Said I'd take seven days and I took seven days. xP Hope you enjoy!
4.2
The morning after his interview with the Solaceon Gym leader, Sylvester Bode took a drive around the town, checking all the League-related buildings before leaving. He had reported to the Jubilife PD that he would be in Pastoria within a day, though now, in the back of his mind, he wondered if he would find anything there at all.
Judging by the current pattern, Michael Rowan was a swift and efficient traveler. He had swept through four Gyms in little over a month, and by now, could be two, even three steps ahead of him. For the first time, Bode, with his car, resources, and contacts, was finding himself outmatched by a kid on foot. And he didn’t like the feeling it was giving him. While he drove circles around blocks and barged into pokémon obedience classes, Michael could have been departing for his next city that very minute.
Unfortunately, Solaceon was full-to-bursting with League-related facilities, some of which weren’t labeled with the pokéball logo at all. Aside from the Pokémon Center and Pokémart, there were dozens of other buildings and streets where trainers crowded, which would force Bode to swerve from the main road and writhe around for a parking spot. He found a Daycare Center wedged between two barnhouses, some specialty item stores dotted along a shopping street, and a tour center offering sightseeing events. These places were blended so well with the rest of the town that, for someone who didn’t know any better, the whole place might as well have been one big trainer theme-park.
But the longer Bode observed the trainer lifestyle, the more he grew aware of one important fact: The League kids operated entirely within their own world. Wherever they went, they were always either with other trainers or by themselves, and treated the average townsfolk as if they existed in a separate dimension. Every town had facilities that catered to trainers’ needs, so they never had to guess, or stray too far from familiar places to find help. This was likely why they could travel so fast through the Gym towns.
By the time Bode drove onto the highway leading out of Solaceon, he’d resolved that he needed a change of tactics. If Michael Rowan had been in the League for this long, he had doubtlessly immersed himself in trainer culture, and learned to do things exactly like the other trainers did. So, in order to pursue him, Bode would have to do the same.
He reached the first exit to Pastoria City a little past noon, but once he turned to leave the highway, he was stopped by a large traffic jam. Up ahead was a seamless river of shiny-backed cars, which curved with the road and trailed all the way into the city. The other exits up ahead were in a similar condition.
Bode dropped an arm from the steering wheel and let out an angry breath. He turned on the radio to see what the fuss was about, and learned that the city was experiencing an enormous influx of travelers. With the Sunyshore protest only ten days away, many other Sinnoh cities had decided to take up the flame and broadcast events of their own, telling their side of the Galactic story. For a full two hours, Bode listened to the Pastoria stations babble about a multi-themed festival that would be taking place during the protest, where civilians would be able to watch the proceedings in Sunyshore and shout their own messages for the world to hear. All the while, he inched his way down the road in a rhythmic sequence of starts and stops.
“… and we’re doing to be seeing a higher-than-usual concentration of people, so traffic could get heavy, especially around midday…”
“… for the benefit of the city’s trainers, the Pastoria Trainer Museum will be holding a small tournament the day prior, giving five lucky winners a chance to speak with the press…”
“… to which Marie Wickham, leader of the Pastoria Gym, had this to say…”
Bode’s head snapped up. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and looked around, making sure the other cars were still standing. Then he tuned back into the radio, just as the recording of a woman’s voice came on, giving a commentary about something that was going on downtown. When the recording ended, the announcer’s voice returned, but by then Bode’s mind was spinning a thread of its own. He already knew the Gym leader’s name. If anything, that was a start.
But it proved to be the only good sign that whole day. Even beyond the traffic blocks, Pastoria City was crowded and chaotic, at a magnitude that far overwhelmed Jubilife’s. His only option was to get a hotel and a map, since zipping through the roadways would be a perilous waste of time.
Bode learned that the majority of Pastoria’s trainer attractions, including the Gym, were located in a square all the way on the eastern side of the city. So he parked his car in a public garage, paid for several days in advance, and took the subway to the Trainer Plaza.
There he found the Gym, the Pokémon Center, and every imaginable trainer necessity laid out before him like a gift from the heavens. Bode let out a breath and quickened his pace towards the Gym, nearly breaking into a run by the time he reached its doors. But upon entering, he found that the management was in shambles. The Gym Leader was downtown, and all the attendants were busy with a group of townsfolk, which was so big that it nearly crowded the trainers out of the lobby. The visitors were trying to get tickets to a private showing of the GASP protest, which would take place in the Gym and would only be open to a select number of people.
