Survival Project (PG-13)

[The Great Butler]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 23 ; [SENORI]
armageddon

*

Oh, just from that chapter title, I can tell this ain't gonna be good.

There's a certain poetic justice to it being a Senori chapter as we draw ever closer to the end, though.

Out of all of Sai’s breakdowns, the one in the Ecruteak City gym had to be the worst. His dark blue eyes, which had been reliably switching from crazy to sane in the past within a matter of moments, were completely, insatiably wild now. I would have even said they looked like they were about to roll into the back of his head, and then he would inevitably pass out. No such thing happened, but it was close. Instead, he ran off (again), his body moving in an odd zigzag pattern, as his knees were wobbly. He was screaming about Mahogany Town, and how much of a wretched place it had been all of his life, and he was screaming about all of the obscene things he would do to the place if he ever got the chance. It was the first time that I had ever heard him want to be violent, aside from the time where he had attacked me. I had come to the conclusion, though, that he had done it out of necessity, not out of malice.

This paragraph is very, very troubling, and I think that's because of how much detail Senori gives about Sai's breakdown.

And again, he was nowhere to be found when we left the gym. He had darted off quite fast, making it a point so that we wouldn’t follow him. It was either that or he was really in a hurry to put an end to the city that had apparently ruined his life. I remembered the last time that he had disappeared on us… It was safe to assume that all of us had lost some respect for him as a trainer, and that we had suffered for it. We had been cast off as wild pokémon, gotten our belongings stolen, and I had been beaten by a lady with a broom because I was, undoubtedly, trying to steal from others as a sort of revenge.

Admittedly, and unsurprisingly, I was feeling guilty over Sai’s second disappearance. I had finally found the path to moving on from my clan’s banishment by evolving, and now, since I was no longer focused on only myself, I was supposed to be helping my trainer. I still felt responsible for his overall well being. But after all this time, I had learned next to nothing about his past life, his tendencies, and his emotions. I knew no more about how to control him than I did my own life.

I have to say, as chilling as this all is, the fact we're getting it all from the perspective of one of the trainer's Pokemon is still really fascinating. One of this story's great strengths has always been its unique presentation of the Pokemon/trainer relationship.

The only consolation we had was that we knew where he was going.

It would have been even better if we knew how to get there.

“The fact that none of us are humans is really a catastrophe. Then again, if we weren’t pokémon, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” I said, trying to keep everyone’s spirits up, but I was failing.

“I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve wished I was human, just to find a place. This is one of those times,” Ezrem said, shaking his head.

“Agreed,” said Rennio.

Kuiora remained quiet, and I knew that she loved being a pokémon, but now was not the time for us to be helpless and relying on a trainer.

We were standing outside of the Ecruteak City gym, ignoring the stares of people passing by. Obviously, it was strange for a pack of pokémon to be out and about by themselves. It was a good thing that no one could understand us talk about our missing trainer, or perhaps they would be calling the police, just like Marty had threatened.

I'm kind of surprised Morty didn't come out of the Gym to follow up on the obviously unwell challenger he just had.

And then it hit me. Marty. Marty knew about Sai’s untamed demeanor. As soon as that boy saw us, he would be questioning our trainer and threatening to do something about it. It was possible that some unfavorable consequences would come out of our search, but at this point, I was desperate for anything.

“It’s risky,” I said to the team, “but I think I know who to find.”

Now this is surprising. I didn't think Marty would be this important to the story.

The first and most blatant place for us to look was the pokémon center. That was where most of the trainers decided to stay in a city, after all. Inside, the four of us disregarded the new, stranger looks of the new people as we went from room to room, knocking on each and every door. We split up to save time, though Rennio had to stay with me because he wasn’t sure what Marty or Sasha looked like. Some people answered, and when I didn’t recognize them, I bowed in apology and went to the next door, knowing it was useless to try to talk to them. In the end, however, no one found either of the people we were looking for.

“It was a good idea,” Ezrem said, which made me feel grateful for his presence for once. “But it didn’t work.”

“And we don’t have time to wait for the people who aren’t here, do we?” I said, rubbing my chin, making everyone believe that I was thinking. I really was only spacing out, worn out and wanting to rest, but it was good to pretend.

The next places we checked were the fancy restaurant and the mart, the same ones we had gone to with Sai for Atis’s “birthday.” We scoured the entirety of both places, but we didn’t find Marty or Sasha, and even worse, we eventually got kicked out of both places for supposedly causing a disturbance. We stood quietly outside of the pokémon mart now, more lost than we were before.

“This is a place where a lot of history about legendary pokémon originates, right?” Kuiora finally said. It was the first thing she had said during the entire search.

“Right,” I said. Even I knew about the story of the towers in the back of the city without the croconaw telling me.

“That probably means there’s lots of visitors, right? Like… Professor Elm was famous, and so a lot of people visited him. They always stayed in… hotels, I think they were called. Maybe Ecruteak City has a place like that for Marty and Sasha to stay in.”

“A brilliant idea, Kuiora,” Ezrem said, hopping over to her. He was getting along well without the patent use of his wings. “Let’s go find one.”

I have a bad feeling about this. At the very least, they're going to get kicked out again.

I hadn’t wanted to explore buildings in the city that we hadn’t been to yet, in case we weren’t allowed in. Then again, we hadn’t been allowed in the restaurant or the mart without our trainer, so this would be no different, and Kuiora had a point when she said that it was a likely place for Marty and Sasha to be. I nodded, deciding to go along with them.

So then we went from building to building, choosing to look in the windows instead of going inside. We saw normal houses, more restaurants, a dance hall, and I saw Kuiora even take a peek into the towers, though she clearly knew that they weren’t part of a hotel. The search reminded me of when I tried to get Sai to stop looking into buildings, and I wished that we were still at that point of our journey, when things somehow made more sense than they did now.

The last building that we looked in, of course, happened to be the hotel. Rennio had spotted it, saying that he could tell that it was a hotel because of the bellboys walking up the stairs with trays in their hands, and with the lady at the counter checking people in. We rushed inside, eager to have finally reached our destination. The hallways were mostly quiet except for the occasional person walking about, so we weren’t worried about getting kicked out this time. Again, we went from room to room, knocking and knocking and hoping.

By some great stroke of luck, we found Marty on the third floor. He opened the door, looking up and down the hallway, confused as to who could have been knocking. I had to pull on his pants leg to get his attention, even though there were four of us there, and none of us were particularly small anymore. He was rubbing his eyes, making me think that he had just woken up and was simply in a daze.

They actually found him? I'm quite surprised it went that smoothly.

“A furret?” he said sleepily. “And a croconaw… And I’ve seen that rufflet before. Sai’s team?”

I nodded. “Sai isn’t here,” I said, although he couldn’t understand me. I had to say it to make it feel real.

“What the hell? What are you guys doing here?” he said, fully alert now.

“Sai isn’t here,” I said again, trying to hold back tears. They had snuck up on me when I least expected them. Stepping forward, I pulled on Marty’s leg, motioning for him to come with us.

“Do you need me for something?” he said, not moving an inch.

I nodded again, pulling him harder. The rest of the team looked up at him pleadingly, unable to say a word.

“I don’t know what you want… I’m sorry… Here, maybe Gracie will know,” Marty said. He pulled away from my grasp and went into his room for a moment. He returned with the same small fire-type pokémon that I had fought back when we had the battle to decide who would stay or go. This pokémon looked slightly different, however. For one, I could now see her maroon-colored eyes. Her body was longer and more slender, though the colors were exactly the same. And instead of having just some spots on her back for flames to shoot out of, I could see that she could use her head to fight, too. She had evolved sometime between our battle and now, it seemed.

“You’ve grown,” I said stupidly, trying to figure out a way to start this awkward conversation.

“You, too,” Gracie said. There was a pause. “What do you guys need? This is a little, um, different…”

“Our trainer… is missing. He went to a place called Mahogany Town, and we have no idea where it is. We were hoping Marty or Sasha would know. They’re the only two other humans we know…” I said, soon trailing off. I didn’t realize until I was done talking that I had been speaking almost as fast as Sai had been. At some point in time, it seemed that I had adopted some of his idiosyncrasies.

I smiled so widely when she replied, “We’ve been there once or twice. I’m sure we can take you there.”

This almost seems too easy. There's got to be a catch somewhere.

“Really? Oh geez, this is great. Thank you so much,” I said, running up to hug her.

“Watch out for the fire-type,” Ezrem said, pulling me by the scruff of my neck. I glared at him, but was thankful that I hadn’t burned myself, too.

“Ahem,” I said, leaving that clumsy situation alone just to head into another one. “I don’t mean to be pushy, but can we go… now? We don’t want him to get himself hurt or lost.” I avoided saying that he had done it once before.

“Of course,” she said, smiling timidly. “One minute.”

*

After somehow conveying the situation to Marty for a few moments and after Marty told Sasha the situation, Gracie led all seven of us out of the hotel, taking us to the eastern edge of town. I had a feeling that the only reason Marty was listening was because it was his own pokémon. If it weren’t for Gracie, we would definitely be going much slower, or we wouldn’t be going at all.

When we reached the gate that would take us to the next section of the Johto region, she pointed to a sign and signaled for Marty to look at it.

That was when Marty got angry.

“Mahogany Town? Are you kidding me? Sai went to Mahogany Town and left his pokémon here?” He looked at me scarily, and for one brief moment I wished that I wasn’t the leader of the team. Ezrem could take the heat for this one if he really wanted to.

I was going to ask how they actually conveyed to Marty what they wanted, but now I see that they didn't actually completely manage to tell him everything until now, which is more understandable.

“Marty,” Sasha said serenely, probably trying to project her feelings onto him. “Maybe he had a good reason for going. We don’t know anything yet. Let’s just help these pokémon get to him for now, and stay calm.”

“Fine,” Marty muttered, and he kept walking ahead of all of us.

Sasha turned to all of us. “I’m sorry about him, guys,” she said. “We’ll find Sai. It’ll be all right.”

I could only hope that she was right. Despite everything, I had to admit that I wasn’t feeling as optimistic this time around. Sure, I was certain that we could locate him, since we were lucky that he talked more than usual, but I wasn’t so certain about us being glad when we found him.

I'm not so certain either, Senori, I'm not so certain either...

We passed through the gate that would lead us to the Mahogany Town path. The guard there waved at us, and it was a relief to not be given threatening looks for the first time that day. Sasha waved back and smiled. I thought about how we were also lucky to have someone like her with us. She was always kind to us, and exceedingly so. It was preferable to her brother, who, instead of having identical characteristics as siblings should, had quite a temper and easily held grudges toward others. I remembered hearing Marty’s story at the pokémon fan club, however, and somehow I was glad to have him around, too. More than anything, he cared about our well being.

Deciding to bring this up to someone who could understand me, I caught up with Gracie, who was walking next to Marty while the rest of us trailed closely behind.

“I know now why Marty was so keen on having us battle before,” I said. It seemed like a perfectly pleasant way to start a conversation.

The newly evolved quilava flinched at my sudden appearance next to her. “You do?” she said. “I don’t… I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

I wonder if Gracie is just confused due to being startled or if there is something more to this.

Luckily for the quilava, Marty interrupted the beginning of our talk. Immediately after the guard postings was an entrance to a cave and a rather small body of water. I could already see the other side, and I hoped that it led to where Sai would be.

“Well”—I noticed that Gracie’s attention shifted toward him suddenly instead of me—“we could either go the long way, or the short way. And there is no way in hell that I am spending over a week in a cave for the sake of Sai. So we’re going over the river.”

He reached behind his back and pulled a red and white pokéball off of his belt. He threw it forward, just like every other trainer would. His throw was different, however, as he had thrown it into the river, and the ball disappeared beneath the water’s surface. Soon, a massive water-type pokémon emerged and floated above so that we could see the top of its body. It looked like it had long, blue wings, like a flying-type might, but they were really just fins that were larger than most sea pokémon’s. Short blue antennae sat on its head, swishing around with excitement. It had black beady eyes that were looking at us expectantly.

Ooh, Mantine? I can't complain there. Seeing one of those is always a nice surprise.

“She can help us, guys,” Marty said. “Marin, I need you to do us a favor. We need to get across this river and go to Mahogany Town. Do you think you can carry all of us?” he asked, motioning to every member of our group.

Marin surveyed us, giving us a good look over for a few seconds. Its face scrunched up into a ball when it peered over at Kuiora.

“The croconaw can swim,” she said, and I thought that she would tell the rest of us no for a second. But then she smiled, and I knew that everything would go smoothly from here on out.

“Fantastic,” Sasha said, stepping up to the edge of the river. Marin got close enough so the young girl could climb on her back and rest peacefully, without wobbling and falling over. Marty did the same, and then gazed back at us.

“Do you want to go back in your pokéball, Gracie?”

“No,” Gracie said, shaking her head. “I have to get over being around water sometime, right?”

So the quilava was scared of water. It was typical for a fire-type. I thought that was why she was scared of my sudden appearance—she simply was afraid of what was coming next. But soon I would learn that that had nothing to do with it.

Both Marin and Gracie have nice touches of personality here. I like that you added what may or may not be details superfluous to the main plot at this point, because doing so shows that even as we speed toward the ending of the main narrative, other things independent of it are still happening in the world.

Kuiora was able to lower herself into the water, and she mentioned how it had been a long time since she could swim like this. After that… Well, it was a gratifying thing that Marin was as long as she was wide, or the rest of us wouldn’t have fit. Gracie stood on her hind legs behind Marty, and I went to be next to her. This made sense since we were long and slender, and thus could accommodate our body positions satisfactorily. Rennio and Ezrem, on the other hand, had to sit in Marty and Sasha’s laps respectively.

“Your poor wings,” Sasha said, noticing rather swiftly. “What happened to you?”

Ezrem didn’t answer her. He sat there, looking straight ahead.

“Hmm,” Marty said after a few moments of awkward silence. If he seemed concerned about the rufflet, he didn’t express it. “I suppose we’re off.”

And so we were. Marin slowly turned her body around so that she was facing our destination. It only took a couple seconds longer for her to start wading through the water at a quiet pace that would keep us all from falling backward.

After a while, it occurred to me that it could be a long ride. I attempted to talk to Gracie again by saying, “But yeah, anyway, I know what Marty went through. He mentioned it at the pokémon fan club Sasha goes to.”

“Oh,” Gracie said simply. She was shy, and perhaps I was going to be pushing too far, but I wanted something to distract me from the mess that was Sai.

“Do you know anything about it? You’re a pokémon, after all, and Marty’s father used to… abuse pokémon.”

“I was supposed to be a pet, so I was in the house when he did that. It was because of that man that Marty left and went on a journey to the first place. He didn’t like it… as you know,” Gracie said. Though she was speaking more, I could tell that she was still being vague.

I get the feeling Senori is pushing the issue with Gracie a little more than is a good idea...

A part of my heart instantly ached for her. Her flinching at my appearance wasn’t because of her being scared of water; it was because of her being scared of touch in general. And why would someone be afraid of touch? I almost wanted to slap myself in the face because of how obvious it was.

“Hmm,” I said, not wanting to force her to admit to anything she didn’t want to. I despised talking about my clan; similarly, she would probably hate talking about Marty’s father. “That stinks,” I went on brainlessly. “Would you have rather been a battler or a pet?”

“It doesn’t matter to me either way,” Gracie said. “It’s just that Marty gets to be too much sometimes. For instance… you know how Marty’s acted with Sai. He acts intensely insane with every bad trainer he comes across, even if the trainer doesn’t seem too bad to Sasha or me. Sasha’s the only one who can keep him somewhat calm… since she can talk to him…”

Of course, Gracie didn’t know that I knew what was going on inside her head. I felt that I was invading her mind and making her spill all of its contents against her will, when in reality I was doing no such thing. And in a sense, I felt that I was betraying Marty’s privacy. We were talking about a very intimate part of his past without him knowing it, and even worse, we were doing it right in his presence! It was times like these that I wished others were like Sai—private and able to talk to pokémon—only less eccentric and less prone to running away.

...but now I see that Senori is at least aware of what's happening, which is a nice detail. Seeing this not end in a misunderstanding and embarrassment is a refreshing change.

To avoid feeling even more guilt, I kept quiet. It was Gracie who intentionally went on and said, “I wished that would leave it alone and let me forget.”

“You’ll move on,” I said. “I don’t know how exactly, since I’ve never been in your situation, but you will. I did, too, so I know you can.”

“Thanks…” Gracie said shyly, and then she turned away.

Yeah, I kind of wish Senori had left it alone too...

The rest of the trip was relatively quiet. There was some more murmuring from Sasha about Ezrem’s wings, and she kept checking them to make sure that the bandages were on as snugly and as tightly as they could be. Marty made some comments about being scared of accidentally dropping Rennio in the water and consequently electrocuting us all, and thankfully, though his fears were warranted, it never happened. The only other noise that accompanied us on our journey was the sound of Kuiora gurgling in the water, enjoying her time swimming.

I was reflecting about Gracie’s ambiguous yet straightforward story, my story, and Rennio’s and Ezrem’s and everyone else’s. I had originally thought that nothing bad could happen to me, and once I was banished, I thought that my story was the most unique in the world, that no one else’s story could ever compare. Like most older pokémon (or like most of the sentret in my clan), I thought I knew everything that I needed to know. When I met Sai, I realized that I’d been a total idiot and that I needed a lot more focus in my life. I worked hard as his pokémon, and when it began to dawn on me that my heart was not necessarily being my best friend, I tried very even harder to beat it. And did beat it, by evolving and getting rid of my tail, my only connection to my clan. Now, as Sai’s relocation was just a hair’s breadth away, I felt that everything I knew was wrong, my perspective was utterly indefensible, and that there are no objective standards for anything anyone could imagine… including the idea that there are stages to life that everyone must follow. There’s not much imagination or creativity there, when you start thinking about it. Humans and pokémon alike have created these artificial goals simply because we wanted to have some way to explain the way the world works.

At this point, I decided that I didn’t care much anymore. I hoped to spend the time that remained in a way that was best for not only me, but for every single one of us on the team… including Sai.

The way Senori is talking really makes me feel like this is the end. It just... feels like the pre-climax reflection on what's happened.

Mahogany Town looked like a pleasant enough place, one that I would have loved to spend more time in, if we weren’t on the lookout for our renegade trainer. I would have loved to spend more time here because the town almost looked like a humanized version of a forest. All of the buildings were a light green color, with the roofs being of a darker green. Unusually, there was no pavement to walk upon here, and the grass looked well taken care of, beautiful and alive. Several carriages were lined up next to every building, with a crowd of people at each—they were waiting for their turn at whatever goods the carriages were selling. Not a single person looked like they wished they were somewhere else in the world.

Pleasant imagery, I'm just surprised they got here this fast.

Finally, someone answered nonchalantly, “I saw a boy like that. Hard not to miss him when he’s away from everyone else. He went toward that laboratory over there.” The woman pointed to a lone metallic building at the edge of town. It was away from all of the other buildings, and no carriages or large amount of people were there.

This is perfectly in line with the theories I had for a long time.

“Thank you very much,” Sasha said, bowing curtly. She was suddenly in a hurry. She strode over to the laboratory, and the rest of us eagerly followed.

“Of all places, he send Atis to a laboratory? Maybe Atis left us to be a lab rat,” Ezrem commented, scoffing at the thought.

“Shut up,” I said. “Sai would never do that. And Atis would never willingly agree to that, either.”

If they only knew...

Ezrem said nothing more, but he coughed mockingly. Rennio was shrinking back from the place, staying behind all of us. Kuiora looked up at the building in awe, probably never having seen something more creepy yet fascinating in her life. Gracie didn’t seem to have a reaction… since it wasn’t her trainer that we were talking about. And Atis… I looked for him, but then I remembered that he wasn’t here.

He was in the building in front of us. And so was Sai.

Sasha stopped in front of the entrance, but Marty barged right on in, fists clenched and raring to go if necessary. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to punch Sai in the face once he was given the chance. The rest of us followed. We were more reluctant this time, but we knew we couldn’t turn back now.

The first floor of the building seemed anticlimactic to us. I didn’t quite know what we were expecting to see, but it wasn’t an empty floor with a simple counter, much like the one we saw at pokémon centers. A fountain stood in the middle of the room, with plants and chairs surrounding it for comfort. Other than this, only one thing stood out: there was a guard blocking the stairs leading upward.

Marty approached this guard first and said, “Excuse me, but we were told one of our… friends came through here. We really need to see him. If you don’t mind, would you let us through?”

“Sorry,” the guard said in a husky voice with the slightest hint of an accent, “but no one is allowed upstairs. Authorized personnel only.”

“Authorized personnel? Like hell the boy is authorized to be in a place like this. He barely knows how to tell his right foot from his left.”

“If he was able to get upstairs,” the guard said firmly, “then he was authorized.”

There's definitely a deep connection between Sai and Team Rocket if he was 'authorized.'

Marty gritted his teeth; he was getting real angry, real fast. “I didn’t come all this way to be told that Sai is as mysterious as ever, and that I should leave him alone to stay that way. Let us through.”

“The answer is no,” the man insisted.

“Marty…” Sasha said, about to lightly touch him on the shoulder, but it was too late.

Marty had gestured to Gracie to attack, and, as loyally as ever, Gracie obeyed him. She dashed forward, running underneath the guard’s legs and knocking him off balance. He fell on his stomach, groaning at the impact of his chin hitting the ground. Marty thanked Gracie for her services and stepped over the guard, running up the stairs and motioning for all of us to follow. Stunned, we felt obliged to obey just as well as Gracie had.

Well it's pretty obvious that something like this would have to happen. It would be a drag on the story if the security wasn't just disposed of.

Upstairs was where the real scenery came into play. The first floor donned nothing that any normal building would—and should—have. I had never been inside a laboratory before, so maybe that contributed to my unusual viewpoint, but I was sure that this place wasn’t normal. Along the walls were several computers and full desks where people sat, wearing long, white lab coats. They were holding clipboards and scribbling on them with their pens furiously, or they were messing with the vials that sat in front of them. What stood out the most, however, was the machine in the middle of the room. Part of the machine hung from the ceiling, and part of it was connected with the ground and a cot. On the cot lay a purple snake-like pokémon, and it was writing in pain as a man next to it was taking notes…

On the first floor, Sai wasn’t there, but there was the buzzing of the machines and a ton of screaming.

Is this the lab from the games or something different?

“Keep going,” Marty yelled over the screaming, “until you find him.”

We went to the edge of the room, which led us to the stairs leading to the second floor. As we ran through the room, the scientists nearby looked up from their clipboards and looked at us curiously, suddenly panicking and demanding that the intruders be attacked. As we ran as quickly as we could, I noticed that there were also stairs leading down, and I kept a mental note to myself that said we should return to this floor if we didn’t find Sai anywhere else.

The second floor wasn’t much better in terms of content, though it was quieter. The room was completely empty save for two people and two pokémon, taking their places on the arena that was designated by white chalk on the otherwise empty, bare floor. The battle would seem normal if the pokémon didn’t look like they were battling to the death. There was blood—both dried blood and new blood—all over their bodies and in the fighting area. The pokémon were panting heavily, while the trainers—if you could even call them that—stood by watching, completely unscathed.

An experiment to ... make Pokemon stronger in some way? Curious, it wouldn't have been the first thing I would have thought of. The imagery is pretty brutal.

I darted forward on all paws, crossing the arena. The granbull tried to catch my tail in between its teeth, because I stupidly got too close—that’s what happens when confusion takes over—but I narrowly escaped. The sunflora tried to take Ezrem out since he appeared weaker, but Ezrem yelled something about being a flying-type and having the advantage, so the grass-type shrunk back, trying to cradle its wounds instead. Kuiora and Rennio got by without problems, unless you counted Rennio’s sudden sobbing problematic.

“I just want Annie!” he cried, and when he stopped, Kuiora had to start carrying him and tell him to suck it up. He stopped talking about his older trainer and now asked to stay and fight for his new trainer, but no one was actually going to let him do so.

I can't blame Rennio at all for feeling that way...

“Not in this mess,” Ezrem agreed.

The third and fourth floors were standard rooms with desks and machines lined up everywhere. The only difference from the first floor was that it seemed that there were individual offices for the people who worked here. The privacy that the enclosed walls offered thankfully allowed us to sneak by quietly, and without being noticed. Kuiora let out a huge sigh of relief, but that was the only sound we made, and it was hardly damaging.

We kept running and running, floor after floor, not daring to stop even once. Most of the rooms looked the same, and thankfully, we went by relatively unnoticed. It was finally different on the seventeenth floor—I think it was the seventeenth floor, anyway. It resembled a modern, humanized living room. There was a couch in the middle of the room, a coffee table in front of it, and some plants in the each corner, giving the place a rather relaxing atmosphere. We were anything but relaxed, however. Questions were running swiftly through my mind. Where was Sai? Why was he affiliated with a place like this? Where was Atis, and what kind of tests could they be running on him? Why were there pokémon fighting so brutally when battling was supposed to be fun? My thoughts lingered on the basement that we didn’t get to see, but it was too late to go back and explore.

The stairs in this room were hidden behind the tall couch. When we arrived at the foot of the stairs, I could see that there was a door at the top, which was different from all of the other floors. From the light that was pouring inside, it seemed that these stairs led outside.

“Well, guys,” I said, out of breath from running, “this is one of the last places Sai could be. Let’s hope he’s here.” I paused. “Or not. Whichever you prefer,” I added solemnly.

Luckily—or unluckily, depending—Sai was at the top of the building. I was glad to see that he was safe and that he seemed physically unharmed. He wasn’t alone. I was also glad to see that Atis was standing a good ten feet in front of him. The only person I didn’t recognize was a woman that was by Atis. She was short and had a small body, but it seemed that she had a rather firm grasp on the fighting-type’s arm. And the fighting-type was visibly shuddering; we could all see it, even though we were far away.

“It looks like you have friends that are here to see you,” the woman said calmly.

“Mother, please—” Sai started, but then his body unmistakably tensed up. He turned to see us, and his eyes went wide with amazement.

I think I just saw every theory I had confirmed. I'm not even sure if I should be shocked or not, but man, this is pretty depressing even though I predicted a lot of it. I get the feeling it's going to be all-out bad news from here.

I took a closer look at the woman that was with Sai. Apparently, it was his mother. Why wasn’t his mother back in Vermilion City, where he said he was from? Was it just another lie he told us? And surprisingly enough, she didn’t look very similar to him. She had green eyes instead of blue, and her hair almost looked black, but I could tell it was just a dark brown because of the sun that was highlighting it.

“You’ve grown, Sai,” the woman went on. “You have such loyal pokémon now… just like you always wanted.” I saw her squeeze Atis’s arm, and he only shook harder. “And you look even more like your father than before. You’ve got the same wildly lonely look in your eyes. Are you still lonely, Sai?” she said in a sympathetic, motherly tone.

