Kenta smiled at the two of them. “I appreciate it, you guys. I know this is risky, but we’re not alone. Before long, we’ll have more friends than this entire town can hold, even if they all stood shoulder-to-shoulder.” He clasped his hands together tightly, determinedly, staring down at them as he thought about the long road ahead. “You’d be surprised how quickly a resistance can form when times are desperate. All you need is a common foe.”
“You mean, like this one?” asked Curtis, flipping out a remote from his sleeve and pressing a button. The television came on, and Hibiki gave an involuntary grunt of anger at the man’s face on the screen. It was Silvaki Kurisawa, the appointed head of G.R.I.P.
“-may think that pokémon training will be less worthwhile now that there are only two available spaces on your team,” he was saying with a sympathetic smile, looking directly at the camera, at his home audience. “Let me assure you, however, that pokémon has never really been about catching ‘em all, as the popular slogan went in the old days.” He gave a short laugh. “I mean, come on . . . before the pokémon space bacteria spread to the Johto region, we only knew of a hundred and fifty pokémon, and some of them were merely considered mythical creatures for a while. Yet, can you imagine having to feed just twenty pokémon a day? How about forty? How about eighty? It’s just ridiculous, how we used to think.”
“Listen to his voice,” grumbled Hibiki, glowering with fury. “Listen to how sleek he is. This guy could be the king of dirty lawyers.”
“He makes a valid point though,” said Kenta, with a thoughtful hand under his chin. “This is precisely the reason I’ve only captured four pokémon in my life.”
“My friends, you must have a different goal now,” continued Kurisawa in his reasoning tone. “Rather than catching them all, you should be about battling them all! That’s what pokémon do- they live to battle. And the minor restrictions we’ve placed on usable pokémon will make such a goal far more achievable. Don’t worry- restricted pokémon are not gone forever! G.R.I.P. promises to have five zoos up and running before the end of this very year. Everyone, not just you- your mother, your father, your sister and brother, all will have a chance to see such magnificent pokémon as Sinnoh’s Garchomp, and the Herron Region’s Ungarmax.”
“You know, this guy makes some convincing arguments,” observed Curtis, watching the T.V. with his arms crossed. “He’s doing all the right things. You see how he’s invoking family and friends? And he’s promising that everyone’ll have equality in getting to experience pokémon, trainer or not. He’s really trying to make G.R.I.P.’s vision sound good, here.”
“Yeah, but I wonder how he’ll sugarcoat the fact that he’s torn countless families apart,” muttered Kenta through his teeth. “Every trainer’s team is his family away from home. Bakuphoon, Spear, and Bolt gave me comfort that overcame my homesickness on the road. You can’t get that sort of intimacy from just anyone.”
“Kenta,” said Curtis quietly, nervously, “no offense, but could you wait on that? Kurisawa’s discussing catching policies now.”
“. . . Alright.”
“Now, there’s a method that you can use which is quite simple, when determining whether or not you should have a certain pokémon,” Kurisawa was saying brightly, smiling in a similar fashion to the Dali Lama. “If your pokémon is the kind you’d naturally run across in the wild, such as a Mareep or a Weepinbel, then you’re fine! On the other hand, if strange circumstances so happen to wind you up with, say, a Metagross, you should get it sorted out as soon as possible on our website. Make sure you do a thorough check on any suspected borderline pokémon, and you’ll do just fine!”
As the website address appeared at the bottom of the screen, www.grippolicies.gov, Kurisawa raised a finger and made a this-is-important face like the one Hibiki had seen his elementary school teachers often give him. “Be advised! There is one pokémon that is not in the uber category of forbidden candidates, but is still illegal to own by anyone without authorization. Also known for causing blackouts to minor cities, this pokémon is Magneton. For the reason just given-”
“Magneton!” repeated Kurt, looking suddenly overwhelmed. He glanced wildly at Curtis. “Turn that off!”
“O-okay.” The picture of Magneton on the television screen went blank, and Kurt clapped a hand to his forehead. “Just think! Magneton. But it makes sense!”
Everyone looked at him, and Hibiki raised an eyebrow. “What makes sense, sir?” he asked, trying to sound polite. “Is Magneton special?”
“Well . . . yes, and no.” Kurt held up Kenta’s Master Ball in his hand, and all eyes turned to the forbidden object. Kurt cleared his throat. “Though I live in this little out-of-the-way town, I am not ignorant to the many pokeballs invented by designers over the years,” he said importantly. “Other than the compound and expand mechanism, they’re really not all that complex. The power of a pokeball comes from its magnetic potential.”
“Magnetism?” said Kenta. “Is that really all there is to it?”
