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CHAPTER III

NOT SO SIMPLE

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(-o-)

Once we were safely within the confines of my backyard, we took turns seeing each other’s pokémon. Rubert took his Slowking out first, introducing himself then Charli and I. Charli was well into it, grabbing the pokémon by its front paws and speaking to it like a child. I didn’t know much about the Slowking species, only that apparently, it was a completely different animal than its pre-evolution, Slowpoke. I had been expecting a lazy-looking, half-witted thing, but Slowking’s wide-open eyes and sure-handed movements indicated that it was anything but. I understood the comments about the difference immediately.

The Shellder-crown chomping down on its head looked funny and somewhat silly, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Rubert appeared pleased, wearing a smile that did not fade.

“They say that Slowking can put some professors to shame,” the eighteen-year-old commented. “I’m going to give it all my schoolwork from now on.”

A small laugh burst from me, and Charli exclaimed, “that’s why you picked him!”

Rubert chuckled guiltily. “It’s one of the reasons. The other is because it’s already fully evolved. That means it’s probably the strongest of the lot.”

It was true, evolved pokémon were normally way tougher than unevolved ones. That said, I could not recall the last time I saw a Slowking in the Indigo League Championship Show, so my opinion was that it couldn’t be all that powerful to begin with.

“But there was Mr. Mime,” Charli said, “and Espeon, too…”

Rubert opened his mouth suddenly. “Ah! I forgot about Espeon… Yeah, I thought about it for a sec, but felines creep me out. And Mr. Mime is just weird.”

“There was an Espeon?” I said, surprised.

“Yeah,” Charli replied. “Isabel got it.”

Espeon evolved from a rare and mysterious pokémon called Eevee, which had a bunch of different evolutions that featured prominently in trainer events. I was sure that getting your hands on any of them would make you stand out anywhere. Good for her, I thought. No wonder she’d seemed beyond stoked.

“What about that other girl… Anna?” I said, curious.

“A Ralts,” Rubert replied quickly. “Absolutely fitting.” He grinned and looked at us like he was waiting for a reaction, but he didn’t get one.

“Fitting? Because she works in a tailor shop? … Ralts looks like it’s wearing a dress? …”

“Ohhh,” Charli voiced, nodding with a smile forming on his lips.

Slowking had been watching us the whole time, possibly wondering why it was surrounded by three big kids. It saw me looking its way and its eyes relaxed, corners of its wide maw stretching ever so slightly. Was it smiling? It made my blind eye begin to itch, and I looked away nervously, suddenly feeling like we were with another person and not a pokémon beast.

“I’m bringing mine out!” Charli declared and pulled the pokéball out of his pocket before flicking it into the air. A tiny, purse-sized bird gleamed before us, and as the light faded, the green and red hues of its feathers deepened. Its beak was mustard yellow and sturdy-looking despite its small size. It chirped immediately and hopped over to Charli, who squatted down and put his hand out to greet it. “Hey, Natu! How’s it going, little guy?”

The tiny bird pokémon hopped up and down and produced such an odd squawk, that we all laughed, startled. It had a character.

I watched as Charli picked it up and cradled it in his arms before standing, and I couldn’t help but smirk. “Why’d you go for this one, again?”

Charli was beaming at his new companion, barely sparing me a look as he answered, “he’s going to evolve one day… and when that happens, I’ll be able to soaaar through the skies.”

“Nahhh,” Rubert muttered cynically. “We’ve only got a couple weeks max with them, dude. There’s almost no chance you’ll get him to evolve before then.”

Charli’s demeanor did not change. “Don’t you think he’ll let us keep them?”

Rubert grimaced and shook his head. “Probably not. They’ve been with him for ages.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s only lending them to us for the job.”

“I’ll beg him for it,” Charli insisted. “He’ll give it to me.”

And then, as if wanting to change the subject quickly, he said, “bring that Drowzee out, Tom! Let’s get another look!”