“Stop it!” Sai cried, snapping his attention back to her. His voice had a much harsher tone than it normally did, and it almost made me shake myself. “I just want Atis back. Give me Atis back right now…!”

“You willingly gave me the hitmontop. You even let us poison him and make him faint just to capture him, so he wouldn’t fight back. And you’re telling me that you want to take it all back?” the woman said tauntingly.

His mother knows exactly what words to choose to cause him the most trouble, doesn't she?

I gasped. Had Sai really done that? It seemed unreal to me, to hear of him being so unnaturally… cruel. I looked at the others, and I could tell that they were all thinking the same thing.

“I do,” Sai said determinedly. “I thought… I thought I could abide by your rules, if it meant I could be free. I can’t do it, though. I won’t.” His words sounded reassuring. They sounded more like the Sai I knew, but I was still beyond confused. I stood there with the others, utterly frozen.

“You were ordered to prepare pokémon like this, and give them to us. You’ve done exactly so. We thank you for it.”

And there it is. I knew he had to be part of some kind of experiment or project for a long time now, and my guesses weren't far off the mark.

A lot makes sense now... his obsession with choosing Pokemon 'fated' to be his, his erratic behavior which can now be mapped to his struggles with what Team Rocket wanted him to do, all of it.

“No! I want him back! I’ve seen what you guys do to pokémon. You call yourself Team Rocket and say that you’re just trying to make the world a better place, but I’ve seen what you do! It’s nothing good. Nothing good at all. I won’t put Atis through that. I won’t—”

“And then you will never see the light of day again. That was the deal, was it not? I created this project to save you, Sai. To save you. To give you a life you’ve always dreamed of…”

And yet there's still more to it? It always felt like there was some dark secret about his past besides the Team Rocket connection...

“I didn’t want this! I never did. I only did it because… because you promised me things would get better. That I would get better. But I never got better! Not even for a second!”

“It’s not my fault that you believed my words,” the woman said evenly, but her words didn’t match the ruined expression on her face.

“You promised! You promised…” Sai said. He started sobbing as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the knife that he had bought in Goldenrod City. I almost cried, too. Had he been waiting for this moment all his life? He held it out threateningly toward her. His arm was as firm as the woman’s grasp on Atis.

I should have known the knife was a Chekhov's Gun, I really, really should have. The question is if Sai actually has the guts to do it.

“Are you going to hurt me, Sai? Just as I’ve supposedly hurt you?” she asked.

“Why not? You like weapons. You love them so much that you decided to name me after one. How nice of you,” he said sarcastically between sobs. “Give me Atis back. I don’t want to have to use it.”

Wait, what? They named Sai after a weapon?

Now I know that's not going to be forgotten. Something like that MUST be meaningful in some way.

The woman frowned, and she let go of Atis and put her hands in the air, as if signaling surrender. I watched in awe as Atis ran over to us quicker than I had ever seen him run before. When he got close to us, I could see real terror in his eyes. I went up to him and hugged him, but Atis said there was no time for a reunion.

I'm rather surprised someone who appears to be fairly influential in Team Rocket is giving up this easily. I think it might be a trap.

“We’ve got to get Sai out of here,” he said with haste. “Before he goes crazy. Please, Senori, you’ve got to talk to him and… and…” But he couldn’t continue.

It was clear to me that Sai wasn’t fond of this woman. Despite this, she obviously knew about him more than anyone else. She knew everything, perhaps.

“If she knows Sai, maybe she can help us keep him from going crazy,” I offered quietly. Apparently, I hadn’t been quiet enough, because my trainer obviously heard me.

“Don’t talk to her! She’s only going to tell you about all the bad things I’ve done. Even if what she says isn’t true, she’ll win. She always wins…” Sai said, his arm twitching slightly now. He was staring directly at her, talking loudly to make sure we could hear him.

“Sai,” his mother said. “Just as you weren’t allowed to get close to your pokémon, I’m not allowed to be close to you. I’m your mother. Why else would I want to be like this to my son? I don’t want to be like this. Please understand and put the knife down.”

“No,” Sai said. “I won’t. I’m done listening to you.”

“…Then you will pay for it.”

I don't buy her 'concern' for him for a minute.

“Please, Senori,” Atis begged again. “You have to do something.”

More than anything, I wanted to help Sai. I felt that it was all I lived for, really…

But Sai already seemed too far gone.

This isn't going to end well for every involved party, I get the feeling...

All I can say is wow. This was intense. So much happened in this chapter, and so much finally got confirmed and tied up... I can't do anything but rate this highly. Written well, plotted solidly and containing excellent content... it's all here. I have literally nothing I can criticize.

[Dragonicwari]

“Of all places, he sent Atis to a laboratory? Maybe Atis left us to be a lab rat,” Ezrem commented, scoffing at the thought.

Even Sasha didn’t try to stop him from speaking bad things about Sai this time. Her mouth was raised over her hand in shock. There was something wrong with the place, and there was something even more wrong with our trainer being so closely associated with it. Still, no questions were answered. Instead, more questions arrived.

The two bolded words need to be switched

Another good chapter sir. Also, remember how I asked if this was based on the rival from Silver/Gold a while back, it seems like I wasn't to far off

[diamondpearl876]

There's a certain poetic justice to it being a Senori chapter as we draw ever closer to the end, though.

I was hoping someone would say this.

I have to say, as chilling as this all is, the fact we're getting it all from the perspective of one of the trainer's Pokemon is still really fascinating. One of this story's great strengths has always been its unique presentation of the Pokemon/trainer relationship.

I'm glad you think so. I've always wanted to write a long fic from various pokemons' point of view, so here it is...

I'm kind of surprised Morty didn't come out of the Gym to follow up on the obviously unwell challenger he just had.

Morty's always seemed a bit uncaring to me, but I guess I didn't think of that.

They actually found him? I'm quite surprised it went that smoothly.

Some things actually go right in this fic.

Both Marin and Gracie have nice touches of personality here. I like that you added what may or may not be details superfluous to the main plot at this point, because doing so shows that even as we speed toward the ending of the main narrative, other things independent of it are still happening in the world.

Gracie's details will be more important later on.

Pleasant imagery, I'm just surprised they got here this fast.

I didn't feel dragging out this scene was appropriate, but I did try to add some things in there.

Is this the lab from the games or something different?

Something different.

And yet there's still more to it? It always felt like there was some dark secret about his past besides the Team Rocket connection...

There's more.

Wait, what? They named Sai after a weapon?

Now I know that's not going to be forgotten. Something like that MUST be meaningful in some way.

Names are an important theme in this fic... It's not really a common theme so I guess it wasn't very noticeable. It should be more noticeable next chapter, though.

All I can say is wow. This was intense. So much happened in this chapter, and so much finally got confirmed and tied up... I can't do anything but rate this highly. Written well, plotted solidly and containing excellent content... it's all here. I have literally nothing I can criticize.

I'm glad you liked it so much, especially since this was an important chapter. Thanks for commenting!

The two bolded words need to be switched

Another good chapter sir. Also, remember how I asked if this was based on the rival from Silver/Gold a while back, it seems like I wasn't to far off

I guess not. There's some differences though.

[diamondpearl876]

I also wanted to post to say thank you to everyone who nominated and voted for SP. It means a lot to me. I can say I had the biggest smile on my face when I heard I won some things. XP

That being said, I have added a list of nominations and awards that I've gotten for SP, not only on Serebii, but other forums. Check it out if you want. It's on the first post.

Also, the next chapter will be released as soon as a couple reviewers catch up on the fic. I don't want to overwhelm anyone. Look forward to it!

[diamondpearl876]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
— Mary Oliver

chapter 24 ; [SAI]
stand my ground

*

To my pokémon—

For you all to understand me is the last thing I want. It is a type of contradictory consolation when you tell each other that you want to know me better and I instruct myself to be gracious, but it is true. To truly understand me, my thoughts must flow through you and then consume you. You must see through my eyes to believe what seems to be a million tower-inspired legends, and you must fall victim to numerous pits. I would never demand this of you. For you to understand me is the last thing I want because I am nothing but the sum of the parts that others have made for myself, and that means I am either next to nothing or I am too much, an endless source of devastating fireworks (yes, I’ve seen those—once) and breath that feels like smoke. In the end, if I ask you to understand me, I will be selfish, and I will disappoint you somehow. I would never demand this of you, so think, think before you take a memory…

*

I was only four years old when Team Rocket claimed that I was a threat to everyone around me.

My mother had moved to Johto from a place that she called France. She said that she adored the things that we call pokémon because of their potential power and because of the kind of all-important feeling that they gave her when she owned this strength of theirs. She upped and left without a problem. My father was in prison for constant drug abuse, anyway, so she had nothing else to lose. When she reached Johto, she heard of an organization called Team Rocket and immediately went to join them, as her goals and Team Rocket’s were one and the same. She was loyal and a hard worker, and she went through the ranks faster than anyone the organization had ever known. Within no time at all, she was considered an executive, and she suddenly had a say about what went on in that little laboratory in Mahogany Town. But she was pregnant with me at the time, and I was inevitably her downfall. I was soon born, and for the first few years, I was fine; I was her precious little thing. At the age of four, after my brain had some time to develop, something went wrong with me.

Supposedly, I was an outrageous child—one that couldn’t be controlled by any means. First of all, my mother suddenly found it impossible to send me to any sort of daycare or babysitter because I would scream bloody murder every time I was apart from her for more than a few minutes. This separation anxiety that I experienced forced her to take me to the laboratory with her each and every day, which was where my recklessness shined further.

Unlike a normal child, I wasn’t interested in playtime. My moods shifted faster than the ticking of the clock, but no matter how I felt, I only wanted to follow my mother and do whatever she was doing. She was often in her office filling out paperwork and talking on the phone to other members in other cities, other regions. Besides this, she would supervise the experiments that went on in the laboratory, or she would supervise the battles that tested how strong pokémon were and whether or not they were fit to join a Team Rocket member on their endeavors. I would watch as pokémon were hooked up to machines with what seemed to be an endless number of black and white cords, and I would look at the fear in their eyes and wonder if I would ever want to trade places with them. I would watch as pokémon fought until their eyes were clawed out, until every part of their bodies were paralyzed with exhaustion.

It didn’t take long for me to start interfering with the experiments and the battling. During my frequent outbursts, I was running into the middle of the arena, screaming at the top of my lungs and getting hit by pokémon’s attacks. While I broke quite a few bones doing this, they always healed, so I felt no need to stop. I ripped cords out of the machines and I destroyed a ton of the research that the scientists had spent so much time working on. I was irritable and miserable and unstoppable, even as people tried to hold me down. I was irritable because I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but I couldn’t find my own strength to actually leave. I was miserable for no discernible reason, and I was even more confused when my mood would skyrocket within the next few minutes to the point where I thought that I was the most special person in the world. I thought that I was the only person in the world who could fly, and instead of destroying things, I felt that I was creating. I jumped on desks and tried to pretend I had wings as I hopped off. The workers found this, at least, somewhat humorous, but I was always made angry yet again by their laughter and then I continued my destructive tendencies. I was unstoppable not only to others, but I also couldn’t even control myself.

I never listened to my mother when she told me to quit this kind of behavior. I wanted to listen, but I didn’t have the heart to do so. More research was ruined and more experiments were interrupted. More bones were broken. After a while, the leader of Team Rocket even called me into his office to speak with me in the sternest voice I had ever heard… but even he didn’t cease the insane thoughts that went through my mind and were translated into actions.

As time went on, things only got worse. My thoughts had changed from not only wanting to hurt myself by being a part of experiments and battles, but I also wanted to hurt others. I didn’t like the other scientists. They looked at me funny, they never seemed to smile, they hurt the pokémon that my mother loved so much, and they obviously wanted me—and my mother—gone. It started with me simply drawing pictures of stabbing them and killing them by breaking their necks. When I was finished with a drawing, I would show my mother proudly, thinking that she would agree with me, as she never spoke too highly of the other workers. But apparently her words were only jokes, as she quickly reprimanded me and told me never to draw things like that again. Of course, I didn’t listen.

What happened from then on was also out of my control. My thoughts raced so quickly that I couldn’t tell what I was thinking about most of the time. When I did unbelievable things, I only realized it after it had all happened. I spilled vials full of chemicals all over the workers, sending quite a few of them to the floor with their skin being torn apart. They writhed in pain, and I only laughed at them like they laughed at me. I yelled at them to try experiments on humans to see how they liked it. (Later, I would regret this, as it seemed that they took me literally.) I felt the pressure to keep talking, so I insulted them incessantly until my mother came to seize me and take me home for the day, even if she wasn’t done with her work.

Things weren’t much better in our actual home. I destroyed things and the house was often a mess that my mother never cleaned up. At night, I would either sleep too much or sleep too little. When I slept too much, I had vivid dreams about violence and gore that made me wonder every day about whether or not they had really happened. It was likely that they could happen, after all, given the nature of the laboratory. At other times, I found it impossible to sleep, even though my own bed was familiar to me. After spending about six hours trying to fall asleep, I would wake up sweating and screaming because of night terrors. The lack of rest only contributed to my untamed moods and actions.

Occasionally we went out to other places. Sometimes we went to restaurants and went to celebrate holidays and went to the park and went to buy things, and soon, I would have even been sent to school. But mostly there was no time for that, so I stayed inside those four metallic walls and learned about the world that way. If I had known that this was all I would see for about ten years of my life, I would have been fine with leaving more.

For two years this went on, until the leader of the laboratory had finally gotten sick of me and my wild antics. The boss had given my mother leeway since she was of a higher ranking, but there was only so much he could take.

I was only six-years-old when Team Rocket wanted me executed immediately.

*

“This boy has contributed nothing positive to Team Rocket’s goals,” the boss started bluntly. I had heard once or twice that his name was Giovanni, but not many people dared to say it. His appearance didn’t help matters. He was a tall man with broad shoulders. He had dark brown hair and thin eyebrows. He wore a black suit with black slacks that were held up by a belt. He wore an evil grin, too… and I didn’t think he was much better than the others I knew. My mother was the only good person in this place.

He had specifically set up a meeting time for my mother and me to come see him. She had brought me along, of course, since the meeting was about me. We were on the seventeenth floor, watching the leader intently as he casually sat back on the blue couch in the middle of his office. We stood in front of him, on the opposite side of the coffee table. All I knew was that he didn’t look happy, so I clung to my mother and let her do all of the talking, though I definitely had something to say.

“Master Giovanni, I can explain—”

“There is nothing to explain. If you had an explanation, the boy would have been stopped a long time ago. He has destroyed years of work, and he has put a temporary halt to our future research. He has blatantly hurt other workers in this building and made several of them quit. Above all, he has shown no signs of getting better throughout these past two years.” There was a pause. I flinched at his words and hid behind my mother now. “I like you, Melanie, and I want to like your son. But he is too much to handle, even for you.”

“What… What are you trying to say, Master Giovanni?” my mother said. Her voice was unnaturally weak.

“The boy is clearly… mentally impaired,” the leader said, “and he has no home in a place like this. I want him gone for good.”

“Master Giovanni, with all due respect, I don’t want to do that,” my mother said quickly. I clung to her harder, trying my best not to lash out. “He is my son. I have nothing left but my son. My husband is in jail, and I don’t want to lose my last connection to him. I can’t go through another loss like this. Besides, where will he go? Who will take care of him?”

“Melanie,” Giovanni said gently, though he was grinning. “If you let the boy loose now, he will speak of everything he has seen. You cannot tell me that he won’t speak, because he’s not yet been put in a situation where he could tell someone something. We cannot depend on him going somewhere else and staying quiet.”

“Master Giovanni, please—”

“I want the boy executed.”

My mother’s eyes widened. “You want him… killed?” she breathed.

I didn’t know the meaning of the word “execution” at the time, but my mother cleared it up for me. The leader of Team Rocket wanted me gone for good. I was only six years old. It didn’t seem plausible to me. Even though the team was ruthless and heartless, they didn’t kill people. They didn’t kill pokémon. At least, I had never seen them kill anyone… My hatred for them grew tenfold as I realized that this had probably been done in the past without my knowing. My feelings welled in my chest, and I huffed. I darted forward, reaching forward with my hands. I jumped at Giovanni, attempting to scratch at his face, but he had apparently been prepared for this. He held out his arms and kept me still. He was much stronger than I was, and there was nothing I could do to get any closer to him.

My mother gasped and pulled me away from him. “Sai, how could you attack Giovanni, of all people?”

“He’s evil! He wants to get rid of me!” I cried.

“Master Giovanni, please reconsider. This is probably just a phase. He will grow out of it…”

“I’ve given him two years, Melanie. As I’ve said, he’s shown no improvement. I want him gone, and that’s final.”

“Surely, there must be another use for him,” my mother said. She was struggling to speak, as she was still trying to hold me back. Eventually, finally, I went limp and started crying. I wailed and wailed and wished that my mother’s grasp was more comforting. I started thinking up ways that I could hurt Giovanni further—in his sleep, when he wasn’t expecting it…

“Another use? I cannot think of anything this miscreant could be useful for.”

“…I thought you might try to get rid of him. Hush, Sai, this is important,” my mother said, though I could tell that she was trying to hold back tears too. I sobbed quietly, but I couldn’t stop myself completely. “I thought about what happened if he couldn’t get better. Look, Giovanni, I don’t want to lose my job here. Or my son. There has to be a way. Why don’t we keep my son here while I’m working? In the basement, with the other pokémon?”

“He does apparently think he’s a pokémon that deserves to fight like one,” Giovanni mused. “Go on.”

“He’ll stay… locked up as I’m working. I’ll take him home at night, and—”

“No more. Have you not thought about him running away and hurting others? We can’t have him ruin our reputation.”

She gulped. “As you wish, Master Giovanni. He’ll stay in the cells. I will teach him there in my free time, as if he was going to school.”

“I have yet to see how he will be of use to us.”

“Well, as you said… Sai seems fond of pokémon. When he is old enough—you are free to choose the time, so that you no longer see him as a threat—we will set him loose on a journey.” She paused, waiting to see if he would interrupt again. When he didn’t, she continued, “He will raise pokémon and send them back for Team Rocket to use. We can see if he is any better at raising pokémon with his… outlandish personality, compared to the rest of us. It will be a… survival project of sorts.”

Giovanni leaned back in his seat, smiling. “Now this,” he said, “sounds interesting. Again, go on.”

“Okay,” my mother breathed. Her voice was barely audible. “Okay.”

“Mommy?” I said quietly, looking up at her.

What was she possibly planning for me?

*

Giovanni demanded that the plan be put in effect immediately, so that I wouldn’t cause any more unnecessary damage. We went home shortly afterward, though my mother certainly was in no hurry. She walked slowly and stayed quiet the entire way. When we got there, she instructed me to get my suitcase and pick out my favorite toys while she looked at clothes. It was one of the first directions I got as an experiment for Team Rocket, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was still lost and asking questions that had no clear answers.

“We will feed you there, so there’s no need to pack food. Or water,” she said. She kept mumbling things like this, and then she was mumbling obscenities about Giovanni, which again made me wonder why she obeyed a man like him.

For once, I listened to her. It seemed like a life or death situation that I should follow. Since I didn’t care much for playtime, I didn’t have many toys to get. I only picked up a few stuffed animals and some talking machines that reminded me of the ones back at the laboratory. I put them in a suitcase and watched as my mother filled it with all different kinds of clothes, pieces even for different seasons.

In the middle of her packing, I stopped her by climbing into her lap and hugging her because she seemed so depressed. At such a young age, I even knew what depression was. It was feeling too little when you wanted to feel something, anything. It was a small yet enormous amount of apathy and hatred and loneliness and sadness all built into one hollow soul. Depression was needing all day tomorrow to recover from today. It was something that no one should have to experience, so I tried to comfort her. And I tried to get some answers.

“Mommy,” I said, “are you going to leave me?”

“No, Sai,” she said. She immediately broke into sobs and switched from holding me to holding her face in her hands, trying to mask her sorrow. It didn’t work; I could feel it emanating from every fiber of her being.

I sat there quietly, listening to the sound of her crying mixed in with my racing thoughts. Neither was pleasant to listen to. I couldn’t even come up with anything to say to her because I was thinking too quickly.

We sat there in silence for a long, long time.

Finally, she said, “Let’s go… before he thinks too much and changes his mind.”

We made our way ever so slowly to the laboratory. We passed the green brick houses and the green grass and my mother told me to remember the view forever, because it would be a long time until I ever saw it again. I didn’t take her seriously, of course, but I wished I had later on. The grass below tickled my feet and the green of the houses—including my own—made me feel envious of other people. It was an emotion that I would continue to feel for many years to come.

When we reached the laboratory at the edge of Mahogany Town, the one I had grown so familiar with, we went into an area that I had never been to before. We usually always went upstairs, but this time, we went downstairs. I thought that it would resemble the basement that we had in our own house—which was comfortable as it was a combination of a family room and a toy room—but it didn’t. Not at all.

In the middle of the basement was a movable cot which had a long, leather strap lying out. What caught my eye closely after that, however, were several cages lined up on the walls. They were all filled with pokémon. Some of them even had two or three of them in one small cage. So this was where all of those experimental pokémon came from, I thought. They came from these cages in the basement, and they were strapped onto that cot and wheeled upstairs for further examination or to battle. It all made so much more sense to me now.

My mother brought me over to the far left wall where three empty, larger cages stood. She explained that they were there for bigger pokémon… but now, they would be used for humans.

“This,” she said, “will be your new home, Sai.”

I stared at it, unimpressed. While my old home had two floors and several rooms, this cage was only about as big as the bathroom. It had a small bed in the corner, a sink, a toilet, and… a barred door. It wasn’t exactly appealing. I swallowed hard, squeezing the handle of my suitcase, wishing that there was no reason for it to exist.

My mother went to open the door, waiting for me to go inside. After a few minutes of me refusing to move, she pushed me and told me not to be so difficult. The time for being difficult had to be over, or I’d never get released. I didn’t think that the things I had done were really that bad, but I was starting to reconsider my notions.

“Sai, you are going to do extraordinary things for us,” she said in a more lighthearted voice. “Can you do that for me? Can you agree to this? I’ll be here with you always. I know that will help you. Can you do this for me?”

For her, I nodded. I trusted her wholeheartedly. I was only six years old; I didn’t know what I was agreeing to at all.

She smiled weakly and she shut the doors, but I couldn’t tell if they were shutting me out from the world or if they were shutting me in to keep me safe.

*

And so began my life as a human experiment for Team Rocket.

At first, it didn’t seem so bad. I was beginning to live in a relatively peaceful state of mind, which happened once in a great while. It had started when I had attacked Giovanni and had been hushed by my mother… I knew that I was going to be quieter because I hadn’t been as tough or as violent as I usually was. I felt luckier than ever whenever these kinds of serene moments happened in my life. For a while, it made me think that this cage was meant to be my home, after all. It was cozy enough. The bathroom was always accessible, and the pokémon that often stared at me from across the room looked away when I had to go. And I had my toys to play with whenever I felt interested. And the bed was comfortable, even if it was small, and I wondered what would happen when I outgrew it. Would my mother buy me a new one?

As she promised, she didn’t abandon me. She came to visit me every day—several times a day, in fact. She was becoming more involved in my life than ever before! It seemed like a great deal to me. She was teaching me my numbers and my letters, saying that I’d normally be in school by now and that she wanted to keep me on a regular schedule, like most kids would be on.

But as time went on, my old habits returned. The only thing that had improved was my separation anxiety; I had, indeed, grown out of that phase. Still, it became increasingly difficult to think about numbers and letters long enough to attempt memorizing them. I wanted to destroy things… and people, if given the chance. I was either too sad or too angry. When I was too sad, I spent most of my time huddled over my suitcase in the corner of the room, begging to go home. This riled up the other pokémon in the room, but I ignored them. And when I was too eccentric, I tore up the clothes that I had and the flashcards that my mother had given me to practice with. I yelled and yelled and yelled, both obscenities and random things on my mind, just to get the thoughts out of my zipping head, but no one came to rescue me. Not even my mother.

“If you ever want to get out of here,” she told me sternly, “then you have to focus. You can’t let your emotions get the best of you. I’m going to teach you everything that you need to know so that you’re prepared when you leave this… nice place. But we have to start small.”

I tried my best. I used self-made routines to help me. I used my forever growing fingernails to etch the alphabet into the stone wall of my cell. I continued to do the numbers, zero to one hundred, even when I started bleeding. It was the only thing I could think of doing. I needed something that I couldn’t destroy, and this was it. My mother didn’t seem to approve or disapprove; she only seemed pleased that I wasn’t being completely destructive. As a reward, she told me that most pokémon trainers set off on their journey at age ten, which was only four years from now. Four years! The first four years of my life now seemed like a blur, so perhaps the next four would go by just as quickly. I didn’t think anything of it.

Time passed so quickly I couldn’t keep up with it. Since I didn’t even have a window in this place, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night, winter or summer. Many things happened, but the one event that stands out the most to me is when I received a very special visitor.

He was a short man with a shiny bald head. His face was lean and taut. He had a soft, inviting smile, so I didn’t scream or attempt to attack him, though I was feeling especially wild when he came. He wore a red tie and a gray suit, and all I could think about was how I was so glad to see those colors outside of the blood and stone on my walls. I had never seen him before in my life, so I knew he wasn’t from the laboratory. He said that his name was Dr. Richards, and then my days were filled to the brim with new experiences and feelings that I didn’t even have names for.

*

“Sai… Sai Luart. Age ten. Is that right?”

“Oui.”

“I don’t speak French. It’s my understanding that your mother has taught you several languages thus far. Is that also right?”

“…Sorry. I guess so.”

“It’s best to learn multiple languages when you’re young. You’re able to speak the different sounds and learn them better.”

Silence.

“You know, I don’t get many young patients like you. I would say that you’re special.”

“That’s what they all said.”

“Who said that?”

“Everyone above us. They wanted me dead.”

“That’s not very kind, is it? Well, I don’t want you gone.”

Silence.

“Sai Luart. Age ten. I have a lot of information written down about you besides this, but I’d like to hear your side of the story. Is that all right with you?”

“Did my mother bring you here?”

“Yes. She did.”

“…Nevertheless, I have no story to tell.”

“I bet you do. Everyone does. From my understanding… You were a very worrisome young boy. You seem to harbor a ton of anger toward yourself and others, and you seem to cherish violence when it seems most convenient for you. Many interviewees pointed out that they knew how you were feeling based on the look in your eyes. What do you think?”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve changed an awful lot since then. I’d love to tell you about it.”

