"Cacaaa—!"
The Cacnea shrieked as it collapsed backward.
Its arms and body were coated in thick frost. With a dull thud, it fell into the field, completely unconscious.
"Ah!"
The kid with the watermelon hair tugged at his hair in frustration. He looked at the Porygon, which was currently shifting its feet from a gear-like shape back to their original form, and cried out in disbelief:
"How can it still change its shape like that!?"
"That is the true value of a man-made Pokémon," Kashiwagi said with a chuckle. "The light of civilization, born from the peak of human imagination."
"...You're saying things I don't understand again."
The watermelon-headed kid pouted. He checked on Cacnea's condition, and after confirming it was okay, he picked up two watermelons the size of human heads from nearby before shouting,
"Time for watermelon! As they say, you gotta eat watermelon after a battle!"
Porygon's deadpan eyes lit up like searchlights.
Watermelon!
It vividly remembered the first time it defeated a Victreebel. The opponent had invited them to eat watermelon then, too. As the hero of the hour, it had received praise from all its comrades—an experience that had made it incredibly happy.
Would it happen again this time?
"Pah-ree!"
Porygon looked at its Trainer expectantly.
Having joined the team recently and feeling like it hadn't contributed much yet, it was constantly seeking the validation of its peers.
"Thanks a lot. Your family's melons really are big and sweet."
Kashiwagi wasn't about to ignore his Pokémon's earnest gaze. He gave Porygon's head a reassuring pat and released the rest of his team.
"You bet!"
The watermelon-cut kid proudly handed the watermelons to his Victreebel, letting it use Leaf Blade to slice them into eight perfect, uniform pieces.
Thus... another boisterous fruit-tasting session began.
"Zwai!" "Zwai!"
Zweilous was overjoyed the moment he saw the watermelon. He particularly loved food that doubled as a drink. Plus, since it was mostly water, it filled his stomach quickly but digested just as fast after a bit of movement, meaning he could still pack away two large bowls of food by dinner time.
"Whoa! Take it easy—Blissey, keep an eye on him!"
Seeing that he couldn't hold back this "Husky on a leash" by himself, Kashiwagi decisively handed him over to Blissey and her Psychic powers.
"Happy~"
Blissey obliged. The moment her mental energy surged, Zweilous was pinned in place.
The latter flailed his claws wildly in mid-air, eventually turning his heads toward her to protest weakly. He was just trying to eat a watermelon, after all!
"Zwai!" "Zwai!"
"Wait, did she evolve?"
The watermelon-cut kid stared at Blissey, unable to remember if she had been a Chansey or a Blissey when they first arrived.
But his attention quickly shifted as Kashiwagi walked over to the irrigation canal by the farmland. Crouching down, Kashiwagi released a purple Feebas into the clear running water and began feeding it bits of watermelon.
Feebas poked her head above the water, took a small nibble of the bright red flesh, and sank back down. A moment later, she floated up for another nibble. Feeling the wonderful sweetness, she wagged her tail happily.
"Why is this Feebas a different color?" the watermelon-cut kid asked, crouching down beside them curiously.
"She's a special one," Kashiwagi replied. "She was born this color. Haven't you ever seen a Shiny Pokémon before?"
"Nope."
He shook his head, then asked excitedly, "Does being a different color mean the Pokémon is stronger?"
"Not necessarily..."
"Ehh—I thought it'd be at least a little stronger than a normal one. So it's just for show?"
The moment those words reached his ear, Kashiwagi knew things were about to go south.
He looked at Feebas. She froze for a second before her expression crumbled into a dejected, heart-broken look. Her entire complexion seemed to dim, and she stopped eating the watermelon entirely.
Being naturally self-conscious, Feebas was extremely sensitive to how others perceived her.
The watermelon-cut kid realized his blunder and panicked. "Wait! I—I didn't mean it like that! Argh, anyway, that's not what I meant!"
Seeing that he couldn't explain himself out of it, he simply bolted.
"I didn't mean it like that anyway—!" he yelled over his shoulder as he ran.
