Team Plasma Grunt

[Jake clears his throat.]

What would you do if you were transported to the wonderful world of pokemon?

If your answer is some variant of, “become a trainer, get gym badges, and beat the elite four,” all I have to say is [speaker imitates a combee call]. Uh, I mean, all I have to say are buzzer noises. Sorry, forgot this was being transcribed and all.

Because the reality of the situation is that you are in a foreign country with no papers, no money, and no clue. I thank nonspecific-god every day that I got plopped down in Unova, because getting sent to somewhere where everyone spoke japanese, or worse, french [retching noise is audible], would have utterly and irrevocably fucked me.

So anyways, there I was, smack dab in the middle of Castelia and utterly lost. I won’t bore you by describing my panicked first hour in the new world, or morose second and third hours. But by the time noon rolled around I had something resembling a plan. Step one was fulfilling the bottom tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: getting myself three hots and a cot. Standing up from the secluded park bench I’d been sitting on, I resolved myself to joining a criminal organization.

Choosing a direction at random, I began walking. A few stoplights later I found what I’d been looking for. Two Team Plasma grunts standing on a street corner handing out pamphlets. Diplomatically ignoring their ridiculous knight cosplays, I told them I wanted to sign up.

What? Oh, yeah, getting a bit ahead of myself.

Diplomatically ignoring their ridiculous knight cosplays, I smiled and opened my mouth. And almost before I could say a single word, my plan started getting derailed.

> Team Plasma Grunt - 01 <

“Hey--”

“OMIGOSH OMIGOSH OUR FIRST RECRUIT.” Jill leaned towards our intrepid interdimensional interdimensional immigrant. She had a total disregard for personal space and a peculiar gleam in her eye endemic to those who were zealous, crazy, or both. Neither of these things were comforting to Jake, but then he’d been solidly out of his comfort zone for the past three hours.

Her partner, Frank, groaned. “Dammit, Cyn, now you’ve scared him off too. We won’t even get to give him a pamphlet!” He looked down at his undepleted stack of pamphlets with more than a little shame.

“Well, I don’t want a pamphlet, but I do want to join you. How do I sign up?”

Frank gaped at Jake. Jill, meanwhile, clasped her hands together and smiled even harder. “Great! I’ll take you to the recruiting station!” She made a grab for Jake’s hand. Jake jerked back in surprise and gave her a strange look. Unrepentant for her social faux pas, Jill simply turned around and began walking. “Follow me!”

“But, Cyn--” Frank sighed in defeat. “Fine, whatever. I guess I just gotta do this alone. I’ll probably be more successful to.”

Jake looked towards Jill, back towards Frank, and then back towards Jill.

Frank made a shooing motion towards him. “Go. Follow her!”

Jake did.

With his long legs and patented about-to-be-late-for-a-college-class stride he quickly caught up to Jill’s petite figure. Momentarily, he worried about having to make small talk that might indicate his total cluelessness about the world he found himself in, but to his luck, Jill was interested mainly in filling the silence with gushing praise for Team Plasma in general and their leader Ghetsis in particular.

Jake, on his part, was interested mainly in absorbing as much of Jill’s knowledge as possible. Biased and unreliable it was, but it was his only way to crosscheck knowledge of the Pokemon games with the reality he found himself in.

After a twenty minute walk, the pair found themselves in front of a warehouse bearing team plasma’s heraldry. They entered to find a reception area full of mottled carpet, sepia tones, and a conspicuous lack of people or pokemon. Jill strode forward towards a receptionist’s curved wood desk and rung a bell.

Jake looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“Oh this reception area is just for new recruits. All us employees use the back entrance.”

Jake frowned. “Where are all the recruits, then?”

Jill grimaced, her cheery facade momentarily slipping. “We… don’t get a lot of those. But!” she visibly shook herself, plastering a smile on. “That’s just ‘cuz people hear ‘Team’ Plasma and assume we’re evil just because Team Rocket gave teams a bad name! I know everyone will come around eventually.”

Minutes of awkward silence passed as Jill paced and Jake shifted his weight from foot to foot.

A door slid open. Jill stopped pacing and snapped to attention, fisting her right hand and putting it over her heart in some kind of salute. Jake turned his attention to the figure stepping through the door.

At five foot ten, Taylor was an intimidating presence. She stood eye to eye with Jake, but where he had a baby face and hunched posture, she had faded scars and the rigid, straight-backed posture of entertainers and soldiers. On her right arm, a larvesta perched. Her left arm was missing.

“Who’s this?” From her, two words were an interrogation.

“New prospective recruit ma’am!”

“Hmm.”

Taylor glanced at Jake, before looking back to Jill.

“Good work. Now head back out to your partner, who you should have been with this entire time.” Taylor’s impassive mein didn’t break, but Jill blushed crimson and scurried out of the office. “As for you, follow me.” She turned around and headed back through the door. Jake trailed behind her.

Despite himself, Jake was checking her out. This wasn’t anything special, of course. As a red-blooded male, Jake had checked out each an every girl he’d walked past today, like they were dystopian YA novels and he was a preteen girl with a library card. But the absolute authority Taylor projected made him realize things about himself he’d never noticed. Uncomfortable things.

