“Mr Maple,” Cashe said, glancing at Emilia. Her eyes widened and she stepped closer, leaning against Cashe to be able to hear both sides of the conversation, “What do you want?”
“To the point, I appreciate that. We don’t have much time,” Mr Maple’s voice was grainy through the tiny speaker of the pokedex, “If you ever want the chance to see your wife again, now is the time to act.”
Emilia looked up at Cashe, her face wrinkling with concern. She opened her mouth to speak, but Cashe help up his finger to his lips, signaling her to stay quiet.
“What do you want?” Cashe said again.
“I wanted you to win the tournament, but alas, I find myself disappointed. “Mr Maple sighed. Cashe felt a twinge of anxiety at the cold words, “In the next half an hour, make your way down to the engine room. Alone. My assistant will meet you there.” Mr Maple paused, “Do not be late.”
“The engine room?” Cashe shared a look with Emilia. “What do you want me to do there?”
“My assistant will explain everything to you, Mr Cashe,” the murmur of someone speaking away from the microphone came through the speaker and Mr Maple paused for a moment, “That’s all the time I have, I’m afraid. Thanks to your fumbling of the match against Mr Daye, I now have much more on my plate than I anticipated. Go to the engine room, Mr Cashe. See your wife. Do not disappoint me again.” The call ended the buzz of a cut line.
Cashe hung up from his end and put the pokedex back in his room.
“Cashe?” Emilia said.
“I’m not going,” Cashe growled. Cashe touched his belt, making sure he still had both his pokeballs with him.
“Are you sure?”
He bit his lip, locking eyes with Emilia. Hers were wide and full of concern. Not for his decision. For him.
“I don’t know.” He paced back and forth, knuckles turning white as he gripped his pokeballs in his hand.
Emilia stepped in his room, taking care not to dirty her beautiful dress. “You don’t have to do anything,” she said, “We can just stay here all night and talk if you want.”
Cashe grunted and continued pacing. He stopped and shouted in wordless frustration, kicking his bed hard.
“Cashe, talk to me.” Emilia stepped further inside his room and placed a gentle hand on his arm, stopping his movement. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know,” Cashe whispered, “He’s going to use me. He was already using me.”
“He wants you to feel scared and alone,” Emilia stepped even closer, standing only an inch away from him. She wrapped Cashe in a delicate hug. Strands of her loose hair tickled his face, “You’re not alone, Cashe. You have me. You have Lindon. You have your pokemon. Whatever you decide to do, we’re going to support you.” Emilia stepped away from him, giving him one last encouraging squeeze on his arm.
“I-” Cashe took a deep breath and closed his eyes, “Thank you.”
Emilia smiled, “Of course.”
“I’m going to the engine room,” Cashe said, making his decision, “I don’t know what they want from me, but I want to find out.”
Emilia nodded slowly, “And once you do?”
“I guess I’ll have to figure it out once I get there.” Cashe rubbed his face with a sigh.
“Okay,” Emilia brushed her hair so it fell over her shoulder, “I am going to put on some makeup and go to the party, then. I’ll see you there.”
Cashe nodded, “Let Lindon know what’s happening. I’ll check it out, see what’s going on, what Maple wants, and meet you both at the party. Nice and easy.”
***
The belly of the cruise ship was no different than Cashe remembered. Noisy and cramped, the roar of the engines reverberated through the narrow corridors of the ship. Piping ran along the length of the halls, twisting and turning in inscrutable fashion. The irregular clanking of metal on metal echoed through the hall and every once in a while, Cashe spotted movement - sailors and crew walking briskly through the corridors of the ship. If they cared that a man in a tux was making his way through the bowel of the ship, they didn’t show it. Nobody even gave him a second glance.
Cashe followed the groaning of the engines, making his way through twisting halls that Lindon had dragged him through just a few weeks prior. The halls soon became cramped with machinery and doors leading off to many rooms. He slowed, moving forward cautiously. It would be trivial to get lost down here.
“Apollo Cashe?” Cashe turned his head, almost passing a corridor that he hadn’t noticed. The speaker was Mr Maple’s green-haired assistant, yelling to be heard over the rumble of the engines, “I’m here to take you the rest of the way!”
