Rock 4.2: Aftermath
Rachel
February 27, 2020
What a difference a week can make.
*
February 20, 2020
STOCKS SOAR: END OF ALOLA CRISIS HELPS SAGGING MARKET
Join Avenue Journal
The DOW rose more than 600 points today, nearly reversing the month’s previous losses and easing fears of a market crash. “This is great news. Tremendous news. The best news,” President Trump said in a tweet this afternoon. “And I did all of it. No one else could have done this. Obama couldn’t have done this. Except, maybe, Xerneas…”
THE SCAVENGERS RETURN
The Rallying Cry
The light’s return brings our fair-weather occupiers back to us. They would leave this land for comfort because they do not love it. Alola is a tool for their convenience, not a home. Not a heritage. And what do they do with tools? They use it until it breaks or a better one comes out. Then they will throw it away and move on to their new…”
ALOLA LOOKS LIKE WHAT?!?!
Hivemind
Twenty incredible photos show the damage to Alola. You won’t believe number seven.
“THE CRISIS ISN’T OVER:” ECOLOGISTS WARN OF TROUBLES TO COME
Hau’oli Tribune
The light may have returned, but irreversible damage may have already been done to Alola’s environment. Bryce Donaldson, Chair of Environmental Studies at The University of Hau’oli, told the Tribune. “Photosynthesis was limited or non-existent in most of the archipelago for several weeks. For tropical plants…”
DID HALA CHANGE UP HIS TEAM?
Justin’s Journal
Hello, fellow travelers. Some of you have heard the rumors that Hala has switched up his first Grand Trial team to add a hawlucha. We don’t have video, but we do have pics of the platform after the battle. Looks brutal to say the least. This could be big. Between the devastatingly hard water and bug totems, Melemele is now one of…”
PROMINENT PSYCHIC ARRESTED, STOLE TAXPAYER DOLLARS
Bullseye Media
It was easy to miss during the Blackout’s chaotic news cycle (and need I remind you that the Blackout was caused by a psychic type?), but Dr. Andrew Brinner, formerly a ‘renowned’ apologist at the University of Hau’oli was fired from his post and arrested on charges of embezzlement. Folks, I’ve been telling you for years that…
THE SAVIOR OF ALOLA
The Battler
This isn’t the first time Selene Perry (#47) has saved her home. Even before she was champion, she awakened Lunala and ventured into Ultra Space. Recently she stepped up during the Blackout in Alola, taking point in the battle against Ultra Beasts. When the stars aligned, she took on the most difficult opponent of her life…”
*
A professor at The Henderson School for Preternatural Development once told you that teleportation could be unpleasant. That was a dramatic understatement. Took you years before you could do it and still come out composed on the other side. The trick is to get as far inside your own mind as you can. Feel as little as you can. Separate yourself wholly from the world outside until you can’t notice it changing around you. Even then there’s a strong wind pressing against you, begging you to pay attention to it. You can’t. Not unless you want severe vertigo.
When you open your eyes and pull yourself out of your mind, you’re on Aether Paradise. Or Foster’s Paradise to one man and one man only. There are cleaning crews everywhere trying to fix the damage that built up over the Blackout. The ocean environment was hit almost as hard as the land was. Mercifully, no gyarados rampaged and took this place out.
You smile at your alakazam. “Thank you, Allen.” He hums back in your mind, a trace of anxiety laced into it. Older alakazam struggle to make basic decisions. He’ll never admit it but without your guidance he would’ve starved to death a long time ago while he tried to decide what to eat. “Maybe you can meditate over the ocean? It’s a nice day.” He’s gone within a blink of an eye.
You turn around and start walking to your destination. It's strange seeing the place after it’s gone a bit without cleaning. Scum and dried seafoam have formed a crust on the ordinarily pristine surfaces. Some of the flimsier fences have been knocked over. Most of the windows were shattered. It’s going to take a long time to make this place look good again.
