Pokémon x HONY

“How do you feel making it this far?”

“Can you tell me how you caught your Roselia?”

“It’s a funny coincidence. The day I caught her was simultaneously the best and worst day of my life.”

“Can I ask why?”

“My then-boyfriend broke up with me over the PokéNav that day. He didn’t even give me any concrete reason—just a simple ‘We should go our separate ways’ and a meaningless ‘I love you’. Needless to say, I was heartbroken, and I spent a good part of the day crying my heart out.

“I don’t know how much time had passed when she showed up, but I know it was at least a few hours since she was offering me a berry out of concern. I gladly took it, then I ended up venting out all my feelings to her. And even if she had no idea what the hell was going on, talking to her was so therapeutic.

“I’m treating my Pokémon to a night in one of Rustboro’s hotels later. We just came from a win against Roxanne earlier today, and we’re beyond excited to have our seventh badge!”

“That’s great! Congratulations.”

“My father owns the Safari Zone in Route 121. He used to charge people to enter the Zone and would make them use ‘special’ Poké Balls, which gave everyone the idea that this was where their money was going. In truth, those balls were just plain Poké Balls painted over to look fancy, and my father gets free shipments of those balls from a small Poké Ball factory his brother owns in Kalos. He made a huge profit from charging the visitors, so it didn’t take long for it to get to his head.

“He started raising the entry fees, with fees being doubled in less than a month. Visiting trainers noticed, and their number became less and less each time the price raised. To make up for it, he started cutting the salaries of his workers. In turn, his workers started quitting one by one. The whole situation made him so mad that one day, he made me and Mom pack our bags and move out to Kalos to live with his brother, and we couldn’t say anything to change his mind.

“While we were in Kalos, he tried asking himself what went wrong in the business. He started blaming the workers for leaving, then the trainers for not appreciating the Zone, until he finally realized that there was no one to blame but himself. He knew that he let his greed get the better of him, and as a result, the entire business went down the drain.

“It would be five whole years before we heard anything about the Zone again. My father got a call from one of his old business partners saying that the Pokémon he left in the area turned the Zone into a fully functioning ecosystem. Stricken with guilt, my father came back and reopened the Zone. This time, he removed the entrance fees and asked for volunteers to sustain the Zone’s day-to-day business, with he himself becoming one of these volunteers. He claimed that it was under new management, and he wasn’t really lying—by the time we moved back here, he was a changed man.

“I went to Kalos for a vacation last week, and the main thing that stuck with me was how sharply dressed everyone was. You’ll take centuries to find two trainers who dressed the same way. Heck, even the regular plaid skirts for Lasses they made fashionable with little trinkets and accessories.

“Part of me wants Hoenn to catch that trend with clothes, but part of me’s also thankful that we’re more laid back when it comes to fashion. I mean, when I saw the price tags of some of those accessories they were selling in Lumiose, I couldn’t imagine how a regular trainer could afford any of that. Not to mention that those expensive clothes would wear out so fast when you journey with them.

“I attended my first Wonder Trade event in Slateport today, and it was really fun! I’m pretty sure I’ll be going to many more in the future.”

“What did you like most about it?”

“I guess how large the whole thing is. I didn’t believe them when I heard that they were doing a simultaneous event across several cities, and I almost gave my ticket to someone when they said they were syncing it with other cities in Kalos. I thought, there’s just no way they could pull something that huge off!

“But when you’re in there, and you see all those screens showing groups of people with labels like ‘Lilycove’ and ‘Rustboro’ next to ones that say ‘Lumiose’ and ‘Kiloude’, all your doubts just leave you. It really brings it home how small the world is. I can’t wait for the trend to catch on to other regions—the more the merrier, after all!

“Anyway, we all put are Poké Balls in a huge machine, and after it made some really futuristic sounds, the Poké Balls were gone. I saw everyone’s eyes widen with mine, and I saw that everyone on the screens were the same. In a matter of seconds, a bunch of Poké Balls came out of the machine, only we knew that it wasn’t ours. From the pile, everyone in the building got one, and you couldn’t describe just how excited everyone was at the thought of getting a brand new Pokémon from who-knows-where.”

