Young Writers Society

This is the fourth chapter of my Pokemon fanfic. It shouldn't be overly confusing, even to someone who doesn't know a lot about pokemon. I know that this chapter is a long one, so I understand if nobody wants to review it in its entirety. Any amount that you are comfortable reviewing is fine by me. I'm grateful for any kind of comment

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Chapter Four: Rage

By the time Tommy reached the park he had completely forgotten about the argument he had with Max.

He had stopped on the corner of a busy intersection where a small team of traffic controllers were directing a trail of cars away from the park. His eyes took in the mass of people who had gathered in the large field. He wasn’t even aware that he had stopped moving. The sight before him had stunned him senseless.

It was different. The ceremony. Everything.

Fewer people had showed up than last year. Not a staggering amount, but enough to notice a discrepancy. They appeared to stay in tight groups, conversing only amongst themselves. The chattering of many voices mixed together with the shuffling of thousands of feet and the impatient tooting of car horns, creating a drone of white noise that could be heard a mile away.

It was impossible to pick out specific tones, emotions or even decipher the general atmosphere coming from the crowd. Tommy couldn’t tell if the people were excited, soaking up the warmth of the sun and patiently awaiting the celebrations, or if they were vengefully discussing the tragedies that inundated their city.

The most obvious change was also the most disturbing. Lining the entire park and evenly spaced ten paces apart were city guards. They were dressed in grey, with black armour pads protecting most of their body.

He didn’t have to count them to know that there were more guards than he had ever seen in one place before. A low curse passed his lips, an involuntary expression of his astonishment. He had no idea the council had so many hands at their disposal.

Although he was tall enough to see over most of the people who were shoving past him on the sidewalk, he stood on tip toes to get a better look. He wanted to catch a glimpse of something, anything that would remind him of the annual ceremonies he had known and enjoyed his entire life. The joyous, festive time of year when the people of Celadon City would meet, forget their daily woes and celebrate the wonders and pleasures that pokémon brought into their lives. The time new trainers were initiated and sent on the greatest adventure anyone could ever have. The time he spent his whole life waiting for.

He strained his ears, desperate to pick up a sound that might indicate anyone was having a good time. There were no lively exclamations of joy, not a single trill of carefree laughter, and not one note of upbeat music to be heard.

Tommy lowered himself back onto his heels, a heavy lump forming in his throat. His stomach felt deflated, no longer containing the swarm of butterflies he felt at the thought of being so close to obtaining a pokémon.

He could see it now. A veil had been lifted, uncovering the sad truth that his excitement had blind sighted him to for a long time. Too much had changed. The people wouldn’t be able to celebrate pokémon like they used to. Not now they were regularly associated with so much death and carnage. He knew he had been stupid for expecting a different outcome. The people wouldn’t ignore reality long enough to welcome the initiation of new trainers when they could potentially add to the nightmare that already clutched their city with an iron grip.

“Hey! Get moving, would ya!” Tommy felt a sharp poke in the middle of his back. He turned to see a rather large, elderly woman attempting to get past him. She jabbed him with her walking stick then used it to barricade herself against the foot traffic that was jostling them from either side.

“Er, sorry,” Tommy muttered, not really caring if she heard. He crossed the intersection, weaving in and out of the slow traffic, and then walked parallel to the park, towards the university grounds on the other side.

The city guards faced him from the opposite sidewalk, their backs to the park. The thought of so many eyes in his direction made him uncomfortable. He tried to keep his gaze ahead, but occasionally stole glimpses of the guards. Each and every one of them stood in an identical pose; booted feet apart, arms slightly out, fingertips curled as if in reach of something attached to their belts. He pretended to scratch his temple so that he could get a better look. On each hip, the guards had a short, baton-like weapon that was made of metal. There wasn’t a single pokéball in sight. Tommy couldn’t work out why they had swapped their best possible defence for these strange, lightweight weapons. The guards had significantly increased in number, but would that compensate for their lack of pokémon?

A young couple cut across the road and attempted to enter the park from the side. One of the guards immediately broke formation and blocked their way. He didn’t say anything. He simply pointed back the way Tommy had just come, and the message was clear. There was only one way in.

