START Chapter 12: Limitless

"Why do we limit ourselves? The world of pokemon is as wide as it is mysterious. Abandon your shackles to embrace the new reality."

-Locke, Holt

Holt Locke

By the time Shira and I had arrived at the spot, Dawson was nearly done for. His arm was covered with spores. Any exposed skin was bloody with cuts and scrapes, further hindering his mobility.

And worst of all, he was struggling to escape from a roserade the size of a telephone booth.

I immediately released Nimbasa, who sprayed a flurry of will-o-wisp orbs to stave off the oncoming roserade's rush. The barrage did little more than annoy the roserade, none of the ghostly flames actually catching on for some reason.

"Holt!" Shira shouted out from behind me. I kept my eyes fixed on the roserade, my mind snapping into full alert mode. One false step could prove to be fatal and I wasn't planning on dying to an overgrown shrub.

"Condense your flames, Nimbasa. Hit 'em with your mystical fire attack!" I shouted. Somehow, I knew that this would work. Misdreavus channelled the ghostly flames until they merged together into a fireball. Crying out loudly, Nimbasa sent the fire soaring towards the roserade.

This seemed to fare better than the will-o-wisp, knocking the roserade backwards several feet. "Keep it up Nimbasa! Another mystical fire."

"It's no use…" Dawson sputtered out. He was leaning against one of the walls to the gazebo, clutching tightly his spore-covered arm. The arm seemed to writhe on its own, which was terrifying.

At my concerned look, he scowled at the spores. "A paras caught my arm when that roserade distracted me. As long as I stay awake, I should be fine. My body's fighting it off."

"What happens if you fall asleep?" Shira asked. She held Dawson's arm gingerly and was picking away the spores with a piece of cloth.

"Parasect spores are unique. They work under a hive mind. Your body can fight them off for the most part. Once you die, though, it's free real estate," I told her. "They'll take over your body."

Dawson nodded in agreement. "Jakarta learned that the hard way. They had to firebomb half of the city just to get rid of all the fungi." Shira greened at that.

"Where's Slugma?" I asked, changing the subject.

Then I heard a gurgling sound coming from the ground next to me. The magma slug pokemon oozed out of the hole it had burrowed, covered in specks of dirt and blazing grass.

"He needed to rest. We took out at least a dozen paras. They just keep coming… I think they might be in a territory war with the roserade right now…" Dawson said. "Anyways, your fire type attacks won't do much against that roserade."

"Why is that?"

Dawson pointed at the roots surrounding Roserade. "This garden's full of occa and rawst berries. So no matter how many times you burn that thing, it'll just sap away at the berry roots and negate most of the damage."

"Why don't you just burn them?" Shira asked. "The berries, I mean."

"That's a stupid idea. What if you accidentally set off a wildfire? A lot of these pokemon need those berries in order to survive. If we start burning them en masse, that'll disrupt the ecosystem," Dawson coughed. "Whatever we do, we gotta take out that roserade without lighting the Rose Garden on fire."

Another paras lunged forward towards Dawson. Slugma blasted it with an ember, charring it to a crisp in mere milliseconds. "Good boy," Dawson said.

"What other pokemon do you have?" I asked. "Other than your slugma."

Dawson shifted his belt around until the other two pokeballs were more easily reachable. "I have a magikarp and a drilbur," he said. "Once they evolve, it'd be perfect type coverage…"

I resisted the urge to stick my head in the ground and scream. Type coverage was not a half bad idea, but completely useless when considering the murderous roserade that was coming straight for us.

"If you could send out drilbur as well…" I said.

Dawson shook his head. "It's better to only control one pokemon at a time. The connection, it's less likely to shatter your mind."

"I didn't even know that was a thing. It's fucking Yu-Gi-Oh up in here with these mind crushes," I muttered. "Nimbasa, dear, can you try lifting the roserade away from the ground with your confusion attack?"

My misdreavus yelped, channelling another burst of energy in the direction of the roserade. It levitated about an inch or two above the ground before Nimbasa's confusion fizzled out, which put us back at square one.

"The roserade is tied down with its roots. You've gotta sever its connection with those roots or else it'll just keep healing," Dawson said. "Miss Matsumoto, do you have any pokemon that can help us?"

"I, uh-" Shira began to say.

"Don't try to get involved," I said. "Stay back and keep getting those spores out of Dawson's arm. Nimbasa and I can handle this for now."