*

It was true—I had learned many languages. And several other things. After teaching me the basics, she taught me how to write and read. Writing didn’t take long, since I had already partially taught myself by carving in the letters. My handwriting was legible enough for her. She said there wouldn’t be many instances where I had to sign something. Next came reading. This, at least, gave me something to do when sitting in my cell, but it was extremely difficult with my short attention span. It took much longer than it should have to teach me to read according to her, but she succeeded eventually by giving me plenty of children’s books. She had to replenish them every two weeks or so because I tore those apart too. When I said I wanted harder material, she brought young adult books for me. The new books were a challenge that I gladly undertook. My mother occasionally made jokes about me reading the research materials that were always being made on floors above, but I didn’t find it funny. I really did want to take part in that, just to have a chance to be somewhere else, breathing in air that wasn’t heavy and full of unpleasant smells.

Next, she taught me the basics of pokémon. There were different types belonging to each individual pokémon, she said. She used the ones across the room as an example. Mostly, there were fire-types and poison-types and dark-types with us, with a small number of steel-types. These types were the most difficult to raise, she said, but they were highly rewarding. She taught me which types were effective against others and which were not so effective. Fire beat grass, water beat fire, grass beat water. It seemed simple enough, and I passed these tests with flying colors. I thought that if only Giovanni could see how intelligent I was becoming, he would let me out sooner, but my mother solemnly told me not to get my hopes up.

History and basic mathematics came next. I learned addition and subtraction and division and multiplication, and my mother told me that although the lessons didn’t seem too fun, they would be useful later on when trying to keep money. Money would be absolutely vital, she said, and she promised that she would have plenty of it prepared for me. Every time, I told her not to go through the trouble, but she just shook her head and asked me to repeat the stories behind Kanto and Johto and Hoenn and other pokémon regions, along with the story of how pokémon were discovered in the first place. Apparently, these regions were uninhabited in terms of humans, and one day, pokémon showed up on the shores of Africa. Though plenty of animals lived in Africa, pokémon were deemed as reckless monsters at first, and the people there went to great lengths just to keep them in their native habitats. It took many years for the trusting bonds between pokémon and humans to form. It made me wonder whether or not I was meant to be a pokémon instead, only I ended up in the wrong body, the wrong life.

The lessons, though simple, kept me busy. The books kept me busy. My mother’s daily visits kept me busy. But it wasn’t enough. As it turned out… four years was a very, very long time when most of what I did was simply sit there, looking at the pokémon from across the room. While my mother taught me French (our family’s main language, I knew) and English and German and Japanese—she told me that I’d want to be prepared to speak to anyone I came across on my journey—I, out of sheer boredom and slight curiosity, taught myself the art of speaking to pokémon. When all I had was time, it was relatively easy, and I figured that it would be important to talk to my partners. Why my mother hadn’t taught me this on her own time was beyond me.

I learned by genuine observation. Since, to anyone who couldn’t understand, pokémon only spoke their names, intonation and body gestures were key. Each and every pokémon had a clear voice that they used for all of the individual emotions that they could possibly have. I learned the sounds of sadness, of anger, of happiness. The pokémon shook their tails in delight when they wanted something (in the cells, it was usually food), or, if they didn’t have tails, their eyes glittered when they talked. Ears flattened when they were worried or feeling guilty. And so on. I could feel the emotions pouring out of them with every action they did, and this translated into an understanding of their speech.

The first full conversation that I had with a pokémon—a long, purple snake named Arbok—went something like this:

“Hello?” I said, feeling pretty prepared. I wanted to practice. Above all, I wanted to socialize. It had been far too long since I spoke to anyone besides my mother and Giovanni. I knew that saying hello was appropriate, at least, because that was what my mother used to say when she answered the phone.

“The boy is talking to himself again,” I heard the arbok say nonchalantly. He wasn’t even trying to be quiet, and in truth I had come to understand the many insults that he had thrown my way over the last couple years. These insults had triggered numerous rages of mine, but I hadn’t stopped them. With my lack of self-control, I didn’t know how.

“That’s not very nice,” I said now. I was in one of my calm, peaceful states. It wouldn’t last long, so I had to make use of it while it was still there…

“It’s not?” the arbok said, glaring at me. And then his face softened and mouth opened in surprise, revealing a long, red tongue that looked like a fork. Forks were one of the things in the real world that I missed, since my mother couldn’t give them to me for fear of me using one as a weapon. The sight of the arbok’s tongue made me want to give up, but I somehow kept pressing on.

“It’s not,” I repeated his words, suddenly too overwhelmed to think of my own.

“It’s apparently a special gift to be able to talk to pokémon, boy. How long have you been listening to us?”

“I think,” I said, ignoring his question and finding the courage to go on, “it’s just because I have nothing else to do. I have a lot of time to learn, whereas everyone else is too preoccupied with life.” I shifted around uncomfortably, the bareness of my feet feeling the cold of the stone floor below me. It seemed appropriate and fitting, so I didn’t put any socks or shoes on. I wasn’t even sure if I had some anyway.

“That could be it, too. Would explain why all the Nurse Joys in the world can listen to pokémon and understand them perfectly fine.”

“Nurse Joys?” I asked curiously.

“You’ll meet one someday, I’m sure. They do nothing but spend time with pokémon… just like you,” the arbok said rudely. He sneered and looked away from me, and I could hear the sarcastic tone of his voice. It rang through my entire body, and I could feel his scorn firsthand amidst all of my own emotions that were stirring in my heart.

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re getting out of here. We’re not,” Arbok said, his contempt abruptly showing.

“I’m still stuck here for a long, long time,” I said sadly. I couldn’t bear to look at the snake anymore, so I stopped.

“Then rest, little boy. Quit making so much ruckus all the time. Be calm. And prepare yourself for the world,” Arbok said. It turned away from me and didn’t look back, and I knew that that was the end of the conversation.

Rest, he said! It was easy for him. He didn’t have a never ending list of things he needed to do when he got out of this forsaken place running through his mind. Okay, maybe he did have this, even though he was supposedly never leaving, but I could say for certain that my thoughts raced faster than his, so that didn’t count. He didn’t have a mind that constantly ticked over, counting the amount of specks in the patterns on the stone walls surrounding three sides of his body. He didn’t have three songs running in his head all at once, songs that were once sung to him by his mother. He didn’t have images from last night’s dreams haunting him and talking to him. Rest, he said… I would, if only it were that simple.

But it was getting easier. The symptoms of my mental illness (as Giovanni called it, though I wasn’t sure what it entirely entailed) were changing dramatically as I grew older. I no longer wanted to tear things—or people—apart. That was one thing that I had always been worried about thanks to the boss. My impulses consisted of other things now. And when my moods shifted, they stayed for longer periods of time instead of changing every hour or every few minutes. That meant that I had longer moments of peace and clarity as well. And my delusions of grandeur graduated from thinking that I was impossibly able to fly to thinking that I was, more realistically, sent as a special gift from the sky above to do Arceus’ bidding.

But while many things were different, many things were still the same.

I was still sick, no matter what happened.

*

“I would love to hear it, if you’d be willing to tell me.”

“I either feel too much or feel too little. I believe that I am better than everyone else and that they’re just keeping me locked up because they don’t want to admit my greatness. Despite this, I have no desire to live my life half of the time because things can’t possibly improve. When I do want to live, I want to do too many things at once. I have many plans for the future... My father is dying in prison, miles and miles away, and I feel like I’m the one killing him. I feel guilty, like I’m being punished for doing that to him. I can’t eat, or I eat too much. I can’t sleep, or I sleep too much. I can’t make any decisions for myself, so I have my mother make them for me. I am bored with everything, dissatisfied. I can’t overcome my loneliness or fear for the future. I can’t be with others without going crazy, but I can’t be alone. I can’t concentrate on anything for too long. I want to fight and fight and tell everyone that they’ve all let me down. I want to talk too much, all the time… if you couldn’t tell by now.”

“It sounds like you are very, very overwhelmed.”

“I am. I am beyond overwhelmed. All the time…”

“I think I can help you, Sai.”

“You can? Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“No one’s ever offered to help me before.”

“Yes. Well. I can give you medications to keep your moods stable.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

Silence.

“Give me a name. Tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“They call it bipolar disorder. Very uncommon in children, but it does happen.”

“…Thanks.”

“There is one problem, however. As I told you earlier, Sai… you are very young. Medications for younger patients aren’t forbidden, but they aren’t encouraged, either. Do you know why that is?”

“No.”

“This is because your brain is still growing. Your body is still growing. These medications can do things to permanently… mess up your brain chemistry.”

Silence.

“You’re young, but this isn’t going to be a phase you’re going to grow out of. Bipolar disorder is forever. Medication will almost be a necessity for the entirety of your life. Nevertheless, it’s up to you. What will you do?”

Silence.

“For your mother, will you take the medication?”

Silence.

“Sai?”

“…Yes… I will.”

“I hope they work well for you. I sincerely do. It may take a long time to find the right one, so… let’s get started.”

*

Another peculiar symptom that came to me when I was about eleven years old was… delusions. That was what my mother called them, though she regretfully said that she could do nothing for me. She said that Dr. Richards would have to take care of it. Dr. Richards only said that he wasn’t sure if it was because of medication or if it was just natural. He suspected the latter, as it was apparently common among the mentally ill. And I had come to accept that that was what I was—mentally ill. Messed up in the head. Forever sick.

I was lying in my tiny bed—I was, indeed, starting to outgrow it, and my mother promised that it would be replaced soon—trying to sleep when it happened. The room started spinning around me. I completely forgot where I was, even though the room was so familiar to me. My breathing grew heavy, and I wanted to punch myself or burn myself and convince myself that I was real. But I couldn’t move. It was hard to even breathe when it felt like a heavy weight sat on my chest, and my lungs seemed to have finally noticed that there was a dead spot in the middle of my chest, shriveled up due to lack of use. Everything I looked at quickly became blurry. I kept blinking to make everything clearer, but in my mind, everything was still muddy. I was suddenly convinced that all the memories I had belonged to someone else because I believed that I was a pokémon. In reality, I knew that I wasn’t, but that was what it felt like.

I was a small creature. I looked down at myself when I finally had the strength to do. I was a dark brown color, with some cream on a circular part of my belly. I had tiny paws and tiny feet. My sense of smell had increased tenfold, and the ears that I now had felt nothing but danger nearby. Yes, I was a pokémon, yet I was not.

Images flashed through my mind. There were images of destruction, of blood and gore, just like I had seen in my dreams so many times before. This felt different. This felt utterly and terrifyingly real. Several pokémon that looked just like me were being torn apart and eaten alive, even the babies. From far away, I was a spectator who was powerless and unable to fight, even though the urge to do so clung and screamed at every part of my body. I couldn’t do a thing. I watched and watched, mouth hanging open in disbelief.

I violently shook myself back to reality. I sat straight up, taking in the view in front of me. All was dark. All was quiet, aside from my obvious panting. I jumped out of my bed and tried to run to the other side of the room, crashing into the bars in the process. I wanted to look for that pokémon, but I had never seen it before in the laboratory. I had to find it. I had to find it and save it, but I didn’t have the means to do so.

The next day, someone was brought into the cell next to me. I was in my bed yet again, sleeping, so I never got a good look at him. When I woke up, the pokémon were murmuring and laughing to each other, saying that the person next to me was “just as crazy as the Sai boy.” I didn’t dare speak to the other boy because he was talking to himself frantically, wildly, praying to Arceus that He would shed some light upon him or that He would come rescue him, Senori Deliro, from the life that he had so suddenly been thrust into. Apparently, I had been so successful up to this point that they decided to bring in another test subject.

I had thought about it all night. I still vowed to find that pokémon. I vowed to put that pokémon on my team and take care of it as best as I could, since it was obviously injured emotionally after what it had seen. Remembering that everyone had to have something to call their own, I decided that I didn’t want to use my mother’s name, and I didn’t want anyone to remind me of the boss. I would find that pokémon, and I would call him Senori… for the sake of the one that was just like me, stuck behind bars in a life that was less than ordinary.

*

Sertraline hydrochloride, anti-depressant, 50mg. Used to confirm the diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder. Reported frequent headaches, symptoms of mania (delusions of grandeur, high motivation and energy). Discontinued.

Fluoxetine hydrochloride, anti-depressant, 10mg, increased to 20mg. Used upon request by Master Giovanni upon seeing the effects of sertraline hydrochloride. Reported weight gain (10lbs), frequent nausea, sweating, symptoms of mania (worsened insomnia, delusions of grandeur, impulsive and aggressive behavior). Discontinued.

Lithium carbonate, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 300mg. Reported severe pain and tremors, and thinking that he was a “zombie, though I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve heard my mother describe it as a bad, bad feeling.” Discontinued upon having intentions for suicide.

Lamotrigine, anti-convulsant/mood stabilizer, 25mg. Reported better sleeping, calmer moods, slight paranoia. Discontinued upon seeing rash.

Quetiapine fumarate, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 50mg, increased to 100mg. Reported sleeping too much (16+ hours a day). No other reaction. Discontinued.

Aripiprazole, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 15mg, increased to 30mg. Reported extreme paranoia (thinking that others wanted to poison him) and an unwillingness to eat. Discontinued.

Patient tried to refuse all further treatment but called for me five days later, saying he had changed his mind.

Divalproex sodium, anti-convulsant/mood stabilizer, 25mg. Reported severe weight gain (30lbs), returned homicidal thoughts, frequent dizziness and aggression, strange and vivid dreams. Discontinued.

Chlopromazine hydrochloride, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 10mg. Reported lethargy, depersonalization, numbness. Discontinued upon request.

Risperidone, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 0.5mg, increased to 1mg, then 2mg. Reported slight anxiety, calmer moods, better sleeping.

[diamondpearl876]

I believed that I was nearing fourteen years of age. I had asked my mother to stop celebrating my birthday at the beginning of every January. After missing all of the holidays in the two previous months, I didn’t want her to take pity on me and try to cram all of those days into one. It only made me miss the outside world more, which wasn’t what I needed.

What I needed was to get smarter and stronger, both mentally and physically. And that was exactly what I did. The readings got harder, the mathematics got crazier, the history more complex, and science came into play, too, since it would be nothing short of important to know the kind of land I would be treading on. And soon, my mother went back to trying to teach me life skills.

At first, she tried to teach me about cooking, saying that food would be absolutely essential not only for myself but also for my future pokémon. Eventually, this endeavor failed, as the leader of Team Rocket made it absolutely forbidden for me to leave my cell for any reason. He thought that I would go on a vengeful rampage if I were let out too soon. As he had said in his office, it would be he who decided when I could be set free. So my mother told me all about berries, about which ones were good for a pokémon’s growth and which ones were poisonous. She told me about which types of human foods were good for me (for this, she brought well-planned meals to show me in person) and which were bad for pokémon. Avocados were bad for flying-types, excess chocolate was unhealthy for anyone, and so on.

She taught me how to fight. This, she said, was something that we would learn together. She read up on martial arts and watched videos about it and relayed all the information that she had learned to me. In the small room of the cells, we practiced kicking and punching and headlocks and any kind of move that could stop a potential murderer dead in his tracks. I asked her whether or not I would really have to use these techniques someday, and she said she hoped not, but it never hurt to be prepared.

She taught me about traveling. She told me to keep all of my pokémon out of their pokéballs at night. This was to ensure safety for myself when I was sleeping. I was to make damn sure, however, that none of them snuck off and got themselves hurt. Well, that would be easy enough, I mused, since I didn’t sleep much anyway. She taught me about making fires and how to prepare my backpack for upcoming trips and how to find clean water nearby if I didn’t already have some. I asked her if this was really okay, since one of the rules of the game was to not have any trusting bonds between pokémon and me (to prevent separation anxiety when the time came to give them away), and she said that it was just a risk that I’d have to take.

Lastly, she taught me how to read maps. She taught me about what all the little symbols meant, and how to tell which way was north and south and east and west. I learned information about each individual town in Johto, but that was it, seeing as how it would be impossible to leave the region. This would important, she said, when trying to figure out where to go… especially if I ever had to return to Mahogany Town at any point. She hoped that would never have to happen, because she could tell I didn’t like it here. Well, wasn’t that the truth? But I trusted her to make this game play out as fairly and as peacefully as possible, so I kept my mouth shut this time.

I tried to keep it all straight in my head, but my skill at retaining information was easily starting to fade. Ever since I had started the medication, my memory had become worse and worse. That was what Dr. Richards had meant when he said they could potentially ruin my brain chemistry, I supposed. I didn’t tell him or my mother, however, because I didn’t want to make it look like I was going to give up so easily, and I didn’t want my mother telling Giovanni that all of the lessons that were aimed at me were for nothing.

I focused on getting better, on not being sick anymore. But it was the hardest thing I had ever done and probably would ever do. Not being sick anymore required me to be an entirely different person… a person that I just didn’t know how to be. The fact that I had little contact with others made it impossible to live vicariously, and the fact that it was my brain causing me to be this way, not my own personal choices, made my decision even less than useless.

More people came into the cells. They were just as crazy as me, so they didn’t help. A woman named Kuiora Loki said that she had the same disease as me, though hers was easily controlled by creativity. She was obsessed with the idea of sculptures and carvings of pokémon, especially legendary pokémon. She tried to etch her drawings into the stone walls at first, threatening to break through the walls and escape to her freedom. My mother—who was officially in charge of this project, it seemed—brought her several carving blocks over the course of a few months. Kuiora was released almost immediately once Giovanni saw how gentle and genial she was when she expressed herself in her own way… and once he saw how much money he could make off of selling her work.

Another man, Atis Harleen, was the quietest person I had ever met… not that I had met many people. To me, it seemed that the saying which claimed the quietest ones were the ones to watch out for was true. It took me two months just to get his full name out of him. He slept most of his time away, and once I was released, he was still there. I never figured out what was wrong with him or if there was anything wrong at all.

The last person to come to the cells when I was there was another man. He could only stand it for one night. He soon went into a screaming frenzy, yelling about how he didn’t deserve to be put in a place like this. He was apparently going to go somewhere else, somewhere better, against everyone’s will. He said that he was going to give my mother—and anyone who could hear him—two hours before he let himself go. “If you really want me,” he said, “you’ll come and get me!” But no one came. Two hours later, just as he vowed, I heard the loud sound of bone cracking against concrete. It sounded very familiar to me, given my previous excursions on pokémon battlefields. I covered my ears, but still I heard it over and over. It was so loud, and soon, there was nothing. Later, I found out that he had banged his skull against the stone walls until he had put himself into a coma. Giovanni had him executed since he didn’t want to pay for the care it would take to repair him.

These people, though I had little to no contact with them (they were uninterested in me and in the pokémon in the room), they meant the world to me. I felt them in my heart and I didn’t even know them. They gave me hope, they gave me strength, even the unknown man. I especially felt this way when Kuiora was released. I knew that I would be set free somehow, someway, and that things would get better not only for me, but also for the world—because of my doing. My mother promised me the same thing, and when she did, I smiled wider than I ever had whenever she wasn’t around.

Above all, they helped me to shape my future pokémon team. I wanted to honor their lives and memories, and I was going to do just that. I pledged to keep my future pokémon with similar personalities or hobbies. They would even have the same names. There was Senori and Kuiora and Atis and—well, I would figure out his name later. It seemed like the perfect plan to me, despite knowing that I would have to return them to Team Rocket someday. That part of the project was always stuck in the back of my mind, mostly ignored. I would deal with it when the time came, I decided.

And instead of having delusions (which the medications seemed to have thankfully destroyed), I had strange and vivid dreams instead, ones that also helped me shape my future team. I saw flashes of yellow and cackling electricity, which reminded me of the poor nameless man and the price he had to pay to reach the sky above. There were many rivers where water wavered between rippling calmly and rippling wildly. And there was an army and a strong leader in front of the pack. I took these as important signs that I should remember someday, as I wasn’t imagining gore and violence for once.

I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, and for once, my future seemed beautiful.

*

“So, what was that man’s name? I’m sure my mother tried to get you to come and talk to him. Am I right?”

“What man?”

“The one who I assume tried to commit suicide and failed.”

“That has no place here. I’d like to know how you’re feeling.”

“I’d feel a lot better if I knew the man’s name.”

“I don’t know the man’s name.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Now, how are you feeling?”

“I feel better. But I still miss the outside world.”

“I don’t think that will go away.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the optimistic one?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“How about if I do you a favor?”

“A favor?”

“Tell me anything that you want to see. Anything from the outside world, and I’ll bring it to you.”

Silence.

“You will?”

“I will. Right now, whatever it is.”

“Well… I don’t have a window in here. Show me what looks like outside your window at twilight. My favorite part of day.”

“I can do that. I’ll be right back.”

A very, very long silence.

“I was starting to think you’d never come back.”

“Of course I would. I had to think about it, though. I couldn’t just take a picture and develop it, since it’s not twilight yet.”

“What time of day is it?”

“Mid-afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“I brought you this.”

“Dice?”

“Yes. I guess I can tell you one bad thing about myself... since I know so much about you. I’m, ah, afraid of the dark. At twilight, everything starts to turn black, just like the dots on the die. And for me, it’s scary. The only safe place is inside. It’s light and bright inside. The white resembles the purity that I feel from this safety. The intensity at which I feel this fear varies each day… thus the varying numbers on each side of the die.”

“You’re highly creative. I wish I was.”

“So I’ve been told. Does it suit you?”

“It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but yes, I suppose so. …Can I keep it?”

“You can.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

*

To keep myself occupied, Dr. Richards suggested that I should try to find ways to make my future pokémon journey special. I told him that that would be breaking the rules. I couldn’t get close to my pokémon. Well, he said. If I really wanted to be creative, then I could find ways to follow the rules and make things special. So I did.

With my mother’s insistence, I would have a lot of money, so I would give each of my pokémon their own rooms. That would keep us separated, and would give them a lot of much needed privacy. Yes, that seemed perfect. And I would use the pair of die… somehow. I would make my pokémon roll the dice for me when I was catching them. If they were meant to be with me, then the die would land just right. One, two, three, four, five, six pokémon—they would get whatever correct number they were supposed to get. I knew that I was right because every time I thought about Senori being my first pokémon, I rolled the die and came up with only ones. That would surely make them feel like they belonged on my team and nowhere else, even if they didn’t particularly like me (when I assumed they wouldn’t, given my… disease).

I was going to be released soon. I just knew it. I could feel it in my bones, in my heart.

Of course, things didn’t always go as planned, especially not for me. Things never wanted to go my way.

The medication only partially kept me stable. I still went off into rages, and a few nights later, I went into one of my worst ones yet. It wasn’t my fault (at least, I didn’t like to think so), but the damage was still the same.

The pokémon in the cages were particularly restless that night. For some reason, my mother was late in bringing us food, and the water was dirtied from not being refilled as it should have been. I didn’t mind (and apparently neither did Atis), but the pokémon were fretting. If they had to be stuck here as loyal test subjects, then they believed that they should be treated right in every form possible.

“It’s bad enough that I have to share a home with this goddamn kadabra,” Arbok said. He, too, was in a hateful mood that night.

“Don’t forget that I can mess up your mind. You should watch what you say,” the kadabra replied in an even voice.

“If you could do that, then you should have ruined the minds of these scientists long ago and gotten us out of here. You’re useless,” the snake retaliated.

As their exchanges started to escalate, my mother just happened to come into the basement, a tray of food in hand. She apologized for her lateness, but she had thought of a great idea for me, which only made the pokémon glare in my direction. I shied back into the corner of my cell. She went on, saying that she had wanted to get approval from the boss. It always took a while to be able to talk to the boss. She settled down the pokémon by giving them their food, and then went back upstairs temporarily for the rest. She returned, gave Atis his food, which he thanked her feebly for, and then, before I knew it, she was in my cell, smiling excitedly. I stared at her, expecting her to say that it was time to leave—for good.

“Sai,” my mother said. “I thought about how else I could help you on your journey. Well, battles are going to play a huge, huge part. And Giovanni won’t let you out to battle on the second floor with everyone else, but he said—” She extended her arms out to show me the room, as if I had never seen it before. “—we could fight in here.”

“In my cell…?” I said stupidly. “That sounds quite a bit dangerous, even for you guys…”

“You’ll… still be in here,” my mother said regretfully, “but the pokémon will be in the center of the room. It’s big enough. And they know better than to disobey by now,” she added, peering over to the other side of the room. The pokémon didn’t dare look up from their feeding bowls.

“Okay,” I said simply. “Whatever you think is best. I trust you.”

“As you always have,” my mother said. “Let’s get started.”

Once the pokémon were finished eating, she locked me back in and then she took the arbok and the kadabra out of the cells. I silently told myself that the idea of her choosing any other pokémon in the room would be guaranteed if she had heard their scuffling earlier. She brought them out into the middle of the room, and as expected, they were on their best behavior as they obeyed mindlessly. The arbok was placed on my side, and she would be battling with the kadabra. The two pokémon hissed as they stared each other down, and I knew that they weren’t pretending to hate each other.

“You’ve seen battles before… and you’ve even been in them yourself sometimes,” my mother said quietly. “But it’s an entirely different thing to be controlling the battle. You have to know your pokémon inside and out to be able to predict how they’re going to fight. You have to know their attack specialties, their defensive strategies, and, of course, their moves. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said simply, as I so often had during previous lessons.

“Good. I won’t explain much. It’s better for you to learn by doing. I’ll let you go first.”

It suddenly occurred to me that this was what I would be doing in the real word if I ever got released—no, when I got released. I froze as what seemed like a million emotions welled up in my chest, threatening to make it explode. The thought of making pokémon battle in such a harsh manner, as Team Rocket so often encouraged, was unbelievable to me. I only wanted to make friends with pokémon, to share their hopes and dreams and to have them know mine. But I had to follow the rules. I wasn’t able to get close to pokémon. I had to battle with them and make them strong enough to become a fearful force of Team Rocket. To do anything else would lead to my death…

I gulped, pretending that there was something stuck in my throat that was preventing me from speaking. Finally, I said, “I don’t know any of the arbok’s moves.”

“Then think of standard moves like tackle, scratch, defense curl, and tail whip. Just like I taught you when we went over pokémon basics.”

“Okay… Arbok, use tackle!” I cried, using the force that my mother had instructed me to use, all that time ago. She said that it was vital to sound like I meant it when I was ordering them around, or they wouldn’t have respect for me or feel the need to listen to me.

It appeared that I had used the right tone of voice, because the arbok immediately lunged at the kadabra, headfirst and with full power. Or maybe he was just waiting for the command so that he could tear the kadabra apart. Either way, my first command as a pokémon trainer seemed to have worked. There was an odd sense of relief that passed through my body, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly.

This didn’t last long, however, as the arbok didn’t stop at just a tackle attack. The kadabra flung backward and caught itself before it fell on its back. The arbok darted forward again, and the same scenario repeated itself, except that the snake didn’t allow for the psychic-type to get up. He plopped down on the kadabra’s body and stayed there, watching the pokémon beneath him struggle to get back up.

“Arbok, get off of him!” I cried, clinging on to the bars, wanting to get closer to help the kadabra out. Apparently, the arbok couldn’t hear me over the kadabra yelling the same thing, because he didn’t appear to hear me. The snake, of course, was more prone to listen to me than its opponent.

