Chapter 74

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Thursday 20th April 2000

Well, us all living together is proving to be one hell of an experience.

It’s not quite like the holiday in Weymouth, because that at least was in a totally different place. It had that unique feeling of a holiday. This was something else, almost like we were suddenly housemates…

Which, I mean, we were, if only for two weeks, but that’s my point. This wasn’t a holiday… it was a school holiday but that’s not the same thing…

As you can see, my brain is a little fried. I’ll try again.

There’s no presiding circumstance to make this feel less jarring. It’s not the first school holiday I’ve had, though it’s just dawned on me that it’s my very last. Once we get back to school, us Year 13 students will only have one final term, our A Level exams, and then another long summer like the one two years ago and the rest of our lives ahead of us… Dakota’s been keeping us to a revision schedule, though not without some difficulties.

This is just the seven of us all living under the same familiar roof, spending the days together, and generally making the most of things.

And boy, have we been making the most of things.

Gaming contests, film nights, treating almost every night like a sleepover… we even had a formal dinner on the Friday, just for the hell of it. And that’s without mentioning the trips into town and hanging out at the skate park and a cycle around the park-park (I’m sure you can tell who instigated most of those).

It's not been perfect, but I know nothing ever is. And the imperfections – it feels weird to refer to little issues like that – were hardly a big deal anyway. The biggest sticking point was Bao’s continued, childlike pressing of the rest of us to go and see Pokémon: The First Movie (yeah, apparently there are more on the way). He’d been waiting since it released in the US months ago… not to mention in Japan almost two years ago… and it finally came out here on Friday.

I’m surprised – and relieved – it didn’t go as far as that episode of The Simpsons with Bart and Lisa bugging Homer about going to the water park. But even his chipper efforts to slip it into conversation, which were actually kind of admirable on occasion, were too much for Zahid. The past several days had almost become a battle between them, a war of attrition where each was constantly hoping to topple the other.

Neither had close allies in this war. Kitty and Lucy were somewhat on Bao’s side, but Dakota, Kendal and I were neutral.

Without support, Zahid ultimately, begrudgingly lost.

On Thursday, the seven of us headed to the cinema and let Bao handle ordering the tickets for us teenagers to see a kids’ film while the rest of us bought snacks and drinks. We went to an early-evening screening, and since kids were off school and able to see it earlier in the day, it wasn’t particularly busy in our theatre: us and a handful of others. Which Lucy apparently took as an all-clear to be as boisterous as she wished during the period before the trailers began. At least a couple of the kids there found her antics funny, even if she earned some glares and tuts too.

“Okay, Lucy, calm down now, please…” Dakota ordered her like a parent.

“Not yet!” she chirped back while marching up and down the aisle.

“Can you at least sit down when the movie starts…?” Bao pleaded, anxious, almost pained.

“Whatever you want!”
She proceeded to plop herself down in his lap, and he whelped in surprise.

“Nice work, Bao,” I spoke across to him. “Can I hire you as a Lucy-tamer?”

“Maybe?” he squeaked back as Lucy reclined back against him.

“And this is probably more entertaining than the film’s gonna be,” Zahid noted, audibly amused by Bao’s discomfort.

What followed was a mostly-wordless and rather hands-on struggle between Bao and Lucy, with him trying to force her off of him and her making it considerably difficult.

“Should we help him…?” I asked the others after at least a good minute of watching the skirmish unfold.

“There’s no helping him now,” Kendal replied with an air of deep understanding.

Fortunately, Bao managed to shove Lucy into the seat next to him not long after. She giggled mischievously while he composed himself.

The trailers started up soon after, and then the film began. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from it – thanks to Bao, I’d seen a couple of episodes, so I could at least say I was vaguely familiar with Pokémon – so as Pikachu appeared through a peephole on the screen, I honestly had no idea where things were going to go.

As it turns out, the first chunk of the film was an entirely separate short featuring the Pokemon of the main characters, so my idle thoughts on how things would pan out based on the opening minutes were totally washed away when that ended and the main story began…

The opening short was pretty cute, almost totally free of dialogue (unless you count “Pika-Pika” and the like as dialogue) and mainly relying on physical comedy and music. There were little inserts with random Pokémon between scenes, too: one of them had a group of what I’ve since confirmed were Primapes, marching and huffing.

“It’s Zahid!” Kendal whispered, earning a few chuckles and a disapproving grunt from Zahid himself.

Actually, not long later, when a furious Charizard was running amok, she corrected herself and claimed that was Zahid: if he responded, I didn’t hear it. Surprising, since he was huffing and grumbling his way through the short. By contrast, I could tell that Kitty was trying to control her squeals of adoration at the cute critters.

The main feature began with a heavy tone-shift… and Zahid fell silent for the next few minutes as we were introduced to clone Pokémon Mewtwo.

