Pokemon: After the black fall

by Malevolent Guzzler

A look inside of what life would be like in a Pokemon dystopia. One where humans live in fear, the world is in disarray, child soldiers are common, and everyone is dealing with the demands of a world not their own.

1. Prologue: The Black Fall

Prologue: Aftermath

When I was two years old, three quarters of the population of the Earth was wiped out along with most of the wildlife on the planet. This event was called, "The Black Fall". Now, we knew they were aliens or something. The truth is no one really knew where they came from, what they are, or why they're here. They just showed up. They were the grotesque mockeries of wildlife on earth after the Black Fall. Imagine our shock when creatures just sort of appeared with the ability to shoot fire or ice out their mouths. When creatures of stone just started emerging from the mountains. At first it was just chaos, the first few years there was all sorts of yapping between the politicians. They started off in the wilderness and seemed like they were afraid of humans. They focused their efforts on taking out the animals on the earth, and replacing them with these monstrosities. Think of the largest bat in the world, now imagine one that was five feet tall, that kind of thing is the difference between the animals of the world and these things. Within a few years what started off as a few of them, a small bane on the world, quickly became a full blown menace.

Next what happened is what the history books called "The Encroachment" or as I like to call it "The Infestation". It's when those creatures realized we were easy prey, we didn't have the weapons to fight them. We had guns, but what good is a gun against creatures made out of stone, we had bombs and tanks but there was too many of them and we waited too long. It started off with just a few casualties, there was some creatures that were like rats, except far larger and they started killing children. Then they killed cats and dogs and rats and just about anything else. Then came the bugs, all over the world bugs started appearing that were bigger and deadlier than any other bug in the world, and they seemed to be multiplying every God damn day. With seemingly no natural predators more and more moved in to overrun the neighborhoods. That was just the start. Soon other monsters showed up that could take out power grid, rip right through buildings, and others that could cook you alive with nothing but their breath. The streets weren't safe. The Encroachment lasted for about 5 years before the government declared martial law. Then it was all out war, at this point millions of people had died.

There was more of course, there's always fucking more. Powerful monsters appeared that had abilities beyond what we could imagine, and we went to war with them, every nation, all around the world. Some of the monsters had abilities we couldn't even comprehend, like the ability to bend objects with their mind. Seriously like what the hell is that? Some of them shot beams of energy at us, some of them were strong enough to bend tanks in half. Honestly I used to be pretty scared as a kid, back then people used to be escorted from place to place by men with guns. We were walked to school every day by men with assault rifles. It was terrifying but we honestly could have won if the grid didn't go down. They did too much damage to our infrastructure, I still to this day think it was inadvertent because some of them just happen to have an electric hang-up. When the grid went down and the fires started people panicked and emergency services just shut off when people needed them most. People rioted and a lot of people were killed by other people just so they could get the shit they needed, or even the shit they wanted but were too chicken shit to work for. I was lucky. There was a military base by my city which kept order for most of that initial rush. I got by virtually unscathed. That was the first war, the one against the monsters themselves.

Then the big breakthrough came, a breakthrough that allowed us to capture the monsters and start to train them to fight against other monsters. It was a ball that allowed us to capture wounded or injured creatures. Then we started trying to domesticate them, it was a slow go at first but we got it down by the time I was about at that point some of us kids had managed to "domesticate" the things without even using the stupid balls, but whatever; what the fuck do I know. Then we started the mass domestications, and what the textbooks call the "weaponization of the populace". Kids were given one of these monsters then taught how to train them so that they could fight other monsters. It was the dawn of the new era where child soldiers weren't just something that happened in Africa. Nah this shit was global. People were told to arm themselves and to fight and for a few years that worked. We started to push them back. We walled up our cities and we made them safer. People could walk on the streets again, people started to sorta live their lives, but then everyone started to get greedy.
Countries realized they could use the monsters for their own advantage and soon wars stared to be declared all over the world. The third world war lasted for about 5 years, nuclear war never broke out but it was the largest war in human history and this is where most of the world's population was wiped out, this is where I lost my dad. He was conscripted and sent to fight down south somewhere, between the advanced weapons and the newly tamed monsters people died in fucking droves, so many people that whole towns turned into ghost towns. Of course with fewer people to defend the towns many towns became overrun by the monsters yet again. Times got dark, and over the course of a whole ten year war so many people died that the fighting had to stop. No one really won the war, none of the countries in the war lost any land, just a few of the smaller countries got taken over or gave themselves up to save their own asses. It was just a great cleansing where all of mankind decided that enough was enough. We had found a new ways to wage war and war was fucking waged all right, and it damn near killed us all. I wish I could give you a better description of the way it happened but I was just a kid at the time. By the time it was over I was just turning 18.

With the world in shambles the economy collapsed and only a few corporations ended up sticking around, and those were mostly the ones that had converted from wartime production to consumer products, all based around catching and keeping healthy your own personal monsters. Soon people were carrying the monsters around with them all the time and they were more or less just pets. They became a form of entertainment just as much as a real threat. Everything seemed fucked up to me at the time but within a few years everyone just seemed to pretend it was normal.

I'm not a historian but I figured you ought to know what happened before I start telling you anything else. A lot of people had to die for the world to get this fucked up and for me to get this jaded. I have watched the world die and now all it's going to get out of me is regret and hatred. I deal with people every day who are permanently fucked up from it. Many of us lost a whole lot of people during that time. The survivors are mostly people who were too young to fight in the great wars and who happened to catch on to training monsters so they didn't get wiped out, myself included. Now we even have cute nicknames for them, people call them Pocket monsters because the little balls you catch them in can shrink to fit on a belt or in your pocket. The Japanese call them Pokémon, which kind of got picked up by the population at large. So that's what fucked the world up. I'm sorry if I can't really give you much of a how, but that's what we were told as kids. That's all I got for now.

Black Coffee, Nose Sugar

We're getting a late start today which shouldn't really matter because the target is unemployed, or at least that's what the report we've been given on him states Though me and my partner Tony both suspect that he's a drug dealer. It wasn't in the report but we checked the criminal record on the guy and found he had a possession charge, as well as an armed robbery charge and an assault charge, the last one was dropped. I'm sipping black coffee which I've picked up from a gas station it's kind of cold just the way that I like it. Tony is doing a line of coke off of the dashboard. He grunts after taking in the coke and looks up at me wiping his nose.

"We really should invest in bullet proof vests" he remarks

"Yeah probably a good idea, 20 bucks says that this guy is packing heat" I reply

"20 bucks says he uses the Pokémon we're trying to repossess against us, and that it will be his best monster" he says

I sigh and look over the report and read through it rapidly scanning for how bad the situation we're about to get ourselves into really is. The house that we're looking for is in a bad neighborhood, but not the worst one in the city. Luckily not many young punks or gangbangers are up at 10am if we're lucky I figure we can wake this guy up and knock on wood, reason with him without him going off

"The name on the report says Demarcus Brown, looks like this asshole has fallen over three months behind on payments of a Kangaskhan, that's a rare one, I bet the payments on something like that is ridiculous"

After another large sniffing noise and Tony hawking up some phlegm and spitting it down onto the ground, "You have no idea, that's an import, probably got it on a high interest loan after getting a big score. I don't know what an ex con needs with a fucking Kangaskhan."

"Well good news is this guy seems like an idiot, high school dropout, nothing but series of shitty jobs, and going in and out of jail for his adult life. He's got a series of arrests for simple crimes. He's hardly a criminal mastermind, looks like he tried to rob a pokémart with a cop car right in front of it, fucking dumbass."

"Alright, well let's get over there, I'll park around the corner from the house and you can do your thing."

Tony wipes off the dashboard with a moist toilette and starts the car while lighting a cigarette. It's too early to have a whole conversation and both of us just want to get in the zone. So on the way over to Mr. Brown's house we don't really say a whole lot and the only thing you can really hear is the sound of the radio and the coughs Tony will occasionally have as he takes too deep of a drag on his cigarette. We don't talk much at work, but Tony is my best friend and outside of work you can't get us to shut up as long as alcohol is involved. Put me and Tony in a room with nothing but a 30 rack and we will sit there and riff until we run out of beer. Work however is a depressing thing where we deal with the scum of the earth, a bunch of lazy fucks who buy their Pokémon on credit instead of training them like a normal well-functioning person. They usually buy the kind of little monster that they wouldn't have a chance of catching on their own. They always spend more than they can afford and most of them are dirt poor. Many of them are on drugs and no one is ever happy to see us. Pokémon are one part trusted defender and one part family pet, and people tend to get attached to them. Of course most of these dirt bags mistreat their Pokémon and usually can't afford to feed them. Many of the Pokémon we repossess are starving and on the verge of death. Some of them are still paralyzed or unconscious and they haven't been to a Pokémon Center in weeks. They're just in piss poor shape, and even they don't deserve that shit. We deal with the scum of the Earth in our job and it puts both of us in a piss poor mood, and honestly it drives both of us to drink.

We pull up around the corner from the house that the man in question is in, we can hear people in the backyard and realize the prospect of the man being asleep is foolish, so I decide on another approach. We pull over and I reach for the third ball on my belt. And mutter "Aldrin come out and play". A Beedrill pops out of the Pokeball and appears in front of me. The bee is a hideous mockery of what a bee should be. It stands a full 3 feet tall and has razor sharp stingers on two of its legs and one on its thorax. I named it Aldrin after Buzz Aldrin the astronaut. "Alright boy, I need you to fly over into the backyard of that house over there and count the number of people in that yard and anyone who might be in that house, then come right back to me." Aldrin flies off in the direction of the house.

Tony puffs on another cigarette and looks over at me, "Hey man I've got a question, why do you use a bug Pokémon as a scout and not something else that can fly, like a bird." I look over at him and answer rather plainly, "No one thinks anything if a bug flies by them, especially in a bad neighborhood without pest control officers, everyone underestimates bugs, and Aldrin is the best trained scout I have." Tony shrugs, "I don't use my bug Pokémon for scouts, and then again mine can't fly so it's no good as a scout anyway." I look over at him and laugh, "Man, no one is going to think a damn Pinsir is native to this area, that thing sticks out like a sore thumb. I'm surprised I haven't had to repossess it myself with how much it costs. I know we get a discount but mother fucker you need to learn not to shit where you eat" He takes a sip of his coffee and mutters "True Story"

Aldrin comes back over to the van and I open the door and let the big old bug back in. He bobs up and down excitedly. "How many of them is there boy?" I ask. Aldrin looks at me and goes "Bzz. Bzz Bzz" I look over at Tony and confidently state. "Three of them." Tony looks back and says, "That still floors me you taught the damn thing how to count." I put Aldrin back into his Pokeball. "I tried to teach him Morse code but it was too much for the little guy, we have it down to a system, he can count and if I ask him a yes or no question he does one long buzz for yes and a short buzz for no". Tony shakes his head and puts out his cigarette in the ash tray. He looks like he wants to say something, but I think at the end of the day, he knows I'm a better trainer than he is.

Some time passes and eventually as we watch the house we see a man who occasionally walks out into the front yard to smoke a cigarette while talking on a cell phone after some debate we decide that this must be Demarcus. We both agree that he isn't a drug dealer after about an hour when we realize that no one is coming or going from his house. He comes out to talk on the phone and aggressively argues with someone on the other line. I think it must be a relative because of the colorful slang that he's using and the excited pattern of his speech, Tony disagrees and thinks it must be a girlfriend. About the third time he comes out to talk on the phone we pull the van around step out of the van and start walking towards him.

Scumbag

We walk towards the man and calmly say "Demarcus Brown?"

"Yeah, who the fuck are you?" he replies

"We're from United Pokémon Services, We're here to repossess the Kangaskhan you purchased. You see, you've become truant on your payments….."

It's at this point I have to cut off my spiel mid statement because this shit sucking scumbag whips out a pistol and fires a round into the air. Me and Tony retreat and hide behind the van as Demarcus pops a round into the side of the van, believe it or not this is not the first time this has happened. Tony looks at me with an expression that is a mix of rage and utter contempt and draws a Pokeball from off of his belt.

"Was it you or me who said he would have a gun?" he stammers

"I did, so you owe me 20" I blurt

"Fuck that shit, this isn't over yet, we had multiple bets. I can still come out ahead."

"You got a plan for this?"

"Yeah I'll take care of it, Go Spew!"

A koffing appears from Tony's Pokeball and just sort of floats there for a moment before ducking down when it hears the gunshot as it pokes its head out from the van. Tony turns to the koffing "Alright, use smokescreen to cover us, and when we get to the side of the house use smog to drive him back inside, then wait here, don't get yourself shot over this." The koffing starts spewing a little gas out behind the van, just enough to cover itself and then spews smoke in front of the van. Demarcus immediately starts cussing and stops shooting. We get to the side of the house as we spring from one point to another and immediately Spew starts shooting gas out of the center of the smokescreen and Demarcus starts coughing and hurries back into the house and slams the door. Tony holds out his Pokeball hoping to get Spew to return to his Pokeball but the smoke is too thick and he can't get a decent shot so he puts the ball back into his pocket after shrinking it back to a more reasonable size. Then we hear two voices bickering in the backyard.

