DEVOLUTION: Descent or degeneration to a lower or worse state.
A/N The following story takes specific tidbits of the Pokemon canon and runs with it. There are references to real-life scenarios and places. This story borrows from the idea that Unova* = America, and the other in-game regions = Japan. It's fantastical and makes vague connections, but it's personal headcanon, and I wanted to share it with you. I hope you like it.
* UNOVA: United States of America. So yeah, they'd be more cities than just Castelia and whatnot.
As the RMS Orion cut across the Atlantic Ocean in only her fourth day of travel, Jean McCardell was violently sick over the side of the ship.
It wasn't the first – and most likely wouldn't be the last – time she'd lost her breakfast. Jean thought she would have gotten used to it by now. As she stared miserably down at the glassy waves, she tried to vain to think of something other than the churning in her gut.
"I hate the sea," she muttered weakly to herself.
"Jean, darling? Oh, no, don't tell me you've been sick again."
The girl in question summoned what energy remained and twisted slowly around, her hands still clutching the white railing like a lifeline. Her mother gave her a disapproving look, arms crossed tightly over her crisp navy uniform, the weak autumn sunlight sliding over the gold buttons. Jean managed a watery smile.
Mother frowned and moved closer, uncurling a hand to rub brisk circles on Jean's back. "We only have two more days to go, darling," Clara McCardell reminded her daughter, "do try and keep a lid on things. You're likely to frighten Richard off at this rate."
Ignoring her mother, Jean leant back over the railing, took a few deep gulps of the icy sea air, and straightened up, her mother's hand peeling off her back like old paint. She raised a shaking hand to her lips and ran her fingers along them, hoping that she wasn't totally repulsive. She smelt her fingers.
"There we go." Clara caught Jean's eye and smiled tightly. "Now, why don't you go get freshened up? We're expected in the ballroom at eight. It's already six."
Jean wiped her clammy hands on her skirt as Clara peered worryingly at the sea below. Jean waited a moment, though she didn't know what for.
When Clara looked back at her daughter, her expression dissolved into a look of mild irritation.
"Jean, darling, go now, otherwise you won't be ready in time."
Jean went.
The ballroom of the RMS Orion was the most opulent ever to be installed in an ocean liner. Eight crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting a fuzzy, warm glow over the sumptuous scarlet wallpaper and cool marble flooring. The weight of this room alone is likely to sink us, Jean thought wryly.
At her mother's request, she'd changed out of her woollen travelling skirt and into an orange evening dress with three-quarter length sleeves and a boat-neckline. It had been very fashionable in Nimbasa before they left on this infernal voyage.
Jean meandered around the room, already bored out of her mind. It was positively full to burst with a great array of people, most of them sailors. The ship had originally been a simple passenger liner to Liverpool, but at the last moment had to accommodate a couple hundred young men for the current crises in Rotterdam. Jean didn't read the newspaper (she preferred her girl's comics), but she'd overheard 'the men' saying something about a desperately planned German airstrike that had desecrated the harbour and wiped out half the navy's pokémon reserves.
Speaking of pokémon… After making a hurried check of her evening purse, Jean skirted around the edge of the room, dodging around the gigantic circular dining tables, and made her way up the brief flight of stairs to the mezzanine floor. Here the elite usually remained, like peacocks on high, clustered in little groups for safety. The upper-class disliked being on the ground floor among the sailors; her mother called them 'sea-rats'.
Jean quickly found her parents. Her mother was standing talking to three men, all in navy uniform, like herself. Clara wasn't exactly part of the military – due to the McCardell's 'situation' her mother had taken an honorary position among the higher ranks of the American navy. Jean doubted her mother could even row a boat.
Harry McCardell stood beside his wife, but though he was in close proximity, he had a faraway look on his bearded face. He wasn't paying attention to the conversation at all. Clara kept glancing at him as if willing him to disappear.
"Papa?"
Jean's father blinked a few times, dazed, before focusing on her face. A hesitant smile appeared.
"Jeanie, sweetheart." He blinked again, his thick eyebrows wrinkling like disgruntled caterpillars. Harry shook his head, as if his ears were full of water, before stepping away from his wife. His expression cleared, a well-practised mask of benign fatherly affection clipping into place.
"Papa, have you seen Billy's pokéball?" Jean asked, keeping her voice clear and a little louder than normal. Harry hadn't been himself for a few months now. She'd long learned that patience and pretending her father was deaf was the only way to get any response.
"Billy?" Harry echoed. He stared at wonder into Jean's eyes before looking around him suddenly, as if expecting her pokémon to materialize in an instance. "Billy… You know, sweetheart, I don't think I have." Clearly making an effort to remain focused on his daughter, Harry smiled tiredly. "Perhaps he's up in your rooms."
