The consequences of this link technology on our society will go far beyond their uses in industry, science, and pokemon training. It affects our perception of time and reality. Our eyes now do not first go to the stars to search for and wonder about the mysterious 'other.' We turn to our neighbors, our friends, our families. We turn to ourselves.
Our own worlds, our own lives, become infinite wells of questions, 'what ifs.' Other Kantos that do not have the instant communication we enjoy. Or, in the matter of pokemon, the various phyla we take as a matter of fact, like Fairy, Dark, or Steel, or the glory of mega evolution. Other Kantos that might, through some unimaginable series of events, be alone in the world, without the company of other nations, or even its familial regions. These global musings easily turn to our own lives. Other versions of 'us' living and dying. Inevitable thoughts of friends and lovers we might have met, or not, can gnaw on us.
Many pleasures we take for granted that make our lives easier here are absent there, things that give us more power, both over ourselves and our own destinies. We gain the impression of a world in which our partnerships with pokemon have a harder, sterner, edge. But, such as in the case of the Kalos and Hoenn wars, our power gave us the ability to turn our freedom into unprecedented destruction that would undoubtedly be viewed as a parable of warning to our alternate selves, who, otherwise, we might be tempted to view as beneath us. They are not the noble savage, and neither are we the enlightened minds of a blessed future.
This interconnectedness that our fated placement in the multiverse has made gives us power over our lives, the lives of others, and the lives of pokemon. The stakes are higher in our 'edition' of reality. Our heights are the highest. Our losses are devastating. May the gods who created our station give us grace to live up to the challenge of being ourselves.
-Silph Group President Yataro Iwasaki, 3015 AE, "What We Have Found." The first sanctioned public statement concerning the confirmation of alternate universes, a year after the LINK Team first established communication with the Prof. Samuel Oak of Universe II, who was using a version of their Silph's link technology. LINK Team's revealing of the existence of the other twenty eight known universes soon followed.
- (-o-) -
My uncle is scheduled to vid me in ten minutes.
Mom made me get out of my room an hour ago, early, to get ready ahead of time. I showered, then dressed in the baggy shirt and pants I slept in. She gave up on me trying beyond basic decency and combed out my hair into something manageable, chose my clothes, and almost started dressing me herself like I was a helpless child before I started yelling at her to get out of my room.
"Make a good impression," she said. "Put on your cute floral toboggan." She took it out of a packed box in the corner. She didn't ask why I put it away.
I see my reflection faintly in the glossy monitor, wearing said toboggan.
Mom had changed my laptop wallpaper while I showered to a picture of some beach she visited while scouting out the new house. I'll change it back in a bit. She left some travel brochure on the desk too.
I tug on my hat. It's soft. Warm.
From what I've heard, it would be too hot to wear anymore soon. Here, I could wear it for a few solid months, put it away for the summer, then open it up out of my winter clothes drawer and have it hug my skull for the season. Even though it's coming to Alola too, eventually, it's arriving weeks later and headed straight for long term storage. That weird red hat might as well be going away forever.
I grimace.
Uncle Kukui sends me a com request five minutes too early.
I can hear my mother's voice sitting on my shoulder. "It's midnight there. He's making time for you. You can at least recognize that." Through the fog of my unease, some of that rings true. I'll make an effort.
I start smiling only when I click to make the request expand into a livestream of him at his lab.
Moonlight filters through a large skylight. Uncle is not wearing a shirt. Only a labcoat and a baseball cap. He leans into the camera to adjust its angle, pushing his tanned pecs further into the frame. Satisfied with the view, he sits back in his chair.
I continue to smile a smile that pulls my face taut.
He smiles in return. "Mizuki, good to see you. How is the prep going?"
I tell him that it's going fine.
A curious little Rockruff crowds into the frame, staring at me through its end of the transmission. It barks, wagging its tail. Uncle scratches its neck until it's distracted enough to not be entranced by a new human face.
My smile relaxes into something a bit more real.
My uncle calms it down and promises that, "Mizuki will be here soon." Rockruff barks in understanding and leaps to the ground off Uncle's lap. "Sorry about that," he says.
"It's fine. I know how it is," I say.
He nods and gives me a thumbs up. "Just so you know, your Trainer Passport is done and is waiting for you at the house, along with all the things you and your mom shipped over. Got it all this morning. Good timing, yeah?"
My smile returns to a stretched politeness as I agree that all of this is, in fact, good timing.
"So, do you think you're going to start the Island Challenge as soon as you get here, or are you going to take some time to adjust?"
I tell him that I'm not sure. I don't tell him that I would have already been two gyms deep into a real Pokemon League if I had my way.
"Either way, I'm happy to introduce you to everyone. There's a few people I definitely want you to meet."
I agree to his suggestion.
He nods, smile growing. As if on cue, the Rockruff from earlier jumps up and fills the screen, wagging its tail madly. A Pikipek lands on Uncle's shoulder, trilling. He manages to push through past the insistent little dog Pokemon and say, "10-4, good buddy! I'll get everyone together once you're here and let 'em know you're on your way."
I thank him.
