SURVIVAL PROJECT
chapter 12 ; [ATIS]
influence
*
Sai sometimes made me feel like I was making progress.
On one hand, I was able to leave Earl and the kids at the Violet City pokémon school. Sai had rescued me from a lifetime of boredom. But traveling with Sai was partly the same as living a nightmare. We were training for the sake of power and getting badges for the sake of saying we had them. Worst of all, we didn't have an overarching goal to reach toward.
The other half of the journey consisted of freedom and having the ability to explore the world. It was getting even better now that Sai was slowing down, but it wasn't good enough yet.
Pokémon don't often get a second chance to choose their trainers. I can only count on one hand the situations that could offer a second chance, and I don't even have that many fingers. Neither scenario is pretty. A trainer either dies or abandons his pokémon. I wouldn't wish that upon myself or anyone else.
When Marty came along, he presented the unthinkable. He forced us to reconsider Sai as a trainer. He forced Sai into thinking about our opinions, desires and dreams. Not many trainers have the guts to comply, mostly due to fear.
I wasn't sure what to say. Was it worth it to stay until the boy finished his journey and had to find something else to do with his life? Was it worth it to try to make it on my own in a society where pokémon are nothing more than pets or tools of violence? I could have weighed my options, but I needed more time.
So as we made our way to Goldenrod City, I still had a choice to make. Though Sai was strict, he wouldn't honestly take that choice away from me if I decided to bring it up again. He was following someone else's rules and setting aside his own, only allowing them to be set free when it was safe or necessary. And to him, I was necessary. I could say this with certainty, at least, when my life was anything but certain...
I
certainly expected Sai to keep going and going until he reached the gym, even if it took hours. It wouldn't be out of character for him.
But he stopped. I crashed into the back of his legs accidentally. I called his name, but he was lost while glancing at a lone building in front of us. A white fence surrounded the building, and the cries of happy pokémon could be heard inside. The sign ahead read,
Daycare Center—We Take Care Of All Pokémon! After what had just conspired, I wondered if he was going to abandon us here, but the idea fled from my mind as quickly as it came.
“A daycare is where pokémon can get taken care of, right? Fed and bathed and stuff?” he asked, turning toward Senori.
“I don't know,” Senori admitted, “but we can always go inside and ask, if you're really curious.”
“I am,” Sai said, moving toward the door.
Inside, there was an older woman sitting behind a counter, reading. She glanced up at us and stood, smiling as if there hadn't been visitors in years. Perhaps she was lonely after being with pokémon for so long. I would be lonely if I were in her position.
“Hello!” she said, putting her hands together and holding them up to her face gleefully. “Welcome! How can I help you?”
Sai didn't bother to greet her. “You take care of pokémon?” he said.
“Yes, me and my husband take care of pokémon here,” she said. Maybe she wasn't so lonely, after all. She went on, “He's in the back giving the pichu brothers a bath. That's one example of what we do here. If you need a vacation, we're here for you! If your pokémon wants a unique area to train in, we're here for you. We're here for any reason.”
“Ah, yes...” Sai said, rummaging through his backpack. “I caught a bunch of magikarp the other day. I can't carry more than six pokémon, and I know I won't be using them on my team, so...”
“So you want us to watch them?” the old lady finished for him.
“Exactly,” he replied. He took out one pokéball and placed it on the counter. He went through his backpack again and pulled out another. And another. And another. ...In total, I counted twenty of them. The old lady looked stunned rather than eager now.
“Son, do you know how much it's going to cost for us to watch these magikarp?” she asked.
I could see Sai's face turning red. “I don't know why I caught them. I mean, I was going to use them for food... but it doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore...”
“You were going to
eat them?”
“Yeah... Isn't that normal?”
She paused, then said, “I'm glad you're not going to eat them, at any rate. But it will cost a lot for you to leave them here, depending on how long it takes for you to come back.”
“I don't intend on coming back. I have no use for them. They're probably wishing for a reliable trainer... but that's not me. This is my way of showing them they were in my thoughts. I hope you understand. They were in an old, small cave with little water before, and here, maybe they'll be treated better.”
“So you're giving them to us permanently.”
“I will give you anything. I will pay you to take them from me.”
“That would be acceptable,” she said, then told him the price.