“Indeed. My family’s been making pokeballs for almost a hundred years.” Kurt held up one of his custom-made apricorn pokeballs: a Lure Ball. “Back in the nineteen-twenties, we didn’t have much to work with other than natural materials like apricorn shells and magnetic rocks from the cave east of Azalea. Pokémon themselves are the ones that turn into energy when being sucked into pokeballs; the ball itself has nothing to do with that part. I mean, have you ever seen a regular cat go into a pokeball? It doesn’t work.
“Anyway, the first pokeballs were so weak that their only purpose was to hold pokémon already captured. Then as time went on, we eventually learned to make better magnets for the balls so they would stay snapped shut when activated, and temporarily turn off when the pokémon needed out. These were the electromagnets.”
Kurt turned his head towards the television screen. “What’s fishy about this is the fact that the most powerful electromagnet currently known to man is being dubbed a forbidden pokémon . . .” He again raised the Master Ball. “And meanwhile, the crowned jewel of the pokeball collection is made of something very much like Magneton!”
A heavy silence fell following Kurt’s words as the meaning clicked, and Hibiki recalled what Kenta had remembered seeing and hearing back at Silph Corporation. The trainers there used mostly Electrode and Magneton! Of course . . . it’s so obvious now!
“Hold on a second,” said Kenta, suddenly looking horrified. “If this really is a Magneton, does that mean . . .” His eyes widened. “No! They can’t! Are they killing pokémon just to turn them into balls?”
“Well, wait a minute,” said Kurt, as Kenta leaped to his feet in alarm. “I didn’t say your Master Ball necessarily was a Magneton. It just bears similar features in metallic structure.”
“I still have to be sure!” Kenta hefted up Hibiki’s backpack and darted into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. The three remaining people at the table barely had time to exchange wondering glances when Kenta was back out, in his Brendan Birch clothes again. He turned his eyes gravely to Hibiki. “Put up your hood. We’re going to Kanto!”
***
“Kenta, was this part of the plan?” Hibiki asked him sometime later, as the two brothers soared through the clouds of Kanto on Bolt’s back. “We didn’t know until about twenty minutes ago that the Master Ball was a pokémon.”
“The plan was originally to get the necessary raw materials for Kurt to make dozens of Master Balls with,” Kenta shouted to him over the screaming of the passing wind. “But all that changes if it means killing innocent creatures. Silph probably could’ve made the Master Ball years ago, and their project may have only been halted by ethical dilemmas.”
So we don’t have a plan now, thought Hibiki nervously as they dropped lower towards a nearby mountain peak. This is scaring me. We need to be thinking out loud here, or we might finally make the fatal blunder that gets us locked away before anything can happen!
“Hey, bro,” he said again, pulling Kenta’s sleeve to hold his attention. “Sorry, but what makes you so certain that we need to be going this way?”
“Oh, just a little incident that happened not long after I got shot.” Kenta looked down past Bolt’s neck, at the ground far below. “Bolt, pull down here. You remember this spot, don’cha, boy?”
They were approaching a village nearby a great mountain to the north. A transmission tower was lodged in the mountain, and a pathway ran down from it and into the village. Bolt touched down just beyond the town’s boundaries, and Hibiki shaded his eyes to get a clear look at the houses. Up above, he hadn’t noticed it, but each and every building within the town had a long, metallic stick rising out of the highest part of the roof. He dismounted from Bolt’s back, and automatically covered his mouth as the dust from the dirt road swirled around him. Kenta patted his Salamence on the head, tossed him a pokeblock, and gave him a quick salute. “Nice flying today, Bolt. You’re going to sleep well tonight!”
Bolt munched the pokeblock happily, then raised his wings and looked at Kenta inquisitively. Kenta smiled. “There’s a good soldier. Keep an eye in the sky, and let me know if you see any suspicious activity.”
Hibiki again covered his face as Bolt took off once more, kicking up a dust storm in the process. He didn’t lower his arms again until he felt Kenta’s hand on his back, guiding him forward. “We have to keep moving,” said Kenta, picking up a light jog. Hibiki kept with him, and looked once more at the town before them. Again, something had escaped his notice; a chain-linked fence surrounded the place on all sides, and only where the road led in was there an open gate. He turned to eyes to Kenta, and saw that he was smiling.
“On first impression, it may seem like these people don’t like outsiders, but they’re really very friendly. Welcome to Henna Villa, the town where everyone owns a jeep.”
They passed through the gates, and Kenta looked around the village with relish. “This takes me back,” he said, as they continued jogging past houses. “Ready for another story, Hibiki? It’s relevant to what we’re doing now.”
“Uh, sure.” You never did get to mentioning what happened to you after the Silph incident.
