literature

PKMN Chpt 8

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~-:Chapter 8:-~

     Scott leads me down the hall of bedrooms, and I can hear a variety of noises.  Mostly pumping music, cheering, and the occasional clinking of glass bottles.  Obviously the Rockets who passed yesterday's trial are taking the opportunity to celebrate.
     "Do they always party like this after an exam? Aren't there any classes they need to be at, or any work that needs to be done?" I ask Scott as we pass an obviously drunk chick being led out of a loud room by a pair of high-fiving guys.
     "It isn't endorsed per-ce, but the admins turn a blind eye as long as they get enough booze or other substances," he responds.
     I shake my head as I continue down the hall, thinking back to all the years spent with my old man, and how the presence of booze meant nothing but pain and abuse for me.
     The hallway bends and reveals double glass doors to the outside of the facility.  Once outside, I take in a vastly different view than I expected.  Sure it was woodsy, but apparently this side of the facility opens up to civilization!  There are buildings, two to five stories tall connected by paved roads and parking lots.  I can't believe this is real.  We walk across the fairly vacant parking lot, past the library, the gym, and a bookstore, and hang a left at the coffee shop at the corner.
     "These," Scott says, gesturing to the eight colossally wide skyscrapers that tower before us, "are the classroom buildings."
     I stare up at them in amazed silence.  It's just unfathomable how buildings this humongous can remain hidden from the world.  And this is just one facility of many!  How do they hide them all?
     "Each of these buildings is home to a specialized class of subjects," he explains.  "According to your schedule, you'll be taking beginner level courses in six of the buildings: shelters and construction, edible prep, technology training, espionage, combat, and to round it all off, history."
     "And all those classes will be in these buildings here?"
     "No, those are the buildings you'll be in.  So yes, you'll be in some of these buildings, but those aren't the names of your classes.  You'll get those in a day or two."
     I sigh heavily and mumble to myself.  "Riiight. Awesome.  Another hurry up and wait process where I'm not warned about anything I'm probably going to need to know in advance."
     The buildings are all dark and foreboding.  It's obvious that they aren't in use today, because there is no smoke billowing from the smokestacks, no floors have their fluorescent lights on, and nobody is at the desks in any of the lobbies.  I can't imagine what half of these buildings must look like when in use, the blown out glass of the windows on a few higher floors where an explosion must have taken place, or the trees that have grown so deeply into parts of the buildings that rooms have been carved into them for spatial reasons.  
     As I eye the buildings, marking their intricacies and height, I ask him, "How long have these buildings been around? The trees look hundreds of years old, but the facility couldn't have been around for that amount of time right? I mean, Pokémon are a fairly recent phenomenon aren't they?"
     He shrugs.  "This was military right?  I have no idea how long ago the facility was built, but it was definitely around for some time before the Pokémon started popping up all over the place.  Anyway come on, we got other things to check up on.  Let's go see the labs next."
     We leave the Class Clearing and head back towards the main facility.  As we pass the storefronts, a thought occurs to me.
     "Aren't we pretty much on a closed course? How do we have things like the bookstore and the coffee shop?"
     He shrugs again.  "Just because we need to stay on base for most of the year doesn't mean we can't have real world perks and privileges.  Not everyone here is here just to do drugs and missions.  You got kids here, no family left, too young to be of use yet, and what are they gunna do for the next couple years while everyone else is in training?  They go read a book, or hang out and play video games, or they just get out and explore.  So we need a place to keep them safe.  Well, safe enough anyways.  Kids don't know that "unsupervised exploration time" is actually training.  How else can we teach them that we're the good guys, and the Pokémon that attack them are the bad guys?  
     "Otherwise you got our recruits, on their day off chilling at the gym.  Maybe grab a coffee to pull an all-nighter for an exam, or a homework assignment.  There are plenty of opportunities to make money, whether you volunteer for a paying project run by one of the higher-ups, or you get stationed in a town outside the facility and need to set up shop for a while, get a job, make a life, until you can complete your mission, stuff like that.  Odds are you wont be getting on any moneymaking missions anytime soon, so you wont be able to buy a book or buy a coffee, but those are unnecessary luxuries really.  You need a coffee, you can just as easily get a cup-o'-Joe inside the facility, and the library will have a whole bunch of books to help you get assimilated."
     I walk beside Scott, trying to imagine this deserted block filled with kids, the stores ringing with commerce, a happy town where anyone would want to live.  I'm having trouble picturing that over the only image I can see now: a wasteland of drugged up Rockets, clumped together here or there, picking fights with each other, puking on each other, and battling their monsters to the death to see who the most powerful is, to pick who is in charge.  I blink a few times and then rub my eyes to snap back to reality.  
     "I'm having trouble picturing this place as the kid friendly day care that you described.  Where the hell are all these kids? I know we just passed a few parties on our way out here, how can there still be innocent kids just roaming the halls of this place, being kept 'safe'?"
     He pauses to think about it, his arms folded so that he can rest his chin on his arm while standing.  "It's difficult to explain. Here, come with me."
     He walks me back to the coffee shop, and we go inside.  He greets the cashier politely as we enter, and grabs a few napkins from the holder.  The place is empty since everyone is celebrating yesterday's exam, or recovering from their failure, so Scott and I sit at the table closest to the door. He takes a pen out of his pocket and begins drawing a crude map on the napkins.
     "Okay, this is the main facility, more or less.  It's kind of under this mountain here, so it's pretty impossible for me to judge the size accurately.  This is the exit we took this morning," He circles a point toward the bottom of the 'mountain' on the first napkin.  "This is one of the South exits.  If you go straight from here," He draws a line straight down from the circle, "then you'll be about where we are now, at this coffee shop.  Go east from here, " His line makes a right turn, "and you'll be at the classroom buildings we were at before.  If you go west, " He draws a line left from our coffee shop crossroad, "and you'll be heading toward the labs.  Do you understand so far?"
     "Yep, that seems pretty simple."  
     "Okay," He grabs two more napkins and lines them up farther 'south' than where we are now.  "If the road was a four way intersection instead of a three way intersection, the southbound road would have to go about twice as long as this facility is wide to actually connect to where the kids are.  They're out of the way enough that even if the recruits here wanted to go over and fuck with them it's a much longer walk than they'd consider, even if they were high out of their minds, and it's treacherous enough on the mountain with the Pokémon out there that odds are they wouldn't want to try the forest to get to it.  Hell, most of the recruits don't even know that there is a kid-care building that way, so there haven't been many attempts, you know?  It's hard enough to condition, err, teach the kids as it is.  Usually the kids coming from there are the stronger recruits when they get somewhere like here, having dealt with Pokémon first hand for a few years of their lives."
     "All right, I guess that makes sense.  So wait, if most recruits don't know about this place, how do you know about it?  No offence, but you don't seem to be any higher in rank than I am."
     "Hey fuck you man."  He smiles and pushes me good-humoredly.  "Long story short is, I'm actually a transfer to Delba from another facility… Somewhere a bit warmer.  Anyway the facilities pride themselves on their heritage or whatever, and so to be fully accepted as a member of Delba I'm still learning the secrets and history of the place.  I think I'm being put through a much heavier knowledge-based training than most recruits here, in an attempt to have me brainwashed into thinking 'this is my one and only facility.'  I don't really care too much about what I have to do, so long as at the end of the day I'm a member of the team, y'know?"
     That's one way of thinking about it I guess.  I know I wouldn't be that open to training of any kind, no matter the reward.  There has to be a line somewhere on what you won't do, or what you do won't matter.  
     We throw out our napkin maps and head toward the labs.  They're a bit farther from the T intersection than the class buildings were, but the quiet walk on the wooded path was pleasant.  Another difference with the labs is that they're out of the way, plain buildings, ones you might see on a college campus.  You can't see the entrance to the facility from here like you can from the class buildings, but these are far less interesting.  We step up to the nearest building and Scott opens his arms wide.
     "Welcome to the labs.  Think of any high school science you might have heard of, and we have a lab for it.  Computer labs, chemistry labs, biology labs, physics labs, etc, etc."  Each time he lists a lab he points at another of the otherwise identical buildings in front of me.  "Come on, let's check this one out."

