Getter Started, Youngin'


I.

Why, of all the things he owned, did he have to lose his passion? Why, of all his relationships, did he lose his marriage? Why, of all choices for a middle-aged man to make, did he decide to become a pokemon trainer at the ripe old age of sixty-two?

Why, John did not know.


II.

He decided that it was because of that pokemon.

The damn thing had done it: had planted the seeds of self-realization, had made it impossible for him to go on living his dull life, had made him rethink continuing his loveless marriage, had caused a chain reaction that ended in an explosion, an epiphany that had been fifty-two years overdue, but yet not too late to right.

Not bad for a wild animal.


III.

He was fifty-four. He'd practiced in a tiny town off the coast of Hoenn for close to ten years. Sunny, tropical, beautiful and consistent weather—a place for retirement. Pacifidlog Town. Nobody over the age of forty or under the age of ten lived there. Only old geezers like him, rocking their rocking chairs, shooting shit off their sea porches as the sun went up and down. Little kids letting their toes kiss the splashing waves, giggling and shrieking while their older brothers and sisters prepared themselves for their journeys.

Edna had wanted the move, her idea for some peace. See the beaches, take a few cruises, enjoy life as they settled into middle age together, just like how those pamphlets described. After the Incident, that was it. She didn't want to be near cities anymore. They made her depressed.

All that time, John wondered, Is this where I'm going to die?

But it wasn't. Because eight years later, a near-dead pokemon would remind him that even though he felt like he was dead, it wasn't his time yet.


IV.

It was nine in the morning, by his wristwatch, and he was sixty-one years and seven months old. His feet ached, his hands creaked, his face frozen in a neutral expression. The clinic he ran, just a small practice, was supposed to open at eight, not nine; however, he'd woken up late, stuck in bed wondering how the hell he was going to climb out of it. Nobody minded, though. The town was small enough that everyone knew everyone's business, and when those businesses would open; if there was an emergency, they knew where he lived.

The lock clicked open and John carefully pushed open the door, mindful of the door's hinges. Because of the moisture, rust formed quickly. Last week the door had almost squished him whole after the hinges gave out.

The clinic's interior was small and white and brown, wood and paint and the smell of salt water. Two wooden chairs, a windowed desk, and an artificial palm tree made up the waiting room; behind the desk was a door, and that led to two rooms: an examination room, and a file room.

The examination room was used only for prescribing medicine; John knew all his patients, and they all knew it was only a formality. They usually walked in and out, five minutes at most; not even toddlers with headcolds took that long to diagnose and treat. In the file room, John sat and read medical journals to pass the time. It was an exciting day when he had two patients to look after.

He walked into the waiting room and opened the curtains, allowed the sun inside the dark room. Same as always, he thought, looking out at the sea. He wondered why the thought tired him.


V.

John wasn't licensed to treat pokemon, only humans. It hadn't been a conscious decision on his part; when strangers asked him why he chose humans, he would say, "I guess I never really thought about it until after the fact." But that didn't sound like him. He always thought things through; he never rushed. He wasn't impatient. Even Edna asked him why.

"I don't know," he had said. "Honestly. I wasn't thinking, I suppose."

Maybe he just didn't like pokemon, he would think. Perhaps he preferred patients he communicated with, and his subconscious was sparing him from his own prejudice. In any case, it wasn't like he was losing money; on the contrary, he usually made more than those that practiced exclusively on pokemon. (Those that practiced on both, however, always made most, hands down.)

As he tended the bloody foot of an eight-year-old, he found that the girl was very chatty, very talkative, and very much wanted her mind away from the pain of his probing tweezers. She was interested in pokemon, as every child was, and she wanted to know why he wasn't working in a pokemon center.

"Because I can't treat pokemon," he replied, pulling out another piece of glass.

The eight-year-old's foot twitched. "Ow," she whined, clutching her mother's hand tightly. She took in a breath, he paused, and then she asked, "Why?"

"Because I didn't go to school for it." He searched for shards with his magnifiers.

"Why?" she said. Her voice sounded faint.

He paused and pulled out another piece. "I'm not an animal person."

"But p-people are animals too," she said in a soft, but smart alec-y tone. "Same thing, right?"

John wondered how she sounded so calm despite the fresh tear tracks down her face. Daisy was her name, and she'd come from Kanto for a vacation with her mother when a smashed bottled had made its way into her foot.

Maybe that explained it, John thought. Kanto had a hell of a lot of gangs.

