On Saturday, July 31st, 2010, Hoshi Mutsu slept through the sunrise for the second time. And this time, he was actually successful.
Ugh, was his first thought upon waking. I feel like yesterday was some sort of strange dream…
After exiting the academy grounds, clothes and ultra-illegal knicknacks contained in a paper bag, Hoshi and Casca had gotten a double order of pizza, staggered home, and crashed like…
Well, like Rockets, I suppose. Heh.
A soft but insistent murmur was sneaking in through the blinds, and when he put his feet down Hoshi found that the night’s chill had been woefully overpowered; the carpet completely failed to cool his feet. He was already starting to sweat – or maybe it would be more accurate to say he never stopped – the air inside the apartment hot and humid despite his bedside alarm reading 6:43. A steady rain pounded against the window, but it seemed that even the heavy cloud cover wasn’t enough to beat the unnatural heatwave. Too worn out to even sigh, he stood up.
Arcus, I feel like I worked a double shift. After a minute of standing blearily in the gloom, he went to the bathroom and confirmed that, yes, he looked that way too.
Hoshi splashed some blessedly cold water across his face as he listened to his girlfriend undergo her own awakening ritual; Casca preferred to eat before anything else, which was convenient on the rare occasions where they woke together, since he got the bathroom all to himself. He debated indulging in an early-morning shower, but eventually discarded the thought.
No; I have only today and tomorrow before my paid leave is up. I need to get something at least resembling a plan together for the Gym job. Coordinate with the other four, convince them to actually do what I say – fuck, I don’t even know where they live.
Cleaning himself quickly, he stepped out of the bathroom with a bit more energy. “Hey Casca, my first ‘lesson’ won’t be ‘till next weekend, right? Can I go into the Academy before then, or do I need an appointment?”
Casca was standing near the fridge, squinting suspiciously at a carton of milk. “Hm? Oh, yeah, that should be fine. You might get some heat at the door, but just flash your ID and you’ll be fine.” She paused, then thrust the carton his way. “Might be better if we go together. More importantly, does this milk smell weird to you? It smells weird to me.”
He took the container with an eye-roll. “I bought this on Wednesday, of course it isn’t-”
The sentence was cut short as he immediately felt something off about the carton. He sniffed it, but… No, it isn’t bad. It’s… Hoshi was usually a morning person, but the heat and fatigue had combined into a swamp that his every conscious thought had to trudge miserably through in order to complete.
There’s definitely something weird about it. Wait, don’t tell me…
His hands slid over the carton – the room temperature carton. “Oh, for fuck’s-!” Casca stepped aside as he wrenched open the fridge door, and when a blast of frosty air failed to appear, he cursed again. “The damn fridge is busted!” For all the cold to be gone, it must’ve happened yesterday – maybe even the day before. “Of all the shitty timing…”
“Shit, that sucks.” Casca commented. “Do you know anybody with a machop or something? ‘Cause I don’t think the two of us could haul a whole-ass refrigerator up here from wherever the heck the nearest appliance shop is…” Gingerly, she plucked the milk from Hoshi’s hand, sniffed it again, and began to pour herself a bowl of cereal with a shrug. “At least we caught it before the stuff went bad, right? Silver lining.”
For a moment Hoshi only stood, sour, before he softly slammed the door. “Yeah.” Some silver fucking lining.
“It isn’t just unplugged, right?”
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It turned out that no, it hadn’t been unplugged, and yes, the plug still had power; his toaster worked just fine when he switched things around, producing a quick breakfast for him while his girlfriend polished off her cereal.
And so Hoshi was now out in the sweltering morning rain, protected only by an umbrella and the thick armour of his seething annoyance, debating with himself as to whether he should go down to Electric Paradise, a store just a few streets away, or hoof it all the way up past the power plant to see Danny about some salvage.
Because while his body was telling him the convenience was worth it, his wallet was saying something entirely different: that he had dropped a pretty fucking large cut of his savings on training lessons over the last month, and paying full price for a new refrigerator would put… a certain amount of strain on his finances.
