Pokémon: When Everything's Made to Be Broken (PG)
When Everything's Made to Be Broken
Whatever Ash had expected from his interview with the International Police, he hadn’t expected to be greeted with a handshake from a wide-eyed young man who said breathlessly, “Mr. Ketchum, it’s an honor to meet you, sir! I’ve been a huge fan of yours, ever since I was a little boy. Your battles in the Silver Conference made me want to become a pokémon trainer myself.”
“Well, thank you, I’m happy to hear that,” Ash said. He returned the other man’s handshake and smile such that Ash’s features briefly became as boyish as it was when he was a ten-year-old boy starting out on his pokémon journey. “I can sign something of yours, if you want me to. Oh, and Pikachu, too!”
The yellow pokémon perched on Ash’s shoulder chirped happily and Ash reached up to scratch under Pikachu’s chin.
“Thank you, Mr. Ketchum, sir, I really appreciate that.” The International Police officer’s smile faltered somewhat as he shifted gears. “I’m sorry that we have to meet like this, Mr. Ketchum. I always dreamed about meeting you and battling you, either at a tournament or if our paths crossed by chance.”
“I’m sure it would have been a good battle,” Ash said in turn. “Maybe we could have a little match after we’re done with this.”
The officer’s smile returned. “Maybe,” he echoed, and then he gestured to the chair and table which were the only furniture in the small, windowless room where they were meeting. “Would you please have a seat, Mr. Ketchum?”
Ash nodded and sat down on the stiff plastic chair with Pikachu crawling into his lap. He looked around and chuckled, “I never thought I’d end up in a room like this in a police station, officer.”
“Beckett, Cole Beckett,” the officer sat down on the molded chair opposite Ash and Pikachu and laid out a folder on the table in front of him. “First of all, Mr. Ketchum, let me assure you that this is not an interrogation. You’re not being arrested or held for questioning. You can leave this room whenever you want, whether you need to use the restroom or even if you want to leave altogether. This is just a safest, most secure, and most private room in our headquarters. Those are the only reasons why we’re having this meeting in this room, Mr. Ketchum.”
Ash listened to Beckett’s explanation with a few murmurs of “Okay,” and “Right,” to try and mask his impatience, but when the younger man had finally finished speaking, Ash let himself ask, “So, why all the secrecy? I’ve had meetings with the International Police before, and they’ve never been like this. Even with everything you said, it still feels like I’m in trouble.” Ash shifted slightly in his seat, and Pikachu shifted with him, as he added, “And you don’t have to call me Mr. Ketchum, okay? Just Ash is fine with me.”
Beckett’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Yes, Ash, I’m sure that this all seems very cloak and dagger, and I apologize for that. It’s for your own safety, though.”
Ash’s boyish features hardened into a man’s severe scowl. “Is it Team Rocket?” he asked. “They should have broken up after I took down their boss, but maybe there’s still a few trios that didn’t get the message.”
“Well,” Beckett started to say, but Ash spoke up again.
“Or is it Team Galactic? Magma? Aqua? Plasma? Pikachu and I have beat them all, and we can do it again!” On his lap, Pikachu voiced its agreement with Ash and its fur bristled with the electricity stored in its furry little body. “Or is it a new gang of criminals that’s popped up somewhere?” asked Ash. “Just point us at them and we’ll take them out!”
As Ash had spoken, he had gotten more and more excited while, on the other side of the table, Beckett had grown more and more uncomfortable until the younger man was fidgeting in his seat. “Mr. Ketchum, Ash, please, you’re on the right track, but I’m afraid that it’s more serious than another scheme to steal pokémon or use a legendary pokémon, or, I’m sorry, it’s not more serious, but it is more personal.”
“How so?”