… well, mostly silent.

“Why am I here?” mused the character on the screen.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing, man…” I heard Zahid mutter.

It didn’t take long until we moved on to the protagonists, and the main story followed. I won’t tell you everything that happened, but it was pretty enjoyable for a kids’ film. If nothing else, I had a spring in my step when we left the cinema, the journey back home being all bright and cheery and boasting a full dissection of what we’d just watched.

“Come on, I know you were getting misty-eyed!” Kendal teased Kitty as we got to Dakota’s street.

“Pikachu was crying and everything, I couldn’t help it…” the younger girl insisted, sounding a little ashamed.

“It was pretty sad,” Bao agreed with a big smile. He seemed extremely happy to have finally seen the film.

“Hey, what was the point of that huge spiral staircase slide thing?” I asked, rhetorically more than anything. “Mewtwo just hovered down from above anyway…”

“I was thinking the same thing!” Dakota exclaimed brightly.

“I guess it was just there for the chase bit later on,” Bao suggested, before looking to Zahid. “You haven’t said much, Zahid. What did you think? It was good, huh?”

“Eh…”
More contemplative than dismissive, if I had to weigh it up.
“It wasn’t terrible-”

“Seeeee? I knew you’d like it in the end!”

“I didn’t like it much,” he clarified. “Mewtwo was cool. And the dragon one, he didn’t give a shit.”

“Oh yeah, I did hear you say ‘yeah man’ when he was sizing Mewtwo up…” I pointed out.

“If I was in… Pokémon world… and had to choose a Pokémon, I’d choose him.”

“Things I never thought I’d hear you say…” Dakota told him with a laugh. She fished the house key out of her pocket as we walked up the drive.

“I liked it!” Lucy declared louder than she needed to. “It wasn’t as good as The Lion King but it was fun!”

“Do you compare every movie you watch to The Lion King…?” Bao asked her while Dakota unlocked the front door.

“How will I know if something’s better than my favourite movie if I don’t compare them?” she bartered back.

“Oh crap…” Dakota proclaimed suddenly. I looked over her shoulder, through the open doorway, expecting some kind of warped space beyond it.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The new interior wasn’t a million miles away from the norm – the layout looked to be broadly the same – except everything was more spacious, with nature trying to reclaim things, plants and dirt all around.

And… well…

“Whoa! Pokémon!” Bao shouted in sheer joy.

“You’re fucking kidding me…” Zahid sighed heavily.

I don’t believe they were real Pokémon – not that I’m the best person to say for certain – but a number of cartoon animals were scurrying and scrounging and strolling around in the warped house.

Dakota turned to the rest of us in leader mode.
“Let’s suit up now, before we head inside-”

“Boring, let’s go!” Lucy interrupted as she dashed forwards, slipping past Dakota and making her way inside.

“Lucy!” my girlfriend called after her in frustration, but wisely decided not to bother doing anything more than that.

“Sorry…” I found myself saying on my sister’s behalf. Dakota gave me a light smile before summoning her spear. The rest of us quickly followed suit, and within moments, we were in our Painter gear and heading inside.

There was a degree of humidity in the Lokonessence-warped house that hit us as soon as we crossed the threshold, though it wasn’t as severe as the jungle area during last summer’s “altered house” incident. Lucy was rushing around the transformed hallway, now the size of a cathedral, unsettling the creatures around her and sending most of them fleeing from her. One of them, a sort of rounded flower-head with stubby arms and legs that looked ever-so-vaguely like Togepi, made a beeline for us.

Kitty crouched down and held her arms out.
“Come here, cutie…!” she purred, and the Pokéfake ran straight over to her.

“Bota!” it mewed as Kitty scooped it up and held it.

“It’s okay, I know she can be loud…”

“Man, look at it…!” Bao spoke in awe, looking closely at the plant-based creature. “This is the coolest thing…!”

“So are we gonna be fighting every single one, or is there gonna be some Mewthree or something that we have to fight?” Kendal pondered, while waving her finger about in front of the Pokéfake like it was a baby. It seemed captivated enough by the movement.

“Hopefully the latter…” Dakota gulped. “Otherwise we could be here for weeks for all we know…”

“And I don’t wanna hurt Botaful…” Kitty said sternly while cradling the little critter.

“Great, now it has a name,” Zahid groaned. “Let’s face it, this has probably come from Bao’s head, so…”
He turned to the shorter guy, glaring a little.
“What does your gut tell you?”

“Mine tells me I’m hungry!” Lucy remarked brightly as she skipped back to us. “Is there an ice cream Pokémon or something?”

“There’s probably one here now you’ve put the idea in my head…” Bao reasoned. “But let’s see-”

“Ooh, I wonder what else I can make happen just by making you think about it…?” my sister asked seductively, making Bao’s eyes bug out.

