Chapter 3: Groups | Bud Light Beheading
Fiorella Fiorina, chic in a cerise coat, looked twenty-something, was forty-seven. Deactivated she stood before the endless plate glass window of the stadium's façade, through which light flowed to paint the mountaintops a faint, jagged white line. One hand cradled her ear, the other gripped a microphone. Her cameraman, Lutz, watched for her signal. All was silent in this antechamber elsewise devoid of life; all was trembling and noise, for on the other side of the wall eighty thousand humans roared.
"In three. Two. One," her earpiece said.
A cutting hand motion and they flipped online, Lutz hefting the camera, Fiorella aiming the microphone at the capsule elevator doors that opened smoothly as Toril Lund, gloved hand on her throat like she was choking to death, came crashing through.
"Toril. Congratulations on the hard-fought victory." Bright, chipper, twenty-something. "You've officially finished group stage with an undefeated 11-0 record. How do you feel?"
Toril passed, forward tilted, and did not say a word, did not acknowledge Fiorella's presence.
Fiorella surreptitiously cycled her hand at Lutz to follow as she kept pace beside Toril. "That match gave you some trouble. What were you thinking when you lost two Pokémon early, and how did you manage the thrilling comeback?"
Toril's lips shook as though to form a whisper, but it was a whisper to herself as she sped down the hall. Hidden from the camera at Fiorella's direction were Toril's ungloved fingers, which left a trail of bright red droplets on the tile. Those fingers seemed, to Fiorella at least, a fitting answer.
"Was losing Zoroark so early a blunder, or did the other trainer catch you off guard with an unexpected strategy?"
Nothing. Toril was looking at a hefty fine for this interview.
"Raj Viswambaran from Galar and Jinjiao Zhang from Bohai also finished their groups undefeated. Are they the ones to beat moving into the bracket stage? How do you match up against them?"
Nothing.
"Many call you a favorite to win the tournament. If so, you'd be the first ever female World Champion. Does the historical significance add to the pressure of competing?"
An absurd question, one they forced her to ask. Fiorella Fiorina covered this event for over twenty years. She knew no girl would ever win. No girl should ever win. Toril Lund was a perfect case study why. Look at the shape into which she'd twisted herself simply to have a shot.
Though Fiorella expected no response, Toril's boot smacked the tile as she staggered to a halt. Still gripping her throat, she snapped her head toward Fiorella like a wild beast. Her eyes swelled with disgust and confusion.
"History? Who—gives a shit?"
A double fine, ouch. Before Fiorella could follow up, Toril lurched at a angle and fled through a door. The door to the women's restroom.
By all standards of professional and broadcast decency, the interview ended there. Fiorella turned to the camera. "Thank you, Toril. I'm Fiorella Fiorina and this has been your Post-Match Interview, brought to you by Silph Co., the world leader in Pokémon battling products. Let's turn it over to the Bud Light Analyst Desk to break down that explosive match."
Cut. As soon as Lutz lowered the camera, all power left him; his head sagged under the weight of his Fuchsia Nidos baseball cap.
The capsule elevator doors opened again. The other trainer walked past looking, thankfully, less worse-for-wear than Toril.
"It's good this happened," Fiorella told her.
"Shut up Mom," Aracely said, and kept going.
The shape of the mountains shone, a single jagged line, the sawtooth blade of history.
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"Wowzah! What a heart-stopping match! Literally! I thought they were gonna bust out the defibrillator for me by the end! BZZRT!"
The analyst desk host, brought on by the IPL to drum up youth interest, stirred controversy with diehard fans, which was maybe the point. Her particolored pink-blue hair, pinned by twin Magnemite accessories, bobbed to the frantic waving of sleeves too long for her arms.
"Now, ladies and gentlemens, it's time for the Bud Light Analyst Desk! Your eyeballs are mine—caught in my Electroweb! Whosawhatsit? I'm your host, Iono! Ello, hola, ciao and bonjour! Let's get right into the breakdown!"
"Yes, let's. I've got a lot to say about that one."
The first analyst better fit the business casual feel of the desk environs (marred only by an unopened case of Bud Light on the center table), seated side-lean in his armchair, tie loosened and top button undone of his nerd couture polo.
"Let's hear the hook first, Bill," Iono said. "Give us your best one-word summary of the match!"
"Sloppy." Bill raised a fist in comedic old-man-yells-at-clouds fashion, though he wasn't that old; barely gracing his fifties. "Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! That's not the level of play you want out of a tournament favorite. The Post-Match Interview told the story. Toril Lund won, but she was not happy about it."