“Kadabra, use psychic! Don’t hold back,” my mother said.

The kadabra stiffened, holding out the spoon in his hand as he closed his eyes and focused. The arbok was soon enveloped in a bluish light, and he rose up into the air. He tried to lash out at the psychic-type with his teeth without me ordering him to, but it was too late to reach far enough. He went higher and higher into the air, and suddenly, his body started twisting in peculiar ways. The kadabra telekinetically caused the arbok’s tailbone to crack and break, making the snake wail and wail. The mixture of horrible sounds seemed to reverberate in the air.

“Why are you doing that to him? This is supposed to be a battle!” I cried, my eyes wide and my heart hammering.

“The kadabra could have easily broken the arbok’s neck instead,” my mother said, entirely unaffected. “We believe that pokémon should, at all times, use their full power… and their full power should be enough to kill another if necessary. If they can’t do that, then they’re useless to us.” She sighed. “I thought you knew this, Sai.”

“I do know that. I did. I just… Bad things should only happen to bad people, like the ones I hurt… These pokémon are good and trapped here for no reason…”

I let my voice trail off as I had to center my attention to my abruptly shaking body. I tried to make it stop, but found it impossible. My volatile thoughts argued against each other. Some of them said that violence was the answer, while the other half claimed that no, there had to be another way, there just had to be, or life was meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. The sight before me was a blur, and the screaming deafened. I was rolling and rolling around in my head incessantly; I had a front row seat to the end of my world, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My grasp on the bars in front of me tightened considerably. I was used to my view being obscured by these long, thick pieces of metal that also blocked my freedom. Sometimes they were moved out of the way, but I could never see out of the door long enough to keep myself satisfied for more than a few seconds. And I thought—even if I were to be let out of this place, maybe nothing would ever be enough. Maybe I would never get used to the feeling of sun beating down on the back of my neck. Maybe I would never get over the way that grass can tickle my feet when I’m not wearing shoes. Maybe I would never get over the way it feels to converse about the simple things in life. I missed it so now, and although I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the experiences, it could at least be a wonderful time. Better than this. I had to know if things would get better or worse or if they would stay the same. I always wanted to be let go, but the desire to be set free wasn’t something you could just get used to, like catching colds or eating at the same time every day… Yes, it was just as terrible, just as terrifying every time it happened.

I shook the bars in front of me, trying to make them bend to my will and break, just like the kadabra had done to the arbok, only my actions wouldn’t have been cruel and unnecessary. The bars weren’t living and breathing creatures—or were they? What did I know? All I knew was that they didn’t budge. Instead, I beat at them with my head, but this only reminded me of the nameless man, and I didn’t want to be like him, I really didn’t, so I used my arms and hands and legs instead, and every strike hit with a loud clang, but nothing caused any damage, not even a dent. This only made me angrier. I used my own full force, ignoring the obvious pain that followed. Agony shot through my arms and up to my shoulders, through my legs and down to my feet, but I only kept going. I firmly believed that if I gave up now, then I would never get out. I would be trapped here forever, stuck in my own devious mind, my own spiteful body. I couldn’t deal with that. I just couldn’t.

“Let me out!” I screamed at my mother. Again and again. She was the only one who could help me. She was the one who had given birth to me, she was the one who had raised me, she was the one who had taught me things that I needed to know. She had done all of this for me, so why couldn’t she let me out? Why was she so powerless in the one area that could help me the most?

Let me out!

My arms were forming bruises that would last for weeks, a seemingly everlasting reminder of rage that doesn’t leave.

Let me out!

My legs hit a small, sharp section that was protruding from the main bar, which sliced my toes. Blood seeped to the floor, drip by drip, as if that part of my body was crying.

Let me out!

I hit and hit, screamed and screamed. My mother was on the other side of the door, trying to soothe me with her calming voice. It didn’t work, for it was obvious that she was scared of me. Otherwise she would have come in and held me, like she always did.

Let me out!

I slid to the floor and sobbed and sobbed for a life that I didn’t even know.

*

“You say that bad things only happen to bad people?”

“Yes.”

“Bad things just happened to you. Are you a bad person?”

“Yes… I don’t follow the rules that I should. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to when I get out, either.”

“This isn’t your fault. You’re sick, you know.”

“Uh huh.”

“You did this, and you don’t think you’re ill?”

“I never said that I didn’t think I was sick.”

“Well, you certainly don’t seem to act like there’s anything wrong with you. You act so… normal when you’re around me, it’s hard to believe you’re a patient at all.”

“I don’t know who I am.”

“You’re Sai Luart.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you’re a strong, courageous boy who’s been through a lot. You’re kind and you’re a dreamer. And it means that you have a lot to look forward to.”

Silence.

“Sai?”

“What do you want from me?”

Silence.

“What do you want from me?”

Silence.

“What do you want from me? What do you want from my life?”

*

I want to love you… whoever you are and whatever that means. I want to eat ice cream on the swing set in the backyard with you and I want you to watch part of the moon say hello to its other half and I want to watch your favorite movies and listen to your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods just to wear your heart and I want to one day stop counting the months, the days, the minutes, the seconds, until I can see you and I want to have someone to talk to when something good or bad or extraordinary or humiliating happens to me and I want you to like your name just because of the way I say it and I want to learn to cook just for you and I want to laugh at stupid jokes until I cry and I want to try to take care of you before I send you to a doctor and I want you to love yourself more than you love me and I want to save you from your senseless fears and and and

and I want to go on adventures with you and pretend that there’s something left for me to find and I want to hear all about your past life and I want to remember every small detail about you and I want to find any excuse in the world to hold you and touch you and breathe you in and I want to worry about you all the time because I’ll be so scared that I’ll lose you any sooner that I have to and I want to stay up late into the night with you because reality feels okay when I’m with you and and and

and I want to tell you that you’re perfect again and again and wonder why you don’t believe me and I want to spend my life convincing you that you’re perfect and I want to experience the feeling of doing something you don’t understand for the sake of another and I want to cherish your existence because it gives me hope and I want to dream about all these things I want to do with you and for you and I want them to happen in real life and I want to tell you that dreams really do come true so we can feel young again

and I want to avoid shame and pain and fear and I want to repress my emotions and I want to beat the social norms I know and I want to fight against coercion and secrecy and I want to receive positive attention and I want to boost my self-confidence and I want to defend myself and I want to reach all of my goals and I want to stop charging toward my death

and and and

with this

and more

I want to

somehow

someway

show you this

unbelievable enduring unbreakable everlasting persistent endless captivating overwhelming completing empowering undying love I feel for life.

*

More time passed. There wasn’t much left for me to learn, apparently, so I stuck to remembering things from the past, but it was hard. It was as if my memory had somehow been blocked recently. I could easily recall emotions that I had felt, but facts such as how type differences affected a pokémon battle slipped my mind. Not having anything to teach me meant that my mother showed up less and less. I became lonelier and lonelier. I slept with my books and shoes and clothes on the other side of the bed to make it feel like I was sleeping next to someone. It somewhat worked.

Once I heard the news--after much, much time had passed since the incident—that I was going to be released the following day, I immediately became restless. I felt wholly unprepared, and it was as if I had literally forgotten everything. I paced around the room the entire night because I was unable to sleep. The pokémon in the room looked at me with disgust and didn’t even bother to say good-bye the following morning. That was fine. It would be better, I knew, if we could say hello somewhere else. Somewhere better.

When my mother came downstairs to get me, she ignored them entirely. She took the keys to the cell out of her pocket and unlocked the door. I couldn’t help but notice that her hand was shaking as she did so, making it harder to slide the metal open. I looked up and smiled at her. She was nervous too, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore.

“Come on, Sai,” she said. “We’ve got a few things to do before you go.”

I nodded. I followed her upstairs, looking at my cell one last time before rounding the corner. It hit me that there was, at least, one good thing about being all the way in the basement for the majority of my life. The realization was this: no matter where I would go from here, I could only go up. Up the stairs and out the door into the world.

She brought me to the third floor. Walking up the stairs had already put a strain on my legs, and I made a mental note that I would have to build up strength if I really wanted to go on this long journey. I was also able to notice that the scientists had done a decent job at cleaning up the terrible messes that I had left behind as a child. All of the machines looked brand new, and their desks were organized. The floor I saw was the complete epitome of cleanliness. The second floor was the same, though I was brought into an office that I hadn’t known existed. The first thing I noticed was a desk that showed a nametag that said “Melanie Luart” on it.

“Sit down,” she said, motioning to the seat in front of the desk. I did so. It was the first of many orders that I would have to obey. I vaguely knew it at the time, but I didn’t feel the full force of my obligations until she started speaking again.

“You know your mission, yes? You are to set out on your own pokémon journey. Giovanni and I have decided that you are as ready as you’ll ever be.”

“Must you be so formal?” I said, shifting around slightly. I didn’t know what I had been expecting once I got released, but it wasn’t this. There was much more to come; I just had to be patient for a little while longer.

“Yes,” she said simply. “Anyway, your ultimate goal is to prepare pokémon for our use, experimental or otherwise. To do this, you must raise them to the best of your abilities. Utilize everything I’ve taught you thus far. Catch pokémon that have the most potential by any means necessary. The pokémon must become as strong as possible, and when you think they’re ready, you must report to us and send them to our laboratory. You are not to become attached to them. This ensures that you won’t betray us. You are not allowed to leave the region or stray too far away from the main route.”

“The main route?”

“Yes. You will start in New Bark Town and go from there. This is where all trainers start their journeys, supposedly... This is where it will be easiest to find pokémon that you can control.”

“...Do I need to know anything else?”

“Nothing that you shouldn’t know already. Train as much as you can. Don’t stay in one place for too long, or you’ll be prone to start wasting time. We can’t have you slacking off. If we do catch you doing anything that doesn’t meet our approval, then you will be punished accordingly.”

I stared at her blankly. Hadn’t I already been punished enough just for existing? Saying nothing, I then looked down to the ground, wanting to leave already. If the team was in such a rush, why were we wasting time here? I was feeling too energetic for my own good.

“If I think of anything else, then I’ll be sure to let you know,” my mother said, standing up. She gestured for me to join her and so I did. Before we left the room, I saw a picture frame sitting on her desk that showed me from when I was younger. Did I really ever look like that? And it had been so long that I didn’t even know what I looked like now. She seemed to notice my curiosity, as she led me into the room next door, which was just the staff bathroom. From my peripheral vision I could see a large mirror hanging on the wall, and my skinny frame immediately stuck out.

“You need to clean yourself up before you go. Make yourself look presentable,” she said. She reached into her pockets once more, making me think that she was going to lock me in again. Instead, she pulled out a small sharp device and handed it to me. “This includes shaving,” she added, smirking.

“How do I do that?”

“Figure it out. You’re a man now, right?” she said. She left me in the room by myself, alone and confused.

Of course, I wasn’t interested in making myself presentable. The mirror and the image of myself that I hadn’t seen in years mesmerized me instead. I leaned in over the sink, taking a look at my face. Noticing my dark blue eyes first, I couldn’t help but think that they looked rather intimidating. They were eyes that were accustomed to the dark. They were accustomed to the same old views, and now they were seeing something new. There was a spark inside of them that I had never seen anywhere else. I wondered if they would change at all over the course of my journey.

I also wondered when I had changed so much otherwise. When had my hair turned black? Had it always been black? I thought I had seen the little boy in the picture have brown hair, but now I was not so sure. Seeing myself all at once threw me off guard. And how old was I now, anyway? I still had a young face with soft skin and all, aside from the stubble that covered the bottom half... Well, I wasn’t about to ask. The answer would only tell me how many years I had lost.

I stared at myself for so long that it suddenly hit me that I was wasting time already, just like they didn’t want me to. After quickly taking a shower (and after not wanting to leave the relieving warm water it offered), I tried shaving, as my mother requested. For the most part I succeeded, but there were clear cuts that I made in the process that made me bleed slightly. I brushed the blood away, wondering if I was making myself look worse or better.

When I was finished, I stepped out of the bathroom to find that my mother was waiting for me, and that she had probably been standing there the entire time.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I got sidetracked.”

“Well, don’t make a habit of it,” she said, motioning for me to follow her once more.

This time, she led me outside. The sensation I automatically felt after my first steps out was overwhelming. The sun’s rays seemed to blind me in a matter of seconds and it seemed as if I was going to be blown away by the wind that had suddenly picked up upon my arrival. The only thing that was familiar was the feeling of concrete below my feet. I felt dizzy and struggled to keep myself upright.

My mother chuckled, but it was a sad chuckle that she was obviously using to lighten the mood. She dug into her pocket one last time and handed me a rolled up piece of paper.

“This is a map of the Johto region,” she said. “I taught you how to read one, remember? Head to New Bark Town, as I said. You’ll be fine.”

“You think so?” I said. “I can hardly stand the sun already.”

My mother’s demeanor quickly changed. She tensed up and said, “Your father would be proud, you know. He always said he would be proud, no matter what happened.”

“It was as if you both knew this was going to happen,” I mumbled.

“I didn’t. I never meant for this to happen,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me.

“I believe you,” I said anyway.

“Do you?” she said.

“You’re the one who brought up the idea in the first place. That means you thought about it... and probably for a very long time. But under the circumstances at which you brought it up, yeah... I guess I believe you.”

After a few moments of silence, she said, “Sai. Your name is like a weapon. Intelligently sharp, and very powerful. I know you can deal with whatever is thrown at you.”

That was something I couldn’t believe right away. It would take time to create that kind of thought within myself. Still, I trusted her words and nodded, but kept my disbelief silent. For it was not a prison of stone and metal that I feared, but one built of words and promises.

*

I was out of prison for nearly three weeks before I came to the realization that I had been in a flat place compared to the real world. I didn’t even notice it until I left. At the Team Rocket headquarters, there were flat colors, flat noises, flat people. It had nothing to do with geography or Mahogany Town in general. The real world was just that much more lively. All of its smells and textures and sounds seeped into my bones and made me half-forget everything I had known before. I was adapting and coming out of my shell. Yes, this sort of beauty was my new truth.

As instructed, I made my way to New Bark Town. I had to first travel through the cave on the east end of Mahogany Town and everything from there was just a matter of going south. My mother had warned me that this method was the fastest, but also the most dangerous. There were more powerful wild pokémon in the nearby ice cavern and the next city, but it would quickly level off once I reached a certain point, she said. That was fine with me. I was determined to get myself started as soon as possible; I had already wasted enough time. If I ran into a wild pokémon, I simply fled or fought it myself. It was only difficult for a while because my body wasn’t accustomed to fighting actual opponents. Eventually, though, I was able to stand my ground. A few pokémon even helped me out along the way and offered to come with me, but I had to decline their offer. Accepting would have meant breaking the rules too soon.

The ice cavern was cold and the nights were cold, but nothing could have prepared me for the chilling experience that I had when I met Senori. When I found him, my body seemed to freeze up immediately, and I had no idea what to do. He was just walking around aimlessly, maybe looking for something to eat. I knew that he was the right one because he was alone. His eyes told me that he was missing someone because he had seen terrible things, just like the pokémon in my vision had. He was the one, and I had to capture him... somehow.

It dawned on me that I didn’t have any pokéballs. No... On my way to the outskirts of New Bark Town, I hadn’t tried to go into another city and communicate with anyone. Not only did I want to get to my destination as quickly as possible, but also I wasn’t sure if I could talk to someone else without messing up. It was better to wait. In addition, it was better to start off with a bad impression. I wasn’t allowed to get close to my pokémon, after all. And that was why I attacked Senori when he was powerless—he would then dislike me from the start, and it was my only option in terms of catching pokémon, anyway. I forced him to join me with sharp words, like my mother would do.

“I don’t care what anyone’s called you. Your name is Senori,” I had said, trying to sound confident. Inside, I was regretful, but there was no way I could let it show.

My confidence only became somewhat founded when I started my tradition of asking the pokémon to roll the die that the doctor had given me way back when. Was I really expecting the die to prove to Senori that he was meant to be my first pokémon? Half of me was hoping, and the other half was overcome by intuition. When the die showed a single dot after it was rolled, my beliefs were confirmed in my mind and apparently in Senori’s.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he had said.

And so he did. He took me to New Bark Town and told me how all trainers begin their pokémon journeys. While he scolded me at the same time, I looked for one out of many for the pokémon that was destined to join me next, at the proper starting point. I watched the totodile, cyndaquil and chikorita through the gates nearby. I only told Senori that no one stuck out to me in order to buy time. In truth, Kuiora stuck out to me immediately. During the training sessions, it was clear to me that she was fierce so she could get what she wanted. She was the strongest mostly because she wanted to be the strongest. Outside of that, though, she was gentle, and when I overheard Professor Elm talking to her, I discovered her love for legendary pokémon. She instantly reminded me of the Kuiora I had known before, so I took her in. Lying to Professor Elm about my origins was surprisingly easy, but it made me paranoid that perhaps the police would come after me as well if I did something wrong. This journey was definitely going to keep me on my toes.

Next came Atis. Senori had told me about the journey that all trainers take, the one to get the gym badges. I assumed that this was what my mother wanted me to do because the gyms went in a certain order, just like the cities, and the badges proved just how strong you were. Atis was my first step into the real adventure. I stepped into the pokémon school out of curiosity, but then swiftly realized that it was to recruit my third pokémon. His quiet demeanor was too obvious for his own good. Standing at the back of the classroom, his eyes showed an odd mixture of boredom and terror. His reaction to me told me he didn’t want to be here, so I took him away even though he already had a trainer.

Meeting Atis was important not only because he was already evolved and powerful, but also because he set some ground rules for my journey. Falkner told me that I should set up appointments with gym leaders in order to not disturb them like I had with him. And during the actual battle, I remained on the sidelines and let him do whatever it is that he did during combat. My guise told the others that I just wanted to learn more about his strategy, but I knew otherwise. I stayed silent, unsure of what attacks to call out, and because I was afraid of calling out the wrong move, just as I had done during my personal training. We won—he won—and so it all began.

Several things happened before our next gym battle. I met a boy who thought I was a terrible trainer. Marty came along at the right moment, just in time to save Senori from the falling rocks in the cave between Violet City and Azalea Town. If it weren’t for him... Well, I don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to think about the violent words he threw at me, either, but they have stayed with me because they were true. My explanation was that I was too busy with the racing thoughts in my head that I hadn’t even noticed any imminent danger, but how could I tell that to Marty without sounding crazy? How could I tell him that I was actually a good trainer because I knew how to communicate with my pokémon and he didn’t? I didn’t know how to act around him at all. His reaction toward me justified my initial fear of interacting with others.

The fear eventually dissipated. My moods quickly escalated once we hit Azalea Town after a few restless nights of sleep at the cave. I wanted to meet everyone and do everything at once because I couldn’t focus on a single thing. My speech was fast and I suddenly had an endless amount of energy. There was nothing in the world that could stop me. That was why I asked to visit Sasha in her home even though she suggested that she didn’t want me to come. I wanted her to be my friend because she accepted me despite being reluctant. Her being Marty’s sister was an unfortunate coincidence, but I wouldn’t know it until later.

In the midst of my mania (which was supposedly the term for these high moods I got), I recklessly started spending money on random things. I bought everything in sight, everything except medicine, because none of my medicine in the past ever did anything good for me. I even bought my pokémon t-shirts, which wasn’t so random, because it made me feel closer to them. I didn’t care about any consequences at the time because I was invincible... even at the hands of Team Rocket!

It wasn’t long, however, before this high energy changed into bouts of anger. I yelled at Atis and threw things at him simply because he suggested that we stay in Azalea Town longer than I originally wanted. I was angry because I wanted to stay, too, but I couldn’t. He knew nothing of my situation, and for that I despised him in that moment and acted in the only way I knew how.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Atis and how I had so blatantly hurt him. In spite of everything, I wanted to stay. I wanted to be closer to my pokémon. The only good thing about my outburst was that it made him hate me more, but that was only desirable to people who were far away. I had to do something, anything to distract myself. I went into the Azalea Town well and caught as many magikarp as I could. I intentionally caught pokémon that weren’t meant to be on my team so they could be my friends, but I quickly dispelled this notion and released them later on to people who could take care of them better that I ever could. When I was manic, my desires and feelings changed just as quickly as they came.

I got back on track as quickly as I could. I fought Bugsy and that battle turned into a lesson I didn’t want. I couldn’t learn that weak pokémon were just as useful as strong pokémon because there could be no weak pokémon on my team. It just wasn’t an option. I felt proud at this outburst, at least, because I was finally following the rules.

Aside from wanting to stay in places longer than I did, Kuiora offered me the first example of my disobedience toward Team Rocket. She wanted to be stronger. The team wanted her to be stronger. I wanted her to be stronger for herself, but not for them. I knew everything. I knew that she was begging for my attention, even though I told Marty otherwise. I didn’t give her what she needed until I had no choice but to do so. My lashing out against her... I had no choice. I had already learned that sometimes violence was really the answer and as expected, things got better from there. Her obvious gratitude was the only thing that kept me sane.

When Marty saw the violent exchange and then challenged me to a battle, I wasn’t really surprised. I knew that he would try to work against me somehow. He wanted to prove that he was the better trainer and make my pokémon leave me. I agreed to the battle, thinking that I wasn’t going to let them leave regardless of whether or not they wanted to. I would convince them to stay just like I convinced them to come with me at all. I was surprised, however, when I didn’t have to do anything of the sort. They chose to stay. I was secretly glad, but this meant that none of my defenses were working. Somewhere along the line, I had let my guard down and had let them in.

Suddenly, another miracle happened: Rennio showed up. At that point, he was nameless to me, since I hadn’t learned the name of the final man in the cell. He seemed so young, so eager to grow, but something was stopping him. He gave off the anxious impression that he was scared to stay in Ilex Forest for too long, like the other man who wouldn’t accept imprisonment. He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere better. I offered to take him with me, so that things would be better for him—for a time, anyway.

Ezrem showed up, too, but I didn’t need him. I didn’t want to seem cruel, but he was just so persistent. There just wasn’t any room on the team. He didn’t belong. Since no one else was in the cells during my time there, I believed my team was complete, even though my mother told me the most pokémon I could have was six at a time. I simply said no, and expected my answer to be final. Still, I let him follow us for Rennio’s sake. If I wasn’t going to be the source of the comfort he needed, then someone else would have to take that role.

Despite these two positive events happening in a row, I suddenly fell into a depression, as I so often did after being manic. I believed the trigger was Marty telling me that Sasha would never want to be my friend or travel with me because I wasn’t a suitable companion. To have this confirmed to me by another person dispirited me to the point where I was miserable all the time and had no energy to travel any further. As a result, we ended up staying in Goldenrod City longer than intended. I ended up saying yes to Atis when he wanted to show me around the city instead of insisting that we should battle the gym leader and move on. Notably, there was a pocketknife I picked up at the large department store. When I saw it, I immediately thought of my mother and her love of weapons of any kind, be it a pokémon weapon or a handheld weapon. Turning it over in my hand, I decided that it would be perfect for her, and it was also then that I realized I would probably have to face her again someday, after everything was over.

Keeping the pocketknife, however, was a terrible reminder of the rules that she had given me. Never become close to your pokémon, she said... to ensure that I wouldn’t betray the team. But Atis was clearly telling me he wanted to get to know me better. He wanted to spend more time with me. When I let him write whatever secret he wanted on my back, I felt that it was etched into me like a tattoo or whatever those markings are called. I knew that I would have to fight the urge to look at what it was, but I let him do it anyway. It would disappear in the shower eventually and ruin any chances of me finding out, at least, but for the time being, I settled on rubbing myself there when I couldn’t sleep to remind myself that Atis was real.

[diamondpearl876]

Time went on and revealed more events that I didn’t want to have to experience. The scene at the radio tower had told me that Team Rocket was lurking around for whatever reason. Automatically I assumed that they were after me. They had caught on to all of my misdeeds and were ready to take me back to my prison. I had to do something quick to make up for it. My choice: I had to make Rennio fight, despite his fear of battles. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have made him do it, but it was up to people who were much more powerful. When we lost to Whitney, my intention wasn’t to leave my pokémon behind for days at a time. I only wanted to leave and find a safe hiding spot for us to go to as quickly as possible. Before I could find any suitable location, however, I had already been confronted by a Team Rocket grunt who was instructed to come to me and bring me back to Mahogany Town for “rehabilitation.”

When I found out what this “rehabilitation” was, it seemed unnecessary for me to go all the way back to Mahogany Town, but others apparently differed in opinion. The rehabilitation involved me being in my cell once more while being asked to take my medication. This time I was forced by Dr. Richards to do so. He called me out on not taking it, saying it was fairly obvious when someone stopped. I had no choice but to give in to him. He would check my mouth after every swallow to make sure that the pills were actually gone, and then he would leave me alone with my thoughts.

Soon enough I was starting to feel manic again. I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t think about my pokémon’s whereabouts and conditions anymore without my mind wandering off somewhere else. I asked him why this happened because the goal of medication, I thought, was to keep me stable, not to make me go up and down. He explained to me slowly that Giovanni had paid him money to give me antidepressants instead of mood stabilizers in order to keep my moods “high” and energized for proper travel. Supposedly I was more active and successful during these times in my journey.

“So they’ve been watching me the entire time,” I said bluntly.

“Yes... and they’ll continue to do so. I’m sorry.”

When I left about two weeks later (after they said I was “fully functional” once more), it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen my mother at all, but I wasn’t going to stick around and prove to her that I had temporarily failed. I fled back to Goldenrod City, hoping my pokémon were still there and that they were being well taken care of in my absence.

When I returned, I was overjoyed to find that my pokémon had waited for me. If they hadn’t waited for me... Well, I didn’t know what I would have done. Started over? Tracked them down? At least I didn’t have to think about it for too long, since my pokémon noticed my arrival almost immediately and of course wanted to know where I was. With me being secretive as always, I tried to pretend it never happened. It worked, to a certain extent. I could tell there was a different feeling in the air now, one of tension and mistrust. There was nothing I could do about that, and perhaps it was for the best, anyway. Now I could do things better than before.

But I quickly ran into a problem: Sasha. I had another choice to make when she confronted me about taking my pokémon to the fan club. Either I could say no and insist on going to the gym in order to not waste time or I could go with my own instincts, my own desires of wanting to be her friend. Despite everything, I went with the latter. I just didn’t have the heart to say no, and it was only for a few hours, anyway...

Seeing Senori evolve into a furret at the Goldenrod City rematch was worth it. It was a proud moment for both of us. He looked as if he were finally letting go of his past somehow, as his new movements were much lighter, much less tense. And to see my very first pokémon come so far in such a short amount of time made all of the exhaustion and pain I had gone through thus far seem like nothing compared to the joy I felt when I was with them. When Senori came to me that night with my antidepressant bottle in hand, asking me to stay with them, I felt like a true trainer for the very first time.

