Joey had not actually planned on even entering Cerulean until it was time to schedule his gym battle, but ever since he’d become the official smuggler of the Voltorb worker’s revolution the trip had become a daily necessity to help others break their chains of labour.
His day would start by grouping his team into their morning exercises, practicing the moves that they were preparing for King, or in the case of Rattata and Slugma, for the conference.
Then he’d go off on his own towards the west, where Cerulean loomed in the distance after just a few steps down the route.
A series of Shadow Sneaks helped along with the fact that he wasn’t carrying any Pokemon with him and brought him into the city proper in under an hour.
Without the instantaneous movement it would have taken him at least three, and that was considering that he was relatively fit and practiced in walking and running long distances.
Once in Cerulean Joey would do one thing and one thing only. Buy as many charged eating ports for electric Pokemon as he could carry
“Here for your package?” the amused teller would ask him, the man having seen Joey everyday of the week for two weeks now.
“Hit me up chief!” Joey would exclaim while pulling out his wallet and letting out just a little grimace.
It didn’t cost that much… But that was only because he was rich. Any other newbie trainer would have already bankrupted themselves.
“Usual discount for big bulk purchases,” the teller would say after accepting the payment, before pushing the large pack of what were essentially batteries towards Joey.
The trainer would then load the whole thing into his mostly emptied backpack and start making his way back to the clearing in which he was training.
A trip that took much longer now that he was carrying enough food to feed a colony of Voltorb for one day.
The issue wasn’t the weight, since the backpack took care of that, but the fact that adding more items, no matter how many times they were folded with the odd spatial technology of the Pokemon world, increased the capacity on Shadow Sneak.
A journey of an hour became a journey of an hour and a half, or maybe two depending on the weather.
Joey had made the trip often enough that he’d experienced it in the hail, in the rain and in the mud. The worst was the rain. He hated rain, it just got everywhere.
He could have technically been bringing back a charge port to recharge every time to save on many instead of buying a new port each time, but then the issue would be that even his trip to Cerulean would take half an hour or an hour longer.
When preparing for the eighth badge time was money, and Joey had enough money to spend it on buying some time.
When this whole debacle ended he could trade in the barely used ports for some cashback. He really was starting a collection.
When he arrived back at the clearing Joey unpacked his backpack, at which point Diglett would stop his training and nod resolutely, like a true secret agent of the revolution. He would take each of the small radio-sized ports and carry them one by one to supply the Voltorb so as not to turn their strike into a hunger strike.
During this process Joey would check the local news to see how the situation was being reported on.
Unfortunately, the prognosis was not good.
Some news outlets were reporting on the fact that the power outages had never before been sustained at such a consistency across the northern region of Kanto. However, instead of focusing on the Voltorb revolt as the reason the mayors of the affected towns were instead talking about accelerating the plan for a decentralised power grid, each town and city supplying themselves with their own electricity.
The costs of the electricity would be slightly higher as a single power plant benefitted highly from the economy of scale, but what Kanto needed wasn’t cheap electricity, what they needed was a reliable power grid.
In the future system being envisioned by the political powers to be, each town having their own grid would remove singular points of failure, which quite frankly, was a good thing.
In the future, Joey also knew that the local power plants would likely be replaced by single house solar panel systems. After all, the technology of environmental energy harvesting was growing at a rapid pace and technically speaking there was nothing more resilient than a system in which every household generated their own electricity from things such as the sun and the wind.
After Joey finished his analysis of the political and energy infrastructure landscape Diglett would finish up with his deliveries under the supervision of the same Voltorb which had come with the ground-type on the very first day.
Then Joey would make lunch for his team, after which it was time for the sparring.
There were days on which Joey had his team spar against each other, but today specifically was a time when he’d seek out the water pokemon of the river for their regular beatdown.
Many of the Poliwag, Slowpoke, Starmie and Wooper native to the region had already developed the habit of literally dipping out whenever they saw Joey’s team approaching, but a few outliers seemed to enjoy the challenge.
One large Seaking in particular was always particularly excited to face any member of Joey’s team, while one overly large Poliwrath enjoyed laying the beatdown on whichever Pokemon dared challenge it.
Joey sat by the river as he watched Metapod face the Seaking and Diglett the Poliwrath.
Misdreavus had found herself a Slowbro who could usually be bribed into a fight with some berries, while Rattata and Slugma ended up facing each other due to a lack of opponents.
He was starting to feel ready.
Feeling ready to show King how much they’d grown.
He clenched his fists and decided that he’d call the gym to schedule the fight today.
-/-
It was in the afternoon that Joey did what he’d done last year. Call the Cerulean gym reception.
