“…You know you found a good pokemon by the spark in its eyes, every Pokemon Master calls it a different thing and explains it differently, hard work or killer instinct, the driver or the grinder, the hunger for conquest or the appetite for victory, but all of them agree on one thing: Pokemon who don’t have it might reach mountains, pokemon who have it… They go far beyond.”
The one and only pokemon laboratory of Azalea was smaller, much smaller, than most. A two-story building right between the limits of the new and modern central district and the old and traditional Slowpoke district. A sign on the front of the building had written "Azalea City Laboratory", the words curving along the edge of a big painted pokeball above it. To the side of the pokeball was a drawing of a Slowpoke giving the lab a bit of a personality.
It was not that Azalea didn’t have the funds to fund one big laboratory or two, which was common for a city with its size, or to maintain a proper pokemon professor full-time. It was just that there was not much incentive to it. Azalea did not have a tradition of generating great trainers, nor did it have many corporation headquarters like Goldenrod, a military science and innovation complex like Olivine, or a powerful and rich clan of dragon masters who funded everything like Blackthorn, in fact, the first pokemon that the orphans of the city “caught” came from Leader Bugsy, when that role should be filled by the city’s pokemon professor.
What were the benefits of having a pokemon professor in your city? Someone more civically minded might ask.
A lot. If they invented something that could be commercialized, like Professor Oak with his Pokedex, and registered it in your city, then that city would gain a portion of the royalties of that product. Their research might help in some way the city itself, like Professor Ryan who, with the help of grass and ground types pokemon, created a new type of soil for Pewter that was fertile, Pewter City was now almost entirely self-sufficient where before it needed to import a giant volume of food from other cities.
Did Champion Lance and Elite Four Lorelai have to Fly or Teleport over to Celadon to tell its food industry that, no, they could not in fact sabotage the Pewter City efforts to make food more affordable and that if they tried it again, they all would be locked up indefinitely?
Yes… Well, the benefits of living in a martial state some would say.
Another great benefit of having a pokemon professor was network. Say that the pokemon professor of Goldenrod needed someone with certain specific characteristics, abilities, and knowledge, and the only person in the world who could fulfill these requirements lived in Azalea, what was he supposed to do? Call the very overworked Gym Leader? The busy Mayor? Or the understaffed and underfunded laboratory assistants and ask them to search for this person amongst hundreds of thousands of people?
You are not going to find that person.
So it was a surprise when THE Pokemon Professor Samuel Freaking Oak asked me in a letter to go to the Azalea laboratory so that the LAs there could connect to the laboratory of New Bark Town where Professor Oak was visiting because he wanted to make me, ME, a work offer.
I looked at my watch. Fifteen to 7 a.m.
“Hera?” Cape said stoically, probably wondering what I was doing just standing still for at least two minutes.
I bowed a little to him. “Sorry, sorry, I'm just a little too nervous about talking to The Samuel Oak.”
Heracross scoffed a little and I glared at him, I knew I shouldn’t make him nervous but. “Professor Samuel Oak won the conference twice and was Champion for an entire cycle before he became a pokemon professor.”
His eyes opened wide and now he was standing still, Cape was probably the biggest fan of conferences and because of that knew how difficult it was to win it all. Conference winners are like super celebrities to him, which for the pokemon world they were, and I had told him about the championship and still chuckled when I remembered that he had grumbled for weeks because they were not available for civilians.
After waiting for him to recover we walked to the door, the poor bug type still rigid at the thought that he was going to see a Champion, and knocked. Almost immediately, the door opened, and a lanky and tall man who appeared to be in his thirties, with brown receding hair, and glasses and dressed in formal clothes with a lab coat atop it, appeared and scanned me up and down for some seconds.
“You must be Scott Wood right?”
I exchanged a glance with Cape. “Yes.”
“Great, come with me.” He seized my arm and yanked me past the entrance, into a corridor and past three rooms, one full of electronic devices, another that looked like a server room which had a Snorunt who snored in a comfortable round bed, probably to not let the server overheat, and another full of scraps and pieces of metals in which one Magnemite floated around.
I looked behind briefly to see if Cape was following. He was easily keeping up with us with his wings while looking at everything with curiosity, he was still a fairly young pokemon so he was still very impressionable about new places.
At the back of the two-story building, we reached a location the size of a large bathroom. It was empty except for a bulky computer with a big screen, a big keyboard attached, and four chairs. The LA, who briefly announced himself as Mike, seated me and Cape, who before Mike addressed him I could have bet he hadn’t noticed. He reached for the control panel and before touching the keyboard turned back to us.
