Chapter 156 (Part 2)

Author Note:

Read Part 1 here!

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“Mom?” Sam rubbed his eyes just to make sure what he was seeing was not a prank. “And Redi?”

“Sam!” both of them said in reply.

From the far end of the hallway beneath Silver Town’s main arena, Sam watched his mother pick up her pace to meet him where he walked. Redi, meanwhile, practically dashed over to get right in front of him. Before she got too close, however, she skidded to a halt and rubbed her arm, awkwardly chuckling without knowing what to say after being apart for so long.

“It’s been a while,” Sam said.

“Since Ecruteak! But we’ve sent each other a message once or twice, I guess.”

“Yeah. I told you I’d be in the Ilex Forest.”

“And you were late because of that, you jerk!”

Redi huffed in annoyance, but Sam just laughed slightly. There was so much he wanted to say to catch up with her, but a flash of movement from behind caught his attention, and his eyes landed on a Pokémon he did not expect to see.

“Wait, is that Porygon? No, it’s a Porygon2!” he exclaimed. “Wow, you managed to evolve that quickly?”

To his amazement, Porygon actually reacted. Rather than aimlessly floating in place, the now much more rounded Pokémon brought up its head in a very Redi-like motion. It stayed in place like usual, but it acted with a surprising amount of animation to effectively go through its own version of strutting in pride.

“Yeah! Mr. Pokémon is all about learning new things, so he sent me to someone who’d help out,” Redi said. “Turns out, all Porygon needed to do to evolve was eat a massive computer database!”

Sam waited a moment to hear the punchline, but none ever came.

“Porygon ate a database?” he asked flatly.

“Uh-huh. Something about them being a learning datavore?” Redi said with a shrug. “But now people are working on turning data gathered from that event into something recreatable via disc, so there’s going to be Porygon-2 all over the place! All thanks to us!”

She puffed up her chest, and Porygon imitated the motion behind her. Redi didn’t notice, and because of that, Sam couldn’t stop his laughter.

“But it’s not just Porygon!” Redi continued, blasting through to get a word in edgewise the moment Sam started to calm down. “It’s everyone on my team! We’re all way, way stronger, now!”

Sam took a second to settle down.

“Please,” he said teasingly. “Can’t be much. You only have, what, four Pokémon on your team?”

“Actually,” Redi said, leaning in with a knowing smile, “Right now, I have five.”

Sam blinked at her, struck speechless for the second time today, and a grin crossed Redi’s face as she took in Sam’s shock.

“But what about you, huh?” she said, nudging him in the arm. “You got your last Pokémon? Mine was kind of a volunteer from back home, so I didn’t need to catch or trade for her, but you said you had a plan? Something about trading for a Pokémon that can help with transportation?”

“Something like that,” Sam said, patting a certain Ultra Ball on his waist.

Redi sent him an intrigued look, but she didn’t press. She hadn’t revealed her newest team member, and neither had Sam. They could have found somewhere to show off their teams, but that would have defeated part of the point they had split up. They might have still been friends, but they were competitors.

The best place to show off their teams would be in the Conference itself.

“Come on! Let’s catch up.”

Sam was in these lower tunnels to leave after his preliminary match, and after Gengar’s performance, he doubted he’d need to come back to compete in a second one. Redi told him that she wouldn’t be up for a battle until late afternoon, but she had still been allowed in due to being a fellow competitor, and Sam’s mom had been able to join her due to the familiar connection alongside Redi’s vouch, though she wasn’t allowed to send any Pokémon out.

It would have been fine to keep speaking down there, but voices carried, and they didn’t exactly have a way to tell if someone was listening in. They left the arena and left the general area of the Conference to find a more private place to talk. Instead of anywhere too busy, they settled down in a quiet park. This wasn’t exactly a location reserved for the Conference, but a few trainers obviously competing in it had claimed the park’s public battlefields to give their teams a less occupied place to train.

Sam, Redi, and his mother found a table at which they could sit and talk.

“Porygon managed to evolve mostly because of Mr. Pokémon,” Redi explained. Across from her, now that they were done walking, Delcatty released herself just so she could sit in Sam’s mother’s lap. “I already mentioned this before, but Upgrade discs for a Porygon’s evolution are in development. Mr. Pokémon and the guy who helped me already managed to work out deals for various rights to them, and since Porygon was the one who evolved, we’re getting a significant share of that.”

Sam nodded along. He could tell by the sharp look in his mother’s eyes that her business sense was going off.

“That’s good,” he said. “I’m happy for you. You said a big part of why you headed out on a journey was for the money, right?”

“S-sure,” Redi said, suddenly stuttering. “But I was just going to do that by advertising. Money is just money, but this level of income isn’t going to last forever. Really, I brought it up because I wanted to give you this.”

She wiggled in her seat to slip off her backpack, and she swung it around to let it rest in her lap. She then began to zip it open, but Sam stopped her before she could pull anything out.

“Wait, are you about to give me money?” he said, voice serious.

Redi froze.

“...Maybe?”

“You’re trying to pay me?”

“It was your information that let us do all of that!”

