An Electrifying Beginning
Night descended on San Fransokyo gently and coolly this time of the year, the last few months of their perpetually mild winter before spring swept in again and brought with it blooming sakura trees. On another night, Hiro would have been glad to pause on his walk to enjoy the pleasant weather and take a more leisurely pace down Eighteenth Avenue.
Not tonight. Tonight, he had somewhere to be.
His feet pounded against the sidewalk as Hiro ran, his lungs burning and his eyes bright. A corner came up; he grabbed the fence and swung himself around without breaking his momentum, ignoring the ache in his shoulder once he was through and recovering so smoothly and confidently from a momentary stumble that it was like he intended for it to happen. The light above his head winked threateningly; Hiro did not see it, so concentrated was he on the one light down that alleyway, an intersection that was as lively as any real-time party in another part of town.
The honorary bouncer by the “door” stopped him with a glare and said in a vaguely Russian accent, “No kids.”
“Awh, c’mon!” Hiro exclaimed between heaves for oxygen. He raised a finger for the man to wait, doubled over his knees, then straightened and pulled out a ten dollar bill, holding it up to the bouncer with the most big-eyed, pleading expression he could muster. “Please? I just want to-”
The bill was snatched away before he even finished. The bouncer held it up to the light this way and that, squinting skeptically for a good ten seconds before glaring at Hiro again. Then he pocketed the cash and jerked his double chin. “Yes!” Hiro grinned, bounding past him into the noisy crowd beyond.
He ducked under a red-eyed, loopy man’s drunken elbows and sidestepped a swearing lime-haired woman without either of them noticing he was ever there – or anyone else noticing he was ever there, really – thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as he went. Without fail his left hand closed around a spherical object that buzzed in irritation at the touch, but Hiro was used enough to it by now that he just gave it a light, reassuring tab. Quickly and gently he rolled the thing around, feeling to make sure the tiny white chip was still attached to its underbelly, and with the knowledge secured picked his way to the front of the audience.
The arena was makeshift at best, a four-by-six (feet) rectangle marked with white chalk with two circles on opposite ends for trainers to station themselves, both currently occupied – but wouldn’t be for much longer, judging from the grumbling pink-haired Goth girl climbing to her feet with a disgusted noise. The pokémons had already been returned, but Hiro could still see traces of blood and stone fragments on the ground and not-so-fine cracks that crisscrossed the entire length of the arena (but never breaching the chalk lines, he noted.) Typical Yama work.
Yama himself, all four hundred and two pounds of him, sat on the other end and was having a grand time at laughing his latest opponent off. “A lousy marill and you think you can win against me?!” he wiped his face on his sleeve, swiped the cash the smirking referee was holding out on a tray, and slammed his hand onto the ground in front of him, grinning nastily. “Who’s next, eh?”
His squinty eyes swept the crowd, most of which immediately backed off. Hiro could hear at least two audible swallows somewhere over his head. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and hunched his shoulders as he stepped forward, putting on the most sheepish expression he could manage – and yeah, he practiced it. So what? Even the most natural actors needed to refine themselves.
“No one?!” Yama roared just as Hiro stepped forward. “Well then-”
“Um, excuse me?” Hiro said shyly, shuffling to the front. He took the red-and-white sphere out of his pocket and held it loosely in one hand, the other clenching around the hem of his jacket. That part wasn’t acting; he was nervous. Hiro had done this many times before, enough to know what to expect and how to play it and how to win, but the part of getting into that white ring – augh. “I would like to, uh. Fight you?”
A shocked murmur rippled through the crowd. Yama stared, dumbfounded. The referee woman recovered first, pursing her lips in disdain as she straightened, tray in hand. “House rule, kid: no pay no play. Get lost.”
“But I do have money!” And Hiro scrambled to hold up the small bunch of wrinkled five-dollar bills he’d prepared, eyes going wide. Come on, come on, he thought as the woman regarded him skeptically. Just take it. It’s as good money as everyone else-
Yama broke in with his loud guffaw. “A bug coming to challenge the king!” he declared, pulling out his own wad of cash and throwing it into the tray. “Give him a little applause; he’ll need it once he gets sent running home to his mommy’s tits.”
Chuckles. Boos. Hiro endured them and handed over his own bet money, then went to sit down in front of Yama. This was the rule of backstreet battling: you don’t stand, you sit, which puts you in clearer danger of the other side as well as your own pokémon, and any attack that goes over the chalk line was a loss. That meant smaller pokémons and far too much risk to be legal, and that was exactly where all the thrill was for Hiro. He watched Yama lean forward in a mocking bow, did the same, saw Yama crack his head, tried to do the same, and then they lay their pokéballs on the ground in front of them.
“Two shall enter,” declared the referee with a dramatic whirl of her parasol, “and one shall leave. Begin!”