“Focus, Bao…” I instructed him, and he shook his head like he could dismiss whatever had sprouted in his mind.

“Highest point for a boss fight,” he spoke with confidence. “So, we just go upstairs…”

We all looked to where the stairs would be, to see the bottom of a huge, slide-like spiral pathway.

“Yeah, thanks for putting that into my head, Alex…” Bao whimpered.

At the very least… that spiral was large enough that it wasn’t a steep incline. There was no fear of any of us slipping and winding up sliding all the way back down to the start.

Rather, as we steadily traversed up, we realised just how big the inside of the house had become. Again, it wasn’t at the scale of last summer, but while the hallway had simply grown much larger, there were more areas above it than just the first floor and the attic as you might expect. Our wide arc took us through various intriguing areas, each filled with Pokéfakes of all shapes and sizes: red rhinos with their horns attached to a spinning plate on their face, rolling toucan-like birds, hopping upside-down plastic bottles with big googly eyes, a three-headed snake with a football rattle for its tail, and yes, even a slow-moving Snorlax-like beast made of scoops of ice cream. We spent a few minutes stopping Lucy from trying to take bites out of it…

(Can I just say here, I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed of how many Pokémon I know by name now?)

The higher we got, the narrower the arc seemed to get, and after maybe half an hour or more of walking up the path, we passed into another new space and found that we had apparently reached our destination. The pathway stopped at the ground of this location.

It appeared to, anyway. It was hard to be 100% certain when the place was so misty that we could barely see three feet in front of us. Even the natural glow of parts of our Painter costumes, while more visible here than in broad daylight, didn’t help illuminate the area.

“Any thoughts on what we’re looking for, Bao?” Dakota asked, irritated (though not with him).

“No idea… my gut says it’ll be something cool, does that help?”

“In a weird way, it does…”

Lucy started chopping at the mist with her Lokon daggers, not that it made much difference.

Botaful bleated a little in Kitty’s arms.
“I know, I know…” she cooed at the imaginary Pokémon. “It’ll be okay.”

“Lemme try something…”
Dakota began spinning her spear around in her hands, like the blades of a fan, and, like smoke in slow motion, the mist began retreating away from her.

“Nice call!” I congratulated her, and began attempting to do the same with my sword. Our weapons being shaped differently meant I wasn’t moving my sword as fast as she was moving her spear – it was more like I was juggling it without letting it leave my hand – but the mist around me also slowly started to disperse.

Bao, Kendal and Zahid all found their own spins (ha) on the technique, while Lucy stubbornly opted to keep slashing and stabbing and Kitty held onto Botaful. With most of us working on dispelling the mist, it gradually seemed to get the message, shrinking away faster and faster. Our surroundings were revealed slowly but surely, a small and mostly-barren island in a body of water stretching to the horizon in every direction. One inhabited speck of land could be seen a long way off, buildings just about visible from where we stood.

“Before anybody asks, I don’t really know…” Bao told us, looking this way and that for any clues.

“Keep an eye out for Mewtwotwo,” Kendal advised.

“I thought he was Mewthree?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I can’t settle on a name…” she whined softly, fiddling with her bow while scanning the horizon.

“Maybe this was all just a big excuse for a desert island retreat?” Lucy offered up, settling down on the sandy soil beneath us.

“No, something’s about to pop up… I can feel it…” Bao murmured, tense now.

“Ha, lewd,” Lucy giggled.

Right then, something flickered into existence a handful of feet away from us. I wish I could explain what it looked like, but it sort of didn’t look like anything. It was simply a weird mass of pixels in a roughly rectangular shape, standing motionless.

“Oooooh, that’s so cool!” Bao cheered, grinning madly. “See? I said it’d be cool!”

“Bao, that’s the least cool thing I’ve ever seen,” Zahid stated, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.

“It looks like a glitch…” Kitty observed while Botaful squealed “Bota!” in her arms.

“It is! It’s MissingNo.!”

“It’s missing a no…?” Lucy echoed, looking at Bao suspiciously.

“MissingNo., this weird glitch Pokémon that isn’t meant to exist!” Bao explained excitedly. “I spent a week trying to find it but couldn’t and then I gave up!”

“Looks like it got sick of waiting for you to try again,” I quipped.

“Is this the big boss, then?” Kendal queried. “Cos it’s kind of underwhelming…”

MissingNo. proceeded to fire a blast of water right at her, with enough force to send her flying back.

“Oh, yeah, it knows Water Gun,” Bao commented idly.

“Alright, so it’s like a super-soaker fight?”
Lucy sprang back to her feet.
“I’m game, let’s do this!”

She sprinted forwards; I heard Dakota get as far as saying “Lu” before stopping herself.

“Let’s go…” she commanded instead, and all the rest of us barring Kitty sprang into action.

