Liberty Chap 5: What you don’t know

Oldale was a fairly small town. Its founders had tried to incorporate and preserve nature as much as possible, although they didn’t go as far as Fortree. The whole town was a few blocks wide and it really only took an hour or two to traverse the town on foot. The nurses finally let me out after a day of bed rest, despite their warnings. Most of the stuff in my bag, including the bag itself, had to get replaced. The only real things I had left was Grace’s Pokeball, which was thankfully waterproof and clipped to my belt, and a few stray notes that had somehow gotten stuck in my clothes. Thank Arceus those notes were plastic and not paper like Unova’s currency was. The end result was that Jayden gave me his stuff for a short while and got to buy some newer gear for himself. They didn’t exactly fit me, but they were only meant to be a loan. The only real thing of value I’d lost was a tiny notebook I had from Unova. Honestly, it was foolish of me to keep a logbook of Plasma’s activities, but I kept it as a record of hideouts and what needed to be done. I had no record of where the new hideout would be. I’d heard it would be in some cave somewhere or near Lilycove. The rumors were never verified on where it would be. I was hoping Lilycove. Jayden had left an hour after I got out of the hospital to get some important things done.

I had found Route 101 to be relatively tame compared to Route 110. Instead of a forest of tall grass and ferns I was greeted with a simple winding forest trail that looked neatly maintained. It was fairly short as well, a mere half hour walk. I had cradled Grace in my arms as I walked and a thought dawned on me. I hadn’t actually sat down and done any serious training with Grace. I had let Grace do what she wanted for the fight against the Skitty lady and mostly did the same for the two other trainers I fought outside of Oldale. I was perfectly content with that. I had no right to order Grace around like a pawn. I knew that Grace could truly excel under my advice though. I set Grace down and she looked up at me in surprise before running off to a sunny spot on the trail.

“Grace. Get back here.” I commanded. Grace turned towards me before reluctantly coming towards me. “I know you won’t want to, be we need to train. As in, practice your attacks and try to boost your strengths.” I added the latter bit after noticing Grace’s quizzical expression. “I know you just want to laze around, but just try this for once. You might get to burn off all the energy you store up. First we will start with speed training.” I managed to convince Grace to do laps down the trail. I decided to join in after the second lap. I easily outpaced Grace due to her naturally slow speed and short legs hindering her. It was fun to race against Grace, despite how one sided it was. Eventually I decided I needed to stop trouncing Grace and stopped to let her run a few more laps before stopping for the day. We still had to get to Littleroot after all. I grabbed Grace and put her in my arms as we walked down the trail. As I walked, I started to feel a little uncomfortable with how I trained Grace. Most trainers simply fought against random Pokémon for training. They didn’t specialize in certain areas like I had started with Grace. I was training her the way competitive battlers trained their Pokémon for battles. The idea left a sickening taste in my mouth. I was not the same as them. I didn’t purposely train my Pokémon to enjoy beating up others for my benefit. I just needed her to be strong and capable as soon as possible. Otherwise, attaining the goal of beating the Hoenn League and overthrowing it would become even farther out of reach then it currently was.

After a few minutes of walking down the trail I started to hear a sharp faint sound that gradually grew louder the further I walked. Eventually I could make out that the faint chirps I heard were sharper then I thought. They sounded a lot like birds squawks. I unconsciously wondered off the path and towards the cries. Maybe it was a bird Pokémon with a broken wing, maybe it was simply a territorial battle, or a mating call. The possibilities were many. I hadn’t expected to see something that went against all the principles I worked could so hard to upkeep. An older trainer, about 17 from my estimates, was throwing rocks at a bird with brilliant red plumage with black edges. The bird danced around the rocks and let out a shrill cry every time it did so. The trainer hadn’t heard me over the sound of the abused bird. The bird continued to passionately twirl around the rocks, not putting up a fight against the trainer. Surely the trainer knew this was wrong. I had expected something like this to come from an inexperienced fresh faced trainer, not an older boy who surely had some sense. This is why the training age was pointless. Kids were too inexperienced to properly learn the difference between abusing and training their Pokémon. Simply being older didn’t change this fact either. The league should completely abolish the training age completely and make everyone take a mandatory psychology test when they got an I.D. At least under that system we would be able to judge if a person was mentally capable of caring for Pokémon. Far less Pokémon would be abused if it was in place The trainer must have heard me approaching him, because he stopped throwing rocks and  turned to stare at me. The red bird, which I later learned was an Oricorio, stood still as well. Could it not see that freedom was so close? I broke the silence first.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh, me? I’m training, mate, can you tell? This is the most efficient way to train, didn’t ya know. Say, you look like an experienced trainer, how many badges do ya got there, mate? I only got three myself.” Did he not understand I had just caught him red-handed? Did he not understand I had seen everything?