After a few dilapidated hallways you reach the conference room. The inside is orderly and the air conditioning works. Chris probably had the staff clean it first. Lounging at the head of the table is your boss himself, lounging back in a swivel chair with his feet on the table. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt with 37, his jersey number, emblazoned on it in big red font.
To his left is Winston, head of IT. (“Call me, Win,” he likes to say. Like anyone ever will without an eyeroll.) He’s at least wearing khaki shorts and a monocolor t-shirt. The smallest of steps up from his boss. Jabari’s a few seats away from Chris’s right. He’s wearing a polo shirt and nice jeans, which is about the most you can expect from him. It’s a good uniform for what he actually does. Emmanuel is at the far end of the table from Chris. He’s dressed in a three-piece suit that probably fit perfectly twenty pounds ago. You wonder if he ever looks in the mirror and wonders how he fell far enough to go from Wall Street trading to enabling an entitled brat’s big boy project.
You know damn well how you got here. He offered you more than anyone else did. And if things go south, well, you worked as a fixer before this. Helped sweep some of his indiscretions under the rug. And if he doesn’t want the world to know who he really is he’ll keep paying you well for your services. You’ll be here until he finally burns this place to the ground. Then you’ll probably go back to your old work.
You pull out a chair and sit down. “I apologize for the delay. My espeon wanted a very long walk today and I lost track of time.”
Chris waves a hand dismissively. “I get it, I really do. Lot of my pokémon have felt cooped up.” He sits up straighter and drapes an arm over his chair. “Oh, and Rick won’t be joining us today.”
You see Emmanuel wince. The board can roughly be split into suits and non-suits. Meetings are largely Winston egging Chris’s worst instincts on while Emmanuel and Rick, CFO and Chief Counsel, try to talk him down as Jabari stares blankly into space, unsure what any of it means unless it comes into his field of expertise. Then you’ll make your case when the fighting’s played out. Waiting lets you see how serious Chris is about the issue and avoid arguments he won’t find effective.
Chris smiles a little too broadly. Gods, what is it now? “Yeah, he won’t be coming because I told him we were meeting in the Hau’oli building.” He holds out his fist and Winston bumps it.
“I really think the Chief Counsel should be here at a meeting this important,” Emmanuel says.
“Nah, I know what he’d say. ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can’t do anything without me!’” He scoffs. “If I wanted to hear that I’d call my ex-wife. Let’s keep this tight knit today. Unless you want to leave, Manny?”
Emmanuel leans back and stews. Winston giggles and Jabari fidgets in his seat. You do your best not to react at all. Nothing to be done while there are others around. He’s too prickly about his image to be seen backing down. You’ll confront him later in his office.
“Well, if you’re not leaving, how ‘bout you kick things off?” Chris asks. “How is the money flowing?”
Emmanuel takes a deep breath and pulls a folder from his briefcase. “I won’t bore you with the exact figures.” Because Chris wouldn’t remember them anyway unless there was a sixty-nine at the start. You’ll privately ask for them for your own reference. “We had a 300% increase in anticipated revenue in the first two weeks of The Blackout. This was mostly from people abandoning the island challenge and selling their teams to us. But the costs of securing our facilities and moving some of our most volatile assets off the archipelago cut into these profits a little. In the end we had a roughly 180% increase in profits in these two weeks over our estimated yields, assuming all as-yet-unsold assets go for market price.” Chris nodded and Emmanuel carried on. You take the break to pull out your own notepad and jot down the key takeaways so far. “Anticipated profits stayed high throughout the rest of the Blackout as more teams were sold to us. Most were sales directly from contractors, but some were sales of the less desired members of ‘orphan teams’ from the trainers who died on the trail or defending the settlements. The inkay captures were also a lucrative income stream. Personnel costs were also down considerably due to layoffs.”
Chris drums his fingers on the table in thought. “The people we laid off, do we have to take them back? We ran for a while without them, right?”