He looked up at the dark clouds, visibly churning with a speed that must be ludicrous given their size and distance. The rain fell down in sheets, and to his right the comparatively-close sea crashed against the docks in violent fits.
His teeth grit – but then Hoshi began to laugh. In the empty streets near the Gym, the sound seemed almost thunderous. Arcus fuck…
While I’m doing this, Casca is going in to fetch the contact details on my criminal team, so I can coordinate with them to bug the Gym’s official League computer. The juxtaposition between the two major problems of the day was just too absurd; he had to express it aloud.
Eventually the echoing laugh ran out of gas, and Hoshi was left… not empty, not even close, but cleaner inside, more aware.
“Fuck. This better be a volcano, ‘cause if it’s actually a legendary Pokémon, I’m gonna kick its fucking ass.”
Nature responded to his hubristic statement with a gust of wind, and Hoshi struggled to keep hold of his umbrella. Fuck it. I’ve got other shit to talk with him about anyway.
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If there was one upside to the constant deluge, it was that it washed away the heavy garbage-stink of the dump. Usually Hoshi could smell it from a ways off, decaying machinery combining with the stench of grimer and koffing – and what little organic waste got routed there, all the way out of town – into a putrid miasma that singed his nose hairs as he went through the gates.
But not today; today, even the moisture-loving grimer were taking shelter. The only Pokémon that Hoshi had seen on the way over had been a pair of electabuzz, up on top of the crimson shadow of the power plant, fighting each other for the privilege of getting struck by lightning.
Not that they’ll be satisfied, win or lose; I haven’t heard a single peal of thunder all day. Yet another anomalous bit of weather – usually the summer storms were heavy with electricity.
Hugging his umbrella close, Hoshi went through the open gates. “Danny, you out and about?” It would be completely stupid to try and get anything done in the rain, but Danny Houndoom was the exact right blend of idiot and mechanical savant to get caught up in something in the middle of a typhoon. “It’s Hoshi!”
No answer. In the darkness of the stormy morning the stacked refuse was nearly indistinguishable from natural mountains, seeming to loom on the horizon despite being only metres away. Okay, maybe that thought was a little too uncharitable; not even Danny would be working out in this.
He trudged to the man’s little cabin, dodging the deeper puddles by luck more than ability. Lights are out. Is he asleep?
For a second he debated knocking, before a flash of movement in the window made the decision for him.
Clack clack clack, went the corrugated metal. “Danny, open the door! It’s fucking underwater out here!”
Shuffling, what might have been a muffled voice, and then the door opened. Huh, still in his pajamas. Did I imagine seeing something? “Fucking heck, kid. Sun’s not even out yet.” Danny yawned, old-fashioned nightcap completely incongruous with his sweatshorts and sunglasses, and as the man’s long exhale continued Hoshi solved the mystery: a grimer, brighter green than normal, burbled around behind Danny’s heels.
Huh, that explains the movement. “Sorry man, didn’t think you’d still be asleep – it’s like ten already.”
Danny’s head tilted, and he looked around, seeming to notice the rain for the first time. “Oh. Fuck, I guess that makes sense – it’s hot as balls. Come on in.”
The interior of Danny’s little shack hadn’t changed much from the last time Hoshi had seen it.
“So what’s up? No way you swam through a damn hurricane just to chat,” the man said, a layer of sleep still lurking under his voice.
“Fridge conked out.” Hoshi’s eyes went across the room as Danny turned on the lights – like his speaker system, they were distributed amongst the rafters, obviously jury-rigged.
“Huh. Well, fuck, that’s inconvenient.” He peered through the window as Hoshi sat. “Sorry, but I’m not gonna be able to dig something up for you with the rain like this. Holy shit, it’s coming down…”
“You don’t have anything pre-built?” Danny usually keeps a few fast-sellers on hand, but with the heat being what it’s been…
The scrap seller shook his head. “Nope, sorry. I can do something in…” His tongue slipped through his lips as he thought. “Maybe three or four days? Depends if it keeps raining.”