For sheer lack of standing room, Bode squeezed his way through to a side lounge and sat down at a chair, where he waited almost an hour for the crowd to clear. Once enough people had left, he entered the lobby again and locked eyes with the first available staff member he saw, a woman with poofy brown hair. He hailed her with a raised hand.
“Excuse me! Do you have a moment?”
The woman pursed her lips nervously, but approached. “Sir, if you’re here for the tickets, you’ll have to get in line. I can’t help you any other way, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, I’m not here for the tickets. I’m here on behalf of the Jubilife City PD, looking for a boy named Michael Rowan.” Bode flashed his badge. “He is disguising himself as a pokémon trainer, and I need to see the records for this Gym to see if he’s passed through here.”
The woman’s face brightened. “Records? Sure! Just follow me.” She led him through a door behind the counter, which revealed a back room filled with file cabinets. She opened a drawer of clipboards and began to search through it, biting her lip. “Um, which week do you want, specifically?”
“Anything after June 28th.”
“Gotcha.” The woman read off the tabs on the dividers, which were labeled with dates, and pulled out three clipboards. She searched through them one by one, then shrugged. “Sorry, there hasn’t been a Michael Rowan here yet.”
Bode’s eyes flashed. “Thank you.”
He left the Gym at a lively pace, lips spreading into a smile. Taking a look around the crowd that populated the plaza, he saw a seemingly endless array of faces and colors. Some kids looked like they had just come out of elementary school, and others were nearly in their teens. They all walked around with varying emotions, varying styles, together giving off an almost wordless cloud of noise.
Bode’s next stop was the Trainer Hotel, where after a long negotiation with the staff, he was allowed a single-bed room that was usually reserved for overflow. He asked whether Michael had checked in yet, and the clerk replied with a nod.
“Yes,” he said, showing Bode a clipboard. “June 29th.”
Bode nodded and thanked him.
He proceeded to his room, noting passing trainers in anticipation, as if Michael could appear from a side hallway at any moment. But Bode would move slowly. He would start by alerting a few select individuals —Pokémon Center nurses, hotel staff, store vendors — and spin around Michael a web of eyes. Then he’d tighten the strings, and get the boy in custody before he took a single step into the battle room.
//////
Meanwhile, just a short train ride away, the town of Solaceon was in its midday swing. The streets were bustling with cars and wagons, and the clock tower in the main plaza had just struck one.
Directly behind it stood the city hall, a building resembling an overinflated house. It was decorated by a colorful garden and had a large, welcoming porch, but it was the most modernized place in the city, with a computerized database and slick steel doors protecting the archives. All of these things made a positive impression on Nancy Bryan when she arrived, but the more time she spent inside, the more she felt the tiny rooms close in on her, and the text of the documents blur into one big pool of nothing.
Determining a company’s existence was hard enough in itself. The collection of officially-registered companies was stored in the government database in Snowpoint, which had the fastest computer system in Sinnoh, but the amount of information was so vast that it would still take many hours to sift through it all. On top of that, getting access to the archive could take months, so for most people, the only option was to manually search through government-published registry books. Those could be found in any official library, and classified registered companies by their type of service. Sixteen volumes were published annually, one for each district of Sinnoh, and if a city was well-connected, it would also have a supply of manuals from districts nearby.
But Solaceon’s collection was far from extensive, and its specialty was far from hardware.
Nancy sat for what felt like days at the desk in the record room, scanning through the lists of the Solaceon district, while Ned shuffled through boxes behind her, trying to locate the other ones. In the meantime, Tom and Bobby were at the press office, where they were restarting the previous day’s search, this time focusing on finding Briney. She, the smart one, had volunteered to go to the city hall that morning, where she thought she’d be able to finish the search within an hour. Five of them had passed.
The only solid information she and Ned had been able to gather was that hardware companies had to have suppliers, who provided the plastic, the metals, and the wires from which they’d build their machines. There was only a small number of them in East and West Sinnoh, so the teammates switched tactics, calling major suppliers in the East and asking if any of them did business with Briney Limited. But after talking with eight companies, no one had so much as mentioned Briney’s name.
Towards four o’clock, their brains were fried, and distant objects in Nancy’s vision had become smudged. They both called it quits and went to a café across the street, where they sat for a well-deserved meal.