"Shit man, I forgot about the two guys in the back" Tony spits out.

"I'll take care of them, head into the house and deal with Demarcus I'll be right in."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah man, they're probably a bunch of scrubs, I guarantee if they do have Pokémon that they'll have maybe two each I can take both of them at the same time if I have to. I'm just fucking like that."

"Fuck off you cocky asshole. Alright I'll get the side door open and get to Mr. Brown."

We both pull out a Pokéball and let out a single Pokémon each, Tony brings out a Primeape, and out of my ball comes Hypno. We can hear scrambling coming from all directions. Under Tony's command the Primeape rips the door, which probably wasn't even locked, right off of its hinges with a squeal. I push my Hypno, who from here on out I'll refer to as Sandman, against the side of the house. I wait for about a minute since I can hear footsteps coming around the side of the house. A pale man covered in tattoos peeks his head around the corner and I grab him and slam him against the wall then down to the ground. Sandman stands over him "Sandman use hypnosis," I command and within a few seconds and a few swings of his pendulum Sandman puts the man to sleep. I turn the corner and the other man, a black man of above average height is standing there with his hands up. "Put your Pokeballs on the ground and roll them over to me," I whisper to him. He complies and pulls out two Pokeballs and rolls them over to be, I shove them into my pockets, I tell him he'll get them back in just a moment, and he sits back down on to the chair, Sandman without command uses hypnosis on the man who looks surprised for a moment before nodding off. "Good idea Sandman" I whisper and bring him back inside of the Pokéball. I pull out another ball but don't let the Pokémon out yet because I'm not sure how well Tony is doing with his Primeape inside. I can hear a whole lot of crashing and smashing of one thing or another but can't make out the voices.

The backdoor is locked but the house is so old and decrepit that I'm able to force it open without too much trouble by simply using a credit card, which isn't even a credit card, it's some rewards card I picked up from a clothing store that I almost never go to. I sneak into the room as I can hear "Raticate use bite" I can hear the squeal of one of the overgrown super rats as it lunges towards Primeape in the other room. Tony shouts out "Primeape use mega punch" The rat which was in the other room flies right across the room and slams into the wall, and then I can hear a thud as Tony lunges forward pinning the man against the wall. "Alright scumbag, surrender the damn Pokémon and I won't have to break your jaw" he growls at him. Demarcus is just sitting there and cussing him out, mercilessly rambling on about how we're a bunch of corporate thugs taking things from innocent people. I walk over without hesitation and with him slammed against the wall, walk over to his belt, and find the yellow Pokeball that is on his belt and rip it off. Purchased Pokémon usually come in yellow Pokeballs, it saves us from having to let the monsters out looking for the right one. I tell Tony we should get out of there because we got what we wanted. We turn to leave and Demarcus pulls out his gun yet again and tries to punch Tony. Without any hesitation I see his Primeape lunch forward and blast him right into the wall. Tony pushed the Primeape back and looks at me and nods. We both proceed to kick him over and over again, the first few kicks hit him right in the face as he doubles over in pain. When he curls up into the fetal position we focus on kicking him in the ribs. Tony has his Primeape roll him over and kicks him square in the middle of his back. He brings Primeape back into his Pokeball and then spits on Demarcus.

"Fucking Scumbag, he's lucky I don't take all his Pokémon" Tony says with disdain

"Not worth the paperwork."

"Do you think this guy has any drugs? I could use some weed"

"Probably, but I want to get out of here before the two guys that are sleeping in the back wake up."

"Yeah good point, True story."

"Did he use that Kangaskhan at all?"

"Nah the building was too small, just that Raticate, why does every scumbag have a Raticate?"

"Because they're common as hell, you get a Rattata and evolve it after a short amount of time."

"Well the thing fainted, let's get out of here, I could use a smoke."

"You know those things are going to kill you, especially the way you smoke them."

"What are you my mother?"

We walk out of the house, unlocking the front door and head back to the van. Tony brings his koffing back into his Pokeball after giving it a little hug. He loves that damn thing, and I don't care what anybody says he's a good trainer, his Pokémon are all happy as fuck whenever they're around him. We get back into the van. Tony starts the car. "You owe me 40 dollars" I say.

Nicknames

Some people say that only women and children nickname their Pokémon which is something I don't really understand because it seems like a courtesy. If you have a pet you give it a name and then you call it by that name. I guess the argument that people make is that Pokémon are tools and their not meant to be pets, and I get that but it still makes sense to give them a name because that's how you're going to refer to them, I mean come the fuck on, at least give them a number or something. Nothing annoys me more than when I'm battling some asshole who throws out a Pidgey and he just calls it Pidgey. That to me is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If theoretically you weren't human and you owned humans you wouldn't just call each human you had human or person. That would be stupid, it would be impersonal and degrading. I don't know if Pokémon really care if they have a nickname or they just learn to think their name is tautological but I would like to think that if you have a Pokémon they would prefer to have a name. I heard somewhere that cows make more milk, like a lot more milk if they have a name, because a cow is like a person and is happier when it has a name, it feels like it's loved and when it feels like that it makes more milk because it's happy. Most Pokémon are at least as smart as a damn cow. They understand, or can at least learn human speech, they recognize your voice, and they learn who their owners are and know a set number of commands and can even learn more, so we know they're intelligent. Some Pokémon are even apart of the human like egg group and you're going to name that damn thing its species name like it's some kind of idiot? Fuck you, fuck you in the ass with a spiked steel dildo.

Besides are you really going to risk owning two Pokémon of the same type and not giving them different names, the damn things will get confused? What if they end up fighting a Pokémon that is the same species as that one and goes by the same name which isn't even a name? What if the other trainer has a voice similar to yours? Then you just get to stand there like a moron and watch as the other trainer commands your monster. Fuck that. What if the damn thing gets recaptured or repossessed by a different trainer, I have seen this happen. No nickname it's even easier to retrain. They can easily be retrained because they don't have to learn a new name, it's just reprogramming a thing so that it gets back to base. By not naming the monster you basically say that it means nothing to you and that you are just begging for the thing to be taken away from you, either that or you have so many Pokémon that you can't remember their names. Which means you don't really have a connection to your Pokémon you just have slaves that you send out to complete a certain purpose. You get this a lot in competitions in the leagues.

Those shitheads have so many Pokémon that they just send them out with no regard for who they are or what they're doing. They are just tools to accomplish an end, sometimes they do it just to get off one or two moves before the Pokémon faints. I've seen matches on TV where people will send out a Pokémon to eat blows while they spend their time just healing their other Pokémon. You're turning that living being into a sacrificial animal just so you can win a match. I know these monsters, I work with them and they're living breathing things that feel pain. I'm not gonna get on a pedestal here, but if something is willing to take blows from a living and breathing weapon standing across from you then the least you can do is give the fucking thing a name. Besides I've heard that Pokémon who have a name are happier and happier Pokémon evolve easier and more often than the ones who are treated like shit. I don't really think that's true but hell man it couldn't hurt. As you can probably guess all of my Pokémon have nicknames. I carry six on me at all times and each one has a nickname, and I usually call them by their nicknames. So don't get confused and wonder why some random thing named Tyson is using mega punch, and wondering like what the fuck that is, know that they exist and they have names. Names that I gave them because they are unique things that I have to interact with constantly.

Some of my Pokémon I admittedly got when I was a kid and named it then. Some of them I actually renamed later when I realized that just calling a thing by what the thing is was kind of stupid. It was one of those realizations I had when I was high as hell, it made sense though because the monsters we carry around are smart enough to learn names so there's no reason why we shouldn't give them a name. There's a lot of debate about how smart Pokémon really are but I've been able to teach mine all sorts of tricks, and they seem to have a basic handle on strategy, and they even get that people are not Pokémon and the way you deal with people and Pokémon is different. That means that they do understand at least a few key concepts that other animals do not get, and that's good enough for me. I'm not arguing that they're as smart as people, although I've heard some psychic Pokémon are. So that's just my little rant about that because that always bothered me. I'll try to bring up what each one of my Pokémon is as they are introduced but I'm pretty fucked up, both in the sobriety sense and as a person so bear with me.

My Best friend

In case you haven't noticed I work with a guy named Tony for United Pokémon Services which essentially sells Pokémon to people, mainly poor people on loan and then if they don't pay they send guys like me and Tony to fuck them up and take their Pokémon back from them. Tony got me the job, which his dad got him. Tony isn't just my coworker he's also my best friend. He's a short stocky guy who is the kind of person who can push you around even though he doesn't work out. Tony has got a short but unruly beard and is covered in tattoos. Whenever he gets a little extra money he gets another one. He's a short Italian guy you just really don't want to piss off. He usually smells like cheap cigarettes. His eyes are usually bloodshot and are dark as ink. He usually look like a combination of wired and totally stoned. He doesn't sleep enough, he's almost always high. Tony has a very serious problem with anger and gets upset all of the time, he doesn't hesitate to start yelling, arguing or screaming, he often punches anything he can reach, whether that be a thing or a person doesn't matter.

Tony is a drug addict, or at the very least a drug user, he claims to be addicted to prescription pain pills but I've never seen him go into withdrawal and I've seen him go without them for days, so I'm pretty sure he just really likes them. He's always in pain mind you, but it's really nothing he can't treat with ibuprofen, and I know this because on days where he doesn't have painkillers he just takes that and he's totally fine. He also smokes a lot of pot, and recreationally does cocaine although not too often. He also drinks too much, but then again so do I, so I don't really have a whole lot to talk about there. I've never seen him go into withdrawal from that either though so I wouldn't call him an alcoholic either, although we both like to joke he is. So maybe addict was too strong of a word, the way I really look at it is that Tony doesn't like to be sober for any reason for too long, and when he is, he's still drinking a lot of coffee and he smokes like a chimney.

Tony is a trainer and a damn good one at that. His Pokémon are all like him, and he has mostly poison types because of both convenience and because I think those type of Pokémon listen to him better than any other type. All of his Pokémon are like him, they're stubborn and angry while being both crafty and strong. He squad consists of a Nidorino, (which at his house doesn't stay in his Pokeball) Voltorb, Koffing, Tentacruel, Primeape and Pinsir. He has nicknames for all of them too, but we won't go into all of them now. When Tony is passed out what's weird is that many of his Pokémon will listen to me if I tell them to do something, Tony can't say the same for most of my Pokémon with the exception of Aldrin and Tyson, but that's because they've known him for so long.

Tony and I have been friends for almost 20 years. Tony moved into town from a big city and had a hard time fitting in. We were both the weird kids who fought like hell to fit in, but had a hard time because we were poor and we were small, and neither of us got tough until high school. While all of the rich kids at school had all sorts of cool and unique Pokémon me and Tony had what they like to call bush Pokémon, or Pokémon for poor people. I had a Beedrill and he had a Nidoran. We had to fight like hell not to get our asses kicked, which a lot of the time we did. We grew up with a chip on our shoulder into two dysfunctional adults who now worked for the rich kids, picking on people who are even poorer than we are. We ride around in a van all day and drive around picking on people and ruining their days, we went from bullied to bullies and people didn't even notice.

Oh and in case you were wondering we never gave that guy I put to sleep his Pokémon back, they sucked anyway, they were a Spearow and a female Nidoran. So fuck that guy. We'll send the Pokeballs back in the mail later, it'll sort of add insult to injury. Also our job doesn't pay that well, it pays the bills and our bar tabs and that's really about it. If I'm lucky I'll have enough money for a few creature comforts, other than that I live a very Spartan life. I wanted to be a Pokémon Master when I was younger, but that job pays worse than being a fucking repo man for United Pokémon. So this is our profession. We're paid bullies, and god do we both hate that.

The Van

If you want to get technical we're not supposed to use our Pokémon on the job, even though this job would be impossible without them. We have a bunch of tools in the van which, we can, but usually don't use. We have one of those extender poles with a loop on the end of it which we can use to bay a Pokémon, and we have a rifle loaded with tranquilizer darts in case we have to put one to sleep, we also have a healthy back stock of Poke balls for catching Pokémon if we happen to have to make one faint and force it into a new ball. We also have like three great balls on hand for that, we used to have a few ultra-balls as well but the company we work for cut our supply budget and now we don't have those anymore. Tony also has his pistol permit and carries a handgun but that's more for the trainers than the Pokémon themselves. Honestly on some Pokémon a bullet is sort of useless, like on rock or ghost Pokémon it doesn't do much of anything, although we don't repossess too many ghosts. I've only run into one or two ghosts that were leased out to those goth types that honestly just handed their Pokémon back over without too much of a struggle, slight argument and that was really it. It was only really a verbal insult and them calling us posers and fascists for like 5 minutes before we took them back, which honestly isn't that bad considering the kind of bullshit we go through every day.