I thought that things were looking up then, and I didn’t just think it was the medication having an effect on my brain. But then the incident with Rennio and Ezrem happened. Once again, I had a choice... and I chose to backtrack and save Ezrem from the burns that he suffered. There was no way that I could leave him behind now, not with Rennio trying so hard to battle for me. When I actually called him by his real name in the waiting room and when I saw him cry, I had to try not to cry too, for similar yet different reasons.

Things got worse. That day, Atis told me that he wanted to leave the team. I understood and didn’t question him at all. After the Ezrem ordeal was settled, I tried to celebrate one last day to make Atis happy, and also to try to get him to stay. I couldn’t come up with anything that would convince him. I couldn’t even convince myself of wanting to stay. Only the evil thought of turning him in swayed in my mind. In a way, it was perfect timing. I hadn’t meant to deceive him... but I couldn’t let him go. If I had let him go, I was risking more suffering on my part. It was selfish, I admit. When I watched him faint in front of me, the disbelief in his eyes ripped into me. I felt sick myself. I could only hope that my promise to miss him every day had rung true in his mind.

It felt unnatural, but I cried all night. My pokémon tried to comfort me despite their own sadness, but there was no way I could tell them what I had done. They would all leave me and know me for the terrible person that I was. I couldn’t afford any more mistakes now. Anything else would have let Atis’s sacrifice be in vain... but when had I ever been known to stick to the rules? When had I ever not followed my own intuition? Never. I just didn’t have it in me. My adventure without Atis didn’t last long at all. When no one wanted to fight for me versus Morty, it reminded me of Atis and his introverted self. When Senori couldn’t attack the ghosts, it reminded me of Atis’s knowledge of the world that surpassed my own. My team was falling apart because it wasn’t just me that could hold the team together. We all held the team together in our own way, and the absence of one of us was showing.

I panicked. I wailed. I screamed random obscenities because I was so very tired of keeping quiet about all of my lies, all of my secrets. I didn’t know how much I was revealing, but I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was getting to Atis as soon as possible, before he became an experiment of Team Rocket’s, like I had been. He was a special pokémon, just as I was a special child... but his situation could be handled much more effectively. Something else could be done—or so I hoped.

Thanks to the map that my mother had given me, I knew exactly how to get back to Mahogany Town. Coincidentally, there was a cave to the right of Ecruteak City that led me directly there. I didn’t stop to rest until I got there, even when my limbs felt like they were about to break down from fighting so many wild zubats and geodudes. I didn’t sleep or even hesitate a moment before running back into the laboratory that offered so many unfavorable memories to me.

Inside, I violently grabbed the first person that I came into contact with by the scruff of his collar and yelled, “Where’s my mother? Where is Atis?”

“I-I don’t know any Atis…” he stammered, dropping the papers that were in his hand.

“Where’s my mother, then? Where’s Melanie Luart?”

“Sai…? W-What are you—”

“Where is she?!” I said more fiercely, gripping more tightly onto his uniform to make a point. He was making small talk, and it was unacceptable to me.

“Last I heard, she was going to train and—”

I let him go, not needing to hear anything else. There were only two training locations in the entire place, and whichever one she was in, I knew that she—and Atis—weren’t too far from me anymore. I scrambled up the stairs in the corner, causing two more scientists to make a mess with the materials in their hand. I didn’t even stop to apologize, for I felt I had no reason to and I was in a rush. My head felt like it was going to explode at any moment if I didn’t see that Atis was somewhere in this building, safe. Not locked up or bruised or bleeding.

It seemed that, for once, there was one good thing about living in this place for so long. Despite being locked up for years, everyone recognized me. Everyone knew who I was and no one questioned my presence. There were no alarmed shouts about an intruder, so I could go wherever I wanted. They all chose to ignore the wild fire of tears that was undoubtedly falling down my face.

I ran up the next set of stairs, to the second floor, to the first set of training grounds. My gaze shifted from one person to another, from one pokémon to another, but neither my mother nor Atis were there. They all stopped to stare at me, even the pokémon who were in the middle of attacks. I panted for a moment before sprinting once more. I crossed the middle of the arena to save time, despite the fact that I might have been hit. It reminded me of the time when I was a child and would purposely do this, but I had grown up now. Couldn’t anyone see that? Couldn’t anyone see that I was as normal as I would ever be?

I went up and up and up, to the roof. That was the only other place they could be now that I knew the second floor wasn’t where I needed to be. Please be there, I thought. Please be there. I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone else just trying to find them. But at last, I did find them. Thankfully, I found only the two of them. No other pokémon—no other signs of harm—were present. The only bad sign was that my mother was standing next to Atis. She was too close, too close.

She looked at me in disbelief. “Sai?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“You know exactly what I’m here for,” I said, motioning toward the fighting-type. Atis was also staring me down, but I couldn’t tell if he was glad or disappointed. It was times like these where I wished that he was easier to read.

“Hmm…” my mother said. “This pokémon is no longer yours. The moment we took him away, he was the property of Team Rocket.”

“But I’m… I’m part of Team Rocket, too!” I said, the words leaving a foul taste in my mouth. It was the first time admitting this in my entire life, and I could only wonder if I would regret it after all was said and done.

“You’re not part of this group. You’re… an experiment yourself—”

“Don’t remind me,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’m a toy, I know. Don’t I have a say in anything, too? What about the others? Where are they right now?”

“The others? Well, we followed them for a short amount of time…” she said, shifting her gaze away from me and lowering her voice.

“What are you saying?”

“They’re dead, Sai. They’re all dead. Killed by pokémon, suicide, murdered… You name it, and it probably happened.”

My eyes widened. To know that I was the only survivor was hard to believe. Wasn’t the will to live supposed to push anyone through any adversary? Wasn’t misfortunate eventually supposed to give way to good fortune? It made no sense to me. I put my hands over my ears, wishing I had heard nothing.

“But they were sick like me… They were special…” I said, taking a few steps back.

“Whatever they were means nothing. All they are now is dead,” my mother said, shaking her head. “I told you that you would be able to overcome anything, Sai. By the looks of it, you didn’t even run into anything truly dangerous. Besides yourself, that is…”

I looked up and saw that she was walking toward me, still moving her head disapprovingly. I peered over at Atis and saw that he was shuddering. Lost and confused. What had I learned from Atis? How could I prove to him that his journey with me wasn’t for nothing? I tried to persuade him with pleading eyes. His mouth opened for a moment as if he were going to speak, but then his face scrunched up and his eyes closed.

“Sai!” he suddenly shouted, darting forward. But my mother seemed to anticipate his actions and caught him by the arm before he could even get close to reaching me.

I bit my lip. “I just want Atis back. I’ll do anything you ask.”

“You say that, but you haven’t done much of what I asked of you before you left.”

“I… I mean it this time. Do whatever you want to me, but let Atis go.”

“I can’t do that, Sai. Pokémon are more than beneficial to us. You know this.” She paused. “It looks like you have friends that are here to see you.”

“Mother, please—”

I cut myself off. Confused, I turned around to see Senori and the rest of the group close behind him. I gaped at them, wanting to shout at how crazy they were, how they should be far, far away from here and why did they come here anyway? How did they know where I was?

My mother went on, talking about how I had such loyal pokémon now… She said I was still lonely… Was I lonely? Yes, I felt lonely in the sense that no one knew what I was up against in my life… but of course I didn’t want to give her the pleasure of knowing that. I yelled, this time being random, I just want Atis back, you told me things would get better and they never did, they never did, I won’t follow your rules because you lied to me. You lied to me!

But she knew where to get me most.

“…And then you will never see the light of day again...”

I wanted life. I wanted freedom. When she brought up the idea of me dying, I remembered the others and how they were gone now, and I fumbled with my pants until I found the pocketknife that I had bought at the Goldenrod City department store. I held it out threateningly toward her. It was the only weapon I had left, if words weren’t going to work and if my pokémon were going to leave me after what they were seeing.

“Are you going to hurt me, Sai? Just as I’ve supposedly hurt you?” she asked.

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what my intentions were. I just wanted to seem like a scary person, just as everyone else seemed to me. I almost didn’t believe it when she put her hands up in surrender and let Atis flee over to the rest of us. Atis ran right past me, as expected, and started mumbling things to Senori that my mind couldn’t properly process. I could only focus on my mother’s words, which hurt me more than any damage the knife could ever do.

“I’m done listening to you,” I said, and it was the most confident thing I had said during the whole conversation.

“…Then you will pay for it.”

I watched as my mother reached behind her and pulled out a few pokéballs off of her belt and extended them toward me. “A pokémon battle,” she said. “If you win, I will see to it that you are allowed to leave this town and leave this project. If you lose… you must subject yourself to us once more, or choose death. It’s up to you.”

I stayed silent for a moment, unmoving, thinking through the proposal. How could I beat her, a trainer of many years? I had little experience in battling. I had done little actual training with my pokémon. Having three badges couldn’t be enough—and I didn’t even have the badges to prove my strength. They were lost. It felt like I myself had already lost. And would my pokémon fight for me, anyway?

Slowly, I put my arm down, and I put the knife back into my pocket.

“Unlike some people… I am not a torturer. I am not a killer.” I sighed. “I agree to your challenge, but only under fair one-on-one conditions. I also won’t be forcing any of my pokémon to actually fight. If they choose to leave me alone in this battle, then so be it.”

I turned to face my team. They looked up me with such innocent, questioning eyes. I smiled as best as I could and kneeled down so I could look at them directly.

“I’m sorry I left again,” I started. “I had to find Atis, but I didn’t want to put you guys in any danger. I hope you understand, but if you don’t… it’s okay. If you don’t want to fight for me right now, that’s okay too.” I extended my hand out toward Atis gently. He flinched slightly at my touch, but he let me pet him on the side of his head for a few moments. It was all I needed. I had intended to tell them everything after the incident was over, no matter what happened, but the touch felt so final, so conclusive, that I explained everything in that moment: that I was mentally sick and I had been imprisoned for it. My goal as a Team Rocket experiment was to train pokémon for usage in battles and other projects better than any normal person ever could. I told them everything and I was out of breath by the time I was done. I shook my head and repeated that they didn’t have to fight for me.

I didn’t wait to see their reactions. I didn’t think I could handle it. I simply stood up and turned to face my mother, saying I was ready, and that whoever wanted to fight could step forward.

“If you’re ready, then let’s begin,” my mother said, tossing a pokéball into the air. Out popped a small lizard pokémon whose tail lit brightly with fire. The orange creature let out a fierce growl, saying it was ready to go. It was my mother’s first pokémon, a charmander from the Kanto region, and it didn’t seem to recognize me. To go from playing with this pokémon as a child to fighting in a life or death battle seemed beyond surreal to me.

I held my breath and waited for the inevitable, my mind reeling with words of false persuasion and comfort. I knew in my heart that not a single pokémon was going to step forward. They had no good reason to defend me anymore, and I wouldn’t blame them for leaving. But Rennio—Rennio, out of all of them—stood in front of me and faced the fire-type pokémon in front of him.

“Are you sure this is what you want, Rennio?” I asked quietly.

He turned his head to me and nodded. Though he was frowning, I could tell his reaction was sincere.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t be commanding this battle… as usual. Everything is up to you.”

Again, he nodded. And then it began.

I would like to say that everything that happened next was by my own design. I would like to say that I watched Rennio battle and cheered him on like any normal trainer would. But I was manic from before, and now I was also depressed from everything that had happened. When you’re manic and depressed at the same time you can only keep yourself occupied on a single thought or situation for a few seconds before you succumb to something worse. The battle, then, was sporadic for me, and I only thanked myself enough to have found the strength, courage, and the time to be able to explain everything to my pokémon before the end of it all.

Come on, self. Keep me on my toes. Keep me in the know. But I couldn’t do it. Rennio shocked the charmander and the charmander retaliated with a tackle and then my thoughts turned to death. It was all over for me. I didn’t raise my pokémon well enough. I was a failure of a trainer, just as Marty had deemed me to be. He should have taken everyone away while he still had the chance.

Team Rocket should have executed me when they had the chance, all those years ago. I should have been a different experiment, one with cords and machinery and a bunch of paperwork filled with invaluable information. The white cords would have been happy cords and the black cords would have been sad cords and they would have hooked up to me simultaneously, sending me back and forth between the two extreme emotions that constantly pervaded my life. Because that’s what life was to me. It’s all a game, it’s all a game. It’s all a joke, a fraud…

Rennio was swinging the charmander around by the tail, an otherwise amusing sight. The charmander smashed into the wall. At this point, Kuiora asked to switch in, since her water attacks were much more effective. There’s another one on my team. Two out of five. Why are my pokémon here, anyway? Is that Ezrem cheering Kuiora on? Three out of five. My god, they’re raising hell. They’re raising hell to give to me what they already gave to me once—a chance at independence and happiness. They can’t do it again. It’s too late for me.

It’s okay. If I don’t make it, someone else will. A normal person, maybe? It has to be a normal person. Everyone else is dead. All they had ever been was dead. But I believe one of my kind will prevail someway, somewhere. We’re special, after all. Kuiora, when did you get so strong? I didn’t train you at all like I should have. You did all this for me? Stop raising hell already. It’s too late for me.

I couldn’t sit still anymore. I started making my way around the edges of the battleground, watching them as intently as I could, which doesn’t say much. Kuiora took down the charmander, as expected. She’ll be happy to know that my mother is a fire-type pokémon trainer. My mother sent out her ninetales next. I remember it being a young vulpix. Why hadn’t Charmander evolved? Is my mother threatening me again? If you mistreat a ninetales, she’s saying, you can be cursed. Do I want my pokémon to be cursed? I’ll take the curse for them. But you’re already cursed enough as it is, the ninetales said…

Unbelievable. I was cursed with depression and mania. Depression is needing all day tomorrow to recover from today and mania is needing all day today to prepare for the invincible tomorrow. It’s a vicious cycle. It doesn’t end. Because of my medication I hardly have had any periods of normalcy. I don’t know what it means to be stable, but my pokémon do. That’s why Atis just ran into the middle of the battle to make Kuiora save the rest of her strength for what was to come. Four out of five. That leaves Senori. Senori? What do you think of me? …What do I think of myself?

Well, how can your mind get this messed up? How can you be so clueless, so lost? How can you be so lonely that you don’t even like yourself for company?

How could you not?

I tried to give my love to the world. The world didn’t seem to want it. The only constant I have ever had in my life is my mood swings and air. Air has kept me alive and breathing and together with my pokémon. It has been with me in the cells, in my dreams, in my lungs.

It would be the perfect way to go. …And I was in the perfect position to go.

The ninetales was defeated. Was I winning or was I losing? I wasn’t even part of the battle anymore. Maybe I never was to begin with. I really can’t get over this pokémon training thing. I wanted it for so long and I never even grew accustomed to it. I liked the feeling of learning and having my pokémon teach me instead. I liked not being expected to know everything. Tell me, Senori, that I’ll never get used to this—this so-called form of living. The unknowing and uncertainty will come to me and I will always be ever so inviting.

Senori was the last one. He was the only one I had any hope of getting help from, and he was last. He was last! This told me something, but I couldn’t figure out what. My mother has six pokémon, and I only have four usable pokémon. We are overwhelmed, no matter what my furret does. It’s too late for me.

I backtracked to the edge of the building. This way I could see not only my pokémon but also my mother and my opponent. I felt like I was watching a show that I had no part of. I was completely dissociated from myself. My only thought: I was already gone. No matter how much I wanted to live, the idea of death and death itself were overtaking me. Even if I won the battle, I would never get better. I would forever be sick. If I lost… Well, then I was even more gone. Either way, I was dead. Who is dead? I’m dead.

It’s such a shame that I’m drowning in my goddamn shame.

…I always wanted to see myself become a better person. I wanted to see Senori stop having to worry about me all the time. I wanted to see Kuiora evolve into her final form and fulfill her dreams. I wanted to hear Atis smile so much that I forgot his normal scared voice. I wanted to continue watching Rennio learn to fight again and I wanted to feed him… whatever that meant. I wanted to see Ezrem through his old trainer’s eyes.

It never once occurred to me that any of these things could still have happened.

I might have begged for help, once upon a time… but I didn’t.

I jumped.

[The Great Butler]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
— Mary Oliver

chapter 24 ; [SAI]
stand my ground

*

...Wait, that... does that actually say Sai?

That alone would have me nervous, but the quote combined with it just makes it even more chilling. There's a certain sense of finality now that a Sai chapter has finally happened.

To my pokémon—

For you all to understand me is the last thing I want. It is a type of contradictory consolation when you tell each other that you want to know me better and I instruct myself to be gracious, but it is true. To truly understand me, my thoughts must flow through you and then consume you. You must see through my eyes to believe what seems to be a million tower-inspired legends, and you must fall victim to numerous pits. I would never demand this of you. For you to understand me is the last thing I want because I am nothing but the sum of the parts that others have made for myself, and that means I am either next to nothing or I am too much, an endless source of devastating fireworks (yes, I’ve seen those—once) and breath that feels like smoke. In the end, if I ask you to understand me, I will be selfish, and I will disappoint you somehow. I would never demand this of you, so think, think before you take a memory…

*

I was only four years old when Team Rocket claimed that I was a threat to everyone around me.

My mother had moved to Johto from a place that she called France. She said that she adored the things that we call pokémon because of their potential power and because of the kind of all-important feeling that they gave her when she owned this strength of theirs. She upped and left without a problem. My father was in prison for constant drug abuse, anyway, so she had nothing else to lose. When she reached Johto, she heard of an organization called Team Rocket and immediately went to join them, as her goals and Team Rocket’s were one and the same. She was loyal and a hard worker, and she went through the ranks faster than anyone the organization had ever known. Within no time at all, she was considered an executive, and she suddenly had a say about what went on in that little laboratory in Mahogany Town. But she was pregnant with me at the time, and I was inevitably her downfall. I was soon born, and for the first few years, I was fine; I was her precious little thing. At the age of four, after my brain had some time to develop, something went wrong with me.

Is it correct to assume this France is the real-life France (thus meaning this story takes place under the "the regions exist within the real world" theory) as opposed to an assumption of the France-like region that Generation 6 will take place in?

So far, nothing terribly surprising, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Already I can see that you're fleshing out all of this excellently.

Supposedly, I was an outrageous child—one that couldn’t be controlled by any means. First of all, my mother suddenly found it impossible to send me to any sort of daycare or babysitter because I would scream bloody murder every time I was apart from her for more than a few minutes. This separation anxiety that I experienced forced her to take me to the laboratory with her each and every day, which was where my recklessness shined further.

Unlike a normal child, I wasn’t interested in playtime. My moods shifted faster than the ticking of the clock, but no matter how I felt, I only wanted to follow my mother and do whatever she was doing. She was often in her office filling out paperwork and talking on the phone to other members in other cities, other regions. Besides this, she would supervise the experiments that went on in the laboratory, or she would supervise the battles that tested how strong pokémon were and whether or not they were fit to join a Team Rocket member on their endeavors. I would watch as pokémon were hooked up to machines with what seemed to be an endless number of black and white cords, and I would look at the fear in their eyes and wonder if I would ever want to trade places with them. I would watch as pokémon fought until their eyes were clawed out, until every part of their bodies were paralyzed with exhaustion.

Some of my early theories look like they might be true after all...

It didn’t take long for me to start interfering with the experiments and the battling. During my frequent outbursts, I was running into the middle of the arena, screaming at the top of my lungs and getting hit by pokémon’s attacks. While I broke quite a few bones doing this, they always healed, so I felt no need to stop. I ripped cords out of the machines and I destroyed a ton of the research that the scientists had spent so much time working on. I was irritable and miserable and unstoppable, even as people tried to hold me down. I was irritable because I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but I couldn’t find my own strength to actually leave. I was miserable for no discernible reason, and I was even more confused when my mood would skyrocket within the next few minutes to the point where I thought that I was the most special person in the world. I thought that I was the only person in the world who could fly, and instead of destroying things, I felt that I was creating. I jumped on desks and tried to pretend I had wings as I hopped off. The workers found this, at least, somewhat humorous, but I was always made angry yet again by their laughter and then I continued my destructive tendencies. I was unstoppable not only to others, but I also couldn’t even control myself.

Somehow, even though this is the first time we're getting Sai's story in such detail, I feel like I can definitely see the beginnings of his behavior from previous chapters here. The last sentence, though, is a little confusing. Could you clarify its meaning a bit more?

I never listened to my mother when she told me to quit this kind of behavior. I wanted to listen, but I didn’t have the heart to do so. More research was ruined and more experiments were interrupted. More bones were broken. After a while, the leader of Team Rocket even called me into his office to speak with me in the sternest voice I had ever heard… but even he didn’t cease the insane thoughts that went through my mind and were translated into actions.

As time went on, things only got worse. My thoughts had changed from not only wanting to hurt myself by being a part of experiments and battles, but I also wanted to hurt others. I didn’t like the other scientists. They looked at me funny, they never seemed to smile, they hurt the pokémon that my mother loved so much, and they obviously wanted me—and my mother—gone. It started with me simply drawing pictures of stabbing them and killing them by breaking their necks. When I was finished with a drawing, I would show my mother proudly, thinking that she would agree with me, as she never spoke too highly of the other workers. But apparently her words were only jokes, as she quickly reprimanded me and told me never to draw things like that again. Of course, I didn’t listen.

If I may, I think that if Sai had been seen drawing such a picture or had one of them on himself in a previous chapter, it might have made for a nice teaser that wouldn't have given too much away.

And again, this matches so perfectly to the Sai we all knew from the previous chapters. It doesn't just feel like typical backstory that explains triggers for the character's behavior; instead, what you're showing here is very easily traced to the characteristics of the present-day Sai. I'm very impressed by that.

What happened from then on was also out of my control. My thoughts raced so quickly that I couldn’t tell what I was thinking about most of the time. When I did unbelievable things, I only realized it after it had all happened. I spilled vials full of chemicals all over the workers, sending quite a few of them to the floor with their skin being torn apart. They writhed in pain, and I only laughed at them like they laughed at me. I yelled at them to try experiments on humans to see how they liked it. (Later, I would regret this, as it seemed that they took me literally.) I felt the pressure to keep talking, so I insulted them incessantly until my mother came to seize me and take me home for the day, even if she wasn’t done with her work.

So Sai actually has killed people before?

I notice a little hint in there to something I've long suspected - that Team Rocket were doing human experiments and Sai was somehow related to them. Time will tell if my exact theory turned out correct, but so far, I'm getting an ominous feeling...

Things weren’t much better in our actual home. I destroyed things and the house was often a mess that my mother never cleaned up. At night, I would either sleep too much or sleep too little. When I slept too much, I had vivid dreams about violence and gore that made me wonder every day about whether or not they had really happened. It was likely that they could happen, after all, given the nature of the laboratory. At other times, I found it impossible to sleep, even though my own bed was familiar to me. After spending about six hours trying to fall asleep, I would wake up sweating and screaming because of night terrors. The lack of rest only contributed to my untamed moods and actions.

Occasionally we went out to other places. Sometimes we went to restaurants and went to celebrate holidays and went to the park and went to buy things, and soon, I would have even been sent to school. But mostly there was no time for that, so I stayed inside those four metallic walls and learned about the world that way. If I had known that this was all I would see for about ten years of my life, I would have been fine with leaving more.

And here's some more that can be traced directly to actions Sai took in previous chapters - the problems he had sleeping directly explain the bizarre and wildly varying incidents with the rooms, while noting that he "went to restaurants" and "went to buy things" can be directly linked to how much he got worked up over those things in the present.

This was clearly all very well planned out.

For two years this went on, until the leader of the laboratory had finally gotten sick of me and my wild antics. The boss had given my mother leeway since she was of a higher ranking, but there was only so much he could take.

I was only six-years-old when Team Rocket wanted me executed immediately.

*

“This boy has contributed nothing positive to Team Rocket’s goals,” the boss started bluntly. I had heard once or twice that his name was Giovanni, but not many people dared to say it. His appearance didn’t help matters. He was a tall man with broad shoulders. He had dark brown hair and thin eyebrows. He wore a black suit with black slacks that were held up by a belt. He wore an evil grin, too… and I didn’t think he was much better than the others I knew. My mother was the only good person in this place.

He had specifically set up a meeting time for my mother and me to come see him. She had brought me along, of course, since the meeting was about me. We were on the seventeenth floor, watching the leader intently as he casually sat back on the blue couch in the middle of his office. We stood in front of him, on the opposite side of the coffee table. All I knew was that he didn’t look happy, so I clung to my mother and let her do all of the talking, though I definitely had something to say.

“Master Giovanni, I can explain—”

“There is nothing to explain. If you had an explanation, the boy would have been stopped a long time ago. He has destroyed years of work, and he has put a temporary halt to our future research. He has blatantly hurt other workers in this building and made several of them quit. Above all, he has shown no signs of getting better throughout these past two years.” There was a pause. I flinched at his words and hid behind my mother now. “I like you, Melanie, and I want to like your son. But he is too much to handle, even for you.”

“What… What are you trying to say, Master Giovanni?” my mother said. Her voice was unnaturally weak.

“The boy is clearly… mentally impaired,” the leader said, “and he has no home in a place like this. I want him gone for good.”

That's certainly Giovanni for you, always focused on the goals and how every single possible thing could benefit Team Rocket. I'm feeling more and more confident in that theory I had early on, too.

“Master Giovanni, with all due respect, I don’t want to do that,” my mother said quickly. I clung to her harder, trying my best not to lash out. “He is my son. I have nothing left but my son. My husband is in jail, and I don’t want to lose my last connection to him. I can’t go through another loss like this. Besides, where will he go? Who will take care of him?”

“Melanie,” Giovanni said gently, though he was grinning. “If you let the boy loose now, he will speak of everything he has seen. You cannot tell me that he won’t speak, because he’s not yet been put in a situation where he could tell someone something. We cannot depend on him going somewhere else and staying quiet.”

“Master Giovanni, please—”

“I want the boy executed.”

My mother’s eyes widened. “You want him… killed?” she breathed.

I have to admit, it feels to me that this is a bit of a jump for Giovanni to just immediately decide he wants Sai executed. I can think of other ways he could have this problem taken care of that might give Team Rocket benefit as well, although, I can also see the narrative value in doing it this way.

I didn’t know the meaning of the word “execution” at the time, but my mother cleared it up for me. The leader of Team Rocket wanted me gone for good. I was only six years old. It didn’t seem plausible to me. Even though the team was ruthless and heartless, they didn’t kill people. They didn’t kill pokémon. At least, I had never seen them kill anyone… My hatred for them grew tenfold as I realized that this had probably been done in the past without my knowing. My feelings welled in my chest, and I huffed. I darted forward, reaching forward with my hands. I jumped at Giovanni, attempting to scratch at his face, but he had apparently been prepared for this. He held out his arms and kept me still. He was much stronger than I was, and there was nothing I could do to get any closer to him.

My mother gasped and pulled me away from him. “Sai, how could you attack Giovanni, of all people?”

