We were escorted through the night to an ordinary-looking stone building that turned out to be the city’s prison, and the soldiers shoved us into a large cell built to house multiple people. The cell wasn’t empty; another person was already sitting on the bench attached to the wall. I had thought maybe we’d meet Michael or one of the other visiting trainers there. I certainly hadn’t expected this man.
“What are you doing here?” I asked the Violet trainer bluntly. He was the apprentice who had escorted us to the medical center, the one partnered to a Ledyba. I still couldn’t remember his name.
The heavyset man looked up at me briefly, then sighed and looked back down again. “Didn’t react the right way when the general told us the plan,” he said dully. “Shoulda kept my mouth shut ‘stead of saying it didn’t feel right, using the wild majū like that. So they put my partner in one of your cursed balls and sent me here.”
“Oh,” I said lamely. I had kind of assumed that he and the Pidgey trainer were just Edwin’s lackeys. Clearly it wasn’t that simple.
“My condolences,” Hisa said seriously as he sat down next to the large man. “Cyril, yes? You are not alone in this – they took our majū too.”
Florence cast a quick look back into the main part of the building, where a soldier leaned casually against the only door that led back outside. Then she hurried forward towards Cyril (I tried extra-hard to fix his name in my head this time). “You know this area best,” she said quietly. “How can we escape? Can we dig a hole? Overpower the guard?”
Cyril stared back at her blankly, then slowly shook his head. “We can’t escape,” he said in a low voice. “The building is solid stone. Even if you get past the guard, protocol says the door stays locked at all times, and the guards outside have the keys.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said glumly. “They’ve got our majū. We can’t leave them behind.”
Florence’s mouth tightened, but eventually she nodded. Isaac didn’t look quite so pleased.
“We cannot just sit here and let them run rampant over the whole region!” he hissed while gesturing wildly and pacing back and forth. “We need to plan something!”
“I do not think conquering all of Johto will be quite as easy as Finnegan thinks,” Hisa suggested. “Calm yourself, Isaac. We will have time to talk this through.” He leaned back against the wall and trained his eyes on the lone guard in the room. “For now, let us see how the situation unfolds for the others.”
I wasn’t able to share Hisa’s equanimity, not after seeing how the rest of the night went. Soldiers brought in first Kiah, then Luca, and neither of them had their Pokemon partners. They both had been caught sleeping, just like us, and hadn’t been able to fight back at all. For a while after that we were left alone, and I started to hope that Michael had gotten away. But as the tiny slit of a window high up in our cell showed that the sun had just started to rise, a new pair of soldiers dragged him in. His clothing was rumpled and one of his sleeves was torn, but he looked pleased with himself.
“They did not get my girl,” he told us with a fierce smile as soon as the guards had left us to our own devices. “I will admit they caught me unaware – I did not realize the other guards on the wall were watching me in particular. But she saw them as soon as she returned from her –“ he glanced at the guard standing by the door – “ah, hunting. The cowards tried to catch her in a net, but she tore it apart and escaped.” His eyes gleamed he looked around at all of us, but his smile quickly faded. “Did none of your partners get away?”
A series of quiet head-shakes and a self-effacing shrug from Hisa answered his question. I looked down, my stomach twisting. I couldn’t help but think that maybe, if Pausso hadn’t been in his ball, maybe we could have done something. Was this all my fault?
Michael ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. “Skies preserve us,” he said quietly. “This whole situation is rotten.”
“That is putting it mildly,” Isaac replied with some heat. He had settled down on the bench next to Hisa while the night wore on, but now he stood again and paced up and down the length of the cell. It was starting to get crowded, so he had to step around Michael and over Luca’s legs to do so. “Well, clearly all of us outsiders have been caught in Finnegan’s net. There is no point in continuing to delay. Has anyone come up with a viable plan?”
“Isaac, we have company,” Hisa said in a tired voice as he pointedly looked at the guard by the door. The soldier grunted and shifted slightly.
“Yes, of course.” Isaac turned around with an almost-manic look in his eyes and leaned forward against the bars of the cell, his eyes focused on the guard. “You cannot possibly be happy in such a position. Do you want resources? Opportunities? I am sure we can find a way to –“
“Hold your tongue,” the guard drawled. For a moment it looked like Isaac would keep speaking anyway, but then the guard put a hand on his knife sheath. “Hold your tongue, or I will silence it for you”.
