, that it was one of those TMs designed to be idiot-proof-- designed to teach Pokémon only the safest possible version of a technique so they couldn’t hurt themselves.
But Vator didn’t seem like an idiot. A little muscle-headed, maybe, but not stupid.
So I fired up Tor, downloaded some TM hacks off the dark web, loaded them onto my GameShark, and connected it to my TM reader.
Vator finished with the crawling, then began to crank out situps and pushups at blistering speed.
I installed the hacks, tweaked a few settings, and got out of the house just as Riolu finished up.
He stood, and faced me with a terrifyingly blank expression.
Oh boy.
Now that I thought about it, maybe giving him Dig wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe the crawling was some sort of cultural thing. Would he view my gift as an insult?
I tried not to gulp as I approached him.
///
Vader tried not to tremble as Rafael approached him..
The exercise had been easy. A warmup, really. But Vader had no idea of what to expect from Rafael’s judgment.
“You’re spending a lot of time on the ground, so… I got something for you,” said Rafael.
Vader’s heart sunk. Of course trying to substitute swimming with belly-crawing dirt had been a stupid idea. That alone had probably soured Raphael’s opinion on him. He’s probably looked like a total fool. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Though he could feel his heart breaking, Vator reached out, ready to receive Raphael’s letter of dismissal.
But instead, the boy gave Vader some sort of chunky machine. Baffled, Vader turned it over in his hands, trying to divine its purpose.
The machine had a disk inserted on one side. Vader thumbed the disk, getting it to turn inside the machine’s disk reader. Laser-etched letters spun into view.
“TM 28 DIG / MT 055 EXCAVAR”
Vader practically had a heart attack.
THIS WAS A TM READER.
Rafael added, “I’ve modified the TM a bit. The move will be more powerful, but you’ll have to be careful using it not to hurt yourself.”
THIS WAS A TM READER WITH A CUSTOM TM INSIDE OF IT.
Vader hadn’t even been aware that it was possible to modify TMs.
And Rafel done this all for him, because… because…
Why?
This had been premeditated. Very premeditated. Customizing a TM couldn’t be something that was possible in short order.
Rafael been expecting Vader to come here probably for months. At least. No-- for years. He had set it all up on our very first meeting. And now he was giving Vader the dig TM because…
Because not everywhere was the everglades. Not everywhere was an endless, fetid swamp good for nothing but mosquito bites and swim lessons. Because there wouldn’t be a lot of water in the upcoming gym matches. But there would be a lot of ground.
Rafael had known Vader would practice his swimming. And Rafael had foreseen a way to turn it from a mere conditioning exercise into something more. Some sort of pre-training, for the technique that Vader was now about to learn.
Vader began to tremble.
///
Vator was shaking. With a flat expression plastered to his face that spoke of a certainly incandescent rage.
Welp.
I had lived a good one and a half lives. To want more would be greedy.
I accepted death.
Then, in what must have been a miracle, Vader calmed. He stopped shaking, put the TM reader to his forehead, and depressed the “Play” button.
He had chosen mercy.
I backed away with as much speed as was dignified, trying to get out of his line of sight before I accidentally did something to change his mind.
///
Hours later, Vader emerged from the TM fugue to a night sky and rumbling stomach.
Raphael had predicted perfectly again, and left out a plastic-wrapped plate of rice, beans, broccoli, and fried Combusken. He’d also left the screen door unlocked, allowing Vader to take the plate inside. Raphael was nowhere to be seen, but Vader could hear the human’s slow, even breaths coming from a bedroom upstairs.
Vader ate his dinner in an almost meditative trance, still reviewing the lessons the TM had taught him. The gift Raphael had given him. This new ability-- to swim through earth like it was water.
The TM disk had already self-destructed thanks to its DRM, so Vader left the TM reader on the dining table. Then he began to cry.
All the training. All the suffering. It had all been worth it, to get here.
My Little Riolu Can't Be This Violent - 4
The middle school graduation ceremony had been on Friday. My parents had attended, of course. Because that’s who middle school graduation ceremonies were for-- the parents. No middle schooler truly cared about their diploma.