“Are you ready or do you need something before we connect to New Bark?” he asked, sweat dripped his face, apparently he was more nervous than us.
“Could we maybe… Get a cup of water?” Cape nodded in agreement.
He nodded, picked a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped his forehead, and said. “Of course. I will just start the call and then I will get a jar for you two.”
He then turned and started to type on the keyboard. The screen, which before had an interface that showed servers with the words ready written near them, flicked for some seconds, and then a loading screen appeared. It took a while which didn’t help my nerves or those of Mike, who sweat a little more.
Finally, the screen changed to a generic white laboratory background, and a man who looked fifty years old was seated on the other side of the screen. He looked to the side at something.
The man had brown hair greying on the sides, brown eyes, and tanned skin, his face was rough, however, he sported the same small smile that he always seemed to have in interviews and documentaries, it made him seem as if he always had a joke ready to go. He wore a red shirt with the same lab coat as Mike. He was, without a doubt, the most famous professor in all of the Pokemon League, Professor Oak. The image was a bit blurry though.
“Hello? Is the connection good?” Said the professor, the voice came a while later than the time his mouth moved. Then came the sounds of a keyboard being typed and everything seemed to stabilize and now we could see the image very well.
“That’s better.” He looked towards the camera. “Hello there! I am Professor Oak, I would guess that you boys are Laboratory Assistant Mike and Mister Scott Wood and Cape, right?” He said and I was startled a bit at the fact that he already knew Cape’s name.
“Yes! Professor Oak, we are.” Said Mike, standing very straight, arms on the side.
“Excellent! You did a good job Mike, I will be sure to send commendations to your resume.”
“Thank you, sir! I will be going now but will, very briefly, be back to bring water for them as per their request, one second please.” Then he quickly walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The professor turned to me. “It is a pleasure to meet you, young Scott.”
“No, the pleasure is all mine, Professor Oak.”
He laughed. “So polite. If only my grandson was more like you, but I digress.” He waved his hand in the air. “Do you know or perhaps imagine why I called you here today?”
“I don’t know, sir, but probably someone or someplace to which I sent my resume might have forwarded it to you as some sort of recommendation?”
“Excellent guess, but no.” A knock on the door interrupted him. “You can enter, Mike.”
The laboratory assistant entered the room with an entire jar of water and two cups and very quickly poured the water into the cups, gave each to us, put the jar on the side arm/table of the chair by my side, and then left again.
When the Professor heard Mike close the door, he continued. “Well, as you might already know, every year pokemon professors are obligated to produce a one-year research. We can, of course, continue with the main work of our lives, in my case, updating the Pokedex and learning more about pokemon and the bond they can have with us, but we also need to show more immediate results sometimes.”
I nodded. Everyone minimally acquainted with the profession knew that. Something that the famously modest Professor didn’t say was that he was the one who instituted those rules and guidelines when he became Champion of Kanto more than fifty years ago. He had basically shaped the profession of pokemon professor by himself, not only with hard directions enshrined in law but also by how he conducted himself. He was the original professor that, at some level, all other professors modeled themselves after.
He nodded, satisfied, and then his smile seemed to become a bit more honest. “Well, this year I am going to study the effects of the ambient in certain pokemon species in Alola, there are what trainers from the Pokemon League call alolan forms, Rattata, Meowth, Grimer, and even a new type of Exeggutor, amongst others, that have different appearances, types, moves, and behaviors…”
As the Professor continued to speak about Alola and his research I started to panic. Professor Oak wanted me to go to Alola to capture different forms of pokemon but Alola wasn’t part of the League and didn’t have a conference… Well, I mean it would probably not be too bad if I worked for him for the standard one-year contract. I could come back and start the circuit the next year, it's known that the pokemon assistants of Professor Oak have a very good salary and he would pay entirely for my license and food for my pokemon.
…Yeah, I could absolutely do it.
“…Yes, it will be a very busy year. I still have to call our newest Pokemon Professor Kukui to… Ah, I see I have lost you, it's fine, I have this nasty tendency to ramble about whatever I am thinking at the moment. Many people call it a curse but I think it’s a gift actually!” He laughed.
“I'm sorry, professor.” I straightened up. “Then you would like to employ me to go to Alola with you, correct?”