Bill Masaki never fought in a Pokémon battle in his life, but he was an unabashed Poké Maniac, an aficionado of the finest sort. Also, his trillion-dollar tech firm owned a stake in the IPL, so he was a frequent fixture on the desk. To his credit, his knowledge compensated for his lack of experience, though his nasally voice wasn't the best fit for broadcast.
"The Copperajah in the room is it was only a win by the luckiest break," Bill continued. "Not since IPL 7 has a trainer's Pokémon refused to obey them during a match. You never see that, even in regional tournaments. The last I remember was the Unova quarterfinals sixteen years ago, when—"
"AMAZING!" Iono cut in. "You're saying Aracely Sosa woulda won if her Azumarill didn't try to do Belly Drum instead of Play Rough?"
"Undoubtedly. And Toril would've deserved the loss. The announcers harped on it, but it bears repeating: Zoroark creating an illusion of Rillaboom is way too obvious. No trainer at this caliber of competition would fall for it."
"I wonder," said the second analyst. She'd been silent so far, but any room she was in carried her presence.
"Whatsit you're wonderin', Cynthia?"
Stark opposite to Iono, Cynthia wore all black, a conservative pantsuit, legs crossed, hands clasped on her knee. And stark opposite to Bill, she was a competitor through and through, albeit retired.
"You'd also say no trainer at this caliber of competition would lose control of their Pokémon. Yet Aracely lost control."
"Well, I won't deny Aracely Sosa is a special case," Bill said. "She's only been a serious competitive battler for one year, and it's an open secret she's coached by her father, the famous Domino Sosa of IPL 44. This leads some, myself included, to question whether she really has what it takes to compete at this level. Coaches are, of course, prohibited by the Battler's Union that most competitors—"
"INCREDIBLE! Thanks a billion Billiam. But unions and stuff aren't what the viewers wanna hear about!"
"Ehm. Right. My point is, basically, that even if Aracely is an outlier, what matters is the result, and Toril's Zoroark trap failed spectacularly."
"What matters is the result," said Cynthia, "and Toril won."
"Exactomundo!" Iono flopped frenetically. "She's the first EVER girl to go undefeated in groups! Not even the great Cynthia managed that, folks!"
"The group stage format is unforgiving," said Cynthia. "A gauntlet of rapid-fire three-on-three matches. Upsets are common even among top competitors. Historically speaking, Toril ought to be praised for her accomplishment, not criticized because one match wasn't the cleanest."
"Sí, ja, ouais! Plus, such a dramatic comeback, that shows real grit! Real get up and go!"
Bill adjusted his already loose tie, as though even loosened it was too tight. "All I'm saying is. Toril will need to beat Jinjiao Zhang or Raj Viswambaran or both to win this tournament. Historically speaking doesn't matter—what matters is the match in front of you. She needs to show better play, especially when it comes to her rare Hisuian Zoroark, which, may I remind you, no other trainer at the tournament has. It's her biggest asset."
At the mention of Hisuian Zoroark, Bill's casual glance grew sterner, levied specifically at Cynthia, who met it with a slight ruffling of her smile.
Iono glanced between them and cut off Cynthia the moment she opened her mouth for a rejoinder. "Stupendous insight from our two analysts! Give em a big like, everyone! Now that wraps it up for this match. Toril Lund moves on undefeated, while Aracely Sosa's fate is outta her hands. Which is a PERFECT segue! Cuz whether Aracely moves on or not depends on our next match, Yoshinobu Ito of Hoenn versus Adrian da Cunha of Asucar! Yoshi beat Cely back on the first day, remember? But since then, a string of losses have put him one game behind. This is his last chance! A win now, and he yoinks the coveted final bracket slot right outta Cely's hands! What drama! You better stay tuned—your eyeballs are MINE!"
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In this world, 8 billion humans live.
[I poked a hole in the line of history,] said MOTHER. [There I saw it: Another line, running parallel, where all 8 billion of us were dead.]
Roughly 2.9 billion use Pokémon in some capacity: as labor, as pets, as friends.
Of these, 900 million are trainers registered by an official regional governing body.
75 million have competed, formally, in a Pokémon battle.
[Evolution is, or should be, a slow process. Genetic pools refined and optimized over epochs. Subjected to scientific rigor beyond the scope of any human experiment.]
9 million have earned at least one badge from their region's gym circuit or equivalent.
650,000 complete the circuit and become eligible for entry into an IPL-affiliated regional championship.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
And 2,064 are crowned a regional champion: one for each region of the world.
[Pokémon predate humans. The fossil record proves it. But does rapid evolution predate humans? The evidence is inconclusive.]