Saturday, our little family had just hung around the house. Playing board games, watching movies, and-- at least on my part, receiving well-intentioned advice from my parents.
“Always remember to wear your sunscreen!” said mom. Her starter Pokémon, a musharna, cooed.
“Nothing that breaks the skin, nothing that goes up the nose,” said my dad. “Not when it comes to drugs, not when it comes to sex.”
His Pokémon, a Reuniclus, chimed in with telepathy. “Trust us. That’s not a mistake you make… three times.”
Dad laughed, and he and Reuniclus high-fived. Mom rolled her eyes. Musharna didn’t react at all. It just span in place. Head empty, no thoughts.
They’d left the house Sunday, early-- early early-- in the morning. Kissing me goodbye and then driving to the airport to catch their red-eye flight to Bali. I’d gone back to sleep and only woken up in time to receive Vator.
But it was Monday that was the official start to summer vacation. Monday, because Monday was Trainer Send-Off Day. The official start to the gym season. When kids got registered to their starters, starters got registered to their kids, and government stipends got registered to everyone eligible for them.
And Monday was when the countdown clock started. Three months, to beat as many gyms.
Everyone who failed had to go home. Everyone who succeeded got a stay of execution: immunity from the truant hunters and continued eligibility to challenge gyms for the next twelve months. Fifteen months, in total, without school. Every teenager’s most fondly held wish.
Technically you still had to study while you were on the road, but… come on. Literally no one gave a shit. Not the students, not the teachers, and certainly not the government of the great(ly illiterate) state of Florida.
I focused on that-- my upcoming journey. Doing my best to distract my panicky hindbrain from how Vator’s entire response to learning Dig had been the polite “thank you,” he’d given me after I’d woken up. I tried to calm myself, reasoning that if the TM had been an unforgivable insult, he’d have already left. He was giving me a second chance.
Anyways--
Graduation had taken place in the school auditorium, but TSO was a parking lot event. I rolled up on my electric bike, gliding to a smooth stop. Vator hopped off the passenger seat, and I swung my leg over the middle. We walked from there-- into a poorly-contained zoo of teenagers and Pokémon.
Some of my classmates saw me arrive and gave me, variously, envious and overawed looks. I had a bit of a reputation, courtesy of my minor youtube celebrity.
I found myself unmoved by the awe and/or hatred of teenagers. One of the perks of being mentally an adult.
I walked my bike over to where our classroom was congregating, under the supervision of our homeroom teacher (Mr. Smith) and his Pokémon assistant (Mr. Mime.)
“Raph!” My best friend, Custer waved me over. He wore his year-round uniform: a camo-print hoodie and baseball cap.
“Sup.” That was Joanne, my other best friend. She wore a quintessentially middle-school goth-girl outfit, covering every part of her body with black fabric, spikes, and chains, and decking out every inch of her backpack in homemade buttons of yaoi manga protagonists kissing.
I sat next to them, and together we waited for TSO day to start.
Now, it’s true that a grown man being friends with teenagers is a little suspect. But I swear-- our friendship existed for purely mercenary reasons. I’d surveyed our entire class of middle schoolers in sixth grade to see who the ideal travel partners would be, and been proactive about making friends with the best candidates. Those being, Custer-- who’d been transplanted form Alabama and had a superlative skill at home economics, woodcraft, and reading maps. And Joanne, who had a FUCKING Haxorus.
All of my plans had been neatly falling into place, until Joanne had asked Custer out to middle school prom.
I knew both my friends well enough to see that their relationship was doomed, but even then, had zero intention of being a third wheel long enough for them to break up.
In the meantime, they snuck kisses under the shade of Joanne’s Haxorus even as the principal stepped up to the podium and began to drone on about our responsibilities as trainers.
By the way, did I mention that Joanne had a Haxorus? Because she had a Haxorus.
Her parents had raised him from the egg, and Joanne treated him like a spiky older brother. It was terrifying. As far as I knew, Joanne was the only chubby, socially awkward, middle schooler to have never been bullied. As a pair, she and her Haxorus had been voted, “most likely to be champion” for three yearbooks in a row
Custer had a deerling.