The van itself is one of those big old work vans with no windows, the usual work type van that could be anything really but it is the type of thing you think a child molester would drive. It has no logo or anything on it because if it did people would bolt left and right trying to get away from us and honestly most of the time neither me or Tony have enough energy to chase any of these people around for more than like a half mile, Tony smokes too much and I straight up don't have time for that kind of thing, I don't make enough money to have to chase any stupid mother fuckers who think we're the police or something equally delusional and asinine. The van itself isn't in very good shape, it has no air conditioning and during the summer we sweat an insane amount, during the winter the heat makes the whole van rattle, we have to pay to replace the windshield wipers because I guess they're not covered under insurance. The van is slow and there's no way that we could outrun absolutely anything. Car chases? We couldn't do one of those if our lives depended on it, hence why it's essential we catch these people off guard. The van has some of those great all weather tires that work in theory in every different kind of weather, but in reality mean that we hydro plane and can do burnouts during the snow. The windows are tinted darker than they're allowed to be and occasionally a cop will pull us over if there isn't anything pressing going on inside of a neighborhood, in the rich communities they just kind of assume we're drug dealers. It can be very difficult to explain that ," No officers, any drugs you see in here are for personal use, we're here to seize some rich cunt's Chansey from her because her husband can't make payments on a 100,000 dollar Pokémon anymore." Which is a real thing we have had to say before (minus the obscenities of course. Cops hate that kind of attitude and we're not stupid). The seats in the van are peeling, as is the vinyl on the panels because of how much Tony smokes, even during the winter I always have the window open because I think that cigarettes smell disgusting. Speaking of disgusting, it's always dirty and occasionally when a Pokémon falls out of a Pokéball they thrash around and rip the whole fucking thing to shred, and we'll have to pull over and knock the thing down and then pop it back inside of a Pokéball. A willing monster will just return to its ball, so when we're lucky we can just tell it to get back into the ball and it listens, however if it's temperament is difficult we have to beat the thing down a bit to put it back into a ball. Shit sucks sometimes but that's why we keep Pokémon handy.

We occasionally get attacked and because of that the van is in really sorry shape. There are huge dents in the side of it, and a few bullet holes. Some of the dents are from Tony getting pissed and punching a dent into them himself. Others are from monsters coming up and hitting the van. The sliding door sometimes sticks because one time when we were repossessing a Magmar it breathed fire at the van and melted part of the door before Tango took the thing down with a well-placed water pulse. The door melted a bit so sometimes you really have to slam it shut. The thing is supposed to be fixed with regular maintenance but of course the company is too cheap to do even the most basic repairs, hell they can't even give us dental insurance I suppose I can't expect them to do basically anything. I'd like to remark that United Pokémon is one of the largest Pokémon purchasing services in the region, so they have the money they just refuse to pay us. Great useless hunks of garbage that they are I'm surprised they even remember to pay us. The van serves as a testament to just how shitty of a company they are and how much they won't give us, they don't even give us the most basic things. The van has tires worn down to the point where they barely pass inspection. We struggle all the time to keep the thing together but honestly with how destructive all of the monsters are in this world you have to just be thankful that we haven't come across some junkie with an Onix who would just have the thing take out the van with a single tackle. Those big things freak me out quite a bit and I'm not going to lie I'm waiting for the day that someone finally wises up enough to take out our set of wheels so we can't leave with their shit, if the people we were going after had any brains at all they might do something like that. I've done similar things with my Pokémon. Of course a lot of how Pokémon act has just as much to do with creativity than just instinct. Although I'm not going to lie if some junkie or tweaker did total the van it means we might get a new one, so it might really be worth it, but I guess only time will tell on that one, they might try and fix it and just fuck it up worse. I've had the thought that if I had Tyson rip out the engine and crush it I might get to go home early from work, but I usually suppress that thought and get back to work, and focus Tyson (who is a Machoke) on crushing all the little yuppie scum's Pokémon into paste because they're the ones who use normal type Pokémon the most.

Lunch with Spike

Spike is Tony's Nidorino. While me and Tony get ourselves a couple of cheeseburgers for lunch Spike sits in the back of the van and just sort of chills out. Spike is a real chill Pokémon if he knows you, but he can be a real son of a bitch is he doesn't. Spike is stubborn and like Tony has a serious problem with anger. Someone once told me that a Nidorino's horn was harder than diamond, and I think that is a bit of an exaggeration but all the same I don't want to fuck with it anyway. When Tony is passed the fuck out sometimes I'll play with Spike because he's usually outside of his Pokeball when we're at Tony's house. We try to keep at least one Pokémon out of its ball at a time when we're not moving in the van, on the off chance that some wild monster comes up and tries to fuck with us. Most of the Pokémon around are just Weedles, Rattatas, or Pidgeys but sometimes something big comes up and tries to fuck with us, and those encounters can be deadly. I mean horrifying as hell, that's one of the reasons that kids get Pokémon at a very young age, a wild Pokémon even a small and unassuming one can kill a person without too much of a thought. I've heard tales of Weedles stinging kids and then them dying of poison. Beedrills kill people all the time, especially when they swarm, even something as small as a Pidgey can knock a kid down a ledge with a gust if they're not careful. These things happen all the damn time even with the walls up. Usually we try and keep at least one monster out when we're not moving. Today it's Spike. When it's my turn I usually use Aldrin (who is a Beedrill in case you forgot). Most of the lunch we sit there and discuss mindless chatter that I don't really feel like going into. Spike stays outside of the van scaring off a majority of the people and monsters who would normally fuck with us. Tony starts in a conversation

"So do you think that there are other monsters out there besides the ones we know about?"

"Yeah probably. They did just kind of a show up in the first place, I wouldn't be surprised if one day more of them just sort of did the same thing and just sort of appeared."

"That would suck man, could you imagine if just when society started to get a hold on this kind of thing, bam then we have a whole other set of fucking monsters that we have to deal with."

"Would probably start a whole other war, or at the very least another arms race"

"Could you imagine what kind of things they would probably be?"

"I don't really want to, everything that's happened since the fall, it's like the monsters aren't totally alien, not foreign, it's like they tried to copy the way things looked on earth, and then they failed, like they tried to make their own animals and just made some kind of fucked up replica."

"I'm pretty sure there will be more, I don't think they want us to win."

"I hope to god there isn't but you're probably right."

Spike lunges at something and begins to cry out, he thrusts forward with his horn and skewers what looks to be a Pidgey. The small bird falls over with one quick move and is put down. Spike rips off the thing's head and gnaws down on its small body without a thought. I guess it was time for him to eat lunch too. Pokémon can attack without their owners telling them to, but only if they're given a general direction, like protect this spot, or watch my back. The things aren't helpless but if they go without direction for too long they'll start to get confused and disoriented, except in the wild where they just seem to lash out chaotically. Scientists figured out that Pokémon being used by trainers tend to be better at battling than those of equivalent strength in the wild. To me I think that's a whole load of shit, the real marker of that is intent. A monster that is trained has one purpose, to fight other monsters for its master, wild Pokémon might be doing any number of things, they might be looking for food or going to get water or taking a shit, it could have a whole bunch of things on its mind, our monsters just want to fight. Also I have a hard time believing it just because it seems like the most arrogant boast in the world, like we're masters of these monsters just because we found a way to capture and train them. These things nearly wiped us off the face of the planet, for the record we're not their masters we're just the subordinate species using the dominant one to survive in what is now their world. Fuck that shit, like we're the better species, these things can breathe fire and bend steel, they don't need us, and we need them.

Spike walks around the car after he takes a few quick bites out of the bird, the monster seems kind of on edge today, and I'll have to tell Tony to calm it down. Tony takes another bite off on the burger and takes a sip of his drink. We sit in silence for another minute or two powering down the rest of the meal, or at least he is. I eat really fast because one time a Pokémon came in and ambushed me while I was trying to power down a meal, big mother fucker too, not the usual small little thing, I was outside the wall, it was a Machop.

Tony turns to me and asks, "So what do we have after this? Is it something worth our time or another scum sucking maggot trying to act hard with a Pokémon bought on layaway?"

"I think we get to go to one of those gated neighborhoods next."

"Some rich cunt want another Clefairy?"

"Something like that, the job isn't like Chansey rare but it's something worth enough money that they stand out above the stupid schmucks who spend their paychecks on something you could travel and catch"

I look down at the clipboard I'm holding while Tony brings Spike back into his Pokeball. "Looks like we have a man this time, some bitch who bought the family a Jigglypuff." Tony sighs, "Get Tyson ready we'll need him for this one."

Snuchum

We pull into one of those gated neighborhoods and decide the best course of action is to just walk right up on the house and be up front about it. Rich people tend not to fight too much about losing one of their Pokemon, usually because they have more than one. Some of the real rich snobs actually have access to a Pokémon storage system that allows them to send their monsters out to live in some farm and frolic around. I'm pretty damn poor so I, and most of my friends usually don't even have spare Pokeballs on us at any point in time. Either way we go through the gate of the neighborhood and roll up on the house. I let Tyson out of his Pokeball, because he's a big burly Machoke and probably my most intimidating monster and walk up to the house. We're repossessing a Jigglypuff, nothing major but if we have to fight it I want something that can knock the thing out in one shot. We walk up to the house, the three of us, Tony, myself and the Machoke. It's a nice place, one of those new style houses that pop up all over the suburbs, they called them Mcmansions in the nineties but I like to call them yuppie traps. The house is white with black siding and high trimmed bushes that serve as a fence. We knock on the door and a woman answers, she looks to be in her mid-fifties. I start in, because I'm better at doing the more formal introductions. "Good Afternoon Mam I'm from United Pokémon services, unfortunately you've fallen truant with your payments, and your credit has defaulted, I'm here to repossess one Jigglypuff from your household." I can hear movement inside but it doesn't sound threatening, it sounds like a few whimpers and some shuffling. I know what comes next and I realize that she's started to talk shop with Tony who's the one holding the clipboard, and pleading

"Please we didn't mean to fall behind on the payments, if you could just make a pass this one time, Snuchums is a member of the family now."

"We could accept a payment of 300 dollars in order for you to keep possession of the Pokemon, if you can't pay you have to forfeit the Pokémon because technically until you pay it off, it remains the property of United Pokémon Services. You see you opted for our payment plan that had you paying in installments"

"It's just that my husband was recently killed, he was an officer in the army, he served his country, and it's been so hard without him."

"That's tragic and all, but a whole lot of people have given their lives in the service of their country, and people die every day. Your husband is no different than any of the others. If you can't pay then you have to give it back."

I look inside of the house and I can see the Jigglypuff scared and cowering with what appears to be a little girl. Tyson sits there with his arms crossed undeterred. Both the child and the monster make soft little squeaking sounds, I can recognize them as the sounds of fear. This is usually the part where I should start to well up with tears and get all watery eyed, but that isn't me and it never has been. I've seen too much shit. I've been doing this for way too long. I honestly don't give a fuck about some sob story. Let the kid catch a bug Pokémon and train it. No little girl I know would be upset with a Butterfree. The child comes holding the monsters hand to the door, she tugs at the woman's hand and whimpers, "The bad men aren't coming to take Snuchums away….are they?" The woman looks at her ashamed, "Yes they are, and mommy couldn't pay for her." The little girl and her mother bicker

"They can't take her, she's mine, and she's my best friend"

"They have to, I couldn't afford to pay for her,"

"No I won't let them! She's mine!"

"We don't have a choice, she has to go with them."

"Do something, make the bad men go away."

"I don't know what to do honey, I don't have three hundred dollars, not since your dad died."

"I won't let them take her. Snuchums use pound on the bad men."

You'd think this was abnormal, but when people have pets that are trained combatants this kind of thing happens all the time. The little ball of fluff lunges forward and without so much as a second to flinch as it goes to hit me, Tyson steps up and hits the thing with a karate chop which basically crushes it. Tyson has been fighting for years and this little monster doesn't stand a chance. It falls down utterly crushed. The little girl cries and wails. She goes over to the monster which is unconscious, the woman screams "You monsters! Look what you've done, to the poor innocent thing!" I shrug and say "She was going to have it attack us, my Pokémon here defended me from an assault." The woman looks at me with the most delectable look of contempt the girl moans, "Mommy they killed her, they killed Snuchums!" The woman and her daughter have a rapid and nearly frantic back and forth

"Mommy do something!"

"Snuchums isn't dead, she's just been knocked out honey and I don't know what to do,"

"Make them go away!"

"I can't honey, these men are set on RUINING OUR LIFE!" She roars that part back at us, Tony and I share a chuckle at her agony. I love nothing more than seeing some rich snob pissing and moaning since she can't afford her extra special rare monster. She turns back at us and pleads. "Please I'll do anything, just don't take her Pokémon away from her it's all that she has" Tony shrug and points at the clipboard and says plainly, "300 dollars".

