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Monaca shouldn’t be here.
The site of Team Despair’s last bastion has been well picked over. All of the screens have been smashed in, all of the computer stacks destroyed. Some of that happened later, sure, but most of it was under the order of their glorious leader before Future Foundation and their so-called Champion could arrive.
Of course, all of Team Despair’s members obeyed.
That was the point of the brainwashing videos, after all.
Now, Monaca hadn’t officially been part of Team Despair. Big Sis Junko said it was better to keep her safe. If Future Foundation found out, after all, they’d think she was brainwashed, too, even though Big Sis Junko thought so much better of her than that! Then they’d try to run their counter brainwashing measures on her, which are really just another form of brainwashing, and erase all of Monaca’s memories of her big sis.
NO.
“Here. I have something to show you!”
Big Sis Junko gestures with one hand, and Monaca follows the way she always has (
and always will).A big grin curls across Junko’s lips. She pulls out two Pokémon eggs and holds both of them in front of Monaca, one in each hand. Cracks trace their edges. “Monorotom laid eggs! I think he’s been spending too much time with—” She cuts herself off and giggles. “Not important.”
Monaca’s brow furrows. “Monaca wants to know!”
But Big Sis Junko just leans so close that Monaca can smell the blue raspberries on her breath. “It’s not important,” she repeats. Then she taps her forehead gently against Monaca’s. “What is important is that I couldn’t possibly raise these babies all on my own. I’m going to need help.” She meets Monaca’s eyes and waits.
It clicks.
Monaca’s eyes widen. “You…you want Monaca to—” She points to herself. “You want Monaca to have one of Monorotom’s—”
“If one of them likes you, yeah!” Junko’s head tilts, and her lips purse together. “Although I can’t possibly think of any reason why one of them wouldn’t like you. You’re just the smartest child I’ve ever met!”
Monaca blushes.
Monaca was sheltered in a hidden Team Despair stronghold as she watched Enoshima Junko defeat Future Foundation’s Champion.
It also means she was still sheltered there when Champion Enoshima Junko and her Monorotom were finally defeated, when Big Sis Junko gave her grand speech about hope and despair and then just—
Disappeared.
The two eggs crack. Sharp electric limbs poke out of one, while the red point of a head pops out of the other. Bright blue eyes slowly creep out of the left egg as shell falls from Junko’s hands. “Ro?” It lays its eyes on Monaca, blushes a softer red, and turns away from her.
Monaca frowns.
“Don’t worry, Mona-chan,” Big Sis Junko murmurs as the first Rotom crawls out of its shell, climbs up her arm, and then curls in the crook of her neck. “Maybe the other one will like you!”
Monaca glares at her, stubborn. “It will.”
Monaca rolls through the hideout’s wreckage, her own Rotom setting her wheels spinning. “Wait.” She glances over her shoulder as her wheelchair pauses, checks to make sure the door is locked, and then pushes herself out of her chair. “C’mon,” she says, brushing her fingers along one wheel, “Monaca needs your help.”
Big Sis Junko won’t be here, Monaca knows that, but she’s going to look anyway. Maybe she’ll find something Future Foundation and their new Champion of Hope and all the other Team Despair leftovers have missed. Something only a child and her Rotom can find.
Something meant just for her.
A few seconds pass.
Monaca grows impatient, her cheeks puffing out the way Kotoko’s do when she gets mad. She squirms in her wheelchair. (Just because her big sis knows the lie doesn’t mean Monaca can drop the façade. What if someone else sees? Someone who shouldn’t? Big Sis Junko wants her safe. She has to be safe.)
Then, all at once, the other Rotom bursts out of its shell! It zips and zaps through the air above them, from one corner of the room to the other, and then bounces about before stopping next to its sibling. It prods the other baby Rotom with one electric arm, and the other Rotom shudders, tucking itself even closer to Junko’s neck.
The new Rotom frowns. “To ro?” It levitates up, peers into Junko’s face, and then whirls around to look at Monaca. “Tom to?”
Monaca’s gaze flicks to Big Sis Junko and then back to the new Rotom. She holds out her hand, suddenly shy. “Hi.”
The Rotom floats down to Monaca’s hand. It looks at her curiously and then beyond her to her motorized wheelchair. Its eyes light up. Then it zooms into the wheelchair with an excited bubble of a hum. Monaca’s wheelchair starts to move forward and backward all on its own; Monaca raises her arms as it spins around and giggles as it finally stops, too excited to notice Junko’s wolfish grin.
“Monaca isn’t finding anything!”
Monaca stamps her foot, breaking the scattered glass into even smaller pieces. Then she pushes more bunches of garbage out of the way, none of which have gained sentience as a Grimer or Trubbish. (There’s not enough slime for a Grimer, and the heaps of garbage aren’t bagged the way Trubbish like.) Her eyes narrow, and she runs her fingertips along the seams of the floor tiles.
