We sat next to each other in Arnold and his medicham's office, me on a chair, and Snow on a large bean bag. Three of his walls were sparsely decorated, the olive paint only being interrupted by the occasional picture of his family or hanging spider plant. The fourth wall, though, was decorated with all manner of posters advertising various jobs and even full-time careers for pokemon. I tried to point them out to Snow, who looked at them for a few seconds before she became more concerned with swinging back and forth on her beanbag chair until she swang too far and fell flat on her face. That was the moment when Arnold and his medicham entered the office. They both stepped over my fallen pokemon with the ease of a sneasel, and settled down in their chairs on the other side of his desk.
"So, the last time I saw you two, you," he pointed at me, "were barely up to my knee, and you," he pointed to Snow, "were still a mareep. How time flies!" he chuckled.
I gave him my best-manners-smile and tried to subtly kick Snow, who jolted off the floor and back into a sitting position. "It's nice to see you both again."
"You as well! I hear you and," he glanced at his clipboard, "Miss Snowflake are helping your family make some money."
"Yeah, we got a new pocket room and everybody's chipping in. Besides, my parents thought my pokemon should get certified anyway, so we can start saving some money of our own."
Both Arnold and his medicham smiled as they heard this. "That's very wise of them. You all can save up some money for yourselves, and most of the jobs pokemon do give them a very good workout."
I glanced over at Snow. She had moved on to crossing her eyes and looking at her headlight. "Snow doesn't need exercise, she just needs to focus." I hissed that last part, which got her attention. She snapped back to the world of the living, and apologized for zoning out.
"Ros," she murmured.
Don't worry about it! If I had a headlight as pretty as yours, I'd get distracted by it too! Arnold's medicham had one of the sweetest mental voices I'd ever heard. Like she'd thank you for a punch in the face or a kick in the leg.
"Ampharos and other electric types sometimes get spacey when their electricity gets stale. Has this been happening a lot lately?" Arnold's speaking voice was almost identical to his medicham's mental voice.
"It mostly started after she evolved. I mean, she's always been a little spacey, but after she became an ampharos she'd start zoning out even during things she liked. She made me rebuy tickets to watch How to Train Your Noivern in theaters because she'd forgotten the entire thing. She'd been waiting for that movie for months, and she was on the edge of her seat the entire time."
At this, Arnold furrowed his brow. "You don't use her to power your house?"
"My mom's luxray powers the entire house on her own. She gets very...territorial about it."
"When was the last time Snow discharged all of her electricity?"
"Pha pharos, amparos am am," Snow was finally paying enough attention to participate.
She says it was when you fought a nidorino during gym. How long ago was that?
"Two months maybe?" I couldn't remember for sure.
"So, she only ever discharges all of her electricity during a tough battle?"
"Am," Snow nodded.
Arnold and the medicham exchanged glances. "Snowflake should be draining all of her electricity at least once a month. Otherwise it will start to go stale and she'll get forgetful."
He looked at Snow. She was back to rocking on her beanbag chair. "Or, she'll get more forgetful anyway. If your house is already powered by your mother's luxray, then you can either drain it all in a battle, or set up a regular appointment with an organization that needs her electricity. I recommend the latter, because she'll get paid for it. And it just so happens that I work with a massive company that always needs more power."
He bent down, and emerged a moment later with a sizable file in his hand. Then he opened it up and showed it to me. "This is Anderson and White, they make hard drives. They contract all sorts of pokemon from us. It used to be mostly water types because the computer-making process uses fresh water for cooling purposes, but after the cooling process is complete, the water becomes contaminated. They used to just dump it, but people have been complaining about the effect it's had on the ecosystem, so they've been ordered to clean up the harbor they've damaged and establish a program for purifying the water immediately after it's used. Their plan to do this involves lots of electricity, so they're hiring all the strong electric types they can. If your Snowflake has so much pent-up juice that it's making her spacey, she's definitely powerful enough for this job. What do you think?"
I agreed immediately, but Snow needed to be reminded as to what we were agreeing about. Once we'd had relayed it all to her again, she agreed. Arnold's medicham told me Snow said she wanted to feel more alert again.