Both of their Pokémon focused, laser like, onto Vator.
If their attention discomfited him-- which I seriously doubted-- Vator showed no sign of it. He stared Haxorus placidly in the eye without even twitching.
///
Vader did his best to stay totally, perfectly still. He watched the dragon without so much as blinking.
Dragons were a type of dinosaur, and dinosaurs only noticed you if you moved, right? That’s what he remembered from Jurassic park.
Eventually the Haxorus looked away, losing interest in Vader.
Vader breathed out a shaky sigh of relief through his teeth.
///
I gaped in naked disbelief as Joanne’s Haxorus looked away, somehow losing a staring contest with a two feet tall baby Pokémon.
Vator hissed at the dragon, as if pissed that they wouldn’t be throwing down right this instant.
///
Satisfied with his examination, Haxorus looked away from his big sister’s rival’s Riolu. Plucky, that one. Good. A worthy opponent.
///
Custer and Joanne disentangled their lips long enough to notice the byplay.
“Who’s this?” asked Joanne.
“I’m calling him Vator,” I said.
Joanne and Custer nodded knowingly. “Yep. I can see why,” said Custer. “Pew! Pew!”
He and Joanne continued to make “pew” noises for a little bit, imitating the noise of steel cables getting hit by rocks and debris as an excavator bucket pulled out of the side of a mountain. I knew they’d get the reference. I brought up the RWE Bagger 288 at least twice a month.
“How’d you find him?” asked Custer.
“Remember that trip in six grade?”
His eyebrows raised. “Nice!”
He stood, and offered Vator a handshake. Vator took his hands, and for a few seconds their forearms tensed as they tried to crush the everliving bejeezus out of each others’ fingers.
Manly ritual completed, they let go and smiled warmly at each other. Custer clapped Riolu on the shoulder, and Riolu gave him a nod back.
I noticed Mr. Smith and Mr. Mime giving us the side eye. I looked back at them, tilting my head, wondering if the teacher was going to reprimand us for making a scene. They caught my gaze, shuddered, and then looked away.
The pair had never really liked me. I’d never understood why.
///
Mr. Smith told himself to just ignore the kid, and his absolute monster of a Riolu.
Raphael wasn’t judging him. And In fact, probably didn’t think about him at all.
Mr. Mime patted Mr. Smith on the back, psychically reassuring the teacher that there was no need to feel inferior to the smart, successful, rich student who was also, apparently, on the path towards Pokémon mastery.
He was already halfway to getting his student loans forgiven. Then he could actually do something with his life. Something other than babysit geniuses that didn’t need his help.
It had been a long three years for Mr. Smith.
///
We sat down again and waited for the principal to finish. Vator chose to sit between me and Custer.
I was glad to see them become fast friends, but it did make me a little worried. Even as a fourteen year old, Custer was more traditionally masculine than I’d ever been. Plus he knew how to cook, darn holes in clothes, and identify every edible flower in a five hundred mile radius around Montgomery, Alabama.
Custer was not, in my estimation, the kind of guy who’d deliberately poach a Pokémon off a friend’s team. But if Vator was already considering the idea of leaving me, now he had an alternative.
“... And with that, good travels, good luck, and good battling!” said the principal, finally ending his speech.
The student body gave him a mandatory-school-event sized round of applause. The Pokémon joined in with much greater enthusiasm-- beating their chests, screeching, and pounding the ground with hooves and claws.
The noise died down. And then, finally, it was time for our journeys to begin.
Well, almost.
The Principal leaned back over his mic. “But before you go on your adventures,” said the Principal, “we have more school tradition we’d like you to observe.”
Oh no.
There was one last caveat to our education. One last test in the school year.
And I’d been too busy brooding about Vator to gracefully escape it.
“A battle!” said the principal. “Between our salutatorian--” Julius, with his Beldum, “--and our valedictorian!”
Obviously, I had prepared extensively for this battle.
HAHAHA as if.
In reality I had no plan and no clue. Honestly, I’d sort of forgotten about it.