Jean knew better than to push for any more information. She stepped around her father, her high heels clicking delicately on the marble, before stopping just at Clara's elbow. She waited politely.
It was a few minutes before her mother noticed her. Clara broke off the conversation abruptly to look at Jean. The three men she was with – Jean recognized the fat one; he was the captain – eyed her mother greedily. Jean knew why. Her mother was a very attractive woman.
"Darling, yes, what is it." Clara glanced at the men, raising her eyebrows as if to say oh, children.
"Would you happen to know where Billy is?"
Clara frowned; probably misconstruing Jean's hurried tone for rudeness.
"He's your pokémon, darling. I haven't the faintest." Her mother's eyes zeroed in on Jean's hair and pushed a heavy brown lock back into place. "But do find him, won't you, Jean? He needs more attention than you give him. I keep telling you this," she added, giving Jean an exasperated look. "Now, leave us adults and go find Richard. Find Billy together, darling, I don't know."
Clara turned her back on Jean and slipped back into the conversation with hardly a blink. Jean glanced at her father, dismissed his vague expression, and headed back into the throng of pampered aristocrats.
The last thing she wanted to do was to find Richard, or 'Dickie', as she called him. They were to be married when they got to Japan; the arrangement had only been made last season, when the McCardell's had visited Dickie's family up in Castelia for Thanksgiving. Jean supposed he was okay, if she was completely honest with herself. But she couldn't shake that he was five years older than her and had a moustache.
But mother kept bringing his name up in conversation in a pointed sort of way… And it wouldn't do, Jean supposed reluctantly, to ignore her fiancé so. They'd only said about ten words to one another the entire trip.
He could always chaperone her to her rooms. Jean had to be chaperoned almost everywhere. She kicked herself for forgetting Billy's pokéball - her mother didn't like the idea of a young girl wandering the ship with all these sailors hanging about.
Jean stopped at the brass railing of the mezzanine and looked out over the rest of the ballroom below. The sailors laughed and joked amongst themselves with such easy camaraderie. She turned back to look at the Mr-and-Mrs-so-and-sos. They all looked uncomfortable and petulant when they thought no one was looking, their champagne glasses held daintily before them like thorned roses, great ropes of jewels slung about the women's necks and sagging medals pinned to the men's tuxedoes. For an instant, Jean felt sad for them all.
She leant against the railing and scanned the crowd for Richard. He was like a lighthouse beacon; people were helplessly drawn to him, their eyes sliding across a room, desperately seeking his company.
Jean spotted him over by the swanna ice sculpture. He was talking to Hanna Stone, her pink face even pinker, delighted by her conversation partner. She kept licking her lips.
Exhaling heavily through her nose, Jean forced herself to go over to the couple. Richard saw her coming and raised his glass in greeting; his expression never wavered away from his default isn't this a wonderful day look. Hanna noticed Jean at the last moment. Her smile faltered.
"What a pleasant surprise!" Dickie exclaimed happily, taking Jean's offered hand and bestowing an eager kiss. "Hanna, I believe you have met my fiancé, Jean McCardell?"
"A pleasure," Hanna replied, eyes hard and smile fixed. "I'll leave you be. Good evening Richard, Miss McCardell."
"Thank you for rescuing me!" Dickie breathed once Hanna was out of earshot, ducking down to Jean's eye level. He raised his glass again in thanks and took an enthusiastic slurp. "Apparently her father's in steel pokémon. I had to act terribly interested." Straightening, he reached for a fruit platter on the buffet table, popped a cherry into his mouth. "This new idea of pokémon specialisation is really quite something, is it not? Imagine, years from now, people might make training pokémon an occupation, not a hobby! What a hoot! But come now, Jean, my love," he held her gaze, smiling warmly, "can I get you anything? Glass of champagne? Sake? I do adore this Kantonese cuisine. It's so foreign."
Jean couldn't help giggling at Dickie's conversation. He gave the impression of being stupid as a psyduck, and maybe he was, but she knew it was a million times better than being married to someone who was sharp in words and actions. Dickie moved like molasses, his twangy Castelian accent at a contrast with his summertime smiles. He was nineteen, she fourteen, and he treated her like a little sister. They were getting married in Hearthome City, in Sinnoh – a lifetime away from their current European destination, Rotterdam. Once they arrived in Holland they were travelling up to St Petersburg within a matter of days and then boarding the Trans-Siberian railway. Despite her reluctance to get to Japan (and the wedding), Jean could hardly wait: she had longed to travel by train for as long as she could remember.
Suddenly, she remembered what her mission was. "Dickie, could you help me find Billy? I left his pokéball in my rooms. I need you to come with me." It was safe to employ a sloppy speaking style around Richard. He found her childish mannerisms amusing.
Moustache crinkling, Richard grinned at her. He abandoned his champagne by the ice sculpture and offered his arm. "I would be honoured. Come on, my little ducklett – onwards!"