“You’ve made a lot of enemies, Mr. Ketchum,” Beckett said. He had gotten his nerves under control by forcing himself to maintain as professional a demeanor as he could manage. “Knocking down all of these criminal enterprises was a good thing, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Ketchum, but just because you helped us with cutting off their heads didn’t mean that the bodies of these gangs aren’t dying hard. We have agents working overtime to bring in any ringleaders who are still walking free and to disrupt any plans to regroup the scattered grunts into a new iteration of Team Rocket or any of the other gangs that you’ve helped us cripple. But the International Police cannot be everywhere, and if there are any lone grunts lying low and nursing a grudge over what you’ve done, we don’t really have an effective way to monitor them and stop them if they try to act on their own.”
Ash nodded gravely when Beckett had finished. “Got it. So, how can I help?”
Beckett’s soft face wore a somber look which didn’t suit his features. “We didn’t arrange this meeting with you to ask for your help, Mr. Ketchum. We want to offer you our help. Your role in the downfall of these criminal organizations is an open secret on both sides of the law and we’ve heard dark rumors of plots directed against you. Kidnapping, assault, even killing you, all of these have been floated in the communications which our agents have gained access to. As a rule, we are assuming that the chatter we are capturing is only a fraction of what is being discussed by these types. They hate you, Mr. Ketchum, very much, and they want revenge.”
“I see,” Ash muttered. He rested a hand on top of Pikachu’s head, on top of the fur which had been bristling with excitement earlier and was no standing on end for a different reason. “Thank you for the warning, Cole. I’ll be ready for them now.” Ash pushed his chair away from the table and paused to let Pikachu scamped back onto his shoulder before standing up. Ash offered his hand to Beckett, but the grim-faced man did not take it, nor did he rise out of his own seat.
“It isn’t just you that they’ve threatened, Mr. Ketchum. Your friends, your family, they’ve all been discussed as potential targets.” Beckett put his hand on the unopened folder lying on the table and he swallowed a lump in his throat before he flipped I open and pulled out several pages, which he then handed to Ash. “These are some of the worst of the threats that our agents have intercepted,” explained Beckett as Ash and Pikachu read through the hateful screenshots. “These are the worst not because of what they are threatening to do to you and your loved ones, but because they show a disturbing level of knowledge about your habits, your routines, and your surroundings.”
By the time that Ash had finished reading through the intelligence gathered by the International Police, he looked furious. “My family,” he growled, “they want to hurt my family? My wife? Our daughter? Who are these people, Cole? Just tell me and I’ll take care of them right now! There won’t be anything left of them after I tear them apart!” Ashe’s rage glared brightly in the small, windowless room, but when Beckett failed to offer any more fuel to it, it burnt out and left Ash almost pleading with the officer, “My family, Cole, how could these people talk about hurting Misty and our little girl? I had no idea that anyone hated me enough to want to hurt them!”
“We can help you, Mr. Ketchum, Ash,” said Beckett, “please let us help you. Let us keep you safe.”
“What are you offering?” asked Ash. He slowly unclenched his fists and let the papers in his hand fall to the table. He did not sit back down. “How can you help me keep them safe?”
Beckett open up the folder in front of him again and, with much less hesitation than before, he pulled out another set of papers before saying, “We can offer you a new identity and a new life, Mr. Ketchum. You, your wife, and your daughter can all be relocated to a new home and set up so that you’ll be safe from any of these monsters who want to hurt you. None of them will be able to find you.”
Ash took the second set of papers from Beckett and fingered through them more slowly and thoughtfully than he had done with the previous packet. “The Orre region?” eh asked without looking up from his reading. “I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never been to Orre before.”
“You probably never had a reason to,” Beckett said with a forced chuckle. “There’s not a lot there. No pokémon league, no wild pokémon even. It’s a small, barren, forgotten corner of the world, far away from the reach of any of the criminals who are looking to harm you and your loved ones.”
“No wild pokémon? That sounds too crazy to be true!” Ash’s own chuckle was as forced as Beckett’s. He quickly grew thoughtful, however, and mused, “No pokémon league, huh? No gyms or tournaments, then. Not even a battle frontier?” he asked hopefully.