The woman goes in to the house and goes into what I assume is the bedroom. If I had to fetch a guess she goes under the mattress and pulls out 300 dollars, in 100 dollar bills. Which means that she was lying to us, and she does have some more money than she let on. Truant on the bills but with a large supply of cash in the house in large bills, means she's probably dealing drugs. Rich white woman in the suburbs, I wouldn't be surprised if she was dealing in pills. "She thrusts it into our hands and says "There you go you parasites, you fucking thugs, go bully someone else." We smile and take out leave, before we get into the truck I bring Tyson back into his Pokeball and fist bump Tony. He looks me dead in the eyes and says "Where do you think she got the money, she seemed adamant she didn't have it." I reply, "Yeah and then she gets three large bills, and she can't be that poor if she can still afford that mortgage." Tony goes, "so what do you think? Molly or Pills?" I just blurt back, definitely pills, probably OxyContin. You ought to see if you can restock before we take off." Tony shoots me a look that says maybe. Then shakes his head and says, "I've got a prescription now, my back is killing me." I look back at him and laugh

Now don't call me a cynic, because nowadays everyone is fucked up. Too many people are on drugs, including me. I drink like it's going out of style and I smoke weed as soon as I get home because I deal with the scum of the earth. Everyone who I talk to seems to be on drugs. There is a huge problem with drugs in this city, in this region, everywhere. Doctors pump people full of pills and dealers use doctors to supply them with a cheap supply of designer drugs, and that's not going into all of the illegal drugs that people are slinging. In a world where anyone could die at any moment from lone wandering super powered monsters people want to get fucked up. Most people I know suffer from some form of PTSD, every soldier who has come back from the war is totally off their rocker. Most people have lost parents, or sons, or husbands. We've all seen some terrible things and most of us can't deal with it. The woman and her daughter manage to keep Snuchums. I feel a little bad for the kid, but her monster did try to attack me so I guess she deserves it.

I don't buy the idea that children are innocent. Kids start training their monsters somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. That means that they start participating in combat exercises before they even hit puberty, and that's normal. Before people used to be horrified at the ideas of child soldiers, now that's the norm. Some kids even leave school to try and pursue Pokémon full time, that's actually becoming more common. That shit makes me nervous, it's kind of scary when you think about it. We've got kids who don't even know how sex works or understand the basic concept of science, or know world history. These people are going to go out and recruit and train soldiers to fight for them. This army of ignorant bastards is eventually going to end up running the world. Kids train to become beast masters by making other creatures fight for them, before they even learn algebra. That's the kind of fucked up world we live in. If a kid can command something to fight, then it should understand that at any point in time that they should be willing to accept defeat. If you want to play the game you have to learn how to lose, if you want to fight then you should learn that this is real life and you could very well die. The world is a cruel and heartless place now, and children have been made into just another tool. They're pawns on the grand chessboard, but they're still playing the game. Kids are cruel enough to want to hurt other beings, then they should accept that their own friends might get hurt.

Interlude. I'm not that special

I just realize something. You don't know anything about me. I'll keep this short, I'm a tall broad pissed off mutt. I'm about six foot three and around 220 pounds. Ethnically I'm like 16 things mixed together from various parts of Europe and I'm pretty sure I'm like 1/4 Native American or something which gives me a tan. My hair is crew cut short like a marine, even though I never served in the military. I have a short beard I trim meticulously like it's a fucking compulsion. I'm covered in tattoos, I'll probably talk more about that later. All of my hair is dark brown and my eyes are the color of shit. I'm pretty fucking boring honestly. If it wasn't for the tattoos I would look like any stock bad guy you could find in any action movie. I have a half sleeve on my left arm that is an Arbok wrapping around a cross across a plane of sunlight. I have a full sleeve on my right arm that is a menagerie of different water Pokémon, since this is a seaside town. The center of my sleeve is a Gyarados, but in it is a Squirtle, a Staryu, and a Poliwag . I have one on my left calf, which is just the words "These type of things happen when it's dark". My chest piece is a scene depicting the fall of Satan from heaven from one of my favorite books, Paradise Lost. I don't read much but as a kid I was pretty good at it. I read Dante's Inferno, all of the long winded beautiful poetry shit. I have a rose tattooed on my left hand. On my right thigh is the phrase, "Strange Mortals with Curious Customs" which is an excerpt from the story, "The Mysterious Stanger". That's also about Satan.

If you're looking for a hero in this story, that's not me. I've never been much for heroics, my dad died when I was a kid and I was raised my mom with an older brother who took off when I was thirteen, and a younger sister who I've lost contact with. Last I heard she was doing well. She married an older guy who had a successful startup and got out of this town. I graduated from high school after a mediocre academic career. Had a brief period where I travelled around the country, did two years of community college. I wanted to be a teacher at one point, but I have priors from when I was sixteen and tried as an adult for felony assault. I'm not going to go into that. Tony's dad hooked me up with a job working for United Pokémon.

So yeah that's me, that's the jist of it. I'm an unassuming low life character with nothing special to show for my life. I look like a stock character you would use in the background of a movie. I'm nothing special. So let's move on

End of the day

Work continues to suck, I won't bore you with all of the details. After I stop at the local branch of United Pokémon to drop off the van and pick up my truck, (An old beaten down Chevy) I say goodbye to Tony and drive myself home. My apartment is one of those duplexes where each side is a different house. I have a roommate named Sergio, but the thing is that he works nights, so I don't see him too often except for on the weekend. My apartment isn't very nice but I like it because neither the rent nor the utilities are very high. I don't live in what anyone would call a good neighborhood. The house is rented out by an old Hispanic family that think I'm Hispanic too and gave me the chance to rent the nicest house they own. My neighbors are their daughter and her scumbag boyfriend who is trying to make it as a rapper and sells knockoff handbags and costume jewelry to idiots down in a nicer part of town. Sergio is actually their son, who I keep an eye on for a break in the rent. They even invite me over for family dinners, which are delicious because ethnic food is amazing when it's authentic.

I open the door to my house. Sergio is asleep. He starts work at 8pm and works until 6am so he's out cold. He's a heavy sleeper but I still try not to make too much noise. I throw my coat on the hook and head into my room to change out of my work clothes. I throw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with the name of the local gym on it. I know what you're thinking and yes I'm one of those psychopaths who relaxes around his house in a pair of jeans, purely out of the fear that if I'm going to get jobbed than I want to be wearing proper pants during the home invasion. I head into my kitchen, which is fairly nice for how old the house is. The floor is checkered linoleum, with a kitchen island in the middle of the room. The counters are granite but pretty old. The fridge, stove, and most of the appliances are older too, but they all work fine. They're both that same generic gray color that was big in the 90s. I open up the fridge and pull out one of my premade meals and throw it in the microwave. I cook like two days a week and just eat the leftovers throughout the week. When the food is hot, I head back into the living room and turn on the TV. I only have basic cable, so I turn on the news and consume my daily reminder about how fucked up the world is. I finish my meal which is basically a chicken stir fry with extra chicken and then bring my Tupperware into the kitchen. I plop back on the couch. I'm bored and stressed and want to decompress. I think about going next door to bother my neighbors and see if they want to smoke some pot, but I can hear them arguing about something and decide that it's not really worth it. I decide I might as well pull one of my Pokémon out of their balls so I let Sandman out of his Pokeball.

Sandman pops out of his Pokeball, and when he looks around he seems relieved, probably because he's not in combat. I signal to Sandman and he sits down on the couch, his pendulum falls backward into his hand. The frills on his neck sort of make it look like he is wearing clothes, so that's basically a person. This is my justification for getting fucked up on a Thursday by myself. Sandman is a laid back sort of Pokémon but is probably my smartest. He's stoic and almost never panics for any reason. Even when it's under attack it doesn't really react. He was the second Pokémon I ever caught. Sandman sits down on the couch and leans back, if a Pokémon could sigh I think he would. He had a hard day. I ask Sandman to get me a beer from the fridge, it's a trick I teach all of my humanoid Pokémon. He does and then I decide I really want to smoke some pot.

I pull out my bowl and grinder and grind up some weed. Once the weed is ground up I pack the bowl. Some sort of game show is blaring on the TV, I flick it over to that classical music channel that is on every basic cable network. I crack open a beer and then I spark the bowl. I take a deep hit. I cough, (I always cough on the first hit) and I soothe my throat my drinking some beer. Sandman is one of the few monsters I have that doesn't really mind the smell of pot, I honestly think it gets a contact high. I'm not sure if Sandman could smoke a bowl but I feel like it would be weird to offer it a hit. I take a few hits until my room is filled up with smoke, Sandman looks over at me and puts his hand on my shoulder, I give the little guy a tap back before going to take another hit. I guess I can't really call it little the damn thing is over 5 feet tall. He used to be little, until he evolved. He just sort of grew up with me I guess. Pokemon are weird like that, they grow and change just like we do. The difference is that they turn into ruthless killing machines, whereas I'm just a vessel to channel corporate rage and consume cheap alcohol

Sandman and I are sitting in my house listening to music. Sandman sort of sways to the music. He'll do that to almost any music. He sort of bops his head up and down to rock or rap music, but to classical or jazz or R and B he straight sways. I'm on my second beer at this point. I smoked the bowl down to ash. I was thinking about packing another one, but I don't really have a lot of extra money for weed so I don't think smoking it all at once is a good idea. I feel like petting Sandman so I sort of scratch him on the head. It feels weird to pet him for too long though, because he's vaguely human shaped. He sort of rolls over and stretches out and relaxes. Sandman asks for a glass of water (He doesn't talk but I've trained him, like many of my Pokémon to make signals when he's thirsty or hungry). I pour him a glass of water, and he sits on the couch and just kind of chills out. The rest of the night goes by with nothing really significant happening. Sergio wakes up and gets ready for work. He makes a cup of coffee, which I've honestly come to enjoy smelling at eight o clock at night. We talk briefly about how my day was, but I'm stoned so it feels like the whole thing passes by in an instant. Some more time passes. I brush my teeth and get ready for bed. I have Sandman use hypnosis to put me to sleep. When he does that he goes and sleeps on the couch. In the morning I feed him and put him back into his ball and I get ready for work.

Enter Sandman

Sandman was the second Pokémon I ever caught, but I never actually caught him. I had Aldrin at the time, who was just a Kakuna, who I called Squish. Don't judge me by the name, I was like 8 at the time. My dad had been dead for a couple of years at that point, and my mom got remarried about a year and a half later to this real asshole named Geoffrey. He wouldn't even let us call him Jeff, it was always Geoffrey. Geoffrey wasn't exactly a nice guy. He wasn't a drunk, if anything my mom was. Geoffrey like to beat my mom though. He would get angry with her over any little thing, and then he would slap her right across the face for any perceived disrespect. On the night when I caught Sandman, my big brother Gabe had finally had enough of him slapping my mom and stood up for her. When he did that asshole beat my big brother with a belt, and told me and my little sister if we ever did that, he would do the same thing to us. So what did I do? What every stupid 8 year old would do when trapped in a cruel and dangerous world and now was mad and sad at the same time. I ran away. I grabbed a small two man tent that we had from when we used to go camping, a sleeping bag, some clothes and some snacks and shoved them into my school backpack. I walked for around two or three hours that night until my little feet hurt, then I set up my tent in the middle of a field not too far from my town. That first night, I had terrible nightmares. I saw my stepdad bursting into my tent and beating me senseless, I saw monsters all around me trying to kill me. I hated it.

I didn't go to school the next day even though it was a school day. I thought to myself that if I ran away from home then I didn't need to go to school anymore. I spent the day sneaking into town to steal food from people's plates in outdoor cafes to get something to eat. I was too scared to steal from stores because I heard that stores had cameras. Eventually I was caught by one of the waiters and shooed away. I headed back to my little tent and cried myself to sleep. The nightmares returned that night. I woke up the next morning scared, lonely and wondering what to do next.

Squish couldn't fight because he was in his cocoon until he evolved. So the next day when a Pidgey attacked my makeshift camp trying to eat my snacks I was forced to run away. I spent the day trying to run away from bush Pokémon until I managed to double back to my camp. Running through the bushes and briers had left me all cut up. I drank the rest of my water but the birds had eaten most of my food. That night I cried myself to sleep again, but that night I didn't have any nightmares.

The next day I doubled down on my attempts to steal food this time I brought my backpack and just went to a local convenience store with my hood up and loaded up my backpack full of snacks and drinks. Obviously I was noticed, but I managed to run away, as the man behind the counter was just a teenager and didn't seem to care all that much that I had taken all of that. He seemed more dejected than anything, but all the same I thought that the cops were now looking for me. I was so scared I ran back to my little camp. I ate some of the food and then cried until I fell asleep again. I didn't have a nightmare that night, but I woke up to some kind of creature standing over me breathing deeply. I wasn't scared which was weird. I knew whatever the thing was, it had come to help me. It was helping me sleep better. It was taking my nightmares away. I went up to the thing which was a short stout little thing that stood on two legs with a sort of trunk that hung down as its nose. I thought that it was cool, so I didn't shoo it away. I brought out some of the candy I had stolen and fed it to the creature. The creature then put me back to sleep.

The next morning when I woke up it was still there. I just kind of hung around it that day. We shared what snacks we could. It seemed happy. I didn't name it then, I just thought it was an angel that god sent to keep me safe. It made all of my nightmares go away. That day a policeman came to my camp. He said that my mom and step dad were worried about me, and that I needed to come home. I went with the policeman, on the condition that my newfound angel come with me when I went home. The officer was nice enough to oblige me in my batshit crazy request and this Drowzee essentially followed me home. I had to pay for all of the food that I had stolen but I felt better knowing I had an angel to protect me. I named him Sandman, because every night he would bring me pleasant dreams. I still have him today, and when I can't sleep I have him put me under, and then I let him eat my dreams as a thank you.