Just that this time he wasn’t scheduling a gym challenge, but a gym battle.
“Eigth badge?” the same secretary from last time asked.
“For Jonathan Joestar,” Joey explained further, after which there was a beat of silence.
“Oh! It’s you, Jonathan, the gym leader has been looking forward to your call, although he was probably expecting you a bit later! Congratulations on seven badges… When would you like your gym battle scheduled?”
“You have enough slots to ask me?” Joey asked with a raised eyebrow, keeping an eye on his team eating dinner in the background.
“We just finished with the second badge wave we get every year from the traditionalists coming through Mt. Moon. That’s our only two-month period of very high activity. From now it will be two to three battles per day,” the receptionist explained.
“How about on Tuesday in two weeks?” Joey proposed. “That’s exactly three months after the season started. If I win I have seven months to prepare for the conference.”
The receptionist gave a laugh. “I guess if you win we’ll see if there’s such a thing as too much preparation!” she exclaimed. “That day is completely empty for the moment, but what do you think about having the battle in the evening in front of an audience? It’s not often we get to see an eighth badge battle in Cerulean.”
Joey paused, hesitating.
The conference was in seven months and he’d challenged Koga incognito.
If anyone researched him for the conference the last gym battle they’d find recorded was Flint.
That gave him an information advantage, since most people, even if they realised they shouldn’t broadcast their seventh or eighth badge, would still have information that was more recent than his.
“How about the public spectacle but no public recording?” Joey asked. “Live only. I have some cards I want to keep in my sleeve.”
“Sure thing! It’s your right as the challenger, although the gym will keep an internal recording for legal purposes,” the reception replied.
“Then it’s settled,” Joey nodded, “Tell King that he better be ready. I already fought Koga’s personal team for my seventh badge.” He left out the fact that he’d lost.
If this was to be his last gym battle in Kanto, he wanted it to be something special.
“See you in two weeks!” the receptionist said cheerily before hanging up on him.
Joey grinned as he saw his team, who had recently entered another period of fast growth, likely stimulated by the incredible battle between Agatha and the Black Fog that they’d witnessed from inside their Pokeballs.
“One more badge, huh?” he muttered to himself. “Then we prepare for the conference.”
The entire thing left him feeling somewhat cold. After all, he’d been planning this very moment for literal years.
Now it was time to see if he could also execute.
-/-
It was an unfortunate reality that just because you dreamt it, did not mean that you’d also achieve what you envisioned.
A few days after scheduling the battle with King, Joey woke up to some bad news, although he wouldn’t lie that he breathed a sigh of relief when he realised that it wasn’t pertaining to himself.
‘Amidst outage controversy and price hikes, Kanto’s biggest power plant announces closure after thirty years of continuous operation.’ Was the title of the news article that pinged itself on Joey’s Pokenav because he’d followed the keywords of energy infrastructure and economic news due to recent events.
Joey read the article as he cooked breakfast for his slowly waking team, whom he was running into the ground every day.
The gist of the news was simple and something that any reasonable person could have seen coming for a few days now.
The singular prefectures of the region had announced, one after another during the last days, that they’d opened their new facilities and were experimenting with how well they could meet the demand of their various municipalities.
This had caused the price that the Eastern Kanto Power Plant could sell their electricity for to plummet right alongside their stock price.
They could technically transition into becoming a state resource for emergencies but that hardly netted benefits for the private shareholders of the company, so they announced bankruptcy instead. This likely after transferring whatever money was left in the company out through questionable infrastructural purchases and expensive consulting fees on non-existent projects that nobody would really bother investigating.
The company and power plant had existed for several decades, had no real outstanding debt to speak of and thus its closure was not met with any sort of real shock by the citizens of Kanto. Some dozen human jobs were lost, as were the jobs of what the article claimed were 56 Electrode and 78 Voltorb, but the free hand of the market would soon reassign those human and Pokemon resources into other parts of the region.
After all, with each prefecture now technically having the responsibility to maintain and provide electricity for their constituents through a less efficient, but more shock-resistant decentralised grid, there was a higher demand for electrical engineers and electrical service Pokemon than there had been previously.
If anything, everyone who’d just lost their jobs would be able to find higher paying positions elsewhere, even if it would require relocation.
“Now that’s what I call a contentious ending,” Joey commented as he finished reading and analysing the most recent news. “Who won, who lost? Hard to say!” He shook his head.
He didn’t regret spending a significant amount of money on batteries in the past weeks to supply the strike. After all, when someone was standing up for themselves, it was only right to support them if one could.
Diglett, if nothing else, had matured through these efforts.