"You're being stupid," Dawson said. "A misdreavus does not have the firepower to beat that roserade. Fuck, you couldn't have picked a weaker ghost type — other than a shuppet or something."

Nimbasa shrivelled up a bit at Dawson's words, which was all the opportunity that the roserade needed to clip her with a razor leaf attack.

"No! Get out of there, Nimbasa."

I racked my brain for some kind of attack to turn the tide in our favour. Any information about the misdreavus movepool… Short of a shadow ball, which was clearly out of Nimbasa's range, I couldn't think of anything.

"Use confusion again! This time, try and trip it up."

Nimbasa loosened a burst of psychic energy which slammed into the roserade's legs. The pokemon swayed a bit in place, but a fresh layer of roots sprouted out of the ground, stabilising it.

"We're so fucked," Dawson muttered.

"I can send out the budew," Shira said. "What could I do with him?"

"Budews know absorb and growth. That's about it for the lower levels," Dawson replied. "Absorb wouldn't do jack shit against a roserade. Growth, you could probably get a slight power boost. That's it."

Misdreavus gathered up the energy for another mystic fire, shooting it at the bouquet pokemon's feet. However, the attack was snuffed out by one of Roserade's flailing arms.

"Where does the energy come from?" Shira asked.

"Nimbasa! Will-o-wisp the roots," I shouted, knowing that the attack would be in vain. It bought us a few more seconds, which was all that I could ask for.

"Look, does it matter right now? Slugma, keep those paras away from us!" Dawson said. Some of the more reckless mushroom pokemon were incinerated by the slugma's embers.

"It matters to me. Where does a pokemon get that growth energy from?" Shira demanded.

"Probably the sunlight?" I said. "Don't quote me on that." My eyes were still locked onto the roserade, who was getting more enraged by the second.

"Could I ask for budew to get the energy from elsewhere?" Shira asked.

"I don't know. Maybe," I said.

"I'll take a maybe over nothing, then. Let's go Budew!" Shira said, releasing her new pokemon.

"Put that thing away, you idiot. You're probably pissing the roserade off even further," Dawson said. "Budew doesn't get any powerful moves until it evolves."

"I'm not planning on using anything other than the two that he already knows," Shira said.

"I've already told you- those moves are useless against a roserade!"

"Shut up for a second, Dawson," I said. "Shira, do you know what you're doing? Like, actually."

Shira just nodded. "I've got a plan. What if Budew was able to absorb the roots away from that roserade?"

"How would that even work?" I asked. "Normally, absorb just syphons energy away from the opponent's pokemon. It's pretty weak, with a base damage of twenty or something."

"I don't know anything about 'base damage.' Does the move have to be used against a pokemon, though? Couldn't Budew just absorb the energy from the roots directly, instead?"

I glanced back at the roserade, whose feet were now thoroughly intertangled with the berry roots. Nimbasa's will-o-wisps were barely affecting it now. I knew that we'd have to do something about it soon.

"Go for it," I sighed. "I'll keep the roserade distracted. Whatever you do, try to get those roots away from it."

I looked at Dawson. If the worst came to pass, we'd have to try and escape the garden. With… or without him.

"I'm on it, chief," Shira said. "Budew, use absorb on the ground next to roserade!"

The budew waddled forward, plunging his feet into the soil. Clicking his teeth, he started drinking away at the nutrients under the ground. Slowly, the vibrance began to fade from the plants near the roserade. A couple of the occa berry stems wilted up and died.

Against an actively resisting pokemon, absorb wouldn't have done much. However, when the target was just a berry bush? Even the minor draining attack devastated several of the plants in the vicinity.

"Use growth to burn away that excess energy. Make as much room as you can in your stomach," Shira said.

I thought about telling her that plants don't have stomachs, but at this point I had no idea what pokemon biology would even look like. Even now, with just the single absorb attack that the budew had directed on the ground, I noticed that the roots looked flimsier around the roserade's feet. Weak enough to take a gamble against.

"Nimbasa, could you gather up another attack? Mystical fire against the roserade again."

"Misdreavus shouldn't be able to use mystical fire in the first place," Dawson said. "Only mismagius learns that move."

"She knows will-o-wisp. If she can do that, then I figured that we could improvise another attack," I responded. "Can slugma join in on the attack?"

There didn't seem to be any more paras in sight. Dawson scanned the nearby brushes, before nodding his head. "Slugma can give you some proper firepower. Is the girl's strategy working?"

