Patenting a TM 🍃 Pokemon One-shot

Patenting a TM

Patenting a TM

Ted had a very simple and stupid goal: create a Technical Move, get it patented, and make lots of money off the downloads.

The idea  was simple because the process was pretty straightforward: there was a whole section devoted to how TMs were patented in history class, and Ted was pretty sure that there was no one in mainland Hoenn (except for maybe the weird tree people in Fortree City) who didn't know about Rick Recebo; he was the man behind the patent of the most widely utilized and diversified Pokemon move on the planet, Take Down.

According to the textbook and his history teacher, Ms. Maxwell, after conceiving the concept for the move, Mr. Recebo had  mapped out its execution, recorded the steps on a tape recorder, and sent it (along with a grainy tape of his Linoone performing the move) to the newly-minted Hidden and Technical Move Trademark Office, where it still remained one of the most requested, purchased, and downloaded TMs in the world. Apparently, Rick Recebo had used the money to buy an island before he'd died, where he was buried on a high hill under a stand of palm trees.

Ted's idea was stupid — well, according to Mom, anyway — because Ted had no business wasting time trying to patent TMs when he was still misspelling the word "paragraph" on vocab tests. He was only nine years old, for Arceus' sake — maybe he could think about making up TMs when he proved he actually had the brains to get to and through college.

But no, Ted decided — there wasn't time to wait until he was an adult. He wanted money, and he wanted it now, and this was the easiest way to make it. Maybe Mom would be more appreciative of his initiative when he made bank and got them out of their crappy rental house in the urban trash heap otherwise known as Mauville City. Wasn't she the one always complaining about the bad economy? Well, he might've only been nine, but he wasn't blind. The bad economy was beginning to leech into his already-seedy neighborhood — he could see it in the eyes of the people who went by as he walked to school every morning. And hadn't there been a break-in two doors down three days ago?

So he started thinking.  He started scribbling. And instead of doing those stupid math problems Mr. Dixon assigned every night, he started creating blueprints of his new sensational Pokemon move, image by image, frame by frame. This step, then that step, then this step, then that... Sure, he kept getting awful grades on his homework, but this was arguably more important, wasn't it? After all, this was no Protect, or Hyper Beam, or Facade, or Rock Tomb. Like Take Down, this Pokemon move was going to be universal — any Pocket Monster of any shape, size, gender, or type could use it to their advantage, to turn the tide of the steepest of uphill battles.

Or so he tried to convince the principal when he was called down to the office...

Anyway, near the end of the week, Ted had a notebook filled with promising candidates. On Thursday after school, he decided to drop by the park to try some of them out. Unfortunately, he had to take the scenic route, as his usual path was blocked off by a wall of police cars and lights: another daylight robbery, this time at a hole-in-the-wall burger joint at the bottom of the hill. So the grimy little community park was burning orange in the sunset by the time he arrived.

But Demeter was still there, doing what she normally did when Ted came to visit: picking up trash inconsiderate civilians had dumped and coaxing the exhausted shrubbery into cheerful bloom. She was working on a line of downtrodden tulips when Ted arrived.

"Dem, I need your help." Quickly, he explained to her his plan: the simple premise, the luxurious rewards. "Just think: I could have my own island one day, just like Rick Recebo! And all I need is someone to help me perfect the move. I don't actually have a Pokemon, though, so you'll have to do. What do you say?"