Cashe nodded and followed her. She was not dressed for a party, wearing the tight business suit that so many of Mr Maple’s employees favored. She marched through the corridors, guiding Cashe through the twists and turns of the ship.
“How long until we reach the engine room?” They had been walking for a minute already.
“We are already in the engine room.”
“What?” Cashe glanced around. He saw many whirring machines, their purpose unknown, but he did not see the enormous metal machines made of pistons and moving parts that he associated with an engine.
“It’s all the engine room!” The assistant said again, not slowing down to offer an explanation.
Before long she brought him into a control room. Cashe froze in shock upon entering.
It looked like something from a science fiction movie from the 60’s. Square, boxy machinery ran along one side of the room, painted a pale green. The machines had screens on them, with glowing buttons, various levers and dials, and even a few old fashioned corded phones all attached. The room overlooked another, this one appearing closer to what Cashe expected from a ship’s engine room. Rows of massive machines vibrated below them, working to keep the ship moving.
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There were two chairs in the room, occupied by two of Mr Maple’s employees. They, too, wore their standard green suits with a little star embroidered on the lapels. They were engaged with the machinery, eying displays and adjusting a few things as they worked.
But Cashe’s freezing had nothing to do with that, however. A Drowzee sat in the middle of the room, a hand placed on the heads of two people, dressed in bright orange overalls and wearing safety helmets, passed out on the floor. They looked unharmed, but unconscious.
The door to the control room closed with a bang, cutting off much of the noise coming from outside the room.
“What the hell is this?” Cashe pointed to the unconscious engineers. The green-haired assistant paused looking over her shoulder at Cashe, “Relax, Mr Cashe, they are fine. Just taking a little nap. They won’t remember anything when they wake.”
“Why?” Cashe said, still not moving, “You can’t do that to people!”
“We can and we have,” the assistant’s voice was cold and uncaring, “We need the engine control room. They are unharmed. Let’s go, Mr Cashe. You want to see your wife again, don’t you?”
Cashe hesitated, but stepped past the Drowzee and its unconscious prisoners, following the woman out the door on the far side of the room. He was in this far already. He would see this through.
The exit led to a set of narrow stairs, steep and lined with a bright yellow railing. Cashe followed the woman down and around another twist in the corridor, coming to a spot out of sight from the control room above. It was between two massive engines, the loud rumble of the machines nearly deafening.
A third machine, pulled from the pages of a sci-fi horror, sat between them engines. Half a dozen employees in their green suits were working on the machine, attaching cords and cables to it and various spots on the engine. Maintenance hatches on the engines were open, exposing the moving parts inside.
The machine looked almost like a low surgical table. The silhouette of a man was grooved into the table, creating a shallow bed where someone was clearly supposed to lie. Straps dangled loose around the wrists, ankles, thighs, chest and head to secure the person in place. A crown of chrome and wires sat just above the top of the silhouette, held in place by an arm. Lights glowed on it and Cashe could see an array of sensory pads lining the inside edge of the crown.
A Gothita and Espurr were hooked up to the machine as well, similar sensory pads attached to their heads and chests. The underside of the machine was a mess of wires and tubes, twisting in sinister fashion, casting strange shadows in the flickering light of the engine room.
“What’s this?” Cashe said, stopping again to observe the scene in front of him.
“This is your ticket home,” Maple’s assistant said.
“How?” Cashe looked at the machine. It did not look like any sort of device he would use to travel dimensions.
“You were brought here by a pokemon called Jirachi,” Maple’s assistant said.
Cashe nodded. He knew that.
“When Jirachi uses its power on something, or whenever any powerful pokemon uses their specific powers on something, the energy leaves a residue. Like radiation.” She gestured to the machine, “This machine picks up on that radiation and can transmit it across vast distances. It will call Jirachi to you.”
Cashe blinked.
“Once Jirachi is here, we will capture it,” she continued, “from then, it is only a matter of time before Mr Maple reaffirms his bond with it and uses its power. You won’t be needed for that. You can go off and enjoy your life as you see fit. And you should. It will only be a few days before you return home.”
