After a few hours, Smith decided that we had done enough work for the day and left. I took a few minutes to lay on the ground with Drowzee and wheeze, because I was exhausted. I didn’t move until Florence started pulling at my arms.
“Get up, Monroe,” she grumbled, tugging more insistently. “You promised the others that you would explain how this strange ball works. I too would like to learn.”
“Just give me another minute,” I whined, too comfortable with my vertical position to move. “Why do you care about poke balls anyway?”
Florence rolled her eyes. “You know I want to find my partner majū. Once I do, it would be far safer and more convenient to have a device that could protect them and help them move over distances, as yours does. Otherwise, I could remain shackled to the sea, like Trainer Robert and his Tentacruel. Or what if I bonded with a Slowpoke? You have seen the pace they move at.”
I didn’t have a good reply to that; her argument made sense. Instead, I let out a gusty sigh and forced myself up on my feet. It took both me and Florence working together to drag Drowzee up into a standing position; he really wanted to stay on the ground.
“If you’re so tired, you can go back in your poke ball,” I finally offered. Drowzee gave me a look and firmly shook his trunk left and right; apparently he had gotten used to being outside his ball. I raised my arms in exasperation. “Well, then, you’ll need to keep up!”
The three of us made our way back to Isaac’s house (with Drowzee lagging further and further behind as we went). When we got there, we found that Michael and Isaac were having some kind of boring adult conversation in the kitchen while Charity sat to the side, picking through a bowl of fruit with her Slowpoke.
Isaac perked up as soon as he saw us. “Excellent! Now may we discuss this poke ball further?”
I grabbed an apple from Charity’s bowl, then took a seat at the table. I rolled the fruit around in my hands, trying to decide how to start, as Drowzee dragged himself up to sit on the chair next to me. Everyone in the room was staring at me, waiting for me to explain. Strangely, it didn’t make me nervous; it just made me excited. I liked talking about machines and how they worked, after all.
“There are two important parts to the design of a poke ball,” I began, thinking back to my dad’s explanations in the workshop in our apartment, “capture and control. First, you need to capture a Po – a majū, keep them tied to the inside of the ball. Second, you need to control when the majū enters and exits the ball.”
“For the capture half, you have to make the majū switch into its energy form.” That got me a bunch of blank looks, so I tried to explain. “Majū are different from humans at a basic level. They have a physical form,” I gestured to Drowzee, to the sleeping Hoothoot on Michael’s lap, to Maisy gnawing on a slice of apple, “but they can also take on an energy form for a short time. Like, you know how majū sometimes light up when they use a move? It they glow brightly during their attack, that’s their energy form.”
Michael sat up straighter, looking startled. “I have seen that before,” he interrupted (I took the opportunity to bite into my apple, then made a face; it was tart). “My partner and I were attacked by a particularly angry Nidoran once, and Hoothoot’s usual attempts to dissuade the attacker didn’t work. When we were backed into a corner, she suddenly startled to glow with a golden light, then charged the Nidoran and took it down.” He gently smoothed the feathers on Hoothoot’s back. “The move seemed to hurt her as well, so we have not tried it again, but it was much more powerful than her usual tackling attack.”
“Exactly!” I grinned at Michael. “When in her energy form, Hoothoot could gather a lot more force. But she wouldn’t be able to hold onto that form for more than a few seconds usually.” I pulled Drowzee’s poke ball out of my pocket and held it up for everyone to see. “That’s what makes the poke ball so cool. It can make a majū change to its energy form, then keep it going forever. Because the energy can shrink down so much, it can be held inside the ball until you choose to release it.”
“Fascinating.” Isaac leaned closer to me as he took in every detail of the ball in my hand. “How is that possible? Shouldn’t the majū immediately revert back to its original form and break the container open?”
“Usually, yeah, but the inside of the ball is designed to stop that from happening.” I carefully aimed the ball away from Drowzee and clicked the activation button on the front of the ball twice; it flipped open, showing the lines on the interior of the device. “There are grooves on the inside of the ball that sort of urge the energy to flow in certain directions. That leads it all to the center band –“ I pointed to the thin black band of metal that bordered the top edge – “where the energy can run in a circle. That constant circular movement? It keeps the majū from going back to its physical form.”
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I tilted Drowzee’s poke ball up so that the inside of the ball was more in view. “The control half is all about the entry button. It controls when the majū can leave the ball by opening or blocking the entrance.” I pressed the button on the open ball, showing how the aperture opened when the button was down. “When the window is closed, the energy just keeps going around and around; when it opens, it forms a path out of the ball back into the world. Once the majū has left the ball, it goes back to its physical state.”
Florence, who had been sitting quietly next to a wall up until that point, frowned. “That sounds dangerous to me. This device can capture any majū, no matter how strong? That puts far too much power into human hands.”