Maybe I should have expected to be valedictorian. I’d known, sort of nebulously, that I had a good GPA. I’d done well at school in my first life and absolutely breezed through in my second. But as a direct consequence of that, I’d never paid much attention to my grades. And indeed, I’d been so confident that I hadn’t actually thought to check the posted scores to see exactly where I stood among the graduating class
In the end, I’d discovered I was the valedictorian roughly halfway through the graduation ceremony, when the principal had called me up to give a speech. (I’d improvised on the spot. I had a special talent for bloviating.)
Anyways, the battle.
Teachers cleared students away from the area in front of the principal’s podium. Vator and I stepped forwards, out of the crowd.
I surveyed the improvised arena, but there wasn’t much to take in. It was just an open area of the parking lot, delimited with chalk.
So I looked up, and surveyed my opponents instead.
I didn’t really care about the prize-- a set of ultra balls would be nice, but I already had a dozen squirreled away in my pile of unopened boxes.
But I definitely didn’t want to lose. Why? Well, first and foremost, because Julius was a scheming little shit. I’d watched his Beldum help him cheat through three years of class. He was possibly the only person in this school less deserving of graduation-ceremony accolades than me. I almost regretted not making an exception to my firm “no snitching” policy.
But also, I didn’t want to lose because-- what if I disappointed Vator? What if he gave up on me after a poor showing, and just left?
So. What could I do to win?
Vator bounced in place, every single one of his muscles tense. Eager to fight.
What strategy could I formulate, to ensure the greatest possibility of success? What commands could I give him, to guarantee victory?
No. I was thinking about this in entirely the wrong way.
It would be pure hubris, to try to command him. Vator was strong. And he wasn’t an animal, incapable of complex thought. Trying to micromanage his fight would-- at best-- distract him. Maybe when I knew him better, after we got more of a chance to train together, I could do the boxing-coach thing and yell advice from the sidelines. But for now, all I had to offer was encouragement.
So I said--
///
Vader did his best to stop bouncing, but the nervous energy proved too much for him.
His first real battle-- sprung on him as a total surprise-- was going to be against a psychic type. And not just any psychic type, but a member of the Metagross line.
It had been more than a year since his last scuffle. And even that had just been against other Riolu, like him. Known quantities, with symmetric abilities. And while punching trees was great for conditioning, his training had taught him nothing of how to battle.
Raphael drew his attention with a wave. “We could talk strategy… but I think you already understand what you need to do here,” said Raphael. He clapped Vader on the shoulder, then turned around and walked away.
Now too nervous to even bounce, Vader froze completely in place. He had no idea what to do. Wasn’t that what humans were for? Knowing what to do?
He did his best not to panic, or look the Beldum in its single, malevolent eye.
Wait. He was looking at this from the wrong angle. Raphael hadn’t said Vader knew what to do. He’d said Vader understood what to do.
A spark lit behind Vader’s eyes. The Dig TM-- packaged understanding.
The Beldum was a steel type. And, therefore, weak to his new move.
Nervous energy became just regular energy. And anticipation. And… a little bit of awe.
By commanding Vader with such a cryptic instruction, Raphael had eliminated any chance his opponent could anticipate the move and order his Beldum to counter or dodge the attack.
Had Raphael simply taken advantage of the situation? Taken a quick mental inventory of the resources available to him and then assembled them near-instantly into a cunning plan? Or had Raphael somehow foreseen these exact circumstances? Had identified the second-best as his likely rival and laid the seeds of his defeat so long ago.
Vader’s mind boggled at the thought.
Now relaxed-- confident, even-- he stepped into his best imitation of a fighting stance he’d seen in a Kung Fu movie. And waited for the fight to begin.
///
Julius shook his inhaler, brought it to his mouth, and took a puff.
Beldum hovered near him, projecting psychic impressions of reassurance and trust.
Julius tried to meet confidence with confidence… but it was oh, so hard.
He had given everything to be here. His dignity. His morals. Three straight years of his allowance, spent on vitamins, minerals, training equipment, TMs, and experiments with held items for Beldum.