Then it was Peanut's turn. Arnold initially tried to get Peanut interested in a cleaning job that wanted crobat to blow accumulated grimer slime off of various pieces of machinery, then fly it to the nearest waste disposal station, but upon hearing that Peanut was actually more interested in swimming than flying, offered him a job with the same company as Snow. They needed pokemon that were able to go underwater, were immune to poison, and were more mobile than tentacruel or skrelp to swim around in still contaminated waters and clear out the local pokemon before the area was cordoned off and the electric pokemon were sent in to zap it. Peanut requested a new pair of goggles. Arnold called the company, who said those could be provided, and gave Peanut the job.
Before either of them could get started, however, they both had to go through certification. Snow had to learn basic safety precautions, how to shock herself unconscious if she was ever unable to stop generating electricity in an emergency, and how to give an even flow of electricity so she wouldn't cause a power surge. Peanut's certification was a bit trickier, because he was a poison/flying type who was going to do a water type's job, but after some planning and a few phone calls to make sure everything we were doing would result in the right certification, we devised a plan to get Peanut certified as a swimmer/diver. In addition to the usual tests of speed and agility in water, Peanut had to go through breathholding tests to see how long he could go down at a time, show he could cope with pressure changes in deep water, learn how to attack underwater and, of course, prove that he could survive in tainted water. All in all, Snow needed a few days while Peanut took a week to get certified. Once everything was complete, they were ready to start working.
I had known from the instant Arnold said the word "harbor" that the job my pokemon were being asked to do was several hours away by plane. My family and I live in the desert, where water types are prized and the streets are wider than the rivers. So when I asked Arnold how long my pokemon would be away and when I could see them again, I was surprised to learn that the pokeball transfer system had made it possible for a pokemon in California to work for an afternoon in Maine and be back in time for dinner. They were even working on expanding this system internationally, so pokemon could work in Mumbai in the morning, Leipzig in the afternoon, and pop by Antarctica before heading home to Mexico City in the evening.
For the next few weeks, things settled into a routine. We all woke up, ate breakfast, then the humans went to school and work while the pokemon were transferred via computer to various corners of the country for their jobs. In the evenings, the humans would return and wait by the computer for the pokemon to be sent back. Once everybody had all of their pokeballs, the pokemon were released and everyone ate dinner before heading back to their various responsibilities. Snow was doing much better, her zoning out was back down to what I considered to be healthy levels. She even seemed more energetic, insisting that we play zap catch (which is where I throw a frisbee and Snow zaps it until it's magnetized, then puts the opposite charge into her front hooves so she can make the frisbee change course and catch it) together before I did my homework each night. Peanut, too, seemed happier. He now had custom made deep-water goggles courtesy of his job (the company provided them for free since Arnold had made the argument that they were a necessary work expense), and he would sometimes drag me to the pocket room, then imagine it full of water and show off how fast he could swim or how accurately he could swing an Air Slash from a hundred meters under.
That all changed when Peanut came home one day and was unusually listless. He was uninterested in doing the things that usually made him happy: promises of watching documentaries about the deep sea, getting his back scratched, and being allowed to show off in the pocket room all failed to get any sort of reaction beyond a murmured "crobat," and a shaking head. I asked Snow if she knew what was bothering him, but she just shrugged her shoulders and said "ampharos am," in a tone that meant she was as confused as I was. When dinner time came and Peanut didn't want to eat, though, I started to get really worried.
Ever since the flying type specialist had told him to go on a diet, Peanut was always hungry. I'd tried to do everything I could to make it easier on him: we fed him rindo berries in the hope that they would make him feel fuller without giving him as many calories, I gave him ango berries for snacks in the hope they would suppress his appetite, I even snuck him my leftovers a few times (which thankfully didn't make him sick because unlike Snow, Peanut has an immune system), but none of it was ever enough. I knew he tried to hide it, I could see the muscles tense under his fur when he ate as he tried to keep himself from swallowing it whole, and twice I had caught him in the pocket room at late hours, gorging on holographic sweets just to feel like he could be full. If something was keeping him from wanting to eat, then it had to be very, very serious.
I tried asking what was wrong. He replied with yet another disinterested "crobat." I tried tickling him. Still didn't work. I tried asking Snow to ask, he answered her with a series of "cros" and "bats", but when I tried to ask her what he said, she tried and failed several times before tapping her hoof to her face in her gesture of "I give up."
This problem was clearly too complicated to communicate with tones and gestures. I needed a translator.
