Chapter Text
Sean is a Zoroark. Now, that itself is not a particularly unusual statement. Back in Unova, Zoroark are known to impersonate humans and Pokemon alike. One of the great Pokemon professors once stated that he estimated that four-thousandths of a percent of the population were Pokemon in disguise – a seemingly small number, but note that is one in twenty-five thousand – and in a city like Goldenrod, with four-million residents, that is some one-hundred and sixty hidden Pokemon. Of the many types of Pokemon that can disguise themselves, the majority that are successful are Zorua and Zoroark. Sean knows of sixty-seven other Zoroark and Zorua in Goldenrod alone.
The motivation to disguise like this is quite plain. Humans are fantastic at civilization, the art of safety and easier living. Many advantages are obvious, like the ease of food, the shelter from the weather, and the lack of suddenly finding oneself prey and dying a horrible death to sate some hungry predator. Sean greatly enjoys these advantages. However, it is the more subtle reasons which Sean enjoys most. Observing humans solving their puzzles and general people-watching is something that Sean loves. Naturally, he is employed at one of the premier research laboratories of Vesture Radiology Machines, or VRM for short. The employees have pared down this acronym to 'Verm,' a lazy one-syllable and easy to pronounce name.
His employment at VRM is the longest that Sean has stayed at one place. The next year will be his twentieth anniversary. Sean is one of the longest employees of the company and very good at what he does. He isn't one of the engineers – that is reserved for the smartest and most learned humans – but he does work with them on a regular basis as a laboratory aide/technician. His job title has changed over the years, and most recently it is Engineering Aide Master, which is the highest rung of aides before they become managers. Sean has rejected offers for promotion three times now. Sean has a meeting scheduled for today that he thinks may be a fourth offer.
It is quite early in the morning, around four-thirty, about an hour before the summer sunrise. Sean's nature is to rise this early and prepare himself for the day. He does this in his unveiled form in the darkness of his house with no lights on. This is to keep him grounded and remember his nature, as he spends most of his days playing human.
Sean currently lives alone in a house at the edge of the city. For quite a while he lived deep in the city in one of the high rise apartments, inexperienced and scared of being found out. The house is a bit more risky as there are more windows and neighbors tend to be a bit nosier. Nowadays, being found out doesn't scare him as much. The human response to discovery in Goldenrod, opposed to a violent recoiling, hunting, and hiding of children, seems more like it would be a benign interest and eventual meeting with police, lawyers, researchers, or perhaps an overzealous trainer if the discovered is particularly unlucky.
Unlike many, Sean has supreme confidence in his illusions and abilities.
'Hmm, almost out of butter,' Sean notes while making scrambled eggs. 'Going to need to remember that.'
The eggs smell delicious, and Sean scarfs them down with zeal. Then, he goes into his basement for a morning warm-up before going to the office. His basement is bare but for a training mat and a large scratched wooden post.
One mistake that he made some decades ago was becoming complacent after living in the luxury of civilization. When he was found out, he barely escaped with his life, and the experience affected him much even long after the events. So, he maintains a certain level of fitness and flexibility to ensure he can escape in the worst nightmare scenario.
Sean starts with stretches. Most of these stretches are similar to how a human would stretch, on account of their shared bipedality, but some are taken to extremes no human could match. Once that is done, he decides to work on fury swipes, although what he is doing is anything but furious. His goal is to focus on the technique to carefully and slowly create gouges in the post.
Carefully moving his normal type energy to his claws, Sean scores a row of scratches in the post. It cuts very cleanly, and Sean decides to maintain this standard. After a half hour and continuous scratching, Sean decides that is enough for the morning.
The sun is peeking over the horizon, and it's time to finish getting ready and head to work. It is the last day of the week, and Sean intends to visit his youngest daughter for the weekend. She is living with a small colony of Zoroark some distance into the woods.
Zoroark creates his human illusion before leaving his house. Illusions like this, which are meant to affect all in sight, are best anchored to an object or being. This illusion is anchored upon himself.
The journey to work is one and a half kilometers of walking, then twenty minutes on the train, then a kilometer of more walking. He intends to arrive at work at six.
The walk from his house to the station is along sidewalks and footpaths. The early birds have started announcing their presence, and it is quite a lovely walk. Sean takes in the earthly beauty and walks sedately. There is no reason to rush.
