THE SCIENTIST
"Pi-pika!"
Pikachu charged across the room, ears pricked. Yellow cringed - he had thought that the hours of walking and training would've given him more control over the pokémon, but the pikachu remained stubborn and spirited. It didn't growl, or send threatening sparks of electricity towards him, which he supposed was an improvement. But that didn't stop the pikachu from embarrassing him around other people. Other pokémon seemed so docile and compliant. So peaceful. So… easy.
He inhaled and prepared himself.
"I'm sorry-"
"Pika!"
Pikachu drew back from the strange pokémon, teeth bared. Its ears were back and its fur crackled with potential energy - soon, sparks would flash across the pikachu's body, and the room would take on that strange, heavy atmosphere, the same pressure that you'd feel before a thunderstorm.
Yellow stepped forward. The room was dim. Outside, the weather had been pleasant, with the heat making Yellow sweat as he treked across the bridge and dodged seemingly endless hordes of trainers. But here the windows had been covered over with crumpled and stained curtains, and the bulbs overhead blinked and flickered, barely providing any light. Yellow reached down and touched Pikachu's pokéball, preparing for the worst.
"Hello?"
The figure turned around, with what seemed to be a great amount of huffing and wheezing. Yellow flinched, and quickly tried to compose his face into something expressionless and polite. He'd heard that the man was a recluse, and he supposed that brilliance often came with some madness, but…
It was a crude costume, the type that Yellow had seen people wearing to promote their businesses, or the type that would hug children and pose for photographs at amusement parks. It had once been a nidoking, or maybe even a nidoqueen. The costume was tattered, with most of the original colour having faded away to some non-descript greyish beige. He could see the top of the man's shoes through one of the feet, thanks to a gaping hole. The head was the unsettling part.
There obviously had been fake eyes, at some stage. Now, there was just two dark voids, where Yellow could almost see the man's own eyes, but mostly could only see the occasional shine and reflection from the flickering lights. The man had obviously tried to balance out the creepy eyes by drawing a wonky smile over the nidoking/nidoqueen's muzzle. It hadn't helped.
"Hey, friend! I'm Bill, the Pokémaniac!"
"Uh, hey."
Pikachu growled, but decided against taking on the pokémon/human hybrid, and scuttled back behind Yellow. Yellow was trying to train the pikachu to be friendlier towards strangers, but thought that maybe it wasn't a bad idea for Pikachu to be hostile towards this particular type of stranger. Emphasis on the strange.
"Are you here to see my pokémon collection?"
Bill's voice was shrill. Yellow thought that maybe he was excited to have visitors, but there seemed to be a nervous edge to the high-pitched squeaks.
"I-"
"Too bad, because you won't be seeing any pokémon! You see, I've been experimenting with cloning pokémon, and accidentally spliced my DNA with my precious Nido's! Do you think you could help me out? I'm going to go back into the machine, and you just have to run a programme on my computer. What do you say, friend?"
He's mad. Like, he's suffering from some delusional disorder. Did people know about this? Did they just pretend he was normal? Yellow fought the urge to grab Pikachu and back out of the laboratory. Green had boasted that the man had given him a ticket to the S.S Anne, and he wasn't about to lose out to Green. He wondered if Green had asked the man to freak him out. He wouldn't be surprised.
"Suuure. Yeah. What program do you need me to run?"
Bill wheezed excitedly, and shuffled towards the computer.
"Thanks, friend. You have no idea how annoying this has been - I'm not able to use my computer, or anything!"
He waved the stumpy arms of the costume and giggled.
"It's the Cell Separator! It should just be on the desktop, if you want to come over."
Yellow edged over. The costume stunk - sweaty and musty. He tried not to breathe too deeply, and grabbed the grimy mouse.
"Oh, yeah. You just want to me to press 'Run', right?"
There was another wheeze.
"Yeah, yeah! That would be great! I'm going back to the machine - when you hear my signal, just press the button!"
Bill shuffled towards what appeared to be a big cupboard or wardrobe. Someone had stuck some LEDs and stickers on the front. It reminded Yellow of when he used to stick things onto his wardrobe at home, and pretend it was a spaceship. He'd heard about the space agency in Hoenn when he was seven, and had become completely obsessed, spending hours inside the wardrobe and making rocket noises.
Moving around and wearing the costume seemed to exhaust Bill. It took an awkward minute for the man to heave himself inside the cupboard, and another minute to turn around and close the doors. Pikachu made low, anxious noises the entire time, circling around Yellow's feet and glancing towards the door.
"I know, buddy," Yellow whispered, reaching down to scratch Pikachu's ears.
"Alright, the machine has been prepared! Run the program on my signal. 3… 2… 1!"
Yellow clicked the aforementioned button. It didn't seem to do anything. He couldn't help but notice that the dirt and dust encrusting the mouse made clicking anything an unpleasant experience. He sighed. The program looked simple - just a few options to start and stop the program, some buttons that he didn't understand - splice, transgene… He wished he'd paid attention to his science lectures, now. Or maybe psychology would have been more appropriate for this situation. Psychiatry, even.
There was some huffing and puffing coming from the wardrobe. Yellow could hear him knocking things around and banging against the doors, but decided not to interfere.
"Ta-da!"