Hoshi grunted in displeasure. No way my food’ll last four days. “What price?” But it might be cheaper to just write the groceries off and get takeout for a while.
Danny answered with an uncertain sound. “Ehhh, no less than three hundred. Probably more; really depends on what model I manage to find, and the damage. I ain’t welding something together in fourty-plus for pocket change.”
He ambled to the side to make use of his own, functioning mini-fridge, and Hoshi’s thoughts ran sour. Three – or more likely four or five – hundred. That’s better than I’d get at Paradise, but if I can scrounge up something used from a different scrap shop…
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Another grumble of displeasure. Arc, I really don’t want to go bargain-hunting in the rain, and even less in the heat. Though it was still fucking sweltering, it was legitimately cooler than the previous days had been. Plus there’s the time investment – yeah, no, it’s either here or just buying retail.
Hoshi’s voice cut through the drumbeat of raindrops on thin steel. “I have the thing itself; I’ll agree to a cheap patch job if you help me haul it in and out of town.”
Danny took his time answering, cutting the pit out of his breakfast – a single large peach or nectarine or whatever – and scarfing half the fruit down before deigning to speak.
He smacked his lips. “Ugh, Hoshi, don’t make me work in this fuckin’ heat.”
Hoshi’s brows raised as he shot the man a look. “I’m not making you do shit; I’m offering to pay for a service.”
“Taking advantage of an honest man’s greed, that’s what you're doing,” came the muttered reply. “Fine. A couple ‘a koffing should be able to carry something that big, or at least make it light enough to carry… You’re getting it past the stairs yourself, though.” He bit into the other half of the fruit, and it was gone in seconds – somehow, the old huckster managed it without getting a single drop of juice on his face. “Little guys are half-wild; I’m not taking ‘em indoors.”
“Unlike the grimer?”
“Course. Grimey’s basically tame, ain’t that right?” The grimer burbled as it received a pat on the head from Danny’s bare foot. “You’d know if you had a Pokémon of your own – there’s like, a bond and all that sappy shit.”
He grinned his nearly-toothless grin, and Hoshi’s brow climbed up his forehead a second time.
Seriously? Bright red and white aren’t exactly subtle colours, old man. “Did you not notice?”
“Eh?”
Hoshi gestured to his belt. “As of yesterday, I’m the proud owner of two freshly-caught Pokémon. Even won a few battles.”
The shack’s owner froze in place, his expression fixed in teasing mirth for a moment before changing to disbelief. “What? Bullshit.”
With a grin of his own, Hoshi pulled a ball from his belt. You know what they say, seeing is believing. “Guts, come out and say hello.”
The furniture-dense confines of the building flashed red as the rattata appeared. It – you know, I should really sex the things sometime soon – squeaked questioningly, turning to face the grimer.
“No, no battle. Just showing you off, Guts.” Keep saying the name, so it’ll stick in its head. He turned back to Danny. “Well? Still think it’s bullshit?”
The man’s jaw worked for a moment. “Kid, that’s dangerous. Without a licence-”
“What, you think I’m stupider than I was last month? Look at this.” Continuing to grin at his friend’s flabbergasted expense, Hoshi pulled out his wallet and flashed his new credentials. “Fully licensed Pokémon trainer, Hoshi Mutsu.”
Danny’s face remained incredulous as he looked at the card tucked under the wallet’s clear plastic pocket. “Bullshit,” he whispered. “No, this is worse than bullshit. Hoshi, where did you get this? No way you aced the exams well enough – they’re only taking, like, top one hundred in all of Kanto-” His face screwed up. “And it isn’t even the right season! You’d have gotten it in spring if…”
Hoshi waggled his wallet. “I’m not hearing an apology, you old jackass. Or do you want to settle this with a battle?”
Finally, Danny seemed to break out of his disbelief. “Fuck off, I’m retired. Seriously, where? How? You can’t have faked the thing…” Then he caught Hoshi’s shit-eating grin, and snorted. “No! You can’t! I couldn’t fake a licence, and I’m an Arceus-damned genius!”