All because Raphael Agostini was a cheater. A dirty, no good, low-down cheater.
Julius had never been able to find proof… but he knew it to be true. After all, Agostini had once done perfect on a test Julius had missed a question on. An impossibility! Julius had been the first kid in his preschool class to learn how to read. In elementary school, besides being indisputably the smartest and most popular fifth grader, he’d also been the champion of both the soccer team and the chess club. No one was smarter than him. No one!
And Agostini had compounded his sin with more sin. Cheating in class after class… Stealing the respect, the status, and the power due to Julius.
And to make things even worse, Agostini was best friends with Haxorus girl!
Who wasn’t a cheater, admittedly, but still an enemy of Julius’s, for daring to have a pokemon more powerful than his.
Just the thought of them worked him up so much he had to bring his inhaler back up to his mouth.
Julius had studied until his eyes bled, and-- when that wasn’t enough had taken matters into his own hands.
The only way to beat a cheater was to cheat.
And yet-- all that hard work, all that clever cheating, had only managed to bring him to second place.
But now-- now was when he’d surpass Agostini. Now he’d show his classmates that they’d been wrong to abandon him, had been wrong to pin their hopes on a falling star.
Sure, the boy’s Riolu looked… suspiciously strong, for a Pokémon no one had even heard of before today. But that didn’t matter. Raphael was just some egghead. Haxorus girl was just some meathead. Only he, Julius, was the full package. Brains and brawn.
The principal, that old blowhard, spoke into his mic. “The valedictorian and salutatorian will send out their Pokémon !”
Julius thrust out his hand. Beldum thrummed with psychic energy and levitated out into his side of the battlefield.
“You’re up,” said Raphael. His Riolu walked out into the arena.
The principal raised his hand. “Ready!” he said. Pokémon in the audience cast layers of light screen and reflect around the arena to protect bystanders from stray attacks.
“Set!”
Julius tensed, and Beldum began to hum. Agostini, the snob, barely even reacted. In fact, looked almost bored, as if he wasn’t even going to pay attention to the battle.
The Riolu stepped into a bizarre stance, bending over almost halfway with his arms dangling towards the ground.
For the first time, Julius had an inkling that something was wrong. He’d never seen a fighting Pokémon stand like that-- ever. Had Raphael prepared the Riolu with some secret technique?
He altered his strategy on the fly, suddenly suspicious of what the other trainer had planned. That bulky Riolu must have been trained to be physically defensive. Zen Headbutt wouldn’t cut it, here. He couldn’t rely on a safe attack and type advantage. He had to reach for--
“Go!” said the principal.
--Obliteration.
“STEEL BEAM!” roared Julius.
Beldum gathered a crackling miasma of steel-type energy to itself.
The Riolu--
--started digging.
Straight down into solid asphalt.
Julius fell to his knees.
No.
It was over. Just like that.
Beldum tried to hold onto the gathered power for as long as it could. But the Riolu had all the time in the world.
Beldum discharged its power into the ground, melting all the way through the asphalt into the ground beneath. Missing the Riolu.
Beldum sunk almost to the ground, half its energy spent on just that single shot.
“We’ve still got a shot!” said Julius. “Don’t give up yet! You just need to survive one--!”
The Riolu emerged from the ground like a while breaching from the water. It brought back its fist, and then--
///
One.
///
--and then Vator punched Beldum.
Sometimes, when the the barriers around an arena were particularly weak, and a Pokémon’s attack particularly strong, battles spilled out into the audience.
It was a rare occurrence, and for the most part a merely irritating one, rather than an actively dangerous one. After all, something about humans means Pokémon attacks just… didn’t really work on us.
But as the the innermost light screens around the arena splintered and broke, I found myself extremely glad--
--that Riolu had chosen to punch the Beldum down.
The mere shockwave from his attack had been enough to crack lightscreens, I deeply pitied the poor Beldum that had taken the full brunt.
Vator landed gracefully on his feet, just outside the massive impact crater he’d left in the parking lot.
It took several seconds for the echoes to die down. Several seconds of the audience being shocked and stone, cold, dead silent.