Sai paused while searching his backpack for money, as if he were going to decline the offer, but he went through with it anyway. He had a strained, guilty expression on his face as we left, thanking her for her services. The magikarp became an afterthought as we traveled toward our destination. I repeated that scene over and over in my head, noting how Sai could let go of pokémon if he really tried.
I supposed it was a manageable start.
*
Goldenrod City lived up to its name. The houses and buildings were built with yellow bricks, even the Pokémon Center, which at least had a medical sign on top to indicate its purpose. The pokémart was different too. Instead of it being a one floor stop for pokéballs and healing medicines, it was an entire mall. I didn't see anyone walk out with less than five bags in their hands.
“This city is huge,” Kuiora said, completely awed. We were getting ourselves familiar with an area we would be in for a few days at most, but it was worth it to her.
“It really is. What do they need all these buildings for?” Senori said to no one in particular.
“There's a gambling place,” I said, reading the signs as we went by. “And a radio tower. A flower shop, a bowling alley...” It occurred to me, then, that I should expose Sai to these other, non-pokémon related buildings. The worst case scenario involved Sai despising it all, but it was unlikely. The boy had seemed excited about everything in Azalea Town. Now that he was slowing down, no one could guess what would happen.
I pulled on Sai's pants, unsure if this was how I was supposed to get his attention. Was the gesture too much? Too little? My efforts worked regardless as he peered down at me, saying nothing in order to let me speak. “After we go to the Pokémon Center, why don't we, you know, explore the city thoroughly? If you're okay with that, that is...”
“Like go inside the buildings and stuff?”
“Yes!” I said. I was too loud, but things were going smoothly. “Um, again, if that's all right with you.”
After a few moments of awkwardness, he said, “Sure, if that's what you want. I have to go to the gym to set up an appointment first, but I'll make it happen in two weeks.”
This wasn't his ordinary self. Nevertheless, I was cheering on the inside.
*
Within the hour, the gym appointment was official. The leader, Whitney, was baffled by Sai's appearance and request, but she humored him and said she would definitely be available in two weeks. Sai explained he was following the rules now that he knew them better. I kept quiet, feeling just as obligated to go along with a stranger's rules.
That night, we all slept in the same Pokémon Center room. Although Sai was earning money through battles, he didn't have enough to cover a lot of costs right now. None of us complained. This was nothing knew, though there were whispers about food. I fell asleep that night with an empty belly, dreaming of what else Sai might secretly have known about me.
I took him to the shopping mall the next day. With it being so large, there had to be something worthwhile inside. And sure enough, there were floors dedicated to clothes, gifts, candy, video games, music, movies...
“You can buy us more shirts,” Kuiora said casually. She kept herself close to Ezrem, who had been tailing behind us since the Ilex Forest encounter.
“I don't want one,” Senori intercepted. “The last one covered my tail, which was weird.”
I wouldn't have minded a shirt that fit to feel more human, but I wasn't about to make Sai spend money uselessly. I pushed the boy toward the movie section since he was having trouble choosing a starting place, but he said, “I've never seen a movie. I don't know...”
“You've
never seen a movie before?” Rennio said, surprise eminent in his voice. “Even me and Ezrem have seen movies. With our old trainer, I mean. We saw one about a boy and a girl who wanted to erase their memories of each other, but then they changed their minds and had to go through an awful lot to remember everything.”
“Sounds interesting. ...People make up things like that?”
“You don't know the half of it. Watching movies is something everyone should do,” Rennio said, nodding.
“I don't think it'd be appropriate. Maybe some other time,” Sai said. I left it alone. The last thing I wanted to do was make him uncomfortable. I took him to the gift shop instead. Surely he had someone back home to buy a gift for... “There's one person,” he said. I got my hopes up before he added, “I don't know what she'd like.”
“The point of shopping is to look and see!” I said, literally pushing him over there. Where I was getting this motivation from, I didn't know, but it was nice. Sai accepted, which was even better.
The gift shop had wooden picture frames, bobble heads of various authority figures in the Johto region, collectible cards, cheap trinkets, plush dolls... As Sai browsed the aisles, Kuiora managed to find a totodile plush doll and hugged it tightly to herself.
“Look at this, Ezrem! This is what I used to look like. Aren't I much tougher now?” she asked.