Aside from its Water Gun attack, MissingNo. seemed to be able to teleport itself from spot to spot: it evaded Lucy with enviable ease, and when it found itself in Zahid’s warpath, it moved again, winding up behind Kitty. Thankfully, Kendal had only just hoisted herself upright, and was able to quickly fire an arrow at the glitch before it could blast Kitty. Whether it was only capable of teleporting a couple of times in succession or it simply couldn’t respond to Kendal’s attack in time, I don’t know, but the arrow struck right into it, and it seemed to spasm in a way you would expect of a glitch.

“Take that!” Kendal sneered competitively, as MissingNo. teleported again, this time to my side. I caught it quickly enough that we dealt mutually-destructive blows, my sword striking it even as I was launched away from it with a blast of water. By the time I’d returned to my feet, Kitty was lunging for the glitch Pokémon with her claw. Botaful was planted safely in a mound of sand where Kitty had been standing. She managed to strike it before it teleported once again.

“Bao!” Zahid snarled. “How the hell are we supposed to beat this bastard?”

“I don’t know, the teleporting is new…!”

“It’s a Pokémon, don’t you just catch it once it’s weak enough?” Dakota reminded him.

“Yeah, but I don’t have a Pokéball!” he bounced back.

“You have weapons that can make one!” I yelled out as MissingNo. came within reach of my sword once again.

“Or we can dogpile it!” Lucy sang while pouncing daggers-first for our opponent. “Poképile it?”

“The Pokéball idea works!”
Bao held the edges of his Lokon blades together, yellow crackling like electricity where they met. A sphere not unlike a Pokéball, but in yellow and black, dropped to the ground a moment later.

MissingNo. teleported close to Zahid, who swung his axe at it and made contact.
“Try for it, Bao!”

“On it!”
With all the energy of a Pokémon trainer, Bao threw the Lokon-generated Pokéball at MissingNo.: it opened on contact, and the glitch transformed into light and was scooped inside. The ball once again landed on the soil, and twitched a few times…

Before opening and releasing MissingNo. again. The glitch teleported to another spot.

“We have to hurt it more, then…?” Kendal wailed in dismay.

“Bota! Booota!”

With more energy than I could’ve possibly expected from it, Botaful leapt through the air, its colourful petals rotating around its body like a saw. It collided into MissingNo., knocking it back with considerable force.

“Botaful!” Kitty smiled proudly.

Bao dove for his Pokéball, and threw it at MissingNo. again while on the ground (I know him well enough to say he must have thought it looked cool). This time, the ball rattled and rolled a few times, but MissingNo. couldn’t break free.

“GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL, GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL!” Bao bellowed in irrepressible triumph, fist-pumping like a champion.

The environment around us began to blur. Botaful waved at us with its tiny arm as it and the Pokéball joined the rest of the warped world in smudging away.

“Bye-bye, Botaful…!” Kitty waved back just before our surroundings lost all detail. A second later, the loft began taking shape around us.

“Alright,” Zahid exhaled heavily, “that’s enough Pokémon for today.”

…

After a late-ish dinner, we mostly chilled for the rest of the evening, and shortly after midnight, most of us decided to call it quits for the night.

“Hey,” Lucy spoke up sweetly, “since we got to do what Bao wanted today, can we have a naked evening tomorrow, for me…?”

“How many times do we have to say ‘no’ for it to sink in…?” I asked her.

“As many times as Zahid said ‘no’ before he caved!”

“Yeah, never living that down, am I?” he grumbled while stretching.

And then, Bao spoke.
“Y’know…”

“I don’t like the way you said that…” Dakota grimaced.

“It’s not like I wanna see you guys naked, but… it’d be an experience…” he considered.

“A bad one,” I added. The thought of it was just… uncomfortable. Being naked with Dakota was enough for me.

“No, it’s like… y’know! Wannabe! ‘Naked laughs forever!’”

Lucy burst into laughter at that.

“Bao… it’s ‘make it last forever’…” Kendal informed him, trying not to laugh herself. She was doing a better job than most of us.

“Oh.”
He scratched his chin.
“I always thought that was a weird line…”

“Tell you what, Bao,” Lucy started, taking hold of his shoulders from behind, her head next to his, “why don’t you stay down here with me and we can have a naked night!”

“… just us…?” he checked with her.

“Unless anybody else fancies it?” my sister asked, looking at the rest of us expectantly.

A series of negative responses followed. Only Kendal didn’t say anything; she simply avoided Lucy’s gaze.

“J-Just us, then…” Bao confirmed, looking a little confused if anything, blushing.

The rest of us shuffled off to bed, leaving Bao at the hands of my mischievous sister. On my part, I was a little worried about what would wind up happening… but it’s funny, how different perspectives on things work. I’m sure I heard Zahid chuckling as he headed into his room. As far as he was concerned, he’d gotten the last laugh.