As soon as the designated twenty-four hours had passed, we bundled the ten poke ball prototypes into a bag and made our way over to Slowpoke Well. Isaac had given Florence and myself lanterns to hold, since it would be dark in the cave; I had to grip mine awkwardly in one hand as I made my way down the ladder one rung at a time. Drowzee navigated the ladder above me, and he managed the slippery rungs pretty well for a creature that only had three fingers on each paw.

At the bottom of the ladder we paused to light the lanterns on a narrow strip of ground that bordered a wide, dark pool of water. Isaac looked a little surprised when I needed help with the flint (I had only used matches before, which didn’t seem to exist yet); Florence just shook her head in quiet judgement.

The light from the lanterns revealed several Slowpoke swimming through the deep pool of water, but none of them were close enough for us to easily reach. Isaac motioned that we should follow him through a narrow opening in the wall, and our group silently entered the main part of the cave.

Slowpoke Well was bigger than I had expected. Once we left the main entry the cave started looking a lot older, with odd rock formations here and there and lots of pools of water. A colony of Zubat had nested up in the ceiling among the stalactites (or was that stalagmites? I always got them mixed up), and their quiet chittering echoed in the air around us.

And there were Slowpoke, of course. There were lots of Slowpoke. You couldn’t walk ten steps in any direction without stepping on one of the pink creatures.

“See?” Isaac told us quietly. “There are plenty of majū for us to test the poke balls on here. And Slowpoke are remarkably placid creatures, they should not mind our experiments.”

I had to agree. The group of Zubat hanging overhead seemed a bit antsy about our presence, but the Slowpoke hadn’t noticed us at all.

After a bit of debate, we settled on trying the poke balls on a Slowpoke that was sleeping on top of a boulder near the entrance. Isaac said that I should be the one to actually use the ball, since I had the most experience with the devices. I thought about throwing the ball at the Slowpoke the way that people did on commercials on TV, but it seemed unnecessary; the Slowpoke was just lying there, it wasn’t going to run away. So I took a deep breath, crept up to the Pokemon, and nervously tapped the entry button on its back.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, pressing the button harder into the Slowpoke’s skin this time so that it clearly clicked inwards and the lid of the ball opened up. Again, nothing happened.

Maybe throwing the ball was a necessary part? I didn’t see why it would be, but I was starting to feel panicky, so I closed the top, took a step backwards, and tossed the ball at the Slowpoke. It thudded against the Slowpoke’s side and then rolled down the boulder, swinging open as it hit the ground.

There was a lump in the pit of my stomach as I swallowed and forced myself to speak. “It’s not working.”

Isaac cleared his throat behind me. “Perhaps that ball is just flawed? We do have ten copies; let us try another.”

I tried a second ball, but it didn’t work either. Then Isaac tried a few, then Florence, then Charity. None of the balls worked, no matter what we did. Every failure made the lump in my stomach grow larger.

Eventually our efforts woke up the Slowpoke, who looked at us and let out a giant yawn. I yawned as well, rubbing at my eyes. Maybe a nap would help me figure out why the poke balls weren’t working…

“Careful!” Isaac said, snapping his fingers in front of me and startling me awake. “Slowpoke yawns bring rain, yes, but when used on other creatures they have been known to make the target fall asleep. We should leave before this one resorts to more drastic attacks.”

I nodded my agreement and poked Drowzee, who was dosing off next to me. He woke up with a loud bray, which meant that the five of us had to rush out of the cavern and back up the ladder to safety. Well, it was a relative rush; the startled Slowpoke were creeping towards us, sure, but they moved so slowly that we were never in any danger.

Once we were safely out of the well, I sat down on a patch of grass nearby and set my chin on my knees. The lump from my stomach was back, but it had migrated up into my throat now. “I don’t understand,” I muttered to no one in particular. “That should have worked. Why didn’t it work?”

Florence and Charity sat down on the grass next to me while Drowzee stayed by the well, sniffing the air around the entrance. Isaac stood above us with his arms crossed. “It is not that simple, Trainer Monroe,” he told me in a gentle tone. “Perhaps the flaw is in the design, or perhaps it is in the materials. Maybe the metal your poke ball uses is necessary after all.”

I opened my mouth to disagree, then closed it. I couldn’t tell them why I knew that apricorn balls were possible; it would reveal too much. But I knew I had gotten something wrong, and I had no idea what it was.

“We should try a different material next, probably a metal,” Isaac continued, looking off into the distance. “Violet City is known for its military industry and I have a contact there, I can ask him to connect me with a mining team.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I stared at my shoes, thinking it over. When a Pokemon was captured, it transformed into its energy form. How did that happen? Was it because the Pokemon had been weakened in battle? No – there were too many stories about Pokemon willingly being caught for that to be the case. Besides, Pokemon didn’t transform into energy when they fainted; everyone knew you couldn’t catch a Pokemon if it had been knocked out.

“We can attempt a modification of the design in parallel, on both the original and new material.” Isaac was still talking, either to us or himself, I couldn’t tell which. “Perhaps we should attempt to keep the ball whole instead of splitting it in half first, that might be more suitable for capture purposes.”

“But then we would not be able to open the ball to let the majū out,” Charity pointed out from next to me. Florence nodded her agreement.