He froze mid-laughter. “What?! No, I am going to Alola, you, most likely, will not.”
It was my turn to freeze. I looked at Cape, who also looked puzzled as well so I knew it wasn’t just me that was confused. We both turned back to the professor. “So what we would be assisting you with?”
He coughed and adjusted his lab coat. “Well, before we get to that we need a bit more of my perspective to understand the matter at hand. Is that alright with you?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I nodded. “Of course, Professor.”
He smiled. “Let us start by, clearly, the start. To put things in simple terms I, three months ago, asked my smarter and more intelligent than me companions, my Exeggutor and Alakazam, to search, for one entire month, in all kinds of papers, records, and archives all across the regions affiliated to the Pokemon League for the person that would be most compatible with thirty questions that I gave them so that they can find me the perfect candidate.”
My eyebrows rose in awe. He had just instructed two, at least Elite-level pokemon, to spend one month searching for the most perfect human just for a job, and they accepted it.
“Perfect candidate for what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“Well, now that is a secret. However, if you pass this interview, and it is really an interview do not worry about that. I feel it will be a very good exchange for the both of us.” Seeing my silence as approval Professor Oak’s smile became a little more humorous. “The famously called most intellectually gifted singular-mind pokemon and the most intellectually gifted three-minds pokemon known to man, Alakazam and Exeggutor, devoted hundreds of hours, four hundred to be specific, to compile a list of individuals who fit my criteria, and then organize them in a ranking list, and in the first place, you, Scott Wood, with 93.3 percent match.”
“… So, What does that mean?”
“It means that we are having this interview right now.” I gulped as he pulled out a stack of papers. “Data, statistics, and crude raw information have their place, but I found, in my experience as a scientist, that sometimes, most times actually, you need context. So let's look at some context.”
He pulled the first page from the stack and his eyes went over it. “It says here that until you reached eight years old you were a little troublemaker, not unlike my grandson, a little bit worse in fact, broken windows, pulled girl’s hair, terrorized after other children and pokemon in the street, got sent home from school seven times in one year and then suddenly, you’ve changed. Some months after your ninth birthday you became the most well-behaved child in your orphanage, began to help the matron, the helpers, and the other children, tend to the orphanage’s garden and take care of pokemon who visited, began to always bring home straight A’s from assignments and tests… How does that work? Why did you change?”
I started sweating as I finally realized that having a Pokemon League officer look over your life might be very… I don’t even know how to describe that.
“…Ahn.” I tried to think of something that someone would say in an interview. A very, very harsh interview. “I think that… What started my change of behavior, the reason I mean, was because I became interested in pokemon and pokemon battles, and began to focus a lot on that goal—”
“Would that interest have something to do with the book ‘Pokemon Trainer Manual’ by Master Luke Masao, the second edition, to be precise.”
My eyes widened. How does he even know about that? Is he spying on me? How? I just read the book, in my closed-off room, one hour before going to sleep! I took a deep breath, realized that this was probably going to be the hardest interview of my life, even more than the Pokemart one, and just nodded nervously.
He nodded in return, still smiling, and discarded that paper to the side in favor of another one. “Out of thirty questions, there were two which you did not pass. One of them was “Did the person ever commit a crime before? If yes, what crime and why?”. Evidently, I should have been more specific because in this question they, my supposedly brighter-than-me companions, wrote that when you left your orphanage, at fourteen years old, you ‘stole’ a book from the orphanage’s library. Matron Elena, a good woman I assume, did notice it but chose not to speak about it, and simply let the book go with you.”
Mother Elena knew?! The fact that I stole the book from the orphanage’s library still made me feel very guilty all those years later, so much in fact that I sometimes avoided going to visit the orphanage. My heart began to race and I began to sweat even more. “How did they get that?”
He looked at me, his sharp eyes seemingly probing my face through the screen, then looked at the paper again. “Before you left, there were one hundred and seven books at the very small library of the orphanage, and exactly when you left, three days apart to be precise, Matron Elena changed the number to one hundred and six. She reported in her monthly inventory to the city council that one book was too damaged to leave in the library so they tossed it away.” He looked at the camera again, straight into my eyes. “The book that she reported that was too damaged was, coincidently, of course, your favorite book. The one that you reread every month since your ninth birthday, correct?”
Damn. Now I'm just afraid. What was he before becoming a professor? Special forces? I was stunned.