“He’s evil! He wants to get rid of me!” I cried.

Sai is noticeably perceptive for his age, I notice. Also, color me surprised that Giovanni didn't simply kill him right there and then. I guess there is some sense of nobility, in some twisted way.

“Master Giovanni, please reconsider. This is probably just a phase. He will grow out of it…”

“I’ve given him two years, Melanie. As I’ve said, he’s shown no improvement. I want him gone, and that’s final.”

“Surely, there must be another use for him,” my mother said. She was struggling to speak, as she was still trying to hold me back. Eventually, finally, I went limp and started crying. I wailed and wailed and wished that my mother’s grasp was more comforting. I started thinking up ways that I could hurt Giovanni further—in his sleep, when he wasn’t expecting it…

“Another use? I cannot think of anything this miscreant could be useful for.”

“…I thought you might try to get rid of him. Hush, Sai, this is important,” my mother said, though I could tell that she was trying to hold back tears too. I sobbed quietly, but I couldn’t stop myself completely. “I thought about what happened if he couldn’t get better. Look, Giovanni, I don’t want to lose my job here. Or my son. There has to be a way. Why don’t we keep my son here while I’m working? In the basement, with the other pokémon?"

“He does apparently think he’s a pokémon that deserves to fight like one,” Giovanni mused. “Go on.”

“He’ll stay… locked up as I’m working. I’ll take him home at night, and—”

“No more. Have you not thought about him running away and hurting others? We can’t have him ruin our reputation.”

She gulped. “As you wish, Master Giovanni. He’ll stay in the cells. I will teach him there in my free time, as if he was going to school.”

“I have yet to see how he will be of use to us.”

“Well, as you said… Sai seems fond of pokémon. When he is old enough—you are free to choose the time, so that you no longer see him as a threat—we will set him loose on a journey.” She paused, waiting to see if he would interrupt again. When he didn’t, she continued, “He will raise pokémon and send them back for Team Rocket to use. We can see if he is any better at raising pokémon with his… outlandish personality, compared to the rest of us. It will be a… survival project of sorts.”

This is the narrative value I mentioned earlier while talking about Giovanni jumping right to wanting Sai killed. Had he simply suggested something like this right away, the opportunity for Melanie to look out for Sai by suggesting it herself would have been lost.

It's also full confirmation of the theory I long held, that Team Rocket were using him as some sort of experiment and monitoring his actions. I would say that it's a good thing that I figured it out, because that means you foreshadowed it very well with all the pieces present.

Nice title drop, too.

Giovanni leaned back in his seat, smiling. “Now this,” he said, “sounds interesting. Again, go on.”

“Okay,” my mother breathed. Her voice was barely audible. “Okay.”

“Mommy?” I said quietly, looking up at her.

What was she possibly planning for me?

My heart just sank. You really hit hard with that one.

Giovanni demanded that the plan be put in effect immediately, so that I wouldn’t cause any more unnecessary damage. We went home shortly afterward, though my mother certainly was in no hurry. She walked slowly and stayed quiet the entire way. When we got there, she instructed me to get my suitcase and pick out my favorite toys while she looked at clothes. It was one of the first directions I got as an experiment for Team Rocket, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was still lost and asking questions that had no clear answers.

“We will feed you there, so there’s no need to pack food. Or water,” she said. She kept mumbling things like this, and then she was mumbling obscenities about Giovanni, which again made me wonder why she obeyed a man like him.

For once, I listened to her. It seemed like a life or death situation that I should follow. Since I didn’t care much for playtime, I didn’t have many toys to get. I only picked up a few stuffed animals and some talking machines that reminded me of the ones back at the laboratory. I put them in a suitcase and watched as my mother filled it with all different kinds of clothes, pieces even for different seasons.

In the middle of her packing, I stopped her by climbing into her lap and hugging her because she seemed so depressed. At such a young age, I even knew what depression was. It was feeling too little when you wanted to feel something, anything. It was a small yet enormous amount of apathy and hatred and loneliness and sadness all built into one hollow soul. Depression was needing all day tomorrow to recover from today. It was something that no one should have to experience, so I tried to comfort her. And I tried to get some answers.

“Mommy,” I said, “are you going to leave me?”

You're wrecking me emotionally already and I'm not even halfway through the first post. I don't know if I'm going to make it.

“No, Sai,” she said. She immediately broke into sobs and switched from holding me to holding her face in her hands, trying to mask her sorrow. It didn’t work; I could feel it emanating from every fiber of her being.

Why do I get the feeling she isn't entirely sincere?

In the middle of the basement was a movable cot which had a long, leather strap lying out. What caught my eye closely after that, however, were several cages lined up on the walls. They were all filled with pokémon. Some of them even had two or three of them in one small cage. So this was where all of those experimental pokémon came from, I thought. They came from these cages in the basement, and they were strapped onto that cot and wheeled upstairs for further examination or to battle. It all made so much more sense to me now.

My mother brought me over to the far left wall where three empty, larger cages stood. She explained that they were there for bigger pokémon… but now, they would be used for humans.

“This,” she said, “will be your new home, Sai.”

This is like N's story, but somehow even worse. They put him in a cage?

I stared at it, unimpressed. While my old home had two floors and several rooms, this cage was only about as big as the bathroom. It had a small bed in the corner, a sink, a toilet, and… a barred door. It wasn’t exactly appealing. I swallowed hard, squeezing the handle of my suitcase, wishing that there was no reason for it to exist.

So it's more of a jail cell than a cage? At least that's a little less horrifying...

My mother went to open the door, waiting for me to go inside. After a few minutes of me refusing to move, she pushed me and told me not to be so difficult. The time for being difficult had to be over, or I’d never get released. I didn’t think that the things I had done were really that bad, but I was starting to reconsider my notions.

“Sai, you are going to do extraordinary things for us,” she said in a more lighthearted voice. “Can you do that for me? Can you agree to this? I’ll be here with you always. I know that will help you. Can you do this for me?”

For her, I nodded. I trusted her wholeheartedly. I was only six years old; I didn’t know what I was agreeing to at all.

I get the feeling that if he knew, he may not have trusted her so easily. I'm not getting the biggest feeling of honesty out of her.

She smiled weakly and she shut the doors, but I couldn’t tell if they were shutting me out from the world or if they were shutting me in to keep me safe.

*

And so began my life as a human experiment for Team Rocket.

At first, it didn’t seem so bad. I was beginning to live in a relatively peaceful state of mind, which happened once in a great while. It had started when I had attacked Giovanni and had been hushed by my mother… I knew that I was going to be quieter because I hadn’t been as tough or as violent as I usually was. I felt luckier than ever whenever these kinds of serene moments happened in my life. For a while, it made me think that this cage was meant to be my home, after all. It was cozy enough. The bathroom was always accessible, and the pokémon that often stared at me from across the room looked away when I had to go. And I had my toys to play with whenever I felt interested. And the bed was comfortable, even if it was small, and I wondered what would happen when I outgrew it. Would my mother buy me a new one?

As she promised, she didn’t abandon me. She came to visit me every day—several times a day, in fact. She was becoming more involved in my life than ever before! It seemed like a great deal to me. She was teaching me my numbers and my letters, saying that I’d normally be in school by now and that she wanted to keep me on a regular schedule, like most kids would be on.

I really do doubt his mother's sincerity. But maybe my view is skewed because this is the first full-on view we've ever gotten of her.

But as time went on, my old habits returned. The only thing that had improved was my separation anxiety; I had, indeed, grown out of that phase. Still, it became increasingly difficult to think about numbers and letters long enough to attempt memorizing them. I wanted to destroy things… and people, if given the chance. I was either too sad or too angry. When I was too sad, I spent most of my time huddled over my suitcase in the corner of the room, begging to go home. This riled up the other pokémon in the room, but I ignored them. And when I was too eccentric, I tore up the clothes that I had and the flashcards that my mother had given me to practice with. I yelled and yelled and yelled, both obscenities and random things on my mind, just to get the thoughts out of my zipping head, but no one came to rescue me. Not even my mother.

“If you ever want to get out of here,” she told me sternly, “then you have to focus. You can’t let your emotions get the best of you. I’m going to teach you everything that you need to know so that you’re prepared when you leave this… nice place. But we have to start small.”

And this is precisely why. I have to say, though, that the fact you're getting me to react emotionally to both Sai's circumstances and his mother is a good thing. It means I'm invested in what's happening.

I tried my best. I used self-made routines to help me. I used my forever growing fingernails to etch the alphabet into the stone wall of my cell. I continued to do the numbers, zero to one hundred, even when I started bleeding. It was the only thing I could think of doing. I needed something that I couldn’t destroy, and this was it. My mother didn’t seem to approve or disapprove; she only seemed pleased that I wasn’t being completely destructive. As a reward, she told me that most pokémon trainers set off on their journey at age ten, which was only four years from now. Four years! The first four years of my life now seemed like a blur, so perhaps the next four would go by just as quickly. I didn’t think anything of it.

That detail about his scratching letters and numbers into the stone walls actually made me physically cringe.

Time passed so quickly I couldn’t keep up with it. Since I didn’t even have a window in this place, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night, winter or summer. Many things happened, but the one event that stands out the most to me is when I received a very special visitor.

He was a short man with a shiny bald head. His face was lean and taut. He had a soft, inviting smile, so I didn’t scream or attempt to attack him, though I was feeling especially wild when he came. He wore a red tie and a gray suit, and all I could think about was how I was so glad to see those colors outside of the blood and stone on my walls. I had never seen him before in my life, so I knew he wasn’t from the laboratory. He said that his name was Dr. Richards, and then my days were filled to the brim with new experiences and feelings that I didn’t even have names for.

I don't get a good feeling from this...

“Sai… Sai Luart. Age ten. Is that right?”

“Oui.”

“I don’t speak French. It’s my understanding that your mother has taught you several languages thus far. Is that also right?”

“…Sorry. I guess so.”

I have to admit, that bit about the languages came a bit out of nowhere. I feel like it would have been better to introduce that detail earlier.

“It’s best to learn multiple languages when you’re young. You’re able to speak the different sounds and learn them better.”

Silence.

“You know, I don’t get many young patients like you. I would say that you’re special.”

“That’s what they all said.”

“Who said that?”

“Everyone above us. They wanted me dead.”

“That’s not very kind, is it? Well, I don’t want you gone.”

That can't be good. This guy feels very shady to me, and I imagine that he doesn't exactly have good plans in mind for Sai.

Silence.

“Sai Luart. Age ten. I have a lot of information written down about you besides this, but I’d like to hear your side of the story. Is that all right with you?”

“Did my mother bring you here?”

“Yes. She did.”

“…Nevertheless, I have no story to tell.”

“I bet you do. Everyone does. From my understanding… You were a very worrisome young boy. You seem to harbor a ton of anger toward yourself and others, and you seem to cherish violence when it seems most convenient for you. Many interviewees pointed out that they knew how you were feeling based on the look in your eyes. What do you think?”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve changed an awful lot since then. I’d love to tell you about it.”

Is Sai being sarcastic here? I ask because he seemed reluctant to say anything just a couple lines before claiming to be willing to tell the story.

It was true—I had learned many languages. And several other things. After teaching me the basics, she taught me how to write and read. Writing didn’t take long, since I had already partially taught myself by carving in the letters. My handwriting was legible enough for her. She said there wouldn’t be many instances where I had to sign something. Next came reading. This, at least, gave me something to do when sitting in my cell, but it was extremely difficult with my short attention span. It took much longer than it should have to teach me to read according to her, but she succeeded eventually by giving me plenty of children’s books. She had to replenish them every two weeks or so because I tore those apart too. When I said I wanted harder material, she brought young adult books for me. The new books were a challenge that I gladly undertook. My mother occasionally made jokes about me reading the research materials that were always being made on floors above, but I didn’t find it funny. I really did want to take part in that, just to have a chance to be somewhere else, breathing in air that wasn’t heavy and full of unpleasant smells.

That last bit almost makes me wonder if Sai could have been stabilized and made better progress had he been trained as a scientist. Maybe it would have sufficiently captured his attention.

Next, she taught me the basics of pokémon. There were different types belonging to each individual pokémon, she said. She used the ones across the room as an example. Mostly, there were fire-types and poison-types and dark-types with us, with a small number of steel-types. These types were the most difficult to raise, she said, but they were highly rewarding. She taught me which types were effective against others and which were not so effective. Fire beat grass, water beat fire, grass beat water. It seemed simple enough, and I passed these tests with flying colors. I thought that if only Giovanni could see how intelligent I was becoming, he would let me out sooner, but my mother solemnly told me not to get my hopes up.

History and basic mathematics came next. I learned addition and subtraction and division and multiplication, and my mother told me that although the lessons didn’t seem too fun, they would be useful later on when trying to keep money. Money would be absolutely vital, she said, and she promised that she would have plenty of it prepared for me. Every time, I told her not to go through the trouble, but she just shook her head and asked me to repeat the stories behind Kanto and Johto and Hoenn and other pokémon regions, along with the story of how pokémon were discovered in the first place. Apparently, these regions were uninhabited in terms of humans, and one day, pokémon showed up on the shores of Africa. Though plenty of animals lived in Africa, pokémon were deemed as reckless monsters at first, and the people there went to great lengths just to keep them in their native habitats. It took many years for the trusting bonds between pokémon and humans to form. It made me wonder whether or not I was meant to be a pokémon instead, only I ended up in the wrong body, the wrong life.

That Africa thing is pretty interesting, but it's the last line that really catches me. Sai does seem to have a lot of characteristics that would be expected of a Pokemon, so his question of identity is a very natural one for him to be asking.

The lessons, though simple, kept me busy. The books kept me busy. My mother’s daily visits kept me busy. But it wasn’t enough. As it turned out… four years was a very, very long time when most of what I did was simply sit there, looking at the pokémon from across the room. While my mother taught me French (our family’s main language, I knew) and English and German and Japanese—she told me that I’d want to be prepared to speak to anyone I came across on my journey—I, out of sheer boredom and slight curiosity, taught myself the art of speaking to pokémon. When all I had was time, it was relatively easy, and I figured that it would be important to talk to my partners. Why my mother hadn’t taught me this on her own time was beyond me.

I learned by genuine observation. Since, to anyone who couldn’t understand, pokémon only spoke their names, intonation and body gestures were key. Each and every pokémon had a clear voice that they used for all of the individual emotions that they could possibly have. I learned the sounds of sadness, of anger, of happiness. The pokémon shook their tails in delight when they wanted something (in the cells, it was usually food), or, if they didn’t have tails, their eyes glittered when they talked. Ears flattened when they were worried or feeling guilty. And so on. I could feel the emotions pouring out of them with every action they did, and this translated into an understanding of their speech.

That's a very good explanation of why Sai can speak to Pokemon. I like it.

“You’ll meet one someday, I’m sure. They do nothing but spend time with pokémon… just like you,” the arbok said rudely. He sneered and looked away from me, and I could hear the sarcastic tone of his voice. It rang through my entire body, and I could feel his scorn firsthand amidst all of my own emotions that were stirring in my heart.

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re getting out of here. We’re not,” Arbok said, his contempt abruptly showing.

“I’m still stuck here for a long, long time,” I said sadly. I couldn’t bear to look at the snake anymore, so I stopped.

“Then rest, little boy. Quit making so much ruckus all the time. Be calm. And prepare yourself for the world,” Arbok said. It turned away from me and didn’t look back, and I knew that that was the end of the conversation.

Rest, he said! It was easy for him. He didn’t have a never ending list of things he needed to do when he got out of this forsaken place running through his mind. Okay, maybe he did have this, even though he was supposedly never leaving, but I could say for certain that my thoughts raced faster than his, so that didn’t count. He didn’t have a mind that constantly ticked over, counting the amount of specks in the patterns on the stone walls surrounding three sides of his body. He didn’t have three songs running in his head all at once, songs that were once sung to him by his mother. He didn’t have images from last night’s dreams haunting him and talking to him. Rest, he said… I would, if only it were that simple.

Wow, um... Sai's life is really horrible, isn't it? I'm glad you held on to all of this about him for so long; it was worth the wait for the payoff.

“I would love to hear it, if you’d be willing to tell me.”

“I either feel too much or feel too little. I believe that I am better than everyone else and that they’re just keeping me locked up because they don’t want to admit my greatness. Despite this, I have no desire to live my life half of the time because things can’t possibly improve. When I do want to live, I want to do too many things at once. I have many plans for the future... My father is dying in prison, miles and miles away, and I feel like I’m the one killing him. I feel guilty, like I’m being punished for doing that to him. I can’t eat, or I eat too much. I can’t sleep, or I sleep too much. I can’t make any decisions for myself, so I have my mother make them for me. I am bored with everything, dissatisfied. I can’t overcome my loneliness or fear for the future. I can’t be with others without going crazy, but I can’t be alone. I can’t concentrate on anything for too long. I want to fight and fight and tell everyone that they’ve all let me down. I want to talk too much, all the time… if you couldn’t tell by now.”

Sai is shockingly open about his issues, which in some way feels a little bit unbelievable. It's not that bad, though, because his being isolated for so long gave him a lot of time to think about it.

“It sounds like you are very, very overwhelmed.”

“I am. I am beyond overwhelmed. All the time…”

“I think I can help you, Sai.”

“You can? Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“No one’s ever offered to help me before.”

“Yes. Well. I can give you medications to keep your moods stable.”

Well, that's not surprising. I kind of figured that was the kind of doctor he was.

“What’s wrong with me?”

Silence.

“Give me a name. Tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“They call it bipolar disorder. Very uncommon in children, but it does happen.”

And honestly, you're handling it as a subject very well. Too many authors romanticize mental illness or turn it into something it is not, but you're showing it as something Sai legitimately struggles with. Major props to you for that.

“…Thanks.”

“There is one problem, however. As I told you earlier, Sai… you are very young. Medications for younger patients aren’t forbidden, but they aren’t encouraged, either. Do you know why that is?”

“No.”

“This is because your brain is still growing. Your body is still growing. These medications can do things to permanently… mess up your brain chemistry.”

Silence.

“You’re young, but this isn’t going to be a phase you’re going to grow out of. Bipolar disorder is forever. Medication will almost be a necessity for the entirety of your life. Nevertheless, it’s up to you. What will you do?”

Silence.

“For your mother, will you take the medication?”

Now, right there is where I lost any respect I might have had for this doctor. It feels to me like he used Sai's mother as leverage to get Sai to agree on taking the medication, which is an underhanded, dirty trick.

Another peculiar symptom that came to me when I was about eleven years old was… delusions. That was what my mother called them, though she regretfully said that she could do nothing for me. She said that Dr. Richards would have to take care of it. Dr. Richards only said that he wasn’t sure if it was because of medication or if it was just natural. He suspected the latter, as it was apparently common among the mentally ill. And I had come to accept that that was what I was—mentally ill. Messed up in the head. Forever sick.

I was lying in my tiny bed—I was, indeed, starting to outgrow it, and my mother promised that it would be replaced soon—trying to sleep when it happened. The room started spinning around me. I completely forgot where I was, even though the room was so familiar to me. My breathing grew heavy, and I wanted to punch myself or burn myself and convince myself that I was real. But I couldn’t move. It was hard to even breathe when it felt like a heavy weight sat on my chest, and my lungs seemed to have finally noticed that there was a dead spot in the middle of my chest, shriveled up due to lack of use. Everything I looked at quickly became blurry. I kept blinking to make everything clearer, but in my mind, everything was still muddy. I was suddenly convinced that all the memories I had belonged to someone else because I believed that I was a pokémon. In reality, I knew that I wasn’t, but that was what it felt like.

I was a small creature. I looked down at myself when I finally had the strength to do. I was a dark brown color, with some cream on a circular part of my belly. I had tiny paws and tiny feet. My sense of smell had increased tenfold, and the ears that I now had felt nothing but danger nearby. Yes, I was a pokémon, yet I was not.

...This was how he decided on what Pokemon he had to have?

Utterly genius. I love it. All that needs to be explained now is his use of the die.

Images flashed through my mind. There were images of destruction, of blood and gore, just like I had seen in my dreams so many times before. This felt different. This felt utterly and terrifyingly real. Several pokémon that looked just like me were being torn apart and eaten alive, even the babies. From far away, I was a spectator who was powerless and unable to fight, even though the urge to do so clung and screamed at every part of my body. I couldn’t do a thing. I watched and watched, mouth hanging open in disbelief.

Wait, premonitions?

I violently shook myself back to reality. I sat straight up, taking in the view in front of me. All was dark. All was quiet, aside from my obvious panting. I jumped out of my bed and tried to run to the other side of the room, crashing into the bars in the process. I wanted to look for that pokémon, but I had never seen it before in the laboratory. I had to find it. I had to find it and save it, but I didn’t have the means to do so.

The next day, someone was brought into the cell next to me. I was in my bed yet again, sleeping, so I never got a good look at him. When I woke up, the pokémon were murmuring and laughing to each other, saying that the person next to me was “just as crazy as the Sai boy.” I didn’t dare speak to the other boy because he was talking to himself frantically, wildly, praying to Arceus that He would shed some light upon him or that He would come rescue him, Senori Deliro, from the life that he had so suddenly been thrust into. Apparently, I had been so successful up to this point that they decided to bring in another test subject.

And there's another genius explanation, this time for the nicknames. Wonderful planning.

Sertraline hydrochloride, anti-depressant, 50mg. Used to confirm the diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder. Reported frequent headaches, symptoms of mania (delusions of grandeur, high motivation and energy). Discontinued.

Fluoxetine hydrochloride, anti-depressant, 10mg, increased to 20mg. Used upon request by Master Giovanni upon seeing the effects of sertraline hydrochloride. Reported weight gain (10lbs), frequent nausea, sweating, symptoms of mania (worsened insomnia, delusions of grandeur, impulsive and aggressive behavior). Discontinued.

Lithium carbonate, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 300mg. Reported severe pain and tremors, and thinking that he was a “zombie, though I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve heard my mother describe it as a bad, bad feeling.” Discontinued upon having intentions for suicide.

Lamotrigine, anti-convulsant/mood stabilizer, 25mg. Reported better sleeping, calmer moods, slight paranoia. Discontinued upon seeing rash.

Quetiapine fumarate, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 50mg, increased to 100mg. Reported sleeping too much (16+ hours a day). No other reaction. Discontinued.

Aripiprazole, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 15mg, increased to 30mg. Reported extreme paranoia (thinking that others wanted to poison him) and an unwillingness to eat. Discontinued.

Patient tried to refuse all further treatment but called for me five days later, saying he had changed his mind.

Divalproex sodium, anti-convulsant/mood stabilizer, 25mg. Reported severe weight gain (30lbs), returned homicidal thoughts, frequent dizziness and aggression, strange and vivid dreams. Discontinued.

Chlopromazine hydrochloride, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 10mg. Reported lethargy, depersonalization, numbness. Discontinued upon request.

Risperidone, anti-psychotic/mood stabilizer, 0.5mg, increased to 1mg, then 2mg. Reported slight anxiety, calmer moods, better sleeping.

And I can only imagine how much homework you did to get this. Thank you for treating it seriously.


to be continued in next post

[Sidewinder]

Chapter 20

“Drink this,” she said. “Keep yourself hydrated.”

lol, I liked that. Sometimes it annoys me in other fic's how humans talk to Pokemon with the most basic speech, and I liked how you made it sound so natural and real coming from her.

“Third degree burns are also called full thickness burns. This is because they destroy the entire outer layer of skin, and the layer of nerve fibers underneath.

Did you know that? Or did you research it?

And I was sorry to say, buddy, that I didn’t want your self-pity.

Lol I was waiting for something right that. You really stuck close to his character with that line and it just acreamed that he was an *******. and I loved it

“and it just so happens that we have a water-type pokémon on the team. Aren’t you lucky?”

Sounds like something you'd say lol

I told her that being a shiny pokémon suddenly made me feel like the only shiny rufflet in the world, and it made me feel lonely

Is it me, or is that the first time Ezrem has said something like that? I'm so used to him being so annoyingly self-centered and awful that that took me off guard

Now, I was nothing but forgiven.

I bet that really burns him up, lol

Chapter 21

“I want to get stronger,” I admitted, “but not in the physical sense.”

That made me want to cry. Him saying that meant so damn much in the most beautiful way. Nicely done. It's not often that a person can convey that sense of wanting and emotion with such few words

and he picked up a small, cheap camera.

Hmm, the word 'cheap' rings wrong with me for some reason. I feel that anything that Sai gives Atis will mean so much to him, and the wording just doesn't fit right with the situation to me.

“we’ll need a cake. That’s a food, right?

God Sai is so freaking weird. I'm sure this is some type of hint, but I just can't see it

“How is it logically impossible to divide by zero, anyway?”

Hah!

Before I could even question his enigmatic betrayal, everything went black.

Sai is such an *******. I want to punch him in the face now

Chapter 22

I'm not going to quote any portion in particular with those first four or five paragraphs, but that sequence as a whole was just fantastic. Lol, I created a doc and saved it just because I couldn't get enough of it. Just wonderfully done all in all. The way you blended the stories together to show the different aspects of her relationship was just so completely awesome. My hat is off to you, mam

Sai cried all night.

Now I'm actually back to feeling sorry for him

“I look forward to seeing your strength.”

Lol that almost sounds like something he would say from the games

“You’re joking,” Senori said. “My tail just went right through it! This thing has no solid body!”

I see what you were trying to convey here, but those three lines of dialogue sounded a bit forced and out of place to me

Hmmm, not alot I found for me to comment on. I can say that I really enjoyed the chapter though. The battle was still a bit too slowly paced for me, but you made up for it by doing one of the best characterisations of Morty that I've seen in awhile. You really played into his mystique pretty well. Kuiora's kinda psuedo depression was an interesting change of pace as well, as I'm not used to her being so gung-ho about not battling. The thing that really got to me this chapter though was the emotion from Sai; it was pretty gripping. Not only that, but his little exclamation about being upset with what he did with Atis really got my blood pumping. Nicely done.

Chapter 23

“I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve wished I was human, just to find a place. This is one of those times,” Ezrem said, shaking his head.

So Ati isnt the only one, eh? I could've called that lol

I nodded again, pulling him harder. The rest of the team looked up at him pleadingly, unable to say a word

That would be an awesome scene in a movie. Really made me crack up in kind of a funny/sad way

“You, too,” Gracie said. There was a pause. “What do you guys need? This is a little, um, different…”

Hah, that cracked me up too

His personality would, but that didn’t seem helpful at the moment.

Lol, he'd be easy to find on that basis haha. I'm loving these little whip smart comedy snippets you're putting in

The battle would seem normal if the pokémon didn’t look like they were battling to the death. There was blood—both dried blood and new blood—all over their bodies and in the fighting area. The pokémon were panting heavily, while the trainers—if you could even call them that—stood by watching, completely unscathed.

