Chapter 10

  He got a good kick out of that. He had seen the look of disbelief on my face and began to detail the process of how he had hunted down reports of Jirachi sightings across four entire regions and hired a hit-squad unit of military caliber Alakazam to overpower the legendary pokémon once he found it.

  “Alakazam is truly monster pokémon, Baruto-kun. One which give me nightmare…” he had mused.

  I listened to it all without speaking, and without taking another bite. Then, he must have noticed how spooked out I was, because he chuckled and came clean about what the star-piece actually was. The part about hunting Jirachi down was true, and technically, so was the part about the star-piece being its head. Partially.

  The golden, helmet-like carapace on Jirachi’s head was actually the pokémon’s naturally growing horn. According to Zuqimori, it was tougher than steel and the only material he knew of that was capable of doing what he did with Brightstar (hence the name). Jirachi wasn’t know as the Wishing Star for no reason. Zuqimori told me that it had an all-seeing eye on its belly which it would use to peer into a person’s heart before deciding whether to grant the wish or not.

  “It say no to my wish, so I study and study, and discover that Jirachi star-head is like quantum radio antenna,” he had said. “With star-head, Jirachi can see all that everyone can ask… So, I think… ‘It means it can see my Japan!’… That is when I hire Alakazam team and spank bad Jirachi and take sample of star-head. Don’t worry Baruto, Jirachi is like small god – cannot die like normal pokémon.”

  With all this talk, it started getting pretty dark pretty quick, but I figured it would serve me better to learn the truths, both bitter and sweet, from the start.

  “How do pokémon die?”

  It was the most basic of questions, but one that I was curious about. Thoughts of Emolga played in my head. The little guy had given it his all in an attempt to drive us away. It wasn’t entirely rational, but the idea that it could die frightened me.

  “Pokémon in wild and pokémon for trainer have different lifespan. Wild pokémon die faster…” He brought his bowl to his mouth and clinked a small mouthful of udon into his mouth with his chopsticks.

  “Pokémon with human is stronger. Live longer…”

  He still hasn’t answered the question, and maybe his Japanglish is getting in the way.

  “You can speak Standard,” I mutter. “I can handle it better now.”

  “Oeee!” he says, stomping a foot under the table. “I am sensei here, Baruto! I know my Engrish is not very excellent, but you don’t want me to practice? You cannot speak Japanese which is very extremely sad, but let me speak Engrish with you. You will be speaking this warld language too, too much when you go from here, so enjoy Engrish while you can!”

  But I thought he wanted me to… never mind.

  “Alright, sensei… eh… how do pokémon die?”

  Pokémon died like everything else did. Injury, old age, disease, you name it. The main difference he stated was that once a pokémon formed a bond with a human, its longevity would “too, too much” correlate with its human.

  “The main belief is that pokémon is natural soul-mate of people,” Zuqimori explained. “It can also go other way! For example, my Missy is close to forty years old. She was teenager when I meet her.” He puts his chopsticks in the bowl and takes a sip of water. “It is long story, but my bond with Missy is now very strong, you see?”

  He goes into his pocket and pulls out the same blood-red orb which he had in the woods where we met the Emolga.

  “I had been meaning to ask. What is that?”

  He stares at it briefly before putting it back in. “You see necklace on Missy, no?”

  Ahh…

  A smile comes over his face when he sees the realization in my eyes. “This is part of Missy. I can call her from anywhere and she can find me… And Baruto-kun, because of this, I also understand her better. I think my brain is change because of bond with Missy. I am almost sixty years old, but how old do I look?”

  Sixty?!

  I would have never guessed that.

  “You look forty-five or something,” I say. “But Asians always look younger than their age…”

  He laughs and wags a finger at me. “No, Baruto… bond with Missy is keep me younger. All pokémon is change the trainer when bonding becomes deep, so I have even met some people in this warld which can use Psychic – like Alakazam, others which cannot feel sick from poison, a few which can speak, and you must listen – like dragons… you see?

  “Emonga-pokémon in wild can live twenty, thirty, maybe forty years and then will die from old age disease. Emonga with strong human can live sixty, seventy, maybe eighty years!”

  “Really?” Something in me relaxes. It’s a relief to know that even small pokémon have lengthy lifespans. Was I already attached to Emolga? I had thought of it often these past few hours. My sense of calm serenity had since faded, and I was now slightly nervous about whether or not I had made the right decision by leaving it in the wild.