Kashiwagi gave a helpless smile and turned to comfort Feebas.
"Don't take it to heart. That guy is just a battle-obsessed idiot; there's no way he could see your inner sparkle. Eat a few more bites—make him regret losing such expensive fruit!"
He spoke in a light, teasing tone.
"Boop~"
Feebas blew a bubble. Feeling slightly consoled, she began to take aggressive nibbles of the watermelon in her Trainer's hand.
In reality, however, Feebas's combat strength truly wasn't high.
Kashiwagi remembered clearly that her base stats for both offenses and defenses were on the same level as a Magikarp. The only difference was that she could learn more moves and had access to Egg Moves.
Poor Magikarp—despite its massive population, it didn't even have Egg Moves to its name.
After finishing the melon, Kashiwagi washed his hands and forcibly grabbed Zweilous to wipe the watermelon juice off his two mouths.
He brushed the dust off his clothes and returned his Pokémon to their Poké Balls, leaving only Porygon out.
"Thanks for the hospitality! The watermelon was as delicious as ever," he called out to the bowl-cut kid in the distance.
Seeing the boy hesitating to come closer, Kashiwagi couldn't help but laugh. "Don't worry, my Pokémon don't hold grudges."
"Really?"
"Of course!"
"Well, that's great then!" A smile finally broke across the kid's face. He waved goodbye alongside his two Pokémon. "Safe travels!"
Kashiwagi didn't say anything more. He simply waved back and started walking with Porygon toward Lavaridge Town.
...
...
Normally, traveling to Lavaridge Town requires taking Route 112.
However, because his starting point was different, Kashiwagi couldn't follow the League's official paths. Instead, he had to trek through vast, uncharted primeval forests and rugged mountain ranges.
"Unplanned routes really are a pain to navigate," he muttered, sidestepping a massive tree root protruding from the ground while checking the map on his phone.
He was already a significant distance from Verdanturf Town.
The surrounding area for miles was almost entirely undeveloped. It was so desolate that there wasn't even a dirt path carved out by hikers. This was the kind of wilderness the Hoenn League intentionally left for wild Pokémon—perfect for daring Trainers looking to encounter rare species.
Sure enough: Kashiwagi spotted several ghostly silhouettes drifting above the forest canopy. Their distinctive deep-purple, balloon-like appearance was hard to miss.
"Drifloon, huh...? So Hoenn has wild Sinnoh Pokémon now. Is it migration?"
He felt a brief sense of wonder, which quickly turned to realization as he noticed the Drifloon had spotted him. After exchanging glances, they began to descend slowly.
"Hmm?" Kashiwagi blinked.
Are wild Pokémon these days really this fearless? Instead of staying away, they were actually approaching him. Were they so hungry they were coming to beg for food?
He was half right.
The Drifloon were indeed hungry, but they weren't exactly looking for handouts. They preferred to be self-reliant.
Specifically, they liked to grab human children, carry them up into the sky, and shake them around to "feed" on their terror. Clearly, this group had roughly guessed this "big kid's" age correctly, but in their hunger, they had failed to account for his size, weight... and combat prowess.
The Drifloon smiled as they extended their thin, stringy arms, wrapping them around Kashiwagi's arms to hoist him into the air.
Their expressions shifted instantly.
"Drif—!?"
Holy crap, why is he so heavy!
"Heavy, right? That's what seventy-seven kilograms feels like. Since you guys aren't pulling, I guess it's my turn."
Kashiwagi returned their gaze with a bright smile. As the Drifloon's expressions turned from hunger to sheer horror, he grabbed their retracted heart-shaped hands and proceeded to swing them left and right, slamming them repeatedly against the trees and the ground.
Thwack! Bam! Crack!
His sheer strength, rivaling that of a humanoid Pokémon, made a group of Seedot in the nearby shadows tremble in fear.
Porygon wanted to help several times, but seeing its Trainer's ferocious display, it stayed back, worried about getting caught in the crossfire.
Is the Trainer angry?