“No,” Jabari says. “If anything, we’ll need more people than before to get our holding facilities operating again and continue our breeding programs. Those were shot by The Blackout, by the way. Bunch of schedules off track and we couldn’t always store mates together once we got them to the mainland. Since they were off-site I’ll also want full check-ups on our breeding pokémon.”
“Eh,” Chris says. “At least try it for a little while. I’ll sign off if we absolutely need to.”
“Sir—”
“We’ll already have to hire contractors for the repairs. And we were already bloated before. Get some unpaid interns, maybe? I have three handling a volcarona and that’s going just fine.”
You don’t remind Chris that he wouldn’t move said volcarona to Alola to light up Hau’oli. She has a brood and apparently didn’t want to move. Or Chris didn’t want to move her and risk losing the profit from selling the babies. Maybe a mix of both. Lost you an incredible PR opportunity that might’ve made him more money in the long run.
“I do have bad news, though,” Emmanuel says.
Chris dramatically rolls his eyes and collapses on the back of his chair. “Fiiiine. Tell me what you got.”
“Most of our contractors quit, at least temporarily, and the ones who turned in their teams probably aren’t planning on resuming the challenge. We won’t get another major recruitment bump until May, although I’m afraid a lot of trainers that would have gone on the island challenge will opt out after recent events. This limits our ability to catch more pokémon, on top of the ecological damage reducing the number of wild pokémon available to catch.”
You decide to add your own take, even if the boss won’t like it. “Given the way the press is talking about the environment I don’t think we could keep up our current catch-per-trainer rates. Too much risk of temporary protections on the post-Blackout environment that end up becoming permanent.”
“Sure, sure, whatever, we can back off a little. But we’re a pokémon catching company. We’re still going to be catching pokémon. Make a plan that’s still profitable and I’ll look it over.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Emmanuel jots down some notes. You follow. It won’t fall to you to make the new plans, but it will be your job to defend them.
“Then we have two more problems,” Emmanuel says. “The same problem, really. Jeremy Māhoe. The family’s threatened suit and—”
Chris slams his hands on the table and rises to his feet, the left corner of his mouth twisted up in a snarl. “Fuck them. We did nothing wrong.”
“I know, sir—”
“We. Did. Nothing. Wrong.” Chris hisses through his teeth. He slowly pulls his hands off the table and starts pacing. “We paid the kid to catch a larvesta. He knew the risks but wanted the money. And when he fails, it’s not his fault for botching it, it’s our fault for giving him a job. Fuck that. I’m not paying his estate a cent. If we yield here, then the family of every fuckup in the commonwealth will be banging at my door for cash. I didn’t get where I am without risk. No one at the top got there without risk. He rolled the dice and lost. Boo-freaking-hoo.”
If this ever gets to a deposition you are going to need to coach him so, so hard on what not to say. You also need to make absolutely sure he doesn’t talk to the media about this. A sixteen-year-old got burned so badly the teeth were almost too damaged to use to identify the body. Alola’s volcarona refused to help with The Blackout in protest until they were given promises of strong future capture protections. The people, well, most of the people, won’t see the multimillionaire as the real victim here. You’d prefer he just settle the case and get this out of the news. You’re in a good spot now that you’ve provided Alola with the inkay it needed. In the coming months you’ll need goodwill in the legislature that he seems intent to just piss away.
“That’s half of our problem,” Emmanuel insists. “If I’m reading our records correctly, we no longer have a contractor with a Class V license. This precludes several of our most lucrative captures.”
Chris frowns and glances at you. “Is there anyone in the pipeline?”
“One candidate. Not sure how much of her thesis she has done.” Or if she wants to work on it. You don’t get the impression she likes her mentor much. Not sure what happened to sour the dynamic and Cuicatl insists that everything’s fine. You’ll need to find someone else now that other people with a Class V aren’t busy managing a natural disaster. Since she’s your only candidate it should be easy enough to talk Chris into freeing up money.
“Hurry her up,” Chris says. “Time is money. My money.”