"I suppose," he said, cleaning of the blood from his tweezers. It was his answer to everything, his reply to the mundane and the fantastic. Edna often said if he ever met a Mew, the first thing he would say would be, "I suppose you exist." He found that she was often right when it came to those sorts of things.

"How long?" asked her mother after a quiet moment. Her eyes were bloodshot, strained, and underneath them sat purple bruises. Her posture seemed deflated, like a puppet held by a single string.

"Just a few more pieces," he replied. "I suppose there might be some infinitesimal fragments scattered here and there, but the wailmer solution should disintegrate them wholesale."

The mother rubbed her eyes and nodded. "Thank you for this, letting us in at this hour."

It was around eleven at night. Most of Pacifidlog was asleep.

"No problem," he said. "I wasn't even ready for bed."

Before her mother could reply, her daughter asked, "Why do you hate pokemon?"

John blinked.

"Daisy," said her mother, glaring, "what did I tell you about those kinds of questions?" The words came out through clenched teeth, the way mothers always talked when upset but unwilling to make a scene.

"But Mom—"

"What do you say to him?"

Daisy turned to John with a reluctant line for a mouth. "I'm sorry," she said. There was a hint of a whine in-between each syllable.

John blinked again. "It's fine."

"I'm sorry, she's just very curious," said her mother, bowing her head, going a little deeper than a nod. "I'm very sorry."

"No, it's fine," he said. But his lungs seemed to have filled with something, a light sort of fluid, or a gas, and he wondered if he was having an attack—but there were no other symptoms, and it felt more like anxiety, like the feeling he'd had on his wedding day: as if there was something to wait for and greet at the door, a nameless something that was to change his life—a commitment, a vow, an oath to be sworn. What was it? he wondered. Had he said the magic word?

At sixty-two years and seven months old, John Darling felt like he had just been reborn. And he did not know why.


VI.

He locked up the clinic for the night. With a click, the locking mechanism fell into place, and John pocketed the key. He thought of going home, finding Edna asleep or perhaps with her newest woman friend, and decided against it. He wanted to clear his head, feel the wind, look at the sea from the furthest pier. He didn't know why, but the thought of his usual routine seemed toxic, poisonous, fatal to his heart and mind.

So he decided to take a stroll, see the stars, and wonder why the hell he had such an ominous sense of foreboding in his creaky joints.


VII.

"Windy," John murmured, pulling his coat's collar closer to his neck. An especially strong breeze threatened to knock him off the pier, pulling the ends of his coat like a beige kite. Above him, large clouds were swept away towards Slateport, silhouetted by the light of a gibbous moon, blanketing his face in shadow.

John frowned. "Damn. No stars."

The wind picked up, and the last shreds of cloud cover shifted forward. The light of the moon illuminated the sea, the faded wood of the pier, and he could pick out the faintest pinpricks of light deep in the sky.

"That's more like it," he said, smiling.

And that was when an epiphany hit him.


VIII.

From out of nowhere, something large, heavy and gooey smacked John straight in his middle, a clean punch into his chest. He fell over, hitting the pier's wood with a muffled thump, and everything in his body seemed to ring like a windchime knocked this way and that by a hurricane.


IX.

Sometimes things never happened the way they were supposed to, thought John, feeling as though his lungs would give out. He'd wanted to do something different for once, perhaps ponder the world as he gazed up at the stars, maybe watch the corsola dance on the reefs—but no, no, of course not, the moment he deviated from his usual routine, he was bombarded by—by—

John's eyes widened; his jaw went slack; the wrinkles of neutrality carefully cultivated over fifty years of life fell away to reveal a smoother, lined forehead, pale blue eyes, an expressive mouth; his shriek of fright died in his mouth, as he couldn't find the strength to even scream. In this one instant, John Darling felt like he had aged thirty years and regained forty.

Lit by the moon, two vacant eyes stared up at him, black, piercing, omnipotent—they could see his past, his present, his future. And they called to him, called for him to move, to act, to do something, anything, if only to exercise his strength in the face of danger.

And following this order, John brought up a shaking hand, balled it into a fist, and slammed it in-between the two eyes, shattering their hold on his mind. He wriggled out from underneath the creature, relieving himself of the soul-crushing pressure, and panting, he clutched his chest and watched as the creature unfurled to its full length, revealed its form, releasing a mighty roar—

John blinked. He stopped breathing.


X.

It was a slowpoke.