Tommy looked over his shoulder to see that a vast crowd had gathered at the park’s entrance. Before he could wonder why it was taking them so long to enter, his eyes found the answer, and yet another striking change of procedure. The council really was going all out to prevent mishaps from befouling the ceremony. Just inside the entrance to the park he could see a series of long black boxes that were attached to conveyor belts. Guards were standing beside these boxes, instructing people to discard all their loose items onto the conveyer belts and step through the metal detectors, before finally granting them access to the park. The flurry of people who were waiting to be handed back their possessions had caused a backlog of people wanting to get through.

Looking back ahead to the university, Tommy sighed, wishing the professor hadn’t made him promise to meet him before the ceremony. By the time he made it back and fought his way through the crowds, the ceremony would have already begun. Although judging by the looks of things, there wasn’t a great deal to be excited about.

He walked the rest of the way with his gaze fixed on the ground, feeling a nauseating swirl of dejection in the pit of his stomach.

The university was a rustic, six-story building with brown, chipped bricks and mullioned windows. Ivy had been trained to grow along white trellises that leaned against every bare space of wall, giving the building a welcoming, homey touch.

Tommy pushed the glass entrance doors open and stepped into the reception area, where the university looked a lot more modern, with marble floors and gold trimmed furniture. He barely registered the guard sleeping at the main desk before taking to the halls and making his way to the third floor. Once outside Professor Ercus’s lab, he pulled a chain of keys out of his pocket and opened the door.

The laboratory curved into an ‘L’ shape, wrapping around a corner of the building. Tommy called out for the professor and waited for a reply. Silence. Nobody was home.

He took a seat at one of the many desks that lined the office, on top of which were various contraptions and devices that aided the professor’s intense studies of pokémon. He’d spent many hours of his childhood monkeying around with these machines, and even more time being chased away from them by the professor. Now that he was old enough to understand how to use them, the professor occasionally called on him for assistance. Tommy knew the professor could get by on his own, and that he probably just wanted to keep an eye on him, but he always accepted an opportunity to learn about pokémon.

Today, however, these contraptions held no interest for him whatsoever. Somehow, he found himself wishing the day was already over. He sensed an ominous feeling in the air, as if an electrical entity was looming over his shoulder, waiting for the perfect moment to strike him down. It prevented him from feeling any of the excitement he had started the day with, and drove the thought of obtaining a pokémon completely out of his mind.

He spent the next twenty minutes gazing out of a window that overlooked the park, lost in his troubled thoughts. The crowd was starting to compress as the last swarms of people filed through the metal detectors. Children had taken to the trees for a greater vantage point. He could see them perched among the vibrant streamers that hung from the branches.

As the ceremony drew closer, the people began to face the university, where the park inclined into a flat hill. Resting upon the knoll was a podium and an array of chairs that curved around a microphone. The chief members of the council had already taken their places on the podium. He could see the backs of six board members and the four ward leaders. The mayor, a wizened, thin lady with a shock of blue hair, sat in the centre, surrounded by her associates.

Tommy threw open a window, a square panel at the bottom of the frame, suddenly eager to hear what the mayor would say to the people of Celadon. Their babbling voices flooded into the laboratory, and he could sense their anticipation now. He still couldn’t work out which exact emotions were being expressed, but he knew they were just as keen to hear the mayor’s speech as he was.

But the speech never came. He waited for the mayor to rise and begin addressing the public, but she remained put, staring out at the crowd before her. Then a chime rang out from somewhere, signalling midday. The crowd fell silent in an instant. The sudden lack of noise was deafening. Tommy felt a quick surge behind his navel. This was it. The ceremony had begun.

What happened next shocked him more than anything he had seen up until that point. The council members stood up in unison and hastened off the podium, clambering down the hill and onto the sidewalk, where a couple of guards parted to let them through.

“Huh?” Tommy said aloud, his shoulders drawing back and his mouth dropping open in shock. A buzz of talk swiftly rose again from the crowd as they confirmed with each other that they were all seeing the same thing.

A black van whizzed out of nowhere and came to a stop in front of the hoard of council members. The back doors were thrown open, allowing them all to scramble inside. The doors slammed shut and then the van rocketed off, tearing across the street. It rounded a corner and shot along the length of the park. Seconds later it rounded another corner and vanished.