“Yes! Very much so,” Ezrem said, smiling darkly.
Senori followed Sai. The sentret was always watching out for our trainer. I appreciated it, seeing as how I couldn't properly do it myself. I could do it now, if I tried. So I caught up to the two of them. We lingered in some aisles but not others. He wasn't interested in anything until he came across outdoor equipment. There were tents, sports tools and a shelf for smaller items like pocket knives. That's exactly what he picked up—a pocket knife. He held it in his hands, turning it over and over in his palm.
“You want
that for her?”
“That's not a very girly gift, Sai,” Senori said, teasing him as if the woman were his lover.
“She's a fan of weapons,” Sai said simply.
“Sounds dangerous,” Senori replied, his grin disappearing.
“Everyone's got a secret!” Ezrem said, coming up behind me and scaring me, nearly to death. My breath had accelerated in a mere second. I had a feeling he despised me for attacking his partner, but he made up for it with his terrifying personality.
“W-What do you mean?” I asked, wishing he'd leave. He was making me lose my confidence.
“Who knows what he
really wants to do with that knife?” He fluffed up his feathers, pretending like he wasn't insinuating anything. Sai didn't seem sinister, but if Ezrem saw that in him... “There's a secret in everyone! In everything! In every place! I bet plenty of people have stolen from this mall. My old trainer used to do that when she was out of money and desperate for food!”
“We're not stealing anything... even though we're low on money...” I said in Sai's defense. According to Ezrem, I was doing a pretty bad job of it.
“I'm just saying,” Ezrem said. “How well do you know your trainer?”
Not well enough. I kept my mouth shut.
“Ezrem, be nice,” Kuiora said. She had been giggling up until then.
“I
am nice! I'd like to know my trainer, so I'm watching Sai.”
“You're scaring Atis.”
“It's not my problem he gets scared so easily.”
“I don't care. Be quiet! You're not even Sai's pokémon,” Kuiora said. She was going back to her childish ways and here I was, being thankful for it.
Needless to say, Ezrem went quiet after that comment. He scoured Sai like a bird scours its prey. He made sure Sai bought the pocketknife, and that was the end of the journey in the mall.
*
Next, I brought him to the flower shop. It sounded innocent compared to the mall. Ezrem wouldn't bring me down this time. Because the flower shop was at the northern part of the city, I woke everyone early, resisting the urge to rest on the top bunk a while longer. It took a lot of shaking to wake Sai up, I noticed.
On the way there, the aroma of the city changed. Some of the city's air was polluted and not very appealing when breathed in. Now it was more pleasant and inviting, and we all felt comfortable.
Inside we discovered the source of the beautiful aroma. There were several women, each of them doing separate chores. One watered the plants, another placed them in a satisfactory order and the last waited at the counter for us. She seemed surprised, as if she didn't see a lot of men come by.
“Would you like to buy flowers today?” she asked sweetly, cupping her hands together and holding them behind her.
“Maybe,” Sai replied. He gave us permission to see what we wanted. Kuiora was attracted to the blue flowers almost instantly, with Ezrem and Rennio following close behind. Senori went to the red flowers, and I stood by the yellow ones. Sai roamed around, coming to each of us at least once.
When he reached Kuiora a second time, he picked out a blue flower, bent down to see her face-to-face, and he handed it to her.
“For you,” he said, smiling.
“Why?” she said as she reached out to him.
“For being my pokémon, of course.”
He gave me a flower as well as Rennio and Senori, expressing his gratitude. He even went over to Ezrem and thanked him for joining us, which was surprising. No one protested. Finally he approached each lady in the store and said, “You give out flowers every day, but how many times do you have flowers given to you?”
I enjoyed seeing him be so kind. Senori must have been impressed, too, as he copied Sai, trying to give a red flower to him.
“I don't deserve one, but thank you.” He took the flower from Senori, but put it back in the vase. He went to the counter to pay before any of us could do the same.
“You should take a vase with you too,” the lady at the counter offered.
“What do I do with it?” Sai asked.
“Fill it with water. Put the flowers in so they don't die. It's on us, since you were so nice.”
“It's okay. You don't have to...”
“We want to!
“It's just a vase, right?” he said, giving in. “Thank you as well.”
“Our pleasure.”