A flushed Bill burst out from the wardrobe, without the costume. He was wearing a wrinkled shirt that had seen cleaner days, and a pair of cargo pants. His socks clung tightly to his calves, and his shoes were some velcro/sandal/runner hybrid.
"He dresses to his pokémaniac reputation, anyway…"
His stomach poked out from beneath his top, hairy and bulging. His neck and face were covered with a coarse and scraggly beard that desperately needed grooming, and his hair was plastered to his head with sweaty. Bill pushed his glasses back up his nose, and smiled. He hadn't brushed his teeth for weeks.
"Thanks! It's good to be back to being a human! Nido is going to appreciate having her body back too, heh."
"Eh, no problem."
Pikachu whined. Yellow bent down and scooped him up, moving towards to the door in what he hoped was a graceful and subtle manner.
"So, do you want to see my pokémon collection? It'll be easier-"
"Actually, someone mentioned that you had S.S Anne tickets?"
"Oh, yeah…"
Bill looked defeated. Yellow was torn between pitying him and being disgusted by him.
"Yeah, I have those tickets! You can have them, for helping me."
Bill rummaged through the many pockets of his cargo pants and drew out two creased tickets.
"One for you and one for your pikachu, right?"
"Heh, yeah. Thanks."
Yellow stepped forward, reaching for the outstretched tickets. Suddenly, Bill lurched forward, moving quicker than Yellow would have expected for someone who seemed to pant just from standing. A grubby hand scratched the top of Pikachu's head.
"Pik!"
"Ouch!"
A warning shock - nothing too painful. Yellow estimated that his pikachu was about capable of paralysing a man, at this stage of its training, and had been on the unpleasant end of these shocks numerous times. If Pikachu had wanted to incapacitate the man, it was certainly capable. Yellow almost wished it had.
"Sorry, man. My pikachu's nervous around strangers."
Yellow quickly pocketed the tickets, before Bill could take them back.
"Oh… It's okay. Some pokémon are just nervous, eh? Heh."
"Yeah… Thanks for the tickets. I have to head away, now. So…"
Yellow nodded uncomfortably and turned for the door.
"Bye-bye, friend! Come around again! I'll show you my collection!"
"Sure, yeah."
Yellow ducked out. He closed the door firmly behind him, and exhaled heavily. The sunlight and soft breeze was a welcome change from the musty laboratory.
"What a fucking weirdo," he muttered.
He watched them, peering out the window. He sighed and jerked the curtains back over the window, determined to block out the annoying and invasive sunlight. The laboratory was lonely. He was lonely.
He breathed deeply and clapped his hands together.
"Hey! My name's Bill, the Pokémaniac! If you've used one of the computers at the pokémon centre, then you've probably used a couple of my inventions!"
The laboratory didn't respond. There was a wet and dripping sound coming from the cupboard.
"She's moving," he thought.
"Before, trainers could only carry six pokémon - if they wanted more, they had to replace one of the other pokémon, or find someone to foster a pokémon. But now, you can deposit your pokémon into my PC programme, and store hundreds of them!"
He single-handedly created this craze of catching and collecting pokémon from every region. He created a program that could take a biological entity and translate it back and forth between computer code and organic material. He was a genius, a god.
"Stupid kid," he grunted.
He plodded back over towards the cupboard. He'd had a proper machine, once. The university slashed funding after an unsavory accident. They kept a pension for him, of course. He was famous. He gave that university its name, its reputation. But they couldn't been seen to be funding that type of research. Excuses, excuses. How did they think the pokemon storage system was created? There had to be failures. Learning experiences.
"Nido-chan? Are you there, Nido-chan?"
He almost sang. It'd been months since he heard music. The radio had broken, and he couldn't find the motivation or energy to venture down to the town and buy another one. He didn't want the stares, the snide comments.
He opened back one of the doors, and looked at the blob. He'd trodden on her when removing the costume, and a faint footprint remained within the oozing, slimy mass. A few scales and fingers remained, but they were probably going to be incorporated soon.
"Hey Nido-chan. How are you doing? How are you feeling?"
She'd had functioning eyes yesterday. Bill had experimented on them - doing various light examinations. But today, they were gone. That made him sad. His nidoqueen had had beautiful eyes. People urged him to compete with her, but he had never bothered.
"Not too talkative today, eh?"
The blob moved, slightly. He was wondering when he would have to consider Nido dead. She could move, right? She was able to see yesterday. She could vocalise a couple of days ago. That had been awkward, trying to keeping her from speaking when that Green had come around. What defined life? Whatever the parameters and regulations were, his nidoqueen looked as though she was regressing through them. From a functional animal to a mass of organic tissues. Bill wondered if she would regress even further - from multicellular to unicellular, from unicellular to… The core. The molecule. The thing that had sparked life. A floating piece of genetic material, perhaps. A mutated prion.
He was sad that the nidoqueen was gone. But months upon months of isolation had numbed most of his emotions. He was sad about the death of his companion. He was sad that his radio didn't have batteries. He was sad that he didn't have any of his favourite chocolate bars. There was no differentiation between those sadnesses, just a muted baseline of "Oh…".
But she was useful. He hummed tunelessly. He imagined the blob looking towards him, pleading. "Help me. Kill me."
"Not yet, Nido-chan. We have work to do."
There were surgical instruments buried at the back of the cupboard. Rusty, grimy. Not sterilised.
It was time to test Nido-chan's pain responses. He grinned, madly.