Author's Note
I got stuck when writing these next few chapters. Sorry.
Well, anyway, Lyra was at the Radio Tower, and she just defeated Archer in battle. Team Rocket has been disbanded again. The Director of the Radio Tower was kidnapped, but Lyra saved him. Oh, and she wrote some random stuff on the wall.
Right now, she has yet to defeat the last Gym leader, Clair.
Barfing on Archer was coincidental, but from the look on Archer's face, you'll think I did it on purpose. Though, to be fair, I guess it didn't matter whether I meant it or not. His pants were stained with barf either way.
The Director walked in the Observation Deck, stepping over gloppy piles of barf. "Oh...!"
Archer screamed and ran off, clumps of barf falling off from his sleek white polyester pants. The Director watched him coldly for a few hard moments before turning his attention back to me.
"You have already defeated them? Thank you!"
I smiled thinly before covering my mouth with a tissue immediately.
"Your courageous actions have saved Pokémon nationwide," The Director continued, seemingly unaware of my personal struggles. "You are well worth this." Actually, I was worth a lot of things, but never mind that now.
He gave me a silver wing, the item cool and soft against my left hand (the other hand was still firmly put over my mouth). I looked at the Director reluctantly.
"Please, take this," he said firmly.
This wing felt so delicate, so fine. The intricate detail of the wing's texture drew into my hand.
"I, uh..." The Director coughed awkwardly. "I don't have anything else to reward you with."
"Oh," I said, rubbing off my mouth with the napkin. I carefully placed the wing in a better part of my bag, avoiding eye contact.
"There used to be a tower right here," the Director explained. "When the tower was replaced with the Radio Tower, that Silver Wing was found at the top of the tower. Somehow, I feel like you should have it."
I pressed the handle of my bag against my hand.
"I heard from a friend from Cianwood City that you can go down the cave at Whirl Islands when you have a silver wing," the man continued.
"How? Does the wing use the science of physics and allow you to breathe underwater?"
"Uh...I have to go back to my office! See ya!"
He starting to walk out.
"Wait!" I shouted out. "Please, tell me, what is supposed to happen—"
"Oh, I just remembered," the Director said, coming back. "Um...I heard that you can't see the legendary Pokémon with only that silver wing. Apparently there is something else you need...or something like that."
"Uh..."
The Directer thought a little more. "Oh, wait. Sorry, I forgot what it was."
"So..."
"See ya!" He started out again.
"Sir!" I shouted out. "What legendary, what am I looking for—"
"Oh, I just remembered," the Director said, coming back.
I looked at him expectantly.
He smiled playfully. "Are you expecting something? This is what they call FAKE OUT."
I stared at him in disbelief for a few moments before he cleared his throat. "Oh, uh, I really must go back to my office this time. See ya!"
I only nodded. The stench of my own barf was getting to me at that point. I didn't want to open my mouth.
He walked away. For good, this time. I was still sort of looking in that direction when I got a phone call from a guy named Huey. He wanted me to hustle my ass and go back all the way to the Lighthouse and battle him. I didn't even remember who Huey was.
I left the Radio Tower, which had sucky elevator music again. There were some police officers around, but all of them had useless information. For example, one of them had told me, "The Director is nice again, just as he was before."
Great, just great. Instead of everyone thinking that Team Rocket had anything to do with it, they're all going to think that the Director has some kind of serious split personality problems. Leave it to the Johto police force to make everything complicated.
I was about to turn to the Pokémon Center when I heard the sound of crunching glass. I stepped back and began to peer out from the other end. The stench of smoke drifted from that direction.
I spotted Proton amidst the dust. He was standing somewhere near the corners, gingerly holding a cigarette. His hair was no longer disheveled, but he had a small frown on his face. He was probably thinking of all the ways his life has got rotten.
Proton hadn't noticed me yet. I still stood at the outskirts, Hamako standing behind me. Proton blew into his cigarette, smoke floating out into the thick night air. He held his head back and inhaled, his breathing shallow. I backed away and waited from the edge of the Radio Tower, holding in my soft breaths. Hamako followed my lead and did nothing. She, too, stayed paralyzed in silence. I studied Proton. He had on a royal blue backpack. A bulging folded tent poked up from it.