*
I didn't take the team anywhere the next day. Taking charge of my life—and his life—was absolutely draining. The others lounged around and talked idly as I lay in the top bunk. Sai filled the vase with water, as instructed, and put the flowers in, one by one. The bouquet's color combination didn't go well together, what with three blue flowers, two red, and one yellow. I smiled anyway, knowing that Sai had gotten the human interaction he desperately needed, especially after being rejected by both Marty and Sasha.
I thought, again, about the choice I had to make. Sai appreciated me, undoubtedly, and he wasn't out to harm me through pokémon training. It was his own preference. It just happened to be a preference similar to most others' in the world...
I couldn't think much more about it. I supposed I would keep going along with my plan. This wasn't something I had to rush at all.
*
Maybe I'd regret it later, but I took him to the casino. I'd heard horror stories of people coming addicted to gambling and losing their money, but we didn't
have much to lose. That, and Sai didn't seem like the type to get attached to one particular activity.
“It's loud in here,” Rennio complained the moment we stepped inside. Indeed it was loud, with the sound of coins clanging against machines. Victory music played in some spots, but not others. There were angry shouts and happy ones too. The atmosphere fit Sai perfectly, but he was lost.
“I have no idea what to do,” he admitted sheepishly.
“You've never heard of a casino, either?” Ezrem cried, trying to be heard over the music.
“No.”
“I know where you can start,” Ezrem said. I forgave him, then, for the ordeal at the shopping mall. He navigated the rows of games and slot machines. Soon we reached a table that had a wheel on top. The wheel consisted of black and red lines with numbers on them. People crowded around, murmuring excitedly. “Roulette. You make bets on what color you think the ball will land on. Or you can bet on what kind of number the ball will land on. Whatever you want!”
“Sounds easy,” Sai said. So he made bets. We sat around him, watching intently. Most of the others made complicated bets to earn more money. They offered thirty pokédollars if the ball landed on a red number between one and eighteen, for example. Sai focused on simplicity. “It will land on black,” he said. When he was asked to put money on the table to bet with, he gave me a ferocious look. I shrugged my shoulders.
It turned out that Sai didn't have to worry about money. In fact, it was the exact opposite. He won his first bet and made a profit. Then he won again... and again... He was good at guessing, even with low odds and a luck factor. He
did lose once or twice, but he wasn't too far off the mark during those rounds.
The scene reminded me of the die he carried around. When he introduced himself as my new trainer, he had commanded me to roll the die, somehow knowing that the outcome would show three black dots. Was his intuition
that reliable? It was the only plausible explanation.
He was smiling by the time he quit, saying, “Now we can have food and a room at the Pokémon Center tonight!”
That was all that mattered to him. He didn't want to leave and explore the other games. His childish eagerness over adult-like responsibilities made me giggle. The others laughed too. Was a happy hitmontop that funny? It was rare, at any rate.
*
On the last day of our adventure, I decided to take him to the radio tower. I didn't
know it would be the last place we would go... I just knew that Earl used to listen to the radio back in Violet City, and the people broadcasting always had something fascinating to say. There was no end to the things they could share. This, to me, was necessary to show Sai.
My plan didn't work.
We woke up early once more. Sai was more energetic this morning, probably because of yesterday's success. When we arrived, the guard told us everyone was entitled to one free tour, as maintenance was being performed upstairs and we weren't allowed to go up the stairs. Sai thanked him and began wandering. At first, the building was plain, its only striking feature being the counter where many exciting things seemed to be happening.
“Well,” Sai said shortly, “this is it.”
“I guess so,” I said, disappointed, despite the warning we received.
“Don't look so forlorn, boy!” called a man behind the counter. He had headphones on and spoke too loudly for his own good. “Come over here!”
Sai obeyed him. We got a closer look at the machinery the guy had. A microphone accompanied the headphones, and the flat part of the machine had a ton of buttons and words on it. I couldn't read any of it from so far away.
“Hello!” the man continued. “Welcome to the radio tower. I know you can't go upstairs, so you're probably wondering why you came here...”
“Definitely,” Kuiora butted in, peaking her head up over the counter.
“You can get your spot on the radio right here! See this jar?” he said, pointing to it. “If you pay a small amount of money, I'll record your voice so it appears on the radio. You can say just 'bout anything you want!”