“Will do.”
*
February 27, 2020
CHRIS FOSTER DENIES PLANS FOR VSTAR IPO
Join Avenue Journal
The founder and CEO of VStar, Inc. took to social media yesterday to deny reports that he planned on holding an IPO in the upcoming months. It is unclear at this time whether the change is due to the recent incident at a VStar breeding facility. “No, it has nothing to do with that. We just need time to stabilize post-Blackout. Give it…
BLOOD SPILLED ON SACRED GROUND
The Rallying Cry
Pōhaku was once home to a peace summit between the kahunas of Akala and Ula’Ula. These days it’s the private property of a haole capitalist, Chris Foster. His attempt to build his own private Jurassic Park came at the expense of twelve lives, including four kanaka. No charges have been filed and no charges will be filed because the system…
THE TEN BEST TYRANTRUM GIRL MEMES
Hivemind
The new meme has taken the Internet by storm. Here are some of our favorites. Number three is too real TBH.
TWELVE DEAD, FIVE INJURIED FOLLOWING TYRANTRUM RAMPAGE
Hau’oli Tribune
At 6:03 A.M. the morning of February 27, 2022, a tyrantrum began to rampage on Pōhaku, a small island off the coast of Akala. The pokémon broke free of ball and non-ball restraints and proceeded to kill twelve employees and contractors of VStar, Inc. The rampage was finally stopped by the actions of a VStar contractor who speaks Draconic. The tyrantrum…
BUTTERFREE GIRL GOT A GLOW UP
Justin’s Journal
Hello, fellow travelers. Island challenger Cuicatl Ichtaca, aka Butterfree Girl, has outgrown her former title to become the much more badass-sounding Tyrantrum Girl. Rumor has it she’s also the trainer who fought Hala’s Hawlucha. I tracked her down this morning but she declined to comment. Anyone who knows anything…
IS VSTAR PLOTTING TO TAKE OVER ALOLA?
Bullseye Media
Look, folks, I have nothing against Chris Foster. He seems like a hard-working businessman who is providing jobs for our youth. I do have a problem with his secretary, one Rachel Bell, known alakazam trainer and alleged Henderson Cabal member. She’s been seen cavorting with the governor and speaking before our legislature…
TYRANTRUM IN COMPETITIVE BATTLING
The Battler
A tyrantrum owned by Chris Foster (#1) recently escaped containment during a routine medical examination. During the ensuing rampage it demonstrated just how powerful the species can be. Many top trainers have tried to use one in battle but few have succeeded, both due to their rarity and very real drawbacks in…
The doorbell buzzes. “Ma’am, Mr. Foster is here,” your secretary says.
“Got it, send him in.”
He’s visibly agitated with hands shoved into his pockets and a sneer etched onto his face. Victini rides on his shoulder. You notice that his shirt is inside out. The god of victory is sitting on one of the exposed seams. No one’s told him about it yet. You won’t be the first. Chris roughly sits down in the chair across from your desk. Victini floats off of him and moves to the nearest table. You bow to the god and he nods dismissively.
“Alright,” Chris says. His words are slightly slurred. Is he drunk? Hungover? High? You glance at Victini and he just shakes his head. “I leave for three days because my mom insists on having a makeup Solstice party in Unova. While I’m gone Jabari leaves the island to check up on a hydreigon and everything goes to shit. Am I missing anything?”
“That summarizes it.” He left out a lot of details, like why the island was understaffed, but this doesn’t seem like the time to press him.
“You want me to settle with the families and the injured,” he says. “Make it all go away?”
His breathing is slightly labored and he’s glaring at something on your desk. His arm is trembling slightly out of anger, exhaustion, or chemical influence.
“This won’t just go away whatever we do. But settling would help, yes.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. Just not with the anesthesiologist. This is all his fucking fault. I don’t owe him a cent.”
“Noted.”