With my turn suddenly up, I became anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, feeling around for the golf-sized pokéball, trying not to let any hesitation show. I pulled it out and pressed the button with my thumb. It expanded in my hand, fitting snugly between my palm and fingers. The sensation had always been satisfying when I did it with Glee’s pokéball. Doing it with your own pokémon – even if it was just borrowed – felt even better. Inside this ball was a being that could touch powers that no human could ever hope to match. Inside was a being that would follow my commands and protect me.

I thought back quickly to my mother’s Zigzagoon, how its small, snarling mouth yapped threateningly at my father’s Treeko, and how Treeko’s eyes widened, and its pupils grew to fill the irises before baring its own tiny teeth in response.

It all happened a lifetime ago, and the memory of my fear was dull and distant, but I had learned something that day. I would not – could not – underestimate a pokémon again. However tiny, however small. However harmless or cute it may look.

I uttered a silent prayer in my heart: Be good, Drowzee, and I tossed the pokéball gently up so that when the white light surged out and met the ground, I caught the empty pokéball on its way back down.

“Yeah!” Charli whooped. “It’s so stylish, man!”

Drowzee let out a jovial cry, seemingly aimed at Slowking, who waddled over and pawed playfully at Drowzee’s snout. I took a few moments to really take in my partner’s appearance. Though it looked like skin from further away, its whole body was actually covered in the shortest layer of fur possible. You’d have to be really close to tell. It gave off a much cozier impression when you realized that.

“Look how great friends they are,” Charli said. “It must have been all that time they spent working together with the professor.”

As if to agree, Drowzee let out a low, trumpeting grunt.

“I bet this guy would fetch a bucketful of money on the market,” Rubert said, eying Drowzee thoughtfully. “There’s people who collect rare colored pokémon like this.”

I blinked. “I wonder what made it this way…” I thought aloud.

Rubert shrugged. “It hatched this way, the professor said.”

“Is it male or female?” Charli said, out of the blue. He looked down at his Natu, then at Slowking. “I can’t tell with any of them, actually.”

It was a good question, one that would be hard to be sure of without some poké-gear.

Pokémon didn’t have the ‘bits’ showing like humans. Males and females could often look identical, unless with certain species like Nidoran, whose genders were glaringly easy to tell apart. Also, when it came to breeding, it was well known that different species of pokémon could breed together so long as they weren’t too dissimilar. The pokémon egg, however, would always be of the mother’s specie. Apparently, this sort of crossbreeding was almost non-existent in the wild, and only a discovery that had been made in recent history, when early pokémon tamers began holding a range of different species in captivity. Many people still believed that pokémon reproduction was a mystical thing.

“I’d say Slowking’s a dude, for sure,” Rubert stated. “He’s got some bro vibes going on. Drowzee too.”

“Right on,” Charli agreed. “As for Natu… I just can’t tell.”

“Ask the professor,” I suggested.

We spent the whole time up until five minutes to seven, chatting about all things pokémon. I noted again how little my phantom itch had acted up, and I wondered if it was really pokémon I was afraid of, or simply pokémon violence. No, I thought, I had been triggered plenty of times by the local pokémon even though I knew they posed little threat to us villagers, so I chalked it up to another welcome coincidence.

We all returned our new friends to their pokéballs, hid them well within our clothes, and set out to Kakuna Main Hall right before the calling bells rang for the general public meeting. I was jittery, wondering what the committee would announce, if not our new capture mission.

When we got there, it turned out to be about nothing much other than the current state of things and what was being done about it. Again, I noticed how much the children outnumbered the adults, with the younger ones grouped up in rows like as if in school. You could tell they were all worried because there were no smiles and no whispers amongst themselves. I calculated that if what Isabel and I had overheard earlier in the day was true, there would still be a good number of adults who weren’t affected, but that still meant there’d be a few dozen kids, myself included, who had lost a parent figure to the coma.