     "This is the Bio Lab.  This is where we study the creatures and their effect on the environments in which they're found."  
     We walk through a relatively normal looking building, through a lobby and into an elevator.  On the third floor, we pass by several empty rooms containing tables with instruments, sinks, tools similar in appearance to the dentistry light and drills that my old man used to use, and waste buckets.  The light is on in the next to last lab on this floor.
     "Huh, I wonder why that light is on.  All the buildings should be closed down for the day."
     Scott knocks on the door, and a loud clanging noise responds as something gets knocked over.  He opens the door gingerly.  "Hello?"  
     "OUCH!"  
     As we walk into the room, someone bumps his head on his way out from under one of the tables, knocking bottles of a greenish liquid too the floor with a crash and a hiss.
     "Confound it… Ah, visitors!  How… unexpected.  And on today of all days!"
     A roundish slightly balding man of average height, maybe three or four inches shorter than myself up close, beams up at us from the floor, where he's cleaning up the newest mess in the room with an old rag and a smile.  
     "Oops."  Scott bends down to help the man up, taking the rag and wiping up the last of the spill.  "We didn't mean to surprise you, sir.  We just didn't expect anyone else to be up here."
     "Neither did I!"  The man chuckles.
     Scott turns to me, his hand still on the man's shoulder.  "This," he says with a flourishing gesture, "Is Doctor Ferraioli.  He's one of the more prominent educators this facility has to offer.  Doctor, this is the new recruit, …"
     The man gently pushes him aside as he takes a step closer to me, offering a firm handshake and a hearty slap on the back.  "Oh I know who this is.  We've met before, haven't we kid?"  
     I continue to shake his hand, a look of puzzlement crossing my face.  "Uh, have we met? I'm not sure that we have…"
     "Huh? OH! Of course, of course, you wouldn't remember from that little bit. Hold on a second."  Dr. Ferraioli breaks our handshake and grabs the coat hanging on the inside of the door.  He puts it on, wrapping it around himself in such a way that his bald head is covered, and it falls on him so that he doesn't look as round as he his.  He says, "Far greater authority than you can imagine.  Trust me." and it clicks.  
     "It's you!  If it wasn't for you, Dr. Ferraioli, I wouldn't even BE in this fuc-"
     "Please, call me Tom.  And calm down! No hard feelings, I was just doing my job!  Man, am I glad that you didn't decide to run quicker that night.  I was still catching my breath from trying to find you!"  He chuckles again and pats his stomach.  "So, kid, how's your time here been?"
     "He's been named an L-17 by the boss," Scott pipes up, his arm around my neck like I'm his little brother and he's trying to show me off to a favorite teacher.  
     "No kidding!  Well congrats kid.  I can't imagine that they went easy on you either, what with your timing into the program and everything, huh?"
     "No sir."  I glare at him.  This was the guy that was responsible for somehow kidnapping me and getting me into this whole mess.  And now here I am, forced to respect him as some well-known authority in a place I just want to get out of.  This is fucking unbelievable.  
     "I can tell you're still miffed at me about the whole 'get him' thing.  But look, it's like I was saying: it's nothing personal, it's just business.  I didn't want to go after some kid, but you went and avoided the two newbies that were put on your case.  I mean, I'm not one to fight, but I know when work needs to get done."
     I pull out of Scott's headlock.  "You ambushed me! With some sort of voodoo I don't even understand.  You kidnapped me right off the street of my neighborhood, and nobody stopped you!  You gagged me, drugged me, and effectively sold me down the creek!  After getting the shit kicked out of me again and again in so short a time, how do you expect me to feel when I see you?"
     Scott interrupts, "Don't listen to him, Doctor.  He has no idea the contributions you've made for this organization, or the ordeals that you've had to go through…"
     "No, he's right," says Tom.  He grabs his coat and shoves some papers into a bag that he slings over his shoulder.  "You want to know what I did?  I can show you!  Follow me."  He walks out of the lab and is heading down the stairs when he realizes that we aren't following him.  "Well don't take all day, alright?  I promise you aren't going to get hurt, now come on!"  

