Chapter 3: Incompetence

Jason finally admitted to himself he was lost. He'd spent the last fifteen minutes looking for the Cafe Sonata but with no luck, since nobody had told him it was just on the other side of the docks. The only sign he could see indicated he was currently on Gwion ap Dafydd Plass, which was deep in the Mareep District and far from where he actually needed to be. In a moment of madness and desperation, he purchased a map from a local tourist information centre, but it wasn't much use, since it simply highlighted each district of the city with coloured illustrations and a short paragraph about its history. Apparently the Mareep District had come about as a result of a Welsh businessman's entrepreneurial scheme to twin Cardiff with an area well-known for Pokémon battling and establish business links that would greatly boost the finances of both cities, while the Millennium Stadium in the Welsh capital officially became known as The Castelia Stadium With Heineken. Part of the plans to convert the stadium into a love letter to Ap Dafydd's two greatest passions, rugby and battling, were scuppered by the illegality of owning Pokémon in the European Union, thus only the name was changed, with the rest of the money being fed to other development projects across Wales.

Scanning over the map in the faint hope it would give him some indication of the direction he was supposed to go to find Cafe Sonata, Jason learned a lot of irrelevant information about the city, like how alarm clocks had slowly been phased out as employers handed out free Timburrs to their staff so they could use Wake Up Slap on them instead, which led to a lot of bruised faces in the morning but at least ensured that business went more smoothly, as being slapped in the face would instantly rid them of their tiredness, especially with a hefty plank of wood involved. On the left hand side of the map, running parallel of Gym Street, was what he'd been looking for, the Meloetta District, named for the legend of a Pokémon that some suspected didn't even exist.

Coming to the big city on a Saturday had not been one of Jason's best ideas, as the weekend was the absolute busiest time, especially in the shopping precincts. He now found himself walking down Gatito Street, located just inside the Ferrothorn District, so named because there were several branches that had become ingrained and imprinted themselves across the globe, and they were responsible for keeping Unova's economy afloat. Jason counted at least thirteen different clothing stores on this street alone, all quite vastly different and distinctive, and many of which would probably get you beaten up in some cultures. He passed the commercial rival chain of Cafe Sonata, Staryubucks, and he banked on all of them being exactly the same, lacking any character and full of depressed-looking businessmen, all glued to their Apple iGears.

Cafe Sonata, when he eventually arrived there, drenched in a mixture of sea-foam and the sweat of a thousand tourists, was no better. The place seemed to be a hangout for hippies and hipsters alike, basically, the sorts of people society as a whole would shun. Strangely, though, the atmosphere was similar, everyone sat around the tables with their frappe latte mocha things that were more foam than liquid looking solemn, checking their X-Transceiver messages or browsing the internet. One unkempt and overweight young man scribbled away in a small notepad, while a purple-haired student sprayed his coffee everywhere as a result of attempted to drink it before it was cool. The only sound apart from the occasional coughing and shuffling was the sound of an acoustic guitar rendition of the rallying ballad, 'Route 10,' being played by the long-haired gentleman situated near the counter. Jason allowed him to continue his ballad and approached the barista, who coincidentally also owned the place.

"Hey kid, this your first time coming here?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer; he simply handed over a Moomoo Milk free of charge. "On the house, company policy, all new visitors get a Moomoo Milk."

"Sorry, I'm lactose intolerant," Jason lied. He could consume as many dairy products as he wanted; he just despised milk in its liquid form.

"Oh, OK." The barista swapped the milk for a lemonade. "Knew it was a good idea to keep these under here!"

"Actually I was kind of hoping you had food," Jason said, taking the lemonade.

"Sure thing, but it's gonna cost ya extra! Name's Hank," the manager informed him, extending a hand, "and this here's Austin." He moved his arm to the left, indicating the guitarist.

"Well, nice to meet you I suppose," Jason said.

"You want a bagel? That'll be 200 poké*!" Hank made assumptions for his customers, it seemed, but Jason didn't object, he simply handed over the cash and in exchange was handed a fresh bagel that had probably been prepared in anticipation of his arrival. He thanked Hank and then made his way back outside, just as Austin began to play an acoustic version of Surfin' Bird.

Since the 'old friend' had not been thoughtful enough to actually arrange a time for them to meet, Jason entered the abandoned offices to find them as empty as he'd expected an abandoned building to be. Oddly, the door actually opened out into the boardroom, complete with a long elliptical table and an abundance of scattered chairs littered around, which at some point would have been arranged around the table. The place could not have been abandoned long, since the many PCs were still hooked up and operating. In the absence of his 'old friend', Jason sat himself down in one of the few upright chairs and started on his seemingly pre-determined lunch of a plain bagel and free lemonade.


Damn, this job is boring sometimes, Victor thought, as he succumbed to his primal urges and reached for one of his copies of Playboy Unova, which just happened to be the Gym Leader Special from 2009 featuring an Elesa centrefold from back before she dyed her hair black (Victor always did have a thing for leggy blondes). Despite the clean-cut image of the Pokémon world presented in most forms of media, not everyone was naive and of course that sort of thing was around, but for the most part Trainers couldn't afford to keep their magazines around with them when they needed the endless amount of space in their bags for more important items, and it was never easy to find somewhere they wouldn't be disturbed. Even in the privacy of his own office he couldn't catch a break, as there was a knock on the door almost as soon as he'd found the page he was looking for. Hurriedly he threw the magazine back onto the pile and made sure his fly was still zipped up before answering the door.