After rushing through their food for a while, they both recharged enough of themselves to make eye contact again, and settled back.
Ned gave a sigh. “Well, that was brutal. And those were only the major suppliers in the East. Technically we still have to check the small ones, and all the others over in the West. That is, assuming Briney isn’t one of those super-integrated companies that are their own suppliers.”
Nancy pressed her hands to her forehead and shook her head. “That’s too much. We can’t possibly pin down every single supplier in Sinnoh. Either we’re doing something wrong, or this job needs more work than we can put into it. Personally, I think it’s the second.”
Ned nodded. “We’ll be in a better environment when we get to Sunyshore. It’s one of the biggest cities in the country. They’ll be bound to have more resources.”
Nancy let out a breath. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s way too pokémon-themed here, for one thing. I honestly didn’t believe that guy when he said that three of the back rooms were for League documents, but now I do. I guess people here are just focused on different things.” She began to play with her napkin, crumpling it then tugging it out by the corners. Then, she looked up. “But so are we, you know. Our first goal should be getting a story. It would be nice to uncover a Galactic fraud along the way, but we can always go back to that once we’re back in our office in Jubilife.”
Ned gave a shrug. “I’m just thinking of ways of convincing Tom to leave, instead of staying another day.”
He gave a smile, and Nancy chuckled, albeit tiredly.
Once they were done eating, they set off for the press office, where they had agreed to meet at the end of the day. The crowd had cleared for the afternoon, leaving the parking lot empty, and the building quiet and calm. The only other people there were a man and woman, idly browsing the racks of newspapers that hung from the walls.
“I wonder if Tom and Bobby got anything,” Ned whispered.
“If we couldn’t get anything in a city archive? Probably not much,” Nancy replied.
Still, for a tiny press office, they were taking a long time. She and Ned checked the inner rooms, but they were either locked or empty, so they went back to the lobby and waited.
Nancy turned her eyes to the collection of newspapers, which held the usual supply of tabloids, mixed with respectable papers like
Sinnoh Post and
The Hearthome Times. A variety of other issues were meant for special audiences, like knitters or breeders. Up above, the walls were lined with framed articles that marked historic events, both on a community and national scale. The last frame in the row held the article from
Sinnoh Post that had announced the GASP unification. Beneath it was a brass carving: June 30th, 1963. Nancy smiled to herself.
Nearby, the couple was also moving along the display, talking in sparse, hushed voices. The woman was reading the framed articles and the man was searching for something among the racks, fingers skimming over the issues.
“It should be around here somewhere…” he murmured. Finally, he stopped and pulled out an issue. “Ah. Here.”
He smiled and handed the woman a copy of
The Hearthome Times. “Item Evolution, by Michael Rowan.”
Nancy felt a tiny jolt, and turned ever so slightly on her heel to take a look at them. The woman had begun to read the article, lifting her eyebrows. “Huh. That’s interesting…”
“I saw it a while after he left,” the man said. “I had the issue lying around, but that was the first time I noticed what he wrote. I was really surprised. I knew about the Pikachu experiment, but I never thought there was a connection between that and moonstones.”
“The funny thing is, I knew some trainers who talked about items that could evolve pokémon,” the woman said. “Back then, it seemed like a complete mystery. And no one could ever tell which pokémon they worked on.”
The man pursed his lips in admonishment. “I wish I’d noticed it earlier. I could’ve asked the boys about it. His friend had a Clefable, so I think they definitely got their hands on a moonstone at one point. But where did they find it? They couldn’t have picked it up on the ground, and the closest mountains are the Coronets.”
The woman smiled. “Everyone liked to say that moonstones came from outer space. But apparently they’re named after Mt. Moon in Kanto… That’s one of the few places Clefables are found in the wild.” She took a few more moments to read, and when she finished, she lowered the paper. “You know, I think I’ll read up on this. It’s a shame you didn’t get to talk to him about it, but I can tell this is just the beginning. He might even write more, someday.”
“I hope he does,” the man said. “I guess I just didn’t expect the papers to put articles about pokémon training in the Arts and Recreation section.”
At that point, Nancy smiled, and turned to face them fully. “Well, you see,
The Hearthome Times doesn’t have a section dedicated to pokémon training. It has one for League news, but that’s news on an organizational level, not stuff written by independent trainers. In fact, big papers hardly ever get submissions like those, so it took a good bit of convincing to get them to feature it. I tried to get it to
Sinnoh Post too, but I guess putting something like that on the biggest paper in the country was a bit of a stretch. But small steps pave the way for bigger ones.”