I pulled Drowzee’s poke ball out of my pocket and turned it over in my hands, thinking again. Something about the poke ball itself had to assist in the capture. But maybe it wasn’t as simple as I had thought before.

Something about the poke ball. Hmm. I peered at Drowzee’s ball more closely in the flickering lantern light. The light reflected off of the shiny red metal on the top half of the ball, and that gave me an idea.

Isaac was saying something in the background, but I tuned him out. I got up and marched over to Drowzee, then reached out and tapped him on the shoulder with the top of his ball, the part I had just been looking at. “Return,” I said quietly as I squeezed the top and bottom of the ball.

Nothing happened. Well, something happened – Drowzee turned towards me and wiggled his eyebrows in an inquisitive way. But the poke ball didn’t do anything.

“I’m trying something,” I informed my Pokemon as I rotated the ball in my hand. Then I pressed the back of the ball, where the center band ran into the hinge, to his arm. “Return,” I said again, holding the ball tight.

This time a light shot out of the center band and collided with Drowzee, sucking his energy into the ball. I nodded to myself; it was about what I had expected, though I had never tried it before.

The others had gone quiet behind me, probably wondering what exactly I was doing. I turned back to face them and noticed that the lump in my throat was gone. “It’s not just the material, or just the design,” I told the group as I cupped Drowzee’s poke ball in both hands. “It’s both. We’re missing a material that needs to be included in a specific part of the design.”

Isaac tilted his head to the side. “Can you explain further?”

I tapped the center band of Drowzee’s ball pointedly, then clicked the button to release him back onto the grass. “It’s the same idea that lets you control when a Pokemon enters or exits the ball, but I think it needs to be used to catch them as well. Something in the center band must reach out to the majū and encourage them to switch into their energy form. So we do need a different material, but the whole ball doesn’t need to change; just the center part.” I thought for a moment, chewing on my cheek. “Actually, I’m not sure you’d even need the whole band for capturing. You just need something in the opening to, uh, call out to the creature you’re trying to catch.”

Isaac nodded slowly. “In that case, what material are we missing?”

“Maybe lemons?” Florence muttered sarcastically from where she sat on the grass.

I shot her a flat look, then turned back to Isaac and shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not even sure what I’m saying is right, it’s just a hunch. But it needs to be something that could connect to a majū’s energy form.”

“A material with the same energy signature as majū?” Isaac let out a long sigh. “That is a puzzle. Well, there are stones with elemental properties that are known to trigger certain majū’s evolutions into the higher levels. Perhaps those would work?”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think so. Evolution stones only work on some species, right? We need something that would work on all majū.” I frowned in thought. “Maybe it’s related to berries? They can heal majū.”

“They can heal humans as well,” Isaac pointed out. “Perhaps metal is the correct answer after all…”

We tossed several ideas back and forth, but each was rejected as unlikely with a little discussion. Charity contributed a few ideas too, but hers were too fanciful and got shot down pretty quickly.

Eventually Florence herded us all back to the house, where we kept debating until Charity fell asleep at the kitchen table. At that point Isaac declared that we weren’t going to solve the problem in one day, so we decided to call it a night.

I eventually fell asleep and expected to dream of poke balls made of mysterious rocks and metals, but I woke with no memories of the previous night. Come to think of it, I’d hardly dreamed at all since I was sent back to the past. Or… maybe I was dreaming, and I just couldn’t remember them?

I looked over to where Drowzee was stretching his arms and trunk; he had started practicing some of Smith’s exercises in the mornings right after we woke up. I folded my arms and decided to get right to the point. “Drowzee, have you been eating my dreams?”

My Pokemon opened his eyes wide and looked straight at me. After a moment, he relaxed his arms and flicked his trunk up and down in a rather sheepish way. “Drow,” he added, looking off to the side.

I sighed. “I still think it’s weird, but I guess it hasn’t hurt me so far, so… it’s okay.” He turned and looked back at me again, his ears perking up. “I mean, you have to eat, right? And since I’m your trainer, it makes sense for you to eat my dreams instead of someone else’s. Just, uh, don’t get carried away, okay?”

“Zee!” my starter said, and then to my complete surprise he shuffled forward and tackled me. It look me a moment to realize that he was trying to hug me. I laughed, then ruffled the short, bristly fur on the top of his head in response.

I realized something in that moment. I had been mad at Drowzee at first for not being an electric Pokemon and for getting us sucked back in time and into this whole mess. But I wasn’t mad anymore. He couldn’t use psychic attacks yet and he was hard to understand sometimes, but he was also dependable and he worked hard and he didn’t mind me messing around with his poke ball. I liked my starter after all.

“You know,” I brought up hesitantly as he finally released me from the hug, “other people’s Pokemon have names. Should we come up with a name for you?”

Drowzee looked at me for a moment, then wiggled his trunk left and right in a hesitant kind of way. I frowned for a moment – he didn’t want his own name? – before I hit on an idea.

“Wait a minute! Do you already have a name?”

“Zee!” He wagged his trunk up and down enthusiastically.

“Great! What is it?”

He gave me a deadpan look. “Drowzee.”

I grinned back sheepishly. “Oh, right. Well… maybe when we figure out the mental bond thing Smith mentioned, you can tell me?”

Drowzee ears twitched happily, and wagged his trunk in agreement.