Pokémon Arena

Chapter Two: Someone's P.C.

Castor

      You know those pink, egg-shaped pokémon you see waddling after nurses? Those are called blisseys. Their eggs are highly nutritious, with both healing and psychedelic properties, a wonder drug that blisseys are eager to share with anyone and anything they meet. The stupid things are so altruistic that they'll give their own eggs to a person or pokémon that they sense is sad or in trouble. They'll kill their own young for the pleasure of others. Science is always telling us that life only exists to perpetuate itself, but maybe the plan changed somewhere down the line.

(-1-)

      Pick up your sword. Don't disappoint me. Someone stabbed me in the heart and I woke with a gasp. My chest was fine, no sword wound, but there was an adhesive bandage slapped over my breastbone, which pulsed with a faint ache. Someone had dressed me in an undershirt and boxer-briefs while I was tripping. Worse still, my mouth tasted like egg, post-breakfast morning breath. Murmurs and shoe-squeaks scuttled around my dorm. Dorm? I turned on my side to meet a pair of big, watery eyes. I shot up and gasped like a small girl.

      "Poli!" chirped the creature, a wet, round tadpole, about as high as my knee and walking on two feet. Its blue skin had the consistency of a boiled egg, as expected from a frog, but the most striking feature was its gut. The creature's stomach was a perfect white circle, colored by a hypnotizing spiral, slowly spinning. The lines were so perfect that could've been painted on. Spinning, spinning, hypnotizing- "Poliwag!"

      I stumbled out of my sheets like they were on fire.

      "He's awake. Don't worry, Ginger, we all got up with a start. You still dreaming on that blissey egg or are you here with us?" the speaker sat in a bed across from me, but his voice echoed like he was miles off. He was my age, thin, with narrow eyes and black hair, "Some dream you must've been having. Those blissey eggs do a number on you. Sent me to space, but I probably ate too much. Hi, I'm Jay."

      "When did I," I began, reoriented myself, "When did I eat a blissey egg?"

      He answered with something about a mandatory inspection. That's right. They inspected me. The images drifted back like bad childhood memories – siren lights, megaphones, then the small, pointed teeth of that police dog. I ran my hand over my calves and neck, no bite marks. They fixed me up, gave me a blissey egg to seal up my wounds. Why would they do that? This room certainly isn't a jail cell. It was a great setup, a large chamber like a penthouse suite, a wall-to-wall window overlooking the western sea from some incredible height. About nine beds lined the walls on either side, roomy, classy, but severe.

      "Poliwag," said the tadpole to Jay.

     "He's just disoriented, give him a moment."

      It wasn't the only pokémon in the room. By the window, a boy played with a creature like a red eye, pivoting on a metal stalk, and several beds down, another boy hugged what looked like a small white child, its whole body a flowing silk robe, both kid and creature were crying. Pokémon? Cushy beds? Am I awaiting trial? I thought, slowly, like time froze, But they caught me. I got arrested and shipped off- shipped off to where?

      There must have been about eighteen of us in all, a good two thirds of 'em I could take in a fight easy if push came to shove, which it always did with me. The boys not brooding, crying or attending to their Pokémon sat around talking, checking the walls and window and consoling each other. From the looks of it, I was the last to wake up. An air of fatigue misted the room over. Most of the high drama had petered out.