24 regions, recognized for their consistent competitiveness at a global level, are awarded automatic berths into the IPL. The remaining 2,040 compete in a wildcard tournament for the final 24 berths.
That's 48. The 48 best trainers in the world make it to the Interregional Pokémon League World Championship.
[Ah, but we've revived ancient Pokémon. Kabuto evolves into Kabutops after only weeks of training. True. But remember, revived Pokémon are mere facsimiles of what once existed. We replaced gaps in their DNA with the DNA of modern Pokémon. We created creatures wholly novel. Yet we call them ancient!]
[The line of history moves only one direction]—MOTHER's voice now ineffably resigned—[and a point on the line can never truly be preserved, once past.]
The top 48 are sorted into four groups. At the end of a single round robin group stage, the top 4 from each group advance to the bracket stage: 16 total.
[But my point is evolution. The first recorded evidence of rapid evolution is not in Pokémon. No.]
[It is in humanity.]
[We manifested in this world and in an eyeblink of geologic time we infested it. Our bodies never changed, but our minds did: our whirring supercomputers, running parallel to each other like the parallel lines of history. Capable of creating fire. Steel. Cars. Porygon. "Kabuto."]
Single elimination. After one round, only 8 remain.
Then 4.
Then 2.
[The law of nature is compete or die. Humanity evolved too rapidly. So Pokémon learned to evolve rapidly to keep up.]
[Evolution is an arms race.]
Then 1.
[In that parallel line of history, humanity lost the race. And all 8 billion of us were dead.]
Aracely Sosa had to be the 1. Only 1 mattered. One atop a mountain of 8 billion corpses.
[I have seen many other lines now. I am a seer of all. And what I see is:]
One above all. One final sentence, one final mark of punctuation, the final point on the line.
[This world will end on October 12.]
"Look who it is Liechi! Hey—hey! Aracely Sosa! Autograph!"
Cely glanced up at the lanky bearded fan lumbering toward her and ripped the earbuds out as she paused MOTHER's recording. Like a magic trick her phone slipped into her jacket pocket during the same motion she waved. "Oh, hii-i!" She crouched and clasped a hand to her heart. "Omigosh, and who is this? You are such a freaking cutie I cannot believe it!"
"My daughter. Her first time at the IPL—but not her last, right Liechi?"
The little girl, kindergarten age, gripped her Azurill to her chest and shook her head no.
"She loves watching you and Ziggy."
"Oh yeah?" Cely said. "Do you wanna be a Pokémon trainer when you grow up?"
Liechi tucked her chin behind her Azurill so nobody could see her mouth, then whispered something too quiet to hear. Her dad laughed.
"I hope so. I was a trainer, made it to regional quarterfinals. Thinking Liechi might carry the torch."
"Don't you let your daddy boss you around," Cely said. "You be who you want, k?"
"Okay," Liechi whispered. Her Azurill squeaked.
"She's usually more personable than this I swear. The excitement must've tuckered her out. You sleepy, Liechi?"
Liechi shook her head emphatically no. Her dad laughed again.
"So yeah. About that autograph."
Afterward Cely wandered the stadium's public concourses. At first, they were choked with people out for snack and bathroom breaks, but they emptied once the next game started. The next game, the one to decide Cely's fate, which, as Dad and Iono said, was out of her hands.
She sought desperately someplace unmarked by holoscreens. Someplace silent, or as silent as possible when only a wall divides you from eighty thousand souls. She'd already muted her (still de-Rotomed) phone to dodge the deluge of consoling messages from Haydn. She visualized them already, another psychic power: bb u were sooo close omfg. youll kill em next time 4 SURE. ur a freakin goddess girl dont u forget it kk? xoxoxo + an extra xoxoxo CUZ U DESERVE ITTT mwah mwah
No message from her other friend, Charlie. That bitch was already asleep.
Cely entered a door and came face-to-face with a wall of copper.
They were copper plates, affixed to the wall by heavy bolts. The one in front of her read:
IPL VIII CHAMPION
YUKINARI ŌKIDO OF KANTO
Followed by a brief paragraph, an image of the champion, and his team, all engraved into the copper. The wall extended both directions, from I to LXIII.
The plates were alive. Rattling, reverberating under tens of thousands of stamping feet within the stadium's inner bowl. There, the opening salvo of Yoshinobu Ito versus Adrian da Cunha erupted. Cely forgot which she needed to win to advance, and did it matter? It was out of her hands, like always, like everything, her life constructed and preplanned.
An idea reached her out the dark cloud murk and she hurried along the copper wall, the roar transmuted into the rush of time's river as years dropped away with only a step, XX, XXI, XXII, until she caught an image she recognized and stopped.