  “Oe, Baruto-kun,” Zuqimori continues. “Now I’m thinking again about your electric block… I meet also strong Electric-pokémon trainers but none of them is block electricity like you. They must wear special clothes, special shoes, special equipments to be safe from their pokémon, but you cannot feel even most powerful shock from Garuvan, from Emonga…”

  Not putting it modestly, it fucking rocks. It feels almost as good as being bulletproof. Knowing something can’t hurt you is the greatest freedom you can have.

  “If you catch Emonga again, Baruto-kun, you must bring here. I need to study something, OK?”

  Speak of the devil and he will appear.

  Less than half-an-hour after dinner, I was back in the labroom, carrying on with my translation homework when Missy somberly floated through the whiteboard. She looked quite standoffish, begrudgingly telling me in her whispery voice, “Come. Come. Papa say come…” and floating away, looking back once for me to follow.

  Papa? That’s what she calls Zuqimori? I had to smile, though I made sure Missy’s back was turned. She might have been pushing forty years old, but she was still a little bitch, and one had to be careful around a little bitch.

  She led me through the long, straight, mine-like corridor which unlike the rest of the hideout, had no flooring but bare earth. This one led outside. The lamp lights grew progressively dimmer as we advanced, until, at the only turn in the corridor, they stopped. After the turn, it was just another straight line out to one of the cavemouths. As there were no lamps there, the darkness of the night made it difficult to see, though there was the faintest hint of light coming from the mouth of the cave.

  When we got outside, I looked up at the sky in plain wonder. The faint light had been starlight.

  Back in Thunder Bay, you could see the belt of stars strewn across the Milky Way on a good night, but this was something else. The Unovan night sky had clumps and clusters of stars that not just glowed but shone. It was as if whatever galaxy this was, was way younger. All my years web-surfing hadn’t been for nothing. For example, I knew that galaxies expanded with age, which meant that eventually, stars and planets would be so far apart from each other that you’d hardly be able to spot a thing in the night sky.

  Now this wasn’t nearly as bright as a full moon, but the starlight was bright enough that I could see the stones and pebbles littered throughout the floor, and Zuqimori seated on a camping chair, casually smoking a cigarette.

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  He smiles when he sees me. “Baruto-kun…” he says, pointing wide to a shrub by the outer cave wall with a spindly tree growing through it. It’s still pretty dark, so it takes a little for my eyes to adjust, but soon enough, I catch something moving on a branch, only a meter or two off the ground.

  I instinctively take a step back, closer to Zuqimori and he sniggers.

  “Pokémon is not…?”

  …

  “Not what?” I say out of the corner of my mouth, keeping my eyes on the thing shifting on the branch.

  “Is not animal!” he answers emphatically.

  The thing stirs some more, and a tiny crackle of a spark lights up.

  “Emolga?” I mutter, something in me lifting.

  “I tell you what, Amerikan? … Pokémon is not -”

  “Is not animal…”

  I do a doubletake. “Is it the same one?”

  Zuqimori scoffs. “Go and get Pokémon-Ball. Go.”

  I don’t need to; I still have it in my pocket.

  …

  Zuqimori sees me holding the mini-pokéball in my hand and takes a big puff of his cigarette before blowing out a cloud of smoke.

  “Put in Pokémon-Ball, Baruto, and keep with you from now.”

  Feeling ecstatic, I begin to approach Emolga, who continues shifting slightly on its branch.

  “H-hey…” When I get almost close enough to touch it, Emolga cracks a bigger spark and produces tiny growl, latching onto the branch with all its paws and sticking its tail up like it’s trying to tell me not to get any closer.

  “If he start to shock, I tell Missy to bite him,” Zuqimori warns from his chair.

  I glance back at him, unsure if he’s serious or not, then at Missy, who looks miserable.

  “What’s wrong, Missy?” I say with a growing smile. “‘Monga here! ‘Monga here!” I almost break out laughing when she whines furiously at me. Zuqimori cracks a smile too, cocking his head slightly as he puffs his cigarette.

  “Mii-woh!” Emolga voices suddenly. Missy floats over quickly and begins uttering softly in pokémon language.

  “Hold up!” My smile drops and hold a hand up against Missy, turning to Zuqimori as I do so. “Tell her to go away! I don’t need her to translate squat!”

  Zuqimori goes into his pocket and pulls out a tiny flashlight, shining it momentarily on Emolga and Missy.