That made us all fall silent for a good few minutes, and Isaac retreated to sit back on the bench again. Then Michael sighed. “You all look like you were dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, and I have not slept for a full day. We should rest.”
“You want us to rest now?” Kiah asked in a ragged voice. I glanced over at him in surprise; he hadn’t said a word since he was brought in earlier that night. He’d just sat against the wall on the floor and huddled up into himself, looking miserable.
“You cannot help your partner if you are sleep deprived,” Michael said softly. “Do it for them.”
Easy for him to say when his Hoothoot wasn’t in enemy hands. But it wasn’t like I had a better idea about what to do. So I curled up on my side in one of the corners and stared across the cell to where I could see Luca curled up next to Florence. The boy had tear tracks on his face and was shaking slightly, and Florence kept patting his back automatically, like she wasn’t sure what else to do.
My mind kept turning around and around in circles as I lay there. What if I had kept talking with Pausso and came to an agreement with him, so he could’ve still been awake when Finnegan arrived? What if I had noticed Finnegan’s fishy behavior earlier? What if I had insisted that we release the wild Pokemon right away instead of holding them in reserve? The thoughts swirled about in my still-aching head, giving me no peace.
Despite it all, I eventually managed to fall asleep.
~
I jolted awake briefly a few hours later when the cell door clanged open and Isaac was escorted out. I heard him ask the guards what they wanted and where they were taking him, but they didn’t reply; they just closed the door and led him out of the building. For a brief moment the room was filled with sunlight as the door to the outside world opened. Then it closed and we were back in the dark.
I was worried, of course. Isaac was my friend, and who knew what they were going to do to him? But I was also exhausted. So after a few minutes of blearily trying to think of something I could do to help, I fell asleep again.
Sometime later I woke up as light washed over the cell. I blinked hazily and watched two guards pull Isaac towards the cell. Then I sat upright, suddenly fully awake. He was limping, and a massive bruise was spreading across the right side of his face. What had happened?
Before I could say a word, a third soldier stepped forward and pointed at me. “You. Trainer Monroe. Come forward.”
On one hand, I did not want to go through whatever had just happened to Isaac. On the other hand, sitting in a cell wasn’t going to help me make any progress. Maybe I could do something useful if I went along with their instructions.
“Up, boy,” the guard snapped, and I found myself jumping to my feet without any conscious input from my brain. And there was the third factor: I was just too scared to go against what the soldiers told me to do. Some trainer I was.
I lowered my head and didn’t look at the others as I walked up to the door of the cell, and I kept my head down as the guards let me out of the cell and pushed Isaac in. I didn’t want to see what the others were thinking, whether they felt bad or looked hopeful or were judging me. I couldn’t handle the weight of expectations on top of everything else.
So I followed meekly as the soldiers opened the door to the prison and led me outside. I did glance up at the sky as we started walking down one of the streets, but it was cloudy, so I had no idea what time it was. Probably still morning, since I was only slightly hungry.
I tried to look around and gather information as I was escorted who-knew-where, but the city honestly didn’t look any different than it had the previous day. Soldiers still roamed the military district, running all kinds of errands. It was kind of depressing to see that the world still moved on when everything had changed so drastically for me.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
After a few minutes we arrived at a building that looked like every other building. Inside was another large, open space in the design that Violet seemed to like so much. And here I was finally able to learn something new, because the building contained people working with the wild majū.
On one side a small cluster of soldiers and a woman in a nurse’s uniform had gathered around a Vulpix who was lying on the floor, fast asleep. The woman gave one of the soldiers a small box; he held it under the Vulpix’s nose, which made the fox sneeze explosively and wake up. The Pokemon looked around, disoriented, but a second soldier recalled it into a poke ball before it could do anything more. I saw him make a mark on the top of the poke ball, then pull a new ball out of a sack. Behind the trio the apprentice who had a Pidgey stood with his bird perched on his shoulder, looking bored.
Closer to the back of the room, Edwin and Fearow were talking to a Nidorino. The Pokemon had crouched down low with his back up so that his spines jutted out, but he appeared to be listening. Tomo stood slightly behind Edwin with a notepad out, ready to write at a moment’s notice.
And close to the front of the room, watching it all unfold, stood General Finnegan. My stomach lurched unhappily and I felt hot all over when I saw him. How could he look so calm and collected when he had just betrayed all of us? Did he not even care?