IPL XLIV CHAMPION
SATOSHI "RED" AKAHATA OF KANTO
Here. Twenty years ago, one year before she was born. The champion looked impossibly young even compared to his reappearance two years down the line. She went to the panel, feeling its text like braille, her cheek to the cold metal so its trembling transmitted to her flesh. The paragraph opened with the obvious laurels: youngest champion of all time at only eleven, an unknown underdog, struggled through groups, steadily improved over the course of the tournament, the names he toppled a brief catalog, until finally her finger felt and there it was:
in the final round, he staged a stunning upset against tournament favorite Domingo "Domino" Sosa
A single mention here on the wall of history, fleeting but undeniably present, a footnote, one she heard expanded countless times those bitter years when he roved his condo half-drunk, making her know, making the walls know: That punkass. They said he's eleven. Shit. Way he battled was like he lived a lifetime in the year since his license.
She saw it, sepia toned, Dad in the same cream-colored suit, but unruffled, his body lean and hungry, his fedora with the hatband carnation suave like a secret agent ordering liquor on the rocks. The poor quality TV film of the era now a blare of static that eroded him, blurred his edges, allowed past and present forms to transpose as he gave his Snorlax the fateful call:
"Rest!"
Rest was the right play, not Double-Edge. I'd calced it, I was so good, so fast back then. It was fifty-fifty with Double-Edge, sure thing with Rest. But he had luck, that's the effed up thing about it, dumb luck. Luck was one of his skills, one of his talents, the way he had it. I only lose if he gets a critical hit. And so he did.
Cely pressed her fingers so deep to the engraved letters the edges cut into her skin. She felt the crowd's cries pitch higher, the battle reaching a crescendo. Her eyes shut.
[To win this arms race humanity must evolve. Most are content not to try. Why should they? This species has been number 1 for so long, it has become complacent. You and me, though? We're different. We are chosen, elected, by the line of history, to master and exceed it. We must grip that line, slimy and wriggling though it might be, and—RISE.]
She gripped the line of history. Her lips parted and a small whisper arose:
"Let me win."
If she really had psychic powers, this was the time for them to manifest.
"Whichever outcome lets me win. Make that the outcome."
The crowd went ballistic. A seismic rumble pervaded.
"I win. I always win. I will always win, until this world ends."
Peaking, peaking, peaking, this was it, the battle's climax, the moment to crown a victor.
"Now!"
The peak broke, crashed down, applause quivered from the eighty thousand, her body a funnel, collecting their energy, and the coin was cast, and came up heads or tails.
She stepped back from the copper plate. And breathed in the silence, as her arms spread, and her fingers twisted into a mudra, and she shut her eyes.
It took fifteen minutes for Dad to find her. She sensed him as he approached, something in his gait or aura. Her eyes opened.
"Omigosh Dad. I looked everywhere for you."
She approached him at a skip. He came with Brittany on one side and Ziggy on the other. Brittany carried a metal case that contained the rest of her Pokémon, healed after the battle.
Dad met Cely's demeanor with a weird smile, like he didn't know if she was playing a prank. She pinched the floppy cuffs of his blazer. "We have got to get this tailored. Male fashion is about precision and elegance. This would look so much better if it actually fit you."
"So, uh—were you watching? Ito versus da Cunha?"
"Nope." She patted Ziggy's head between the ears. He paid not the slightest scrap of attention, though, and zigged off to glide on his belly across the buffed floors. Ungrateful little scene-stealer. But she forgave him. He was only an animal. Unlike some she knew.
"No?" said Dad. "You didn't watch? So you haven't seen the result."
Cely shrugged.
"You get that the result determines whether you move on or not, right?"
"Iono said something like that."
"You don't know what?!"
"Iono. The analyst desk host."
"Oh. Her." His expression became contemplative. An idea worked within his mind. Gears churned.
"Her fashion sense is creative, I'll leave it at that," Cely said.
"Bill and Cynthia know their stuff at least. I actually battled Cynthia, before she was famous. She was in my group. I beat her, of course."
Cely nodded. Okay Dad. By putting so much suspense on it you're actually, like, ruining the suspense.
"Did you talk to your mother?" he asked.
"They don't interview losers in group stage."
"Well, she's gonna be upset." He looked around furtively, as though Mom might be there in the hallway with them. A tortured moment, but he was already cracking. "Yoshinobu Ito—lost. We're moving on. We're moving on!"
He whooped and at the same time Ziggy slid past like a rocket clapping insanely and almost wiped her legs out from under her. Brittany set down the metal case and fumbled with the latches, which was difficult given her lack of opposable thumbs, since she was a Gardevoir.
