Skies As Grey As Battleships
- Chapter 3: History Lesson -
After his fantastic collapse in the foyer of his apartment building, it had taken Touya approximately ten minutes to pull himself together. He hadn't wanted to tell Touko about what he'd seen for two reasons; he didn't want to her to worry, but he was also somewhat wary of the course of action she'd suggest.
He had a feeling that she'd definitely want him to report it - not because she was such a stickler for following the rules, but because she knew that Touya wanted to report it but just wasn't brave enough to do so. Either that, or she'd wheedle the information out of Touya and march down to that building herself and attempt to break up the fighting, which would be incredibly rash but entirely plausible given Touko's personality.
So he was going to keep this incident to himself, and his way of dealing with his anxiety over the issue was going to be to pretend that it never happened. He was not going to think about foxes that could shoot out pulses of darkness or odd boys with green hair.
But despite his attempts to forget the battle he'd witnessed, he found that his mind was acting disturbingly one-track and determined to regale him repeatedly with last night's incident. Which was why his thoughts continued to wander, and why he was failing in his plan regarding not worrying his sister.
As usual, she'd woken up earlier than he had, and he'd found her in the kitchen digging into a bowl of dry cereal. The cereal itself was wholly unremarkable, simply a mass of brownish-yellow flakes coated in what Touya assumed was sugar.
After Touko had informed him, however, that the box of cereal had come from one of the kitchen cabinets, already eaten from and bearing no expiration date, Touya began to think that assuming the substance was sugar was giving the cereal too much credit.
Tepig, currently settled beside Touko's cereal bowl, had a little pile of flakes in front of him, presumably placed there by Touko. Seeing that the Pokemon was eyeing the mound of cereal with suspicion, Touya mentally docked points from the cereal's chance of actually being non-toxic.
"Hey!"
Touya jumped at the sudden noise; though he'd known his thoughts were wandering he hadn't thought himself that distracted.
"You're not listening, are you." Touya could tell that she was trying to sound annoyed, but she couldn't keep the amusement out of her voice.
"Sorry," Touya responded sheepishly. "I haven't really woken up yet."
"Come on! Bianca's coming by soon. Since you didn't see her last night, you can't be half-asleep when she gets here."
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation before Touya could reply. He started to stand up, but Touko was out of her chair and at the door in two seconds flat.
At a considerably slower pace than his sister, Touya made his way to the door. Everyone was grinning like an idiot; for the first time in a while, most of the group was together. The only one missing was Cheren.
"Hi, Touya!"
He wasn't the biggest fan of physical contact, but when Bianca practically tackled him into a hug, he didn't really mind it - he'd used to put up a struggle, but after more than half a year without seeing Cheren or Bianca, he missed their quirks. Even the ones that usually annoyed him.
Touya gently prized Bianca off of him; he was beginning to get the tiniest bit claustrophobic. "It's good to see you," Touya said, meaning every word of it.
Bianca nodded, and Touya noticed belatedly that coming to Castelia hadn't seemed to have sapped any of her incessant energy - she was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"I think we're ready to go." Touko glanced at Touya to confirm.
"Can we bring our Pokemon?" he asked Bianca. Frowning, she shook her head.
"No. It isn't safe, and the factory head doesn't like Pokemon running around."
"Then I guess we're ready," Touko said.
"Okay! From here, I'm guessing the factory is about a fifteen minute walk. The time is..." Bianca looked down at her wrist and pressed a button on her orange and white Xtransceiver, checking the time, "... six fifty-seven, so we can either walk super slowly or just kill fifteen minutes."
"Bianca, do you think you could show us where the Records Office is?" Touko asked, beating Touya to the punch.
"Sure. But you know they usually want you to go there the day you arrive, right?"
Touya made a noncommittal sound and Touko rolled her eyes. "He couldn't find it."
"Oh," Bianca giggled. "I guess the address system is kind of difficult, but couldn't you have gotten directions from someone?"
Touya paled slightly and started fidgeting once he realized that the question wasn't actually rhetorical. "... Everyone was getting off of work, so I didn't want to hold anyone up."
At least this was partly true - Touya hadn't wanted to bother any of the tired workers returning from their long day of work; the only reason he'd stopped that boy was because he hadn't seemed like he was going anywhere at the moment.
"You know, no one's going to care if you bother them for a couple of seconds."
"I'd feel rude."
"Okay, well, if -"
"Guys, really?" Bianca groaned, exasperated but used to their squabbling. Touya and Touko usually got along well with each other - or at the very least behaved themselves in front of Bianca - but like most siblings many issues were at a danger of devolving into a petty, though generally not very serious, argument. "Let's head out. If we leave now, there'll definitely be time for me to show Touya the Records Office. You're going to head there after work, right?"
"Right. Do you know how long it'll take?"
Bianca quirked her head to the side, thinking. "It was a while ago, but it took me... half an hour, maybe? One hour, tops."