I spotted Lenn among the crowd, then the young woman called Anna with Isabel herself. The older girl had a sisterly arm over her junior’s shoulder, and the two seemed to have hit it off pretty well. They probably found comfort in each other, being the only girls on this assignment.

Myke and Kieran were off near the front of the assembly. Myke had a slick, black racer jacket which I’d only ever seen him wear when he was going ‘out’ out. He had his arms folded and exchanged frequent whispers with Kieran, who was not too far off in style.

The gathering must have been of a hundred people or so and knowing that there were eight of us peppered among them who had been chosen for a special mission made me feel like an undercover secret agent. I didn’t know about Rubert, but I was sure that Charli, next to me, felt similar. His eyes had a constant smile to them, as if the smallest spur was all he needed and he’d be off to the races. The few times my gaze met with another ‘hunter’, as we’d been called, there was a knowing twinkle in the eye and I sensed that a new type of bond had been made amongst us. We were the people the village would be counting on, even if ninety-nine-percent of the villagers didn’t know it. We were the people that Gran would be counting on, and I felt grateful for them all, from Charli to Lenn. Yes, even Lenn. It was true, there might have been a few other kids who could have taken his place, but I doubted any would be as knowledgeable about pokémon as he was. He had probably been an easy pick to make for the committee. Then there was me, known for my aversion to get near pokémon, through pure dumb chance that Isabel approached me, and through pure whimsy that I followed her. Why she recommended me was also pure guesswork, but if I did have to guess, I’d wager it was because she just didn’t fathom why I would ever give up on the chance of a lifetime, receiving a pokémon from a professor and taking it to help a loved one while at it.

I had not realized just how special a hand fate was dealing me.

***

“We are all goin’ off in our own directions, there’s no two ways about it,” Myke said, plunging the group into a thoughtful silence.

When the assembly had finished, the whole secret group had gone up to one of the locked rooms on the second floor. Mrs. Colbs had opened it for us and told us we had an hour or so to use it while she handled some paperwork in her office in one of the adjacent rooms. The night was setting in, but none of us looked tired in the least.

“Well, it makes sense,” Lenn said, “though I really wonder how he plans on finding the thief now.”

“The professor said they could track it,” I answered. “The pokémon he gave us, that is.”

“Imagine having to follow a Drowzee around…” He didn’t speak with much derision, but it wasn’t kind either. “We’ll be two full days behind our target when we set out. That can’t have been what he meant.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I wanted to fling some shade back at him, but I had nothing. His Abra, with its well-known ability to teleport, sounded like the quickest way to catch a thief.

“Why are you even trying to figure it out?” the tailor’s daughter, Anna, said. “I’m sure they’ll have thought of something.”

Lenn ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not trying to figure it out, I said I was just wondering… This will take much longer than a few weeks if there’s no real way to track the thief.”

“But if they can…” I said pensively. “You and Abra could probably teleport straight to it…”

The group remained silent for a few moments, then Myke clapped his hands. “Damn!” he hissed. “That’s pretty darned straight! Not bad, Tommy!”

I thought it was a wickedly good idea, but Lenn didn’t seem so convinced.

“That’s hardly how that move works, they teleport out of fear, and usually not very far. With a two-day disadvantage, who knows how far we’ll have to go.

“And not only that, but these pokémon we’ve gotten are low level rookies. The professor’s only been using them for his lab work and its painfully obvious if you look into it. I don’t see us going anywhere fast.”

“Then why would the professor give us that estimate?” Kieran said and Lenn shrugged.

“He might suspect that the target is hanging around for some reason.” He smirked slightly. “Maybe it’ll be back for another bunch of souls.”

“No.” Isabel was shaking her head. For those that hadn’t lost anyone to the coma, I was sure the prospect of a second-wave was an uncomfortable thing to think about.

“Yeah, little chance,” Myke said reassuringly. “If it did, it would just be makin’ our job easier. We’d catch the bugger in a flash.”

Lenn chuckled and said, “What, while we’re all outside looking for it?”

