(This is a multiple POV work; a horizontal line break indicates a change in POV.)
(Disclaimer: I do not condone any of the illicit activity in this story. Pokémon and its trademarked characters do not belong to me.)
INTERNATIONAL POLICE INVESTIGATION CASE FILE #3301 [DECLASSIFIED]
Sandra Macintosh—DEFENDANT #6. A middle-aged woman, accused and convicted in October of sexual abuse of a pokémon.
Sylveon—VICTIM #4. Unnamed sylveon. The primary victim of Sandra Macintosh. Interview conducted with the aid of on-staff pokémon translator. Italicized items are interview questions.
Christine—International Police agent. Led the investigation into the pokémon brothel.
Sandra
The first thing that captivated me when I arrived at Alola was a pokémon. It was a raticate, on the side of the street. Its darker and fur and pudgy cheeks, different from what I had seen back home in Johto, was what first caught my attention. It was clinging to the outside of a fallen young coconut, and gnawing at the outside.
When I returned to that street corner the next morning, the raticate was still there, having barely made an inch of progress on the thick coconut shell. I chanced by a local passerby why the raticate could spend so much time, gnawing away at the coconut. Why it didn't just give up.
The local, an elderly lady, insisted on knowing my name first. She said it was part of the Alolan "spirit of friendship".
"My name is Sandra. I'm from Johto," I told her.
"Nice to meet you, Sandra. I'm Tania. Lived here in Hau'oli for…oh, about 40 years now?"
I pointed to the raticate. "How long has it been there…gnawing at the coconut?"
"Oh…he's been there…probably longer than I've lived here," she joked.
"And it just keep gnawing at the coconut…all day? Every day?"
"We Alolans are resilient people, Sandra," the lady, Tania, told me. "Even when the journey seems to take forever, we know that there is an end in sight."
So perhaps I moved to Hau'oli City with my husband and son, hoping some of that resilience would transfuse into me. But alas. I was stuck with some desk job at yacht sales office in the city. The pay was decent, and I was always close to the beach, but the smell of diesel becomes infuriating.
Where was the peace? The unyielding nature? The idyllic tropics? Passing by the street corner every day on my way to work, I never saw the raticate again. Instead, I was often jostled by mobs of tourists rushing with their cameras to the next shop, the next attraction, the next restaurant.
It made my blood pressure race so much that I stopped drinking coffee in the morning. I began to share the sentiments that many of the long-time locals felt. Professor Kukui expressed this on Alola Public Radio most aptly, in my opinion:
"Tourists are our greatest blessing and our greatest curse. They bring the whole world and all its cosmopolitan color to our doorstep. And that is precisely why they are a danger."
My son Amis, who is 8, always dreamt of being a pokémon trainer. He has a young cyndaquil that he brought over when we moved. When we first moved, Amis liked to take trips into the tropical forests and fighting the pokémon there.
The biting flies and scorching heat never smothered his ebullient laughter and cries of excitement. Sometimes from home I thought I could hear his high-pitched laughter, echoing in the forested mountains surrounding the city. But then it turns out be a jet ski or motor yacht in the water or something like that.
One day, Amis returned from his forest hike all scratched and bruised. The burn marks on his legs showed that he had his cyndaquil cauterize the wounds for him while he made the journey down.
"A raticate attacked me in the forest," he told me. "He was angry because I stepped on his tail. He grabbed my leg and wouldn't let go."
"Did you try to pull him off of you?" I asked. He winced as I poured antiseptic on his cuts.
"Yeah, but…ow…he wouldn't budge. He…owww…just kept gnawing and scratching for like…oww…it was like two whole hours."
"It couldn't have been that long."
"It felt like two hours."
Amis did not go back to the forest after that. In fact, he did not like to go out at all. He would often sit silently without any expression, facing the window, watching the waves crash into the beach, watching the crowds of tourists scrambling around the strip of sand. Then he started getting interested in motor yachts. He kept asking me if I could take him to my work at the yacht sales office. He never mentioned anything about pokémon anymore.
And it was then that I began to see myself in the mirror. Was it really that long ago that I was a little girl? The image in the mirror forced me to ask that question, because it only seemed like yesterday that I was crying, laughing, playing, dreaming. At the moment of that very thought I heard my son scream.
I ran towards his voice. "Yes, honey, what's wrong?"
As Alola is a tropical place, our houses are very vulnerable to all sorts of pests. I think even the pokémon enjoy the air conditioning.
I saw my son with a baseball bat in his hand, and the dead pokémon on the ground, bleeding. He was smiling, the first time I had seen him smile since the incident at the forest.
"I did it, Mommy. I did it. I did it," he said, smiling. "I killed him."
I asked Amis to put down the baseball bat. I kneeled down to look more closely at the pest Amis had killed. It was an Alolan raticate, with the characteristic dark fur and pudgy cheeks. Looking closer, I received a tremendous shock.
On the raticate's teeth were little fragments of coconut fibers.
Sylveon
What can you tell me about Sandra?
Sandra? You mean the lady?
[presents photo] Is this her?
[nods head] Yes. That's the lady.
Tell me about the lady. She was the one who touched you, is that right?