Once, Big Sis Junko showed Monaca the historical tapes of Team Rocket’s hideouts, and they both laughed at the spinning tiles. Her big sis might have put something like that in one of the other rooms, but she wouldn’t put it in here with the brainwashing videos. She wouldn’t have wanted any of them to trip and ruin the videos’ effects. But maybe she put a hidden panel beneath a tile?
No, Big Sis Junko would be smarter than that! One of those stupid Future Foundation people would have found it if—
Her finger catches on something.
Monaca’s eyes widen, and she grins. She pulls at the tile, trying to pop it off, but nothing changes. Her brow furrows. She pulls even harder, but still, nothing happens!
“So,” Junko says, cupping the Rotom at her neck and drawing it gently into her hands. “I was thinking of naming them Shiro and Kuro. For both halves of Monorotom, you know?” Her eyes flash. “Which name should be yours?”
“Kuro-chan! Help me!”
Kuro flits from its preferred spot in Monaca’s wheelchair and levitates just next to her. “To to?”
“The tile—” Monaca pulls on it even harder and stumbles backward, fortunately missing the shards of glass behind her. Her cheeks puff out. “It won’t move!”
“To ro!” Kuro taps the tile, lights up like a lightbulb, and then sinks inside. As soon as it does, an image of Monorotom appears on the tile. It winks its slash of a red eye at her.
Suddenly, a section of the wall across from them flips and slides into itself, revealing a small tunnel, just big enough for Monaca to crawl through. Of course, certain trained Pokémon would be able to crawl through, too: Growlithe, employed by most of the police, and Big Sis Junko’s Monorotom. But there’s dust here, and no trash, which means that probably no one else has been here in a very, very long time.
“C’mon, Kuro-chan!” Monaca exclaims as she heads into the tunnel, not even waiting for it to join her.
“Well, I’d say that’s settled!” Junko ruffles Monaca’s hair fondly. “Kuro-chan is yours!” She flashes her a grin that could eat her alive, if Monaca dared to notice. (She doesn’t.) “You’ll have to take really good care of it, okay? Lots of berries and water.”
Monaca should be paying attention.
She isn’t.
The tunnel leads into a room smaller than Monaca’s bedroom, just a little dug out spot in the middle of nothing, all earth and dirt and dust. In its center is something that looks just enough like Monorotom for Monaca to gasp and run to it, only to realize, now that she’s close, that it’s nothing like him at all. Sure, he has the same split down the middle that the Monorotom shell does, and he has the same cut out hold for his red electric swoop of an eye, but that’s where the similarities end. The Monorotom shell is half black and half white – kuro and shiro – but this one is all black, just darker on one side than the other.
And whatever he was, he’s cracked, broken, and abandoned.
Still….
Big Sis Junko’s first partner Pokémon was her Rotom. Even before she’d met Professor Aster, she’d befriended the Rotom powering her first phone and started playing around with different designs for a new shell. Most trainers and researchers knew that Rotom like inhabiting appliances – phones, clocks, ovens, refrigerators, things like that – but Big Sis Junko thought, well, why couldn’t it have something with a bit more personality, if it wanted?
So Junko made her first Monorotom shell – a mechanical bear that her Rotom quickly inhabited, equipped with a translator so that she and her Rotom could speak together. Monorotom quickly became the image of Team Despair as a sure sign of Enoshima Junko’s ingenuity, and he became a symbol of superiority over people who couldn’t care less about adapting their world to the joy of the Pokémon who lived in it with them, who just took their Pokémon at face value.
This shell, whoever or whatever it is, has the fingerprints of an Enoshima Junko design.
Just incomplete.
Monaca runs her fingers along the metallic shell. She knows robots. This isn’t a robot, but if she crafts it like one or repurposes it, then maybe—
She hears a laugh behind her.
Monaca jumps and whirls around to see Kuro giggling just outside of the tunnel. She frowns. “Kuro-chan! I was concentrating on—”
But Kuro ignores her. It zips around her head and examines the broken shell on its own. “Om tom rotom!” All at once, it flits into the broken shell and powers it, a red slash of an eye filling the hole left for it just the same as Monorotom’s once was. The black bear shell struggles to stand, chuckles in a tone quite unlike Kuro’s, and then collapses. Sounds – muffled, crackled, broken – filter through the bear’s mouth, and his sharp, jagged teeth turn upside down into a frown.
Wah wah wah wah.
At least the sound cues still work, even if the translator doesn’t.
Monaca stares at the shell, at its sad face, and then has a sudden spark of inspiration. “Hey, Kuro-chan,” she says, “why don’t I fix that up for you? You could be Kurorotom!’
The black bear’s eyes light up, and he laughs.