They slipped quietly out of the ballroom (well, as quietly as one could when the Richard Oak was on one's arm) and started the winding trek to the upper floors. Jean had a suite a few floors from the top of the ship. It had a magnificent view.
Dickie nattered away companionably, blathering on about the essay he'd just had published on pokémon domestication. Not many people really trained pokémon; it was a small-time hobby, akin to rapidash riding or shopping. Jean didn't mind spending time with Billy, but she much preferred reading her comics. Mother thought differently. Richard had given Billy to her as a wedding present – his father was one of the few aristocrats who truly enjoyed pokémon breeding – and Jean had to pretend to be overjoyed at the prospect of cleaning and feeding and looking after a deadly creature with knives for hands for the sake of the imminent Oak-McCardell union. Billy wasn't vicious towards her, but he sure scared other people off when they came too close. Dickie said Billy was going to be her bodyguard, now that they were to be married. Jean didn't really understand what getting married to Richard Oak had to do with her safety.
"Oh, my dear, have you heard of the Rotterdam crises?" Dickie put on his best mournful expression and clutched at his heart dramatically. "It's simply awful, is it not? Father was most displeased at the whole spectacle. You know, he still thinks that pokémon should be considered partners, not weapons. I'm not entirely sure what to think myself, darling. But the thought of pokémon blasting the Nazis to bits… Listen to me! This is hardly conversation for my wife -"
"I don't mind," Jean interrupted hurriedly. Pokémon could blast people to bits?
Dickie eyed her doubtfully as they turned a corner, the low lamps along the corridor casting a gloomy, furry light. "My love, I don't want to distress you. I know how hard this journey has been on you so far. I'd like to think we'll arrive in Japan in one piece. Are these your rooms, sweetmeat?"
Displeased that she hadn't interrogated Richard further, Jean fumbled in her purse and unlocked the massive wooden door with her key. Almost before she'd pushed the door open, there was a shrill exclamation from inside.
Rolling her eyes, Jean opened the door and flicked on the lights.
Billy stood in the middle of the vast, opulent room, his head bowed and eyes trained on his mistress with an expression of utter relief. The pawniard murmured something and shuffled forwards, his gaze ducking from the floor to her.
"What have you done now?" Jean could hardly disguise her exasperation. On the ground off to the side, next to the French imported wingback chair, lay the sad two halves of Billy's pokéball. Richard cried out in alarm and rushed forwards to scoop the remains up.
"How on Earth – Oh, father will be anguished to see this." Dickie raised the broken pokéball up to his eyes and studied it. "It looks like it's be sliced clean through. But how could Billy have done such a thing?" He glanced at Jean's pawniard curiously. "He's been in his pokéball the whole night, hasn't he, Jean, my love?"
Jean shrugged, sulky. Now she'd have to take Billy down to the ballroom with her. Mother would have a fit. She hated pokémon at the table.
The pawniard moved closer to his mistress and took one of her hands carefully in his own sharp palms. That was one of the things Jean found most frightening about her pokémon; he didn't have hands.
Billy muttered something in his tongue and started to gently stroke the back of her palm with the blunt side of his knife-hands. Bowing his head, he touched his mouth to her hand, making sure to keep the small blade protruding from his forehead away from her skin, looking the very definition of apologetic.
Dickie looked like he was about to swoon. Jean thought her fiancé's weak spot when it came to pokémon was one of his less-distinguished features.
"Yes, alright," Jean snapped, moving her hand away and crossing her arms across her chest. She didn't know it, but she was the very image of her mother. "Come on, Dickie, we ought to get back downstairs. We'll miss the first course."
Richard held up the pokéball hopefully. "My angel, do you mind if I take this with me? I've half a mind to mail it to father once we reach Rotterdam. He knows the man who invented pokéballs, you know. They might be able to give us some answers."
Jean shrugged again, looking very much her age. She turned to leave, but stopped at the mirror beside the door to her suite, examining her reflection. Perhaps mother would like it more if her hair was out?
Just as Jean felt Billy's knife-hand hesitantly brush against the skirt of her dress, seeking further forgiveness, the room was plunged into darkness.
And just as suddenly, the lights came on again.
Jean whirled around to face Richard, who looked utterly bewildered. Frowning, she opened her mouth to say I thought this ship was the best of its kind at the same time the lights flickered again, bobbing between utter blackness and an orange glow.
In the silence, there was a terrible, echoing groan that shook the floor and made the glass in the windows rattle.
Jean grabbed Billy's shoulder to steady herself. The pawniard's knives shot outwards, suddenly thirty centimetres long; he growled menacingly, his eyes darting all over the room.