"One hour of paperwork?" Touko wondered aloud, sounding as aghast as Touya looked.
"Wait." Bianca closed her eyes, evidently working something out. "There are two of you, so that's..."
"... Two hours," Touya completed, beginning to wonder why the hell he'd volunteered in the first place.
"I could always -" Touko started, but Touya shook his head.
"No, I offered to do it."
Touya had spent a larger portion of the day than he'd have liked to admit resigning himself to hours of filling out forms. The work at the factory wasn't as bad as he was expecting, though since they took turns doing certain jobs he wasn't confident it would remain that way.
Working on a different job, Bianca had been in a different part of the factory, though since he and Touko had arrived at the same time they were each doing the same task as the other. In this case, the task had been to inspect the seals on soldiers' food rations. The assignment was extremely easy, but though Touya knew he should be grateful for the simplicity, in reality he had been bored out of his mind and would have preferred something a bit more intellectually stimulating.
He and Touko had been walking back from the factory - Bianca's apartment was in another direction, which unfortunately meant that walking to work together wasn't going to be a common occurrence - before Touya had split off to wind his way through the plethora of buildings and find the ever-elusive Records Office.
Bianca had shown him the way in the morning, but after working at such a repetitive task for seven hours straight the path was a bit fuzzy. Touya came to an intersection, and, after snaking through the throng of people to the other side, discovered that he'd forgotten where to go from there. The frustrating part of this whole thing was that he was positive he was really, really close, and that he only had one or two blocks to go.
Confused and angry at himself for forgetting, he took a look around and tried to get his bearings. Just as he was about to take a wild guess as to the proper direction, he heard a voice from behind him.
"Are you lost?"
Relieved, Touya turned around to face the kind person who'd decided to help him. The word 'yes' was almost out of his mouth, but then he suddenly froze, eyes widening.
In front of him was the boy with green hair, the very same Zorua from yesterday perched on his shoulder. Touya felt rooted to the spot; he was sure he was in some sort of danger, but he had no clue as to what he should be doing about it.
"Y-yes..." Touya stammered. He had no reason to lie, and he figured that there wasn't a point to remaining frozen in terror. He'd let the situation play out . He didn't think that the boy would attack him with his Zorua in the middle of a crowded street - he'd be arrested within a minute, after all - but he was still very much on his guard.
Though, upon closer inspection, Touya noticed that the Zorua was actually wearing its limiter. The tiny green light was on, which meant that the collar was active and in working order.
"If you'll talk with me, I can show you to where you need to go." The boy presented the offer calmly, as if agreeing to talk with someone you'd witnessed committing a criminal offense was what rational people did.
Quickly, Touya began weighing his options - he could run away and return home without having visited the Records Office and potentially be tailed by a criminal organization in the process, or he could follow the strange boy in front of him and possibly end up floating with a cement block around his ankle at the bottom of Castelia Harbour.
Truth be told, neither option was particularly appealing, but a choice had to be made. Influenced by a niggling feeling of curiosity, Touya decided to take the second option and hear what the boy had to say.
"Alright," he agreed, unsure of whether or not he'd made the correct choice. "So..." Touya trailed off, about to ask where they were headed but realizing that he didn't know the other boy's name. "Um. My name's Touya."
He bit back the near-reflexive 'it's nice to meet you', mainly because, well, he wasn't terribly thrilled that the boy had managed to find him, and he wasn't just going tolie to him.
Given the sheer magnitude of Castelia City, though, he was slightly impressed. Even if it was through dumb luck that the boy had found him, that was still some massive reserve of luck he had.
"My name is N."
Touya blinked. "Does it stand for anything?" he asked curiously.
N looked thoughtful for a moment. "I'm not sure," he admitted.
That was when Touya decided that this boy was odd, a thought which was immediately followed up with the feeling that he probably should have noticed this earlier.
Since this topic of conversation was rapidly going nowhere, Touya chose to shift it to something that was actually relevant.
"Where are we going?" He tried not to sound too suspicious, but since N had already begun walking in one direction he figured he had a right to ask.
"I thought we could walk to Prime Pier."
There was a moment of silence as Touya tried to reconcile the fact that they were headed to a pier with the fact that he'd thought up the hypothetical 'floating at the bottom of the harbour' situation only a minute ago.
N glanced at Touya curiously. "I realize the pier lacks people at this time of day, but I chose it solely because it's quieter and would make for easier conversation. There are also benches, which I consider important - since you were lost, I presume you've been walking around a great deal. It also has a nice view."
Touya took a second to process what he figured was essentially a rapidly spoken and excessively verbose way of saying that N wasn't going to hurt him. He was about to thank N for taking him to a place with benches before he remembered that the boy was a criminal and didn't necessarily deserve thanks.