Then the crowd began to roar. Julius pushed himself off his knees and stumbled forward toward the impact crater, crying his Pokémon’s name.
I was… grudgingly impressed at the boy’s performance. His Beldum’s attack had been impressive, though ultimately not impressive enough to outshine Vator. Maybe I’d misjudged Julius, on some level.
But thoughts of reconciling with Julius leaked out of my head as Vator approached me with a casual saunter. He brushed loose dirt off of his shoulder. Nonverbal code for, “that was easy.”
Audience Pokémon deactivated their barriers. The school nurse and her Audino rushed forward to care for the Beldum.
Belatedly, the principal declared that Vator and I were the winners.
I redoubled my private commitment not to piss Vator off.
///
Ow ow ow ow!
Vader flicked yet another hunk of molten asphalt off of his fur. He’d only seen the aftermath of the Beldum’s attack, and what he saw made him extremely glad to have been underground when it went off.
He was struck, again, by Raphael’s foresight. Dig had been the perfect option to use in that fight. And the perfect fit for Raphael’s sublime philosophy. “Just dodge,” he muttered to himself, in awe at the prescient wisdom of the words.
And he was struck, also, by how true his earlier realization had been. He had spent his entire life living at the bottom of a well, mistaking the light at the top-- mistaking the tidbits of knowledge Raphael had deemed him ready to receive-- for the sun.
But now he saw his understanding of the world had been confined to the observation of nothing more impressive than a patch of overcast sky.
The second-best’s Pokémon had launched an attack so powerful that Vader had felt its heat even while ensconced safely within the bosom of the earth.
And yet, the second-best had been nothing more than-- obviously-- the school’s second best student. A clueless egghead, probably, unable to defeat Rafael even in the academic arena. The Beldum would be too low a standard of training to hold himself to.
And yet-- that the Beldum had been such a threat anyways was a sobering indication that Vader was not as strong as he’d thought. There were heavens yet to climb. And already, he could tell that Raphael stood above them all.
///
I accepted the bag of ultra balls from the principal with what I hoped was a regal nod. Then I turned around, and gave them all to Custer. He was so shocked he almost dropped them.
“Wha--?”
“I’ve already got a supply,” I said. “Consider these a thank-you for all the jerky I’ve bummed off you at lunch.”
He clutched the ultra balls to his chest, still looking absolutely gobstruck.
There. I gave myself a mental pat on the back. If he filled out the rest of his team with captures, he wouldn’t have any incentive to poach Vator off mine.
Behind me, the principal made a choking noise. I looked at him over my shoulder, wondering if he was okay, but he was already walking away.
///
That was it, decided Principal Seymour. There would be no more end-of-year battles, ever. If the helicopter moms on the PTA wanted their ungrateful little hellions to fight to the death, they could pay for their own asphalt and their own prizes.
///
Now for my more pressing problem.
Vator was fucking terrifying.
Even if I ignored, for now, the incredible power of his attack-- as impossible as that was-- I couldn’t help but notice his impeccable timing. Fast enough to avoid the Steel Beam, but not so fast that Julius wouldn’t order it at all.
I felt totally inadequate as a trainer. Did he even need my help? He’d already managed to train his speed and power to this level without me, and he definitely didn’t need me giving him directions in battle.
I reminded myself that this was fine. Great, even! I wasn’t doing the Pokémon-trainer thing to satisfy my ego, or prove some point about being the very best. I was doing it so I had a fallback option as the future (and, therefore, stock market) diverged more and more from what I remembered. And to that end-- having a super strong Pokémon in my back pocket was a… good thing?
It was a good thing. But only so long as he stuck around. If he decided I was useless and left me behind, I’d be humiliated. When a Pokémon and their trainer parted ways, most people automatically assumed there had been something wrong with the weaker party, which I most definitely was.
And when a starter left their trainer, then people suspected exploitation, or even abuse.
But… what did I have to offer? What could I do to keep him around?
What did Vator want?
I didn’t know. So I turned to him and, though displaying my lack of awareness might lower his opinion of me, decided to just ask him my question outright.
