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Fun. - Some Nights [x]

There is a moment in any late night where you have to make a decision. It comes after you’ve exhausted every coffee mug in your kitchen. It comes after scribbling and suffering, pacing and planning.

It comes after writing and rewriting the same five lines until you forget what the point was. It comes after realizing that effort does not always equal value. It comes after realizing that you rarely ever break even.

There’s a moment in any late night when you remember that nothing you’ve ever done has ever had the impact you wanted. It comes before scrolling through years of old projects, convincing yourself over and over again that this is your job. This is what you do, and you’re good at it. Or, you were. All those other nights.

You wonder if you’ll ever do anything good for anyone again, or if there’s a point to doing this anymore. You shut your eyes and squeeze them tight and feel like you’re suspended in free space, weightless, drifting, and falling, falling-

Some nights you pry them open and force yourself back down at your desk. You put fingers to keypads and push and you push because you know it’s better than the alternative.

Queen - In Only Seven Days [x]

As the bullet train sped straight out of Saffron City, Bill watched the buildings fall out of view of his window and resolved that this would be the week he confessed his feelings to the girl who worked at the Goldenrod Flower Shop. This family visit would last a week. He had a full seven days to tell her how he felt.

Monday, he pulled into the Goldenrod Station, went home, unpacked. He kissed mom, hugged dad. 

Tuesday, he combed his hair, straightened his tie. He smelled his breath, ate a mint, smelled his breath again. He marched to the Flower Shop on the other side of town, opened his mouth, and said, “I’m lookin’ for some sunflowers.” He returned home embarrassed and distressed, holding a dozen sunflowers.

Wednesday he stayed home, because going two days in a row would look weird.

Thursday he spent all day pep-talking in the mirror. When the sun set he thought, “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Five days. Five whole days had passed since Viridian’s gym temporarily closed up shop. Okay, admittedly, Green could certainly say the break was more than welcome; rarely ever could the red lettered CLOSED sign be spotted hanging on the door, the guy never took days off, even considering a big chunk of the challengers who unconfidently stumbled in were fresh from Pallet Town with their ill-trained Squirtles, Bulbasaurs, and Charmanders unaware Viridian wasn’t their first stop. The first time – all those years ago, Arceus did Green feel old – it was a funny mishap, an honest mistake, Green would ruffle their hair, bid to see them again, and shoo them their merry little way to Pewter City, but the hundredth, let’s just say the smile he held in place was a little less cordial. It’s tedious, but he can’t keep this up forever. Challengers are scarce when you’re the last stop to the Indigo Plateau – a lot of young trainers flunk out along the way of their journeys, some just find another calling, and some simply don’t hold the drive to be the very best – but they do exist and Green’s personal team, and currently only team available, just doesn’t fit the bill.

Green’s job as a gym leader isn’t to stomp on every soul that dares step foot in his threshold, but to promote growth with Pokemon that reflect where a trainer logically should be when they come a-knockin’ – unless they’re the travelling trainer who collects badges from all the regions, still, Green has to keep it standard whether he’d like to whoop ‘em with his personal team or not. No biases. On-hand, his Pokemon are more suitable for a Battle Tower, Frontier, Tree, and the Pokemon World Tournament he participated in a few years back, not your run-of-the-mill gym battle which is why he found himself on the back of one mega evolved Pidgeot, he’s a little too tall these days for the Pidgeot’s normal 150cm, backpack strapped to his back en route of Cerulean City, with the command of ‘take it easy, boy.’ That wingspan can wreak some fuckin’ havoc.

Just before Cerulean, Green lets off around route 4, throws Pidgeot a treat before sending it back to it’s respective Poke Ball, and walks the rest of the way up to the cape. There’s a few waves shot in his direction as he makes it through the city, he waves back, a couple people even look like they want to chat, but Green, unprofessionally, scurries faster across the expanse of the city. This whole day is unprofessional, right down to showing up at Bill’s doorstep ‘cause Green needs results. The poor dude’s probably swamped with work yet here the gym leader is anyway, bag hanging off a single shoulder, extending an arm to knock, feeling something like an inconvenience.