The station is a marvel of human ingenuity and progress. Even at this early hour, there are some dozens of others wanting to go to Goldenrod Downtown. Many of them are regulars to this hour, and Sean approaches one of his friendly neighbors, Shea.
“Hey-o Shea-o,” Sean greets.
“Sean-y Sean-y, what's up?” returns Shea. Shea is a semi-retired ranger who now teaches outdoorsmanship at the Principi Academy, one of many junior preparatory academies throughout the city.
“Not much today, but tomorrow I'll be out of town visiting my youngest daughter, you remember Karen? I heard she's got a new boyfriend I need to give a mean look to, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, ha ha, I should be wishing the best of luck to him, but considering the last boy toy your daughter had, I don't have the highest confidence in her judgment, heh.”
Their conversation continues as they wait for the train. Shea has a particularly troublesome student, Sean learns. This kid should be graduating soon, but will probably fail too many courses to pass. However, this kid has important parents, and Shea and her fellow instructors are being pressured to pass him anyways. Shea shares her plans of immovable resolve to fail “that foppish spoiled brat,” whom she greatly dislikes from his attitudes and behaviors. Sean asks her many hypothetical questions – what will she do if this kid escalates his delinquent behaviors? What will she do if she is bypassed completely by her superiors? Does she think that if she had taught this kid earlier, could she have changed his habits before they became destructive? Sean loves hearing her thoughts and will definitely follow up with Shea after the situation is resolved.
The train is exactly on time, and they enter the train together. Sean decides to share more about his life – less exciting than her story, but perhaps calming her anxieties about the near future by filling her mind with his mundane concerns. Lately, Sean has been researching about some updates he wants to do to his house. He needs a new air-conditioner, foremost. He is also considering updating the other appliances in his house, and it turns out he needs to update the electrical in his house to accommodate some of the options he has been looking at. Shea has some surprising recommendations about different refrigerators, as it turns out she recently had to rapidly replace her old one. The twenty minute journey ends with Sean exiting at his stop, Shea having twenty-five more minutes before her destination. He is in the exact downtown where VRM's Goldenrod office is located.
The walk from the station to his office is much less untamed than his early morning walk, but no less impressive. Some dozens of other office workers and cooks, assistants, delivery people, public safety officers, and the other required positions of human society are meandering to their locations for the day. Overhead are the tall impressive buildings of Goldenrod, the tops blurry to Sean's nearsighted eyes.
VRM rents floors seven through ten of the Neodymium Tech Tower, so named for magnet producing companies which placed Goldenrod on the map. The building has a total of forty-five floors above ground and two basement levels.
Sean quickly heads to the elevator after nodding to the building's receptionist. The only way to open the elevators is through a radio tag embedded in his employee badge. The elevators are rather quick and he arrives at his workplace in little time.
At this early hour, many of his coworkers have yet to arrive, although some are here already. The schedule for work is get your work done, and many people show up whenever they want. Most people are here during the daylight hours like a normal job. Many years ago, Sean shifted his hours so he could be home early enough to care for his family in the afternoons, and simply never ended his habit of arriving very early and leaving earlier than his coworkers.
His work for the day is average, with him supporting normal data gathering. This office exclusively works with the MRI machines, which use huge fluctuating magnetic fields to create images of inside the body. The engineers have explained it to Sean many times now – the gist of it is magnetic fields interact with hydrogen atoms in such a way that they can be seen by antennas. This results in water in blood being more visible than skin. The fine details are complex and the design is continually altered to improve imaging resolution, accuracy, and contrast; and improving safety.
The huge magnetic fields can launch paperclips and other such bits of metal at tremendous speeds, posing a danger from projectiles. Sean has seen this a few times, with the worst damage being from a metal pen which penetrated through the solid wooden walls and could have killed someone had it hit them in the wrong way. This danger is not limited to their lab, and accidents can happen to their customers should they ignore the safety warnings. Over the years some handful of people have died due to mistakes involving metal in the chamber while running the MRI machines.
VRM wants to find a way to make that danger less. Currently, hospitals and Pokecenters rely on metal detectors to avoid accidents. Despite this, accidents still happen, and it is theoretically possible to reduce the damage if the magnetic fields turn off fast enough. The feasibility of this is being investigated by the experiments Sean is supporting.