"Oh, you're back," he said rather disappointedly, "and you didn't even bring me pizza."

"Now's not the time, Victor!" Lisa snapped, "Do you ever take your work seriously?"

"Eh..." Victor feigned a long, hard thought on the matter, "...nope."

"Thought not," Lisa scoffed, "anyway, I need you to do something else for me." She handed some sheets of paper to Victor, who took them and subsequently managed to drop most of them.

"Once you're done being incompetent, I want you to read through those and then file them in the correct folders," she continued, indicating the filing cabinet next to his desk, which had one drawer left half-open from the last time it was used, which was roughly a month ago when Victor had been looking for a document that he later realised was actually on his desk the whole time.

"That's it?" he asked, looking up from the pile of papers he was still gathering up.

"Of course," Lisa smiled, "it's just about on your level, after all." Victor rolled his eyes, before returning his attention to the papers he was about to store away. As Lisa was about to leave, a sudden thought struck him.

"Lisa, are you absolutely sure about this whole thing? I mean, do you really think we can pull this off with such low numbers?" he asked, for once showing some sort of commitment to the great task they had been planning for quite some time now.

"Victor, I served in the US military for over ten years," she replied. "Have a little faith, would you?"

"I know that," Victor said, "but seriously, they have far higher numbers than we could ever hope to get."

"It will be difficult," Lisa conceded, "but we have to do this. If we want to show those bastards we mean business, we have to strike now, and we have to strike hard. But now they know we're coming, and they'll be prepared, which makes things even tougher."

"Look, Lisa, I know I don't take this stuff too seriously most of the time, but I really don't think this is a good idea," Victor confessed. "It's taken five years to come to this, that's nearly a fifth of my life. You know how much that means?" Part of it was a genuine concern about the mission at hand, another part was the prospect of having to make himself useful, but Victor definitely felt fear. Whenever he thought about what was about to come, his stomach turned, his mind reeled, his sympathetic nervous system kicked into overdrive. He had never known true fear, he realised. Not until now.

"Yes I do," Lisa said. "Way back when I started out in the US Military, I'd gone from a quiet life in California to suddenly being out on the front lines in Afghanistan, just like that. Nothing prepared me for what was to come. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Innocent people, good people, killed for their beliefs. You think I'm not scared, Victor? No matter how many times you go out there, no matter what it is you've gotta face, that fear never goes away. It's part of being human. All you can do is not let it overwhelm you."

"Yeah, well, back then there were hundreds of others just like you in the same situation," Victor said, "and what do we have? Us two, the surveillance guy, an engineer and a medic. That's not gonna get us through this."

"It will. Just trust me, soldier." Lisa winked, then left Victor to his file-sorting assignment. Shuffling back to his desk with a disorganised bunch of papers in hand, he still didn't feel much better about the current predicament. There was too much at stake, and they had too few resources. It was a colossal risk to take out one relatively small camp, all to make a name for themselves, and for all Lisa's determination, she thought the same. Not willing to dwell on it, Victor placed the scattered papers on his desk. He could easily finish that later, and anyway, he had other priorities. Like finding the Elesa centrefold again. He reached back to the humungous pile of magazines he'd collected and never bothered to move and, reclining in his office chair, resolved to find that centrefold again, and hoped this time he wouldn't be interrupted.


Lunch came and went, but still nobody had turned up. Jason grew impatient, his bagel was long gone, and he'd been taking the occasional swig of lemonade so that he would at least have some way to pass the time. He'd tried the lights, but it seemed the bulbs were blown except the one circular one in the middle of the ceiling, creating a spotlight effect, and the PCs were all either locked up with the company password or so slow that it was not worth using them. By now the memories of the previous night had returned, and they were about as mundane as he'd expected them to be. It was almost a disappointment that it turned out he hadn't been drugged or anything equally extreme, but at the same time it was a relief. With that saga resolved, there was nothing else for it but to open the parcel and find out what he'd actually been given.

"What does all this mean?" he fathomed, tearing open the packaging to reveal a white book, a pocket watch and a shard of mirror with a post-it attached to it, which had 'Here Mike, this will explain everything' written on it. None of the items seemed to have any relation to one another, and the angelic tome was completely blank despite its ornate cover suggesting that some great secrets may be hidden within. He decided he was going to need some help solving this, and dialled Rebecca's number.

"Come on, pick up!" he urged, hearing her X-Transceiver ring once, twice, then thrice, before finally cutting to voicemail.

"Umm..." he began, in the most perfect way to start a sentence concerning a great riddle, "hey, Rebecca, how are you? Anyway, er... I have a favour to ask. What do a white book, a pocket watch and a shard of mirror have in common? I'd ask Owen but I don't think he'd know. Well, see ya Monday I suppose..." he finished. He never had got used to voicemail, and the entire time he was aware of how preposterous his request must have sounded.