The couple stared at her in surprise.
“Are you saying… you published this?” asked the man.
“Yep.” Nancy pointed to herself and Ned. “Our team did.”
The man looked at them, and his face spread into a grin. “Well if that ain’t the biggest coincidence in the world. I’m Ted.” He extended a hand, and shook with both of them.
“We’re reporters from Jubilife,” Nancy explained. “We’re on the hunt for stories, so we’re on the move a lot.”
Ted’s eyes widened in surprise. “Jubilife? Wow. You’ve come a long way. I haven’t been to West Sinnoh in years.”
“Do you know Michael too?”
“I did, for a little while. He and his friend came to me for move tutoring help.”
“Which they then used to beat my Gym,” said the lady, with a smile.
“Oh, so you’re a leader?” Nancy said.
The woman nodded. “I’m Lona. Pleased to meet you.”
She and Nancy shook hands.
“So how did you meet Michael?” asked Ted.
“He saw us at a park in Hearthome,” Nancy replied. “He thought our pokémon were interesting, so he came to talk to us. They’re from Hoenn, see. We told him we were reporters, and he told us a little about how he was doing in the League. Then a few days later, Michael found out something really exciting about moonstones, and wanted to write something for the papers. Well, and he remembered us.”
“I guess good luck works both ways,” said Ned.
Ted gave a smile. “That it does.”
Before anybody else could speak, there was a loud bang and a creak of swinging doors. All four of them jumped, whirling around towards the front entrance as two figures stumbled inside. It was Tom and Bobby, both of them red and out of breath.
“There you are!” huffed Tom. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”
“You? We thought you were in the back the whole time!” said Ned.
Bobby shook his head. “No, we left this place hours ago. We were in town. We would have taken you with us, but we figured it would be faster if we went right away, and we didn’t want to pull you guys out of your work in case we didn’t get anything. But anyways, that’s not the point. You’ll never believe what we found!”
Nancy’s heart began to thump, and she and Ned took a few steps away from the couple. “What is it?”
“Briney Hardware Limited doesn’t exist!” Bobby said. “Or, at least, it did, but it now it doesn’t. It got merged with a company called TGC in 1948, and they pooled together their resources to start making advanced technology, like computers and navigation systems.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Newspapers!” Tom grinned. “They didn’t make their stuff in a secret lab room, Nancy, they sold it! They made the papers six times in the forties alone, because they were doing all kinds of stuff that no one else in Sinnoh did before. And you know what their most popular invention was? The pokéball. They took an old model that was used fifty years ago, and they refined it to make the pokéball we use today. They sold their design to the League, and that made headlines all over. There’s this magazine called
Pokémon League Weekly that didn’t stop talking about it for five issues straight.”
He turned to Bobby, who pulled a magazine from a plastic bag and waved it around in front of them. “Did you guys know that Solaceon boasts the most extensive collection of
PLW magazines of any Gym city? There’s a fan shop downtown that’s got shelves of these babies, all the way back to the ‘40s. Take a look.”
He opened the issue to a bookmarked page and handed it to Nancy. Her eyes found a paragraph that had been circled in red marker, then locked on an underlined name. She gasped. “There he is! Alfonso Helfer!”
“The problem was, we were looking for articles
by Alfonso Helfer, not articles
about Alfonso Helfer,” Tom said. “So we didn’t pay attention to what people were writing. Check this out.” He pointed over Nancy’s arm to a line marked with an asterisk. “‘Made with access to an unparalleled workforce as a result of their recent merging with Briney Hardware Limited!”
“There was one other article in a regular paper that mentioned the merge,” said Bobby. “So if Alfie started out working for Briney Hardware, then he ended up working for TGC.”
Nancy scanned the page, feeling excitement buzz inside of her. But after fizzing for a few moments, the spark faltered. “Okay… so we’ve proven that Alfonso Helfer works for TGC. But how does that connect him to Team Galactic?”
Bobby paused. “Well… that’s something we have to figure out.”
“The important thing is, we know that Briney Hardware exists,” said Tom.
Nancy’s shoulders drooped. “And thanks to that, we also know that TGC exists. So now we have to find out about that company too. That basically puts us back at square one, guys.”
“Hang on,” came a voice. Nancy turned, and saw that Lona was looking at them, frowning. “Did you say Alfonso Helfer?”