"Yeah. Absorb is killing off the occa berry plants. Slugma should be able to do more damage now."

Dawson clambered up to his feet. "Leave it to me, then," he said. "We shouldn't ignore how useful pokemon attacks are, even outside of battle. Slugma, clear smog."

An opaque gas poured out of the cracks in the slugma's body. It quickly enveloped Dawson's arm, as he shrieked in agony. Even from a few feet away, the intense heat was overwhelming for my eyes.

When the gas cleared away, I was met by a shocking sight.

Dawson's arm, which had been covered in a layer of mushroom spores, was now completely cleared off. The scrapes and scratches were still there, but the bleeding had all been staunched. It was a repulsive yet impressive sight. His entire arm was now a feverish red.

"I'm so fucking glad that that worked. Slugma, are you ready to kick some plant ass?"

The lava pokemon grunted with eagerness.

"Nimbasa, get out of the way!" I commanded. My misdreavus turned transparent, phasing through one of the roserade's razor leaf attacks.

Slugma burst out a ball of flame, stronger than anything that Nimbasa had conjured up. It slammed into the roserade's side, lighting aflame some of the flowers in its hands. The creature made a shrieking noise, which was grating to hear.

The scene reminded me of the cacnea in Miranda's office, a lifetime ago.

"One more time, Slugma! Incinerate attack."

The slug pokemon once more let loose a fireball. However, this time the roserade just barely managed to deflect the attack with its hand. More berry roots sprouted from the ground, connecting to the roserade's lower body.

I turned to Shira, but she already knew what to do.

"Budew! Absorb again. Don't let that roserade connect to the roots." The bud pokemon dove into the ground, hastily sapping up more berry nutrients. There was now a circle of dead occa and rawst berry plants surrounding the roserade.

A burst of purplish black liquid spouted out of the roserade's hands, narrowly missing the budew. My misdreavus, who wasn't so lucky, was caught in the face by the sludge bomb attack. Her ghostly membrane began to sizzle from the acidic gunk.

"Nimbasa, dive into the ground. Try to get that stuff off you as quickly as possible."

"Slugma, incinerate that oversized cabbage," Dawson spat, venom in his voice.

The slugma lurched forward, faster than a slug had any right to be. He gathered flames by burning through the oxygen and wilted grass, spraying fire in the direction of the roserade. Needless to say, it was super effective.

Without access to the berries to ward off the fiery weakness, Roserade quickly lost any spirit for continuing the fight. It took a few steps back, carefully staring down the three enemies in front of it, before retreating into the safety of a rosebush.

And just like that, we had won. At least, against the more immediate threat.

Several pairs of eyes began emerging from the dirt. Paras, likely numbering in the dozens. With the roserade temporarily bested, it seemed like the lead parasect had finally mustered up the courage to step outside.

I knew that if we'd let the parasect infestation break out into Portland, there would be hundreds of civilian casualties. Something had to be done before that happened.

"Slugma, incine-"

"Hold up, Dawson," I said. "We don't need to kill them all."

"You know what happened to Jakarta. We can't let a parasect outbreak happen in Portland. I won't let that happen, not to my city."

"What if there was some way to neutralise that threat?" Shira chimed in. "Can you capture all of the paras?"

There wasn't even a need to count. We didn't have nearly enough pokeballs to attempt to capture all of them. That struck out Shira's plan. I told her as much.

"Maybe we can just eliminate the lead parasect? That way, the rest of them might scatter," I offered.

"There's no guarantee that eliminating the parasect would work. Another one of them could evolve, which is a viable threat that I can't rule out," Dawson said. "I know that you're hesitant. But this is the only way."

"That's a massacre."

"Dawson is right," I ultimately agreed. "We've got to be rational about this. Even if we got rid of just 90% of the paras, that would be enough to balance out the ecosystem. Protecting Portland should be our priority here."

Begrudgingly, Shira accepted that as well. The three of us lined up, with the paras eyes poking out from the ground in front of us. Some of them were staring at the slugma, others were staring into my own eyes.

"Misdreavus, mean look," I quietly ordered. A gaze imbued with ghostly energy fell upon the ground before us. Shira looked away, instead taking a prolonged interest in the flowers behind us. The paras would not escape.

"Incinerate," I heard Dawson call out.

Slugma gathered up the air surrounding him, belching out a blob of fire that shattered once it reached the paras. A puff of smoke was all that remained above ground as the fireball entered a few of the paras holes.