Tommy noticed that the guards had started to disperse, too. One moment they were neatly spread along the sides of the park, refusing entry to those who tried to cut in. The next, they were calmly scattering into alleys, side roads and anywhere else that offered a fast getaway. The whole ordeal lasted a single minute. After, the people of Celadon were left alone, looking around with taken aback faces and making sharp exclamations of confusion.

In perfect timing, bright flashes of light emanated from the corner of the park opposite the hill. Tommy turned in his chair, blue eyes snapping to the source of the flashes. He hadn’t seen them until they came to life. A chain of ten foot TV monitors cut across the grass in a diagonal line so that they could be seen by everyone. For a moment, all they saw was a flickering display of electronic noise. Then a black streak broke the images, parting to reveal the same close-up video feed of the mayor’s head. Her surroundings were dark, and the picture kept jolting up and down. They could hear the amplified sound of a vehicle groaning and whining as it barrelled through the city. The video feed was live. They were watching the mayor as she sat in the back of the van that had just taken her away.

“It was not my desire to abandon you like this, and for that I am sorry,” the mayor began with a catch in her throat. Her voice was delicate, but rose above the groans of the van and carried across the entire park. Tommy could tell that she was holding back tears. “There was no other way for me to tell you this without putting my colleagues and myself in danger. I know that after the next few minutes most of you will feel resentment and anger towards the decisions we have recently made. My greatest hope is that one day you will all realise that what I am about to do will not only better our community, but the lives of our pokémon.

“It is custom for me to preface these speeches with warm sentiments about pokémon and the way in which they have been entwined with our culture for many generations. However it is no longer possible for me to express these sentiments. I don’t have to remind you of what has become of Celadon City. What was once a utopia of joy, learning and harmony is now a place of death, loss and destruction. Our unity with pokémon once provided us with the benefits of companionship and protection, but now evokes fear and panic. Pokémon are cruelly hunted for their power and frequently subjected to a lifestyle that is against their true nature. The issues I am talking about have always been present, however in recent years they have escalated into a realm of madness that has no foreseeable end. This council has fought an uphill battle in the name of holding on to what we know and love most in this world. We have strived to put an end to the forever mounting casualties and damage done to the city, but the time we must admit to ourselves that the fight is lost has come. Therefore, as of today, we have decided to declare the possession of pokémon illegal.”

A collective gasp rose from the crowd as the mayor's words struck home. For a second, Tommy could feel the vibrations of many stomping feet and the people’s loud outbursts of rage. Then, unable to stop himself, he was on his feet, shouting along with them.

The mayor continued her speech, talking over the screams of anguish. Her voice sounded louder, as if someone had raised the volume on the TVs so that she could be heard over the din. Her eyes were wide, displaying a graveness Tommy had never seen in anyone before. Her final words came slowly, clear and precise. “Those of you who attended the ceremony today mark the start of a defining point in our history. You were the first to surrender your pokémon, and for that, I hold you in high regards. I will now end this speech by urging anyone who has malice in their heart to bury any plans of rebellion you might have. Do not fail to comply with the new ruling we have set in place. Do not look for ways to go against what our city now stands for. I can assure you that your actions will be met with severe consequences. Finally, I give this warning to those who didn’t attend the ceremony and are still in possession of pokémon. The deadline is midnight. I implore you to hand your pokémon into your local police station on your own accord. Do not exceed the time limit. If you fail to comply, they will search for you and they will find you.”

The screens turned black, and once more, the crowd fell silent. Then, slowly, the meaning of the mayor’s words dawned upon them. She told them they were the first to surrender their pokémon, but Tommy knew that not a single person standing before him was aware of doing such a thing. In desperate need of confirmation, he watched as people dug through their pockets and bags and withdrew their pokéballs, and attempted to call out their pokémon. For a moment, Tommy thought the crowd might violently expand as thousands of pokémon joined their ranks, however each and every pokéball either opened in its owner's hand or fell to the grass and cracked open, revealing an empty interior.

His head was reeling. How had the council done it? How had they robbed everyone of their pokémon?

He figured out the answer about the same time as the crowd. The conveyor belts. The guards had scanned everyone’s belongings using the black machines at the other end of the park. Was it possible? Had they somehow used the ceremony as the perfect distraction to seize everyone’s pokémon?