“What did you trade out, and what did you get?”

“I got my fifteen minutes of fame back in the day for being the first coordinator to beat Wallace after he won the Grand Festival. I managed to pull off a lucky final appeal with my Froslass that edged over his Milotic by a few points. The entire audience gasped, and the host stuttered when he proclaimed me as the contest’s winner.

"My less-than-appealing face was on the front page of The Hoenn Times, and my lucky appeal was played and replayed in the Hoenn News Network. I remember all the people who wanted to talk to me while I was shopping in the Poké Mart, the very same people who would cut in line or would ignore me if I wanted to ask a question. It was a real experience.

"I even got to be interviewed by the people in Hoenn TV. They dubbed it as ‘an exclusive interview on the contest world’s next rising star’. Rather than boosting my ego, it made me nervous that I had so much to live up to just because of a smarter-than-usual play in my end. But I won’t deny enjoying it. I guess I knew at the back of my mind that it wouldn’t last very long.

"I joined another contest later that week. For the first time, everyone in that Contest Hall was watching me, expecting me to continue my 'winning streak’ even if that contest with Wallace was my first win in months. My Froslass felt just as much pressure as I did, maybe even more. So both of us weren’t surprised when we lost that contest badly—I was fourth place by an unusually wide margin.

"The so-called supporters were quick to turn into bashers, calling my win with Wallace a fluke and deeming me unworthy of being the coordinator who broke his winning streak. Some people even called for a reevaluation of the judging for that contest to prove whether or not I actually earned that win. Fortunately, the reevaluation never happened, and I could still have the little shred of pride of claiming to have beaten a Top Coordinator in a contest.

“How long have you been working on the storage system?”

“I’ve been with it since its inception, actually, so that would be—oh—several years now. My partner, a Kantonian named Bill, and I went to Celadon University together, and one day, he shared the original prototype of the system with me. Back then, it had a text-based interface and was nearly unnavigable, and I told him that under no circumstances could he release something like that to you poor trainers. He invited me to help him develop the system further, and I gave it a proper GUI and cleaned up his code a bit. The system saw a worldwide release only a few months after that.”

“Ooh, that sounds like a lot of hard work! Can you share what challenges you faced in implementing it?”

“Well, it was hard at first to convince people to want it in the first place!”

“Whoa, really?”

“Yeah. It’s a great idea, and the general public thinks so now, of course, but how do you explain it to people who have no background in quantum mechanics, engineering, or digital physics? I can’t tell you how many times my partner and I have had to convince others that the system is perfectly safe, that Pokémon don’t feel a thing when they’re transferred, that it’s impossible to delete or modify Pokémon as they pass through the system, and so on and so forth. If you can think of a question regarding whether or not Pokémon would be harmed as they pass through the system, I’ve had to answer it at least 10 times.

“And that isn’t even getting into the financial aspect of it. I won’t go into too many details about that for fear of boring you, but let me just say that convincing people to invest in putting a PC in every Pokémon Center turned out to be far, far more complicated than figuring out a way to turn living creatures into electricity and data.”

“Huh, I didn’t know that! But hey, since we’re on the subject… I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering this, but how does it all work? You know, the process of storing Pokémon?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you all the details, partly because some of it is a trade secret and partly because the full explanation may take more time than you’d probably like. Whenever any of us—Bill, myself, or the other administrators, I mean—whenever we’re asked this, we often compare it to a telephone. Basically, a telephone works by converting the sound of your voice into electrical pulses, sending those through a wire as electricity or through the air as radio waves, and converting those pulses back into your voice on the other end. The storage system works in a similar manner. The matter converter breaks down a Poké Ball, draws it into the digital matrix, and sends it into our cloud-based system until you specify a destination whenever you withdraw a Pokémon. There’s a bit more to it than that, but then we’d have to get into the nature of Pokémon and how it’s possible for them to perceive their surroundings, even in an electro-digital state such as the one they assume inside a Poké Ball, and that gets a bit messy.”