Ah shit, it's Friday

Although most people love Friday I've come over the years to loathe the day. The reason is simple. There's a bar in Tony's part of town where Thursday night is ladies night, a whole big event where they have a DJ and women drink essentially for free. Men as a result flock to the bar on that night to try and hit on every piece of ass they can. I never go because I'd rather have a Snorlax body slam me then be caught dead in a nightclub, but Tony; Tony is there every week without fail. Usually he's just hungover or sleep deprived if he found the money to do cocaine, but sometimes if he does ecstasy the night before he can be mean as hell, and in no mood to work at all. Today Tony is luckily just stupid hungover. Regardless shit needs to get done, so I shove him in the van and jump in the driver's seat, rolling him on his side on the off chance that he throws up.

In terms of workload Fridays are usually pretty easy. We try and get most of the repossessions done during the week, so we can just coast on Friday. All the same I don't like having to work for two people, so after stopping to get a coffee at the gas station I look at today's docket to figure out where I need to go. The first Pokémon that needs to be repossessed is actually in a good part of town, in a place known as the "School of Pokémon Theater." On a Monday this wouldn't be much of a problem but on a Friday this is going to be a huge pain in the ass. Not because I believe that the Theater Company will give me much of a problem, but merely that there will be a lot of people in the building and at any point any one of them could accost me.

Pokémon which are bought by organizations generally fall into one of two categories, mascots or guards. Places like prisons, bars, or nightclubs usually have one or two fighting types working the joint, sometimes construction sites will put a Machoke on layaway, and then won't pay the bills. That type of encounter usually involves them using the Pokémon against me, but working stiffs often don't have that many Pokémon of their own. Mascots however are usually corporate, and people in those kind of places have money, and the free time to train their own Pokémon. This is one of only two repo jobs I need to do today, then I figure I'll just have to wash the van. So I start up the van and head downtown. Tony starts to snore.

The drive only takes about ten minutes. I walk up the theater company and assess the situation. Aldrin will stick out here like a sore thumb, and the whole thing is indoors to I realize that recon is going to be very limited. There are around ten cars in the parking lot, so I figure that I must have gotten here before rehearsal started, I'm lucky today. I count the Pokémon my belt, I make sure I have all six of them before I head inside. I don't expect too much of a fight, so I just grab my clipboard and a great ball and walk up to the door, which is unlocked. I walk inside and approach the stage which seems to have no one but stage hands on it. "Excuse me, I'm looking for a Ms. Fiona Mayback," I say calmly without too much emphasis on seeming authoritarian. A small woman in glasses pops her head out and says "That's me! What can I do for you sir?" She does this with quite a bit of pep.

"It seems you've fallen truant on some payments for a…Jynx. I'm going to either need 300 dollars, or I'm going to have to take custody of the Pokémon"

"That can't be right, I just paid the bill two weeks ago," she stammers with her face flushing

"I'm afraid that payment went towards your outstanding debts, but after the late fees you still owe more on the Pokémon"

"Please, I need her for tonight's performance, without her I'll have to refund a full house then I won't be able to pay you, and I'll be out of business"

"Lady, listen I'd love to help, but I'm just one man, I don't have the authority to come back tomorrow, I won't even be working then, just please turn over the Pokémon in a kind and orderly manner."

Now I can sense my time is running out, the auditorium is starting to fill with people. Most of them appear to be standing back, but some of them are starting to circle around me, and as good of a trainer as I am, I won't be able to take them all. I'm trying to think quickly, but I know that trying to use brute force without my partner would be totally futile. Suddenly as I'm counting the people filing in, I'm struck with an idea. "Why don't you ask some of these lovely people? Surely if you each give 5 or 10 dollars then you would have enough to make your payment, and then the show can go on as planned, "I say while trying my best to stay calm.

"I've got 5 dollars" a woman chimes in

"I've got 10!"

"Hell I can through in 10 dollars to keep Mistress Sylvia in our company"

"I only have 3, but I suppose every little bit helps"

"How much do we have now?"

Just like that everyone thinks my idea is a good one. I'm very lucky this happened to be a theater company and not a back alley with a bunch of gangbangers, or else I would have been mincemeat. (Trust me, I've been in that situation before) Fiona comes forward after taking the collection, and says "We have 270$, will that be enough?" I'm about to shake my head no, when I see a beautiful woman with silver hair walk in, she must be in her mid to late twenties, she has a piercing set of blue eyes which give her an almost supernaturally glowing appearance. She takes one look at me, and takes stock of the situation. "This repo man looks a little shabby himself, I bet he hasn't been to a play in a long time. I have an idea. What do you say we give him a free pair of tickets tonight? He covers the remainder of the fee. The tickets are 30$ each, you'd essentially be getting a free ticket to the show." My knee jerk reaction is to say no. Not just no, but fuck no. There's something in her eyes however that makes me think, maybe just this once I can take it easy on them. Which I probably am thinking because I haven't seen a woman this beautiful in a very long time. I pull out my wallet, reach in and throw thirty dollars into the pile. "Tell you what, give me a bottle of water, and you've got a deal." I say thinking to myself that there are worse things than having to go to a play. They all cheer, and I walk out of the building with a pair of theater tickets. I think I've been swindled, but all the same, worse comes to worse, I just have to go to a play. I never do shit else on the weekend anyway.

Breaking some ribs

The second repossession of the day does not go as smoothly as the first one does, and most certainly does not end with a beautiful woman offering me theater tickets. I'm currently in the house of a man who I'm 90% sure has some sort of psychosis. The house is absolutely filthy, and the man who is wearing filthy rags of bright colored and mismatched clothing. There are stacks of newspapers and paper plates that are shoulder height all around me, the house is covered in droppings from something yet unseen. There are discarded takeout wrappers everywhere, with bits of rotting food stuck to them, and various cups sprinkled around. There are so many smells in this apartment that I can barely breathe with how much stink is crammed into such a small space. I am absolutely disgusted having been in here, and at the end of my rope just being in this room. He previously tried to bludgeon me with some sort of club, but this homeboy doesn't fuck with some dirty fuck getting lippy with me. I have already deployed Twister my Arbok who is currently wrapped around this man so tight he can barely breathe. How this man afforded even the down payment on a ditto is beyond me.

"Listen to me sir. This is not a debate, there is no history of payments beyond your initial down payment"… I manage to stagger out while

"Fuck you! Fuck this! Fuck the government! I don't care what they'll do to me, I'm not rejoining the army."

"Is…. Is that why you think I'm here? I don't work for the government, I work for United Pokémon services, I don't give a fuck about you personally, I just need that ditto that you bought."

"George Clooney? You can't have him, I need him to make the copies. I'm going to copy Shellshock over and over again until I can stick it to all of those assholes in the army! I won't go to war where Pokémon fight on the front lines ever again. There's nothing you can do or say to make me. Fuck you! Fuck the government! And I saw that you knocked over the third stack of plates to the right of the second nightstand, those must stay standing or else the satellites that monitor the house will see into it again"

"Is that why you cover the tops of the stacks in tinfoil? Also who the hell is Shellshock? You don't have any Pokeballs on your belt, I don't see any Pokémon here"

It's at this point I start to notice the low hum that's pervading the house. The man continues to ramble on incoherently thinking I'm from the government. I tell Twister "Bind him tight, don't let him loose", then proceed to look around the filthy hovel for the source of this noise. The kitchen has several thing plugged in, but the refrigerator doesn't appear to be one of them, which is disgusting. The stove wasn't making the noise either. This man has a microwave which contains something that appears to be cheese mixed with eggs, and maybe something of a potato, but despite the terrible smell it remains silent. The buzzing noise however is growing louder and louder. I turn the corner to face a door, and the source of the noise seems to be behind it. I open the door very slowly. The light is on behind it. It's a cellar. With the door opening the noise is now incredibly loud. I hear a shout from the other room, "don't go down there you CIA spook! That's where I'm keeping the surprise for you and your type!" There are more questions now than answers, like what this man's plan is, where is this Ditto, and does he think I'm black? I don't even have curly hair, fucking racist shithead.

I walk very slowly down the stairs, but as I turn the corner I'm struck with terror with what I find. There are twenty or so Pokémon in this room, but unlike the other rooms, this one is sparkling clean. Scattered around the floor are what some unlucky souls mistake for oversize Pokeballs. I know better from my experiences with local gang members and low lives. These are Voltorb. Each one of them is buzzing with an ominous hum, they are evenly distributed along the concrete floor of the basement, spread out like individual little packets, and wire runs between all of them, feeding them with their lifeblood of electricity. Their eyes are all shut, but I can sense that they know I'm here. In the far corner of the room I can see the ditto I need to repossess. The thing is hunched over in a heap. Ditto don't have much in the way of stomachs but they do need to eat, and this one is probably malnourished, and if I had to bet, sick of being used as a way for this man to farm Voltorb.

I tiptoe down the stairs, and release Aldrin, I whisper to him very softly "Fly over to the ditto, grab it, and bring it to me. Aldrin hovers over the Voltorb, luckily his buzzing seems to blend into the electric hum that the Pokémon are tuning in on. They don't stir. Buzz flies across the basement, back behind a table and some chairs, and over a stack of magazines. Mainly a huge stack of one called Guns and Ammo. He goes up to the Ditto and the ditto transforms into Aldrin. I should have thought of that, I whisper as I watch the two of them converse with a series of buzzes. Oddly enough both of the bees come over to me after a short time. I put Aldrin back into his Pokeball, and put Ditto Aldrin into another ball. Then I hear a shrill screech, and then several more. I turn around and see all of the Voltorb waking up. I bolt up the stairs as fast as I can, as I can hear them rolling up the stairs behind me. I quickly draw Twister's Pokeball from my belt, and book it towards the door. I can hear the man's maniacal laughter after the Arbok loosens his grip.

It occurred to me as I was running up the stairs what this man was attempting to do, he wasn't just breeding Voltorb, and he was planning on using their ability to self-destruct to blow up his enemies in some shady government organization. I can see the glee in his eyes as I run to the door, knocking over stacks of takeout boxes, topped with tinfoil. I straight up rip the door off the hinges with my adrenaline running so high. The Voltorb stop when they reach their master. He doesn't give chase, I jump into the van and scream at Tony, "We gotta go, we gotta fucking go right the fuck now!" The man gives me the finger through his destroyed door as we drive off. I think the only reason why he's not chasing me is that he probably has enough Voltorb to breed his own little inbred army of bombs. I look at Tony and scream "IF YOU EVER MAKE ME DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT ALL ALONE AGAIN, I'LL PUNCH YOUR NOSE SO FUCKING HARD YOU'LL FIGURE OUT HOW YOUR OWN ASS SMELLS". Tony looks at me perplexed, and just mutters "Jesus Dante, it's Friday. Learn to lighten up a little, we only had two cases today". I'm so damn angry I can't even mutter a coherent reply, I just keep driving. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely drive the van. I must have been pale as a ghost, even though my natural complexion is a toasty golden brown. I can't even think, but I keep driving until I pull into the lot for United Pokemon.I clock out without saying anything else to Tony but throwing the two Pokeballs to him.

"I need a motherfucking drink, maybe 2, and a blunt" I mutter as I climb into my truck.

Why People have certain Pokémon

In theory people should be able to capture and train any type of Pokémon, but that's just a theory and it really doesn't work like that in real life. Some people catch certain monsters and have to trade them away because they won't listen to them or they straight up can't control them or take care of them. People used to joke around about gym leaders and how they seemed like morons for only using one type of Pokémon but honestly that's just kind of what works. Some people specializing using one type of Pokémon because that type matches their temperament. Others find certain types of Pokémon easier to care for, either way even if someone does carry multiple types of Pokémon there is usually some overlap about what kind they carry on them. I for example carry two psychic monsters and two poison ones. Tony has three poison types on him at all time. Some people say that the type of Pokémon that someone can use tend to say a lot about their personality but I'm not sure exactly what kind of types mean what although I do have a theory about certain types.

For example people who value freedom and sort of have an airy sort of personality, who have that thing where nothing really seems to bother them, those free spirit types they seem to like flying Pokémon. The more callous and poorly tempered a person in, the more abrasive and well downright evil a person seems the more likely they are to specialize in using poison type Pokémon, and yeah I know I'm including myself in this. Water trainers seem to be more emotional than normal and seem to like the sea, and hang around it all the damn time, (Yeah I know that seems obvious). Psychic trainers tend to be really smart, manipulative and have great cunning. Fire trainers have short tempers, get angry quickly, and are arrogant as fuck. Normal trainers tend to be mellower and usually tend to be women. Grass trainers are laid back and peaceful and honestly remind me of hippies. Electric trainers tend to be nerdy and energetic with a sort of jolting personality. Rock trainers are stoic and stubborn, same thing with ground trainers but that should go without saying. Ghost trainers are a whole bunch of super spiritual goths, Fighting trainers are brawny, cocky, and stern. I haven't met enough people who train either dragon or ice types so I don't have a clue about those people. Bug trainers tend to be younger, simple sort of people who are naturally curious and don't get grossed out easily, and they also tend to respond well to chaos and poorly to direct attacks. These are all generalities but they seem to be true to me. Of course a lot of this also has to do with what kind of Pokémon you can find in your area, honestly you can barely find any fire Pokémon in this area so almost no one uses them.