Well, yes, but she was my client. When the lady first saw me, she said that I was very cute. As a sylveon, I get that a lot. So I smiled at her. But then the lady said I reminded her of her son. The son that she lost. But this I don't understand, because now I heard that she has a son who is alive…am I right?
Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. Anyway at the time, I was flattered by Sandra's comment. Usually when I get a human customer, I have to show them my junk before they'll believe I'm a male. Few humans automatically recognize me as a male. So I liked that about the lady.
You thought highly of her?
Yes, she was nice. She let me be top since I was the male—I liked that. Most of the female clients I had had some weird "power complex" in their heads. I only lasted ten minutes the first time, and she really didn't mind. In fact, she said she liked it. The lady gave me some pieces of colored paper, saying "thank for rekindling my joy".
It was money.
Money. Yes. That was the problem with staying at that place.
That place, you mean the brothel?
Yeah. Money was the problem. Money caused all the trouble.
How so?
Well, every time bad people came to see us, they would always ask for money. Money. Money. They would shout really loud, and point guns at people. Money is so important to you humans. That doesn't make sense to me. When the lady gave me those pieces of money, I just chewed it all up. I thought it was food or something. I mean, what other useful purpose could it possibly have? It's just pieces of colored paper.
Did you try to use it to get food?
Oh, I was hungry. I was always hungry. The lady should have given me food if she really cared about me. They don't give us much food so we stay skinny and desperate. It's good for business, I guess.
They, you mean the owners of the brothel?
Yes, those humans. When I figured out what money was supposed to be for, I tried handing some money to Master. I thought I could get some sweets or something.
Master is the owner of the brothel?
I guess.
You like sweets?
Yeah, I guess I do [giggles]. Can I have some more of the cherry sweets? They're my favorite.
Of course you can [hands sweets to the sylveon]. Now what did Master do when you gave him the money?
He yelled at me. He didn't hit me because that would leave cuts and that would be bad for business. He said that I was stupid to handle money, that I would get into big trouble next time I got caught. But humans use money right? Doesn't that mean humans are more stupid than pokémon?
Perhaps so.
Christine
Sometimes it seems like the pokémon victims are forgotten. That is, we are forgotten by the right people and remembered by the wrong. The right people do not stay very long. They do not stay to read past the first few lines. They hear a saccharine story of the romantic tropics, and never see any more.
It is a pity. I have learned that it always takes a long time to get to know someone.
My name is Christine (this is my code name; I cannot reveal my real name for personal safety). Hailing from Goldenrod City in Johto, I am an International Police Agent stationed in Hau'oli City.
I have led the investigation (and eventual seizure) of the Hau'oli brothel. Our agents occasionally made visits to the building, to make sure that the pokémon working at the building are not suffering unduly.
And yet you might be taken aback by my statement, for what these pokémon are being forced to do is, by definition, suffering? But I sincerely wish we could do more for these pokémon.
Why did we take so long to raid this illegal business? The brothel has not only connects with Team Skull, the local criminal organization of Alola, but also the infamous Team Rocket, which we discovered through intelligence was funneling in money to sustain the business.
We arrested criminal bosses connected with the brothel, as well as frequent customers. An example of the latter is a woman by the name of Sandra Macintosh. An immigrant from Johto, she was married (now divorced) and with a son. She worked at a yacht sales company here in Alola. She, along with 8 other frequent customers, were convicted of pokémon sexual abuse. They are currently imprisoned.
Attached to this document I have provided some appropriate excerpts of Ms. Macintosh's memoirs, which she has been writing in prison, still believing in her innocence. She argues that no human ever could ignite the passion within her than a pokémon could. And as shocking as it may seem, some people are inclined to agree with her.
As part of our inquiries, we also conducted interviews with the pokémon who were exploited at the brothel with the aid of our on-staff pokémon translator. I have attached some appropriate excerpts of an interview with a sylveon, who suffered the closest contact with the defendant, Ms. Macintosh.
Why do humans turn to pokémon brothels? What do they value from their companionship? Professor Kukui, and his cousin Professor Oak, have both sponsored further academic research into this topic.
Some humans visit the brothels merely out of some perverted pleasure they find in raping nonconsenting pokémon—perhaps to assert power over someone. A pokémon is an easy first attempt. But it is not all so black and white. A traumatic loss of a pokémon or a human child often leaves a gap in some people's lives—a pokémon sexual partner fills the void. Their intentions are perhaps good, but the result is grossly cruel and inhumane.
Despite it being illegal, Alolans have always tolerated the brothel's presence. As much as we dislike admitting it, our culture has always had a very liberal attitude when it comes to sexual relationships, and this extends to sex between humans and pokémon. Many of us locals are reluctant to separate from that culture.
Tourists from the likes of Kanto, Johto, and Sinnoh do not necessarily approve of this, but they treat it as a novelty and do not publicly speak ill of it, because it's to them, an integral part of Alola that must be "respected".
But I beg you to ask this. Is abuse and neglect of pokémon part of our culture? Is the exploitation of pokémon's bodies for ill-used profit part of our culture?
What respect does this deserve?
(To be continued. Thank you for reading! I'm just testing out this story idea for now; if you would like to see more, please let me know in the comments!)