He sighed at the look on my face. “I know its not really… appropriate to employ this type of surveillance for a simple appointment. However, after the troubled times we faced two years ago and the infiltrations in the League and the Indigo government by Team Rocket it was decided that there needs to be a more incisive process to determine who will work in public service. I will respect it if you want to walk away now but you must know that I am not here to judge or belittle you just because one time, when you were younger, you swiped one book. Everyone has something they did that was not right in their youth and by your face you are not exactly proud of it, right?”
I nodded. It was true that the war with Team Rocket had shaken the confidence and approval of the Indigo government and its Officials and that now they were extremely strict, especially to gym leaders, but also to all positions even tangentially related to matters of national security. As someone who accompanied the news very closely at the time, I praised them when they decided to “squeeze” the leash so to speak. It would be a little hypocritical of me to criticize it now. Besides, it is a chance of a lifetime for a few hours of embarrassment. I took a deep breath and nodded again.
“So?” he asked. “How did that book change your troubled and difficult young life? Be completely honest and, again, I am not here to judge you, I am here to understand you.”
I took a sip of water and waited for a whole minute for my mind to form some type of coherent thought. “After I read that book for the first time I found… I—I guess I could call it my calling, or vocation, or whatever. After reading it I watched some battles and read a little more about being a trainer and talking to Mother Elena and my friends I decided that I wanted to become one and that I could only do that if I did as the book said and put my life in order and sought to do better myself.”
“Interesting.” He moved on and pulled another paper. “At fourteen years old, the age where you need to begin preparing to leave the orphanage, the orphans, under the companion program, are given by the League representative of the region, who is almost always a pokemon professor, one pokemon for them to take to their new home, to help with anxiety, nervousness and other unfortunate effects of no longer living together with your family and, or friends. As Azalea City doesn’t have a pokemon professor.” He stopped to click his tongue in disappointment. “That falls under the purview of the local Gym Leader, in this case of course, Leader Bugsy, who, for the sake of time, instead of searching for a good match between child and pokemon, just administers a test based on knowledge of pokemon and pokemon care to form a ranking in which the first place has first pick of pokemon, the second has second pick and so on and so forth.”
He turned the page and analyzed it for a second.
“I don’t exactly agree with Leader Bugsy's methods but it is his gym and at least he makes the children who did awful at the pokemon care part of the test take summer lessons about it.” Professor Oak said with a smile. “Now, out of fifty-five participants on the test, you got first place, with a total of forty-four questions answered correctly from a total of fifty. Congratulations by the way, and then…”
He moved his chair slightly to the side and on the empty space on the screen appeared a video that began to play, I immediately recognized the place. It was the grassy and green battlefield of the Azalea Gym.
Two women entered the arena each followed by a file of kids. The two matrons of the two orphanages of Azalea and their children. That was a video of the day when we, the orphans of Azalea, chose our pokemon.
The gym field was cleared of the obstacles that it had when the trainers came to challenge Leader Bugsy for the badge. And instead, there was now fifty-five pokemon, fifty-five children, the two matrons, five gym trainers, a mean-looking Yanmega, and Gym Leader Bugsy, who called the first place and then congratulated me with a handshake. Of the fifty-five pokemon, there are five files of ten, and at the front of them five.
The video didn’t have audio, so it didn’t pick up what Bugsy said to me but I remembered it like it was yesterday.
He stood at my side, with his characteristic bug catcher clothes, and said, “I hear that you want to be a pokemon trainer, the five pokemon at the front are the ones which I have total confidence can reach at least elite level if you train them right, you should choose one of them.”
An intelligent looking Paras, a very serious and still Venonat, a Scyther with crossed arms, a very muscled Pinsir, and a very normal Surskit. I could not just sit there all day thinking about it, there were fifty-four children after me, and so, in that nervous spot, I remembered the advice on how to pick a pokemon in the Pokemon Trainer Manual. It didn’t glorify the ones who were born strong and knew it, but the ones who put in the hard work and had the motivation, the spark in their eyes.
The video then showed me pacing back and forth between the five pokemon and looking just at their eyes to see who had that. The pokemon were obviously confused, the other fifty pokemon stood behind them, waiting, and when I reached the place between the Pinsir and the Surskit I saw him. A glaring Heracross who looked at the five in front of him like it wanted to just walk over there and challenge them for a fight for their spot.
No. It didn’t even want to be amongst the five. It wanted to beat every single one of them and then stand in front of them. The only one. The best. Right then and there I knew, those five prized pokemon might work hard or push themselves to be great, but they wouldn’t work harder or push themselves like that starved-for-glory Heracross.