“Err, I have none so fa—- Don’t try to change the subject on me! I saw what you did, I saw you abusing that bird.  You can’t run now, I’ve got you surrounded by the rangers.” That last part might have been a bluff. The boy had the gall to have a blank expression after I had explained what I had saw him do. How did he not know what he was doing?

“What in the bloody hell are you talking about?  I was training Mar-“

“No you weren’t. Training, is that your way of saying that you abuse your Pokémon? Your Pokémon would be better off without someone like you training them. You just came along and caught the poor bird against its will. To add insult to injury, you start abusing it in a not so private place.

“Abuse?” The kid asked in an incredulous tone, “I’m not like that, mate. People who abuse Pokémon are disgusting scum who need to rot in the inferno.”

“So why don’t you join them? Join them in the inferno they earned. You truly do disgust me.”

“Shut up. I don’t abu— You know what, fuck arguing. You can’t see the facts in front of you. Fuck the fuck off or fight me.” The bird started twirling and shaking its wings in a dance while moving to stand in front of the trainer. How badly had he brainwashed the poor bird? It seemed to willingly obey its captor instantly. I let Grace out of my arms and she stood at attention.

“Maria, you know what to do.” The bird started flapping its wings and created a barely visible disturbance in the air. The bird’s wings launched the disturbance at surprising speeds.

“Dodge it Gr-!” Grace was moving before I even called out. My voice died when I saw that the disturbance had hit Grace before she could really move out of the way. The force pushed her back and left a decent sized cut on her.

“Use air slash again.” The kid yawned after he called the attack. Grace was ready this time and dodged the disturbance with some difficulty. The bird was ready for this and had fired another disturbance at Grace. I grabbed my Pokeball and recalled Grace. It wouldn’t do to have her unconscious. The disturbance dissapated into the air.

“You lost, now fuck the fuck off, scrub. Don’t ever claim that I abuse my Pokémon again or I will make your life a living hell when I see you. If I ever see you.” The trainer had walked up to me now and was standing no more than an arm’s length away. It was clearly an attempt at intimidation. I wasn’t going to be daunted. The only reason he had won was due to me being outclassed. By no means was it a balanced fight. If that bird had lost than I might have been able to save it. Now it was too late for the bird. Salvation had closed its window of freedom. A quick glance at the jerk showed that he had two Pokéballs loosely snapped to his belt.

I spoke in a low quiet tone, hopefully unnerving him. “How do you know your Pokémon enjoy battles? Sure, they battle in the wild, but that’s just a means of survival. How do you know that your Pokémon truly love to battle? You don’t, you can’t know without a psychic, who can very easily lie to you out of fear. It would be better if you release your Pokémon. They wouldn’t have to live in fear, they wouldn’t have to suffer.” I started to swing a punch, but dropped it as soon as he reacted and used my other hand to pull on one of his belt’s Pokéballs. It snapped off the magnetic lock easily. I turned and ran, ignoring the shout and squawk I could hear behind me. I could hear the kid giving chase, he was fast, I’ll give him that. The bushes snagged at my clothes and roots seemed to pop up just to try to trip me. It didn’t work. I weaved through the thick layer of trees, off the trail at this point. I jumped over a pile of rocks and stumbled at the unexpected decline behind them. I kept running and weaved away from the rocks. I heard a grunt and then a thud behind me. The kid had fallen. I started to run back the way I came, hoping the bird wasn’t still after me. I stumbled back on the path and went in the direction I hoped Littleroot was in. It turns out I was right.

If I thought Oldale was small, then Littleroot was tiny. Littleroot lived up to its nickname as the thirty minute city. Apparently you could walk anywhere in the city in under thirty minutes. The town itself was no more than a few suburbs with a giant preserve nearby that dwarfed it. Apparently the preserve was for the Professor, who used it as storage for those who didn’t trust the PC. They were right not to trust it. A few of the tech wizards from Unova had already hacked into the Unovan PC system. The Hoennese PC system was apparently child’s play for them. They even managed to put a failsafe in where the PC would forcibly release Pokémon if the release didn’t happen by the deadline. Serves those abusers right for leaving Pokémon to rot in cyberspace. I checked into the Pokémon Center so Grace could be healed. She was out in a few minutes. I headed straight to the lab, near the preserve in the back of the town.