Sean is working with Dr. Penny, the Master Engineer leading the technical efforts to understand the problem. Some engineers report to Dr. Penny, and they bounce ideas off each other and run simulations using their fancy computers. Dr. Penny reports to Director Garbrand, who is in charge of the VRM Goldenrod research facility. Sean's boss, Managing Director Felicity Yarnell, also reports to Director Garbrand.
The experiment Sean is running today is to characterize the transient behaviors of one of the MRI's components during hard shutdowns. The exact details aren't necessary for Sean to run the experiment. The engineers provided a way to automate the setup, and little human interaction is needed once it is running. However, the experiment will be run many times, and it would be too tedious for the engineers, who can use their time more effectively.
The experiment has been running overnight, and Sean checks to make sure no catastrophic problems have occurred. The timer on the setup is for three hours from then, when the experiment needs to be adjusted manually. With that, Sean lets the experiment continue and goes up to the above floor where his desk is.
The room is filled with two-dozen cubicles. A third of the cubes are gray, while the others are beige. This office space is for the grunts. Furniture is mismatched and replaced as necessary. Being one of the most senior residents of this space, Sean was able to chose one of the edge cubes farthest from the door. Plopping himself in his chair, Sean turns on his computer and waits.
The machine takes half a minute to turn on (a vast improvement to his first computer, which took as long as ten minutes). From there, Sean continues the documentation he was writing the previous day. His claws carefully strike the keyboard from under his illusion. The next three hours pass with no interruptions.
Sean heads downstairs to adjust the experiment. He disables the main power supply, and switches the cable to connect another instrument. He runs this instrument at several predetermined settings, and writes down on paper the readings from the display. There are thirty-some read points he needs to transcribe. After that, he reconnects the main power supply and re-enables the main test. Setting a timer for twenty-four hours (ending on Saturday, when one of his coworkers will take the data), Sean returns his notepad to his cube and swings by one of the other cubes on his floor.
The people who use this floor are split between two teams. His team are engineering aides and laboratory management. The other team with cubes here is the supply chain logistics. His team has five people, while this logistics team has nineteen. Despite not needing to collaborate often Sean has made an effort to know the people on their team. He talks to some of them daily, albeit briefly.
Sean sees that his friend Michael is currently on a call. Leaning back and with his phone in his left hand and pencil in his right, he looks particularly stressed. Michael makes eye contact with Sean and shakes his head.
“... that won't do for us, we can't substitute the connectors with the steel sheath version. We need them with the specifications conveyed in the previous email...” Sean looks and sees that Michael is without his normal coffee.
“Coffee...?” Sean's illusion mouths at Michael, who nods at him before becoming distracted by his call again. Sean walks over to the drip coffee, and gets a 'cuppa,' black coffee of undeniable strength. Michael is very thankful when he hands it over.
Sean decides to talk to one of the other logistics people. Most arrive around eight, and the clacks, shuffling, chatter, and high pitch whine of the monitors are apparent to his sensitive ears. Today seems a bit more busy than normal. Seeing his other usual conversation partners busy as well, Sean walks around looking for someone free. The person he decides to talk to is one he sometimes avoids. She is a recent dropout from professional Pokemon training, and has opinions and attitudes which sometimes make Sean uncomfortable. He doesn't hold it against her, and does note to himself that she is still significantly progressive compared to the superstitious villages from his Zorua days. This person is Claire Woods.
“Hi Ms. Woods, everyone seems very busy today? What's up with that?” Claire looks up from her notepad.
“Oh hi Mr. Black, oh, you wouldn't have heard yet. The Saffron office burned to the ground yesterday night! It's super crazy and it's still burning now, actually. They had been behind on scanning their records and lost like everything. Everyone's writing everything they can remember about their suppliers and customers. I don't know fu--, erm, very much yet but I am going to be swamped soon.”
“Oh shoot, is everyone okay? That's nuts,” replies Sean.
“No, I heard three people were hospitalized. It may have exploded first before burning down? Linda will send an update about that around ten-thirty.”
“That is definitely weird, I thought they didn't do any of the volatile stuff there? What could have exploded?”
Claire shrugs and her phone starts ringing. Sean waves her bye and goes to his cube.