Yama slammed a button on his belt and his pokéball cracked open, releasing a tiny, mean-faced blue elephant into the field. Hiro knew exactly what that thing was – from pokédex entry to statistics to this one’s spectacular reputation everywhere on this side of San Fransokyo. Its control was beautiful and it hit hard, both of which made it one of the best backstreet pokémons all around. Yama robbed it off its last owner two months ago; now it fought for him with the sort of sullen, beaten-down spirit of someone too used to being traded around like an object. Hiro felt sorry for it, but only at the back of his mind.
“Go on,” he urged his own pseudo-pokéball, voice soft and placating.
The thing remained silent.
The silence stretched on, one second at a time, into awkward territory. Hiro stared at it and swallowed. Someone in the background broke into a random song.
Yama leaned back, sneering. “Is this some sort of joke?” he demanded.
“Uh, I- No! Technical difficulty!” Hiro protested, reaching out to grab the pokéball. Of all the times for it to be difficult…
The thing chose that moment to rocket forward in a brilliant flash of white and yellow, filling the air with static. Everyone save the phanpy flinched back as it crackled against their skins, and Hiro wasn’t sure whether to grin or to cringe. Yama leaned away, his eyes going wide – then narrowed into mean, mean slits. Hiro’s gulp was not entirely faked.
“A tiny loser pipsqueak pokémon for a tiny loser pipsqueak,” Yama remarked airily, then slammed his fist on the ground. “Tomoe Gozen, Earthquake!”
Hiro cringed as the phanpy reared up on her hind legs and slammed her front ones down, creating a shockwave that sank deep, deep into the earth around them. Cracks radiated from the ground, upturning it into a forest of spikes. Hiro’s voltorb stopped spazzing erratically as it became caught in the artificial catastrophe, its electricity fizzing out as so much steam in the wind.
It was a full minute before the Earthquake died away. The gleam of white and red was almost invisible in the upturned battlefield had Hiro not been sitting only three steps away from it. The referee walked a full circle around the arena, squinting at the chalk line to make sure the attack had stayed inbound. They had. “Yama!” she cried, and held out the tray to him.
“That was the most disappointing challenge in my life!” Yama exclaimed, chortling, as he reached for the money.
“Wait!” And Hiro held up the wad of cash he’d been saving for this fight, the real fight. “I want to go again. Please?”
Yama glared at him. “Your voltorb’s dead, loser. Take your loss and go.”
“No, it’s not!” Hiro insisted, jaw clenching. He held out the money wad, waving it invitingly in front of Yama’s nose. For a moment the man’s face was an open book – disgust, there was plenty of, and then something Hiro knew very well began to blossom. Greed. Yama made a show of slowly putting his winning money away before pausing halfway, recounted it, and with a snort put them back into the tray plus some more. Hiro brightened and did the same. He pretended not to see the way the phanpy glowered at him like I’m supposed to be done after this, how dare you made me go for a second time?
Yama straightened in his seat, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and jerked his chin imperiously. The referee put the tray down, opened her parasol, and repeated the gesture from before. “Begin!” she hollered.
“Up!” Hiro shouted before Yama could put in a word edgewise. This time the voltorb reacted, rocketing out of its previous place in a Rollout that brought it to bounce safely between the spikes. It was a blur of red-and-white and the crowd fell back with a loud gasp.
Yama’s Tomoe got her bearing back faster than her trainer did. She let out a loud, shrill cry and slammed her feet into the ground a second time in an Earthquake that was not so controlled, but even without the referee’s opinion she’d already lost. The voltorb was too close now, hovering free of her attack as though it had used a levitation move (even though it hadn’t; it’d always been impervious to all her effort the moment Hiro released it into the field) and knew exactly what it must do.
Although the voltorb was only a quarter-size of what was normal for its species, it was strong. The blast of Sonic Boom was released without fail, tearing into Tomoe’s eardrums with a piercing screech. She fell back, hissing, and Voltorb rolled free of her scrambling limbs in time to not be batted away by her flailing trunk. Eardrums bleeding and blinded by panic, the phanpy reared up and this time, Hiro knew the Earthquake was going to hit everything its owner could think to attack.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Swift!” over the din of the terrified, scrabbling crowd. Voltorb heard him and valiantly wheeled around in its intended escape, bouncing once, twice…and then released the stream of flashing star-like projectiles at the phanpy’s side.
It was a critical hit, finding its mark right behind the ground-type’s ear. Tomoe stilled for a second, then slowly toppled onto her side, landed in a loud thump, and lay still.
For a few seconds there was absolute silence. Everybody stared, astonished, from the referee woman to the audience to Yama himself, his jaw working without a sound as though he was halfway to convincing himself this was all an illusion. Then he recovered, though not before Hiro, who jumped up to his feet and shouted, “YES!”