"My sweet, are you alright?" Dickie stuffed the pokéball halves into the pockets of his black trousers and staggered over to her as the floor of the ship gave another dying moan. "Perhaps we ought to leave, go back to the ballroom – safety in numbers and what have you -"
The floor rumbled again, this time causing some furniture to slide across the room. Dickie yelped and grabbed Jean's left arm. With the other hand, he brought out his own pokéball and managed to unscrew it, releasing his herdier with a flash.
The stout canine pokémon gave a gruff woof in greeting before bracing itself against another quake.
"We're leaving!" With Dickie on one side and Billy on the other, Jean managed to steer them out into the corridor. The ship was now quaking from side to side slowly. She felt a tide of bile swell in her throat.
Swallowing thickly, she started moving down the hall, completely off-balance. Billy moved in front of her, his big helmeted head swaying sickeningly on the slender stem of his neck. Dickie had one arm now around her waist, the other grabbing at the walls for some semblance of normality, his herdier dashing up ahead and lurching around a corner.
"Reg! Reginald!" Richard called in distress. "Come back here!"
Billy suddenly stopped and moved backwards, his arms stretching out either side of him to shield Jean and Dickie.
"Billy, what -"
There was a brief moment where the air before Billy seemed to shimmer before there was a blip, and Harry McCardell's duosion was hovering in the middle of the corridor.
The pawniard gave a warning snarl and clashed his hands together, making an ear-splitting screech of metal-on-metal.
Father's duosion barely looked at Billy, its big, liquid-black eyes staring at Jean.
"It's the Nazis!" Richard breathed in terror.
Suddenly, duosion was right in front of her, the green gooey nebula had encasing them all and she barely had time to take a breath before the hallway of the RMS Orion instantly disappeared around them and she was staring out at the Atlantic Ocean with wet rock beneath her feet and the twinkling lights of Liverpool behind her, thinking It's just like the Titanic.
Jean learned later from duosion that the ship's engines had exploded. The rumbling they had felt moments before they'd been teleported to safety was the gaskets blowing, seconds before the entire bottom half of the RMS Orion had lifted sky-high.
She tried to force her father's duosion to go back and find her parents, but the pokémon had stared at her dumbly in response. Secretly, Jean knew that it was hopeless. Duosion belonged to her now.
Richard had sent a letter off to his father in Castelia city. He asked for permission to continue onto to Japan with Jean; his father had said yes. Richard said to her that they were starting life anew, that this was the great turning point of their young lives.
"We'll always remember that day," he said in their train compartment, Jean watching the icy landscape flashing by like a dream, "we'll always remember the twentieth of May, 1940."
The day that the RMS Orion exploded, it had been a week since the Rotterdam Blitz. Three hundred Unovian sailors had died in the ship's disaster.
As Jean and Richard knew this to be the turning points in their lives, eventually the history books would call it the turning point of the Second World War. The calamity of the RMS Orion wasn't recorded as a fluke, but as a secret bombing mission by the axis powers. Mollified, the Germans had taken this catastrophe under their wing and taken the blame for the bombing. It rallied the Nazi troops and their allies, and in 1943, as Jean and Richard celebrated their third wedding anniversary safely in Sinnoh, England was overthrown. Still fumbling to pick up the pieces after the RMS Orion Event, Unova hastily declared neutrality and cut itself off from the world, the very image of isolationism.
But when the European forces – now governed entirely by the Nazis – stormed across southern Europe towards Asia, Japan declared war. In 1945, it was no longer the Second World War: humanity had now encountered the Third World War, Japan versus the Nazi behemoth.
It became known as the Sixty Years War, and later, also the Cold War. Unova was safe across the ocean, watching these two enemies duke it out with devastating effects. When it seemed like they could go no further, when the Nazis were teetering on the easternmost edge of Asia, only a hair's breadth away from their destination, Japan introduced the genetically-altered mewtwo into the fray.
It's 2045 now, the hundred-years anniversary of the Third World War. Jean and Richard Oak are long dead, as is their grandson Samuel Oak. The world is split into two countries: Japan, with its super-colonies of Sinnoh, Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn, and the States of Unova. The Pacific Ocean is a treacherous, pokémon-infested wasteland, miles upon miles of uncross-able water. The only continent that lies between them is Black Europe, a charred, desolate wasteland of human and pokémon remains. Some harsh tribes live on the land, but it was officially declared a no-access zone in 2006.
Pokémon training has boomed in popularity, the devastating mortality rates glossed over by colourful television shows and video games. Pokémon themselves are dangerous creatures, not impossible to train, but hardened by generations of combat. Some people, like the Oak family, believe pokémon should be loved; and indeed, their philosophy has filtered down into the many cults of Japan. But here, military power is paramount, and Japan is a superpower.
There is a class divide unlike any other. Japan is not yet at war with itself, but that's about to change.
It's 2045. Welcome to Hell.