The soldiers marched me up to Finnegan, and I stood there uncomfortably for what felt like several minutes while he observed the work happening in the room and occasionally muttered comments to a short man taking notes at his side. By the time he turned to look at me Edwin had finished with the Nidorino and moved on to the next target, this time a pair of Growlithe.
“Ah yes, Trainer Monroe.” Finnegan smiled in a way that felt entirely superficial. “I understand from Trainer Edwin and Researcher Tomohiro that you were an integral part of this poke ball development project. I have a few questions for you.”
I kept my mouth shut and glared at him. I was still scared, sure, but I wasn’t going to go belly-up and give Finnegan whatever he wanted right away.
He didn’t seem to care. Instead, he turned and called across the room. “Researcher Tomohiro! Come join us.”
Tomo looked across the room and nodded, then started making his way over to us. Edwin looked up too and must have seen me, but he quickly turned back to focus on whatever he was doing with the Growlithe.
“We are making good progress with the wild majū, sir,” Tomo said happily as he reached us. “They are quite responsive to Trainer Edwin’s Fearow. Only three of the last fifteen have reacted poorly.”
“It’s the damnedest thing, seeing wild creatures won over by words instead of force,” Finnegan said with a chuckle. He turned to dismiss the soldiers who had brought me in, then escorted Tomo and me over to a free corner of the room where two chairs stood around a low table. The two men sat down, leaving me to stand awkwardly opposite from them.
Could I maybe run and escape while they were distracted? No, that was stupid. The city was full of people who worked for Finnegan, I wouldn’t get far. Besides, how could I run away without Pausso and the others?
“I will tell it to you straight, young trainer,” Finnegan said as he leaned forward and steepled his fingers together. “These poke balls of yours? They are a game changer. And that means we need a regular supply. So, you are going to tell us how to make them.”
I bit the inside of my lip and kept my mouth shut as I frantically thought back on what they already knew. Isaac had told anyone who would listen about the theory behind poke balls, I knew that for sure. But had he actually talked about the engineering process? I didn’t think so.
Even knowing the theory, it had taken us a solid month and a half of work to figure out how to make working poke balls, and that was with my future knowledge, Isaac’s scientific methodology, and Charity’s uncanny ability to make connections the rest of us couldn’t see, not to mention easy test subjects in the form of Slowpoke. How much longer would it take a group without those advantages? Maybe twice as long? That could make or break how this conflict developed.
Finnegan looked at me over his hands in a piercing way. “I know you research types get jealous of your findings,” he said casually, “but I am afraid I must insist. You will tell us what we need to know.”
Well, now I knew why Isaac had looked so horrible. They must have tried to make him talk and he’d refused. If he could be brave, so could I! My hands and legs were shaking in fear, but I resolved then and there that I wouldn’t say a word, no matter what.
“No,” I managed to squeak out finally.
The general raised his eyebrows. “Oh? You will not tell us what we want?”
“I’m not going to help you take over Johto,” I muttered through gritted teeth.
For a few seconds Finnegan just looked at me. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I know what you must be thinking,” he said in a cool voice. “You think I am the villain, and you are going to be the hero. You think I am now going to thrash you about to make you talk, and you will be brave and defy me through it all.”
I stared back at him and tried to force my legs to stop shaking.
“Child, this situation is far more complex than you understand. There is value in unity and cohesion. My goal is not to destroy our region; it is to make it stronger. Others may disagree, but I know what I am doing is right.” He sat back in his chair, still watching me. “In any case, there is no need for me to beat you. I have other ways to make you talk.”
I frowned, not sure what he meant. Then he pulled something out of the pouch tied to his side, and I froze.
He was holding Pausso’s poke ball.
“I find it very curious that your personal version of this device is so different from all the others,” he said casually as he turned the red and white ball around in his hand. “It looks far more refined and sophisticated. There is a story there, I am sure.”
I thought as quickly as possible. Okay, so I hadn’t expected this. Still, this could prove to be an advantage. If he accidentally released Pausso, I could get him to use Confusion or Hypnosis to take the general down from a distance. Though would we be able to get out of the building on our own? Probably not – as soon as Fearow noticed us, he’d come after us and we’d be toast.
“Researcher Tomohiro,” Finnegan said quietly as he kept staring at me. “Will you tell our guest what you told me earlier?”