That made my eye begin to itch. An uncomfortable silence took over the group. How could that have skipped my mind? If we all set out to hunt it, who would be here to catch it if it decided to sneak its way back?

I sure hoped the Professor had an answer for that.

“You’re thinking about it too much, guys,” Charli said brightly, and Anna immediately agreed.

“They’ll tell us what to do before we leave. I’m sure Prof is racking his brains to figure things out, so why should we?”

“Because nine brains are better than one?” Lenn offered, still smirking. I bet he hadn’t lost anyone to the coma. Myke stepped in and nudged the Sinnoh-boy on the shoulder. The gesture wasn’t lost on Lenn, who played it off nonchalantly.

“At this point, we know near nothin’,” Myke said. “Tryin’ to figure it out is pointless. Why don’t we discuss routes ‘n stuff? Y’know, stuff we’ll actually get a say in…”

“Routes?” Rubert said, puzzled. “Like the paths we’re gonna take?”

“Mhm, exactly,” Myke replied. “We’ll be splittin’ all over most likely. I think it’s good if we know what to expect from each direction, don’cha guys think?”

We agreed, and we spent the next fifteen minutes talking about what lay beyond the borders of our village, from wild pokémon, to other villages and towns, to what facilities we should aim to find. Things like inns to sleep at and Pokémon Centers were prime topics, and the discussion did begin to lift our spirits.

When Mrs. Colbs strode into the room, it took us all by surprise. We still had a good chunk of the hour left, but something told me our time was up.

“Youngsters,” she said firmly. “I have received a call.” Her eyes glided over us quickly. “It’s a good thing you are all here, because you are needed at the Professor’s lab right away.”

Myke was the first to speak. “Like right now?”

“Right now,” Mrs. Colbs repeated, standing there with a small cellphone in hand. When she saw that none of us were moving, she spurred us along. “Come on people, right, right now! And remember; not a word to anyone on the way,” she said as we were exiting the room.

Avoiding people wasn’t hard. It was nighttime and everyone was already indoors. The eight of us moved without much talk, like a rustling wave of steps straight to the laboratory.

This time it was Mr. Pelter who let us in through the doors, leading us to the second room with the pair of reclining beds. Professor Cid sat at a desk by the wall and spun around on his chair to face us.

On the desk, I noticed several small machines that looked like cellphones, with small screens and with extendable antennas, like walkie-talkies. The professor ran both hands through the fray hair on his temples and adjusted his glasses.

“Thank you for coming, folks,” he said tonelessly. “Please gather round. There has been an alarming development which has come to my attention.”

We shuffled and shifted closer to him, swarming him like a little mob. He did not bother to stand but looked down at the floor for a few moments as if he was wondering how to begin. He jerked upright suddenly and spun back to the desk, where he grabbed one of the talkie-looking devices that lay there.

“This,” he began, “is the device you’ll be using for long-distance tracking.” He pulled the metallic antenna, extending it to full length, almost as long as a 20cm ruler, and pressed on a button on its side. It produced a satisfying clink. The screen glowed with green static, and the machine beeped once every couple of seconds. We were all watching with bated breath.

“This will be your primary tracking tool. I know I told you my pokémon could track the targets, bu- …” He stopped talking suddenly and looked up at us before quickly looking back down at the device in his hand. He was acting strangely, even for him.

“B-but they can only do so in close proximity. Which serves as well because these devices will lose effectiveness the closer you get to… to the target. You will need to switch to your pokémon partners for tracking once this happens. I will provide you with the command they’ll understand, not to worry.”

Myke must have sensed something was off with the Professor, because he asked, “Somethin’ wrong Prof?” and the Professor appeared almost relieved to hear the question.

“Yes, well, you see… I had originally believed we had one thief to catch. Just the one. That’s what the initial data pointed to; that’s what my own eyes believed to be true…” He scratched the back of his head and then pressed another button under the screen of the device. He held the screen out for us to see and all our heads came close together trying to get a glimpse.