He turned, making for his computer and pulling open a thin desk drawer. “Where’s the fucking- hah, here we go! Lemme see that thing!”
He gestured with a hand scanner – does Pokémart just throw those things in the trash? I’d have thought they’d be too valuable to toss – and Hoshi relinquished his wallet with a roll of his eyes. “That’s not gonna tell you anything, Danny. Just take the loss with grace.”
“Shuddap,” he replied with his usual eloquence. An orange laser flashed out from the scanner’s front, playing over the complex pattern on the right side of the card, opposite Hoshi’s mugshot, and the scanner beeped cheerfully. A light on the side flashed green, and Danny’s face cycled between disgust and disbelief.
Idly, Hoshi noted that Guts was chewing on his host’s wooden bedframe.
“Fuck me. This is-”
“If you say bullshit one more time, I’ll keep how I got that thing to myself. You’ve gotta expand your vocabulary, Danny.”
“…Horse shit. Bouffalant shit. Fuckin’ fairy shit on toast!” He stared at the card for another moment, then tossed the wallet back to Hoshi, who caught it. “I’m speechless, Hoshi. It can’t- it can’t be a real fake, right?”
Hoshi took his time putting the thing away, letting the man stew. But eventually he answered, letting some of the verdant smug feeling drip away. “Ignoring the oxymoron, it totally is a real fake. Got it yesterday.”
“Fucking..!” The junkyard owner’s face made interesting shapes as he composed himself. “I don’t know what to say, kid. This is… this is gang shit, right?” Hoshi nodded, and the man’s nostrils flared, “Arceus- damn it, Hoshi, you know I hate that shit!”
The rookie grunt was silent as his older friend worked himself up, then back down, curiosity building until it beat out caution.
“…Okay, fine. You win. You got this from Rocket?”
Another nod. “Yeah, and that isn’t all. Guts, come over here.” The rat stopped sharpening its teeth on Danny’s shitty furniture, giving him a long look before ambling over. Not very motivated when out of battle – something to work on, I guess. “They just handed me two Pokémon – in these weird fucking balls. Here, check it out…”
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Danny Houndoom considered himself to be a pretty damn good tech guy, despite the shakes that age and… other things were adding to his fingers. He could code, he could wire, he could weld and sodder and screw – he was the whole fucking package, tied with a bow.
So it was with exceedingly large reservations that he quietly admitted to himself, in the privacy of his own head, that he hadn’t the vaguest fucking idea of what he was looking at.
“Arc, kid. This thing is- I don’t even know how to describe it.”
Under the spotlight of his desk lamp, the weird purple ball was splayed out in its service mode – it was, at least, similar enough to a standard Pokéball for that feature to still be present. So it’s using at least the base of the same tech. He just wished he could observe that, instead of having to intuit it.
Danny knew Pokéballs. He could reset them, change registration codes, and he was halfway sure he’d be able to assemble one if he had all the parts laid out… but the tangle of incredibly fine wires and circuitry in front of him didn’t resemble anything in Silph Co.’s catalogue, not in the least. “Look at these lenses, Hoshi – they’re so fine. You can’t grow them like that, the seed crystal starts off too spherical; this must be cut down. But it’s flawless, there aren’t any marks…”
Carefully, he brought his tool down and pressed it into the carefully concealed service slot, and the ‘Rocket Ball’ snapped back together with incredible force, much more than any ball he’d ever worked on. “I can’t say any more, I’m too afraid to dig into this thing to get at the battery or storage shit. Fucking- who the fuck made this, a fucking space alien?”
Hoshi bobbed his shoulders in an infuriating half-shrug. Damnit, man, can you not see I’m freaking out here? “Something like that – I mean, I’d believe they were aliens, anyhow.”
“I’m not screwing with you, Hoshi. This thing is- I’ve never touched a Master Ball, but if you just showed me this thing without context that’s what I’d think of first. This is some dumb fucking future shit, man.” Or at least the tech needed to build it is future shit; the materials themselves are mundane, it’s how they’re refined that makes this thing shine.