Beckett’s head shook back and forth mirthlessly. “No, there’s nothing like that in Orre, well, not in any organized fashion, at least. There are a series of so-called colosseums in Orre, going to the pokémon tournaments they hold there is the closest thing to a national pastime that the region has.”
The familiar boyish grin reappeared on Ash’s face. “Well, that might not be so bad then!”
“Ah, actually, no, Mr. Ketchum,” said Beckett. His voice increasingly became less friendly and more business-like as he told Ash, “You can’t do anything to attract attention while you are in Orre. Having any spotlight on you, no matter how small, would increase the risk to yourself and your family. That means no tournaments, not even local ones, and no world-saving heroics, either.”
“It’s not about having the spotlight on me,” Ash protested, ignoring Beckett’s poor attempt at lightening the mood. “Battling is what me and my pokémon do best.” Looking over at Pikachu, Ash exchanged a smile with his pokémon. “Winning tournaments would feel nice, and so does helping people and pokémon when I can, but I never wanted glory or recognition. Well, maybe I did when I was younger, but now the only title that I care about is the title of pokémon master.”
“We all had that dream when we were younger, I think.”
Ash turned his smile on Beckett now before folding his arms behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. “Maybe I’m just a big kid who never grew out of that dream, and thinking that it could come true for me.” His eyes returned to Beckett, but Ash’s expression was more serious this time. “What you’re asking, Cole, what you’re asking me to do is to give up on that dream.”
Beckett couldn’t bring himself to meet Ash’s accusatory stare, but he didn’t want to look at Pikachu either, whose black eyes matched its trainer’s. Feeling like he had no other choice, the younger man chose to look at one of the room’s bare walls instead as he argued, “You have other dreams, Mr. Ketchum, other titles. Father, husband. You’ll have to make a choice.”
“I’ll need to talk to Misty about it.”
“Of course.”
Ash burst out laughing, “If I made a decision this big without talking to her first, I wouldn’t need to worry about Team Rocket or any of the others getting me. She’d do the job for them!” But the drab environment of the interrogation room and the heavy subject of his discussion with Beckett made Ash’s laughter ring hollow. “Would we still be able to see her sisters, my mom, or any of our friends? No, I suppose not, right?”
“The International Police are willing to convey letters to and from your immediate family members,” Beckett explained with an affected tone which did not match his pained expression, “but you’ll have to be careful what you include in them. You’ll have to become your new identity, Ash, Mr. Ketchum, I mean.”
Ash waved off Becket’s verbal stumble. “You said that the International Police are offering me this as a choice, but so far you’ve made me feel like I don’t have much of a choice in all this. So, tell me, Cole, what happens if I walk away today without taking your offer? Why shouldn’t I try to save the life I’ve built instead of throwing it away?”
Becket found the folder again and picked It up carefully. “If you don’t follow our recommendations for your protection,” he said slowly, “that doesn’t mean that you would be on your own. We’d still pass along any information that we find out about what these criminals might be planning, but we wouldn’t be able to guard you at all times, either in Orre or anywhere else in the world. There’re too many of them, and not enough of us.”
“I have my pokémon,” Ash said and Pikachu cast sparks off of its cheeks to show its agreement. “I’d like to see any of these crooks try to beat my charizard!”
“You’re a powerful trainer, Mr. Ketchum, one of the strongest trainers in the world,” agreed Becket before going on, “but you and your pokémon would have to be on guard all the time. And even then, it might not be enough. All it would take is one moment of letting your guard down at the wrong time, and then you could lose everything.”
“So, what you’re telling me is that, no matter what, I’d have to change everything about my life in order to keep my family safe. The only choice that I have is whether I’ll keep my name or not.”
Beckett started to reach across the table for Ash, but his hand had gone only a few inches before he lost his nerve and awkwardly pulled it back to join his other hand in holding the folder which the International Police had compiled for Ash. “That’s not how I would put it, Mr. Ketchum. I would say that you have the choice to give your wife and daughter a normal life.”