Chris lowers his gaze to the floor. His shoulders slump and for a moment he looks small. Pathetic, almost. Victini’s mind buzzes against your own in indignation at the thought but it doesn’t make it any less true.
“Am I going to jail?” he whispers.
“I don’t think so, no.” He smiles slightly. “There will be fines. You’ll probably get dragged in front of the legislature and maybe Congress before this is over. But we’ll make it out of this in the end. The company might not, but we will.”
He dips his head again. “No,” he whispers. “The company will. I staked my reputation on this. You know what the other pros say behind closed doors? They say I’m an idiot failing upwards. That I’d fail at any real job. This is my real job and I’m going to show them how fucking smart I am.”
You look to Victini. He just nods. Expected. The God of Victory doesn’t want to give in. He and Chris were made for each other.
“Income’s down, the fines for this will take a lot of our capital, and I don’t think we can come back from the PR nightmare.”
He scoffs and raises his head to glare at you. “Then what am I hiring you for?”
“Because you’d be in prison for vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence without me.”
Chris looks back down. “I was barely buzzed.”
Like he’s barely buzzed now.
“You drive here?” you ask. You were lucky last time that he wasn’t a household name yet. Now with his fame and recent infamy you aren’t sure you could keep him out of jail.
“Oh, please. I rented a limo.”
“And a limo driver?”
“And a limo driver,” he mutters.
“Good.” You shuffle around the papers on your desk and load a spreadsheet on your computer to give yourself time to think. “Talk to Emmanuel about this, but I think at minimum we’ll need to sell off the fossil restoration and breeding assets to get heat off of us and raise capital.”
“The tyrantrum will go for a lot,” Chris says. “I know a collector in Kenya who loves mankillers.”
That’s very likely to end badly, but it won’t end badly for you.
“I’ll leave that to you and Jabari. For now, take your social media private, stay home or stay sober, and let the suits handle this.”
“You think I’m an idiot, too,” he slurs. “That I can’t do this.”
“No. I think you’re smart enough to hire people who can cover your weaknesses.”
If you also think he’s an idiot that’s none of his concern. Victini still whacks the edge of your mind for the thought. Chris stays quiet so he apparently doesn’t tell his trainer.
“Is Tyrantrum Girl the Class V candidate?” Chris asks.
“Yes.”
“What’s her thesis on?”
“Pokémon mythology. As in, the myths that different species of pokémon believe.”
He nods. “I’ll call Shirona. She likes Alola and mythology is her shit. Won’t shut up about it. And she’s a bitch. Takes her from a ten to a six real fast. She knows her shit, though.”
You aren’t usually intimidated by the big names in battling. You know the biggest and all of his secrets. Shirona still has a reputation, especially in her favored vacation spots. Her support would basically ensure Cuicatl gets her V… and then gets thrown right back into the most dangerous capture situations…
It has to be someone.
You don’t like that it’s her.
*
Alola still isn’t fully repopulated. There’s a long backlog of flights to get to the archipelago. Some people won’t return at all. The Ultra Beasts were one thing. The Blackout was a bridge too far.
Some of the smaller beaches are almost entirely empty now. The one by Lila’s condo is one of them. They’re standing at the edge of the surf, feet buried in the sand. They don’t react at all as you walk towards them. Even when you’re beside them they keep their eyes closed and their arms loose at their side. Their alakazam is floating somewhere over the waves. You send a thought to yours to suggest he join him.
Then you stand there near the surf as wave after wave washes over Lila. You stay a bit farther back. Shoes aren’t cheap and you weren’t anticipating they’d be at the beach instead of in their condo.
Finally, Lila turns her head back to face you. They stare into your eyes with such an intensity you could swear they’re trying to tear your mind apart and see what’s in it. They can’t. You’d know if they were trying. Maybe you’re even strong enough to stop them.
“Come. Let’s go inside.”