Damn you're taking this to a new level. I literally was not prepared for this in any way, shape, or form. Rockets are a lot more intense than I would have figured. Nicely done. I'm digging the blood and intensity

“Mother, please—” Sai started, but then his body unmistakably tensed up.

Okay, my 'Sai is defintely a robot' theory has gone completely out the window

“It’s not my fault that you believed my words,” the woman said evenly, but her words didn’t match the ruined expression on her face

God this is ****ed up

You really ****ing pulled out all the stops on this one, didn't you? From my drunken haze last night of reading the chapter you posted yesterday, I do remember several things that play into this one, but a lot of it I still can't remember and you pulled this chapter off really well. I had a feeling that you would drop a bombshell like this on us all at once one day, but I still wasn't prepared. Sorry for my absence of late, but I almost really preferred to read four at once and get all this stuff in rapidly without having to wait for updates. Awesome job pair, I'm impressed

[The Great Butler]

I believed that I was nearing fourteen years of age. I had asked my mother to stop celebrating my birthday at the beginning of every January. After missing all of the holidays in the two previous months, I didn’t want her to take pity on me and try to cram all of those days into one. It only made me miss the outside world more, which wasn’t what I needed.

I'm guessing that he became more aware of the time passing at some point?

Can't disagree with why he wouldn't want to celebrate his birthday, though.

What I needed was to get smarter and stronger, both mentally and physically. And that was exactly what I did. The readings got harder, the mathematics got crazier, the history more complex, and science came into play, too, since it would be nothing short of important to know the kind of land I would be treading on. And soon, my mother went back to trying to teach me life skills.

At first, she tried to teach me about cooking, saying that food would be absolutely essential not only for myself but also for my future pokémon. Eventually, this endeavor failed, as the leader of Team Rocket made it absolutely forbidden for me to leave my cell for any reason. He thought that I would go on a vengeful rampage if I were let out too soon. As he had said in his office, it would be he who decided when I could be set free. So my mother told me all about berries, about which ones were good for a pokémon’s growth and which ones were poisonous. She told me about which types of human foods were good for me (for this, she brought well-planned meals to show me in person) and which were bad for pokémon. Avocados were bad for flying-types, excess chocolate was unhealthy for anyone, and so on.

Nice detail. He did seem to be well versed in how to feed his Pokemon earlier, so this makes sense.

She taught me about traveling. She told me to keep all of my pokémon out of their pokéballs at night. This was to ensure safety for myself when I was sleeping. I was to make damn sure, however, that none of them snuck off and got themselves hurt. Well, that would be easy enough, I mused, since I didn’t sleep much anyway. She taught me about making fires and how to prepare my backpack for upcoming trips and how to find clean water nearby if I didn’t already have some. I asked her if this was really okay, since one of the rules of the game was to not have any trusting bonds between pokémon and me (to prevent separation anxiety when the time came to give them away), and she said that it was just a risk that I’d have to take.

Well we can see how well that whole 'no separation anxiety' thing worked out, can't we?

I know I keep saying it, but I'm absolutely in love with how well planned out all of these details are. Everything being explained right now is perfectly synced with how Sai acted earlier in the story.

I tried to keep it all straight in my head, but my skill at retaining information was easily starting to fade. Ever since I had started the medication, my memory had become worse and worse. That was what Dr. Richards had meant when he said they could potentially ruin my brain chemistry, I supposed. I didn’t tell him or my mother, however, because I didn’t want to make it look like I was going to give up so easily, and I didn’t want my mother telling Giovanni that all of the lessons that were aimed at me were for nothing.

Hmm, I wonder about this. I think I would have liked to see more memory issues from Sai during the story, unless he recovered from his memory loss between this point and the events in the story.

More people came into the cells. They were just as crazy as me, so they didn’t help. A woman named Kuiora Loki said that she had the same disease as me, though hers was easily controlled by creativity. She was obsessed with the idea of sculptures and carvings of pokémon, especially legendary pokémon. She tried to etch her drawings into the stone walls at first, threatening to break through the walls and escape to her freedom. My mother—who was officially in charge of this project, it seemed—brought her several carving blocks over the course of a few months. Kuiora was released almost immediately once Giovanni saw how gentle and genial she was when she expressed herself in her own way… and once he saw how much money he could make off of selling her work.

The fact that this Kuiora was also obsessed with Legendary Pokemon gives me some ideas I really, really wish I hadn't had...

Another man, Atis Harleen, was the quietest person I had ever met… not that I had met many people. To me, it seemed that the saying which claimed the quietest ones were the ones to watch out for was true. It took me two months just to get his full name out of him. He slept most of his time away, and once I was released, he was still there. I never figured out what was wrong with him or if there was anything wrong at all.

The last person to come to the cells when I was there was another man. He could only stand it for one night. He soon went into a screaming frenzy, yelling about how he didn’t deserve to be put in a place like this. He was apparently going to go somewhere else, somewhere better, against everyone’s will. He said that he was going to give my mother—and anyone who could hear him—two hours before he let himself go. “If you really want me,” he said, “you’ll come and get me!” But no one came. Two hours later, just as he vowed, I heard the loud sound of bone cracking against concrete. It sounded very familiar to me, given my previous excursions on pokémon battlefields. I covered my ears, but still I heard it over and over. It was so loud, and soon, there was nothing. Later, I found out that he had banged his skull against the stone walls until he had put himself into a coma. Giovanni had him executed since he didn’t want to pay for the care it would take to repair him.

Two very different circumstances, but the way they're handled are both very good. Giovanni's cold, calculating thrift in how he dealt with the unnamed man is pretty chilling.

These people, though I had little to no contact with them (they were uninterested in me and in the pokémon in the room), they meant the world to me. I felt them in my heart and I didn’t even know them. They gave me hope, they gave me strength, even the unknown man. I especially felt this way when Kuiora was released. I knew that I would be set free somehow, someway, and that things would get better not only for me, but also for the world—because of my doing. My mother promised me the same thing, and when she did, I smiled wider than I ever had whenever she wasn’t around.

Above all, they helped me to shape my future pokémon team. I wanted to honor their lives and memories, and I was going to do just that. I pledged to keep my future pokémon with similar personalities or hobbies. They would even have the same names. There was Senori and Kuiora and Atis and—well, I would figure out his name later. It seemed like the perfect plan to me, despite knowing that I would have to return them to Team Rocket someday. That part of the project was always stuck in the back of my mind, mostly ignored. I would deal with it when the time came, I decided.

I love how you had the nicknames for his Pokemon be the names of his fellow captives. That was a brilliant turn.

“Of course I would. I had to think about it, though. I couldn’t just take a picture and develop it, since it’s not twilight yet.”

“What time of day is it?”

“Mid-afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“I brought you this.”

“Dice?”

“Yes. I guess I can tell you one bad thing about myself... since I know so much about you. I’m, ah, afraid of the dark. At twilight, everything starts to turn black, just like the dots on the die. And for me, it’s scary. The only safe place is inside. It’s light and bright inside. The white resembles the purity that I feel from this safety. The intensity at which I feel this fear varies each day… thus the varying numbers on each side of the die.”

I'm a bit confused as to who is conversing with Sai here, but now that the die has been explained as well, I'm really feeling like the story is coming to a close. I'm enjoying this so, so much right now.

To keep myself occupied, Dr. Richards suggested that I should try to find ways to make my future pokémon journey special. I told him that that would be breaking the rules. I couldn’t get close to my pokémon. Well, he said. If I really wanted to be creative, then I could find ways to follow the rules and make things special. So I did.

With my mother’s insistence, I would have a lot of money, so I would give each of my pokémon their own rooms. That would keep us separated, and would give them a lot of much needed privacy. Yes, that seemed perfect. And I would use the pair of die… somehow. I would make my pokémon roll the dice for me when I was catching them. If they were meant to be with me, then the die would land just right. One, two, three, four, five, six pokémon—they would get whatever correct number they were supposed to get. I knew that I was right because every time I thought about Senori being my first pokémon, I rolled the die and came up with only ones. That would surely make them feel like they belonged on my team and nowhere else, even if they didn’t particularly like me (when I assumed they wouldn’t, given my… disease).

I know I should be focusing on the full explanation of why Sai uses the die (which is explained well, by the way) but what I really can't help but notice is just how genuine you're being about his illness. That's something I just can't compliment you enough on.

The medication only partially kept me stable. I still went off into rages, and a few nights later, I went into one of my worst ones yet. It wasn’t my fault (at least, I didn’t like to think so), but the damage was still the same.

The pokémon in the cages were particularly restless that night. For some reason, my mother was late in bringing us food, and the water was dirtied from not being refilled as it should have been. I didn’t mind (and apparently neither did Atis), but the pokémon were fretting. If they had to be stuck here as loyal test subjects, then they believed that they should be treated right in every form possible.

“It’s bad enough that I have to share a home with this goddamn kadabra,” Arbok said. He, too, was in a hateful mood that night.

“Don’t forget that I can mess up your mind. You should watch what you say,” the kadabra replied in an even voice.

“If you could do that, then you should have ruined the minds of these scientists long ago and gotten us out of here. You’re useless,” the snake retaliated.

As their exchanges started to escalate, my mother just happened to come into the basement, a tray of food in hand. She apologized for her lateness, but she had thought of a great idea for me, which only made the pokémon glare in my direction. I shied back into the corner of my cell. She went on, saying that she had wanted to get approval from the boss. It always took a while to be able to talk to the boss. She settled down the pokémon by giving them their food, and then went back upstairs temporarily for the rest. She returned, gave Atis his food, which he thanked her feebly for, and then, before I knew it, she was in my cell, smiling excitedly. I stared at her, expecting her to say that it was time to leave—for good.

“Sai,” my mother said. “I thought about how else I could help you on your journey. Well, battles are going to play a huge, huge part. And Giovanni won’t let you out to battle on the second floor with everyone else, but he said—” She extended her arms out to show me the room, as if I had never seen it before. “—we could fight in here.”

Oh, this is not going to go well. This whole situation is clearly a powder keg waiting to blow.

“In my cell…?” I said stupidly. “That sounds quite a bit dangerous, even for you guys…”

“You’ll… still be in here,” my mother said regretfully, “but the pokémon will be in the center of the room. It’s big enough. And they know better than to disobey by now,” she added, peering over to the other side of the room. The pokémon didn’t dare look up from their feeding bowls.

“Okay,” I said simply. “Whatever you think is best. I trust you.”

“As you always have,” my mother said. “Let’s get started.”

Once the pokémon were finished eating, she locked me back in and then she took the arbok and the kadabra out of the cells. I silently told myself that the idea of her choosing any other pokémon in the room would be guaranteed if she had heard their scuffling earlier. She brought them out into the middle of the room, and as expected, they were on their best behavior as they obeyed mindlessly. The arbok was placed on my side, and she would be battling with the kadabra. The two pokémon hissed as they stared each other down, and I knew that they weren’t pretending to hate each other.

“You’ve seen battles before… and you’ve even been in them yourself sometimes,” my mother said quietly. “But it’s an entirely different thing to be controlling the battle. You have to know your pokémon inside and out to be able to predict how they’re going to fight. You have to know their attack specialties, their defensive strategies, and, of course, their moves. Do you understand?”

I don't see any way that this doesn't end with some horrible incident. Even though Sai already admitted in his narration that such a thing is going to happen, the feeling of dread I have isn't diminished.

“Yes,” I said simply, as I so often had during previous lessons.

“Good. I won’t explain much. It’s better for you to learn by doing. I’ll let you go first.”

It suddenly occurred to me that this was what I would be doing in the real word if I ever got released—no, when I got released. I froze as what seemed like a million emotions welled up in my chest, threatening to make it explode. The thought of making pokémon battle in such a harsh manner, as Team Rocket so often encouraged, was unbelievable to me. I only wanted to make friends with pokémon, to share their hopes and dreams and to have them know mine. But I had to follow the rules. I wasn’t able to get close to pokémon. I had to battle with them and make them strong enough to become a fearful force of Team Rocket. To do anything else would lead to my death…

Again, similar to N's story with the stakes raised, but not bad. It still works.

I gulped, pretending that there was something stuck in my throat that was preventing me from speaking. Finally, I said, “I don’t know any of the arbok’s moves.”

“Then think of standard moves like tackle, scratch, defense curl, and tail whip. Just like I taught you when we went over pokémon basics.”

“Okay… Arbok, use tackle!” I cried, using the force that my mother had instructed me to use, all that time ago. She said that it was vital to sound like I meant it when I was ordering them around, or they wouldn’t have respect for me or feel the need to listen to me.

It appeared that I had used the right tone of voice, because the arbok immediately lunged at the kadabra, headfirst and with full power. Or maybe he was just waiting for the command so that he could tear the kadabra apart. Either way, my first command as a pokémon trainer seemed to have worked. There was an odd sense of relief that passed through my body, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly.

I just realized that this is going to end up being an explanation of why he let the Pokemon battle on their own, which means the circumstances are even more likely to not be happy ones.

This didn’t last long, however, as the arbok didn’t stop at just a tackle attack. The kadabra flung backward and caught itself before it fell on its back. The arbok darted forward again, and the same scenario repeated itself, except that the snake didn’t allow for the psychic-type to get up. He plopped down on the kadabra’s body and stayed there, watching the pokémon beneath him struggle to get back up.

“Arbok, get off of him!” I cried, clinging on to the bars, wanting to get closer to help the kadabra out. Apparently, the arbok couldn’t hear me over the kadabra yelling the same thing, because he didn’t appear to hear me. The snake, of course, was more prone to listen to me than its opponent.

“Kadabra, use psychic! Don’t hold back,” my mother said.

The kadabra stiffened, holding out the spoon in his hand as he closed his eyes and focused. The arbok was soon enveloped in a bluish light, and he rose up into the air. He tried to lash out at the psychic-type with his teeth without me ordering him to, but it was too late to reach far enough. He went higher and higher into the air, and suddenly, his body started twisting in peculiar ways. The kadabra telekinetically caused the arbok’s tailbone to crack and break, making the snake wail and wail. The mixture of horrible sounds seemed to reverberate in the air.

“Why are you doing that to him? This is supposed to be a battle!” I cried, my eyes wide and my heart hammering.

“The kadabra could have easily broken the arbok’s neck instead,” my mother said, entirely unaffected. “We believe that pokémon should, at all times, use their full power… and their full power should be enough to kill another if necessary. If they can’t do that, then they’re useless to us.” She sighed. “I thought you knew this, Sai.”

I think we just saw the exact point where Sai's faith in his mother broke.

“I do know that. I did. I just… Bad things should only happen to bad people, like the ones I hurt… These pokémon are good and trapped here for no reason…”

I let my voice trail off as I had to center my attention to my abruptly shaking body. I tried to make it stop, but found it impossible. My volatile thoughts argued against each other. Some of them said that violence was the answer, while the other half claimed that no, there had to be another way, there just had to be, or life was meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. The sight before me was a blur, and the screaming deafened. I was rolling and rolling around in my head incessantly; I had a front row seat to the end of my world, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My grasp on the bars in front of me tightened considerably. I was used to my view being obscured by these long, thick pieces of metal that also blocked my freedom. Sometimes they were moved out of the way, but I could never see out of the door long enough to keep myself satisfied for more than a few seconds. And I thought—even if I were to be let out of this place, maybe nothing would ever be enough. Maybe I would never get used to the feeling of sun beating down on the back of my neck. Maybe I would never get over the way that grass can tickle my feet when I’m not wearing shoes. Maybe I would never get over the way it feels to converse about the simple things in life. I missed it so now, and although I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the experiences, it could at least be a wonderful time. Better than this. I had to know if things would get better or worse or if they would stay the same. I always wanted to be let go, but the desire to be set free wasn’t something you could just get used to, like catching colds or eating at the same time every day… Yes, it was just as terrible, just as terrifying every time it happened.

I shook the bars in front of me, trying to make them bend to my will and break, just like the kadabra had done to the arbok, only my actions wouldn’t have been cruel and unnecessary. The bars weren’t living and breathing creatures—or were they? What did I know? All I knew was that they didn’t budge. Instead, I beat at them with my head, but this only reminded me of the nameless man, and I didn’t want to be like him, I really didn’t, so I used my arms and hands and legs instead, and every strike hit with a loud clang, but nothing caused any damage, not even a dent. This only made me angrier. I used my own full force, ignoring the obvious pain that followed. Agony shot through my arms and up to my shoulders, through my legs and down to my feet, but I only kept going. I firmly believed that if I gave up now, then I would never get out. I would be trapped here forever, stuck in my own devious mind, my own spiteful body. I couldn’t deal with that. I just couldn’t.

“Let me out!” I screamed at my mother. Again and again. She was the only one who could help me. She was the one who had given birth to me, she was the one who had raised me, she was the one who had taught me things that I needed to know. She had done all of this for me, so why couldn’t she let me out? Why was she so powerless in the one area that could help me the most?

Let me out!

My arms were forming bruises that would last for weeks, a seemingly everlasting reminder of rage that doesn’t leave.

Let me out!

My legs hit a small, sharp section that was protruding from the main bar, which sliced my toes. Blood seeped to the floor, drip by drip, as if that part of my body was crying.

Let me out!

I hit and hit, screamed and screamed. My mother was on the other side of the door, trying to soothe me with her calming voice. It didn’t work, for it was obvious that she was scared of me. Otherwise she would have come in and held me, like she always did.

Let me out!

I slid to the floor and sobbed and sobbed for a life that I didn’t even know.

That was utterly terrifying... all I can say, really. I really felt like I was seeing that breakdown through Sai's eyes, and I felt the same things he felt.

“You say that bad things only happen to bad people?”

“Yes.”

“Bad things just happened to you. Are you a bad person?”

“Yes… I don’t follow the rules that I should. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to when I get out, either.”

“This isn’t your fault. You’re sick, you know.”

Is this Dr. Richards here?

“Uh huh.”

“You did this, and you don’t think you’re ill?”

“I never said that I didn’t think I was sick.”

“Well, you certainly don’t seem to act like there’s anything wrong with you. You act so… normal when you’re around me, it’s hard to believe you’re a patient at all.”

Okay, yeah, it is. Is he the one who gave Sai the die in the earlier scene?

I also notice his proverbial bedside manner is not the greatest, but I'd expect no less from a psychiatrist on Team Rocket's payroll.

I want to love you… whoever you are and whatever that means. I want to eat ice cream on the swing set in the backyard with you and I want you to watch part of the moon say hello to its other half and I want to watch your favorite movies and listen to your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods just to wear your heart and I want to one day stop counting the months, the days, the minutes, the seconds, until I can see you and I want to have someone to talk to when something good or bad or extraordinary or humiliating happens to me and I want you to like your name just because of the way I say it and I want to learn to cook just for you and I want to laugh at stupid jokes until I cry and I want to try to take care of you before I send you to a doctor and I want you to love yourself more than you love me and I want to save you from your senseless fears and and and

and I want to go on adventures with you and pretend that there’s something left for me to find and I want to hear all about your past life and I want to remember every small detail about you and I want to find any excuse in the world to hold you and touch you and breathe you in and I want to worry about you all the time because I’ll be so scared that I’ll lose you any sooner that I have to and I want to stay up late into the night with you because reality feels okay when I’m with you and and and

and I want to tell you that you’re perfect again and again and wonder why you don’t believe me and I want to spend my life convincing you that you’re perfect and I want to experience the feeling of doing something you don’t understand for the sake of another and I want to cherish your existence because it gives me hope and I want to dream about all these things I want to do with you and for you and I want them to happen in real life and I want to tell you that dreams really do come true so we can feel young again

and I want to avoid shame and pain and fear and I want to repress my emotions and I want to beat the social norms I know and I want to fight against coercion and secrecy and I want to receive positive attention and I want to boost my self-confidence and I want to defend myself and I want to reach all of my goals and I want to stop charging toward my death

and and and

with this

and more

I want to

somehow

someway

show you this

unbelievable enduring unbreakable everlasting persistent endless captivating overwhelming completing empowering undying love I feel for life.

I don't know what happened in this part, but I like what you did. If this was Sai having a nervous breakdown, as I suspect it is, you did it extremely well.

“Come on, Sai,” she said. “We’ve got a few things to do before you go.”

I nodded. I followed her upstairs, looking at my cell one last time before rounding the corner. It hit me that there was, at least, one good thing about being all the way in the basement for the majority of my life. The realization was this: no matter where I would go from here, I could only go up. Up the stairs and out the door into the world.

She brought me to the third floor. Walking up the stairs had already put a strain on my legs, and I made a mental note that I would have to build up strength if I really wanted to go on this long journey. I was also able to notice that the scientists had done a decent job at cleaning up the terrible messes that I had left behind as a child. All of the machines looked brand new, and their desks were organized. The floor I saw was the complete epitome of cleanliness. The second floor was the same, though I was brought into an office that I hadn’t known existed. The first thing I noticed was a desk that showed a nametag that said “Melanie Luart” on it.

I get an ominous feeling from seeing Sai's mother's nametag noted. Could it be that there were some facts we did not know about her?

“Yes,” she said simply. “Anyway, your ultimate goal is to prepare pokémon for our use, experimental or otherwise. To do this, you must raise them to the best of your abilities. Utilize everything I’ve taught you thus far. Catch pokémon that have the most potential by any means necessary. The pokémon must become as strong as possible, and when you think they’re ready, you must report to us and send them to our laboratory. You are not to become attached to them. This ensures that you won’t betray us. You are not allowed to leave the region or stray too far away from the main route.”

Not that I dislike it - in fact, it works perfectly - but I don't fully understand how he could avoid becoming attached to the Pokemon.

“The main route?”

“Yes. You will start in New Bark Town and go from there. This is where all trainers start their journeys, supposedly... This is where it will be easiest to find pokémon that you can control.”

Interesting way to set up Sai having to follow the 'traditional' Johto path.

“You need to clean yourself up before you go. Make yourself look presentable,” she said. She reached into her pockets once more, making me think that she was going to lock me in again. Instead, she pulled out a small sharp device and handed it to me. “This includes shaving,” she added, smirking.

“How do I do that?”

“Figure it out. You’re a man now, right?” she said. She left me in the room by myself, alone and confused.

Okay, yeah, that's pretty careless of her. She doesn't seem to be concerned if Sai accidentally cuts his own face off.

Of course, I wasn’t interested in making myself presentable. The mirror and the image of myself that I hadn’t seen in years mesmerized me instead. I leaned in over the sink, taking a look at my face. Noticing my dark blue eyes first, I couldn’t help but think that they looked rather intimidating. They were eyes that were accustomed to the dark. They were accustomed to the same old views, and now they were seeing something new. There was a spark inside of them that I had never seen anywhere else. I wondered if they would change at all over the course of my journey.

I also wondered when I had changed so much otherwise. When had my hair turned black? Had it always been black? I thought I had seen the little boy in the picture have brown hair, but now I was not so sure. Seeing myself all at once threw me off guard. And how old was I now, anyway? I still had a young face with soft skin and all, aside from the stubble that covered the bottom half... Well, I wasn’t about to ask. The answer would only tell me how many years I had lost.

I stared at myself for so long that it suddenly hit me that I was wasting time already, just like they didn’t want me to. After quickly taking a shower (and after not wanting to leave the relieving warm water it offered), I tried shaving, as my mother requested. For the most part I succeeded, but there were clear cuts that I made in the process that made me bleed slightly. I brushed the blood away, wondering if I was making myself look worse or better.

I'm surprised Sai did that well shaving.

The elaboration on his seeing his reflection is pretty unsettling to read. His comment on the hair color he thought he had in the photo almost makes me wonder if it wasn't him.

My mother’s demeanor quickly changed. She tensed up and said, “Your father would be proud, you know. He always said he would be proud, no matter what happened.”

“It was as if you both knew this was going to happen,” I mumbled.

“I didn’t. I never meant for this to happen,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me.

“I believe you,” I said anyway.

“Do you?” she said.

I don't. I really have my reservations about believing her.

“You’re the one who brought up the idea in the first place. That means you thought about it... and probably for a very long time. But under the circumstances at which you brought it up, yeah... I guess I believe you.”

After a few moments of silence, she said, “Sai. Your name is like a weapon. Intelligently sharp, and very powerful. I know you can deal with whatever is thrown at you.”

That was something I couldn’t believe right away. It would take time to create that kind of thought within myself. Still, I trusted her words and nodded, but kept my disbelief silent. For it was not a prison of stone and metal that I feared, but one built of words and promises.

Probably a wise fear to have in his situation.

As instructed, I made my way to New Bark Town. I had to first travel through the cave on the east end of Mahogany Town and everything from there was just a matter of going south. My mother had warned me that this method was the fastest, but also the most dangerous. There were more powerful wild pokémon in the nearby ice cavern and the next city, but it would quickly level off once I reached a certain point, she said. That was fine with me. I was determined to get myself started as soon as possible; I had already wasted enough time. If I ran into a wild pokémon, I simply fled or fought it myself. It was only difficult for a while because my body wasn’t accustomed to fighting actual opponents. Eventually, though, I was able to stand my ground. A few pokémon even helped me out along the way and offered to come with me, but I had to decline their offer. Accepting would have meant breaking the rules too soon.

Oh, now I get why he fought with Senori when they first met.

The ice cavern was cold and the nights were cold, but nothing could have prepared me for the chilling experience that I had when I met Senori. When I found him, my body seemed to freeze up immediately, and I had no idea what to do. He was just walking around aimlessly, maybe looking for something to eat. I knew that he was the right one because he was alone. His eyes told me that he was missing someone because he had seen terrible things, just like the pokémon in my vision had. He was the one, and I had to capture him... somehow.

It dawned on me that I didn’t have any pokéballs. No... On my way to the outskirts of New Bark Town, I hadn’t tried to go into another city and communicate with anyone. Not only did I want to get to my destination as quickly as possible, but also I wasn’t sure if I could talk to someone else without messing up. It was better to wait. In addition, it was better to start off with a bad impression. I wasn’t allowed to get close to my pokémon, after all. And that was why I attacked Senori when he was powerless—he would then dislike me from the start, and it was my only option in terms of catching pokémon, anyway. I forced him to join me with sharp words, like my mother would do.

But, as I said earlier, his methods of trying to get his Pokemon to dislike him clearly didn't fully work in the end. Is that something that I am correct to notice?

“I don’t care what anyone’s called you. Your name is Senori,” I had said, trying to sound confident. Inside, I was regretful, but there was no way I could let it show.

My confidence only became somewhat founded when I started my tradition of asking the pokémon to roll the die that the doctor had given me way back when. Was I really expecting the die to prove to Senori that he was meant to be my first pokémon? Half of me was hoping, and the other half was overcome by intuition. When the die showed a single dot after it was rolled, my beliefs were confirmed in my mind and apparently in Senori’s.

I have to say, I really, really love the use of the die even more than ever now that we know the story behind it. Little quirks like that are just great.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he had said.