No. None of it made any sense, Tommy decided. The guards would have had to hand back empty pokéballs. Any real trainer would be able to tell the difference.

The people wanted answers, and they weren’t going to stop until they got them. They swarmed around the black machines and attempted to kick them apart, desperately searching for their lost pokémon. Tommy didn’t have to keep watching to know that they would eventually burst through the metal exteriors to find nothing inside.

Those who were closer to the university had other plans. Of course, a lot of people had already given up and started to wander away from the park, defeated. Others wanted blood. He watched as the people who stayed behind snatched rocks from the ground and tossed them at the TV screens. The jarring sounds of shattering glass echoed throughout the park but nobody stopped them. The guards had long since disappeared, and there were no other figures of authority around to put an end to the madness.

Then, something else the mayor said came back to Tommy. “If you fail to comply, they will search for you and they will find you.”

As if on cue, a faint, whirring sound of many propellers broke the clamour, steadily growing more intense until not much else could be heard. The rioters paused whatever they were doing and looked around for the source of the noise. Then all heads turned to the sky as they saw them.

Hundreds of metallic objects were raining down from above, plummeting to the ground at a breakneck speed. They appeared out of nowhere, small, silver dots on a blanket of turquoise, the sun causing them to glow gold on one side. Within seconds they had all fallen to the treetops and paused, hovering in the air, allowing the people of Celadon to see what they were.

The aircrafts were shaped like giant silver bells, with a height and width of about six feet. Each had a black strip running along the middle from top to bottom. Set into the centre of these strips were a series of seven red light bulbs, one for each point of a hexagon and one in the middle. Somehow, Tommy got the impression that these red lights were the crafts’ eyes, something that he would have found disturbing if he hadn’t been entirely mesmerised. His eyes were glued to the nearest craft, watching it sway lazily from side to side.

If they were there to stop the riot, they didn’t need to. Every person was rooted to the spot, transfixed by the spellbinding sight above.

In a strange, hypnotised fashion, he leaned over a desk just to get a slightly closer look.

A craft dropped from above, instantly coming to a stop just outside the professor’s laboratory and throwing the room into shadow. The sudden burst of turbulence caused the window to slam shut and then bounce back open, shattering from the force. He screamed and fell back, tripping over a chair. The loud whirring of the machine filled the lab, the vibrations jostling the desks and making the objects on top jump about.

The machine’s red “eyes” seemed to bare down on him through the broken window, holding him in place. His arms and legs went numb as his fear drained him of all feeling. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the craft took off and joined the others that were drifting above the trees.

Before Tommy could recover from the shock, the laboratory door swung open and Professor Ercus stormed into the room. He fumbled to lock the door behind him, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. He turned to see Tommy lying on the floor, and paused. His face was drained of colour and his eyes were wide, alive with panic. Tommy was certain he looked the same way.

“W-where were you?” Tommy croaked, his voice trembling. He couldn’t stop the tears from streaking across his face. He wasn’t angry with the professor. He was beyond relieved to see him, to finally have the one person he trusted most in the world by his side. “It’s over, the mayor, she . . . I don’t understand. T-the council . . . they took everyone’s pokémon, and then t-these things came down from the sky, and . . . what’s happening?”

Professor Ercus lifted Tommy to his feet and gripped his shoulders. His voice was just as panicky as his. “I don’t know what’s going on, Tommy, but you need to listen and focus on what I am about to tell you. We don’t have much time.”

As if to illustrate his point, a succession of loud, relentless thuds came from the laboratory door, followed by a booming voice. “We saw you run in there. Open the door or we’ll break it down.”

Everything was happening so fast, Tommy could barely keep up. His head was swimming, struggling to process the heaps of senseless information that has racing through his mind. His eyes darted from the door to the professor, asking the question he was too stunned to voice.

“I’ve done something stupid, Tommy,” he admitted, pulling him around the corner of the room and away from the door. It seemed that the men who were chasing him had already tired of waiting. They began to kick the door down. Loud thuds tore through the room, each one making Tommy flinch.