“I didn’t do it for payment!”

“But I want to give you at least something in return!”

And Sam just frowned, causing Redi to draw back.

“Ugh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be mean,” Sam said softly. “It’s just, well, I don’t know. How do I say this?”

He sent a glance to his mother.

“I talked to grandpa,” Sam said carefully. “The Ilex Forest has a lot of strange Pokémon. And... I learned a lot about the New Pokédex.”

Immediately, Redi seemed to forget everything about whatever she had planned to give Sam. She leaned forward in intense interest, hands slamming onto the surface of the park’s table.

“Tell me,” she breathed.

Sam looked at his mother. She was silent, and her face was surprisingly tranquil. He bit his lip, uncomfortable, but she just shook her head to try to reassure him.

“It’s alright, Sam. I made my peace long ago. You don’t need to worry about me, and besides, I suspected something was up with that man.”

With that, Redi was practically vibrating in place, and Sam knew he couldn’t wait.

He began.

“The New Pokédex isn’t from the future or anything like that,” he said. “It wasn’t sent to my grandpa, but it was sent back to him. He’s the author—mostly. He’s the one who wrote all of its information down.”

Redi then hit him with a barrage of questions, trying to squeeze as much information out of him. Every so often, his mother would chime in, often asking something simple just for a slight bit of clarification.

Sam went over the events of the Ilex Forest, explaining to them the same thing he explained to his team. He was honestly slightly uncomfortable given the topic of the conversation, but he had brought up the topic for a reason. He wanted to get the information out instead of holding it all in.

“Wow.” Redi pinched herself as if to check if she was dreaming. “So, then, Celebi is your second grandpa, huh?”

A beat passed. It was interrupted when both Sam’s mother and Delcatty started to choke off to the side.

“H-huh?”

“Uh, it’s pretty obvious?” Redi said. “Celebi was the one to bring your grandfather over. So that means Celebi is responsible for why your family is here. So that all means that Celebi is basically your second grandpa!”

She paused.

“Or great grandpa. Or great grandma?” Redi said. “Do Legendary Pokémon even have a gender?”

“...I don’t know,” Sam said, staring ahead blankly.

Redi nodded as if that statement carried all the answers in the world.

“So, then, about the money...”

Thankfully, her question brought him back down to earth.

“No. Sorry. It wouldn’t be right. The New Pokédex is my grandfather’s, and because of that, it’s my choice to decide on what to do with the information in it,” he said. “For everything I told you, I didn’t tell you to get a payment. It was a gift to you because you’re my friend. It’s only as simple as that.”

Hearing Sam’s explanation, Redi huffed and fell back in her seat with her arms crossed.

“Fine, I guess. But this sucks. You get this cool backstory and get to go experience all these cool events, but all I got to do was meet with a bunch of important resources and talk to famous people.”

“Did Ursaring evolve, at least?” Sam asked after a moment’s pause.

His question was met with a grumble.

“...Next full moon is in two days,” Redi said, “but Mr. Pokémon seems confident about that one.”

From there, their conversation mostly devolved into idle chatter, and Sam and Redi told each other about everything they’d been up to. Sam told her about all of the crazy events he’d experienced, making sure to keep certain team developments vague, and Redi did the same, speaking about all of the crazy experiments Mr. Pokémon sent her to.

Though they might have been apart, neither of their journeys had calmed down. A month and a half had passed, but their teams had grown much stronger for it.

Occasionally, Sam’s mom would chime in, mostly just to ask a question more than anything else. She just seemed happy to see her son be so animated for once.

“Oh, shoot!” Redi’s face paled when she sent a glance to her PokéGear. “I have to go! My match is almost up!”

“I’ll come with. I want to watch,” Sam said. “And, mom, I’ll show my team to you later, alright?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to it.”

And with that, they all stood to return to the Conference, except—

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Amanda let her son lead the group from the front, giving him the duty to keep an eye out for the signs that marked the roads that would take them back. She let herself fall back to meet with Redi, giving them the chance to have a quiet, unheard conversation.

“I’m curious,” she said. “Just how much did Sam turn down?”

Silently, without saying even a single word, Redi shifted her backpack around to let it hang off a single arm. With a simple zip, the pack opened.

The decently-sized bag was filled to the brim with cold, hard cash.

For a while, Amanda did nothing but stare at that immense sum. Eventually, she managed to force herself to bring up an arm and close the bag back up.

“Oh my.” It took her a moment to gather her thoughts. “Let’s keep this between us, hm? I think it would be best if Sam never learns how much that was, alright?”

“...Alright,” Redi whispered.

However, although the sheer amount of cash Sam had just unknowingly turned down was a mind-boggling sum, Amanda couldn’t say his decision had been the worst.

After all, knowing her son, and knowing what he was capable of after that match?

Once he started to reveal the true power of his team in the Conference, the sponsorship offers rolling in would make even that amount look like a paltry sum.

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Author Note:

Pokémon included in this chapter:
Arbok
Celebi
Nidoqueen
Nidorino
Porygon / Porygon2
Ursaring

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