Kenta pointed at one of the random houses as they passed it, with a grayish-green cement wall. “This was the place where I was nursed back to health. I suppose I’ll begin here.”
“You mean, like this one?” asked Curtis, flipping out a remote from his sleeve and pressing a button. The television came on, and Hibiki gave an involuntary grunt of anger at the man’s face on the screen. It was Silvaki Kurisawa, the appointed head of G.R.I.P.
“-may think that pokémon training will be less worthwhile now that there are only two available spaces on your team,” he was saying with a sympathetic smile, looking directly at the camera, at his home audience. “Let me assure you, however, that pokémon has never really been about catching ‘em all, as the popular slogan went in the old days.” He gave a short laugh. “I mean, come on . . . before the pokémon space bacteria spread to the Johto region, we only knew of a hundred and fifty pokémon, and some of them were merely considered mythical creatures for a while. Yet, can you imagine having to feed just twenty pokémon a day? How about forty? How about eighty? It’s just ridiculous, how we used to think.”
“Listen to his voice,” grumbled Hibiki, glowering with fury. “Listen to how sleek he is. This guy could be the king of dirty lawyers.”
“He makes a valid point though,” said Kenta, with a thoughtful hand under his chin. “This is precisely the reason I’ve only captured four pokémon in my life.”
“My friends, you must have a different goal now,” continued Kurisawa in his reasoning tone. “Rather than catching them all, you should be about battling them all! That’s what pokémon do- they live to battle. And the minor restrictions we’ve placed on usable pokémon will make such a goal far more achievable. Don’t worry- restricted pokémon are not gone forever! G.R.I.P. promises to have five zoos up and running before the end of this very year. Everyone, not just you- your mother, your father, your sister and brother, all will have a chance to see such magnificent pokémon as Sinnoh’s Garchomp, and the Herron Region’s Ungarmax.”
“You know, this guy makes some convincing arguments,” observed Curtis, watching the T.V. with his arms crossed. “He’s doing all the right things. You see how he’s invoking family and friends? And he’s promising that everyone’ll have equality in getting to experience pokémon, trainer or not. He’s really trying to make G.R.I.P.’s vision sound good, here.”
“Yeah, but I wonder how he’ll sugarcoat the fact that he’s torn countless families apart,” muttered Kenta through his teeth. “Every trainer’s team is his family away from home. Bakuphoon, Spear, and Bolt gave me comfort that overcame my homesickness on the road. You can’t get that sort of intimacy from just anyone.”
“Kenta,” said Curtis quietly, nervously, “no offense, but could you wait on that? Kurisawa’s discussing catching policies now.”
“. . . Alright.”
“Now, there’s a method that you can use which is quite simple, when determining whether or not you should have a certain pokémon,” Kurisawa was saying brightly, smiling in a similar fashion to the Dali Lama. “If your pokémon is the kind you’d naturally run across in the wild, such as a Mareep or a Weepinbel, then you’re fine! On the other hand, if strange circumstances so happen to wind you up with, say, a Metagross, you should get it sorted out as soon as possible on our website. Make sure you do a thorough check on any suspected borderline pokémon, and you’ll do just fine!”
As the website address appeared at the bottom of the screen, www.grippolicies.gov, Kurisawa raised a finger and made a this-is-important face like the one Hibiki had seen his elementary school teachers often give him. “Be advised! There is one pokémon that is not in the uber category of forbidden candidates, but is still illegal to own by anyone without authorization. Also known for causing blackouts to minor cities, this pokémon is Magneton. For the reason just given-”
“Magneton!” repeated Kurt, looking suddenly overwhelmed. He glanced wildly at Curtis. “Turn that off!”
“O-okay.” The picture of Magneton on the television screen went blank, and Kurt clapped a hand to his forehead. “Just think! Magneton. But it makes sense!”
Everyone looked at him, and Hibiki raised an eyebrow. “What makes sense, sir?” he asked, trying to sound polite. “Is Magneton special?”
“Well . . . yes, and no.” Kurt held up Kenta’s Master Ball in his hand, and all eyes turned to the forbidden object. Kurt cleared his throat. “Though I live in this little out-of-the-way town, I am not ignorant to the many pokeballs invented by designers over the years,” he said importantly. “Other than the compound and expand mechanism, they’re really not all that complex. The power of a pokeball comes from its magnetic potential.”
“Magnetism?” said Kenta. “Is that really all there is to it?”