The younger me on the screen walked past the five and pulled the Heracross out of his line. He looked extremely confused, but soon beamed as he noticed that he was the first pick.
The Heracross in question grabbed my hand and squeezed.
My friends called me crazy, stupid and an idiot, even Mother Elena wasn’t too sure about that. It didn’t matter. The surprised and, after some seconds, approving sharp look from Bugsy said it all. I had passed a test, walked right into another one, and passed again.
The video ended and Professor Oak came back to the center of the screen, he looked a bit more serious than before. “Very impressive.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t look at Cape because he was probably on the verge of crying and then I would cry too. “Can I get that video?”
“Of course, I will send it to you. Let's continue.” He pulled another paper. “You work at a Pokemart in the morning turn, which means that you passed through their extremely rigorous selection and training process. Then you also work as a referee on the side after your shift, you are earning well above the average, and sinking money into preparing for a pokemon journey.”
He pulled three clipped papers. “These are the many positions that you applied for, laboratory assistant with a focus on pokemon training, programs for people who want to become trainers, and trainer sponsorships applications. Thankfully you didn’t apply for work of the less savory kind, pokemon hunters and slayers are, unfortunately, needed, but it's rare that one never strays away from the law.” He looked to the side at someone. “Real law, not one-time book theft.”
“Yeah, I saw those… Jobs but I never was drawn to them, I want to train, not capture, kill, or sell pokemon.”
He hummed and laid a little back on his chair. “Elucidate to me then, why do you want to go on a pokemon journey, and more importantly where do you see yourself if you continue this road? What is your objective? The eight badges? Conference winner? Elite Four? Champion? Just becoming a master perhaps.”
“The reason…” I looked at Cape, who looked back. “I think that there is not something deep about it. It is just the simple fact that I like it and that I think I can do it.”
The Professor put a hand on his jaw. “What do you mean by can? And what would be it?”
How could I say that without sounding arrogant? “I… Watch the conferences every year and I see the same boring matches and the same battle tactics. I know that I can do that, that I can get to that level and then go beyond it. My objective is to surprise and dumbfound my opponents. I want to create new strategies, new tactics, new moves, and new approaches. I want to see my route opponents, the gym leaders, my conference rivals and the crowd completely lost at the sight of what I will bring to the field, power, versatility, and creativity on a level never before seen… That is what I imagine when I shut my eyes to sleep every night and I want… And I feel that I can make it a reality. So I want to try.”
Professor Oak’s eyes widened at my improvised speech, he recomposed himself and then sighed. “We’ve indeed been in a box for quite some time, and I do have some blame for it.” He saw my inquisitive look. “Learning is great, but when you catalog and classify too much, it can become a mold that is difficult to break away from. The new trainers read the Pokedex and articles written by great trainers and pokemon professors and they see a route to be traveled and not a machete for them to cleave a new way never before explored… You know, I watched you and Cape train, a refreshing new approach with Aerial Ace, continue to work on that.”
I felt pride inflate after such praise from Former Champion Oak. It even made me ignore the blatant admission of spying.
“So if you began your journey in two years, what would be your goal?” He asked.
I paused for a second. “Conference winner.”
He froze for some seconds and then laughed loudly “Haha, you’re very lucky, I'm not going to offer you a job at the lab or the field.” He grinned and pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I will sponsor you as a trainer and you will begin your journey this upcoming season.”
My eyes bugged out and I almost jumped off my seat. That was fantastic, amazing, a job would be good but a sponsorship would mean that I would only be focused on the journey, training, and trying to elevate Professor Oak’s name by participating in tournaments and other fast events. Well, in my case maintain his good name, but why start this season? “It needs to be this season?”
“Of course, a pokemon trainer who desires to be revolutionary must be prepared for when the plan changes,” he said smiling wide, “so now the perks, every pokemon trainer sponsor gives to their sponsored particular benefits which function as the “brand” behind the trainer. I, as a person whose name carries a certain credibility, have to do right by my trainers, then let me talk about those benefits, starting with…”
He bent down and picked up something from under the table, it was something that vaguely resembled a suitcase but smaller and more futurist-looking. He put it on the desk and opened it by pressing a button on the side. Inside it were three pokeballs neatly fitted in three circular slots. “Fire, Water, or Grass, is a question that every sponsored trainer of mine has to answer.
“Now Scott. Which one is going to be a part of your journey?”