Thus, when Taylor sat down behind her desk and gestured at an office chair, Jake sat down with with his hands folded across his lap and unbroken eye contact.

Now, in a twist of fate that would utterly surprise each and every one of her subordinates, Taylor was more innocent in some fields of human interaction than she let on. So as she took a moment to take Jake’s measure, she misinterpreted his poorly hidden embarrassment as confidence.

This was a good sign, she thought. Taylor didn’t want fair weather recruits.

“What’s your name?”

“Jake Inslee, ma’am.” the honorific slipped out against his will, momentarily mortifying him. Jake almost asked her for her name, before seeing ‘TAYLOR’ emblazoned on a placard on her desk.

“Why do you want to join Team Plasma?”

“To advance pokemon rights.” Taylor looked at him for a few seconds, inscrutable. Unnerved, he felt compelled to amend his statement. “By any means necessary.”

Taylor leaned back into her office chair, features still impassive. Her larvesta buzzed faintly, and she reached up to stroke its fuzzy white mane.

“Are you a vegetarian?”

“I’ve never used or consumed any pokemon products,” said Jake, with complete honesty. He’d eaten as much barbecue as the next guy, but for once being a stranger in a strange land had its benefits.

Taylor’s expression changed for the first time since Jake had met her. Her eyes opened a bit wider and her forehead creased, automatic responses to surprise that not even Taylor could suppress.

“Not even moo-moo milk or wooloo wool?”

“As far as I know, no.”

Taylor looked suspiciously at his clothes, but for once Jake’s slovenly taste in clothing had been to his benefit. He was clad in unobjectionable cotton jeans and a nylon shirt. He was also clad in extremely objectionable crocs, but at least his poor fashion sense had kept woolen socks off his feet during perhaps the only time in his life where frosty toes were mission-critical.

“Huh.”

Taylor spent another few seconds considering Jake before coming to a decision. “All right, you’re in.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Yep. Got your papers on you?”

“Uhhh.” Jake fidgeted. “I don’t have papers.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m not really authorized to be in Unova.”

“But your accent…” Taylor furrowed her brows, before her expression cleared. “Ah. Let me guess, your parents were illegal refugees from Galar when you were a kid?”

Jake dipped his head, but carefully didn’t nod. He really didn’t want to try lying to this woman.

Drawing her own conclusions, Taylor said, “I get it. No worries; not having any presence in the system can be an… asset, under some circumstances. Team plasma does good, but good isn’t always legal, ya know?”

The two shared a look, each communicating different things.

Taylor powered on a tablet and filled out a form. Then, she held the tablet and told Jake to say ‘cheese’ (“no, seriously, if you smile on your ID and your mugshot, juries are less likely to convict you.”) “I’m going to go get your ID,” she said. “Atlas will keep an eye on you.”

Taylor sat the larvesta on her desk, and left the room. Jake had a staring contest with a bug until she came back.

She strode back in with a sheaf of papers held in her hand, which she plopped onto the desk before sitting back down. “Read and sign these. Not that they matter since we’ll be paying you under the table, but appearances need to be maintained.”

Jake did. It was pretty boilerplate employee-agreement stuff, right down to paying him minimum wage and effectively forbidding unionization. At least it also promised him a guaranteed place to bunk and eat, like he’d suspected a paramilitary organization would provide.

Jake handed back the documents, which Taylor briefly scanned. Satisfied, she stored the pages into a filing drawer. Looking back towards Jake, she said, “so, do you want us to give you a pokemon?”

Surprised by the non-sequitur, Jake took a while to respond. He sensed a trap. “I take issue with your language, because it implies that living beings can be owned.”

Taylor laughed. “Straight out of the pamphlet! I’m beginning to like you, kid. We’ll assign one of our Pokemon to you.”Here, take this--” she handed him a laminated card with his picture, name, a barcode, and ‘team plasma grunt’ emblazoned on it, “--and make your way to the dorms.” At Jake’s questioning look, she added, “up the stairs, to the left. We’ll send up your new teammate pronto.”

He left with a “thank you, ma’am,” and made his way to the dorms. His new ID unlocked the door, leaving him faced with row after row of bunk beds. All of them had bedclothes, but few of them showed any sign of having been slept in.

Jake picked one of the unused beds and flopped onto it face-first. It was only a little after 1pm, but the stress and uncertainty had made the day seem much longer than chronological time would indicate. He closed his eyes and tried not to cry.

Some indeterminable length of time later, he was woken up by hot breaths rustling his curly brown hair.

Someone is muttering under their breath. “Two parters in a row, both lazy sacks of shit. What’re the odds?”

“If that’s aimed towards me, I resent that.” Jake removes his post-nap eye gunk with his index finger to see the purple, feline form of a purrloin sitting by his bed.

“Wait, can you understand me?” The purrloin gives a disbelieving half-laugh, half-scoff.

Jake blinks. “Wait, I can understand you?”