“Indeed. My family’s been making pokeballs for almost a hundred years.” Kurt held up one of his custom-made apricorn pokeballs: a Lure Ball. “Back in the nineteen-twenties, we didn’t have much to work with other than natural materials like apricorn shells and magnetic rocks from the cave east of Azalea. Pokémon themselves are the ones that turn into energy when being sucked into pokeballs; the ball itself has nothing to do with that part. I mean, have you ever seen a regular cat go into a pokeball? It doesn’t work.
“Anyway, the first pokeballs were so weak that their only purpose was to hold pokémon already captured. Then as time went on, we eventually learned to make better magnets for the balls so they would stay snapped shut when activated, and temporarily turn off when the pokémon needed out. These were the electromagnets.”
Kurt turned his head towards the television screen. “What’s fishy about this is the fact that the most powerful electromagnet currently known to man is being dubbed a forbidden pokémon . . .” He again raised the Master Ball. “And meanwhile, the crowned jewel of the pokeball collection is made of something very much like Magneton!”
A heavy silence fell following Kurt’s words as the meaning clicked, and Hibiki recalled what Kenta had remembered seeing and hearing back at Silph Corporation. The trainers there used mostly Electrode and Magneton! Of course . . . it’s so obvious now!
“Hold on a second,” said Kenta, suddenly looking horrified. “If this really is a Magneton, does that mean . . .” His eyes widened. “No! They can’t! Are they killing pokémon just to turn them into balls?”
“Well, wait a minute,” said Kurt, as Kenta leaped to his feet in alarm. “I didn’t say your Master Ball necessarily was a Magneton. It just bears similar features in metallic structure.”
“I still have to be sure!” Kenta hefted up Hibiki’s backpack and darted into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. The three remaining people at the table barely had time to exchange wondering glances when Kenta was back out, in his Brendan Birch clothes again. He turned his eyes gravely to Hibiki. “Put up your hood. We’re going to Kanto!”
***
“Kenta, was this part of the plan?” Hibiki asked him sometime later, as the two brothers soared through the clouds of Kanto on Bolt’s back. “We didn’t know until about twenty minutes ago that the Master Ball was a pokémon.”
“The plan was originally to get the necessary raw materials for Kurt to make dozens of Master Balls with,” Kenta shouted to him over the screaming of the passing wind. “But all that changes if it means killing innocent creatures. Silph probably could’ve made the Master Ball years ago, and their project may have only been halted by ethical dilemmas.”
So we don’t have a plan now, thought Hibiki nervously as they dropped lower towards a nearby mountain peak. This is scaring me. We need to be thinking out loud here, or we might finally make the fatal blunder that gets us locked away before anything can happen!
“Hey, bro,” he said again, pulling Kenta’s sleeve to hold his attention. “Sorry, but what makes you so certain that we need to be going this way?”
“Oh, just a little incident that happened not long after I got shot.” Kenta looked down past Bolt’s neck, at the ground far below. “Bolt, pull down here. You remember this spot, don’cha, boy?”
They were approaching a village nearby a great mountain to the north. A transmission tower was lodged in the mountain, and a pathway ran down from it and into the village. Bolt touched down just beyond the town’s boundaries, and Hibiki shaded his eyes to get a clear look at the houses. Up above, he hadn’t noticed it, but each and every building within the town had a long, metallic stick rising out of the highest part of the roof. He dismounted from Bolt’s back, and automatically covered his mouth as the dust from the dirt road swirled around him. Kenta patted his Salamence on the head, tossed him a pokeblock, and gave him a quick salute. “Nice flying today, Bolt. You’re going to sleep well tonight!”
Bolt munched the pokeblock happily, then raised his wings and looked at Kenta inquisitively. Kenta smiled. “There’s a good soldier. Keep an eye in the sky, and let me know if you see any suspicious activity.”
Hibiki again covered his face as Bolt took off once more, kicking up a dust storm in the process. He didn’t lower his arms again until he felt Kenta’s hand on his back, guiding him forward. “We have to keep moving,” said Kenta, picking up a light jog. Hibiki kept with him, and looked once more at the town before them. Again, something had escaped his notice; a chain-linked fence surrounded the place on all sides, and only where the road led in was there an open gate. He turned to eyes to Kenta, and saw that he was smiling.
“On first impression, it may seem like these people don’t like outsiders, but they’re really very friendly. Welcome to Henna Villa, the town where everyone owns a jeep.”
They passed through the gates, and Kenta looked around the village with relish. “This takes me back,” he said, as they continued jogging past houses. “Ready for another story, Hibiki? It’s relevant to what we’re doing now.”
“Uh, sure.” You never did get to mentioning what happened to you after the Silph incident.
Kenta pointed at one of the random houses as they passed it, with a grayish-green cement wall. “This was the place where I was nursed back to health. I suppose I’ll begin here.”