I noticed two things about the lab as I walked in. The first was that is was a fairly sterile place with everything being different shades of white. The other was that papers were strewn everywhere. Stacks of paper covered almost every chair and table, along with a good amount of floor space. I didn’t notice the guy sitting at a desk until he loudly coughed to get my attention. “Can I help you with something?”

“Actually you can. Do you know where the professor is? I need to see him for some paperwork.” I responded.

“What paperwork?”

“Registration forms.”

“Okay then,” The assistant said skeptically, “You need to fill out these forms then.” The assistant shuffled a pile of papers and began to dig through another set until he pulled out a set of forms. He stood up and handed them to me before retreating behind his desk as quickly as possible. I stared at the pile of papers in my hands before grabbing the neatest pen I could find. I skimmed over most of the small print and extra details to find the part where I had to fill in details. I wrote me name in the box where it asked. Birthdate? November 16, 3003. Hometown? Err, I had gotten to Hoenn by smuggling myself aboard a ship. I guess Dewford would be most accurate, I had first set foot in Hoenn there. Address? N/A. I couldn’t put down a Unovan address, I was trying to look Hoennese. N/A also went in the spots of family members and next of kin. I would have put Dustin, but he never told me his real name. Besides, I needed to look like an orphan trainer from Hoenn, otherwise I would stand out as a non-Hoennese if anyone ran a background check on me. It would be easier to state that I was an orphan rather then put down fake parents who could be verified as fake. Age? 17. Region of birth? Hoenn. It was a lie, but it needed to be done. Criminal record? None. Why would I tell them anyway? Plasma worked for the greater good, despite the laws against it and they didn’t not need to know about how I used to run with one of the smaller Castellia gangs. Besides, Plasma was not a criminal group. We freed oppressed Pokémon, similar to what the police did. Current Pokémon? Grace instantly went on the list and my gaze started to drift towards the second Pokeball I had on my belt. The Pokémon I had freed. I still hadn’t even opened the Pokeball to see what it contained. My hand gripped the ball and my fingers found the release button. The Pokémon that appeared from the ball was impossibly tiny. It was a tiny yellow fly. I had no idea what it was. Somehow the assistant must have been a mind reader. “That’s neat. Never thought I would see an Alolan Pokemon like Cutiefly. I guess the Alolan Program has been more successful than I thought.” The Alolan Program was a program which brought Alolan Pokémon to other regions to prevent inbreeding on the islands. I added Cutiefly to my list and recalled the bug. The rest of the paper blurred together and I constantly had to pinch myself to keep me awake. As I walked up to the assistant he said without looking up at me, “Give that to the Professor after you’re done, he just got out of his lunch. He’s right down the hall.” I followed the assistant’s instructions and found myself in a smaller, slightly messier room. Sitting in a swivel chair in front of a computer was a portly man around his 30’s who seemed to have a chinstrap beard. He turned in his chair as he heard my approaching footsteps. “What can I help you with?”

“You verify registration forms, right? I have some that need to be verified.”

“I see. Pass them over then, it won’t do me much good to not see them.” I handed the papers over to the professor and he chuckled slightly as he typed before going silent.

“What’s so funny?” I asked. I felt like I had missed something extremely obvious.

“Hoenn, ay? Glad to see you’re from Hoenn. You sound exactly like a Hoennese person after all.” I froze and almost slapped myself in the face. I had forgotten my accent again. It was obvious I wasn’t from Hoenn.

“My family just moved here recently. Something about becoming rangers and getting closer to nature. I was actually born here, I just moved to Unova for a short while.” It was a lie, but so what? What he wouldn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“Moved back here with your guardian who you didn’t put down, huh? That sure sounds completely plausible.”

“I meant that I got sent here due to some charity organization receiving enough donation money from my school. It’s a program for ranger trainees.” I was grasping at straws as I had to rapidly come up with a not-so convincing tale.