“It all sounds so complex and fascinating. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that I couldn’t imagine being a trainer without the storage system! Is there anything you want to say to all the trainers out there whose lives have been made easier because of your work?”

“Much of what we do isn’t for you; it’s because of you. So the first thing I’d like to do is thank our users, not only for using the system but also for going out, exploring the world, and discovering new and exciting things. In turn, you inspire us to create and explore, and with your help, we come that much closer to understanding the Pokémon we share the world with. And with that said, second, never stop being curious. Keep exploring, and keep befriending the people and Pokémon you meet.”

“What has been the most difficult part of your journey?”

“When I had to release one of my Pokémon.”

“Oh, what happened?”

“There’s not much to say. From the moment I caught Mawile, I had doubts on her sticking around. Sure she was a powerful Pokémon and she pulled her weight in battles, but there was always this distance between us. Unlike the rest of my team, which I can all gauge the emotions of pretty easily, the only emotion I could get out of Mawile was indifference, if not discomfort.

"I felt really bad about it, since it was indication that I wasn’t a good trainer, but all the factors led to the decision of releasing her. It wasn’t as eventful as I thought it would be; she came out of her Poké Ball in a beam of blue, and something clicked within her. After a few moments, she looked at me with a vacant expression, nodded, and walked away.

“She’s better in knowing which ash to gather.”

“What’s the most difficult part about being a trainer?”

“As a trainer who isn’t obsessed with battling, it has to be, well, being myself. I became a trainer so I could catch a lot of Pokémon, so battling isn’t my priority. But when I go into one of my catching sprees, I have to reject at least a dozen requests for battles. There are a few who are understanding enough and back to leave it at that, but most of them are persistent and would only back down after at least five no’s. The worst ones are those who say some backhanded comment like, ‘What’s the use of being a trainer if you don’t battle?’

“You came from Johto? Me too! I used to live in Goldenrod.”

“Really? That’s cool! I grew up in Olivine.”

“Oh, wow. I always loved visiting the lighthouse there. It had an amazing view of the sea. Heck, that’s why I’m here right now, since it’s the closest thing to a lighthouse they got around here.”

“Yeah, I used to go there all the time when I was a kid.”

“That’s awesome. Me, I used to hang out at the National Park all the time. I could spend the entire day just walking around that park, and I was a frequent audience of the Bug Catching Contest. There’s such a nice feel to it that makes it like a second home, and sometimes even better than home, you know? Aw, I really miss it.”

“But hey, Hoenn’s not so bad, right? Is there any place in Hoenn you like hanging out in?”

“I’m probably gonna sound like a spoiled brat for saying this, but I don’t want to be Wattson’s gym trainer. I know that it’s difficult to even become one, but it’s pretty obvious that I don’t belong here. Most everyone here can’t stop proclaiming their love for Electric-types, but I honestly couldn’t care less about them.

“If my Meditite wasn’t a dead giveaway, I’d fit in more in Brawly’s gym. Fighting-types are the best, and I’d give anything to make my Meditite stronger under the guidance of a Fighting-type expert. Thing is, the reason why I’m here and not there is because I got rejected from being a gym trainer there. After I applied and failed, my friend told me that Wattson was open to having gym trainers that didn’t have Electric-type Pokemon—the only catch is that they needed to know at least one Electric-type move. So I taught my Meditite Thunder Punch, and here I am now.

“I don’t really know what to do. I wanna say that I’ll try applying to Brawly’s gym again, but it’s easier said than done. I wanna say that I’ll go on my own journey, but it’s not like I have the funds or the energy to do so. I wanna say that I’ll leave this gym and just look for another job, but Wattson’s the nicest dude in the world. But I don’t really wanna stay here since I know I’m meant for something else.