“It’s not that simple,” I admitted. “The button isn’t perfect. A majū who doesn’t want to be captured can usually force the entry open from the inside. Where I come from, it’s common to battle first, to weaken the majū. If they’re weak when they enter the ball, it’s lots harder for them to break their way out. The stronger the majū, the harder it is to capture them.”
I snapped the ball shut, then turned to Drowzee so I could demonstrate. But something made me hesitate. Drowzee seemed to like being outside of his ball; would he be okay with being sent in and out so much?
Well, only one way to find out. “Drowzee,” I asked, “can you help me show everyone how your poke ball works?”
Drowzee turned to look at me with his ears perked up. Then he said “Zee, drow,” and wagged his trunk up and down.
“Cool.” I aimed the ball directly at Drowzee, then pressed down on the button. A bright red light shot out of the entry and connected with him; he glowed briefly in turn, then condensed down to energy and was drawn into the ball.
I didn’t release him right away. Instead, I turned to show everyone the occupied ball. “See how there’s a faint light behind the entry button? That’s Drowzee’s energy form, inside the ball.” I turned the ball back to point at the empty chair and pressed the button again; now the beam of energy shot back out to pool into Drowzee’s shape, sitting back in his original position. “And now he’s back outside, so there’s no light.”
“Incredibly fascinating,” Isaac said quietly. His eyes were lit up bright, and it looked like his hands were actually shaking with excitement. “Can you demonstrate on another majū as well? Perhaps Trainer Michael’s Hoothoot, or my daughter’s Slowpoke?”
“Now wait a minute,” Michael interjected immediately. “No one is putting my partner inside a, a ball.”
“It sounds like fun,” Charity chimed in, “we could try it, right, Maisy?”
“Sloooow.”
“Wait, wait,” I blurted out before things could get out of hand, “it doesn’t work that way. Each poke ball can only be used with one majū.”
Isaac leaned back with a frown. “Why?”
“It’s how the control part works.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking about how to explain; I’d always been shaky on this part. “When a majū is first captured, part of their energy… it sort of fuses with the center band. That part doesn’t leave the poke ball, even when they’re let out of it. That’s how you can return a majū just by pressing a button – the part in the ball reaches out to the part outside, and the two connect.” I set Drowzee’s poke ball on the table and gestured to it. “Drowzee’s out here right now, but there’s a bit of him that’s still in there. You can’t catch another majū in this ball when it's, uh, occupied.”
Isaac hummed quietly, then reached out to the poke ball. “May I?”
I hesitated; I felt odd about having someone else touch my Pokemon’s ball. It was the only poke ball we had, though, so I’d probably have to get used to it. Still feeling uneasy, I nodded.
Isaac picked the ball up and examined it, running his hands over the outside. “This seems to be an unusual metal,” he murmured. “Does it only work because of the metal?”
“I don’t think so. The metal just makes it less likely to break. It’s easy to find in, uh, Galar, so we use it there.” I took another bite out of my apple and watched closely as he peered down at the hinge. There was nothing in the poke ball that would give away that it was from the future… right? “You just need a container that you can hollow out and fit with a capture band, something that can be opened and shut. But something like this apple wouldn’t work, it’s way too soft. The ball needs to be made out of something sturdy that won’t break easily.”
“Like an apricorn?” Charity volunteered from the side of the room.
I actually dropped my apple in shock. Yes, exactly like an apricorn, but how in the world had she figured that out? Then I looked over to where she was sitting and saw that she was currently… holding an apricorn from the bowl of fruit in her hands.
“… yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, that would probably work.” It would definitely work, but I didn’t want to reveal how much I knew just yet.
Michael had been watching Isaac examine the poke ball. Now he turned and focused his dark brown eyes on me. “Trainer Monroe, this all seems rather, ah, complicated. Forgive me, but you are only a child. How do you know all of this?”
“My dad,” I said quietly. “He makes poke balls. He talks to me about his work sometimes, and lets me help him.” I sunk down in my seat, tracing patterns in the wood grain of the table with my eyes. “… I miss him.”
And suddenly I was aware that I really, really did. I missed talking with Dad, and making plans with Mom, and sleeping in my own bed. I had only been on my Pokemon journey for three days, yet I was unfathomably far away from my family and my home, and I couldn’t even call them to hear their voices and see their faces. I blinked rapidly; I refused to let myself cry in front of all of these people.
Michael looked like he was about to say something, but Isaac stood up before he could. “Well!” he exclaimed as he put Drowzee’s ball down on the table. “With that kind of experience, Trainer Monroe, you will be an incredible asset to this project. Together, I am sure we will have a working poke ball prototype using local materials in a matter of days.”
I swallowed hard, then forced myself to smile. It might have come out a little lopsided. “I think it might take a bit longer than that.”
I had no idea then just how right I was.