“Let’s go with that, Uno. Let’s go with that. Anyway... here is your Pokedex. I would say to go and catch them all, but some girl already did that. Anyway, it contains your I.D information, along with information about hundreds of Pokémon. Oh, and,” The Professor grabbed my arm and pulled me in front of a camera. He plugged my Pokédex into the camera and pulled it out alongside a card, “here is your trainer I.D. Try not to lose it. You have no idea how annoying that paperwork is.” I grabbed my Pokédex and I.D and stuffed them into my borrowed bag. I began to glare at Birch for rapidly pulling me over to take my picture and for calling me Uno. Everyone had their nicknames for foreigners. The Kantonese were known as the Kan’s, and the Unovans as Uno’s. Johtoans arguably had the worst nickname, being referred to as Toe’s.

“So, Uno, I have a few questions for you before I let you go.” I froze in fear and fought to keep it off my face. Had the boy whose Pokémon I liberated ran here? I had to keep my tone neutral, my expressions calm. A single mistake is all it would take.

“Shoot away.”

“Can technology really replace Pokémon? It seems every time I check how things are going in Unova I learn about either a new advance in technology that forces people and Pokémon out of a market or riots for Pokémon rights or removing a sketchy statue. With the way things are going now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Unova completely lost Pokémon in most buissness. And yet, the trainer program is stronger then ever. What’s your take on that?”

His question caught me off guard and filled me with a cold fury. I had been so distracted with the abuse trainers had done, I had completely overlooked how corporations legally found ways to abuse Pokémon. But maybe I was never supposed to learn; I was part of the trainer division, not the corporate division. Looking back, I can certainly say that it would have made later events far easier if i had never thought of how corporations abused Pokémon at that time. “The mere notion of technology replacing the need for Pokémon is illogical. Pokémon are an asset to people and have been for generations. Studies have even shown that Pokémon increase work efficiency I think. Besides, how would you replace the need for psychic Pokémon in offices and construction sites? How would you replace the need to use fire types for instant combustion? Or ghost types for speaking to the dead or whatever they are experts at?”

“They have already found ways to get by without these things. Putting magnets on things has allowed people to effectively levitate objects and we can already speak pseudo-telepathically through ear pieces. We don’t even need them to translate for us anymore, especially with the work being done to lower the cost of translation collars. One brilliant man recently combined a replica Magmorter arm, stuffed it with Typlosian hairs, shoved the tip of a Charizard’s tail down at the base of it, and lit it with a Turtonator shell. Needless to was quiet a hot idea. The replica Magmorter arm literally began to melt a few minutes after lighting it, and the tail and hairs let it burns for two straight weeks. And that’s just the prototype. Most people don’t even believe in the powers of ghost types anyways. Pokémon has shifted from becoming a part of buissness to becoming a market for producing required parts of machinery. They even found that simply putting a Porygon with minimal functions into an office increases efficiency. Their idea has merit, but it is wrong not to use Pokémon for these jobs. They are partners with free will, they shouldn’t be replaced by tools.”

“Exactly! Pokémon should not be replaced in offices! They should have a choice about whether they even wish to work there in the first place. It is wrong to use Pokémon as a means to an end when that end is replacing Pokémon. They shouldn’t even be in offices in the first place, in all honesty. It’s not their home, it’s all unfamiliar territory.” I caught my tongue then. What I was saying was the ideals of every member in Plasma. Birch watched the Unovan news, he likely knew about Plasma in Unova. My ideals would only serve to hinder our movements here. “Oh, I guess I got a little carried away then. Thanks for al, this.” I turned and ran out the office. He had learned too much in the few minutes I was there. I had to be more careful. It was my fault for babbling so much.

I walked around to a quieter part of town and pulled out my Pokédex to scanned Cutiefly’s Pokeball. It gave me a brief history on Cutiefly along with health information about mine. It included things like where it was caught and its age, which was a year old, pretty old for Cutieflies apparently. Oh, it had a name to. The abuser had named it Polly. I recalled Polly to the ball and turned to walk back to Oldale Town. As I walked I couldn’t help but think of that kid and the Oricorio. That bird had been scarily obedient to him. Why has he given chase to me after I rescued Polly? He probably only wanted to sell her and we afraid I was stealing his profit. Maybe if I had been more careful and observant things could have gone better. Maybe Grace might have not lost to the bird. Maybe I could have won him over to see the truth, that Pokémon were happier alone. Maybe if I was more observant, then I would have noticed that the Oricorio was smiling as it dodged rocks.