Pokémon Mars

Chapter 25: The Ambassador

Individual lights bounced all over the white corridors of buildings on Mars at night. It never seemed truly pitch-black in Ironville. Team Magma's headquarters were different. Their doors were heavier. Light only crept around them into the corridors when doors opened.

Kazuki preferred night to day, but that night, something was different. Even though his wife was awake in the living room, working on her latest tattoo designs, their room was pitch-black when he felt like something shook him awake. He reached for his phone. It was like something stopped him, forcing him to remain frozen in the dark so he couldn't be distracted from what he didn't want to admit he heard: a voice that he knew was in his head. It wasn't the kind of voice that Firmino said he heard outside. It was the kind that his schizophrenic father heard, or so he thought.

Something nudged him. He knew from the warmth that it was his Camerupt. He already decided he was finally succumbing to mental illness, yet he got the feeling that his Pokémon heard the voice as clearly as he did... or maybe that was his illness telling him so. He ignored it and ignored it, sitting in the dark and folding sections of the sheets over and over, but he couldn't really pretend he didn't know what the voice said.

'Prepare yourself. Your time is coming.'

Then light flooded the room. Camerupt was startled, but it was only Clover, Kazuki's wife. She wore a troubled frown, as if she knew she would find her husband looking distraught.

'What's wrong...?'

'It's happening... it's finally happening... I'm losing it...'

'What? What makes you say that?'

'A voice... I'm hearing voices...'

'Didn't a whole bunch of people hear voices...? Even Firmino?'

Clover reached for the headset on the nightstand, but Kazuki gently brushed her hand away.

'No... not those kinds of voices. It's... a voice in my head...'

'What's it saying?'

'It doesn't matter... I'd just be humouring it by acting like it matters...'

'No.'

Clover's frown became determined when she sat on the bed. Photos of their deceased loved ones, of Kazuki's football days and Clover's time as Orre's eighth Gym Leader, smiled from every shelf.

'You don't pass an Ares assessment at 48 and lose it at 64.'

Clover knew Kazuki's greatest fear was discovering that he or his descendants inherited his father's schizophrenia, but that meant she also knew a lot about the illness. She knew she was right. It rarely appeared at 64 after a lifetime without a single symptom.

'What's it saying?'

'It doesn't matter... it's just typical nonsense about how I've chosen my role and my time is coming... it's telling me to prepare myself...'

'That doesn't sound like nonsense to me...'

She hesitated. 'Something is going to change here. Rudolph can't be a tin-pot dictator forever. Actually, it's already changing. Courtney isn't on our side anymore. She'll hurt someone – or lots of people – if it's what it takes...'

'But how credible can a voice in my head possibly be...?'

Kazuki's eyes wandered to one of the family photos.