“Anything we want?” Ezrem said.
“You must be appropriate, of course.”
“Never mind.”
“What about you guys? Some like to vent, others say hi to their families, others talk about their pokémon... Why, the other day, someone came in here and had the nerve to mention that they had seen a Team Rocket member floating around the city recently.”
His voice was quieter now. Sai's body tensed.
“T-Team Rocket?” he said.
“Yeah, the group of bad guys that took over—”
“I'm sorry, but I gotta go,” Sai said. He had turned and walked away before he was done apologizing.
We followed. Senori broke the silence and said, “Are you guys confused? Because I'm confused.”
“We don't have time to think! Let's go!” Kuiora said, pulling on Rennio's plugs and Ezrem's wings to make them move faster.
We struggled to tag along, even after we were back out in the city air. Senori asked me what had happened. He ran on all fours, urging me to hurry. I had no answer for him. We reached the Pokémon Center, but our room was locked. None of us dared to disturb our trainer.
We fidgeted, asked more questions and waited. Sai showed his face a couple hours later. “Atis?” he said, barely cracking the door open.
“Y-Yes?” I said. I tried to stand, but my foot was asleep. It occurred to me that I was responsible for this mess, yet I didn't know how to take full responsibility.
“Come in here, please,” Sai said. His soft voice calmed my nerves, but not by much. I stumbled over Kuiora's tail and she squealed. Then Sai seemed like the least threatening of us all, so I went into his room and slammed the door before she could yell at me.
“Atis...”
I nodded.
“We'll have to go to the gym as soon as possible now. Forget the appointment,” Sai said. “These people are following me. I just know it.”
“W-Who's following you, Sai?”
Sai paced back and forth, afraid to respond. “Do you want to be friends or something? Are you feeling like the others are getting more attention? I didn't know. You should have told me.”
I stared at him, caught off guard. “N-No, that's not—”
“I don't know how to be close to people. Or pokémon, for that matter,” he said solemnly. “I'm not
allowed to be close to anyone, so it's fine. But if that's what you want...”
I expected him to continue, but he didn't. His dark blue eyes were full of sadness. His panic had subsided. He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a marker, which I didn't know he had.
“I use it to practice writing sometimes,” he said, as if that clarified anything. “This might sound weird... I don't know... We can share secrets, all right? You share one secret, and I'll share one of mine. You can read my secret, but I won't read yours. You can write it on my back, and I'll write yours on a piece of paper, since you don't wear shirts.”
A secret? About me? About
him? I had never told anyone anything about myself due to shyness. But if he were willing to tell me something... How could I let this chance slip by?
“That could make us feel closer, you know. Since that's what you want.” He picked up a piece of paper off the nightstand. The paper was meant to hold the Pokémon Center's house rules, but he took the marker and wrote over the words. It took him a long time to finish, as if writing each letter was agonizing for him.
When he was done, he took off his shirt. Earl had always told me to look away out of self-consciousness, so I didn't look at Sai, either. But then he came to me and bent down, making it hard not to see him. He handed me the marker and nodded.
“This is...” I said, trailing off. I didn't know how to put it. It was weird, writing on a human's back, was it not? Would it wash off? What if someone else saw? And Sai didn't have to know if I wrote nothing of importance...
But Sai was calm. I wanted to keep him calm. So I took the marker and wrote on his back as quickly as I could to get the awkwardness out of the way. I didn't even have to think about my secret.
I wish I was human.
If I were human, I'd do my best to get rid of my shy demeanor. I'd travel through the regions. I'd meet all kinds of great people, and all the terrible people too. I'd protect myself rather than have pokémon protect me. As I traveled, I'd find out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I wished the same for Sai.
I thought I had done a decent job in the last week. I was helping Sai recover from his mania, proving to him that there was more to life than he could ever know. Then he turned paranoid, and everything went downhill. His reaction to the radio tower was illogical to me, but there was nothing I could do to prove no one was following him. Besides, I had my own decisions to think about. I chose to wait it out some more, not only out of worry for Sai, but out of fear for the decision's aftermath.
Sai jarred me out of my thoughts as he handed me the piece of paper he had written on. He couldn't look me in the eyes. I went to read it, terrified and drawn to him all at once.
I am always sick.