     Scott and I meet Tom outside.  "Come on, we'll go over to the battle-ready buildings so this can constitute as 'extra-curricular training'."  We follow him back along the wooded path to the T intersection, and right on back to the classroom clearing.  Tom holds his side, sucking wind.  "You'd think with the amount of work I do I'd be in better shape than this… okay.  Hoo boy.  All right.  So, here we are.  I thought about making use of the Combat Building, but I don't think I can tackle another flight of stairs like that.  So we'll just have to do it outside."  
     Tom sets his bag on the ground before rummaging around inside it.  "Aha!  Here we go."  He pulls something out of his bag, but then slides it up his sleeve, hiding it from view.  "Now, are you sure that you want to know how I got you?"
     "I don't really think this is such a good idea," Scott says.  "I mean, he's new, and this isn't sanctioned, and it's you, and we can see the facility from here, and…"
     "Quiet you." Tom interrupts, his tone growing more serious.  "This question isn't for you, it's for the kid.  Now listen here kid, do you want to see what I can do?  I'm quite interested in seeing what you're capable of.  And like I said, I give you my word you wont get hurt."
     "I don't need your hand-outs.  Whatever you think you can do, I'm ready.  You aren't going to catch me off guard again."  
     I dig my heel into the dirt, expecting this guy to come charging at me with a knife or something.  Instead, he nods.  
     "Very well then," he says.  "Call out your monster."
     "Uh, excuse me?"
     "Your monster! Call it out!"  With that, Tom reveals what he had taken out of his bag.  His own red-and-white orb slides out of his sleeve, and he presses the button to bring it to full size.  Pointing it at me, he asks, "Are you ready?"
     I grunt and jerk Beasty's capsule off my belt, readying it for the release.  
     "You there, Scott.  You'll be witnessing, understand?"  Tom doesn't take his eyes off me as he waits for a response.
     "Aye, sir."
     "Very good.  That means you will call the match's end if you determine that either side is unable to continue, or is in danger of becoming too injured.  Capische?"
     "Aye, sir."
     "Okay then, kid.  Lets begin."