It was then that I noticed the smashed Poké Balls on the floor. Proton rubbed his foot over one of them and rolled it over, the Poké Ball now soiled. Wires probed out of the fine linings. From the other Poké Ball came the ominous smell of sulfur.
"Lyra," Proton said.
I said nothing.
We were alone, as far as I could see. There wasn't any Team Rocket grunts lurking around from the corners, nor any sign of a police officer's flashy deep blue coat. The street was quiet.
"I don't know where the others went," Proton said. He blew from his cigarette again.
I nearly choked on the smoke, so I stepped back. "Where are your Pokémon?"
Proton smiled. It was of the chilling variant this time, a sneaking presence that quickly rose the corners of his mouth.
"I don't know."
I felt a chill passing through my spine.
"Hamako, let's go," I said, starting back to the front of the Radio Tower. A black police car stood there, containing black handcuffs inside a black piece of cloth sitting atop one of the front seats.
I was thinking whether I should tell the police that Proton killed his Pokémon but thought better of it. I moved on.
Hamako followed me. Once she had gone up to me she tugged on my sleeve. I turned my head to her direction and saw Proton's former Pokémon, a Golbat and a Weezing, going around listlessly at the back of an alley. My insides deflated in relief, and I decided to forgive Hamako for the rip she caused to my sleeves.
Proton frowned, approaching me. He saw what I was looking at and his mouth twisted.
"You thought I did something to them."
"Sure. You're just making assumptions. The only thing I thought about was where I'm going tonight."
Proton dropped his cigarette and snubbed it with the end of his boots. "I don't have any intention to reunite Team Rocket. Team Rocket is a failure. It's the product of a not entirely sound mind."
"I'm glad you think so."
"I plan to leave Johto. You're not going to see me again, Lyra."
"Kanto?"
Everyone goes to Kanto. Hell, my mother has probably gone to Kanto twice since I've left home, and she never leaves the house.
Proton's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Sinnoh."
"You're not going to like Team Galactic. I've seen them in the news. Their matching haircuts are from a different century and their clothes are misshapen corsets. They look less dangerous than the American cricket team."
"They're doing better," Proton insisted.
"Team Galactic is doing worse."
"No, the cricket chaps, they're doing better. People are learning the rules of the game now. Anyway, I don't intend to join Team Galactic. I only want be on holiday."
"Seriously?"
"Hell no. I can't even travel to Sinnoh, much less pay for a resort. Who has that kind of money?"
"People who chop of a Slowpoke's tail and make it worth like a million dollars each."
Hamako at this point began opening my bag. I ignored her. Sometimes, my Pokémon randomly open my bag for snacks, and I usually ignore them.
"What happened to the money?" I said.
"I don't know," Proton said. Of course he was lying.
"Who has it?"
Proton scowled. "This doesn't concern you."
It probably did.
Oh, fuck, I thought.
Shouldn't we have gotten back the money they earned along with the Slowpokes? It wasn't so great of them to keep the money they earned without any penalty. We should've forced them to give us at least some portion of the money back, for "damages." After all, they took our Slowpokes, had the tails cut off, and now they got the money for selling the tails...was that not theft? Wasn't both the money and the Slowpokes a matter of theft? That's like stealing dresses and selling them to someone, then getting the money. The thief shouldn't be allowed to keep the money they got from the dresses, right, if the thief was caught? Isn't somebody here supposed to get money back from the guy who stole them? It was nearing midnight, and my mind went through these kinds of moral dilemmas.
And then...who knew? They may have had Slowpokes secretly bred for their purposes, and now...
"Who has the money?" I repeated.
Proton walked away. I walked with him. A sudden whirl of wind blasted by me, but I generally ignored it until I realized my bag was hanging open. Hastily, I zipped it back up. We approached the sidewalks, and the streetlights. There was some stray cars out and about.
I pressed my fist against my jeans. "Do you know who has the money?"
Proton didn't answer.
"And you never got any money back?"
Proton still didn't answer. He cocked his head to one side slightly, like he was thinking, but it was obvious that he was just screwing with me. Well, screw my life.
I continued my questioning. "It was Archer, wasn't?"
"It was for Giovanni," Proton said slowly.
"But Giovanni never came."
"Stop asking and telling me about these things," Proton said. He seemed mildly amused. Still kind of pissed, though.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Ah, the questions return?" Proton smiled slowly. "Already?"
"They had to return at one point."