“Certainly, sir,” Tomo said evenly. He flipped through a few pages in his notes, then cleared his throat. “Isaac told me yesterday that a majū’s energy is connected to the center band of the ball. Trainer Edwin reported that when you disconnected the wild majū from their balls, you spoke of how important it was that the majū be released first, and you took great care as you separated the band from the container halves.” He adjusted his glasses. “My hypothesis is that, should the device be damaged in any way while the majū is still contained, this may damage their energy form as well. Unfortunately, due to current limited resources I have not been able to test this theory.”
I noticed that my shaking from before had gone away. Now I was standing very still, too still, like I didn’t dare to move a muscle. I knew what they were threatening now, even if I didn’t want to think it.
“What do you think, Trainer Monroe?” Finnegan asked quietly as he slowly turned Pausso’s poke ball around in his hands. “Should we test this theory?”
“You just need two parts,” I blurted out. “Something to serve as the container – we used apricorns – and tumblestone for the center band. It’s a kind of glowing stone that we found in Union Cave.”
Part of me was horrified about what I was doing, but what choice did I have? A vivid memory from my childhood, from when I was just six years old, had popped into my head unprompted. A family friend had dropped their Goldeen’s poke ball outside; it rolled into traffic and got run over by a bus before they could get it back. Poke balls were made to be sturdy, but they weren’t that strong, and the impact had cracked the top half of the case and bent the center band, trapping the Pokemon inside. My dad was able to seal the chassis and warp the band back to the point that he could activate the poke ball’s release feature. But when the Goldeen came out, her tail and some of the back part of her body were just gone. Permanently. And that was a good outcome! In the bad cases, a Pokemon would be stuck in their ball forever.
I couldn’t let that happen to Pausso. I just couldn’t.
Finnegan nodded seriously. “Tumblestone, hmm?” He leaned back in his chair and gently tossed Pausso’s ball back and forth between his hands. “Describe it.”
I rattled off how the pebbles and stones had looked in the wild, keeping my eyes trained on the ball moving between Finnegan’s hands the whole time. When I was done, he smiled and slipped the ball back into his pouch.
“You wrote all that down?” he asked the man sitting to his side. Tomo had been busily scribbling away on his notepad while I spoke; now he nodded. “Go talk to the miner’s guild. See if they have seen something like that before in the caves to the east. If they have, we can send a small expedition out today.”
Tomo got up, bowed, and then scurried off towards the door. Finnegan stood up and stretched slightly, then smiled down at me like a Sharpedo. “Your cooperation is appreciated,” he told me. “We will speak again soon.”
I felt positively horrible for the entire walk back to the prison. I had broken so easily, and this was just the beginning. Surely Finnegan would insist that I describe how to actually craft the components next. It wouldn’t take three months for them to make their own working poke balls; we’d be lucky if it took them a week.
For that matter, what if they just made me make them poke balls? I could try to fail on purpose, but I doubted the general would let me get away with that for long.
All of these thoughts roiled madly through my brain as I was escorted back into the prison and led straight into the cell with all the others. They all started talking at once, asking if I was alright and what had happened, but I just shook my head and looked for Isaac.
He was sitting in the middle of the bench, carefully leaning back against the wall. The skin around the bottom of his eye was red and swollen, and his palms and knuckles looked bloody. I felt awful just looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, breathing deeply to try to keep myself from tearing up. “I told them about the tumblestone. He threatened Drowzee, so I had to.”
Isaac stared at me for a few moments. Then he shrugged. “It is what it is,” he told me. “They would have found out eventually.”
I just stood there and looked at him. “Really?” I asked. “That’s it? They beat you up and you stayed quiet, but you don’t care that I gave in so quickly?”
Isaac frowned for a moment; then his forehead smoothed. “They did not beat me in an attempt to get information,” he said wryly. “Finnegan said something and, ah, I lost my temper. I tried to punch him. All of this,” he gestured at his face and down his body, “was retribution.”
My eyebrows shot up high. Isaac punched someone? That didn’t sound very like him at all.
Still, it didn’t make me feel better, not really. “I messed up,” I said miserably as I sat on the bench next to Isaac. “Now they’re going to find tumblestone somewhere and force us to make them new poke balls, I just know it.”
“Well, perhaps eventually,” Isaac said in a tired way. “But I think we will have some time before that happens.”
“Really? Why?”
Isaac looked back over at me and smiled sardonically. “I overheard the general talking to one of his subordinates when he brought me in,” he told me. “They plan to leave for Ecruteak tomorrow, and I cannot imagine they plan to take us with them.”