“You’re going to capture Jirachi, just like that?” Cashe frowned, “I doubt a pokemon that powerful will be happy to be captured.”
“It won’t have a say in the matter,” the assistant said, her voice flat, “Mr Maple will have already acquired the Master Ball by then, and the only way to escape a Master Ball is to already have a trainer.”
Cashe let out an involuntary gasp. They were going to steal the Master Ball. The prize for the entire tournament.
“That prize is for whoever wins this,” Cashe said, “You can’t take that away from the winner.”
“It is a small price to pay for seeing your family again, wouldn’t you agree?” The assistant said with a small shrug, “Now, step up to the machine, Mr Cashe.”
Cashe bit his lip. He didn’t disagree, it was a small price. “How long will it take for Jirachi to arrive?” Cashe said.
“Minutes, most likely. Jirachi likely has the ability to teleport to us.”
Cashe nodded, “Why here? Why not wait until we dock, or do this at another spot on the ship?”
“Are you backing out, Mr Cashe?” The assistant gave him a flat look, “It does not matter. If you wish to see your family again, step up to the machine.”
“I’m not getting in that thing until I understand what’s going on,” Cashe subtly touched the pokeballs on his belt.
The assistant’s eyes narrowed and she frowned, “We need a tremendous amount of power to increase the range of the machine to cover the globe, and doing so will likely render the power source unusable in the future.” She gestured to the various cables being attached to the engines. An employee looked over at her curiously at her movement, “We will likely drain all the fuel the ship has in a very short period of time. Very few places exist that simultaneously fit the criteria of both providing us with that power whilst also being insignificant enough that cessation of function would have little impact.”
“So this will leave us stranded in the middle of the ocean?” Cashe said, clenching his fists.
“We are hardly in the middle of the ocean. We are a few hours from shore, at most. Losing power would have rescue efforts here before the sun set.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you care about people enough to actually worry about that kind of thing?” Cashe said.
The assistant’s frown sharpened, “We are ambitious, Mr Cashe, not monsters.”
“Fine,” Cashe sighed, “One last question. What is Maple going to wish for?”
“Wish for? I am not sure what you are talking about, Mr Cashe.”
Cashe scoffed, “I know all about Jirachi,” he said, “I know that it was a wish that brought me here and I know Jirachi only grants a limited number of wishes. I doubt Maple is going to waste one on sending me home.”
The woman’s frown faded, and she smiled, a rapturous expression overcoming her face, “He is going to wish the world better, Apollo, he is going to make everything clean and pure.”
“What does that mean?” Cashe said. He narrowed his eyes. When people started talking about purity things never went well.
“There is so much corruption in the world,” the assistant gushed, her cold expression gone, her eyes shining, smiling so wide it looked painful stretched across her face, “People, pokemon, age, pollution, thoughts. Imagine it. A world without dishonesty, without conflict or lawlessness, all the corruption in the world sent back to whence it came. A world as seen from the eyes of a child, but true!”
“What is he wishing for?” Cashe said.
“For us to return! For pokemon to return to their own natural habitats, for people to go back where they belong, for innocence and curiosity to be brought back to the minds of the youth, for greed and pride to return to the minds of the greedy and proud, never to be seen again. Never to be thought of again! Can you imagine it? Oh,” a look of sorrow crossed her face for a moment, “But you will miss it all. You will be returned home, as your very presence corrupts the world that is not your own.”
Cashe twisted his face into a disgusted grimace, “He’s going to control people’s thoughts? He’s going to force people to do what he says, act in ways he considered pure?”
“He is great,” her words were almost a moan of ecstasy. She clutched her hands together in front of her shaking at the very thought of a ‘pure’ world, “No one else can be trusted to make it happen. No one else is even ambitious enough to think it possible. Be he does and he will.”
Cashe sighed, forcing the look of disgust onto one of firm resolve. He took a deep breath and nodded to himself, pulling Ivysaur’s pokeball off his belt.
“I’m sorry, Jen,” Cashe whispered, “It doesn’t look like I will be coming home after all.”
*****