Sean's task of transcribing the data he wrote down into the electronic binder is mundane and calm compared to the escalating frantic panic just meters away. Director Garbrand even came to this floor for a bit, something he rarely does. This atmosphere of stress and urgency is reminding Sean of some of his crazier experiences back in Unova while he was a refugee.
At around eleven, Michael clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.
“OK everyone, I just want to share some more details I just learned. The Saffron fire department says it was definitely an explosion, originating from the south side of the building. That is the area where Putnam Photovoltaics' lab was. They released the identities of the injured and none are our employees, but nonetheless I wish them a swift recovery. Since the crazy urgent stuff is almost out of the way, I will be assigning everyone Saffron counterparts who you will collaborate with and help support for their tasks which need access to the intranet. They've found a temporary space to work from, and are working with IT to get them new computers and intranet access. IT estimates three days for this.”
The chatter dies down over time after that. Someone catered lunch for the logistics team, and Sean waits a polite amount of time before stealing a spare sandwich. Sean decides to take a walk outside before his meeting with Felicity.
It's a pretty normal day outside. Most of the people about are returning from their lunches. In this part of the city, it is almost always adults and trained Pokemon. Sean doesn't interact with anyone during his walk and soon returns to his office.
His meeting with Felicity is in one of the smaller conference rooms. Felicity normally works from a cube like Sean's, but with variances in the furniture and an older computer. This conference room has no windows and a round table with five seats.
“Thanks for being on time as usual, ain't it crazy what the others had to deal with today? I've been on calls with the lab manager from Saffron. Monday I will know more about what we will be doing but it's pretty likely that we will need to ship them some of our stuff once they find a new location.”
Felicity is an older woman, at almost sixty and extremely close to retirement. That may be part of the reason that she wants to promote him, to groom him for becoming the new Managing Director. Sean is a bit scared about it, since while he obsesses a bit over humanity and has picked up quite a bit, he doesn't know the first thing about leadership. Besides that, he doesn't want the scrutiny managers sometime get.
“I reckon that means we will be spending some time organizing everything, then? And possibly checking out some of the equipment that has been stored for a while?”
Felicity nods, “Right, it's good to double check. I'm still learning about what equipment they need that can't be sourced from elsewhere. Some of the generic stuff could probably come from contractors or rental companies. But, that is not the reason for this meeting.” Felicity pauses long enough for a quick response from Sean, but Sean is silent.
“Now, I know that you really don't want to be a manager. I still think that you could do great, and I am a bit regretful that I wasn't able to convince you. We still need a replacement, however. In two weeks, we will list the posting for any candidate. Sean, I want you to be involved in the interview process. I want to know, what do you think about that?”
Sean takes a moment to think about it. There seem to be many benefits to this. For one, he can establish his expertise with his new manager from the start. Another, he can argue against someone he would not work well with. Sean nods.
“I think that is a good idea, I can make sure that they will either already have the knowledge or they can learn well. Is it technical interviewing you were thinking of...”
Sean and Felicity spend the next half hour or so discussing what they want out of a manager. It is a fruitful discussion. One thing that particularly stands out, is this new manager will have slightly different responsibilities from Felicity. They will not be as involved in the minutiae, instead they will be more of oversight. Sean will be responsible for the technical details such as deciding when to update equipment.
“Well, enjoy your weekend,” Felicity closes with, and they exit the conference room. A short walk to his computer, Sean decides the bit of work he was planning on doing after the meeting can wait until Monday. Turing it off, he leaves, swinging by Michael's cube to see him still very busy. Waving bye, soon Sean is on the streets on his way back home.
The streets are quieter at this hour than the morning. The return home is fairly boring, as Sean doesn't encounter anyone that he knows. Upon opening the door to his house, he realizes that he forgot to buy butter. Shaking his head, Sean decides to get butter on Monday. He still has enough left.
After taking a quick afternoon nap, Sean gathers what he needs for tomorrow's forest trip. For himself he is bringing some jerky, a rolled up poncho, a canteen, and some health sprays just in case. For his relatives he is bringing some more jerky, dried berries, more sprays, some pokeblocks and toys for the kits. All of this he places on a table for tomorrow. Then he makes a simple roasted quail and beds for the night.