On just about any given day, the port city of Vermilion would be bustling with activity from five in the morning until long past midnight. Today, however, there was almost no spirit in the air at all. It might have been the cold January weather that took the liveliness out of the people on the docks, or maybe the fact that there had been delays due to iced-over water. Then again, the previous night might have contributed to the slowness of the day. Those who had gotten little or no sleep, and those that had grieved for the pokémon taken from them, walked the streets with dark lines under their eyes, on the edge of their patience, yet too tired to take out their aggression on anyone.
One house of the neighborhood stood as an exception to the drab behavior of the city. Loyal members of the Vermilion Pokémon Fan Club swarmed into the small building, pushing past the door one after the other, chatting all the while. Through the threshold, the scenery revealed a compact room, filled with comfortable-looking sofas and a large table in the middle. On the walls hung large pictures and paintings of happy-looking people with pokémon, and on the floor sat actual-size pokémon dolls, consisting mostly of Clefairy. Just above the door, a cuckoo clock struck seven, and a little wooden Pidgey statue popped out and squawked at each knell. The elderly chairman in a suit called the meeting to order, but order didn’t last long. In less than two minutes, club participants were gathered in clusters, fretting and raving about the pokémon they’d lost. Hardly caring if anyone was really listening, they jabbered their hearts out, seeking to get the rage and frustration off their chests. It was difficult for anyone to make out what the others were saying, over the din of many people talking all at once.
“You remember my Dodrio? The one I nicknamed Chocobo? He was faster than any flying bird, and his Tri Attack always gave an enemy some sort of status condition. And those bastards from G.R.I.P. just took him like he was theirs!”
“Dodrio is no great loss, you could always get another one in the Safari Zone. But my Jynx was irreplaceable-”
“Hey, screw you! I don’t care about getting another Dodrio. Chocobo was special! No one could ever replace him!”
“I had an Arcanine. He knew Extremespeed and Flamethrower, and I’d bought his Fire Stone and everything. Those good-for-nothings had no right to take him. Don’t they have enough in their stupid K-9 unit already?”
“Well I had an Eevee, and I never wanted to evolve her, ever! But that’s what they’re famous for. Even if I got her back tomorrow, how could I know who she is? What if those scumbags have turned her into one of the ugly evolutions? There are eight ways to screw her up forever!”
“It’s not fair that they, like, made us pick who we wanted to keep, while making us give up the others! It’s like forcing us to choose who would get saved out of a burning house. Like, like, who matters more, your father, mother, brother, or sister? That’s just cruel!”
“I couldn’t keep any of my pokémon! They were all classified as too strong. What the HELL, man!”
Outside the door, Kenta and Hibiki listened to the lamentations drifting through the window. Kenta shook his head and groaned. “Well, they’ve got the right attitude,” he said bitterly, “but I don’t know if I’d be able to take all this eternal bitching.”
“Hey, Moses had to deal with the Israelites for more than eighty years,” said Hibiki, half-jokingly. “You don’t have it so bad.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not Moses.”
“You’re going to have to be one.” Hibiki put a hand on Kenta’s shoulder, feeling it was his turn to support his older sibling. “Kenta. If this plan is to work, you need to be the strong Moses figure. You might not be able to talk with God face-to-face, but I’ll be your Aaron.” He patted his brother on the back, giving him the reassuring smile that Kenta so often put on for him. “Now get in there and perform a miracle.”
Kenta grinned weakly. “Alright, fine,” he said, standing up straighter. “But if you ask me to part the Vermilion Sea and lead these guys to Fuscia City, I quit.”
“Heh, Moses wasn’t actually the one to do that, anyway,” laughed Hibiki, pulling open the door for him. Kenta rolled his eyes and headed into the room first, and Hibiki followed, pulling the door shut behind him. Nobody took notice of the two newcomers, since all of them were completely preoccupied with talking about the pokémon they didn’t have anymore. Kenta listened to a couple more kids talk about their lost Nidoqueen and Alakazam, then put aside his patience and brought his fingers to his mouth. He whistled loudly, shrilly, in such a sharp pitch that it brought a complete hush on the club in a matter of seconds. All eyes turned on him, and Kenta steeled himself for his upcoming speech.