The other thing that a lot of people don't understand, especially if they're rich is that you have to have the means to take care of Pokémon, the average person doesn't have the room or the means to feed and care for hundreds of little monsters. Rich people can do things like be Pokémon masters because they literally pay other people to take of their Pokémon for them. There's a Pokémon storage system that you can access at Pokémon centers but you have to pay to use it, and most people quite simply can't. Most people can't afford to care for more than 3 or 4 monsters at once. I have 6 because I need them in order to do my job but honestly keeping all of them fed and well taken care of in my small house can be trouble. Some monsters have very specific diets and others you can just buy food for them in stores. It all depends mainly on what type of monster they are. Some of my Pokémon can hunt for their own food so I usually walk around the neighborhood and have them kill other monsters so that they can eat. My Arbok Twister for example works pest control and kills Rattata and bug Pokémon and then eats them. I can feed most of my Pokémon without much difficulty, although my Machoke does eat far too much food for my comfort. This is also why some people choose not to evolve their monsters, sometimes they just end up too big, or they won't be able to feed their evolved forms. As you've noted almost all of these problems can be solved by being rich. Rich people have the best Pokémon most of the time, they can afford to travel and train their monsters all damn day and not have to do anything else. They can afford to breed Pokémon too. Nothing says absolute wealth better than eugenics being used on beings that can kill the fuck out of you. Rich people can evolve anything they damn well please. I hate the hell out of all of these cocky fucks, these bourgeois professional trainers. Some of these people actually got to choose their starter Pokémon, like they had an option to pick something else. I caught my first monster with a stick and a Pokeball. I trained it by having it fight other bugs in my backyard until it got big enough to defend itself competently. These rich fucks start with whatever they want and then get to crush and bully poor people while the rest of us just kind of struggle for air.

So not all of us really choose what monsters we can train, sometimes it just happens. Sometimes we don't even choose at all. It seems like a cliché, but it's happened to me a few times where a Pokémon will just appear and it just starts to follow a human around, either because they gave it food, or because it was injured or something. Sometimes two beings just connect and that ends up being your Pokémon from now on with very little explanation. That's happened to me twice. Truth be told I don't really know if it's normal, but it's the kind of feel good thing they put in kid's TV shows.

Hey Sergio

I reach my house, and I've finally calmed down a little bit. Things are still moving really quick though, my heart is beating what seems like a million miles a minute and my hands are still shaking, just not as much. I walk to the door and open it. My roommate is sitting there in his underwear. He has his favorite Pokémon next to him, a large Pidgeot who he's named Missy. Missy and Sergio are watching something on TV, some kind of sitcom that I don't recognize. Sergio looks up at me, and just gives me "Holla Dante" as I walk by him and reach beeline it straight to the fridge to grab a beer, I think about cracking it open, but sigh in exasperation. I realize it isn't going to be strong enough. I put the beer back in the fridge and open up the cabinet we used to store liquor. I pull out a bottle of Fierce Farrow 101 and pour a shot into a glass. I don't feel like drinking alone however, so I yell out, "Sergio, we're taking a shot." Sergio jumps up from the couch and mutters "Hell yeah, let's get it!" I pour out two shots and we clink glasses without making a toast. Segio looks at me through his thick spectacles and laughs, "Bad day at work huh ese?" I slink back into the chair next to the kitchen table, and sigh defeated "motherfucker you have no idea," I push my fingers into my eyes and drag my hand vertically down my face. Sergio pours another shot into the glass and says "C'mon big guy tell me all about it, I'm off tonight."

As I recount the story to Sergio it dawns on me that you have no idea who Sergio is. That's my bad, the situation at work has me so rattled that explaining the details of my living situation seem to be utterly extraterrestrial in terms of whether or not they're grounded in logic. Sergio is a small spectacled man covered in wiry muscles. He's Hispanic and buzzes his hair very short because he has a head full of thick curly black hair that grows like wildfire. He has brown eyes and dark brown hair. He's got a few tattoos, because he was a sailor in the navy. He's roughly two or three years younger than me, I think. He's my landlord's son. I pay less in rent to let him stay with me, and I don't mind the arrangement because he works nights, and doesn't mind me smoking pot in the house. I'd honestly much rather live with him than his junkie sister who lives next door and is constantly screaming at her boyfriend and ambiguously aged and androgynous child.

Sergio has a good laugh and goes, "Sounds like you messed with someone who was loco. I guess you're lucky you got out of there without half of those Voltorb going off and blowing you and the whole house to kingdom come." I go into the other room for just a moment and reach for my bowl. I take out my grinder and go to put a bit of weed in. I'm out, although I think I have a backup stash in my I reach into my backpack to take out my weed, I find stuffed in the same pocket, two tickets for the play that I bought earlier that day. The play was apparently called "The other side of the abyss" I mutter to myself, "Fuck I forgot I bought these." The play starts in roughly two hours, it's about a twenty minute drive back to the theater. I put the weed back and examine the tickets. I have two of them. I think about maybe calling Tony, but my blood is still boiling from him letting me wade into the fray with that psychotic tweeker with the explosives fetish. I don't have any women I'm seeing at the moment, so I don't really have a date in any way shape or form. As Sergio is readying another shot, (because he's honestly a borderline alcoholic on the days when he's not at work) I turn to him and blurt out, "Hey Sergio, I don't suppose you'd want to see a play. It's kind of a long story, but I ended up purchasing theater tickets to avoid fighting like twenty people earlier" He looks at me perplexed. Takes the shot which he had poured out for himself. He seems to pause for a moment in contemplation. "Yeah sure, why the hell not, but you're driving. Let me just get changed." That was something I didn't consider. I don't know what kind of attire you're supposed to put on to go to t a play. I don't even know how fancy of a play this is going to be. I had showered this morning, but I still need to throw on something that was better than the set of navy blue work clothes United Pokemon has me in. I turn around and head to my room.

Fifteen minutes later after I throw on some deodorant and get dressed, throwing on essentially a pair of black dress pants and a dark red dress shirt with a black tie. I step out after consulting my style consultant, which is Sandman. Sandman didn't hate the outfit I have on, which means that I'm not dressed too outlandish. He can't actually talk or give me feedback, but he grunts with discontent if I put on a weird color combination that doesn't work. Sergio comes out in a blue dress shirt and navy vest, looks at me and snorts, "Homes, are you going to play, or trying to get one of the actors to sign a contract to give you their soul". I shoot him a glare that would make Twister jealous and grab my coat, which is the same leather jacket I had on earlier. I'll be damned if I put on a suit jacket for any occasion that isn't my wedding or a funeral. We head out of the house and get back in my old Silverado.

A Night in Lavender

We arrive at the theater in a little under 18 minutes because the right songs came on the radio that made me want to speed. The place isn't super busy for opening night, but I'd say it was maybe 90% full. It was crowded enough where it didn't seem like the company was going to lose money on the performance, but not crowded enough to say that it was standing room only or anything like that. Sergio beelines straight for what he thinks is the bar. I check out where our seats are located. I feel horribly out of place around all these artsy types, but all the same I try and mask my contempt for the situation and find a silver lining. That silver lining happens to be that we actually have pretty good seats, fourth row back and dead center. The theater looks like it holds a couple of hundred people. I figure they must have sold us tickets that they usually reserve for friends and family or some shit. Sergio catches up with me looking discouraged. "The bar doesn't serve alcohol. It's just for snacks and the like", Sergio mutters to me as he takes his seat. Little by little all of the people shuffle into the theater, which is a hell of a lot nicer than I remember, probably because I don't have my guard up anymore. The seats are all that old school fabric. They remind me of shit from the late 70s, although they're newer. Just done in a more retro style. Above me the houselights are pretty old looking, the whole place has a whole antiquated theater vibe to it. I kind of dig it. There's a balcony overlooking the stage that seems to have more booths and luxury seats up top. There are a bunch of ushers who are little older than teenagers ushering people to their seats.

The houselights dim and they signal that the play is about to start. They start off by making a bunch of announcements, about the cast and the company. Nothing I understand anyway, but it gives me time to look at those little programs they hand out in fancy little digs like this. The play is called. "A Night in Lavender", which sounds like it could either be interesting or a complete waste of time I could have spent stoned. Flipping through my program I see a portrait of the woman who I saw earlier with the ghost white hair and the big blue eyes. Her name is Agatha Darwin. She looks familiar, I think as I take a good long look at her portrait. Then it hits me, this woman went to high school with me. She didn't look like this then, but I vaguely remember seeing those eyes before. They looked like they could cut you down with one long stare. The question is why I didn't recognize her name. I mean I was a burnout in high school, but I remember almost everybody in my grade. I shake off all of these memories, and try to focus because the play is starting.

Now I'm not going to give you a whole run down on the play, because I ain't that good of a writer and I don't have much in the way of a photographic memory, but the jist of the plot goes like this. A man goes looking for his lover who he left in a town called Lavender town. Lavender town is known as a place where the dead come back to life. The central feature of the town is that the spirits of dead Pokémon have come to rest there. The Jynx who I was trying to repossess earlier acts a spirit guide for those who have to navigate the tower. The problem he's running into is that the spirts of the girl's father is trying to prevent him from seeing his daughter, His plight is trying to navigate the tower to find his lover, and then bring her out of the tower so that they can live happily ever after, yada yada yada, so on and so forth. It was honestly better than I expected it would be. The spirits of the tower were played by real ghost Pokémon, which was honestly a pretty cool touch. The rambling mediums were really convincing and the whole thing had a pretty spooky vibe to it. I'll spoil the ending, the woman couldn't leave the tower because when her lover left the town the first time to run off with another woman, or so she thought, (He was escorting his cousins on a long journey) and she took her own life. So she could never leave the tower because she herself was dead. Her father tried to spare her of the ghostly realization that she could never leave but he failed and she realized death is final. Depressing but kind of cool. It ends with the guy taking his own life to be with her.

Agatha played the lead woman in the play. She was genuinely the best actress on the stage. The father was my favorite character overall though. The dude had some serious acting chops. Sergio loved the play. He had told me that this was the first play he had gone to since he got out of school. So that was pretty cool, at least he had a good time. The actors ended up getting a standing ovation. I was kind of wondering if that was just the polite thing to do, or if this doesn't happen all the time. I don't go to many plays either. Regardless we all start filing out of the theater. Now I don't know if this is normal, but the cast of the play is outside getting ready to greet everyone as we're leaving. That's fucking weird, but I figure it will give me a chance to talk to Agatha. Sergio heads over to talk to everybody. He makes a B line for one of the other actresses, who is more of his type. (Smaller, shorter, thin). I walk first up the old man who played the father. "Good work out there man. I totally loved the scene where you attempted to scare away the old man by sicking a Gengar after him. The thing look super realistic and I bought the anger and shit." I say, hoping that sounded like I knew what I was talking about. "Oh thank you, I try and pour as much passion as I can into my roles. I'm a father myself so it was an easy extension of character, "he smiles and gives me a little bow. I turn to Agatha and try to casually sidebar, "Say, you look really familiar… did you by any chance go to Baron Falls High School?" She turns to me, ghost white and says,

"Oh shit, you're one of the first people to recognize me since I moved back here. Yeah I used to live out here, but I ended up going to New York to study theater. I just moved back like last year." She says embarrassed

"Did you change your name? I don't remember going to school with anyone named Agatha" I just kind of blurt out

"Yeah, that's a bit of a long story, truth be told I'm not really ready to go into it here", she murmurs as it's very clear I've made her uncomfortable

"Maybe you'd want to discuss it over a drink" I blurt out again. This time I'm actually a bit perplexed by my own brashness and idiocy.

"From trying to seize my company's Pokemon to trying to steal away their leading lady I see. You are bold for a corporate thug, I'll give you that. This weekend is no good, but I'll give you my number and we can try for next weekend. I figure it couldn't hurt" she sighs and says.

I walk out of the theater with her number. Sergio struck out with the other girl, which isn't surprising. He's pretty good with the ladies but can be a little awkward without the old liquid courage. I suppose the night was worth the 30 bucks I spent on it. We head home, and I drink a couple of more shots of Fierce Fearow 101. I smoke myself to sleep and that pretty much ends that day.

Gym

Saturday morning I'm not hungover so I head right to the gym after breakfast. I throw on a tank top and a pair of short and jump into my truck, downing some pre workout on the way out the door. I usually work out with Sergio, but he sleeps in on Saturdays, so on the weekends I'm on my own. I get stuck in traffic, and my face tingles as I'm trying to contain the feeling like bugs are crawling all over my skin. I walk into the gym, (the human gym, not the Pokémon gym, and get ready to work out.

I'm a self-proclaimed gym rat. One of the first things people usually notice about me is that I work out, most people would describe me as a big guy. I'm 6'3 and I fluctuate between 220 and 230 pounds. I got this way by eating healthy and working out, almost every damn day. I exercise not really to look good but to be strong and powerful, and above all for stress relief. In a world where any number of monsters could kill you in a number of horrifying ways at any point in time you have to have both the body to fight off at least the weak ones and a way to relieve the stress of constantly walking around with your head on a swivel all of the damn time. I work out usually between 5 and 6 times a week. Most of the time I have a workout partner, his name is Sergio, He's a very short Italian man who's built thick and blue collar, and who puts up a moderate amount of weight pretty consistently. I'll talk more about him later.