  “Tell her!” I insist.

  Zuqimori switches the flashlight off and pockets it again. “They are just talking, Baruto-kun.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t want. She’s a snake!”

  He chuckles, then fidgets with his lighter, lighting his cigarette some more. “I tell you – Missy cannot change mind for pokémon. Other pokémon choose not to like you. Now we will see what Emonga choose…”

  Every second Missy spends close to Emolga, my irritation grows, but if Zuqimori doesn’t want to stop her, then there’s nothing I can do. I figure she is already holding back on me because of Zuqimori. If something happened to him and it was just Missy and I, I was almost sure she’d leave me for dead without batting an eye. That’s about the only thing I trusted her for.

  I was dying to know what the pokémon were talking about…

  *****

  Emolga didn’t like the smell or the looks of Floating Head. It was a strange and cold scent that smelled to him like mouldy bark after a cold rain. When Floating Head spoke, it was like the sound that wind makes when it is passing through branches and leaves. Its voice wasn’t terrible, it was soft on his ears and feminine, but there was something too odd about it for it to be comfortable. Its face, too, was not necessarily unpleasant, but it was like the smoke that comes out from a small fire. Ever shifting.

  Emolga decided there and then that he was not very interested in Floating Head.

  “How did you find us here?” Floating Head said.

  Emolga was outside his territory and knew well enough to answer. “I followed smell of White Hair.”

  Floating Head did not seem to like White Hair very much. Emolga could sense by the way it looked and made noises at him.

  White Hair was not especially tall as far as twolegs were concerned, though he was certainly thick and heavy-looking. White Hair wasn’t particularly intimidating either, yet there was something about this twoleg that had felt both threatening and familiar. Back when Glass Eyes and White Hair had invaded their territory, Emolga had tried to scare them off. When White Hair got up soon after the first discharge, Emolga thought he was dreaming. Twolegs travelling alone should have been easy to scare off, yet White Hair looked happier instead!

  That’s when everyone joined in and discharged themselves dry. No matter how many times though, White Hair refused to fall. How!?

  So Emolga summoned and used every last dreg of his power and even then, White Hair still stood!

  White Hair rolled a big, strange stone at him, and not knowing what it was, and too tired to bother flying away, Emolga pawed at the stone. It had sprung open and flashed like a bolt in the clouds!

  One moment, Emolga was where he was… the next, he was in another place. A place that touched the farthest reaches of his memory. A place like his mother’s nesting place. Now Emolga knew he was dreaming, for he had left his mother’s burrow some Fruit Seasons ago and become the leader of his own band of youths.

  The dream did not last long. Without warning, he found himself ‘outside’ again. There was White Hair, waving and showing teeth as the twolegs do when they are happy.

  Emolga had been completely at the mercy of that twoleg, yet the twoleg had not fought back the entire time. Something beat within Emolga’s small heart. A rising feeling that made him want to spread open his sail and soar high above the trees.

  He felt that he had lost face in front of his troupe. Spent his biggest spark and still came out defeated. The others welcomed him back as soon as he exited the strange stone, but Emolga suddenly felt uneasy in his position as their leader.

  …

  “White Hair is Fat Human?” Floating Head said.

  “Fat Human?” Emolga replied.

  “What do you call their kind?” Floating Head asked, signalling at Glass Eyes and White Hair with a tilt of her smoky face.

  “They are Twolegs.”

  Floating Head blinked slowly. “They are called Humans… OK?”

  Emolga pawed quickly at his ear. “OK.”

  “Fat means this…” Floating Head closed its mouth and blew, filling with air and ballooning in size.

  White Hair reacted with alarm, pointing at Floating Head and shouting something at Glass Eyes. Glass Eyes showed teeth.

  “Fat Human is White Hair?”

  “Yes,” Floating Head said. “Let me tell you something about Fat Human…”

  Emolga sat up and nodded, “Yes, tell.”

  “He smells very bad.”

  …

  Emolga nodded. “Is that all?”

  Floating Head looked confused for a tiny moment, quickly recovering and adding, “And he also has a bad noise inside him. You will not sleep well at night. Can you not hear it when you look?”

  Emolga looked at White Hair, blinking once in confusion. Floating Head was not making a lot of sense.

  White Hair called to Glass Eyes again, sounding even more agitated than before. If Emolga had to guess, it might have been because he was perching on White Hair’s branch, so he promptly hopped off, landing on the ground and skipped away from the shrub.