Chirps of excitement turned into squeals of agony as they rang out through the dirt. More smoke bellowed out of the holes. After several minutes of these painful outcries, the ground fell silent. Our deed was done.

At that moment I was suddenly reminded of a passing conversation from my days at school. "The most important defining aspect of systematic destruction, of genocide, is the intent to destroy a collective."

I had just abetted mushroom genocide.

Became an accomplice to a fungi massacre. Fungicide? I briefly wondered if there were any women and children paras that we'd also slain.

Dawson's slugma creeped forward, peering into the now-charred holes that had previously housed the paras population. Seemingly content with the results, Slugma returned to Dawson with a grunt. With that, Dawson returned him to his pokeball.

"I guess that wraps up the audit," Shira said.

"I know you're not the auditor, Miss Matsumoto," Dawson said. "Miss Alice sent me a message after we split ways earlier. She told me who you are."

"Oh."

"She'll be headed over here after she wraps up her research in Bellevue. Apparently, she had no idea that Matis sent you here." Dawson pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry we lied to you," Shira said.

"I know I've talked smack about Matis, but he's still a scary dude," Dawson said, seemingly ignoring Shira. "There's no reason why I shouldn't beat him. He's only known about pokemon for a few months… I've spent years playing this game," Dawson complained.

"I've played for quite a while, too," I said. "VGC up until ORAS."

"See? Matis just doesn't make sense. He's wholly inexperienced and he only uses electric types for some bullshit reason. It's not like he's a monotype gym leader from the games," Dawson said.

"A gym leader like Lieutenant Surge?" I cautiously asked.

"Who the fuck is Lieutenant Surge?" Dawson responded, a confused look on his face.

I was expecting this answer, yet the weight of it was still enough to demoralise me. Even someone like Dawson, who'd dedicated years of his life into playing pokemon competitively, had no recollection of the Kanto gym leaders.

Had I truly been deluding myself? I struggled to come to grips with the idea that all of my childhood memories, of Kanto and Vermillion, were one fabricated hallucination. Weirder things had happened still, after all.

Once we'd stomped away the last of the embers, Dawson stuck his hands awkwardly in his jeans pockets, staring at the ground. The arm that had been cleansed by slugma was still bright red, but the colouring seemed to have died down a little.

"Thanks for helping me out, I guess. The boss roserade will be back to protect its garden, but I'll be more prepared next time."

"How will you handle it alone?" Shira asked.

"Your idea to prevent it from healing was ingenious. I'll try and get a pokemon to sever its connection from the anti-fire berries. Slugma can deal with the rest."

"You're a pretty capable trainer too," I said.

Dawson snorted at my words. "I know how the type chart works, which ain't worth shit." His eyes softened a little as his brows furrowed. "I miss when this was all just a game."

"Yeah, me too."

He paused, staring at me for a moment, before removing something from his neck. It was a silver locket, with a circular frame about two inches wide. There was a picture on it, of Dawson and…

"You and Hikaru?" I asked in surprise. Dawson nodded.

"He, uh… he came up to talk to me after last year's championship. We talked for a bit more after that. We couldn't really tell anyone, not even our parents."

"Then why the hell would you tell me?" I asked. "Why tell Shira? You were hitting on her not even an hour ago."

Dawson just winced. He stood quietly for a few seconds before responding. "I didn't want you to just leave thinking that I'm a horrible person… I've made mistakes." He bowed his head. "I'm sorry, Miss Matsumoto."

Shira gave him a reassuring smile, which he hesitantly returned.

They began to talk about less important things, while I was left examining the scorched remains of the paras hill. I ran my fingers through the burnt soil, feeling the still-warm paras remains, gathering all the mushrooms that I could.

If the games were anything to reference, then I figured that there might be something to salvage these for. My mind instantly went to the move relearners, who provided special services in exchange for these tiny mushrooms.

On my tenth sift through the dirt, however, my fingers encountered something different. This time, the object was moving.

"Fuck," I said, pulling it out. The mushroom that came out landed squarely cap-first onto the earth. Its little stem squirmed in the air, not able to reposition itself without my help.

"What is that thing?" Shira asked, catching notice of the mushroom. "Is it another paras carcass?"

I carefully inspected it, flipping it rightside up, grinning from ear to ear. "No, my friend. This is a different species entirely. It's one of the most feared pokemon in existence."

Dawson groaned. It seemed like he too had recognised the mushroom in my hands.

"Hey Shira, this is a foongus. Isn't he adorable? Let me tell you now, he'll be a fun guy."