"Have a good flight."
"Thanks, Uncle Kukui," I say again.
I close the vid window, then slump in my seat, sighing. With a few clicks, I change the desktop wallpaper back to the family picture the champion took of all of us on the summit of Mt. Silver a few years ago. Everyone bundled up like pastel marshmallows. Even dad. My weird red hat is super out of place here at the top of the world, but Dad wanted me to wear my new present. Everyone's wearing serious high altitude gear, and there I am with that thing. With me piggybacking on him, latched around his neck, which of course wasn't a problem at all for a guy like him, the two of us look like some kind of bulbous flowered plant, or a hunchbacked venusaur.
Mom's leaning into his side, smiling, head just reaching to his shoulder.
The first light of morning comes through the circular window at the peak of my bedroom's peaked roof.
I close the laptop.
I reach across my desk, crush and crumple the travel brochure in my fist, and throw it into the trash can.
I drag my hands across my puffy red-eyed face, wiping dried tears with the heel of my palm.
She means well.
I take the brochure out and smooth it, pulling it back and forth against the side of my desk. I open it, seeing if it's still readable. The article on that one Silph daughter company that's focused on pokemon conservation doesn't look as crisp as it did a few minutes ago, but I can still read it.
I jump up, walk out of my bedroom, wood beams creaking under my feet. Down three flights of steep stairs, past empty rooms, and out the cabin's front door, where that invigorating mixture of piercing morning sun and higher altitude cold hits me full force. I pull my hat more tightly around my head.
Mom's sitting on the front stoop, mine and Mom's few carry-on bags behind her on the porch. I sit next to her.
She puts her arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer.
"How was your talk?" she asks.
"Fine," I reply.
We watch the sun rise more, dew evaporating into a high mist over the pine forest.
She shakes me, hugging my side more tightly. "You wanna have one more go before the League picks us up?"
I furrow my brow as I look up at her. "All of the pokemon are in Alola though."
She takes two pokeballs off her waist and rolls them around in her palm before tossing me one.
"I kept these," she points to the training yard with a thumb, smiling impishly, letting go of me and jogging over to the roughly chalked out battle arena.
I take a look at the markings on the back of my pokeball and laugh. "Alright, fine." I jog after her.
The training area is a flattened rock field about the size of a football pitch, roughly patterned from all the different kinds of rocks Dad's pokemon have patched it with over the years. The fog lights that sit on each corner turned off automatically a while ago.
Each of us take our places. I move my long rough black hair out of my face and tie it around the back in a thick knot so it doesn't get in the way.
Mom looks at me.
"What?" I say, but, while saying it, I answer the question in your own mind. She's said before that, when I do that, it makes me look a lot like him. Wild mountain man black hair, tied off just before a pokemon battle, framing the face I inherited from mom, one of traditional Kanto femininity.
"Nothing," she says before shifting her expression into her 'Fun Mom' form. "Let's get started!" she yells, throwing out her pokeball, exploding in red light. I throw out mine too, but much, much higher up.
Mom's Persian appears on her side, already crouched, big white eyes flickering in amusement.
Her Onix appears on my half of the arena, towering higher than the fog lights, roaring in, what I imagine, triumphant commemoration of the event.
"Standard opening, Persian!" Mom shouts.
Nasty Plot into a Hyper Voice. If she really wanted to go for the win immediately, she'd use her Rock Opening, replacing Hyper Voice with Water Pulse. This is training.
"Vocal Wall!" I command.
A little something Dad had been working on to counter this opening. A variation on Roar so loud that it negates attacks depending on sound. I can see Mom grinning from across the arena.
Persian's fur is on end from Nasty Plot as it digs its claws into the rock, breathing deep.
Onix rears back, like a lion claiming its territory, filling its lungs.
The Indigo Mountains resound with the cries of our pokemon.
Fifteen minutes later, both of us are panting, soaked with sweat, sitting on the front stoop.
"You let me win," I say between breaths, laughing.
"You can't prove it," says Mom.
I huff in exasperation. "You trained that Persian specifically to fight against high level rock pokemon!"
Mom shrugs comically. "She's off her game."
I play tackle her, laughing, which she easily intercepts with a round of tickles. After a few minutes of wraslin', the two of us, covered even more in dirt and pebbles, are sprawled on our front lawn, watching the sun rise higher, waiting for our ride.
Mom taps me on the shoulder. I turn over to ask her what was up, then see her expression has become very serious.
She pulls something long out of her pocket and hands me a silvery tungsten chain with two thick copper rings holding two stones, one blue, with hints of purple and green and black veins intersecting across, and another with silver and gray coloring and those same black webs.
I stare at them, pooled in my palms.
"He gave them to you, specifically," says Mom.
Dad's keystone and Steelixite.
I do my best to hold back tears, to limited success. Mom gets up, picks me up, and holds me close, cooing and shushing at me, running her hands through my hair.
The two of us clean up and compose ourselves before Lance and his dragons arrive to take us to the airport, my new keepsake around my neck, held tight against my chest.
- (-o-) -
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This chapter's song is 'Rylyn' by Andy McKee.