  White Hair made a noise like “Nuuoo!” and held the same strange stone he rolled on the ground earlier, when Hot Light was still flying over the sky.

  Floating Head came in between them and continued talking.

  “He will put you into Dreaming. I have already helped many others, and I will help you too,” it said.

  White Hair kept whinging in the background.

  “Do not listen to Fat Human, whatever he says. In some days, they will release you…”

  Emolga was sat on his hunches, terribly puzzled by it all.

  “But I follow White Hair here by myself…”

  …

  “Nyeh?” Floating Head was speechless.

  “I do not understand you, Speaking Face.” Emolga thought Speaking Face sounded slightly more polite than Floating Head.

  “My name is Missy!” it suddenly screamed, making Emolga shift to all fours and raise its tail straight, ready to make a big spark.

  Glass Eyes began to show teeth and make the gaggling sound that twolegs make when they are very happy. White Hair had quieted down and was watching them intently.

  The Floating Head called Missy immediately came down from her outburst, but it was still very flustered. “Sorry! B-but doesn’t he smell bad?”

  Emolga growled, alarmed. This Missy appeared to be dangerous. He did not know if he would be able to scare it off with his sparks. “White Hair smells fine to me,” he replied cautiously. “Like normal twolegs, but also like very dry air.”

  “Nyeh?” Missy replied. “What are you talking about? W-what about that noise inside him? Can’t you hear it?”

  Emolga cocked his head. “I don’t hear any noise inside him, and my ears are very good!

  “I think you smell weird,” Emolga said candidly. His intention was not to offend, he simply thought that this Missy was being disturbed by some smell, and it might not have known that the smell was coming from itself!

  Emolga was trying to help. “And your voice can tickle and prickle. Is that what you meant?”

  Missy’s face grew frightfully fast, and its eyes flared like wind-blown flames. Emolga shrieked, cracked a bright spark, and leapt to White Hair’s head.

  It was instinctual.

  *****

  Woah!

  I flinched and felt as Emolga latched onto my hair, gripping it painfully. I was about to swat it down but instead put a hand on top of it to stop it from moving and yanking at my roots.

  *FLASH!*

  Bright light envelops me, buzzing in my ears and glaring in my eyes as Zuqimori yelps, falling off his chair and scrambling for cover.

  “Missy!” Zuqimori cries out from somewhere. “Missy, no!”

  Emolga continues discharging, yowling “Eeeeeuuuuu!!!” like a Pikachu using thunderbolt, and I feel something uncoiling from the pits of my stomach, rising through my chest, and finally coming out of my mouth.

  I scream, roaring out with a primal sense of self-defense. I see Duncan and Caleb and Morris before me. Bullies. I never fought back. Now I would!

  The next moment, the form of Missy is before me, though I can barely see her with all the glare in my eyes. Her Scary Face is slowly fading. Incredibly slow. Slow-motion slow.

  Just as I am about to scream at her, the light around me flashes even brighter and then goes out like a blown light bulb.

  Emolga shifts under my hand, and myself, suddenly dizzy, stagger backwards. I lose my balance and fall, landing heavily on my ass, my stomach feeling like a sack of potatoes has been thrown on me. I groan.

  …

  Several moments pass and there’s movement behind me. Zuqimori is gingerly coming out of hiding, dusting his coat. I watch as he goes over to his knocked over camping chair and puts it back up. I’m wide-eyed and taking deep breaths. I didn’t notice, but Emolga was still on my head before it skipped down, landing on one of the knees of my outstretched legs.

  Slightly worried about Missy, I begin scanning around for her and catch her floating above the mouth of the cave, several meters high. It is dark, and the starlight isn’t enough to see her face, but her eyes have a glow to them, and she is looking at us blankly, with her signature slow blink of the eyelids. I realize she is probably as shocked as the rest of us, no pun intended.

  “What was that? …” I mutter.

  …

  Zuqimori is searching the ground with his flashlight. He picks a half-smoked stub of his cigarette and without looking at me says, “Baruto! Put Emonga in ball now!”

  Cue the crocodile tears.

  “w-w-whiiiyyyaa…” Missy begins wailing.

  “Of course.” I roll my eyes and look at Emolga, sat on my knee, curiously, warily, looking up at Bitchy Missy.

  …

  …

  I have a feeling we’re going to get along great.

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