I try and separate each one of my days at the gym into different muscle groups. On one day I'll do chest and triceps, focusing mainly on hitting middle and upper chest. My favorite exercise to do for that muscle group is weighted dips, it allows for the greatest range of motion for the chest and really hammers the triceps, which are the bigger part of your arms and where a lot of the power in your upper body comes from. I can do dips with two 45 pound plates strapped around my waist for a decent amount of reps. I also usually alternate between a barbell and dumbbell exercise for both straight and incline bench, for decline bench I always do barbell, I don't like the angle decline bench gives for dumbbells. I try to hit a fly on chest day and two separate forms of tricep extensions. I also do skull crushers and tricep kickbacks. I finish that workout, and every workout with a whey protein shake in order to speed up recovery and replenish nutrients lost when I'm working out.

As for the other muscle groups I focus on one muscle group and focus them around a particular exercise where I go heavy and then supplement that with several less intense exercises. For abs and core I focus on deadlifts and doing a whole bunch of crunches and leg lifts usually with weights. For leg I focus on heavy squats and a leg press, supplementing it with machines and a weighted lunge. For shoulders I focus on an overhead press, and heavy shrugs, for cardio I usually spend most of my time on a Stairmaster, I dislike treadmills because of the stress it puts on the joints, and I can't have that because at any time I might have to break into a run and chase someone down. I spend a lot of my time at the gym, and at the end of every workout I usually stretch in order to cool myself down. Some people like to stretch before their workout, but if you do that before you lift heavy you actually increase the risk of injury so I stopped doing that and do it after my set, I found that it also helps me relax, My gym doesn't have a sauna or steam room because it's one of those discount local gyms, but what it does have is quite a bit of different machinery which I like to utilize. When I don't have a spotter I sometimes have Tyson spot me on a heavy bench of squat. Pokémon are usually discouraged on the floor but I'm friends with almost all of the trainers at the gym, and I hang out there so often that many of them know both me and Tyson by our first names. Tyson is exceptionally well behaved anyway so I get away with it. Tyson makes for a decent spotter, except he is more cautious about dropping the weight on me then Sergio, my human workout partner, who usually tries to let me get the last rep. Tyson also doesn't help much with moving plates around not because he can't count the weights but because he usually tries to pick up too much weight at once and has ended up on several occasions dropping plates because he tried to pick up more than two plates at once. If the weights are on a barbell he doesn't have a problem lifting them, the problem is more or less just balancing them in his hands.

I start each exercise by doing a warmup set on very light weight and quite a few reps just to get a little bit of blood flowing into my muscles before I do anything too heavy. Then I usually do four sets for fewer and fewer reps. My first actual set being a set of 12 reps, then of 10 reps, 8 reps and 6 reps, with an optional max out set where I go heavier for fewer reps. I do usually between 8 to 12 different exercises on any given day. On certain day I even do more but that kind of thing usually happens on a lighter day, like if I elect to do a sort of light arm workout where I hit biceps and triceps as well as forearms, which is fun but really not all that necessary, and I usually only really do it if I get bored and want to work out but don't want to do a certain muscle group. I also do this kind of thing when I have a pulled muscle and can't work out a particular part of my body, which is usually my legs. I have bad knees from the years that I used to do jujitsu and krav-maga. I can still do what I need to do most of the time but occasionally my knees get enflamed and I'm not able to squat heavy that day.

After every workout I take a protein shake, and before chest, core or legs I usually take pre workout. My pre workout never contains caffeine because I hate the crash that comes with it, I have things to do during the day or at night I like to spend my time relaxing either by smoking weed or by drinking whiskey. For neither one of these things I like being exhausted because that means I'll pass out and around most people nowadays that's a very bad idea. I used to take creatine in order to increase my pump but someone once told me that it was bad for the kidneys so I stopped taking it, I also felt like it was losing its effectiveness with how often I was taking it. I usually cycle off of pre workout as well about once every three months in order to keep it working well and break my tolerance for it.

I work out differently depending on what time of the year it is. My usual workout happens between the months of March until October, during the winter months I do fewer reps for each exercise and heavier weights in an attempt to pack on some muscle. I also do less cardio. Some people call this a bulking season which is essentially what it is. During this time you also have to eat more food, which is easy because it's cold and there really isn't as much to do. People even tend to flee less during this time because of the cold and the snow so it isn't nearly as important to have the cardio to chase people down. The important thing is having the ability to run in boots and move in thick clothing which I train for by doing cardio with weights on in the months before winter happens, I have a whole bunch of weighted clothes, which include a weighted vest, ankle and wrist weights. Some people like to simulate elevation by using those training masks but honestly I tried one of those and to me it feels like you're just breathing through a straw, which is more irritating than anything else.

I go to the gym often and as a result I'm only about 12% body fat and I'm very strong although I won't bore you with all of the numbers about how much I bench, squat or deadlift. I assure you however I'm more than strong enough to take out almost everyone I come across. People have grown lazy in this world because they have creatures that they can use to do things for them, but at the end of the day in my opinion there is no substitute for good old fashion brawn. It won't really make you more popular with the ladies, a lot of people will resent you for it, but what it gives you is just a little more of a feeling of self-control, so that if some little shit has a Mankey attack you and you don't have any Pokémon on you, you can kick the shit out of the little thing yourself and then beat the piss out of the kid who happened to think it was a good idea to pick on you. You have to be a weapon as well because people have no pity in this god forsaken world and the one thing it doesn't tolerate, despite the fact that there is too much of it, is weakness.

Training Session

Pokémon might be our friends according to what the liberal types say, but when we get right down to it, in the day to day; Pokémon are weapons. They're there to protect us from other monsters like them. We have them because it is dangerous not to have them. That's the reality of the situation. Just like I hit the gym today, my Pokémon have to work out in order to keep them in top form. So every other Saturday I get the full lineup on my belt and go and murder some wild Pokemon. In battles with other trainers, you just fight until one of your Pokemon is unconscious, but knocking out a wild monster just means it's going to be eaten by other monsters. So in the wild I just have my Pokémon kill other monsters. Circle of fucking life and what not. People do it all the time, the outskirts of every town are littered with corpses, usually from child soldiers looking to get in top form before they challenge the next gym leader. So I go prowling around with Boulder (my Golem) out, opting to go out into the fields, instead of going out on to the coast. I usually only train Tango out on the coast, although Aldrin does some good work out there as well.

Within a few moments a few bird Pokemon jump out at us, just a couple of Spearows, nothing we can't handle even in a flock. Boulder grabs some nearby rocks and crushes the tiny birds into a pulp with a well-timed rock throw. He basically rips out a piece of the earth with those nasty little claws of him and hurls a stone right at them. He rolls over a couple with rollout too, we practice both of the moves until the flock of birds is little more than a bloody pulp. We do this for the better part of an hour and a half until Boulder gets tired. I then put him back into his ball and bring out Twister for a little training.

Twister and I take some time rooting through the tall grass for Nidoran and Raticate. We manage to kill quite a few of them, Twister takes great care to squeeze the rodents until they're crushed and their eyes pop out of their skulls from the pressure. With the poison creatures he opts instead to simply bite them and rip them to shreds. We come across a few birds as well, he can get the best of them too. When they swoop in for an attack it's just a matter of timing a strike, and Twister has some great reflexes. It takes a full two hours before twister gets tired.

Sandman has had a long week, and truth be told he gets good experience out at my job, so I don't often have to train him in the field. He's one of my most powerful Pokemon anyway. He really doesn't need to train too hard. He can summon psychic blast so powerful that he can snap the bones of certain Pokemon in half and rip them asunder with nothing more than the force of his mind. I opt instead to bring out Aldrin, who usually gets tired the fastest. Aldrin doesn't do too well against birds, so I bring out Tango as well just for backup. Aldrin takes some good jabs at rodent Pokemon, stinging some into submission with his poison bards, and shooting needles into other until they can't move. I've also taught him some techniques to poison creature with a powerful venom that gets stronger over time. When a bird shows up, I have Tango (My Starmie) blast some water at them, or spin at them with extreme speed. Tango has some psychic abilities as well, they're just not as powerful as Sandman's attacks. Between the two of them we get about another hour worth of training. I bring them back into their balls and have Sandman out for the walk back into town. All around us are the corpses of hundreds of Pokemon. I would almost feel bad if the things didn't breed faster than rabbits. There will be another couple hundred within ten miles of us within two weeks.

There are no limits to how many wild Pokemon you can kill, except for very, very, rare Pokemon. I've heard stories about how there might be some Pokemon that there are only one of. I don't think I believe it, but all the same we aren't forbidden from hunting or killing most of them. If anything we're encouraged to do it. Pest control officers patrol the neighborhoods, but not too many people patrol the outskirts of town. The people I do encounter out here are other trainers like myself, and most of them are looking for a fight. They're mostly school kids in need of a good whooping, although you can't be too sure how powerful any of them are, because as I've said before child soldiers are now a real thing.

All the same we head back into town and right to the Pokemon center to heal up. Pokemon centers are in my opinion one of the weirdest things about our current society. Pokemon on a molecular level are all remarkably similar. I guess they're all apart of some weird species. I'll let those conspiracy theorists deal with that shit. Anyway if you just put your Pokemon in their balls and put them into a machine, the machine does most of the healing a Pokemon would ever need, except in absolutely brutal situations, where even the machine can't put the little monsters back together. Like if you have certain Pokemon blow themselves to kingdom come, or if they're vaporized or any number of brutal maladies. In the day to day you don't have to worry about that, in more prominent battles where people have super soldier monsters duke it out, that happens all the time. The Pokemon league is high stakes battling like you wouldn't believe where people risk having their friends and companions utterly annihilated in gladiator style combat all for the amusement of some idiots on the other side of the screen, but hell I guess it's better than the whole war thing that used to happen.

Oh right, Pokémon centers. Pokémon centers also work like community centers. It's technically the only place where you're legally allowed to train Pokémon. People often go there to post different community events. If you're filthy rich there are also storage lockers there, for items. This is also where people can send their Pokémon to other areas, like those fancy farms where they go frolic with their caretakers who aren't their trainers. Violence is forbidden inside of the centers, and there are armed guards at some of them in the worst cities where crime is high. They're staffed by physicians or rather veterinarians who can treat the more serious injuries, and by technicians who just operate the molecular repair machines. There's also usually a lawyer on site, to settle disputes and arrange the legal transfer of Pokémon from one person to another.

As for the appearances of the places, I'd say they look alto like more colorful versions of a doctor's office. They usually are decked out in yellow pastel like colors, with grey or white granite floors, with carpets showing you where they want you to walk. The walls are usually either white or stone grey, with all sorts of bulletin boards and colorful posters plastered all over them. The buildings themselves are smaller than the hospitals for people because there aren't usually many monsters that require extensive care. They maintain a clean facility most of the time, and the nurses all usually wear blue or white. All the same I don't like to be in them too long. The whole false friendliness of the place kind of freaks me out. They're trying to pretend like this whole thing is normal and we don't live in utter fear of the fucking creatures we depend on. I love my Pokémon, but any one of them could kill me at any time if they so choose, and I think people need to realize that the way we're living is not natural. The whole thing is totally fucked. All the same I heal my Pokémon and get the fuck out of there. I get back in my Chevy and head home.

Sunday Funday

I don't have anything to do on Sunday, so I call up Tony and have him drop me off a couple of tabs of acid. Tony doesn't want to trip with me because he has a coffee date with some girl suspiciously younger than him. He says she told him she was 19, by the picture on his Pokegear, I'd say she doesn't look a day over 16, but fuck if I know. Honestly I'm just looking to put some paper on my tongue and hallucinate vividly for the whole fucking day. I spent the first 4 hours of my day just cleaning the house and getting ready to trip. Sergio is a slob. He'll clean if I ask him to, but he never takes the initiative. There's a reason why I essentially get paid to babysit him, he's a fully grown man who takes care of himself like he's a 14 year old kid. He sometimes forgets to shower for two or three days, he eats junk food nonstop, he sleeps maybe 6 hours a day. It can get annoying, so I just want to go to a totally different dimension while he's out visiting his parents.

It's now noon and I put the two tabs of acid on my tongue. I usually do one tab of acid if I get it myself, but Tony can never get himself quality drugs. His acid is usually weak as a limp dicked retiree. Two tabs it is. I bring Tango out of his Pokeball because I figure the jewel in the center of his body will be cool to look at while I'm tripping. Tango jumps out happily and spins around the room. I put on some classic rock and prepare for takeoff. I have some snacks that I've set aside for the occasion so I won't have to cook. I put a whole case of water in the fridge. I have trail mix, beef jerky, and some blackberries. So I'm just kind of playing with Tango for like the first half hour. Nothing is really happening, I don't even get the sense of euphoria you get when the acid starts to kick in. My perceptions are exactly the same. I feel totally ripped off. I contemplate the idea that Tony just got jipped on some LSD. I figure I'll wait. I spend some time looking over a map of the region and tracing over the places which I went.