Absolutely!
He's 100% pissed off!
Porygon offered a silent prayer for the poor Drifloon. Its good-tempered Trainer rarely got angry, but once he did, he didn't stop easily.
...
A moment later,
Kashiwagi let go of the four unconscious Drifloon and tossed them back toward the sky. "Trying to scare people with that pathetic power? Give it a rest and beat it!"
"Drif..."
The Drifloon slumped weakly toward the ground, their tiny mouths hanging open as purple, smoke-like mist drifted out.
The spirits inside the balloons were leaking out?
Kashiwagi's heart skipped a beat, wondering if he'd gone too far. However, he soon realized these Drifloon were simply starving to death.
He reached into his bag and pulled out some Pokémon Food.
The moment they caught the scent of the food, the Drifloon—who looked like they were at death's door a second ago—instantly zoomed up. They scrambled over each other, stuffing the food into their wide-open mouths as fast as they could.
"Whoa, you guys have eaten this before?"
Kashiwagi was surprised by how practiced they looked.
Just as wild horses don't usually have people to trim their hooves, wild Drifloon shouldn't be familiar with artificial Pokéblocks. Yet, they were inhaling them with expert efficiency.
They weren't dogs; they didn't just try to eat everything they saw.
Maybe they taught themselves out of desperation? Or perhaps someone had fed them before.
Considering their practiced "kidnapping" attempt, they had definitely spent time around humans. Whether they had been beaten before was another story.
"Drif!" "Drif!" "Drif!"
Having finished the handful Kashiwagi provided, they swarmed around him, begging for more. Who are you kidding? This isn't enough to feed a Caterpie! Bring out the whole stash!
"You attacked me for no reason, and now you want charity?" Kashiwagi looked at them with disdain, but he still reached back into his bag for more.
The Drifloon dove into the pile like hungry tigers.
"Are they really that hungry?" He watched them, puzzled. He wondered if migratory Pokémon lost their hunting habits during transit and only started looking for proper food once they reached a new nesting ground.
Pokémon ecology truly was a mystery.
Just then, as if sensing his confusion, Porygon dove into his phone to look up the Drifloon's Pokédex entry. The familiar mechanical voice startled Kashiwagi and caused the Drifloon to snap their heads toward the device.
"Heh, thanks."
He tapped the screen to pat Porygon's head. Seeing no danger, the Drifloon went back to their meal. Even after the second serving, they still looked unsatisfied.
Unfortunately for them, Kashiwagi refused to give them any more.
The Drifloon were looking disappointed and were about to pester him further when a sudden roar of motorcycle engines tore through the silent forest. The sound grew louder and closer, a booming rumble more jarring than the explosion of a Pokémon move.
The moment the engines roared, the entire forest seemed to snap awake. Countless wild Pokémon scurried from their hiding spots, running in a blind panic like headless flies, trying to escape something.
Kashiwagi frowned as he watched the wild Pokémon flee past him. While there were no laws against riding motorcycles in a remote forest, this massive commotion felt less like a joyride and more like an invasion. It reminded him of those "Ghost Fire" delinquents who terrorized streets at midnight.
Still, he didn't exactly have the right to tell people how to spend their time.
What truly caught Kashiwagi's attention was the sudden panic in the Drifloon. They began tugging at his arms again, trying to pull him into the sky—but this time, they weren't trying to scare him. They were trying to get him away.
The look on their faces reminded him of something very unpleasant.
In the distance, through the thick foliage, a group of people on mountain bikes and motorcycles came riding in, hooting and hollering. Numerous Golbat and Crobat flanked them, firing dark beams of light that pinned the fleeing wild Pokémon in place.
The riders laughed as they hurled dense, fine-mesh nets at the Pokémon, leaving them trapped on the ground as they moved on to the next target.
Using nets instead of Poké Balls... it was definitely them. The captured Pokémon were likely intended for later collection.
"Pokémon Hunters..."
Kashiwagi clicked his tongue. He felt like he'd been running into villains a lot lately... well, maybe not all the time, but it had only been a few days since the last incident.