Voltorb buzzed smugly and rolled back to Hiro’s side where he snatched it up and gave it a wide, thankful grin before putting it back into his pocket – Voltorb would like to sleep now; it was lazy like that – before skipping over to grab the money out of the tray. All of it. He didn’t count, but he figured there must be at least six hundred bucks in there. Sweet. “Thank you veeeery much,” he couldn’t resist cooing at Yama, whose face was beginning to turn an alarming shade of red, pocketing his winnings.
“What the hell did you do?!” he snapped, rising to his feet. “That Earthquake should have killed it.”
“What did I do? Beat you?” Hiro grinned, holding out his hands. Then he shook a finger at the man. “Nobody loves a sore loser, Yama. But eeeveryone love a winner!” And he hopped away, giddy with his newest victory. Someone in the crowd started a slow clap, and Hiro turned around in a sweeping, dramatic bow.
A meaty hand grabbed the back of his hoodie and yanked him back, shoving him to the ground. Instantly the clapping stopped. Everybody suddenly realized they needed to go somewhere, and the intersection cleared in record time. Hiro was left alone to stare into the face of a very angry Yama and his three goon friends. “Nobody cheats the Great Yama and gets away with it,” the big man snarled, then walked away. “Teach ’im a lesson, boys.”
“Uh.” For the first time since he got here, Hiro realized he might be in serious trouble. He scrambled to his feet, heart in his throat, and backed away with his hands raised. “Well, okay, guys. We can talk this out…”
The three goons gnashed their teeth and continued to advance.
Then a Moped flew over their heads and landed in front of them. The driver swerved it around to face the group threateningly, gunning up his engine into a dull roar. Instincts beat out reasons; the thugs stumbled away, scattering, and Hiro had enough time to stare in absolute amazement before said driver turned around and threw a helmet at him. “Get on!”
“Tadashi!” Hiro grinned, catching the helmet and jamming it onto his head before taking the two-step leap that brought him onto the Moped’s backseat. He barely had time to grab hold of his brother’s shoulder before Tadashi poured in the gas and practically flew down the alleyway past the three Yama thugs. They shouted and regrouped after them, but it was already too late.
“Are you okay?!” Tadashi demanded, his eyes leaving the road for a split second to glance at his little brother. What he could catch of Hiro’s visage was a dazed grin and shining eyes, and he wasn’t sure if he should be mad or glad. Or both.
“Yeah!” Hiro said with inappropriate enthusiasm, trying to buckle on the helmet one-handed.
“Are you hurt?”
“No!”
Mad won out. “Then WHAT. WERE. YOU. THINKING?!” Tadashi risked taking his hand off the handle to beat at the moron. It was more random flailing than any intentions to hurt, so Hiro fended most of it off with surprised/offended noises before Tadashi had to turn his full attention to the front again. “Knucklehead!”
Even with adrenaline hopping circles around his system, Hiro knew better than to argue or to say anything. He bit the automatic smart-aleck comments back and just grabbed on to Tadashi’s shoulders, though it was harder to control his grin. He tried, though, he really, really did. Unfortunately Tadashi caught the expression out of the corner of his eye the next time they took a turn and that incensed him more. “You graduated high school at thirteen and this is what you think is smart to do?! What were you thinking? Were you even thinking?”
“Yes, I was! I am always thinking. And it’s not-” Hiro reached down to catch his voltorb before it could fall out of his pocket and shoved it back in. “It’s not illegal. It’s just unofficial pokémon fighting!”
“Yes, it is! And you know what else it’s not? Safe! Or ethical. Those guys do weird junk to their pokémons to ‘boost their performance’ and nobody knows if they’re going to go berserk or when – crap!” Tadashi slammed the brakes before they could fly straight into a linked chain fence. He made a sharp, classifiable-as-dangerous U-turn like it was what he did every morning before breakfast and zipped down the alleyway, muttering under his breath.
The muttering turned into swearing when he saw Yama’s gang closing in from ahead. Hiro gasped softly, ducking behind his brother’s shoulder – Tadashi wasn’t going to stop, was he? But the other choice would be to run them over and Hiro didn’t need to be Tadashi’s relative to know he would never do something like that, if only because he didn’t want to fill out the paperwork if nothing else (these goons crossed his Thou Shalt Not Break Laws line the moment they tried to do something to Hiro.) He was tempted to ask, but then Tadashi turned right, rode up a ramp like he was some kind of Power Ranger and for a moment they flew, actually flew, before landing hard enough on the other side to nearly jolt Hiro out of his seat.
He took a dazed moment to recover before saying, “Whoa, that’s actually cool!”
“Yeah, and you know who’s not going to be cool when she finds out you’ve been out doing illegal fights?” Tadashi retorted. “Aunt Cass. And I’m not going to step in this time.”
“Oh, come on!” Hiro nearly whined, nudging his brother’s back. “I told you, it’s not illegal-”
The blares of police siren stopped him cold.