1.
Ride the Lightning
Ride the lightning, feel the thunder
'Til the darkness pulls me under
It was raining in Sunyshore City, and the power was out.
Thankfully it wasn't a full blackout this time. The city's west side had been equipped with stronger solar cells the previous summer, which left the houses and businesses dim during a storm, but not completely dark. The Sunyshore Tower, always patched over with repairs, was sluggishly rumbling as it strained to meet its new demands. But the thunder above rumbled loudest, and the black clouds swirled and settled heavy over each battered beach and promontory.
From within the safety of the lighthouse, (gone fully dark,) two men sipped lukewarm coffee and marveled at the rain pelting the nearest window. The shorter, a slouching blond, reached out and pressed his right hand against the pane, trying to feel the rhythm of the droplets.
"In my previous life, I was a thunder god," he said.
"Yeah?" asked the other, a gray-eyed and puffy-haired sort with four obsidian bangles making all his muscles look larger. "How do you know that, Volky?"
"It just makes sense, doesn't it? I used to be a giant who lived in the middle of the ocean. I carried thunderbolts in my bare hands, and when I got mad, I threw them at ships and buildings. If I wanted, I could summon the electrical energy of a million Pikachu and hold it tight in my fist. Sort of like a dynamo powered by my own heartbeat. Like… if the Legendary Zapdos had a trainer, that'd be a giant, blue-skinned lightning-wielding version of me. What do you think you used to be, Flint? A Slugma?"
"Well, if you were chucking thunderbolts at Sunyshore Beach in the middle of the night, I'd like to be my grandma's sleep mask."
The blond, Volkner, turned back to look at his friend. "That's not how it works. You had to be something alive. Something with a pulse. A pulse is electricity making the heart contract. You can't be conscious unless you feel that spark inside."
"Hm," Flint voiced, taking a long sip of his coffee. He produced a Poké Ball from his pocket and pressed the button, releasing Infernape in a flash of blue light. The flame on the Fire-Type's head finally lit up the dark room and cast a warm glow on its trainer's face.
Volkner's face, on the other hand, was cast in strange, sharp angles and the fractured shadows of his unkempt and staticky hair. His blue eyes hung with blotches like he hadn't slept in a week.
"They're gonna blame you for this one, too," Flint warned. "I emailed you a screenshot of the radar for this week on Monday. You didn't look at it, and when I went to find you at the gym, you were face-deep in wires with burnt bangs and crispy fingers. I don't even think you could see what you were doing."
"Nah, I knew what I was doing. And if I didn't, Luxray can see through anything. It would've told me if I was in trouble."
"You touched a hell of a lotta livewires, my guy. I get it. You're an electrohead. Your body's used to shocks. But what I don't understand is why with all your technological genius, you couldn't open one email and maybe think to yourself 'I shouldn't try to overload the city's power supply and have everyone rely on solar panels when whoever got reborn as a thunder god after me is getting pretty pissed at Sunyshore right now.'"
"The city grid can support more power. It overloads easily because estimates of its capacity rely on raw statistics rather than actual watt usage. It's greenwashing. All those sustainability certificates new buildings keep getting are total bull. You get the same amount of points for installing a bike rack that you do for an air purification system, and nobody's monitoring how many times the toilet gets flushed."
"Hm. I think you're right. The Sunyshore Gym does use a lot more power than it needs to."
Volkner ignored the quip. "Now, if we just exaggerate what we think people use and then I renovate the current grid—"
"You've had the 'grid' as your playground with none of the officials batting an eye for years. And… yeah, your projects have really improved the city's efficiency. But I'm your best friend, which means I gotta take all the complaints about you when you're off tinkering. It's days like this when the ornery folks say you're 'a good Gym Leader,' but also the guy who makes sure everybody in Sinnoh eats rice cakes and peanut butter whenever a storm rolls in. Oh, all the Ghost-Types from Eterna Forest are infesting the city? That's all Volkner. Leader Candice can't put Snover in a freezer to sleep when she visits the south? Volkner's fault. Ya know, that buff chick in Kanto filling in for the Lieutenant, I think her name is Visquez, she trains Electric-Types, and I hear she doesn't disrupt society off the battlefield. She might be looking at your job pretty soon."
"Really? She sounds hot."
"She wouldn't listen to you talk about your feelings."
"Well, she's not a floating ball of plasma, so I'm not interested anyway," Volkner said. He took his blue faux leather jacket from where it lay crumpled by the window and slipped it on. "If you see any ornery folks, tell 'em I'm off training on the promontory. After I get the grid back online I'm heading over to the gym to work on that overload issue."
"Right now?" Flint asked, gesturing wildly to the lightshow outside the window.
"With a little help," Volkner replied with a smirk. Then he tossed his own Poké Ball up in the air and released a sparking Raichu. "You know what to do, buddy. Let's ride the lightning!"
Raichu chittered and raised its long cord of a tail up in the air. A personal lightning rod to soak in any thunder god's sudden electric attacks! (It was more than a joke that Volkner's staticky hair could attract stray currents.) Disregarding any further protests, the two of them opened the door to the stairwell and disappeared into the murk of the storm.
"He heard me when I said any of that, right?" Flint muttered to his partner Pokémon.
The monkey just grunted and shrugged.
~N~
I saw Volkner was brought back into the anime for a Journeys episode, and it resparked old feelings.
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net December 21st 2021. Reposters cursed.
