A/N: Written for
Diversity Writing Challenge, b78 - write a stream of consciousness
Sinnoh League Challenge, general version, Sangem Town pt 1 - write about a task that seems too big
Will have a sequel called: To Kill a God.
To Catch a God
We can't kill a god. We can only catch them.
That's the sensible notion, after all, because gods should be on an entirely different level to ordinary pokemon, and ordinary humans too. It'd defeat the purpose if they were as fragile as the rest of us.
A lot of people think we shouldn't be trying to even catch them, even with the advent of the Master Balls.
Master Balls were made to catch legendary pokemon.
They were made to catch gods.
Some people worshipped them. But that was silly in and of itself because we're human so why should we look towards a pokemon as our god? Pokemon have pokemon gods, so logic dictates that humans should have human gods. Some humans do. Others follow pokemon gods because humans are weak and have to depend on pokemon for everything: food, defence, their livelihood and sometimes even their beliefs.
Is the opposite true? Do some pokemon worship human gods as well? It's hard to say with the meagre ways to communicate with we have. There are tales, sure, of people who can talk the language of pokemon, or pokemon who can talk the language of humans, but it's worse than two people conversing in their second language and probably the same as two pokemon of different species trying to understand each other. It's possible, on some superficial level, but there'll always be something that doesn't translate over properly and it's worse with inter-species communication because there's a different mentality at work as well. of course, there's also those people who think different species have different mentality. Who think different nationalities have different mentalities. Then there's gods versus the common population. What are gods?
Gods are a rarity. They're legendary. Does that make them gods? They were untouchable and that spoke well for them until the Master Balls came out. Then they were suddenly catchable. Imprisonable. Tameable.
Still can't kill them and cull their fur or peel off their meat and fry it on a flame. Maybe with another legendary but legendaries are banned in all official tournaments anyway because it's not fair to pit a god against the common mortals, or so the masses say. So catching a god is really an academic achievement. Good for the researchers. Good for the maniacs who decide they want to rule or destroy the world - and yeah, they're maniacs, because with all the different languages and hierarchies in this place, who can actually understand it all?
So yeah, gods. Suddenly cacheable so what's the next step? Try and kill them? Give the atheists a chance for a god-free world? Or turn them into weapons of mass destruction and the Master Balls could do that.
Even gods lose their autonomy when faced with the machine. Or maybe it wasn't quite right to call them gods after all. Some people thought like that too. There were legendary humans who weren't gods. Legendaries and gods weren't necessarily synonymous -
But that was the problem with languages and translation. Someone started calling those pokemon gods and the label stuck. So now it's possible to throw a MasterBall and catch one, and that's at ends with the concept of untouchable gods others cling to because they're not untouchable anymore.
So goes the argument. They're not gods. Legendaries and gods are different but try telling that to the masses who've been using them interchangeably for at least a thousand years. People still argue the fact, but let me tell you: when you hold a Master Ball with a legendary pokemon in it just because you can and can afford it, it's kind of hard to consolidate that with the idea of a god.
And if you can catch them, who's to say the next advancement of modern science won't make it possible to kill them as well.