Things with Bill have always been a little… odd. Green can’t exactly blame him, his childhood counterpart was rather unruly after all. A straight up shitbag, he isn’t afraid to admit it. He’s also acutely aware of the fact he hasn’t formally apologized for doing the man dirty either. He sighs, shoving his hands in his coat pockets, waiting for an answer.

The rise and fall is unmissable on Bill’s features, he starts anyway, “Hey, man, I don’t mean to be a pest,” No how’s it hangin’, how you been, or the like, “But something’s janked in my account, so I haven’t had access to my Pokemon for almost a week now. Had to shut down the gym ‘cause y’know no Pokemon, no gym. Think you can give me a look over?”

Bill takes a moment to collect himself before realizing he’s only standing there, gaping at the younger man. 

“Yeah, uh, sure thing,” he stutters, swinging the door open. “C’mon in.”

He ushers the kid inside, his mind flurrying with the pangs of remorse, guilt, and the fear of being found out. Of course his stupid stunt would inconvenience the whole town, the whole league, even! How had that never occurred to him before? He was selfish! A disgrace! Bill takes a few more moments to mentally scold himself before turning back to Green.

“Can I getcha anything? Coffee? Tea?” With one fell sweep of his arms he clears everything off the coffee table: papers, wires, and a napping Ada. He gives Green no time to respond, concluding, “I’ll put both on.” He does.

Facing the coffee maker on the kitchen counter gives Bill a chance to get away from Green. He hopes that one could just as easily interpret his nervous behavior as the habit of a man with zero time to spare. Both nerves and business act erratically, he reasons. Both are impatient, and do not do well with silence.

“Sorry about the delay,” he says with a laugh, pushing the button on his coffee maker. “Jes’ standard issue stuff, y’know. ‘Course, this wouldn’t be the longest time someone’s had to wait to battle the Viridian Gym Leader.” He laughs nervously, trying to remember if Green was old enough to get the reference. The coffee filters are in the cabinet below the counter. Bill bends down to grab one, and he stops when he notices marks on the side of the cabinet.

The marks are scratches, almost two feet off the ground and tiny. They’re practically unnoticeable unless you get up close, like Bill is now. The unmistakable mark of a clefairy. There has only ever been one clefairy in Bill’s house, and that was Bill himself. He’s sure he must have seen these scratches before, but he has no time to install new cabinets, so the most likely explanation is that he chose to forget about them, until now. 

It seems all too appropriate that Bill be reminded of them now, when the reason for their existence has come knocking on his door. He exhales sharply, grabs a filter from the cabinet, and springs back up to place it in the coffee maker. As he’s finishing the coffee, he realizes something.

It took the table ten years, but it’s finally turned. For while the scene of him and Green in this old cape cottage, one at the mercy of the other, is familiar, this time it’s Green who needs something. This time, it’s Bill’s turn to oblige. Or not.

It’s Bill’s job to fix this issue. It’s Bill’s job to help Green in his hour of need. But nowhere in his job description did it say he couldn’t have a little fun with it. He takes out two mugs and turns back to the gym leader.

“Well, it ain’t so standard stuff,” he says. “Between you an’ me, I’ve been tryin’ somethin’ new. I know you gotta get back, but maybe you’d like to take a look with me?” He runs over to his computer and shakes his mouse a few times.

Bill probably wouldn’t have built the Pokemon Storage System if he knew just how much maintenance it was going to require. Of course there would be some; it was just a natural process of a living piece of software. But it seemed like every year there was more and more to do and less time to do it.

Every time he was just about to get his hands really dirty with some machine or another, someone would ping his computer with what they claimed to be an urgent request. They were usually anything but: forgotten passwords, trouble logging in, storage upgrade requests.

Despite their minimal importance, Bill always fulfilled the requests with an uncanny timeliness. The response time was advertised as two to six business days, but Bill took pride in always delivering in one. He understood that the inability to reach one’s pokemon could count as a personal emergency, and he didn’t want to deny that kind of access to anyone, even for a second.

...with a few exceptions. Every so often he would recognize the name on a request and it would leave a bad taste in his mouth. Bullies from high school, socially inept friends-of-friends who rubbed him the wrong way, people who ate the last piece of food without offering it to the rest of the table first. Bill would see requests from these kinds of people and let them rot for the full six days before getting to them.