'Necessarily' being the operating word, of course - though Touya was skeptical, he'd promised that he'd listen to what N had to say. And there was perhaps the slightest chance that Touya's mind could be changed.
They walked in silence towards Prime Pier, and Touya realized with a twinge of despair that he'd been literally minutes away from his destination. Though his track record really wasn't the best when it came to finding Castelia buildings, he was sure that he could make out the Records Office jutting out into the street beyond the pier.
N sat down on the bench closest to the end of the pier, and hesitantly Touya sat down beside him. Zorua hopped off of N's shoulder and settled on his lap, closing his eyes in the process - evidently the Pokemon valued sleep more than their impending conversation.
"I think I owe you an explanation," N began. Touya was confused, because he didn't really think he was owed anything, per se. Obviously N and whoever else had been with him were at fault for engaging in illegal activity; however, Touya and his terrible sense of direction were also somewhat to blame.
N quirked his head to the side, as if trying to figure how to frame his next few words. "You know that Pokemon battles were once waged between individual trainers, correct?"
Touya nodded; he'd learned in history class that Pokemon battles had been legal up until about thirty years ago. Nowadays, the use of Pokemon outside of the police force and warfare was strictly illegal. Pokemon engaged in warfare and the police force had no limiters, and they were also allowed to evolve due to the increase in strength.
"Do you know why they were banned, then?"
"It's because they were - are - barbaric. It isn't fair to force Pokemon to fight each other."
"You're right that battles can be unfair - but if you fight as friends, not simply as trainer and Pokemon, then that isn't the case. But you're wrong about the reason battles were banned. Touya, if everyone carried a gun, what do you think would happen at an anti-government protest when the police showed up?"
Touya didn't really see where N was going with his analogy, but he answered the hypothetical question nonetheless. "The protestors would shoot the police, who would shoot back, but with greater power - the protestors would be defeated, and people would be killed."
"Right. But what do you think would happen if everyone had a Pokemon with them? Assuming the Pokemon was trained for battle and did not have a limiter."
So that was where he was going. "When the police arrived, people would start battling to escape. And... well, there'd be the chance that the protestors would win."
N smiled, seemingly pleased that Touya had grasped what he'd wanted him to. "That's it - that's the important part. With Pokemon, the protestors could win. And that would be the problem. But if you make battling illegal, then how could anyone truly oppose the government? All that's left are ineffective protests that are easily dispelled by a police presence."
"That makes sense," Touya conceded, "but do you have any proof? My reason works just as well."
"If a Pokemon didn't want to fight, then it would run away or simply refuse. A Pokemon is not under any obligation to fight for its trainer."
"Wait. But didn't trainers used to use Pokeballs to trap Pokemon?"
Today, the only Pokeballs that survived were used in a modified capacity to transport Pokemon that had evolved on the battlefield to a size where physical transport was no longer practical. The only time Touya had seen an actual, unmodified Pokeball was one time on television while watching President Crane.
Since Sedia Crane was both the sole ruler of Unova and the owner of a massive Pokemon, she used a Pokeball for transport. It wasn't as if anyone would dare object.
"That is true - however, a Pokemon can let itself out of a Pokeball."
"Really?" Touya asked skeptically; this was news to him.
"I realize I have no proof of this, so I ask that you trust me."
"Sorry, I can't. Not at the moment." Briefly, he wondered why he'd even bothered apologizing - he shouldn't be sorry he was unable to trust a criminal, but he still kind of felt like a jerk. "But I might be able to. Could you tell me why you were fighting?"
"Zorua and I were engaging in a practice battle for a new member. Most Pokemon aren't used to battles, so I make sure to conduct the practices myself to ensure that no one gets hurt."
"... Member of what?" Touya asked, confused.
"A member of Team Plasma. We're... I suppose you'd call it an anti-government organization."
Touya was almost afraid to ask, but his curiosity was unrelenting. "What's your position within the group?"
"I'm..." he paused for a moment, and Touya thought he spotted uncertainty in his expression, "I'm the leader of Team Plasma."
Touya wondered just what exactly he'd gotten himself into.
A/N: Originally the chapter was going to include N and Touya's entire conversation, but I decided to cut it off due to a couple of factors that cropped up. Crane's Pokemon will be revealed pretty soon, though if you really think about it you may be able to guess correctly. The 'a Pokemon can let itself out of its Pokeball' idea comes from the anime, but since there's nothing in the games to contradict it, I decided to roll with it.
Also, characters are going to be different than their game selves due to the change in universe. There's a reason N is more open to battling - if you'd like, you can think of this N as a sort of cross between BW!N and B2W2!N. To add to that, I realize that 'N' does actually stand for something, but there's a reason this N doesn't know what it is.
Lastly, due to Hurricane Sandy making an appearance, I will likely lose Internet (in the past, my Internet connection has been felled by lesser storms). I'll almost certainly have it back by next Sunday, but just in case I don't, there's your heads-up explanation for any delays.