Don’t be afraid. Just call them out for what they are! You’ve got to MAKE them angry!
“Look at yourselves.” Kenta gazed around the room, at the surprised and skeptical faces that stared back at him. “Your once-proud pokémon teams are all but gone, and the best you can do is squeeze together in a stuffy room and gripe about it? I mean, come on- really? This isn’t going to change squat, you know. Which one of you has gotten back so much as a Weedle for his bitching and moaning?”
The trainers of the fan club continued to stare at him. Their deer-in-the-headlights looks came across to Kenta as extremely stupid, and he forgot his stage fright completely as genuine anger took him. “And why do you all look so shocked right now?” he demanded. “Have I said something strange? I can’t believe how weak you all are. The pokémon you’ve cherished your whole life are taken from every one of you in one night, and you aren’t even attempting to fight back. Not even by civil disobedience. You say you care about them, but you obviously don’t care that much. You guys make me sick. It’s fitting, really- you don’t deserve the pokémon you’ve lost anyway.”
“Who the friggin’ hell do you think you are?” challenged a teenage boy towards the back right-hand side of the room. “You’re not Brendan Birch, just ‘cause you’re dressed up like him.”
“Yeah!” chimed in another girl, standing up angrily. “What we do is none of your effing business, you fake, so just turn around and get out now!”
“That’s right!”
“You have no idea how we feel!”
Hibiki felt himself trembling slightly. He’d encouraged Kenta into this, but things were quickly turning ugly. Suddenly, he had a powerful urge to retreat, to leave this spot of burning discomfort, and go back out into the freezing evening air where it was quiet. This sort of pressure and abuse was too much for him.
“So, I have no idea how you feel, huh?” Kenta returned, his voice booming deeper and stronger than Hibiki had ever heard it before. He was holding up Bolt’s Friend Ball, and his eyes glistened with the light of battle. “You think I don’t know? Then here’s what I propose. Everyone who wants me to leave, battle me out. Prove me wrong. If all the pokémon you still have are stronger than the single pokémon I have, then I’ll go in shame. But if we win, then I get to declare EXACTLY how you feel- and you’ll realize I’m right.”
The fan club immediately burst into challenging calls of “fine!”, “let’s go outside!”, “this freak is mine!”, and a great deal of booing. Hibiki hurried to pull the door open again, and Kenta backed out, pulling Hibiki with him. The two brothers hurried to the other side of the street, and turned with their backs facing the sea. The fan club trainers piled out of their house and stood opposite to Kenta and Hibiki, pulling out their pokeballs in rapid succession. Shouts of summoning filled the air, and in burst after burst of blinding white light, the trainers’ pokémon appeared until they’d formed a solid wall. Hibiki eyed the opposing force; a Venomoth, three Jigglypuff, a Nidorino and a Nidoking, a Farfetch’d, two Poliwag, a Poliwhirl, two Pidgeotto, a Mr. Mime, two Raticate, a Rapidash, a Fearow, three Geodude, two Zubat, two Voltorb, a Vulpix, a Machop, two Gloom, a Clefairy, and two Pikachu. He couldn’t even clearly see the pokémon behind the front lineup, but he was fairly certain that there were at least two more waves after the first. Hibiki looked at Kenta; his brother appeared faint from the sight. “Kenta?” he asked timidly, holding up his Heavy Ball, “I . . . I can help you if you’d like. If we double-battle them, do you think we might win?”
Kenta shook his head, putting a hand over his eyes. Hibiki wasn’t sure he’d even heard him. “Man, these pokémon . . .” he muttered weakly, “. . . suck!”
Hibiki stared at him. “They suck?” he repeated, wondering if Kenta was serious. Kenta tossed his Friend Ball, still shaking his head. “Yeesh, this feels like a waste . . . but desperate times- you know the rest.”
Bolt’s gigantic Salamence body materialized between the Nyna brothers and their wall of opponents, and as he thudded to the ground, the entire front line cowered back a step. The fan club trainers gave yells of exclamation and disbelief, and Kenta pointed at the scattered first wave of opponents with a disgusted face. “You see, Hibiki,” he said, “Intimidate is one of the best abilities a pokémon can have. Any physical opponents severely drop in their status as a threat. The problem is, when they’re not a threat to begin with, it’s just embarrassing to watch.”
Hibiki could not stop himself from gawking at Kenta. Even for him, this was over the top. Hibiki understood that he was playing the part of the mean guy to be taken seriously, but there were limits to be considered. Whether true or not that the enemies were weak, their feelings had to be considered as well. But now wasn’t the time to tell Kenta. He was in his battle state, and the last thing Hibiki wanted to do was distract him.
“Give them the first move, Bolt,” Kenta commanded, “but use Protect. You’ve taken enough hits today already.”
“Hey!” shouted one of the fan club girls indignantly from the crowd, “that pokémon isn’t allowed to be used anymore! I checked!”
“Then take him from me, if you can,” responded Kenta in his resolute voice. “I’ve kept him out of G.R.I.P’s filthy hands until now; I’ll keep him out of yours.”
“We’ll see about that!” snarled a young man, whose age appeared to be just around eighteen. “Break through its defenses, Nidoking! Thrash attack!” His command paved the way for his colleagues, and every fan club trainer on the frontlines followed with shouts of their own. Flurries of leaves, blasts of fire, bursts of water pressure, pillars of lightning, and beams of psychic force all shot at Bolt at once, along with every sort of horn, talon, fist, beak, claw, and sharp fang imaginable. The Salamence was covered as all the attacks landed at once, and a cloud of smoke burst out from the scene. Hibiki held on tight to his hood as the air pressure blasted outwards from the impact, wondering frantically how anything could’ve hoped to survive such an outburst. Kenta, meanwhile, stood his ground, his arms crossed, his eyes observing the scenery as the smoke cleared.
Bolt was unscathed; his wings wrapped around his whole body but the tail, surrounded by a protective emerald-colored aura. As he unfurled his body, the aura vanished from sight, and he bellowed a ferocious roar at his legion of attackers. Lying around him were two fallen Pidgeotto, two Jigglypuff, and a Poliwag. Kenta pointed at them, retaining his strong voice so that nobody would miss his words. “Look at that!” he exclaimed angrily. “We haven’t even returned fire yet, and your own pokémon are hitting each other with their attacks! What if I were a real threat? The lot of you would be done for.”
“Don’t act all high and mighty, just because you avoided damage for one turn!” snapped the one girl from earlier. “Any pokémon can learn Protect. You’re just stalling your defeat!”
“Am I?” Kenta narrowed his eyes, irked at his opponents’ ignorance. “Then defeat us with the pokémon who can still battle after this move.” He pointed at the crowd of fan club pokémon still lined up in fighting poses. “Break them, Bolt! Earthquake!”
Hibiki knew what came next. He bent his knees as Bolt shot up into the sky, prepared to leap. As soon as the Salamence began his comet dive, Hibiki jumped as high as he could, and not a moment too soon. Bolt’s torso smashed the ground with all the force of a fallen jumbo jet, and the quake rattled every house within seeing-eye distance. A few windows shattered, and a couple of unfortunate fishermen on distant docks were thrown straight into the water. On the battlefield, not one ground pokémon remained standing. Hibiki climbed to his feet, and subconsciously inventoried the enemy pokémon still conscious. Remaining on the fan club’s side flew two Butterfree, a Farfetche’d, a Fearow, two Spearow, a Venomoth, a Beedrill, and two Zubat. Other than them, the vast majority was down for the count.
The Vermilion fan club stood surprisingly silent now, standing and staring at their fainted pokémon, all beaten by a single devastating move. Kenta waited a few seconds for the reality to sink in, then spoke once more, hoping to God that he wasn’t making the wrong decision. “I’m guessing you guys had somewhere between seventy to ninety pokémon before this,” he declared, less harshly than before. “Do you want to keep going with your last ten, or are you ready to quit?”
One house of the neighborhood stood as an exception to the drab behavior of the city. Loyal members of the Vermilion Pokémon Fan Club swarmed into the small building, pushing past the door one after the other, chatting all the while. Through the threshold, the scenery revealed a compact room, filled with comfortable-looking sofas and a large table in the middle. On the walls hung large pictures and paintings of happy-looking people with pokémon, and on the floor sat actual-size pokémon dolls, consisting mostly of Clefairy. Just above the door, a cuckoo clock struck seven, and a little wooden Pidgey statue popped out and squawked at each knell. The elderly chairman in a suit called the meeting to order, but order didn’t last long. In less than two minutes, club participants were gathered in clusters, fretting and raving about the pokémon they’d lost. Hardly caring if anyone was really listening, they jabbered their hearts out, seeking to get the rage and frustration off their chests. It was difficult for anyone to make out what the others were saying, over the din of many people talking all at once.
“You remember my Dodrio? The one I nicknamed Chocobo? He was faster than any flying bird, and his Tri Attack always gave an enemy some sort of status condition. And those bastards from G.R.I.P. just took him like he was theirs!”
“Dodrio is no great loss, you could always get another one in the Safari Zone. But my Jynx was irreplaceable-”
“Hey, screw you! I don’t care about getting another Dodrio. Chocobo was special! No one could ever replace him!”
“I had an Arcanine. He knew Extremespeed and Flamethrower, and I’d bought his Fire Stone and everything. Those good-for-nothings had no right to take him. Don’t they have enough in their stupid K-9 unit already?”
“Well I had an Eevee, and I never wanted to evolve her, ever! But that’s what they’re famous for. Even if I got her back tomorrow, how could I know who she is? What if those scumbags have turned her into one of the ugly evolutions? There are eight ways to screw her up forever!”
“It’s not fair that they, like, made us pick who we wanted to keep, while making us give up the others! It’s like forcing us to choose who would get saved out of a burning house. Like, like, who matters more, your father, mother, brother, or sister? That’s just cruel!”
“I couldn’t keep any of my pokémon! They were all classified as too strong. What the HELL, man!”
Outside the door, Kenta and Hibiki listened to the lamentations drifting through the window. Kenta shook his head and groaned. “Well, they’ve got the right attitude,” he said bitterly, “but I don’t know if I’d be able to take all this eternal bitching.”
“Hey, Moses had to deal with the Israelites for more than eighty years,” said Hibiki, half-jokingly. “You don’t have it so bad.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not Moses.”
“You’re going to have to be one.” Hibiki put a hand on Kenta’s shoulder, feeling it was his turn to support his older sibling. “Kenta. If this plan is to work, you need to be the strong Moses figure. You might not be able to talk with God face-to-face, but I’ll be your Aaron.” He patted his brother on the back, giving him the reassuring smile that Kenta so often put on for him. “Now get in there and perform a miracle.”
Kenta grinned weakly. “Alright, fine,” he said, standing up straighter. “But if you ask me to part the Vermilion Sea and lead these guys to Fuscia City, I quit.”
“Heh, Moses wasn’t actually the one to do that, anyway,” laughed Hibiki, pulling open the door for him. Kenta rolled his eyes and headed into the room first, and Hibiki followed, pulling the door shut behind him. Nobody took notice of the two newcomers, since all of them were completely preoccupied with talking about the pokémon they didn’t have anymore. Kenta listened to a couple more kids talk about their lost Nidoqueen and Alakazam, then put aside his patience and brought his fingers to his mouth. He whistled loudly, shrilly, in such a sharp pitch that it brought a complete hush on the club in a matter of seconds. All eyes turned on him, and Kenta steeled himself for his upcoming speech.
Don’t be afraid. Just call them out for what they are! You’ve got to MAKE them angry!
“Look at yourselves.” Kenta gazed around the room, at the surprised and skeptical faces that stared back at him. “Your once-proud pokémon teams are all but gone, and the best you can do is squeeze together in a stuffy room and gripe about it? I mean, come on- really? This isn’t going to change squat, you know. Which one of you has gotten back so much as a Weedle for his bitching and moaning?”
The trainers of the fan club continued to stare at him. Their deer-in-the-headlights looks came across to Kenta as extremely stupid, and he forgot his stage fright completely as genuine anger took him. “And why do you all look so shocked right now?” he demanded. “Have I said something strange? I can’t believe how weak you all are. The pokémon you’ve cherished your whole life are taken from every one of you in one night, and you aren’t even attempting to fight back. Not even by civil disobedience. You say you care about them, but you obviously don’t care that much. You guys make me sick. It’s fitting, really- you don’t deserve the pokémon you’ve lost anyway.”
“Who the friggin’ hell do you think you are?” challenged a teenage boy towards the back right-hand side of the room. “You’re not Brendan Birch, just ‘cause you’re dressed up like him.”
“Yeah!” chimed in another girl, standing up angrily. “What we do is none of your effing business, you fake, so just turn around and get out now!”
“That’s right!”
“You have no idea how we feel!”
Hibiki felt himself trembling slightly. He’d encouraged Kenta into this, but things were quickly turning ugly. Suddenly, he had a powerful urge to retreat, to leave this spot of burning discomfort, and go back out into the freezing evening air where it was quiet. This sort of pressure and abuse was too much for him.
“So, I have no idea how you feel, huh?” Kenta returned, his voice booming deeper and stronger than Hibiki had ever heard it before. He was holding up Bolt’s Friend Ball, and his eyes glistened with the light of battle. “You think I don’t know? Then here’s what I propose. Everyone who wants me to leave, battle me out. Prove me wrong. If all the pokémon you still have are stronger than the single pokémon I have, then I’ll go in shame. But if we win, then I get to declare EXACTLY how you feel- and you’ll realize I’m right.”
The fan club immediately burst into challenging calls of “fine!”, “let’s go outside!”, “this freak is mine!”, and a great deal of booing. Hibiki hurried to pull the door open again, and Kenta backed out, pulling Hibiki with him. The two brothers hurried to the other side of the street, and turned with their backs facing the sea. The fan club trainers piled out of their house and stood opposite to Kenta and Hibiki, pulling out their pokeballs in rapid succession. Shouts of summoning filled the air, and in burst after burst of blinding white light, the trainers’ pokémon appeared until they’d formed a solid wall. Hibiki eyed the opposing force; a Venomoth, three Jigglypuff, a Nidorino and a Nidoking, a Farfetch’d, two Poliwag, a Poliwhirl, two Pidgeotto, a Mr. Mime, two Raticate, a Rapidash, a Fearow, three Geodude, two Zubat, two Voltorb, a Vulpix, a Machop, two Gloom, a Clefairy, and two Pikachu. He couldn’t even clearly see the pokémon behind the front lineup, but he was fairly certain that there were at least two more waves after the first. Hibiki looked at Kenta; his brother appeared faint from the sight. “Kenta?” he asked timidly, holding up his Heavy Ball, “I . . . I can help you if you’d like. If we double-battle them, do you think we might win?”
Kenta shook his head, putting a hand over his eyes. Hibiki wasn’t sure he’d even heard him. “Man, these pokémon . . .” he muttered weakly, “. . . suck!”
Hibiki stared at him. “They suck?” he repeated, wondering if Kenta was serious. Kenta tossed his Friend Ball, still shaking his head. “Yeesh, this feels like a waste . . . but desperate times- you know the rest.”