And speaking of the devil…
“Diglett! Dig, dig, dig!?” an incredibly confused voice came from where the Pokemon was talking to a downcast looking Voltorb.
Joey walked over with his hands in his pockets. “Power plant shut down,” he told the shocked ground type, heh.
Diglett looked up at his trainer with wide disbelieving eyes before tears suddenly started welling up in those big orbs.
“Hey don’t,” Joey said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head before kneeling down and scratching the mole’s head.
Diglett nodded slowly, before pulling his head back and snorting up the snot that had started to dribble down his pink nose.
He shook his head, disippating the tears.
“Nobody died, Voltorb can survive in the wild very easily. Hell, after the power plant stops operation in two weeks they can just move right back in alongside the Electrode.”
“Voltorb, vol?” the pokeball looking electric type questioned with the steely eyes of a leader who was already considering its next steps.
“You did your best,” Joey reassured the pokemon, but didn’t reach out to pat it on the shiny head due to not wanting to get shocked by the static. “You have several options open. As I mentioned, you can move further into the wild for two weeks and then just go back into the power plant once it's abandoned. Release electricity there, let it become static, feed off of it. Alternatively you can always just live in the forest, there are no dangerous Pokemon on this route and there are enough of you to generate your own food even though it will be less effective than if you did it in the power plant.” Joey paused.
“Alternatively of course, there’s a lot more miniature power plants opening in different parts of the region. You could go there and continue employment as a power generator although it’s not like I know the conditions they’ll offer.”
“Vol, vol,” the Pokemon seemed to consider for a moment, before slumping together. He turned to Diglett and spoke a few words.
Diglett then for his part turned to Joey and manipulated the earth in front of him into a ball. Then he split the ball in three and made it move into three different directions.
“So the group will likely disband,” Joey muttered. “Well, it makes sense.”
“Voltorb,” the electric type said, nodding towards one of the groups and turning imploring eyes towards Joey.
“You want my help?” the trainer asked with a raised eyebrow.
The Pokemon nodded.
Joey hummed. His Pokedex technically served as a transfer device.
He quickly opened his Pokenav and navigated the web for a few minutes, easily finding the website he’d known would exist.
Voltorb and Electrode needed urgently, no experience in power generation required! Was the job posting pasted loud and clear on the frontpage of the Kanto Energy Infrastructure Department, or KEID for short.
He dialled a number and quickly got a frazzled government employee on the line who introduced themselves as if they were five minutes away from the burnout.
“What are the work conditions being offered to the Voltorb you need?” he asked bluntly before the other person could even ask him what he needed.
A moment of silence came from the speaker, before a female voice replied. “Healthcare, lodging, food, entertainment, pension. The full package. We need them desperately. Eight hours a day, five days a week although that will likely go down as we fill the stations. The whole department is in an uproar, those power plant morons, how did they mismanage their company so badly!?”
Joey turned to the Voltorb, who nodded resolutely.
“Well, talking about the power plant mismanagement, I’m on route 10 and I have a bunch of Voltorb from that very same power plant who have years of experience generating electricity,” Joey said. “Give them four hours a day, no days off instead of the five day workweek and they’ll be wherever you need them in about an hour.”
The worker on the other end of the line suddenly went quiet. “Are you for real?” she eventually shouted before screaming again. “Let me get my boss!” The line went dead for a moment.
Joey turned to the wide-eyed Voltorb. “Go ask your buddies how many want to keep working under the conditions you were striking to reach,” he said, at which the electric type disappeared in a blur of agility down the tunnel Diglett had been using.
A male voice suddenly came from his Pokenav. “Hello, may I ask who this is?”
“Jonathan Joestar, seven badge trainer currently training for my eighth badge on route 10. One of my team members befriended the Voltorb that used to work in the power plant and I am currently translating their demands,” Joey explained briefly.
“Before I agree to anything, do you have any information about why the power plant lost 50% of its productivity? They’ve been tight-lipped despite the fact they’ll be out of business soon,” the government official asked.
“The Voltorb were on strike for better working conditions, the power plant likely blocked off all journalists because they were embarrassed. Voltorb don’t have such big energy outputs as Electrodes so they were struggling to manage a six hour workday. It’s likely why you’re offering them two days off. Well, the counter-offer is that they work everyday since they enjoy it anyway, but that they work only four hours,” Joey explained.
“Really, that’s what led to the outages?” the government official muttered with a surprised voice. “It’s been such a mystery over here and we’d have likely sent some rangers to find out how but they were all requisitioned for some mission by Agatha.”
“Seems to me the new system will provide more jobs and also decrease the risk of outages,” Joey said. “All’s well that ends well.”