Or at least, that was the impression he got from looking just under the skin – for all he knew, the innards could be hiding a fusion reactor or living alakazam brain or any kind of sci-fi nonsense.
The kid had the gall to respond to his statements with a dubious.look. “Is it really all that? I’ve met the Rocket Professors, and they seemed…” He chewed on his words for a second. “Unreliable. Crazy.”
“All geniuses are crazy, Hoshi.” Danny tapped the side of his head. “Workplace hazard. Some of the shit I put up with way back when…” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “Look, I’m just saying this shit is whack. Using something like this to catch normal Pokémon is complete fucking overkill.”
The kid accepted his ball back, and snapped the plastic cover back on without speaking – and to think he’d thought that was impressive. Between that ball and the fake licence, I’m having serious thoughts about joining myself. What I could do with that tech and twenty hours of alone time…
The possibilities were endless. No way Rocket is just some gang. If their tech is outpacing Silph, then someone in the government is sponsoring them. Fuck, maybe more than one. He could think of a few people back in Unova that would froth at the mouth to get one over on the overlords of the Pokéball market, and an entirely different set that would do twice as much to get access to untraceable balls.
After staring at the concealed Rocket Ball for a long moment, Hoshi finally snapped out of it. “Guts, return,” he ordered, and the rat disappeared in a flash of light. “Arcus, Danny. I want to say first off that I’m not doubting you, but… It’s kind of hard to believe that a gang is able to make something as good as Silph Co.”
“I know, right?” Danny nodded as the young man followed his own thoughts exactly. “It’s gotta be some conspiracy. Nobody makes fake licences, that shit’s impossible. The Indigo League owns, like, ninety-nine percent of remaining porygon; getting into their systems is…” Not impossible, but… “It just doesn’t happen.”
Rolling the ball in his palm, Hoshi considered. “What if they had an evolved porygon? A porygon2?”
Danny sucked on his gums. “…No, still no. That’s still a hundred to one; like a hundred of your little guy there getting beaten by one raticate. It’s gotta be some black ops shit – they get tech, Indigo or whoever gets a disposable asset. Maybe Sinnoh, they’ve been getting a lot of weirdly good deals lately.”
Danny could almost feel the intensity of Hoshi’s mulling. “That… makes sense. But- Danny, you had to be there. It was fucking insane – no way a a government with like, oversight and red tape and shit would put up with what I saw on my first fucking day. It was a madhouse – they had a persian dressed up in a suit, Danny.”
He continued sucking on his gums. Damn kid is going to give me ulcers. “I’ve said my piece. I’m washing my hands of this shit; you lie in whatever bed you decide to make.” Throwing his hands up, he leaned back in his chair.
“…Yeah, okay. Thanks for taking a look; I’ll be back in a day or two to hash out the details on the refrigerator.”
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Hoshi walked into his apartment with a slurry of thoughts sloshing around in his head. Rocket can’t be some kind of foreign group, right? All the bigwigs I saw were Kantonian. Right – Kantonian businessmen, who might have been bought out by promises of money or power. And they’re sending me to bug a League database…
No, that doesn’t count, that’s something Rocket would do even if it was legit. Hoshi’s teeth creaked as his jaw clenched. If they’re backed by a foreign power, I want to cut my losses and ditch as soon as possible. But how do I figure out if they are? Casca wouldn’t be any help; she was just a grunt like him – in fact, if being a Senior Grunt meant sweet fuck-all, he would probably know more than her pretty soon. So do I just keep going? Work my way in, like I was planning?
Just carrying on straight ahead felt weird now that Danny had pointed out something that didn’t make sense, but he legitimately couldn’t think of anything he could do differently. Arcus, I can barely fucking think straight with the heat and humidity. Gazing at his disguised balls for a minute, he pondered in circles, going nowhere.
Then he got up, and resolved to think about it more after a cold shower.