"I'm going to leave the city, okay?" Proton said. "I don't want anything to do with Team Rocket. I'm not going to do anything with Team Rocket. Okay?"
"Umm..."
"Now if you just excuse me, I have the rest of my life to live."
Proton made a run for it. The second the light turned red he ran across the sidewalk, weaving though the honking cars. He probably thought he was so badass, to run in front of honking cars like that.
I turned to Hamako.
"Okay, so maybe I was kind of weird and nosy about it. So bloody what? He deserves it. Nobody is going to interrogate him besides me. The police doesn't care. Kurt is too old. The only person who can do anything about anything is me. And besides, that guy swindled a lot of people. He took the money of a bunch of people."
Hamako stared at me blankly. Then with her front flippers, she showed me one of my Ultra Balls.
"Right," I said. Then I added, randomly, "I have four of those."
Hamako dumped out all my Poké Balls from my bag. There was only two Ultra Balls. My blood ran cold. I looked at the gutter, but the innocent looking thing only smelled completely disgusting, and there was nothing around it but dead leaves. There was no imprint of a Poké Ball of any type around the mushy mud.
I looked at the other side of the street, where Proton was. He was holding the other two Ultra Balls.
"Goddamn," I said.
But I soon realized that Proton looked confused. He held the Ultra Balls limply in his hands and didn't glance at my direction once. His Crobat, on the other hand, was directly in front of him. The Crobat glanced towards my direction and leered at me, crackling.
Hamako advised me to just ignore them. She had such nonsensical ideas, like Crobat's theft not being important enough to risk my life running across the street. What weirdness, right? Still, I had to listen, because she was huge compared to me and would win if we had a fight.
"You're should've zipped the bag up, Hamako," I said. "What did you need from it, anyway?"
She said that none of that was necessary now, and that only patience could be my answer at the moment. I shrugged it off and was about to leave the block, feeling pathetic about the whole thing. But I planned on getting revenge later. Revenge is going to happen, I'm sure.
Let him keep my stupid Ultra Balls, anyway, I thought. He probably will waste them all up.
It was late, the air smelled late with that heaviness the air seems to obtain during the later hours of the evening, and you couldn't see shit.
Then I heard shuffling behind me. When I whipped my head around, I found the words "KILL THE PIKACHU CHILD" scrawled over the wall in still wet red paint, drops of paint running down to the sidewalk. There seemed to be nobody around when I glanced over the place, but like I said, you couldn't see shit in that kind of darkness. My heartbeat quickened, my breathing lessened. I tried to think it through the lagging of my mind whether it is associated with me or not.
I didn't write anything bad earlier, when I wrote at the wall of the Team Rocket hideout. I just wrote "Pikachu is an annoying boy," and "We hear Jupiter, Great Mother," or something weird like that. Jupiter is a cool name, so I wrote that in, and Magna Mater is something I read in a H.P. Lovecraft short story. And "audimus", which means "we hear," was one of the first words I remembered from Latin at the top of my head.
Anyway, I no longer feel safe in Goldenrod, so I was okay with leaving for Blackthorn. Like, super okay. I don't think I'm considered a "Pikachu child", but you never know with this kind of stuff.
Well, I practically brought the entries up to today. I didn't think I could make it, considering how many sittings I had to go through in order to recount what happened at the Radio Tower. I hate the Radio Tower now. Every time I see it now, sitting proudly on a nice plot of land at Goldenrod, I want to murder it. Anyway, for the last few days, I've been doing nothing but randomly walk around and pretend to be a busy and worthwhile person. I didn't really know what to do from here and out—go to the Whirlpool place with the silver wing, or continue on with my Pokémon journey? After an incredible, worthwhile one-sided thought conversation with myself at a coffee shop, I decided to go on to the eighth Gym leader. I've already defeated seven of them, so beating one more doesn't seem to be like much work. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut so I avoid saying some bad crap, and before I know it, I'll get the last Gym badge.
I know that the eighth Gym leader is the strongest one, which means that it must be a responsible, respectable person. I mean, really, they're not going to put in some kind of crybaby in there. The eighth Gym leader will be tough and strong, but after my well deserved victory, he or she will gracefully give me my badge and allow me to continue on with my journey and proceed to defeat the powerful Elite Four. With those great thoughts in mind, I began to set off for the eighth Gym badge!