It wasn’t particularly malicious. He wasn’t breaking any contracts or laws. And, if he was being honest, whatever minuscule amount of power gotten from this act didn’t make him feel any better. It was just a bad habit at this point, and he couldn’t stop.

He was currently on day five out of six of sitting on one such request, which belonged to one Green Oak. Yes, that Green Oak: grandson of Sam, former champion of Kanto, current gym leader of Viridian. Green had been and done many things in his life so far, but to Bill he’d always be that smug, unhelpful brat from ten years ago, the one who’d refused to help him in his greatest hour of need.

He thought about it every time Green’s credentials popped up on his computer screen, how terribly afraid he’d been. How small he’d felt, trapped inside the body of a clefairy. How relieved he was when someone finally showed up to his cabin, and all they had to do was switch on a button! But Green had looked around, nabbed one of the tickets to the fancy SS Anne party, and left without a word. And with that, Green had doomed himself to an eternity of personally-cultivated slow storage system customer service.

Bill relished in this thought as he glanced over the current list of requests, sipping his third coffee of the day (number three meant it was just before lunchtime). Green couldn’t even know that what was happening was intentional; it was the perfect crime. Satisfied, Bill drained the last of his coffee before starting on the requests of those who hadn’t egregiously wronged him.

That was when the knock at the door came. Company always was a happy distraction from the mind-numbing work of maintenance. Bill left his computer, whistling some undiscernible melody, and went to answer the door. 

All throughout grade school the Sonezaki household was covered head to toe with flowers: bouquets of roses on the dining room table, vases of daisies on the coffee stand, azalea bushes planted amateurishly outside their door. All spoils of the Sonezaki Boy’s weekly visit to the Goldenrod Flower Shop, a run he claimed he made because his “ma just loved flowers.” It was believable because the retired Kimono Girl did have an eye for beauty, but the truth of the matter was that she had never once asked her son to pick up any flowers. When he refused to sit for ikebana lessons, Ma Sonezaki realized that her son’s interest in flowers had nothing to do with his heritage or natural curiosity. 

It had everything to do with the girl who sat two rows in front of Bill Sonezaki in class. She was sweet and nice with long blonde hair and a smile that made Bill feel like he’d just been run over by the Bullet Train whenever he saw it. Every morning she’d come to school smelling like flowers and fresh-cut stems and all those other smells left over from her morning work at the family flower shop, and every morning Bill would follow her around and breathe them all in and fall in love.

Bill never said anything, and neither did she, although his infatuation was obvious. But you never forget your first crush, and, more importantly, your mom never forgets your first crush. 

Bill is no stranger to the concept that technology is actually just a series of innovations stacked on top of each other. The simple fact that he currently resides on the shoulders of distinguished computer scientists and pokemon researchers never ceases to amaze him, although that’s not his favorite part about this whole process. 

“Drats, rattata, and tarnation!” 

Something was wrong in the Sonezaki household. Very wrong. Ada watched in dismay as her poor friend paced from the office to the kitchen to the bathroom and back again. Bill scoffed. He sighed. He drew numbers in the air. He planted his hands in his thick hair and tugged. 

Nothing was on fire. No relative was sick or dying. He had not been scorned by a longtime lover (he’d never even had one of those!). No, there was only one thing that could be wrong today.

‘Bill.’

“In a sec, Alan, this’s got me goin worse’n a weedle in my wagon.” He took a few more rounds about the house before finally rushing over to the computer and looking over his code once again. So many letters and numbers really started to get to you after a while. 

“Lessee here…That hash function’s right, I tested it hours ago…Right range in that there for-loop…add five to that thing there and do that over there and-“

‘Bill!’

“-Alan, I’m workin’ here!- Tryin’ a print statement-” His fingers moved across the keyboard deftly, and when he was done he flourished it with a decisive strike of the enter key. 

Nothing. 

“What in Arceus’s green earth am I missin’ in this damned program?” he cried to the ceiling of his cottage. 

‘BILL’

“WHAT, Alan?”

The abra floated up to the computer and extended a hand so that his finger pointed to a specific line of code. When Bill saw it, he bashed his head repeatedly against the desk. They said it together: