Azalea Town’s Officer Jenny was reading the morning paper at the desk of the police station when the door jingled and she saw a figure entering in with a stride to his step. She straightened up out of her seat and saluted her fellow officer smartly, as the custom went.
“Good . . . late morning, Jenny,” Kenta said with a brisk smile, returning the salute. She relaxed and looked him up and down guardedly, putting a hand under his chin. “Good morning. Let’s see . . . do I know you?” she asked with an eyebrow raised. “I can’t explain it, but you look . . . awfully familiar.”
“Fa . . . miliar?”
Officer Jenny suddenly snapped her fingers, her face brightening. “Aha! I thought I recognized your face. You’re Kenta Nyna, aren’t you?”
Kenta tensed, gritting his teeth to keep from giving his shock away. No! She knows who I am? Have I been found out already?!
“Oh, come here, come here!” cheered Officer Jenny elatedly, putting out her hand and beaming enormously. “I had no idea you’d become part of the force! But after that incident three years ago, I’m not surprised. Congratulations!”
Relaxing on the inside, Kenta put out his hand and shook Officer Jenny’s gloved one, grinning modestly. “Eh, heh, heh, I’m surprised you remembered.”
“Who could forget?” Jenny pumped his arm continuously, still smiling widely. “You and old man Kurt were something else, when you went down and rescued all our town Slowpoke single-handedly from that horrible Rocket tail-cutting operation. I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before you became a real officer!”
“Y-yeah,” said Kenta, flexing his fingers a bit in Jenny’s grasp as his hand continued to be rattled up and down. Getting the hint, she let off, and saluted him again proudly. “So! What brings you back to Azalea Town, Officer Kenta?”
“Well, it’s funny you should bring up the past,” said Kenta, scratching the back of his head casually. “I believe you have Kurt Kuchinawa himself in your holding cells, right now. I need to interrogate him, if now’s a good time.”
“Oh.” Officer Jenny’s face fell. “Yes, go ahead. Now’s a good time all right, but trust me, the bad times are imminent.” She pointed out the glass doors, through which Kenta had entered, to the empty streets outside. “There are a lot of angry pokémon trainers out there- or should I say, former pokémon trainers- who are still waking up this morning to realize that their pokémon are really gone. It’s the quiet before the storm, I know it. Be careful, Kenta, there may be quite a few rioting incidents in the next couple of months before everyone’s used to this new system.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” answered Kenta, waving as he pushed through the door leading to the back of the police station. Yes, there’s going to be trouble all right, he thought grimly, heading down the hall towards the cells downstairs. But with any luck, we can resist assertively without being flat-out violent. People with hope are a lot more reasonable than people without it.
As Kenta passed the jail cells, a couple of the prisoners leered at him, and one made a hacking noise in his throat, as if to spit up a ball of mucus at him. “So,” came a sneering voice from a cell he’d just passed, “the little hero returns.” Kenta stopped, staring straight ahead. He vaguely recognized the voice, as the speaker went on cynically. “Come to take something else away from us, huh? I can’t imagine what more you could want.”
“Do you think I’m here to talk to you guys?” he asked quietly. A splatter of of spit landed a few inches away from his shoe, and he smiled bitterly. “Well . . . you’re right. But wait your turns, okay?”
“Who’s that?” came an elderly, wheezy voice from the furthest cell at the end of the room. “I know that voice from somewhere . . . you’re not Curtis though, are you?”
Kenta stepped in front of the bars and looked through, smiling at the man he saw on the other side. “Hello, Elder Kurt,” he said, pulling up an interrogation stool sitting against the wall and seating himself on it. “You’re looking good for your age.”
The short and balding man gazed keenly at Kenta with a pondering hand over his mouth, and his eyes widened in recognition. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, breaking out in a semi-toothless smile. “It’s the boy with the Cyndaquil from back in the good old days. You’re taller than me now!”
“Heh, at this point, Maisy probably is, too.” Kenta pointed over his shoulder. “I meant to ask Curtis about her, but it slipped my mind. Is she still with you?”
“No, she’s been home with her parents.” Kurt shook his head sadly. “It’s just as well. I wouldn’t want my granddaughter seeing me in here like this. It would break her little heart.”
Kenta leaned closer to Kurt’s cell and lowered his voice. “But you didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered in a reasoning tone. “You were just doing what you do best- helping pokémon trainers during their journeys, and keeping alive the tradition that your parents started.”
Kurt snorted. “It doesn’t matter anymore. The good days are over, anyway. It’s just as well that I’m confined to this cell . . . at least I can be ignorant of the outside world, as it is these days.”
“Oh, don’t say that. We’re just going through some hard times. It’ll get better.”
“How do you know . . . Officer?”
“Because I’m offering you the chance to continue doing what you do best,” said Kenta calmly, reaching into his pocket and feeling around for what he was looking for. His fingers passed over the cold metal of Shin’s lockpick, and rested on the cool cylindrical sphere which never left his side. Pulling it out, he passed it through the bars to his jailed companion. “Do you recognize what this is?”
Kurt stared down at the Master Ball in Kenta’s hand, then picked it up in his own and examined it with fascinated eyes. “But . . . but . . . where did you get this?” he whispered loudly, his voice choked with awe. “This is the World Wonder of Japan!”
“Yeah, and soon the world may very well wonder how we became the next WWII Germany,” Kenta said dourly, narrowing his eyes. “You may not know this, but our government seized all data on the Master Ball after shutting Silph Corporation down two months ago. On top of that, they’ve got over ninety percent of all the trained pokémon in Japan, and the few remaining people who can still be legally considered trainers have barely any power at all.
“Do you understand what I’m getting at? Led by G.R.I.P., the government now has control over an obedient army of super-creatures who can do virtually anything. They don’t need us normal people for anything but work. How long will it be before some corrupt politician attempts to become a ruler with this new power? What will we do, then?”
Kurt looked horrified. Around Kenta, he could hear eavesdropping prisoners muttering to each other. He caught little bits of words and phrases, such as “got a point,” “never liked them,” “conspiracy theorist,” and “I knew it!” Ignoring them for now, he focused his eyes on Kurt, who was still grasping the Master Ball. “Maybe I’m just paranoid, but there’s no excusing the fact that we have a major power difference between the government and the people of Japan as of this morning.”
Kenta pointed at Kurt’s gnarly hands. “That’s where you come in. Kurt, you’ve got the experience and wisdom needed to analyze the Master Ball to the fullest. I need you . . .” He annunciated his words intently. “To duplicate it.”
“ . . . . . Duplicate it, you say.”
“As many times as you can.”
Kurt shook his head. “Even if that were possible, I can’t expect to do anything in here. That Officer Jenny woman comes to inspect my cell every day, she’ll find any new item that I’ve got.” He shook his head a second time, with a defeated expression. “I can’t even be angry with her. She does seem to feel sorry that I’m in here, after all the years we’ve known each other in this town.”
Is that right? Hmmm . . .
Kenta put his hand through the bars of Kurt’s cell, a solemn expression on his face. “I can free you, right here and now,” he said seriously, as Kurt looked at him. “But afterwards, you’ll have to be on your guard like never before in your life. You’re going to be visited by the police again, and criminals too, along with all sorts of other people you’ve never seen before. And you will have to deal with all of them in the exact right way, to avoid being imprisoned again, or worse. Nevertheless, you may be the difference between a free Japan or an enslaved Japan, in the near future.”
Kurt grasped Kenta’s hand immediately with both of his own, placing the Master Ball back in his palm. There was a gleam of excitement in his glazed old eyes. “Now, who do you think I am?” he asked gruffly, mirroring Kenta’s expression with a wrinkly smile. “When trouble arises, I don’t hesitate for a moment. Throw your worst at old Kurt, and just see what happens!”
“That’s the attitude I remember you by.” Kenta turned away from Kurt’s cell and looked down the prison hallway at the other cells containing offenders of the law. “Then I’ll be back in a minute to get you out. But before I go . . .” They’re all Rockets. Leave it to Team Rocket to make us require an entire police station for pokémon-using felons alone. “You guys heard everything, as I intended you would. Now you know what’s going on. What you choose to do with this information is your call. My name is Kenta Nyna, and as of this moment, you may consider me your ally.”
“And why should we do that?” came a challenging voice from a cell one spot over Kurt’s. Kenta approached it, feeling a sudden tingle of hope for some reason, and beheld a rather short young man at approximately his own age glaring at him. “You got me arrested back during the Lake of Rage incident,” he said angrily. “What reason do I have to trust you?”
Hey . . . I remember this guy. He was the short kid whose mask was always slipping off because he couldn’t tie it on properly. At that time, he was only fifteen years old . . . and yet he owned a Crobat. That one creature proved to be one of the toughest opponents a Rocket has ever thrown at me.
“You’re right.” Kenta reached into his pocket and pulled out the lockpick Shin had given him a few months back. “How can you know if I’m really trustworthy or not? Well, the fact is, you can never be sure.” He pointed at the Rocket with the butt of his lockpick. “What’s your name?”
“ . . . Yosuke. Shimera Yosuke.”
Kenta smiled humorlessly. “I see. Well then, Yosuke, here’s what you can do now.” He flipped open the lockpick’s blade, pointing it in his own direction. “You can stab me right here and now, for being a lying troublemaker. Technically speaking, I’m already one anyway.” He snapped the knife blade back in, and flicked out the lock-picking device. “Or . . . you can wait until the right moment to break out of here. You know these guys better than me, so take the ones you trust with you.”
He pushed the lockpick through the bars, into Yosuke’s hands. The latter looked stunned, and Kenta felt a little surprised at himself for what he’d just done. Nevertheless, he kept up his calm act, knowing he couldn’t afford to show weakness. He’d rehearsed this scenario already, and now that it had come, he had to pull it off correctly. “You’ll have no pokémon once you make it back to the other side, but that can be arranged, Yosuke. Come see Kurt and Curtis at the last house west of the village, before Azalea Forest. To show that you’re a friend, give them the password, which is . . .”
Kenta made sure nobody heard him, as he whispered a single word to Yosuke. Moving again to leave, he stopped, nearly forgetting something, and backtracked to Kurt’s cell. “Sorry,” he said, putting his hands together apologetically. “I need to catch up with my brother once I’ve gotten you out, so I’ll leave you with this.” Once more, he transferred the Master Ball to Kurt, who shoved it into his kimono inner pocket. “I should tell you, there’s something you should know about that ball . . .”
“Good . . . late morning, Jenny,” Kenta said with a brisk smile, returning the salute. She relaxed and looked him up and down guardedly, putting a hand under his chin. “Good morning. Let’s see . . . do I know you?” she asked with an eyebrow raised. “I can’t explain it, but you look . . . awfully familiar.”
“Fa . . . miliar?”
Officer Jenny suddenly snapped her fingers, her face brightening. “Aha! I thought I recognized your face. You’re Kenta Nyna, aren’t you?”
Kenta tensed, gritting his teeth to keep from giving his shock away. No! She knows who I am? Have I been found out already?!
“Oh, come here, come here!” cheered Officer Jenny elatedly, putting out her hand and beaming enormously. “I had no idea you’d become part of the force! But after that incident three years ago, I’m not surprised. Congratulations!”
Relaxing on the inside, Kenta put out his hand and shook Officer Jenny’s gloved one, grinning modestly. “Eh, heh, heh, I’m surprised you remembered.”
“Who could forget?” Jenny pumped his arm continuously, still smiling widely. “You and old man Kurt were something else, when you went down and rescued all our town Slowpoke single-handedly from that horrible Rocket tail-cutting operation. I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before you became a real officer!”
“Y-yeah,” said Kenta, flexing his fingers a bit in Jenny’s grasp as his hand continued to be rattled up and down. Getting the hint, she let off, and saluted him again proudly. “So! What brings you back to Azalea Town, Officer Kenta?”
“Well, it’s funny you should bring up the past,” said Kenta, scratching the back of his head casually. “I believe you have Kurt Kuchinawa himself in your holding cells, right now. I need to interrogate him, if now’s a good time.”
“Oh.” Officer Jenny’s face fell. “Yes, go ahead. Now’s a good time all right, but trust me, the bad times are imminent.” She pointed out the glass doors, through which Kenta had entered, to the empty streets outside. “There are a lot of angry pokémon trainers out there- or should I say, former pokémon trainers- who are still waking up this morning to realize that their pokémon are really gone. It’s the quiet before the storm, I know it. Be careful, Kenta, there may be quite a few rioting incidents in the next couple of months before everyone’s used to this new system.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” answered Kenta, waving as he pushed through the door leading to the back of the police station. Yes, there’s going to be trouble all right, he thought grimly, heading down the hall towards the cells downstairs. But with any luck, we can resist assertively without being flat-out violent. People with hope are a lot more reasonable than people without it.
As Kenta passed the jail cells, a couple of the prisoners leered at him, and one made a hacking noise in his throat, as if to spit up a ball of mucus at him. “So,” came a sneering voice from a cell he’d just passed, “the little hero returns.” Kenta stopped, staring straight ahead. He vaguely recognized the voice, as the speaker went on cynically. “Come to take something else away from us, huh? I can’t imagine what more you could want.”
“Do you think I’m here to talk to you guys?” he asked quietly. A splatter of of spit landed a few inches away from his shoe, and he smiled bitterly. “Well . . . you’re right. But wait your turns, okay?”
“Who’s that?” came an elderly, wheezy voice from the furthest cell at the end of the room. “I know that voice from somewhere . . . you’re not Curtis though, are you?”
Kenta stepped in front of the bars and looked through, smiling at the man he saw on the other side. “Hello, Elder Kurt,” he said, pulling up an interrogation stool sitting against the wall and seating himself on it. “You’re looking good for your age.”
The short and balding man gazed keenly at Kenta with a pondering hand over his mouth, and his eyes widened in recognition. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, breaking out in a semi-toothless smile. “It’s the boy with the Cyndaquil from back in the good old days. You’re taller than me now!”
“Heh, at this point, Maisy probably is, too.” Kenta pointed over his shoulder. “I meant to ask Curtis about her, but it slipped my mind. Is she still with you?”
“No, she’s been home with her parents.” Kurt shook his head sadly. “It’s just as well. I wouldn’t want my granddaughter seeing me in here like this. It would break her little heart.”
Kenta leaned closer to Kurt’s cell and lowered his voice. “But you didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered in a reasoning tone. “You were just doing what you do best- helping pokémon trainers during their journeys, and keeping alive the tradition that your parents started.”
Kurt snorted. “It doesn’t matter anymore. The good days are over, anyway. It’s just as well that I’m confined to this cell . . . at least I can be ignorant of the outside world, as it is these days.”
“Oh, don’t say that. We’re just going through some hard times. It’ll get better.”
“How do you know . . . Officer?”
“Because I’m offering you the chance to continue doing what you do best,” said Kenta calmly, reaching into his pocket and feeling around for what he was looking for. His fingers passed over the cold metal of Shin’s lockpick, and rested on the cool cylindrical sphere which never left his side. Pulling it out, he passed it through the bars to his jailed companion. “Do you recognize what this is?”
Kurt stared down at the Master Ball in Kenta’s hand, then picked it up in his own and examined it with fascinated eyes. “But . . . but . . . where did you get this?” he whispered loudly, his voice choked with awe. “This is the World Wonder of Japan!”
“Yeah, and soon the world may very well wonder how we became the next WWII Germany,” Kenta said dourly, narrowing his eyes. “You may not know this, but our government seized all data on the Master Ball after shutting Silph Corporation down two months ago. On top of that, they’ve got over ninety percent of all the trained pokémon in Japan, and the few remaining people who can still be legally considered trainers have barely any power at all.
“Do you understand what I’m getting at? Led by G.R.I.P., the government now has control over an obedient army of super-creatures who can do virtually anything. They don’t need us normal people for anything but work. How long will it be before some corrupt politician attempts to become a ruler with this new power? What will we do, then?”
Kurt looked horrified. Around Kenta, he could hear eavesdropping prisoners muttering to each other. He caught little bits of words and phrases, such as “got a point,” “never liked them,” “conspiracy theorist,” and “I knew it!” Ignoring them for now, he focused his eyes on Kurt, who was still grasping the Master Ball. “Maybe I’m just paranoid, but there’s no excusing the fact that we have a major power difference between the government and the people of Japan as of this morning.”
Kenta pointed at Kurt’s gnarly hands. “That’s where you come in. Kurt, you’ve got the experience and wisdom needed to analyze the Master Ball to the fullest. I need you . . .” He annunciated his words intently. “To duplicate it.”
“ . . . . . Duplicate it, you say.”
“As many times as you can.”
Kurt shook his head. “Even if that were possible, I can’t expect to do anything in here. That Officer Jenny woman comes to inspect my cell every day, she’ll find any new item that I’ve got.” He shook his head a second time, with a defeated expression. “I can’t even be angry with her. She does seem to feel sorry that I’m in here, after all the years we’ve known each other in this town.”
Is that right? Hmmm . . .
Kenta put his hand through the bars of Kurt’s cell, a solemn expression on his face. “I can free you, right here and now,” he said seriously, as Kurt looked at him. “But afterwards, you’ll have to be on your guard like never before in your life. You’re going to be visited by the police again, and criminals too, along with all sorts of other people you’ve never seen before. And you will have to deal with all of them in the exact right way, to avoid being imprisoned again, or worse. Nevertheless, you may be the difference between a free Japan or an enslaved Japan, in the near future.”
Kurt grasped Kenta’s hand immediately with both of his own, placing the Master Ball back in his palm. There was a gleam of excitement in his glazed old eyes. “Now, who do you think I am?” he asked gruffly, mirroring Kenta’s expression with a wrinkly smile. “When trouble arises, I don’t hesitate for a moment. Throw your worst at old Kurt, and just see what happens!”
“That’s the attitude I remember you by.” Kenta turned away from Kurt’s cell and looked down the prison hallway at the other cells containing offenders of the law. “Then I’ll be back in a minute to get you out. But before I go . . .” They’re all Rockets. Leave it to Team Rocket to make us require an entire police station for pokémon-using felons alone. “You guys heard everything, as I intended you would. Now you know what’s going on. What you choose to do with this information is your call. My name is Kenta Nyna, and as of this moment, you may consider me your ally.”
“And why should we do that?” came a challenging voice from a cell one spot over Kurt’s. Kenta approached it, feeling a sudden tingle of hope for some reason, and beheld a rather short young man at approximately his own age glaring at him. “You got me arrested back during the Lake of Rage incident,” he said angrily. “What reason do I have to trust you?”
Hey . . . I remember this guy. He was the short kid whose mask was always slipping off because he couldn’t tie it on properly. At that time, he was only fifteen years old . . . and yet he owned a Crobat. That one creature proved to be one of the toughest opponents a Rocket has ever thrown at me.
“You’re right.” Kenta reached into his pocket and pulled out the lockpick Shin had given him a few months back. “How can you know if I’m really trustworthy or not? Well, the fact is, you can never be sure.” He pointed at the Rocket with the butt of his lockpick. “What’s your name?”
“ . . . Yosuke. Shimera Yosuke.”
Kenta smiled humorlessly. “I see. Well then, Yosuke, here’s what you can do now.” He flipped open the lockpick’s blade, pointing it in his own direction. “You can stab me right here and now, for being a lying troublemaker. Technically speaking, I’m already one anyway.” He snapped the knife blade back in, and flicked out the lock-picking device. “Or . . . you can wait until the right moment to break out of here. You know these guys better than me, so take the ones you trust with you.”
He pushed the lockpick through the bars, into Yosuke’s hands. The latter looked stunned, and Kenta felt a little surprised at himself for what he’d just done. Nevertheless, he kept up his calm act, knowing he couldn’t afford to show weakness. He’d rehearsed this scenario already, and now that it had come, he had to pull it off correctly. “You’ll have no pokémon once you make it back to the other side, but that can be arranged, Yosuke. Come see Kurt and Curtis at the last house west of the village, before Azalea Forest. To show that you’re a friend, give them the password, which is . . .”
Kenta made sure nobody heard him, as he whispered a single word to Yosuke. Moving again to leave, he stopped, nearly forgetting something, and backtracked to Kurt’s cell. “Sorry,” he said, putting his hands together apologetically. “I need to catch up with my brother once I’ve gotten you out, so I’ll leave you with this.” Once more, he transferred the Master Ball to Kurt, who shoved it into his kimono inner pocket. “I should tell you, there’s something you should know about that ball . . .”