There were two reasons why Pokémon Hunters preferred nets over Poké Balls:
1. Failure Rates: Poké Balls can fail, and you have to wait for them to click before you know if the catch was successful.
2. Tracking: Poké Balls are equipped with "Black Tech" registration systems. They record the Pokémon's data, and if a Trainer already has six, the seventh is automatically teleported to the person who issued the Pokédex.
...
Nets were simply faster and more efficient. Add a little electric shock device to the mesh, and nine out of ten Pokémon would be too incapacitated to resist.
Of course.
In Kashiwagi's eyes, the fact that these guys had the aim of a wet noodle when it came to throwing Poké Balls probably played a part in their choice of equipment, too.
As the saying goes, "two fists are no match for four hands." While he certainly had the urge to take these scumbags down then and there, he wasn't planning on a reckless frontal assault—he wasn't a bonehead like Ash.
The mystery of why the Drifloon were so starving was finally solved.
So they had escaped from the Pokémon Hunters. He hadn't expected the little balloons to have that much fight in them.
"Hide."
He instructed Porygon to stay inside the phone and pulled the Drifloon behind a massive tree. The protruding roots formed a natural alcove, shielding him and the Pokémon on three sides.
If the hunters weren't paying close attention, they likely wouldn't see them.
And if they did...
Kashiwagi took out two Poké Balls. He calculated his odds of winning a fight against four people and four Pokémon simultaneously. If he could disarm the humans quickly, his chances were actually quite high.
Most Pokémon Hunters owned many Pokémon—some even had pseudo-legendaries.
However, their actual battle proficiency was usually pathetic; if they were actually good at battling, they'd have a much brighter future as legitimate Trainers.
As he mused, the roar of engines grew deafening. Amidst manic whooping and hollering that sounded right in his ear, the hunters tore past his position at a ridiculous speed, seemingly unbothered by the risk of flipping their bikes.
Kashiwagi held the Drifloon tight, keeping his phone camera aimed forward while locking his gaze on the Crobat—the ones most likely to sniff them out.
Fortunately, luck was on his side.
Nobody noticed him or the Drifloon crouching in the deep shadows of the ancient tree.
Once the hunters had swaggered off into the distance, Kashiwagi led the Drifloon out of the hollow. He watched the dust settling behind the bikers and decisively called the police.
After hanging up, he looked in the direction they had gone, feeling hesitant.
In a remote, trackless forest like this, Officer Jenny and her team might not be able to arrive immediately. Furthermore, police sirens were notoriously loud; with the paranoia common among Pokémon Hunters, they'd likely bolt the moment they heard a whisper of trouble.
He hadn't called the cops just to give these guys a chance to escape.
It would be better to inform the local Pokémon Ranger. A Ranger could make a call on the situation and would certainly have more experience handling this kind of crisis than a lone traveler.
Kashiwagi pulled up his digital map. A Ranger Station was marked nearby. Unfortunately... the hunters had come from exactly that direction.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He released the Drifloon's strings and whispered, "You guys need to leave. Fly higher so the Crobat and those people won't spot you."
With that, he started heading toward the Ranger Station.
"Drif..."
The Drifloon exchanged glances. Instead of fleeing as instructed, they trailed after him. Having experienced the hunters' cruelty firsthand, they were worried about this human who had shared his food with them.
Kashiwagi noticed them but didn't protest. Instead, he led the way, stopping to untie the wild Pokémon trapped in the hunters' wake.
He discovered that the capture nets were indeed equipped with electric shock modules. If one tried to force the net open or cut the mesh without the matching key, the device would trigger.
It would even send a silent signal alert to the hunters.
It was a bit more sophisticated than the junk Team Rocket usually used.
However, against a "digital prankster" like Porygon, such tricks were child's play. It was easy to hack and disable the devices without alerting the hunters. Before Kashiwagi even had to ask, Porygon had already dived into the circuitry to shut the systems down.