Sabrina "Brie" de Souza

"Brie, stop…" Samuel managed to say.

Brie simply ignored him. Instead she tightened her focus even further. Ahn's throat was now being visibly crushed from the outside.

"Stop! Please, Brie. Stop it right now."

"H- h- hel-"

"SABRINA!" Samuel screamed.

Then with a horrifying noise, something caved in inside of Ahn. The man crumbled to the ground, a mangled mess of what was once the prominent scholar of NYU.

With that, silence fell upon the laboratory. The kind of deafening silence that seldom a person encounters in life.

A pool of blood had grown around the body of Ahn. Neither Samuel nor Brie bothered to cover it up. They simply sat in silence, staring at each other.

"Are you okay, Sabrina?" Samuel asked.

Sabrina just shook her head. "It's getting louder, professor."

"The voices, my dear? I thought you said that they were going away."

"I thought they were. But they're back."

Samuel pulled Sabrina into a hug. She gracefully accepted it, clinging onto his white lab coat. He had no idea how to even begin to explain what just happened.

"You don't need to explain, professor. I killed Dr. Ahn," Sabrina said.

"But… how?"

"I wanted him dead. I wanted him to suffer."

"You're not misunderstanding my question, dear. You're simply avoiding the answer."

"Psychic ability to manipulate the physical world, the physical system, without any kind of physical interaction," Sabrina said.

"You're defining telekinesis. Are you absolutely certain that telekinesis is the only plausible explanation? In a world of pokemon?" Samuel asked.

"Professor… I'm insisting that it was telekinesis because of pokemon. We've seen studies that psychic power is real. There's an entire subclass of pokemon that are inherently psychic in their abilities."

"Sabrina, those are pokemon. No matter how much time we devote, there's simply no way to completely understand them. You're a human, Sabrina!"

The girl did not respond. For she had no response, simply put. She could only stare as her mentor pulled at his hair, muttering incoherent speculation.

When the clock struck 7:31, she knew that a man would walk inside. She knew that this man would call the authorities.

Neither of them should remain in the laboratory, or else they would face the consequences of Sabrina's action. That much, Sabrina knew as sure as anything.

"Professor, we need to get out of here," Sabrina said.

Samuel looked up in confusion. "Get out of here? Sabrina, we must let somebody know…"

Sabrina pulled out her phone to check the time:

7:24.

They still had some time before the man showed up. "Professor, please. We need to leave."

"Hold on now, Sabrina. This isn't a time to be rash. I'll call the authorities, we can explain this. I'll call your sister, Cris, first thing in the morning…"

7:25.

Sabrina felt the panic swelling up in her chest. Her eyes combed past the doorway. Every second that passed increased her stress levels by a tenfold. Samuel, she knew, would try to stick around to figure this out. He wouldn't understand the implications of her new abilities. What the people in charge would do to her.

"Sleep," she whispered. No, she couldn't have possibly known that this would work. Yet the impossible fell apart like nothing before her will, as Samuel's eyes rolled over to the back of his head. The professor slumped onto the floor, only a few feet away from the deceased form of his former colleague.

7:27.

Pulling the professor into the corner, of the room, Sabrina once more checked the time. The man from her premonition would be pulling up to the front of the building at about this time. If she could find a way to prevent him from finding either her or Professor Oh, then that should be enough.

Sabrina grunted while stuffing the senior citizen into the coat closet. Samuel Oh was not a small man, quite strong and well-built for his age. She had to fold him in half, like a waffle sandwich, in order to cram him in there.

7:28.

The deed was done for the time being. By just focusing a little, she could tell that Samuel would be sleeping for another couple of hours yet. It was better this way, allowing for her to take control of the situation without the professor getting involved.

She still had three whole minutes to figure out a plan. Sabrina approached the mangled body of her assaulter, determined to figure out the next steps-

And slammed face first into the man from her vision. As the horrified night watchman stumbled backwards away from Sabrina, she could only gawk at the clock above.

It was ahead by three minutes. The clock overhead read 7:31. She'd been duped, by herself no less.

The man raised his walkie talkie. Sabrina knew, instinctively, that she should not let him go through with that call for backup.

With a flick of her wrist, she attempted to snatch the device away from his grasp. It was to no avail, his grip was too strong for her budding psychic powers. Were they even psychic? Without a thorough examination, she could not rule out the possibility.