And so he did. He took me to New Bark Town and told me how all trainers begin their pokémon journeys. While he scolded me at the same time, I looked for one out of many for the pokémon that was destined to join me next, at the proper starting point. I watched the totodile, cyndaquil and chikorita through the gates nearby. I only told Senori that no one stuck out to me in order to buy time. In truth, Kuiora stuck out to me immediately. During the training sessions, it was clear to me that she was fierce so she could get what she wanted. She was the strongest mostly because she wanted to be the strongest. Outside of that, though, she was gentle, and when I overheard Professor Elm talking to her, I discovered her love for legendary pokémon. She instantly reminded me of the Kuiora I had known before, so I took her in. Lying to Professor Elm about my origins was surprisingly easy, but it made me paranoid that perhaps the police would come after me as well if I did something wrong. This journey was definitely going to keep me on my toes.

Next came Atis. Senori had told me about the journey that all trainers take, the one to get the gym badges. I assumed that this was what my mother wanted me to do because the gyms went in a certain order, just like the cities, and the badges proved just how strong you were. Atis was my first step into the real adventure. I stepped into the pokémon school out of curiosity, but then swiftly realized that it was to recruit my third pokémon. His quiet demeanor was too obvious for his own good. Standing at the back of the classroom, his eyes showed an odd mixture of boredom and terror. His reaction to me told me he didn’t want to be here, so I took him away even though he already had a trainer.

Meeting Atis was important not only because he was already evolved and powerful, but also because he set some ground rules for my journey. Falkner told me that I should set up appointments with gym leaders in order to not disturb them like I had with him. And during the actual battle, I remained on the sidelines and let him do whatever it is that he did during combat. My guise told the others that I just wanted to learn more about his strategy, but I knew otherwise. I stayed silent, unsure of what attacks to call out, and because I was afraid of calling out the wrong move, just as I had done during my personal training. We won—he won—and so it all began.

The backgrounds of each of the Pokemon are very well detailed, and again, that's an excellent thing. Usually that's not something a lot of authors pay much attention to.

I see my guess about why Sai didn't give orders during battle was correct.

The fear eventually dissipated. My moods quickly escalated once we hit Azalea Town after a few restless nights of sleep at the cave. I wanted to meet everyone and do everything at once because I couldn’t focus on a single thing. My speech was fast and I suddenly had an endless amount of energy. There was nothing in the world that could stop me. That was why I asked to visit Sasha in her home even though she suggested that she didn’t want me to come. I wanted her to be my friend because she accepted me despite being reluctant. Her being Marty’s sister was an unfortunate coincidence, but I wouldn’t know it until later.

In the midst of my mania (which was supposedly the term for these high moods I got), I recklessly started spending money on random things. I bought everything in sight, everything except medicine, because none of my medicine in the past ever did anything good for me. I even bought my pokémon t-shirts, which wasn’t so random, because it made me feel closer to them. I didn’t care about any consequences at the time because I was invincible... even at the hands of Team Rocket!

It wasn’t long, however, before this high energy changed into bouts of anger. I yelled at Atis and threw things at him simply because he suggested that we stay in Azalea Town longer than I originally wanted. I was angry because I wanted to stay, too, but I couldn’t. He knew nothing of my situation, and for that I despised him in that moment and acted in the only way I knew how.

Another very good depiction of what someone with bipolar disorder can go through.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Atis and how I had so blatantly hurt him. In spite of everything, I wanted to stay. I wanted to be closer to my pokémon. The only good thing about my outburst was that it made him hate me more, but that was only desirable to people who were far away. I had to do something, anything to distract myself. I went into the Azalea Town well and caught as many magikarp as I could. I intentionally caught pokémon that weren’t meant to be on my team so they could be my friends, but I quickly dispelled this notion and released them later on to people who could take care of them better that I ever could. When I was manic, my desires and feelings changed just as quickly as they came.

Well then, I didn't expect for those Magikarp to be mentioned again.

When Marty saw the violent exchange and then challenged me to a battle, I wasn’t really surprised. I knew that he would try to work against me somehow. He wanted to prove that he was the better trainer and make my pokémon leave me. I agreed to the battle, thinking that I wasn’t going to let them leave regardless of whether or not they wanted to. I would convince them to stay just like I convinced them to come with me at all. I was surprised, however, when I didn’t have to do anything of the sort. They chose to stay. I was secretly glad, but this meant that none of my defenses were working. Somewhere along the line, I had let my guard down and had let them in.

That's like what I pointed out earlier. The conflict in Sai's character, specifically regarding his goal to not bond with his Pokemon only to find himself doing so anyway, is very intriguing.

Suddenly, another miracle happened: Rennio showed up. At that point, he was nameless to me, since I hadn’t learned the name of the final man in the cell. He seemed so young, so eager to grow, but something was stopping him. He gave off the anxious impression that he was scared to stay in Ilex Forest for too long, like the other man who wouldn’t accept imprisonment. He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere better. I offered to take him with me, so that things would be better for him—for a time, anyway.

Ezrem showed up, too, but I didn’t need him. I didn’t want to seem cruel, but he was just so persistent. There just wasn’t any room on the team. He didn’t belong. Since no one else was in the cells during my time there, I believed my team was complete, even though my mother told me the most pokémon I could have was six at a time. I simply said no, and expected my answer to be final. Still, I let him follow us for Rennio’s sake. If I wasn’t going to be the source of the comfort he needed, then someone else would have to take that role.

Sai's refusal to officially take in Ezrem makes a lot more sense now.

Despite these two positive events happening in a row, I suddenly fell into a depression, as I so often did after being manic. I believed the trigger was Marty telling me that Sasha would never want to be my friend or travel with me because I wasn’t a suitable companion. To have this confirmed to me by another person dispirited me to the point where I was miserable all the time and had no energy to travel any further. As a result, we ended up staying in Goldenrod City longer than intended. I ended up saying yes to Atis when he wanted to show me around the city instead of insisting that we should battle the gym leader and move on. Notably, there was a pocketknife I picked up at the large department store. When I saw it, I immediately thought of my mother and her love of weapons of any kind, be it a pokémon weapon or a handheld weapon. Turning it over in my hand, I decided that it would be perfect for her, and it was also then that I realized I would probably have to face her again someday, after everything was over.

That's what the knife was building toward? Certainly not what I expected...

Keeping the pocketknife, however, was a terrible reminder of the rules that she had given me. Never become close to your pokémon, she said... to ensure that I wouldn’t betray the team. But Atis was clearly telling me he wanted to get to know me better. He wanted to spend more time with me. When I let him write whatever secret he wanted on my back, I felt that it was etched into me like a tattoo or whatever those markings are called. I knew that I would have to fight the urge to look at what it was, but I let him do it anyway. It would disappear in the shower eventually and ruin any chances of me finding out, at least, but for the time being, I settled on rubbing myself there when I couldn’t sleep to remind myself that Atis was real.

That part with Atis certainly does hurt pretty badly now...

[The Great Butler]

Time went on and revealed more events that I didn’t want to have to experience. The scene at the radio tower had told me that Team Rocket was lurking around for whatever reason. Automatically I assumed that they were after me. They had caught on to all of my misdeeds and were ready to take me back to my prison. I had to do something quick to make up for it. My choice: I had to make Rennio fight, despite his fear of battles. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have made him do it, but it was up to people who were much more powerful. When we lost to Whitney, my intention wasn’t to leave my pokémon behind for days at a time. I only wanted to leave and find a safe hiding spot for us to go to as quickly as possible. Before I could find any suitable location, however, I had already been confronted by a Team Rocket grunt who was instructed to come to me and bring me back to Mahogany Town for “rehabilitation.”

When I found out what this “rehabilitation” was, it seemed unnecessary for me to go all the way back to Mahogany Town, but others apparently differed in opinion. The rehabilitation involved me being in my cell once more while being asked to take my medication. This time I was forced by Dr. Richards to do so. He called me out on not taking it, saying it was fairly obvious when someone stopped. I had no choice but to give in to him. He would check my mouth after every swallow to make sure that the pills were actually gone, and then he would leave me alone with my thoughts.

Wait... that was where Sai went?

I don't even know why I failed to question the lack of explanation for that before this, but good job filling in an opening I didn't even realize was there.

Soon enough I was starting to feel manic again. I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t think about my pokémon’s whereabouts and conditions anymore without my mind wandering off somewhere else. I asked him why this happened because the goal of medication, I thought, was to keep me stable, not to make me go up and down. He explained to me slowly that Giovanni had paid him money to give me antidepressants instead of mood stabilizers in order to keep my moods “high” and energized for proper travel. Supposedly I was more active and successful during these times in my journey.

“So they’ve been watching me the entire time,” I said bluntly.

“Yes... and they’ll continue to do so. I’m sorry.”

No you aren't, Richards. I knew this guy was bad news.

I have to give you major points for pulling this off successfully, though. It would be very, very easy to slip into writing a storyline about a bipolar character who is effectively committed and drugged by a villain for exploitative purposes in an offensive way. You don't fall into that.

But I quickly ran into a problem: Sasha. I had another choice to make when she confronted me about taking my pokémon to the fan club. Either I could say no and insist on going to the gym in order to not waste time or I could go with my own instincts, my own desires of wanting to be her friend. Despite everything, I went with the latter. I just didn’t have the heart to say no, and it was only for a few hours, anyway...

Seeing Senori evolve into a furret at the Goldenrod City rematch was worth it. It was a proud moment for both of us. He looked as if he were finally letting go of his past somehow, as his new movements were much lighter, much less tense. And to see my very first pokémon come so far in such a short amount of time made all of the exhaustion and pain I had gone through thus far seem like nothing compared to the joy I felt when I was with them. When Senori came to me that night with my antidepressant bottle in hand, asking me to stay with them, I felt like a true trainer for the very first time.

All these little moments where it's clear he bonded with his Pokemon are just so painful to be reminded of now that I know about the truth of Sai's backgrounds and what the Survival Project actually was.

Things got worse. That day, Atis told me that he wanted to leave the team. I understood and didn’t question him at all. After the Ezrem ordeal was settled, I tried to celebrate one last day to make Atis happy, and also to try to get him to stay. I couldn’t come up with anything that would convince him. I couldn’t even convince myself of wanting to stay. Only the evil thought of turning him in swayed in my mind. In a way, it was perfect timing. I hadn’t meant to deceive him... but I couldn’t let him go. If I had let him go, I was risking more suffering on my part. It was selfish, I admit. When I watched him faint in front of me, the disbelief in his eyes ripped into me. I felt sick myself. I could only hope that my promise to miss him every day had rung true in his mind.

It felt unnatural, but I cried all night. My pokémon tried to comfort me despite their own sadness, but there was no way I could tell them what I had done. They would all leave me and know me for the terrible person that I was. I couldn’t afford any more mistakes now. Anything else would have let Atis’s sacrifice be in vain... but when had I ever been known to stick to the rules? When had I ever not followed my own intuition? Never. I just didn’t have it in me. My adventure without Atis didn’t last long at all. When no one wanted to fight for me versus Morty, it reminded me of Atis and his introverted self. When Senori couldn’t attack the ghosts, it reminded me of Atis’s knowledge of the world that surpassed my own. My team was falling apart because it wasn’t just me that could hold the team together. We all held the team together in our own way, and the absence of one of us was showing.

I panicked. I wailed. I screamed random obscenities because I was so very tired of keeping quiet about all of my lies, all of my secrets. I didn’t know how much I was revealing, but I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was getting to Atis as soon as possible, before he became an experiment of Team Rocket’s, like I had been. He was a special pokémon, just as I was a special child... but his situation could be handled much more effectively. Something else could be done—or so I hoped.

Oh no... I guess the answer to that "something else could be done" is that something else couldn't be done. I feel it coming.

Thanks to the map that my mother had given me, I knew exactly how to get back to Mahogany Town. Coincidentally, there was a cave to the right of Ecruteak City that led me directly there. I didn’t stop to rest until I got there, even when my limbs felt like they were about to break down from fighting so many wild zubats and geodudes. I didn’t sleep or even hesitate a moment before running back into the laboratory that offered so many unfavorable memories to me.

Inside, I violently grabbed the first person that I came into contact with by the scruff of his collar and yelled, “Where’s my mother? Where is Atis?”

“I-I don’t know any Atis…” he stammered, dropping the papers that were in his hand.

“Where’s my mother, then? Where’s Melanie Luart?”

“Sai…? W-What are you—”

“Where is she?!” I said more fiercely, gripping more tightly onto his uniform to make a point. He was making small talk, and it was unacceptable to me.

“Last I heard, she was going to train and—”

I let him go, not needing to hear anything else. There were only two training locations in the entire place, and whichever one she was in, I knew that she—and Atis—weren’t too far from me anymore. I scrambled up the stairs in the corner, causing two more scientists to make a mess with the materials in their hand. I didn’t even stop to apologize, for I felt I had no reason to and I was in a rush. My head felt like it was going to explode at any moment if I didn’t see that Atis was somewhere in this building, safe. Not locked up or bruised or bleeding.

Can't blame him for his reaction here, especially after what happened to that Arbok.

It seemed that, for once, there was one good thing about living in this place for so long. Despite being locked up for years, everyone recognized me. Everyone knew who I was and no one questioned my presence. There were no alarmed shouts about an intruder, so I could go wherever I wanted. They all chose to ignore the wild fire of tears that was undoubtedly falling down my face.

I ran up the next set of stairs, to the second floor, to the first set of training grounds. My gaze shifted from one person to another, from one pokémon to another, but neither my mother nor Atis were there. They all stopped to stare at me, even the pokémon who were in the middle of attacks. I panted for a moment before sprinting once more. I crossed the middle of the arena to save time, despite the fact that I might have been hit. It reminded me of the time when I was a child and would purposely do this, but I had grown up now. Couldn’t anyone see that? Couldn’t anyone see that I was as normal as I would ever be?

I went up and up and up, to the roof. That was the only other place they could be now that I knew the second floor wasn’t where I needed to be. Please be there, I thought. Please be there. I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone else just trying to find them. But at last, I did find them. Thankfully, I found only the two of them. No other pokémon—no other signs of harm—were present. The only bad sign was that my mother was standing next to Atis. She was too close, too close.

She looked at me in disbelief. “Sai?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“You know exactly what I’m here for,” I said, motioning toward the fighting-type. Atis was also staring me down, but I couldn’t tell if he was glad or disappointed. It was times like these where I wished that he was easier to read.

“Hmm…” my mother said. “This pokémon is no longer yours. The moment we took him away, he was the property of Team Rocket.”

“But I’m… I’m part of Team Rocket, too!” I said, the words leaving a foul taste in my mouth. It was the first time admitting this in my entire life, and I could only wonder if I would regret it after all was said and done.

“You’re not part of this group. You’re… an experiment yourself—”

I want to believe that Melanie is having trouble saying this and does not actually believe it, but the feeling that she actually does feel this way is overwhelming me.

“Don’t remind me,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’m a toy, I know. Don’t I have a say in anything, too? What about the others? Where are they right now?”

“The others? Well, we followed them for a short amount of time…” she said, shifting her gaze away from me and lowering her voice.

“What are you saying?”

“They’re dead, Sai. They’re all dead. Killed by pokémon, suicide, murdered… You name it, and it probably happened.”

And I don't feel much remorse from her about this. The only thing surprising to me is that they weren't experimented on to death and instead died outside.

I bit my lip. “I just want Atis back. I’ll do anything you ask.”

“You say that, but you haven’t done much of what I asked of you before you left.”

“I… I mean it this time. Do whatever you want to me, but let Atis go.”

“I can’t do that, Sai. Pokémon are more than beneficial to us. You know this.” She paused. “It looks like you have friends that are here to see you.”

“Mother, please—”

I cut myself off. Confused, I turned around to see Senori and the rest of the group close behind him. I gaped at them, wanting to shout at how crazy they were, how they should be far, far away from here and why did they come here anyway? How did they know where I was?

My mother went on, talking about how I had such loyal pokémon now… She said I was still lonely… Was I lonely? Yes, I felt lonely in the sense that no one knew what I was up against in my life… but of course I didn’t want to give her the pleasure of knowing that. I yelled, this time being random, I just want Atis back, you told me things would get better and they never did, they never did, I won’t follow your rules because you lied to me. You lied to me!

But she knew where to get me most.

“…And then you will never see the light of day again...”

Yeah, consider any hope I had for her redemption gone. I have to give you points for getting me to think she could be redeemed for so long, though.

Also, I want to point out that by this point, I feel like this chapter should have had extra trigger warnings for mental illness and abuse at the beginning. Some of this, for example this part here, can be extremely triggering to certain people. I don't fault you for it because I think it was just an honest oversight, but do try to be a little more attentive.

I wanted life. I wanted freedom. When she brought up the idea of me dying, I remembered the others and how they were gone now, and I fumbled with my pants until I found the pocketknife that I had bought at the Goldenrod City department store. I held it out threateningly toward her. It was the only weapon I had left, if words weren’t going to work and if my pokémon were going to leave me after what they were seeing.

“Are you going to hurt me, Sai? Just as I’ve supposedly hurt you?” she asked.

I wish he would, she deserves it.

I have a feeling I know where this is going to head, though.

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what my intentions were. I just wanted to seem like a scary person, just as everyone else seemed to me. I almost didn’t believe it when she put her hands up in surrender and let Atis flee over to the rest of us. Atis ran right past me, as expected, and started mumbling things to Senori that my mind couldn’t properly process. I could only focus on my mother’s words, which hurt me more than any damage the knife could ever do.

“I’m done listening to you,” I said, and it was the most confident thing I had said during the whole conversation.

“…Then you will pay for it.”

I watched as my mother reached behind her and pulled out a few pokéballs off of her belt and extended them toward me. “A pokémon battle,” she said. “If you win, I will see to it that you are allowed to leave this town and leave this project. If you lose… you must subject yourself to us once more, or choose death. It’s up to you.”

I have to admit, I feel like after how everything else in this story was different from the norm, having the central conflict end up staked on the outcome of a Pokemon battle feels like a little bit of a letdown. It does fit in the narrative, but I feel like I lost a little of the tension.

I stayed silent for a moment, unmoving, thinking through the proposal. How could I beat her, a trainer of many years? I had little experience in battling. I had done little actual training with my pokémon. Having three badges couldn’t be enough—and I didn’t even have the badges to prove my strength. They were lost. It felt like I myself had already lost. And would my pokémon fight for me, anyway?

Slowly, I put my arm down, and I put the knife back into my pocket.

“Unlike some people… I am not a torturer. I am not a killer.” I sighed. “I agree to your challenge, but only under fair one-on-one conditions. I also won’t be forcing any of my pokémon to actually fight. If they choose to leave me alone in this battle, then so be it.”

I turned to face my team. They looked up me with such innocent, questioning eyes. I smiled as best as I could and kneeled down so I could look at them directly.

“I’m sorry I left again,” I started. “I had to find Atis, but I didn’t want to put you guys in any danger. I hope you understand, but if you don’t… it’s okay. If you don’t want to fight for me right now, that’s okay too.” I extended my hand out toward Atis gently. He flinched slightly at my touch, but he let me pet him on the side of his head for a few moments. It was all I needed. I had intended to tell them everything after the incident was over, no matter what happened, but the touch felt so final, so conclusive, that I explained everything in that moment: that I was mentally sick and I had been imprisoned for it. My goal as a Team Rocket experiment was to train pokémon for usage in battles and other projects better than any normal person ever could. I told them everything and I was out of breath by the time I was done. I shook my head and repeated that they didn’t have to fight for me.

Now this feels more in line with what went on in the story. This just feels so genuine that it even touched me a little.

I didn’t wait to see their reactions. I didn’t think I could handle it. I simply stood up and turned to face my mother, saying I was ready, and that whoever wanted to fight could step forward.

“If you’re ready, then let’s begin,” my mother said, tossing a pokéball into the air. Out popped a small lizard pokémon whose tail lit brightly with fire. The orange creature let out a fierce growl, saying it was ready to go. It was my mother’s first pokémon, a charmander from the Kanto region, and it didn’t seem to recognize me. To go from playing with this pokémon as a child to fighting in a life or death battle seemed beyond surreal to me.

I held my breath and waited for the inevitable, my mind reeling with words of false persuasion and comfort. I knew in my heart that not a single pokémon was going to step forward. They had no good reason to defend me anymore, and I wouldn’t blame them for leaving. But Rennio—Rennio, out of all of them—stood in front of me and faced the fire-type pokémon in front of him.

...Rennio?

Now THAT was a true surprise. I would have expected Senori or Kuiora, or even Atis, due to the symbolism each of them would have represented. Rennio is a true surprise.

“Are you sure this is what you want, Rennio?” I asked quietly.

He turned his head to me and nodded. Though he was frowning, I could tell his reaction was sincere.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t be commanding this battle… as usual. Everything is up to you.”

Again, he nodded. And then it began.

I would like to say that everything that happened next was by my own design. I would like to say that I watched Rennio battle and cheered him on like any normal trainer would. But I was manic from before, and now I was also depressed from everything that had happened. When you’re manic and depressed at the same time you can only keep yourself occupied on a single thought or situation for a few seconds before you succumb to something worse. The battle, then, was sporadic for me, and I only thanked myself enough to have found the strength, courage, and the time to be able to explain everything to my pokémon before the end of it all.

Come on, self. Keep me on my toes. Keep me in the know. But I couldn’t do it. Rennio shocked the charmander and the charmander retaliated with a tackle and then my thoughts turned to death. It was all over for me. I didn’t raise my pokémon well enough. I was a failure of a trainer, just as Marty had deemed me to be. He should have taken everyone away while he still had the chance.

Team Rocket should have executed me when they had the chance, all those years ago. I should have been a different experiment, one with cords and machinery and a bunch of paperwork filled with invaluable information. The white cords would have been happy cords and the black cords would have been sad cords and they would have hooked up to me simultaneously, sending me back and forth between the two extreme emotions that constantly pervaded my life. Because that’s what life was to me. It’s all a game, it’s all a game. It’s all a joke, a fraud…

Rennio was swinging the charmander around by the tail, an otherwise amusing sight. The charmander smashed into the wall. At this point, Kuiora asked to switch in, since her water attacks were much more effective. There’s another one on my team. Two out of five. Why are my pokémon here, anyway? Is that Ezrem cheering Kuiora on? Three out of five. My god, they’re raising hell. They’re raising hell to give to me what they already gave to me once—a chance at independence and happiness. They can’t do it again. It’s too late for me.

And there's another surprise - that the other Pokemon are joining in one at a time. I truly wasn't expecting that.

Unfortunately, Sai's breakdown here feels final, and it may truly be too late to stop it now.

It’s okay. If I don’t make it, someone else will. A normal person, maybe? It has to be a normal person. Everyone else is dead. All they had ever been was dead. But I believe one of my kind will prevail someway, somewhere. We’re special, after all. Kuiora, when did you get so strong? I didn’t train you at all like I should have. You did all this for me? Stop raising hell already. It’s too late for me.

I should point out that I like how you're having the battle play out in the background.

I couldn’t sit still anymore. I started making my way around the edges of the battleground, watching them as intently as I could, which doesn’t say much. Kuiora took down the charmander, as expected. She’ll be happy to know that my mother is a fire-type pokémon trainer. My mother sent out her ninetales next. I remember it being a young vulpix. Why hadn’t Charmander evolved? Is my mother threatening me again? If you mistreat a ninetales, she’s saying, you can be cursed. Do I want my pokémon to be cursed? I’ll take the curse for them. But you’re already cursed enough as it is, the ninetales said…

Unbelievable. I was cursed with depression and mania. Depression is needing all day tomorrow to recover from today and mania is needing all day today to prepare for the invincible tomorrow. It’s a vicious cycle. It doesn’t end. Because of my medication I hardly have had any periods of normalcy. I don’t know what it means to be stable, but my pokémon do. That’s why Atis just ran into the middle of the battle to make Kuiora save the rest of her strength for what was to come. Four out of five. That leaves Senori. Senori? What do you think of me? …What do I think of myself?

Senori last... that might be the biggest surprise of this battle yet.

The ordeal Sai is experiencing at this point is so raw and real that I once again feel like I'm in his shoes.

Well, how can your mind get this messed up? How can you be so clueless, so lost? How can you be so lonely that you don’t even like yourself for company?

How could you not?

I tried to give my love to the world. The world didn’t seem to want it. The only constant I have ever had in my life is my mood swings and air. Air has kept me alive and breathing and together with my pokémon. It has been with me in the cells, in my dreams, in my lungs.

It would be the perfect way to go. …And I was in the perfect position to go.

The ninetales was defeated. Was I winning or was I losing? I wasn’t even part of the battle anymore. Maybe I never was to begin with. I really can’t get over this pokémon training thing. I wanted it for so long and I never even grew accustomed to it. I liked the feeling of learning and having my pokémon teach me instead. I liked not being expected to know everything. Tell me, Senori, that I’ll never get used to this—this so-called form of living. The unknowing and uncertainty will come to me and I will always be ever so inviting.

Senori was the last one. He was the only one I had any hope of getting help from, and he was last. He was last! This told me something, but I couldn’t figure out what. My mother has six pokémon, and I only have four usable pokémon. We are overwhelmed, no matter what my furret does. It’s too late for me.

I backtracked to the edge of the building. This way I could see not only my pokémon but also my mother and my opponent. I felt like I was watching a show that I had no part of. I was completely dissociated from myself. My only thought: I was already gone. No matter how much I wanted to live, the idea of death and death itself were overtaking me. Even if I won the battle, I would never get better. I would forever be sick. If I lost… Well, then I was even more gone. Either way, I was dead. Who is dead? I’m dead.

It’s such a shame that I’m drowning in my goddamn shame.

…I always wanted to see myself become a better person. I wanted to see Senori stop having to worry about me all the time. I wanted to see Kuiora evolve into her final form and fulfill her dreams. I wanted to hear Atis smile so much that I forgot his normal scared voice. I wanted to continue watching Rennio learn to fight again and I wanted to feed him… whatever that meant. I wanted to see Ezrem through his old trainer’s eyes.

It never once occurred to me that any of these things could still have happened.

I might have begged for help, once upon a time… but I didn’t.

I jumped.

I thought he was going to stab himself, but probably only because I didn't realize they were actually on a roof (I thought they were on the top floor, but still enclosed.) But either way, it was clear quite well in advance that he was going to kill himself.

I'm not sure what I can say that I haven't said already. This chapter was an ordeal to read because of how dark it got, fitting of the first (and probably only) Sai-centric chapter. Everything made perfect sense, though, and I have to say that I truly am in awe of how well you structured the facts presented here with the things that happened earlier in the narrative.

[robinhood]

I don't know if I've reviewed this before, but I've read the entire thing and it is amazing! Keep it up. Also I think I can guess whats going to happen:
    Spoiler:- !!:

Show Spoiler

 
Ezrem evolves to save Sai from the fall
 

[hl23]

that's one hell of an update