—That's the beauty of the Internet of Things.
As long as a device had a network connection, Porygon could slip inside. In that sense, it shared a similar niche with Rotom.
The only real difference was that Rotom only needed electricity, whereas Porygon required a signal.
"Hide, and don't make a sound."
Kashiwagi calmed the panicked wild Pokémon and continued his approach toward the station, signaling the Drifloon to stay low to avoid detection. He moved through the woods, disabling every trap he found along the way.
Soon, he reached the outskirts of the Ranger Station. He froze as the sounds of a commotion reached his ears.
"Shh—"
He made a silencing gesture to the Drifloon and parted the bushes. Near a small creek, the Ranger Station was surrounded by iron cages of all sizes. Inside, various wild Pokémon were either huddled in silence or screeching in terror.
Two mountain bikes were parked nearby. Two hunters sat by the door, laughing and smoking. Their two Mightyena were sneezing constantly, clearly irritated by the secondhand smoke.
"They actually have canine Pokémon... luckily, these guys are heavy smokers."
He curled his lip. In a normal situation, the Mightyena would have caught his scent instantly, but the smoke had effectively neutralized their tracking abilities. Talk about a stroke of luck.
He scouted the perimeter and realized he could circle around the creek to a blind spot.
"...Stay here. Don't move until I call for you, okay?"
Kashiwagi used hand gestures as he whispered to the Drifloon. These clever little ghosts seemed to understand perfectly.
Indeed, as he moved away, they stayed put, watching him with wide eyes.
What well-behaved Ghost-types, he thought.
Feeling slightly more at ease, Kashiwagi moved with silent speed to the rear of the cabin. He gripped a Poké Ball and crept forward.
There was a window at the back.
He climbed up soundlessly and peered inside. He immediately saw the Ranger tied up in a corner. The man was still conscious—at least he wasn't dead.
Pokémon Hunters ranged from petty thieves to cold-blooded killers. Hunter J from the Sinnoh region had been the particularly vicious type—though she ultimately met her end in Lake Valor, making her one of the few characters explicitly confirmed dead in the anime.
After confirming there were only two hunters out front, Kashiwagi climbed onto the roof, looking down at his targets from the high ground.
He had to admit, the Mightyena were sharp. Even with their noses half-ruined by smoke, they instinctively looked up and locked eyes with Kashiwagi.
"Awooo—!"
The howl had barely left the Pokémon's throat when Kashiwagi leaped from the roof. The light of a Poké Ball opening flashed beside him with a sharp pop.
BANG!
Mawile and Porygon (who had lunged out of the phone) struck simultaneously. A Power-Up Punch and a Thunderbolt sent the Mightyena flying before the two hunters could even process what was happening.
The men turned their heads in a panicked daze.
"Who the—GAH!"
The two let out a synchronized scream. Because they were sitting so close together, Kashiwagi was able to grab both their heads in his palms and slam them into the ground with a sickening thud. Their eyes rolled back, and they went out like lights.
"Phew..."
Kashiwagi stood up and exhaled. He glanced at the Mightyena, who had already been neutralized by Mawile and Porygon, and called out to the bushes. "It's over! Come on out!"
"Drif~"
The four Drifloon wobbled out into the open.
"They're all yours. Just make sure they don't go anywhere." Kashiwagi patted the hunters down to ensure they weren't carrying any weapons before handing them over to the Drifloon's "supervision."
He stepped into the Ranger Station.
Under the wide-eyed gaze of the captive Ranger, he untied the man and pulled the gag from his mouth.
"I've taken care of the two outside. There are four more out hunting who haven't returned. I've already called the police. What's the plan?"
Kashiwagi laid out the situation at top speed.
The Ranger froze for a second, then cried out in agony, "When did you call the police?! Did the others head southwest? You have to stop them! You can't let them catch Raikou!"
"—Huh?"
"Raikou! The legendary Thunder Pokémon! Raikou!"
The Ranger's voice hit Kashiwagi like a physical bolt of lightning, sending a jolt straight through his heart.