After I dropped out of college I actually spent some time travelling around the country. Just for shits and giggles I did the tour of the gyms in every city. There are a total of 9 gyms in this country. I ended up getting 7 of the badges that you need to go visit the Champions League, then I ran out of money and had to go back home. I have more badges than most of the people that you would meet in the normal day to day. Most people know someone who has made it to the Champion's League very loosely. There was a kid who I went to high school with who challenged the Elite Four. I can't remember if he won or not. I really don't give a fuck. The gym challenges were just something to do. I figure I would never actually be able to beat anyone in the Champion's League with my every day Pokemon. I've never seen anyone actually enter with a bug Pokemon at all. I'm just some little hood rat who had a good time out in the country with the rest of his student loans after he dropped out. Tango senses my brooding though, and belts out a long cry. I look over at the emotionless Starmie and realize I've kind of been staring off into space for the better part of 10 minutes. I don't think that's the LSD. Now I'm getting annoyed that I'm not high, so I go and get my bowl. I grind up a little weed and then pack the bowl. Tango just sort of plops down across the room against the TV. The screen is reflected in the jewel of the center of his body. It looks pretty cool, I think as I spark the bowl. I take a few hits then lean back against the couch. I'm thinking about my time traveling across the nation now. I saw so many different places then. I walked through valleys and fields, I journeyed through dark caves, and I climbed mountains. It was a totally different time. Back then I still had some form of a dream. It was intangible then, ethereal almost… (I think that's the right word. Fuck if I know, I dropped out of college). It was there though. I at one point held out hope that I would be able to accomplish something. Anything. I figured I could make something of myself. Instead I'm just a hired goon for a corporate overlord. "Yeah, that fucking sucks," I hear a voice say as I lean forward very confused. The voice is gruff and manly. It sounds like it could have come off a lumberjack. Tango looks at me as he stands up. In his crystal I can see my reflection. My reflection is overlapped with a reddish hue, then it winks at me, "how's it looking handsome?" It says as Tango begins so jump up and down. I jump backward. The weed must have jump started that shitty LSD. I'm not in the trip that I wanted a half hour ago. I restart my music. I figure The Grand Illusion by Styx should be just the right album to start things off. Tango is now dancing, or at least he seems like he's dancing. Is Tango a he? Does Tango even have a gender? How the hell would I check? The patterns on the walls are starting to move, wriggle and undulate, what does undulate mean? Wait a minute, I don't have patterns on my walls, and I painted my walls gray. Well this doesn't bode well, why am I talking like this?

I spend the next hour or so falling in and out of that hole. The whole time I'm looking into the crystal in the middle of Tango's body. I am overwhelmed at the euphoria I feel simply looking at the swirl of colors that come out of that gem. I pick up Tango several times and spin him around in order to make a more interesting display of colors. Once Tango asks me if I'm too high or if I'm doing ok. I tell him I'm fine, but Tango doesn't talk so I might just be talking to myself. In order to check I let Sandman out of his Pokeball to see if Sandman can talk. If Sandman can also talk then I figure the LSD has given me the ability to talk to Pokemon. "Hi Sandman! How are you doing? Everything alright there homie?" I ask him. Sandman opens his mouth of answer but it only makes the sound of TV static. I don't think that's right so I check the record player. It turns out that I need to turn the record over. I do that then repeat the question to Sandman. This time Sandman just yawns, but the yawn sort of sounds like he's trying to say the word "Oranges" so I sit there and listen to the two Pokemon who are just kind of watching me trip for the next half hour. I don't really believe in time, but time believes in me so we all just kind of vibe along to everything anyway. I pet both of them several times then return both of them to their balls. I want to hang out with one of my Pokemon but decided about ten minutes or possibly a week and a half ago that psychic Pokemon can probably read my thoughts. So I debate on who to bring out, and realize that Aldrin would be way too scary at this point in time, since he's a big bee. So I settle on Twister. Twister realizes something is wrong with me the second he leave his ball, so he coils over to the side of me and just sort of sits with me on the couch.

So that's cool, he's got really sharp teeth and is scary too, but I don't think I can be too afraid as long as I don't leave this room. The room is a safe place. The room is everything and all that encompasses everything that is needed resides within the room. Everything is circles. Circles like how twister coils around. All of everything is circles, all of it doubles back like an arbok eating his own tail. Everything doubles back around, all is consumed by all, and taken in to build what is consumed. This is the new kingdom, the kingdom of the serpent. Yes, the serpent comes and brings the cycles of is and isn't. Thus all things are both here and not here. Here is the room, not here is all things which the room is not. The circle both consumes the room, and exists inside of the room. The room isn't the whole, it is just another coil in the coil of coils. The thing that is the serpent. Twister flicks his tail at me to remind me that it's still there. I reach for the trail mix and begin to eat it in small handfuls. I start to think how everything that ends also must begin, and only how when things end can they thus begin again. If they never stop they can't begin again because they never stopped. It is only in these moments of pause can we distinguish what is and is not the same thing as it was before. Therefore what it doubles back into is the end in the beginning, because only when something ends can things begin again. Therefore all ends precede beginnings. The serpent which sits beside me is also myself. All of myself is what the serpent is as well. I am also this terrible thing which is called a serpent. I am the twister as much as I am the twisted. This is what is, I am what I am not and what I am beside. I am also the serpent, and the serpent is me. I open up a bag of beef jerky, give a piece to twister who eats it out of my hand gently. Yes. Yes this will do.

Now is the time of the kingdom. This is the here and now. I stand up and gaze beyond the vast expanse that is my living room. It extends in several directions. These are the ones I can see. This is the here and now. I am the now and then. I am what has come before and what is unfolding. This is what I have done. My life is a record of things which have come to pass. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is the now. I am the here. This place is the setting. I am the character. The noun which does the verbs. The thing which requires description. I am what is described. I am the thing that modifies how things are done. Yes. This is what is. I am the thing which does. I am that which is. Is does thing, things unfold. This is happening. This is. I am. I do.

The Monday Cometh

I went to bed pretty early last night. Was tired after a long day of cleaning and tripping. Tony is sober today. He's not even hungover. We're sitting in the van, he's smoking and he has a small stack of papers. It's the middle of September so our busy season won't hit for another 5 or 6 months when people stop being able to afford the payments on their Christmas Pokemon. There's another smaller rush after everyone's tax returns come in. People never seem to get that a down payment doesn't mean shit if you can't afford the installments, nonetheless the upkeep on larger more demanding monsters. Regardless we're here now and we've got a pretty risky assignment. Someone has gone truant on one of their payments for an Electabuzz.

"It's a fairly strong electric Pokemon. You don't see too many people with one of these Tony"

"Yeah, I would fetch a guess that this guy is not a happy go lucky suburbanite?"

"Background check on the guy says that he was authorized despite known gang activity, it looks like he put down twenty grand as a down payment"

"They got fucking greedy, now they're going to send us into the thick of it to try and save their asses from giving a living weapon to someone who had as big of a pocketbook as he does a chip on his shoulder"

"He probably thinks that he's tough enough to fend off any repo men who come to claim it."

"What's the dude's name? What kind of person are we dealing with?"

"Looks like his name is…Emmanuel Rodriguez, and he's living out on the west side of town. Ferry and West Delavan. It's like two blocks over from your house Dante."

"Is he La Tormenta?"

"That would be my guess"

La Tormenta is a known gang that operates inside of the city that I live in. In Spanish I think it means something like The Storm, or some shit like that. I'm as tan as a Mexican, but honestly I don't speak a sentence of any language that isn't English, I took Spanish in high school and promptly smoked away 99% of it, I drank away the remaining 1% over the course of the next 10 years. Someone once told me that in some cities there's a gang called Team Rocket who operates like the mafia, stealing Pokemon and taking down businesses and shit. That's not how gangs work in my city. Gangs do some shit like selling drugs, pimping out their girlfriends, threatening people on the streets, and mugging people. They hardly have any real organization, and kids start joining them at the age of like fucking 12. I can't really be too surprised, people used to join gangs at 16, but now you don't need to be tough to be in a gang, and you just need to know how to train a Pokemon that's tough enough to help you commit crime. As I've said before, child soldiers. All of them, on either side of the law. Shit's fucked. Everything fucking sucks now, and now you have to worry about an 11 year old selling you crack as he threatens you with a fire breathing lizard.

"So La Tormenta primarily use what kind of Pokemon? Water right?"

"They don't really have too much of a type preference, they lean towards water and electric, but realistically they use whatever they can get their hands on"

"True story, any chance you know anybody in the gang? You live like right in the middle of their turf"

"Nah, don't know anyone in La Tormenta. Don't really know any gangbangers anymore I think maybe my dealer for weed and coke is in La Tormenta. I never asked though. I always thought it was kind of one of those, don't ask don't tell sort of things."

"Well we're about to be in the shit. Prepare for the suck"

We get in the van and head into the area. The drive over there involves a little bit of lighthearted jabber by Tony as he's actually driving today. I'm too in the zone to really focus on it though, and most of the time I just sort of force a laugh and pretend like I know what he's talking about. I almost feel bad that we can finally talk, clear headed as friends and I'm totally checked out. I snap back into reality just to hear

"And that's when the oddish looks at the Pidgey and says, leaf me alone!"

"Hahaha, dude that's fucking hilarious. I didn't know you knew anything about puns."

"I've been picking up jokes from this guy on Petflix called Poke Amon. He's fucking hilarious dude, all he does is a bunch of Pokemon jokes"

"Heads up, we better park on the next street over. West Ferry doesn't exactly have anywhere to hide, and there's only parking on one side of the street."

"Oh fuck, good call."

We pull over, and park behind a waiting moving van. Month to month housing around here means that there's never any shortage of short lease tenants with moving vans to hide behind.

Rumor

We're on lunch and this time we don't get take out, we sit in the little Indian buffet back near the shop and stop and chat. I'm stuffy my face with tandoori chicken and that delicious rice that I can't create in my own kitchen despite the fact that it should be easy. Tony is eating what looks to be the chicken curry. We've already stopped at the Pokémon center, but that only took about 20 minutes because there wasn't really too bad of a line, after all it is only like 1pm on a Monday, and in the beginning of the week not as many people go to Pokémon centers. The real action happens on the weekend, much unlike the real ER or the gym. People and Pokemon have two totally different wellness regiments, or at least they do when they have this weird master slave thing going on. We only have two more repossessions the entire day and both of them look like express runs, or deliveries where we don't have any trouble. Tony brings up something that peaks my interest in between us shoving our faces full of food.

"Remember Dave? The guy who dropped out of school to pursue Pokémon full time?"

"Do I remember him? Of course I remember him, and also I have vivid memories of him using his super powered monsters to bully everyone on the yard."

"He's the League Champion now. He's top dog in the world full of feral beasts"

"Fuck that guy. I'd hedge a bet that he's an entitled fuckwad now. He probably is doing the autographs for the kids, and dick downs for the moms circuit"

"Did you hear he might be coming back into town?"

"Back here, what could he possibly want here? His family moved out to California with him"

"I'm not sure man, I only know what has been going around the rumor mill"

"I hope I don't see him, I hated that asshole back then and I could only imagine how big his head has gotten with celebrity. Also having Pokémon around me that powerful is unnerving, it's like he's walking around with six little gods on his belt."

"I think it would be cool to have him back in town. He is the biggest thing to come out of this city since, the hydroelectric dam. Besides he wasn't that big of an asshole to us after junior year, he calmed down a lot."

"Yeah because we were selling him booze and pot."

"True Story, I'm not sure why he's coming back into town, you'll have to ask him when he comes back into town himself."

"I don't want to see that asshole, not if I can help it. The friendliest me and him ever got was on a customer and provider level. What do you want to bet that one of the first things he does when he gets in to town is ask me to try and get him some drugs?"

"It's not like we couldn't get him some drugs, bet you he would pay out the ass for whatever we could get him."

"Not the point, he's just some smug little pretty boy, who probably wants nothing more than to go around gloating and boasting about how great he is, and probably throwing around some money around."

"Are you jealous Dante? I know you almost went to the league yourself, shit you blew through the 7 gyms in less than a year"

"Yeah and then I ran out of money, nah man I just never liked the guy, and I don't like the idea of having some superman coming into town. When a high powered trainer rolls in here people always lose their shit, and they tend to come in and hustle people for money and other shit. They're a menace man."

"You do that same shit Dante."

"I know, I know, fuck off."

"You just like being a big fish in a small pond don't you?"

"I'm not even the gym leader in this town, it's not like a lot of people even know us as tough trainers."

"Yeah and that's how we always get the drop on the people we have to rough up"

"Yeah I suppose you're right, oh shit man we got to hurry up here, we've been jaw boning for too long."

"Alright let's get back to it, clean up your plate, I like this place and would like to come back."

We turn in our plates, which have honestly been our third plates each and head for the door. The van is parked outside and we jump right on back into it. Tony has come down from his cloud and has decided that he wants to drive again, which is fine by me. I remind Tony that just because he made me do all the hard work in the ghetto one of these repos I'm just going to sit in the Van while he does all the hard work. He tells me to shut up. We both know I hate waiting in cars for absolutely any reason.