But before I could, he said, “I’ll … even harder next time.” His aura voice flickered, turning to static halfway as some strong emotion interfered with his control of human speech.
He would-- what? He would… punch even harder next time? He would punch even harder next time!?
Thinking clearly-- maybe my assumption was wrong. Maybe he’d said something relatively innocent, like, “I’ll try even harder next time.”
But I couldn’t risk checking. Because if he was truly a battle maniac, that wanted the grass to grow and the blood to flow… Then now was not the time to reveal I was out-of-sync with his thoughts.
So I just nodded, instead. And hoped I’d guessed wrong. And decided that, no matter what, I couldn’t give him a reason to leave my team.
Because if the conclusion I’d jumped to had been his actual meeting-- and if some other, more motivated trainer got a hold of him… a lot of people could end up hurt.
///
Vader almost teared up when he saw another example of the generosity Raphael showed to his friends. If only Vader had had someone like Raphael growing up, to--
No. There was no need to cry about the past. He had Raphael here, had Raphael now, to bring Vader past the limits of his own imagination.
Vader turned to his trainer and said, “I’ll train even harder next time.” Making a promise-- to his trainer, and to himself. Resolving, firmly, to keep scaling the heights Raphael had revealed. To go even further beyond-- to work a hundred times a one hundred times as hard. To settle for nothing less than ten thousand percent commitment to whatever cause Raphael set him to.
///
Julius raged at the sky. He would defeat Agostini. He would humiliate that pissant, cheating insect. Even if it was the last thing he ever did.
So I’m not actually using game mechanics to resolve battles for this story, but…
My Little Riolu Can't Be This Violent - 6
With my battle over, Trainer Send-Off officially concluded. Students streamed out of the parking lot--on their feet, on their bikes, and on their Pokémon.
For now it was still bright and sunny, but knowing Florida weather we’d get hit by a rainstorm later in the afternoon. That meant I had to get moving, sooner rather than later. Especially given what I’d just confirmed about Vator’s mindset. I had to find a constructive outlet for his violent tendencies.
Luckily, the nearest gym was only four hours away by bike. Miami beach: famous for sun, buns, and bums.
So I wished Custer and Joanne goodbye and good luck, and set off on my Pokémon journey.
--realizing only too late that I’d forgotten to either collect Vator into his Pokéball or offer him the passenger seat of my bike.
I watched him in my peripheral vision, looking for any sign that he’d taken offense. And breathed easier, when I saw none. He was enjoying himself, actually-- wearing a little half-smile and looking at ease.
So he liked to run. Good. Maybe I could exhaust him a little… mellow out his more aggressive impulses.
We spent some time traveling in silence. Well-- traveling without speaking. We still made plenty of noise. Me with my panting breaths, with the clicking of my bicycle’s chain and the whirr of its electric motor. Vator, with his footsteps, beating an even rhythm on the sidewalk pavement.
The sun shone bright and hot. Sweat dripped down my back and stuck my T-shirt to my skin. I tried to remember if I’d applied sunscreen that morning.
Soon we were out of the suburban neighborhoods that dominated my hometown. I led us onto the South Dade Trail, which ran in between two lanes of divided highways. Today it was absolutely packed full of other young trainers. Occasionally I recognized someone, but the majority of the kids came from other area schools. They sent me friendly waves, and otherwise didn’t acknowledge me. Cars in the left lane slowed down so their occupants could yell us friendly words of encouragement, no doubt nostalgic for their own Pokémon journeys. Truckers honked constantly as kid after kid made tugging signals. Pokémon pranced and bellowed their excitement.
The skies were open, and I was-- for the first time in quite a while-- anonymous. It was almost comfortable. I looked at Riolu and… smiled. He smiled back.
I’d forgotten, somehow, that Pokémon journeys were fun. I found myself re-examining Vator’s behaviors, and wondered if maybe I’d judged him a little too soon. Maybe I’d just misunderstood him. Maybe he was just another teenager, as excited for a summer of freedom as I was. A little over-eager to fight, perhaps, but understandably so. He had skill; why shouldn’t he look for opportunities to use it?