     I throw the capsule into the air, and a dazzling white light introduces Beasty to the world.  It shivers in anticipation, glancing all around before focusing its attention on me.  I crouch down beside it, my heart racing as I lean in face to face with this creature.
     "Look here," I whisper to it, "you see that man over there?" I nod over at Tom.  "Well today, he is the enemy.  I need your help in taking him down."
     The little blue creature turns its body to look where I gestured, before turning back to me and sitting on its haunches, scratching its ear with its back leg.
     "What are you doing?" I whisper venomously.  Beasty looks up from licking its paws and gives a great yawn before continuing grooming.  "I don't think you understand the gravity of our situation here! If we beat him, this could be our ticket out of here!"
     "An interesting opening strategy, kid.  Everything okay over there?" Tom chuckles quietly, watching my every move.
     "Yeah everything's just peachy."  I focus my attention back on Beasty.  "Look," I whisper again, "I take back everything that I've done.  I never meant to hit you with that rock.  I wasn't trying to abandon you or anything when I left my home, I didn't even know you were following me until I was already running.  But I'll admit that you've gotten me out of a tight spot here and there, and this is no different.  Just prove your worth to this guy, and to me."
     I don't even know if these creatures can understand English, but it's worth taking a shot.  How else do these other Rockets and people actually command their monsters to do anything at all?  I stand up straight, fearing the worst but hoping for the best.  
     "Alright, Tom, bring it on."

     Tom presses the button on his capsule, and it splits open, the white light taking shape before my eyes.  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to make sure that they aren't playing tricks on me.  Where Beasty is about the shape and size of a large blue rabbit, I have never seen an animal I can compare this creature to.  It's three or four times the size of Beasty.  It looks like a small, bluish, four-legged dinosaur.  It has patches of dark navy blue peppered across the majority of its body, complementing the lighter blue.  Its head is huge, somewhat froglike, but with fangs protruding down from either side of its upper lip.  Its eyes are triangular, with red irises angrily looking around.  But the most intriguing part of this monster is also the most beautiful.  Planted firmly on the creature's back is a large pink flower bud, easily covering the creature's entire backside.  Surrounding the bud are four large fern leaves, extending past the bud and the creature.  The leaves flow with the wind, spreading and folding to the creature's will.  The bud pulses, tilting toward the sun, opening at the tip slightly.
     The creature lets out a deep, croaking roar from the back of its throat and shakes violently, causing the bud to sway and leaves to fall off its back.  
     "Let's begin.  Go!"
The creature charges with a bellow, its fangs gleaming.  
     "Show him what you've got, Beasty!"
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jmdesantis's avatar
I really like the description of the trees growing so deep into the facility buildings that they are forced to carve rooms out of them. It's such a great image. Oh, yeah, and Dr. Ferraioli too...
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