They tear their bare feet out of the sand and walk up the beach to the condo. You follow behind. Even if your powers don’t work on them you still have enough experience reading people to guess that they aren’t calm. The opposite, really. Probably needed to meditate hard before dealing with you. Not great. You anticipated they’d be mad about the tyrantrum incident, but they have to understand that these sorts of things happen in high level pokémon husbandry. You even got it resolved in-house.
They open the door and wave you in. When you get to the table they sit down and push a bowl of snack mix towards you. Lila’s is very good. A custom mix of different cereals, snacks, and seasoned nuts. One of the highlights of dealing with them. They know damn well that the best way past a psychic’s defenses is through their stomach. The brain just uses too much energy.
You only take a pinch. Don’t want to cede too much power before you know exactly how this interaction is going to go.
They keep staring at you while you eat. Their hands are crossed in front of them and they’re really reminding you they’re a cop. Some small, buried part of your mind urges you to run.
“You’re welcome to take your own risks,” they finally say. “It’s when you drag a child into it that I take issue.”
Ah. Right. Cuicatl is also under their informal role as community coordinator.
“I paid her well,” you counter. “She knew what she was getting into and decided the reward was greater than the risk.”
“Odd. I spoke with her briefly. She didn’t know that she was dealing with her pokémon’s mother.” They lean forward and lowers their voice. Their face stays perfectly composed. “Did she actually know the risks?”
Your mother flashes to mind. She pulled things like this, setting up casual situations before going into full interrogator mode. Webster’s mind connects with yours with an offer of help. You decline. It’s fine. You’re older than you were. Richer. Better connected. No one can do that to you again.
“I didn’t know that, either.”
Lila narrows their eyes and sits back in the seat. Their back straightens and they use their height to stare down at you with lips spread thin. Full cop mode. “Even if she was fully informed, can a severely depressed child be trusted to make informed decisions regarding the risks of a job and the value of her life?”
“Under the laws of Alola, yes.” You’ve triple checked that. It’s VStar’s entire business model.
They continue to glare at you.
“And you can live with that?”
“Yes.”
They lower themselves to a more relaxed position but don’t stop glowering. “Make sure she uses some of that money to see a dentist. It’ll make it easier for me to identify the body when you get her killed.”
Low blow. You even came to this meeting to try and help the girl.
“She wants a therapist, by the way. Thought you might be able to help with that.” Since they care so much.
That finally breaks their composure. Lila sighs and rubs their eyes before taking a handful of the snack mix.
“So she said. I’ve made some calls for her. Turns out that every child psychologist in the Commonwealth has a backlog after recent events. Andrew’s replacement is…” They look up at you and glare. “I’m only telling you this because you’re somehow the closest thing she has to a guardian right now, even if you insist on throwing her into mortal danger to resolve a business problem.” You nod. “Andrew’s replacement is going to be a psychologist specializing in addiction treatment via compulsion therapy. He’s a licensed psychologist and would give another psychic priority for treatment, but he doesn’t have much experience with children. For now I think it’s best to just keep her on some waiting lists and see how fast they move.”
And the mainland is too far to teleport to. Since it’s illegal to have a session with someone outside your state or commonwealth, and Cuicatl would hate the screens anyway, the waiting list is probably her best plan. You’d just hoped Alola might know about some option you didn’t.
“You know,” Lila says. They’re back to glaring at you. Great. “It’s rare that I have to try and tell another psychic they should care about other people. We’re usually better than that.”
“I’ve learned to look after myself,” you counter. “And given the stories I’ve heard about you collapsing on the battlefield from exhaustion, I don’t think you’ve learned that yet. Perhaps I could give you lessons.”
They reach their hand to the bowl without breaking eye contact.
“Perhaps you could get out of my house.”
You stand up and smile before holding out a hand. They don’t take it. “Always a pleasure. See you soon?”
“Hopefully not.”
You call Allen to you as soon as you leave the house. That went better than expected. They probably won’t be pushing any penalties. Would’ve threatened it if that was on the table. Now you just have to deal with the federal and commonwealth governments…