Ash snorted, “A normal life? What’s normal about going into hiding, like I’m the criminal and not the people who want to get at me by hurting my family? They’re the ones who should be running scared! They’re the ones who should be hiding from me!” Without realizing it, Ash had stood back up from his chair and was now looming over Beckett with his palms planted on the table while Pikachu looked up at him from the surface of the table with the same kind of maddening sympathy that Beckett’s eyes were showing.
“Your daughter will think that it’s normal,” Beckett offered in a soft voice that sounded as if it might break if he tried to speak any louder. “She’s still young. She won’t know any life but the one you give her. Maybe, in time, it will become normal for you and your wife, too, Ash.”
“She won’t even have my name,” Ash lamented. He took his hands off of the table so that he could look down at them mournfully. “My daughter won’t know who I am. I’ll have to lie to her, all her life. What kind of a dad can do that to his daughter?”
“She might not know who Ash Ketchum is,” Beckett said quietly, “but she’ll know who you are. She’ll have her father in her life.”
Right away, Beckett could see that his words had struck a chord with Ash. The older man looked at Beckett without really seeing him and said in a distant sort of voice, “I never knew my father. Did you know that, Cole? He tried to make it work with my mom for a while, but I guess he wasn’t really one for settling down. He left to continue traveling and trying to become a pokémon master when I was really little. I only remember bits and pieces about what he was like.” Ash looked up at the room’s low ceiling and smiled to himself. “I didn’t want to admit it to myself for the longest time, and I think that I would still have become a pokémon trainer because of how much I love pokémon, but I used to think that if I tried to follow the same goal of becoming a pokémon master, I would catch up to him someday, and finally see my dad again.”
Pikachu let out a keening cry and ran up onto Ash’s shoulder before reaching out a small yellow paw to pat the back of Ash’s head as he went on, “I inherited my dream from my dad, but I would be lying to you, Cole, if I said that I didn’t used to wonder why my dad couldn’t stay with us instead. Did he love being a pokémon trainer more than his family?” The question hung in the air like it had a presence that Ash could almost see floating over the table. He considered the question in silence before his attention returned to Beckett. “Now, I have to ask myself the same question, and I know what my answer has to be. You win, Cole, I’ll take my family into hiding in Orre, if Misty is okay with it.”
“Right,” Beckett said, letting out the breath he had been holding. He rose from his seat and accepted Ash’s offer of a handshake. “I don’t think you’ll regret this, Mr. Ketchum, sir.”
“I already asked you to call me Ash. You’re going to be one of the last people to do it, after all,” Ash said playfully.
Beckett stammered, “Um, okay, Ash, then. Speaking of that, would you mind, I mean, could I ask you for a favor before you go home today?”
The abrupt change in Beckett’s demeanor made Ash’s smile widened as he let the officer escort him out of their cramped conversation space into the hallways of the International Police headquarters. “Sure thing, Cole! What can I do for you?”
“Could I challenge you to a pokémon battle?” asked Beckett wearing a grin which showed looked as though he was trying to get away with something that he maybe wasn’t supposed to do. “We have a small battlefield just outside for us all to train on.”
“Sure, Cole,” Ash said again, and all of the worries on his face were wiped away by his enthusiasm. “I’d love to battle you.”
The two men went outside into the crisp air. When a sudden gust did its best to knock them and Pikachu down, Ash remarked, “It looks like summer’s over.” He took up a post on one end of the battlefield and laughed as Pikachu leapt down to strike a fighting pose with sparks dancing across its red cheeks. “Pikachu and I are ready! Are you, Cole?”
“Yes, sir!”
Then Ash spun his baseball cap backwards and began his last pokémon battle as Ash Ketchum. The next time that he battled alongside his trusted partner, it would be under the name Eagun.