It was a grid peppered with a dozen or so blinking dots all in different locations, though some were closer together than others.

“No way…” Kieran muttered. “We’ve got to find all of them? …”

The Professor coughed. “Not just them…” He pressed a few more buttons, changing the screen and held it out again.

“… Forty-four.” The screen displayed the number ‘44’ inside a digitized circle under the text ‘matching signatures’.

“But there weren’t that many marks on the screen,” Lenn noted.

“There are several grid-view settings, those were the targets within a 15-mile radius…” The Professor pressed a red, rubber button right below the screen. After a few presses, he sighed quietly.

“To get all forty-four to show up on the screen, we need to zoom out to a 35-mile radius. By tomorrow, that radius could be bigger.”

“That means…” Charli began. “That we need to travel thirty miles in every direction to catch these things?”

The Professor nodded and smiled weakly. “Thirty-five as it stands, yes. It was uncanny that I had eight suitable pokémon for this. Eight hunters for eight directions.”

The Professor then answered the doubt that had been raised by Lenn during our discussion at the Main Hall upper-floor room.

“I shall remain here to collect your captures and ward off any possible attempts to steal any more villagers.”

Anna shifted on the spot and combed some strands of her pale hair behind her ear. “Why would a pokémon do this, Professor?”

The Professor had no answer for her, and a shadow came over his eyes. “It is as much a mystery to me, I’m sorry to say.”

Something was bugging me. It was the number forty-four. The same number of coma victims. I rubbed the little phantom itch in my blind eye and gazed at the Professor.

“There are forty-four targets and forty-four victims… what’s that mean?” I asked.

The Professor looked up at me with the tiniest of smiles and switched off the tracking device, placing it back on the desk. “That is what struck me too. I can only make assumptions. Perhaps the thief was one to begin with – as all evidence suggested – but somehow, after stealing the minds of the victims, managed to split itself into just as many bodies.”

It was a very difficult thing to wrap my head around.

“Remember,” the Professor added, “we are dealing with a ghost-type pokémon here, and I would not put it past it to know some obscure move that allows for all manner of shenanigans.”

Lenn hummed thoughtfully before saying, “There’s no pokémon I’ve ever heard of that could do this. Maybe single-victim knockouts, but nothing like this… What makes you think it’s a ghost-type?”

“Right, it is a most extreme case, but there are ways this could be pulled off. I say it is a ghost-type because I briefly saw its form passing through the walls and into… spaces that are out of the reach of almost every other type. I’ve only ever had trouble with ghost-types, that’s why I’m all but certain.”

“So, what now?” Myke said. “We gotta catch forty of these trick-o-treats?”

The Professor grimaced with sympathy. “Not all by yourself, but I’m afraid so… on average, each of you will need to capture five.”

“But we don’t even know the pokémon we’re supposed to catch,” Rubert said in a whiny tone.

To that, the Professor only picked up a tracking device and wagged it. “Once you get close, as I said, you will get your partners to locate and restrain it. They all know a specific form of Psybeam that will surely incapacitate the target.”

“I supposed this means this will take longer than a few weeks?” Kieran said.

“Not necessarily…You will have all the equipment you need, our only time factor is the distance the targets travel, which is why I pushed for a speedy exit. Tomorrow morning, we shall go over some track and capture procedures and you will have the full day to get to know your partners better, learn what moves they already know, and get as prepared as possible for your exit the next day.”

Charli grunted lightly and muttered under his breath, “But I thought Abra only knew the move Teleport…”

There were a few giggles amongst the group, and even the Professor acknowledged the remark. “Yes, that is the common conception. However, I managed to teach this Abra a few more tricks than is expected of the species.” Lenn gave a smug huff, as if he’d known all along, and the Professor continued, “You’ll find that if you truly wanted to, you could make pokémon learn a variety of different skills. It’s all about the way you go about it, truly…”

Before we left for the night, the Professor handed each of us a Tracking Tool and told us to play around with them and figure out the simple functions. He also advised us to sleep early and visit him tomorrow at whatever time suited us to learn about commands and procedures we would need for the mission. It cleared up a lot of questions, and despite the news of having our proposed workload increased five times over, we all left the lab in good spirits.

