A Pokemon Parable

Charmander, tired and beaten but not ignorant, stopped the boy from putting his homework away. He grabbed the history assignment -the paragraph about apricots- and carried it over to the kitchen, placing the page on the table.

“Call it a hunch,” Charmander shrugged, moving to sit before his bowl, wincing as he sat down. “Ow, you couldn't hold back even a little, could you?” he asked, as the Sylveon gracefully sauntered to rub against Diane before parking herself before her own food bowl, giving the complaining protegee a head tilt and sticking out her tongue in a tease.

Charmander, catching Eric's eye, pointed at the packet on the computer keyboard, to which he received a nod. “You know Stanley, if you haven't come up with a good name for your pokemon I might have a suggestion. What do you think of the name 'Chad'?” he asked, having finished treating the lizard's bruises.

“Well, it certainly isn't a bad name, though it isn't very French. I wonder where he came up with that,” the Charmander newly named Chad questioned. He watched as Eric opened the envelope and withdrew a stack of papers. A rather thick stack at that, but it was out of Chad's line of sight to see what was on them.

Not long later, with the child fast asleep, Chad crept back into the living room, where Emeric was waiting with the packet and a pencil. He motioned to close the door, with which Chad complied as quietly as possible, before moving to sit next to him. Pulling a blank piece of paper before him, Chad began to write as legibly as his shaky hands could allow. “Why Chad? To be honest, I got the idea from a joke at work,” Emeric explained, pulling a crumbled wad of paper from his pocket. It was a print-out of a meme, a well-known one that Chad seemed to recognize, with a sorry-looking guy on the left, and a weird caricature of a muscular, endowed man on the right. “I figured from what I knew of you so far, you might appreciate it more than a name from our native language. Anyway, you need some solid sleep tonight, so let's get started on this packet. Miss DuPont made this as a sort of cognitive assessment to see just what you can do. It covers mathematics, logic puzzles, reading comprehension, and a bunch of other concepts people learn growing up,” he explained, lifting the pages as he dug into the stack. “Just start solving the math problems here, and I'll tell you when you can skip to the next page.”

Over the next hour, Emeric watched on as the small pokemon began to crank through the math portion of the assessment, occasionally telling Chad to move on to the next page. It started with simple addition, subtraction, but Emeric jumped ahead to multiplication and division. The scientist beamed when he observed the division of larger numbers, making a remark that he had not seen that technique used before. Deeper into the stack, they came across geometry, basic logic questions, and then trigonometry. These took a little longer, as Chad used the scratch paper to calculate things like squares and roots. He was nearly unstoppable until they turned to a physics problem, and Chad asked his first question of the session, “The gravity constant?” Emeric questioned, caught off-guard by the abrupt stop in work. “The gravitational constant is 10 meters per second squared,” Emeric clarified, which yielded a hesitant expression from Chad, before he continued to solve the question of how a Rock Throw might arc across a field when thrown at a given force and angle.

Chad was just beginning to work on a heat transfer problem when Emeric motioned for him to stop, “I know you can do more, but I think it's time for bed. Besides that, I need a break. This is a little too much for me to take in tonight,” he explained, placing the packet back into the envelope and ushering the pokemon back to bed. Still sore from the 'training' session earlier, Chad agreed and trudged off to bed. "We can cover the other sections another night."

Blinking his eyes separately, Chad slid off the bed like a zombie. He definitely did not have his usual energy, but at least the pain was gone. He gave a large yawn with a stretch, before scratching his side and plodding towards the door of the bedroom. In the kitchen, Eric and Diane were having a hushed conversation, with odd hand gestures, until Diane noticed the freshly-woken duo and smiled.

<”Good Morning you two, I hope you slept well,” she said. “Breakfast should be ready soon, today we're having omelets,” she informed with a chipper voice. I love omelets, Stanley thought, mentally planning what design of ketchup to doodle on his. Chad took a seat by his bowl, and slowly chowed down on the brown pellets placed before him. Sylveon was nearly done eating, without a spare crumb anywhere to be seen, and Pidgeot was halfway done but it's beak covered in crumbs.>

Eric, having taken a seat at the table, took the opportunity before Stanley was distracted with food to voice a question, “Stanley, since you do not have math class on Friday, and Diane won't be home either, would you like for me to take Chad into work with me for the day?” There was a palpable pause, as the three eaters awaited the answer, and Diane did her best to focus on the stove top.

With a flash of red light, Chad found himself standing next to Stanley, and before a strange boy. “Uh, hi?” he said meekly, aware of the conversation leading up to this point.

<”Oh wow, that's so cool! I love fire types, my mom has a Delphox which is super fluffy and gives nice warm hugs,” he explained, trying to refrain from absentmindedly touching the lizard. “Have you two had a first battle yet?” he asked. Stanley, realizing the answer was neither yes nor no, did his best impression of a hand-sign for 'kind of', not sure how to explain his partner's first battle had been without him. “That's OK, you'll probably have a lot more in the future,” Calem responded, turning his head when the group heard the approach of the bus. “Once I get my first pokemon, we can have a match,” he promised, as Stanley recalled Chad to his pokeball. Stanley was glad, it sounded like he had made another friend. Things were certainly looking up!>

“Gotta be kidding me, I hope you have a plan for this, because I can't do anything if he doesn't talk,” Chad grumbled, as the teenager sent out his pokemon, a Pidgey, which gave Chad a mean grin upon seeing its opponent.

<”Pidgey, use Sand Attack!” the boy called, as Stanley watched on. Use Hyper Beam!, Stanley thought loudly, wanting his partner to overpower the bird.>

With a flap of its wings, Pidgey created a dust cloud which swarmed Chad, causing him to cover his eyes reflexively. He continued to stand there, glancing around for the bird.

The Pidgey flew out of the dust rapidly, diving at Chad as he was barely able to dodge the blow. “C'mon Stanley, you have to actually say it,” he groaned, focusing on anticipating the next strike. The dust was obscuring everything around him, and he could barely hear the bird circling around for the next strike.

<”Go for a Peck, Pidgey!” the teenager shouted. Stanley pondered if maybe Chad didn't know Growl either. Chad, use a Scratch attack, Stanley thought, taking a firm stance. If his heart couldn't get through to his pokemon, nothing would.>

“You damned idiot, you need to actually shout-” was all Chad got out before the Pidgey hit him from behind with the Peck attack. The one-hit KO dropped the lizard to the dirt like a bag of potatoes, as he lay unmoving. The world began to still and freeze, the color draining from the scene.

Groaning, Chad rolled onto his back, looking up at the pre-Technicolor sky and clouds above. “Look, either Stanley has to call out the moves, or I need to do this myself. I'm not a mind-reader.” He brought himself into a seated position, taking the time to properly size up his opponent's frozen stature. “We can re-do this fight if you like, but we need to be on the same page,” he continued, trying to negotiate with the being.

“Yea, rules are important, especially when you're trying to ensure your audience understands the story,” Chad explained, dusting himself off before standing. “So we need to be consistent; is Stanley going to talk, or am I going to do all the fighting? Because if I read his thoughts like you're doing, it implies I'm psychic, and we do not need to explore that can of worms.”

“If that were the case, you wouldn't have picked me. So, this time, let me focus on winning, and show you how to really take advantage of the power of plot.” Chad said, giving his equivalent to the Hero's Monologue, before dropping into a ready stance. “I'm ready, go ahead and rewind it.”

Me too; should I include a therapist in a later chapter?