Luckily, her lack of knowledge when it came to her own abilities was supplemented by a history of reading a lot of fantasy and science fiction novels. Woe unto those who underestimated the undergraduate proclivity for procrastination.

As though she'd done it dozens of times before, she channeled the feeling of unease into a physical manifestation of a hand. As perhaps befitting, her Mage Hand took shape with relative ease. With a clenched fist, she slammed this invisible appendage straight through the night watchman.

Larry, she though. If she was going to ruin his night, she figured she would remember his name.

The man crumpled to the ground, not unlike Samuel had done. Only in this case, there was no Sabrina to ease his fall and his head bounced off the ground. A quick mental scan, and she could tell that he'd suffer no real damage.

"Abra, my partner," Sabrina whispered. Despite being hundreds of feet away, she knew that the creature could hear her. If they'd felt a connection before, their minds were synced on a different level now. "Please come here."

The pokemon emerged. There was no indicator, no flashing lights or particles to announce his presence. One second, Abra was not there, then the next second he was. It was as simple a matter for Sabrina to not question it.

"Merda," she grumbled, clutching her temple. A small trickle of blood had escaped her nostrils, plopping onto the otherwise sterilised floor of the laboratory. Waving her hand, she managed to make the blood disappear. There would be consequences for using her powers, of that much she was certain.

The most important of these consequences, perhaps, was her total lack of understanding of them. She played things by intuition, trusting her gut above all else in telekinesis. Perhaps she had inadvertently condemned Samuel and the night watchman Larry to a miserable life of psychic deterioration.

Perhaps not. She could've been overthinking things.

Without using her powers this time, she pried away the walkie talkie from the unconscious Larry's hand. Thankfully, reality diverged from her premonition—no reinforcements had been called to their location.

She prepared to throw down the device, to smash it beyond any repair… yet something stopped her from doing such a thing. Her eyes travelled to the broken form of Dr. Ahn, the man who'd been the cause of her torment.

Craning her neck in a hideous fashion, Sabrina muttered into the walkie talkie.

"Richard Ahn discovered dead. Appears as though resulted from confrontation with wild pokemon, over." Though Sabrina's lips moved, it was the voice of Larry the night watchman that came through.

"Please state your location, over," another person responded. It was a woman, probably tired out of her mind yet faced with an impossible task: the death of an internationally renowned Pokemon Researcher.

Sabrina prepared a quiet apology to both this woman and Larry for what she'd say next.

"Located in the Samuel Oh Laboratory. Attack appears to have been from a wild pokemon. Specifically, a…" she mentally flipped through the catalogue of psychic type pokemon that she'd organised under Dr. Ahn.

"Do you have a name of the wild pokemon for us?" the woman asked. "We'll start a perimeter search immediately."

Sabrina finally settled on a random, harmless looking creature. She felt an impulse of sorts to call it out, perhaps as a last-ditch attempt to besmear the deceased scholar's legacy. To have been slain by such a pitiful pink creature as pictured.

"I think it's called a mew? M-E-W. Over."

END Chapter 12: Limitless

A/N: Welcome back to another chapter of A New World. Now you might be wondering, another update so soon? It must be a May the 4th be with you joke? No, it is not. I am simply procrastinating on my midterm assignments for next week. Go check out Twisted Garden, or check out some of BANIX's amazing works.

I am currently reading Worm for the first time. It's gonna be an interesting ride.

Main Character: Holt Locke (24)

—Nimbasa (F) [Misdreavus]: captured after she willingly joins him in Pinwheel Forest

—Foongus (M) [Foongus]: captured in Portland International Rose Garden

Side Characters:

Shira Matsumoto (23): graduate student in museology at the University of Chicago, friend of Tetsuya Mueller, now a fully-fledged intern for the Leona Monti Foundation and sent on mission to Seattle with her boss, Alice.

Clayton McArnol (47): owned a bar in Seattle with his wife who has since passed away, the owner of Rodie the herdier and currently acting as the leader of the Seattle Pokemon Trainer Committee. Has shown a surprising degree of skill with pokemon, with an affinity with ground types.

Matis "Surge" Vermuth (36): member of the Leona Monti Foundation and elected as one of the regional leaders of the federal International Trainer Association for Seattle. He is known for his use of electric type pokemon, based on his former training as a U.S. marine and expertise in combat on-site engineering.

Samuel Oh (56): researcher at New York University

Sabrina de Souza (28): research aide at New York University under Professor Samuel Oh, graduate student at Columbia University