Bolt’s gigantic Salamence body materialized between the Nyna brothers and their wall of opponents, and as he thudded to the ground, the entire front line cowered back a step. The fan club trainers gave yells of exclamation and disbelief, and Kenta pointed at the scattered first wave of opponents with a disgusted face. “You see, Hibiki,” he said, “Intimidate is one of the best abilities a pokémon can have. Any physical opponents severely drop in their status as a threat. The problem is, when they’re not a threat to begin with, it’s just embarrassing to watch.”
Hibiki could not stop himself from gawking at Kenta. Even for him, this was over the top. Hibiki understood that he was playing the part of the mean guy to be taken seriously, but there were limits to be considered. Whether true or not that the enemies were weak, their feelings had to be considered as well. But now wasn’t the time to tell Kenta. He was in his battle state, and the last thing Hibiki wanted to do was distract him.
“Give them the first move, Bolt,” Kenta commanded, “but use Protect. You’ve taken enough hits today already.”
“Hey!” shouted one of the fan club girls indignantly from the crowd, “that pokémon isn’t allowed to be used anymore! I checked!”
“Then take him from me, if you can,” responded Kenta in his resolute voice. “I’ve kept him out of G.R.I.P’s filthy hands until now; I’ll keep him out of yours.”
“We’ll see about that!” snarled a young man, whose age appeared to be just around eighteen. “Break through its defenses, Nidoking! Thrash attack!” His command paved the way for his colleagues, and every fan club trainer on the frontlines followed with shouts of their own. Flurries of leaves, blasts of fire, bursts of water pressure, pillars of lightning, and beams of psychic force all shot at Bolt at once, along with every sort of horn, talon, fist, beak, claw, and sharp fang imaginable. The Salamence was covered as all the attacks landed at once, and a cloud of smoke burst out from the scene. Hibiki held on tight to his hood as the air pressure blasted outwards from the impact, wondering frantically how anything could’ve hoped to survive such an outburst. Kenta, meanwhile, stood his ground, his arms crossed, his eyes observing the scenery as the smoke cleared.
Bolt was unscathed; his wings wrapped around his whole body but the tail, surrounded by a protective emerald-colored aura. As he unfurled his body, the aura vanished from sight, and he bellowed a ferocious roar at his legion of attackers. Lying around him were two fallen Pidgeotto, two Jigglypuff, and a Poliwag. Kenta pointed at them, retaining his strong voice so that nobody would miss his words. “Look at that!” he exclaimed angrily. “We haven’t even returned fire yet, and your own pokémon are hitting each other with their attacks! What if I were a real threat? The lot of you would be done for.”
“Don’t act all high and mighty, just because you avoided damage for one turn!” snapped the one girl from earlier. “Any pokémon can learn Protect. You’re just stalling your defeat!”
“Am I?” Kenta narrowed his eyes, irked at his opponents’ ignorance. “Then defeat us with the pokémon who can still battle after this move.” He pointed at the crowd of fan club pokémon still lined up in fighting poses. “Break them, Bolt! Earthquake!”
Hibiki knew what came next. He bent his knees as Bolt shot up into the sky, prepared to leap. As soon as the Salamence began his comet dive, Hibiki jumped as high as he could, and not a moment too soon. Bolt’s torso smashed the ground with all the force of a fallen jumbo jet, and the quake rattled every house within seeing-eye distance. A few windows shattered, and a couple of unfortunate fishermen on distant docks were thrown straight into the water. On the battlefield, not one ground pokémon remained standing. Hibiki climbed to his feet, and subconsciously inventoried the enemy pokémon still conscious. Remaining on the fan club’s side flew two Butterfree, a Farfetche’d, a Fearow, two Spearow, a Venomoth, a Beedrill, and two Zubat. Other than them, the vast majority was down for the count.
The Vermilion fan club stood surprisingly silent now, standing and staring at their fainted pokémon, all beaten by a single devastating move. Kenta waited a few seconds for the reality to sink in, then spoke once more, hoping to God that he wasn’t making the wrong decision. “I’m guessing you guys had somewhere between seventy to ninety pokémon before this,” he declared, less harshly than before. “Do you want to keep going with your last ten, or are you ready to quit?”