Vator spoke up. “What’s that?” he asked. I looked to see what he was referring to, and saw a truck parked on the edge on a cross street.
I braked, hard.
“Lunch!” I declared. I turned my handlebars, checked to my left and right, and crossed the street.
///
Vader gingerly accepted his lunch from food truck employee
That today wasn’t already the best day of his life was only because the other two days he’d spent with Raphael were in competition. And there was still plenty of time left on the clock.
He’d met Raphael’s friends, and been accepted by them. He’d won his first battle without suffering so much as a scratch. And now: ice cream!
It was almost too good to be true.
He sat by his trainer, stuffed his mouth full of vanilla ice cream, and people-watched. Marveling at the panoply of other trainers and Pokémon beginning their journeys at the exact same time.
All too soon, he finished. He licked off his fingers, and wondered if Raphael would be amenable to a request for more.
He decided to hold that request, for now. Raphael was doing something on his phone, and Vator didn’t want to interrupt.
As he waited for his trainer to finish up, he wondered-- what did his trainer think about, when he wasn’t busy being a genius?
Vader felt overwhelmed by the desire to start a conversation. To become not just Raphael’s Pokémon, but his friend. But what could he talk about, besides training? Vader had no interesting hobbies of his own, and now realized that he knew basically nothing about the human.
But for some reason he found himself more courageous than usual. Maybe it was the warmth of the sun, working to calm his nerves. Maybe it was the sweet taste of the ice cream, still sitting on his tongue. Maybe it was the divine hoof of Arceus lifting him up. Whatever the cause-- the effect was the same. To make him courageous enough to just ask.
“Raphael…” he said. “What do you do for fun? Video games?”
///
I examined Vator’s face, wondering if there was any deeper meaning to his question. He seemed a little less blank than normal. And not in a bad way.
I decided to take a chance, and assume his question was asked with the best intentions.
“I’m… a big fan of video games, yes,” I said.
“What do you play?” he asked.
“All sorts of games… military, simulation… I could list every genre I’ve dabbled in, but then we’d be here for a while.”
“Is there a best one?”
“Um…” I considered his question for some time.
Our conversation was a little stilted, but I was happy for any chance to talk to him about something not directly or indirectly related to battling.
“Minecraft!” I said. “And Dwarf Fortress. And--” Wait, Deep Rock Galactic hadn’t been created yet. “And anything that involves minerals, really,” I finished, somewhat lamely.
Hmm. I wondered… The Everglades Sanctuary looked like pretty much any other small town, with roads, houses, and powerlines. Except-- in miniature. Smaller houses, narrower roads, and Lucario staffing businesses in place of humans. Had he asked me about video games because it was a shared interest? I decided to find out.
“What’s your favorite?” I asked him.
Vator’s expression returned to the blank neutral. Oh no.
“I don’t play video games,” he said, stiffly.
It would be an exaggeration to say I was crestfallen, but it was definitely a little disheartening to hear him say it like that.
“But--”
My heart rose with hope.
“--I liked punching games, when I tried them.”
Battle maniac. I held back a sigh. Go figure.
Vator turned away from me, seemingly losing interest in the conversation. I winced. I’d bored him, probably, by ranting impolitely about my interests.
Still… I was finding I rather liked him, at least in those brief periods when he wasn’t either totally silent or hyping himself up to punch something.
///
Vader felt embarrassed and ashamed. Trying to bluff like he understood video games when he couldn’t even recall the names of the only two he’d ever played.
Meanwhile, Raphael had apparently been training on military and geology simulators.
It felt like the gulf between them couldn’t be wider.
Skill issue, he reminded himself, as he always did when his insecurities bothered him. This was a skill issue-- and he could work his way out of it, by listening to Raphael and absorbing his wisdom.
And… it wasn’t like the conversation had been a failure. He’d learned more about Raphael, and now felt a little closer to the enigmatic boy.
The thought cheered him up, a little. Enough to get him to his feet.
Raphael rose with him.
They traded a look. And then set off again, for the open road.
Well, the clogged-with-pedestrians trail. Almost the same thing.