I visited Gran at the tents on my way back home, and she appeared well considering. The night-time volunteer staff were as friendly as their day-time counterparts, and it really took a load off my back. I would probably sleep alright.

After a hot shower, I jumped into bed and brought out the Tracking Tool, following the Professor’s advice and trying all the different buttons to learn my way around its use. Drowzee’s pokéball rested silently atop my nightstand and though I did consider bringing him out to interact some more, I ultimately decided to start fresh in the morning. I already had enough on my mind to ruminate over.

I did fall asleep eventually, and it was a peaceful kind of dreamless sleep.

When I awoke the next day, I had never felt so rested. I slept like a log till nine-thirty in the morning, and when all my responsibilities for the day began worming their way through my mind, I felt ready to take them head-on.

I would visit Gran first and take Glee with me to see her. Then I would look for Isabel or Charli, and head over to the lab for the lessons the Professor had ordered we take. Then I would practice some of those lessons with Drowzee and then begin packing my bag with any spare set of clothes or knick-knacks I should take with me on the hunt.

I was excited, and I set off after a quick round of toast with bluberri jam and a tall glass of cold milk.

On reaching the tents, I approached the volunteer staff who greeted me warmly.

“Is it okay if I leave my gran’s pokémon here with her?” I asked. There were a few other visitors with the odd Caterpie or Venonat, so I figured pokémon were allowed to be here.

“It has a pokéball, right?” the volunteer quickly asked. It was a young woman who lived in the area, but I had never seen her coming over for any of Gran’s herbal remedies.

“Yeah,” I replied, and she nodded with a smile.

“Absolutely, just leave the pokéball with us if you’re not going to stick around. It’s in case there’s any emergencies and we need to put them back in.”

I understood and brought Glee forth from her ball, before handing the empty to the staff lady. I told Glee to stay around Gran and behave herself in public, then searched my back-pockets for some loose change and walked up to the temporary canteen that had been set up right next to the treatment tents.

For a couple of bucks, I bought a berri-fruit pastry loaf that I knew Glee would like and gave her half then, which she nibbled on happily, and the other half to the staff lady with instruction to give it to Glee in the afternoon if I wasn’t yet back.

I hung around with Glee and Gran for a small quarter-of-an-hour before deciding to look for Isabel.

She was the one who got me mixed up in all of this, and I wasn’t sure why I felt like I owed her something, but I did. I made my way to the Goldeen Ponds, a good ten-minute walk from the tents, but less than halfway there, I saw Lenn standing by the path ahead of me. He was looking straight at me, and it immediately struck me as odd. We usually avoided each other.

When I was within earshot, he called out.

“Tomas!” he said. “Just the guy I wanted to see!”

I kept walking toward him. My blind eye nagged with tiny crawling itches and I frowned deeply. “Oh yeah?” I said loud enough for him to hear.

He didn’t reply, but let me approach, a smirk forming on his lips. What the hell did he want? I hid the dislike from my face, relaxing my eyebrows and looking as unbothered as I could.

“Yeah…” he said when I was closer. “I was thinking something fun.”

Something fun? What could we possibly do together that was considered fun? I really couldn’t think of anything.

“What is it?” I said simply.

His smirk grew so that even his eyes seemed to twinkle. It wasn’t a nice smile for me though, I knew what was behind it. He was a sly guy through and through. On a fundamental level, I didn’t trust him in the least.

“You probably don’t have the nerve for it…”

“The nerve for what?” My heart was thumping now.

Lenn put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a pokéball.

“I’m challenging you, Tom. Let's have a battle!”

My mind went blank, and I felt as if I’d been pricked with nettles all over my neck.

Lenn’s smug little face did not look away, and in a cold, friendless voice, he said “I dare you…”

(-x-)