The professor pulled open a storage cupboard and shoved Tommy inside. He then got in himself and pulled the door shut, throwing them both into darkness. The professor’s voice came in quick whispers that were amplified in the small space.“They’re rockets, Tommy. When they break through, they’re going to take me away. I don’t know where. It’s unimportant.”

Tommy began to protest, but the professor cut across him. “No, you have to listen, Tommy. They’re going to take me away because I found out something about Councillor Tenneth. If people knew this, his career would be over and he’d be sent to prison for a long time.”

The fierce blows on the door continued, now accompanied by the slight sound of splintering wood.

“He’s been breaking the law. I found something in his office, something that he should never have been able to get his hands on. Something that he was going to sell to the rockets for a lot of money.”

Tommy felt something spherical slide into his pocket. Could it be? He reached down and cupped the object with a shaky hand and gasped, feeling a warmth of power spreading from the sphere to the tips of his fingers, causing the hair on his arms to stand on end. There was no mistaking it . . .

“Inside this pokéball is one of the rarest pokémon in Kanto, and I need you to save it.”

The thuds were raining down even harder now, the splintering becoming more obvious. Any moment the guards would have broken into the laboratory.

“Professor, I can’t,” Tommy said, already hating himself for what he was saying. “The council just made pokémon illegal. I can’t take this.”

“I could hear the mayor’s speech right before they found me. The deadline is midnight. You have enough time. Go to my apartment. Search my address book for Lenny Nelson. Go to him. He’ll know how important it is that we save this pokémon. I’m sorry I have to ask this of you, Tommy, but there’s no other way. The rockets mustn’t ever get this pokémon. I know you can help me. I know you can do this.

An ear-splitting snap of wood cut through the laboratory. They were almost through . . .

“I’m sorry,” the professor whispered again. He then opened the storage cupboard door, stepped back out into the lab and then pushed the door shut, leaving Tommy alone in the dark.

After a final slam, followed by a crash of wood and glass, two rockets smashed the door clean of its hinges and entered the laboratory. Professor Ercus rounded the corner, revealing himself to his pursuers, his hands in the air. “Here I am. I’m handing myself over to y-“

The professor received a sharp punch to his stomach, cutting him off. Tommy heard him groan in agony, followed by the same deep, booming voice he heard a moment ago. “You had your chance to hand yourself in. Now we have to do this the hard way.”

Tommy heard the rocket strike the professor again, then the sound of his body crashing to the floor. He reached out to push the door open. He was a second away from bursting out of the storage cupboard and rushing to the professor’s aid when the old man’s voice bellowed out three words that stopped him in his tracks.

“It’s worth it.”

He paused, fingers inches away from the handle. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to open the door and go to his rescue, but those three words held him in place.

The professor was right. It was worth it. He must have sacrificed everything to save the pokémon that was now sitting at the bottom of his pocket. Tommy wanted to stop the rockets. He needed to stop them. But somewhere within the professor’s twisted logic rang a bell of truth. If Tommy revealed himself, the rockets would take the pokémon back, and the professor's actions would have been for nothing.

He had to follow through with the professor’s plan. He had to let him go.

His hand dropped back to his side, fingers brushing against the pokéball that was resting against his thigh.

“Worth it, huh?” snarled the deep voice of the rocket. “You won’t think so once Councillor Tenneth catches up with us.”

“Shouldn’t we check to see if he has it?” the other rocket said in a nasal voice.

Tommy heard large hands patting the professor down and then an indignant grunt. “He doesn’t have it. Bugger must have hidden it somewhere. I’ll take him away where we won’t be bothered until Tenneth shows up. You search this dump. It must be here somewhere.”

The only sounds after that were the scrapes of a limp body being dragged across the floor and the clattering of the other rocket as he searched the lab.

Tommy was shaking with anger, confusion, shock and a mix of other emotions that raged inside him, swirling together to create a vortex of pain and suffering. He closed his eyes tight and tried to block it all out. The professor trusted him to finish the mission he had just lost everything trying to accomplish. He needed to focus, or he’d surely fail. He curled his fingers back over the pokéball in his pocket to stop his hands from trembling. Once more, the rush of magic and energy spread across his fingertips, warming his body from the inside. He allowed the feeling of power to consume him. An instant surge of courage coursed through his veins and his eyes flew open.

He was ready.