Nancy lifted her eyebrows. That lady had sharp ears. “Yes, why?”
Lona turned to Ted. “That journal you showed me. It had his name in it.”
Ted looked down as he thought something over, then snapped his head up. “Yes, you’re right!”
“What journal?” said Nancy.
Ted fell into another pause, and bit his lip. His gaze went from Lona to the team, then he gave a resigned sigh. “I’ll have to show you. Come on. We’ll all go to my house.”
Nancy exchanged a glance with her teammates, who made gestures of agreement. The five of them followed Ted out of the building and down the street, where he crossed several intersections and turned onto a path that led into a residential community. He navigated through rows of houses and mailboxes, finally turning into a driveway and climbing onto a porch. Once everyone had come up behind him, he unlocked the door.
“I collect journals,” he explained. “I’m doing a late spring cleaning, and I have this box that I got in a yard sale a long time ago. It’s filled with all kinds of articles about TGC and space, stuff that was probably taken from the public domain since the Space Program began.”
“Whoa,” said Bobby.
“Yeah. They’re my prize possessions. I brought a few to show Lona earlier, but I have a lot more.”
Ted led them into a cozy home library, in the final stages of being reorganized. The furniture was polished and cleared, and the shelves were filled with straight-standing spines. Lona and the news team lingered behind as he ventured into the sea of boxes on the floor. He peered into one of them and pulled it over to the center of the room, beckoning for everyone to come around.
“I never took this to anyone to have it verified,” Ted continued. “I was always afraid they’d take it away from me, or assume that I got it illegally. But I’ve read everything in here, and from what I know, all the journals and newspapers are authentic.” He reached inside and pulled out an article. “This is the one Lona was taking about.”
He handed it to Nancy, who read the title out loud: “Storage System Two.” Then, her gaze dropped to the second line. “That’s him! It’s Alfonso again!”
“But that’s not all,” said Ted. “The experiment they talk about here is the same experiment that led to the design of the modern pokéball. I have other papers in here that prove it. Those men have to be from TGC.”
Bobby frowned. “Not only that… but I think they have to be really important people in TGC, because their names are the only ones that the
Weekly mentioned when it talked about the contract.”
Lona looked from Bobby to Ted. “And that pokéball experiment… Didn’t you say they applied celestial mechanics to the new capsule design? They got them to condense matter. That seems like they knew from the beginning that they would be drawing their inspiration from space.”
“They did.” Ted bent over the box. “In fact… that’s exactly what connects them to Team Galactic. The government started the space program just three years after TGC broke up. I heard that there was a scandal of some sort, but I didn’t follow it, and it never occurred to me to save any newspapers. It was only after I found all this that I learned what TGC was. They were a company that tried to apply space technology to everyday uses. And when the government started the space program, they said that Team Galactic would do the same thing. They wanted to prove to people that they weren’t just exploring space for the glamour, but to make people’s lives better too. They meant for Galactic to pick up from where TGC left off, but they didn’t explicitly say that Team Galactic was the same company.”
He took out a chunk of papers and looked through them, before handing a newspaper clipping to Nancy. It was a summary of the President’s speech in 1951, when he had announced the founding of Sinnoh’s space program, as well as that of the company that would be carrying it out.
“That’s probably why there was no scandal…” Nancy murmured. “Team Galactic used its policy of secrecy to keep from having to mention where it came from. They just absorbed the company and started on a fresh page.”
Ned nodded. “That makes sense. Their names sound similar. Team Galactic, The Galaxy Corps…”
“And if they inherited resources, they’d probably inherit workers too,” Bobby said. He read along with Nancy, skimmed down a few paragraphs, then reached to tap the paper. “Right here. They said that Team Galactic would be headed by experienced officials who were involved in technological innovations, like pokéball refinement. And who do we know that likes to refine pokéballs? TGC.”
Tom looked at the journal that lay atop the box. “And who’s the third name on the pokéball article, the guy who was sitting right next to Allan Knight in the press conference?” He looked up at them all. “Stephen Adams.”
Nancy’s eyes flashed. “So those people in the article were some of the top guys of TGC. And when TGC became Team Galactic… they must have kept their positions.”
Everyone in the room exchanged a glance.
“Alfonso’s no Galactic grunt,” Nancy said. “He’s one of the
heads.”
I'm hoping to get it up before the end of May and finally end my streak of one-a-month chapters.