“I’m happy to hear you agree!” the government official blustered. “The budget is higher because the project has to get off the ground rapidly so we’ve been dealing with a bunch of complaints from the media, the citizens and the more conservative parts of parliament."
“Energy has become indispensable for humanity, realistically speaking every resource necessary for a human to live with dignity should not be fully privatised,” Joey said lazily. “But I’m not here to discuss politics.” He turned his head to see that the Voltorb had returned. All… 51 of them? “I have 51 Voltorb here who want jobs, you have vacant positions you need filled yesterday. How about we just finish this transaction and move on?”
“Excellent! It’s not that simple unfortunately, but could you take the Voltorb to the nearest pokecenter where you’ll be met by an officer Jenny and nurse Joy? They will arrange the transfer so as to keep everything proper and documented.” The man paused. “As for the finder’s fee…”
“It’s alright,” Joey interrupted. “Use it to give the Voltorb a bonus or something.”
“If only all our citizens had such an attitude towards the government,” the man on the phone sighed.
“Anyway, I’ll meet nurse Joy at the pokecenter in front of the rock tunnel on route 10,” Joey said into the speaker. “It’s closer.”
“I’ll notify the officer Jenny in Cerulean. You might see her ride past you on her bike,” the official said before hanging up the phone.
“Well, you heard the man!” Joey announced as he stood up and stashed away his Pokenav. “Let’s get to the Pokecenter, stable employment awaits!” he exclaimed at the group of 51 Voltorb who were all looking at him with the least hostility he’d ever seen a Voltorb exhibit.
Well, considering they’d manage to strike for that long without any Explosions that Joey knew about, this was likely the most emotionally stable group of Voltorb he’d ever met.
-/-
It must have been a funny sight, one single trainer leading a group of dozens of rolling Voltorb south and then west to the Pokecenter down Route 10.
Unfortunately, there was nobody to see it, other than the officer Jenny who zoomed by on the motorbike and waved cheekily at the group before leaving them in the dust.
An hour or so after the negotiation on the phone Joey was standing in the Pokecenter where nurse Joy was starting to capture and transfer the eager Voltorb.
“You got a cigarette?” Joey asked the officer Jenny who was looking at the whole thing with a bemused smirk on her lips.
“Brat,” the woman said while rolling her eyes. “Ask me again in five years.”
“Whenever I do something too adult I get the urge to smoke a pack,” Joey muttered with his hands in his pockets as the seemingly endless procession of Voltorb disappeared in the Pokecenter’s transfer machine under the busy ministrations of the nurse.
“I don’t smoke anyway,” the officer said with a laugh.
Joey threw the woman a weirded out look. It wasn’t often that you met a cop who didn’t smoke, although that was maybe his past life sensibilities speaking.
“You’re an interesting character, you know?” Jenny eventually asked.
“How so?”
“Helping rehabilitate former criminal Pokemon, helping supply striking Voltorb and then helping them transfer to new jobs.”
Joey raised an eyebrow. “You knew?”
Jenny laughed. “The power plant called us on day two of the strike. But how is it any of our business if they can’t manage their employees?”
“Hmm, then you could have managed the Voltorb transfer on your own.”
The officer shook her head, blue curls flying. “We’re officers of the law, our actions are restricted.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s why we need trainers with a good moral compass to overstep sometimes,” she said with a wink, pulling two yellow and one white disc from her pocket and sliding it into the pocket on the front of his hoodie. Then she started walking off, leaving Joey dumbstruck.
“Two from the energy office and one from the police department!” the officer said over her shoulder with a two finger salute as she walked past the last Voltorb still there. “Got some rockets to catch now, but good luck at the conference, we’re cheering for you!” Was the last thing he saw the officer say before she disappeared behind the sliding door.
A few seconds later he heard the loud revving of the motorbike and the woman was gone.
Joey pulled the discs from his pocket and looked at them.
TM24 Thunderbolt.
TM25 Thunder.
TM15 Hyper Beam.
All reusable.
Joey chuckled.
These past few weeks.
It really did feel like he’d been living a Pokemon episode.
He looked down at the last Voltorb in the pokecenter and raised an eyebrow.
It was the leader Voltorb, he was looking up at Joey with resolute eyes.
“Strong sense of justice, a willingness to act, decisiveness, it would be a waste to not have you show the world what you’ve got,” Joey mused.
“Voltorb,” the pokemon said resolutely.
Joey fished out a Pokeball from his pocket and enlarged it.
“Well, here’s to happy cooperation and helping many more people in the future,” he announced before capturing the electric type.
Sometimes that’s the just the way the cookie crumbles
-/-
AN: Little interlude between drama, next is the gym battle