When the case opened Brittany tossed out Poké Balls and choked the hallway with Cely's Pokémon big and small. The mood infected them even if their piddling brains didn't understand the words, so personal space on every side became a riot. Shoving, jostling, smelly, and Dad heaving his arms to the sky: "Okay now, listen up!"
The Pokémon turned to him obediently. Brittany hung on his shoulder. He cleared his throat and entered speech mode.
"Wow. Here we are. I never, I mean never, thought I'd be here again. They say you get one shot in life and once it passes you by, it's gone. But here I am. Here we all are. Cuz don't fucking forget what you did here, the hard work and training, day in, day out—"
Wasn't it absurd? He babbled to these creatures, but who did he really speak to? Cely zoned out. Yes, tailoring for a start. But honestly? The look fails at a conceptual level. It's an attempt to reconstruct something no longer there, to hold a point in time in thrall. No, no, no. Tear it down and start over. Light colors? Unflattering. Darks instead, sedate without showiness. She visualized it: navy or charcoal; tweed; herringbone print pattern for an erudite, professorial look; thick-rimmed glasses; plain tie. Give him a pricey watch, take a lawnmower to the beard, and nix the hat completely.
Of course Charlie, that lovely friend of hers, would say his current getup expressed his spirit, that this cream suit and fedora was the real Domino Sosa in full. But Charlie you creature, the whole point was to eliminate the man in front of her. To replace him with something else, affable and harmless, whose enthusiastic ramblings about flowcharts came across as part of the aesthetic.
"—Also, give a big hand to your trainer. Right there. Cely Motherfucking Sosa. My little girl. Every other trainer here's been doing this since they were ten. Our girl has barely a year of real battling experience, but look at her. Bracket stage. So tonight, we party. Tomorrow, it's back to the grind. From here on out, it's six-on-six, not three-on-three. We'll be on that stage again next week—"
"No you won't," Cely said.
"Heh?"
"You won't be out there Dad. I will."
"Well—yeah. I was just saying."
"Dad. Don't you think we should talk about what happened against Toril?"
"Look. Cely. It was a hard loss, but in the end, we advanced. It's the past now, it's done, it's not coming back. Our next match—"
Not coming back. The hypocrisy. "Ziggy didn't listen, Dad. He didn't do what I ordered."
"Cely." Dad glanced apprehensively at the faces of her Pokémon, Ziggy first. "Not the time. Not in front of them. You don't wanna lose the locker room."
"They don't understand a word I'm saying." And she kept smiling, no trace of venom in her tone. Tone was all they knew. The only one who might think otherwise was Brittany, the empath, but Brittany already understood what Cely thought about her. "I predicted Toril's team, but you didn't let me change mine—"
"A fifty-fifty chance, you guess tails and it came up tails, means nothing."
"I predicted Annihilape had both Taunt and Rest, but Ziggy didn't listen—"
"You didn't predict that Cely don't lie to me. Don't freaking lie to me. You did not stand there and think to yourself Annihilape has both Taunt and Rest when you can't even track Grassy Terrain—"
"You cost me the win Dad."
Dad rose. His suit twisted and creased. Brittany tried to catch his eye with her pleading gaze but up he went. "Me! You think those other trainers have a coach to do opposition research for them? Do you?!"
"You don't trust me. I say I know what Toril will do, I'm right, but you don't trust me."
"Your Pokémon don't trust you! You act like Ziggy doing Belly Drum is my problem, no Cely, it's yours, you don't train them, you don't spend time with them, they only follow you because I say so, and here you blame me?"
Maybe if he got mad enough he'd have a heart attack and die. Oh. That was a nasty thought, a dark clouds thought, and Brittany's eyes went wide.
"I'm done here," Aracely said, because if she stayed it would only get worse. It would also get worse if she left, but at least leaving felt like it accomplished something for the fleeting moment she strode away.
"I'm not done with you Cely! I'm—augh." He sagged, hand to his heart. The Pokémon thronged around him. Brittany initiated their synchronized breathing exercises, and Aracely was gone.
She took out her phone. Still no Rotom in it, but no going back now. Haydn's predictable overload of consolation messages ended with an overload of congratulatory messages.
One message came from Mom.
"Great. Now you miss another week of college. Congratulations."
One came from MOTHER.
"STOP DEAR. THIS WAS NOT MY DIRECTIVE. ABANDON THESE GAMES. REJOIN ME FOR THE IMMINENT ASCENSION. UP IS THE ONLY DIRECTION. DEAR."
She passed the final copper plate, IPL LXIII, and history ended. When she got back to her room, she pulled the sapphire pendant from her neck and tossed it into her open suitcase, then flopped on the bed.