After another ten minutes of waiting around, with no signs of this 'old friend' ever turning up, Jason decided he'd take in a bit of the fresh sea air before returning home. The only real consolation was that he had at least done something productive over the weekend instead of watching TV and trying to train a few of his Pokémon to become slightly more useful, which was not going too well.

Opening the door out into Castelia's alleyways, Jason half-expected it to be dark, a similar effect to that experienced after a trip to the cinema when, after being sat in a dark theatre for hours, you expect the outside world to be pitch-black as well, which is usually not the case except in the middle of winter. This was one of the shadier areas of Castelia City, where the criminal scum would hang out and deal illegally-obtained PP Ups and other vitamins that would strengthen Pokémon, and less commonly, were distilled into liquid form and injected by thrill-seeking humans, often with rather nasty consequences.

A shady-looking businessman who appeared to be trying to be passing himself off as one of the Men in Black appeared from beside the bins lined up near the walls opposite the abandoned office block, a TM held in his outstretched hand.

"Wanna see my Flash?" he propositioned Jason, who immediately fled.


The man in black shrugged and went back to hiding behind the bins, where he and a group of dishevelled tramps lived, using a thrown-out TM manufacturing machine to create an infinite amount of copies of Flash, since that was the only one they had the mould for.

"We lost another one!" he yelled, throwing the disk at one of his fellow homeless, who dodged out of the way just in time, and the CD shattered against a wall.

"Ah, buggrit," the Dodger mumbled. Another man, who happened to have a Ducklett on his head, nodded in agreement, almost tipping the Flying-type off his head and into his lap.

"Watch out, Greg, you nearly lost your Ducklett!" the man in black cried, as feathers descended into Greg's lap.

"What Ducklett?" Greg asked incredulously, scattering more feathers everywhere and sending the others into fits of mirth. This happened roughly once every minute and had become a huge running joke in the homeless community, which was full of distinctive and crazy characters such as Greg the Ducklett Man and Despicable Old Rupert, previously known as the Dodger for his adeptness at avoiding thrown TMs.

"Who the bloody hell was that kid anyways?" the man in black bellowed.

"Buggrit," Despicable Old Rupert replied, since none of the others had seen the boy passing as they were hidden out of sight tending to the machine that manufactured an implement that could create bright lights in caves.

"Very helpful Rupe," the man in black said sarcastically. "Alright lads, I'm going off after him, stay here and keep the machine going would you?"

"Don't worry 'bout a thing, boss!" Greg assured him, his Ducklett flapping its wings and spraying feathers everywhere again. Little did they know that their boss would be struck down by a kunai fizzing through the air and embedding itself into his right kidney...


Jason was sat on one of the benches down by the docks, taking in the fresh ocean air. He tried to piece everything together, wondering why on earth he had been dragged all the way out here for the sake of three seemingly random objects, a no-show and a suspicious man giving away TMs in a creepy and exhibitionist manner. I hope Rebecca got that message, Jason thought, perhaps this time her mother 's gone a step further and confiscated her X-Transceiver as well. The way things were going he suspected Rebecca would be forcefully evicted from the property sooner or later, and she'd have to move elsewhere, but that was irrelevant to his current plight. Jason's real interest now was trying to decipher the meaning behind his mysterious gift.

He watched as the small ferry to Liberty Garden set sail from the harbour, taking a small selection of wealthy passengers to visit the lighthouse that for hundreds of years had held Victini, which was highly sought after by Team Plasma due to its ability to create seemingly endless amounts of energy. Their plan had been thwarted by the vigilante hero Hilbert Blair, who decided against capturing the creature against its will, allowing it to live out the rest of its days powering the lighthouse to guide stranded vessels to its shores. After this encounter the spot had become somewhat of a tourist destination, with hundreds flocking to see the lighthouse, the bright lights of which were unmatched by anything mankind could produce, beating out even the torches with the brightness of a million candles, much to the chagrin of Rhod Gilbert.

Even from the Liberty Pier it was possible to see the light of Victini shining like a heavenly beacon across the seas, although during the day this effect was somewhat muted. Jason had always been fascinated by the tales of Legendary Pokémon, and this particular tale of a young man from Nuvema Town meeting such a powerful entity appealed to him as it suggested that even the most ordinary of people may one day be in the presence of the greatest and most powerful Pokémon in existence. Perhaps that was why the Dark Stone had been stolen, someone like him had taken their obsession with the legendaries too far and their delusions of grandiose had led them to believe that by stealing the Dark Stone they would be imbued with the power of Zekrom. While pondering who would do such a thing, the air around Jason became noticeably colder. The breeze felt no less intense, so it had to be something else causing the sudden temperature drop. Gengar, perhaps?, Jason considered, as the air grew colder still. Now he swore that there were shapes forming before his eyes, and a voice like ice gave one short command.

"You will come with us..."


*Regarding currency, I'm sticking with in-game prices as a sort of guideline, and using the term poké since it's shorter and snappier than 'pokedollars' and also shares its name with the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon currency, thus it seems logical to assume the main islands in which the games take place also use this currency.