Valtor heard a humming noise coming from the other side of the table, and Kenta looked down at his pocket. “Phone’s ringing,” he said, pulling out a green cellular phone. Valtor looked at it curiously. “Hey, that’s not your old phone, is it?”

“Nope. Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” came Curtis’s voice in Kenta’s ear. “Uh, could you come over here real quick? We’ve got a problem.”

Kenta’s eyes widened. “The Master Ball isn’t giving you trouble, is it?”

“No, it’s not that, though that was a surprise,” said Curtis in a nervous voice. “But we found out what the Master Ball’s made of. Hurry over, okay?”

“Alright, but hold on.” Kenta motioned to Valtor to listen carefully, then annunciated his words very carefully into the speaker. “From now on, don’t give your secrets to anyone who doesn’t enter your house with a password. We need to be secretive, or the lot of us will likely be hauled off to prison again. And this time, it’ll be much more serious.”

He heard Curtis gulp. “If you say so. What’s the password then?”

***

“Why that password?” asked Valtor, as he and Kenta left the restaurant and began their short walk down the freezing street towards Kurt’s house. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t like it, I’m just wondering.”

“It’s an antonym,” said Kenta, already looking happier now that he was moving again. “It symbolizes our cause, like a good password should. Tell me, Valtor, who are we against?”

Valtor thought for a moment. “Silhouette?”

“Not them, but you’re close. Think bigger.”

“ . . . G.R.I.P.!”

“Right!” Kenta shot him a thumbs-up and smiled. “The Government Restrictive Institute on Pokémon. They were the forerunners of this whole mess to begin with, and it’s in their name that the government has stolen our pokémon away.” His face darkened. “How appropriate, that the acronym spells out the status of Pokémon Japan. They’ve got a death-grip on every trainer in this country, and they’re not letting go.”

They had reached Kurt’s doorstep. Kenta raised his voice. “That’s why we demand a release!”

The sliding panel door opened, and Curtis poked his head out and looked at them. “Welcome back!” he said jubilantly, bidding them to come in with a swinging of his hand. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for getting Grandpa back! Maisy’ll be so happy when I call her!”

“Well, it’s about time you showed some gratitude for that,” said Kenta in a grumpy voice, crossing his arms. Valtor looked at him in horror, and immediately his face cracked. “Ha, ha, just kidding. How’s Elder Kurt enjoying his freedom?”

Curtis poked a thumb at the work bench in the back of the room and smiled, rolling his eyes. Kenta shrugged, putting up his arms. “Of course. He’s not happy unless he’s working on something. There’s a good man.”

“Yep.” Curtis turned and waved Kurt over, grinning. “Grandpa, take a break.” He looked back at Kenta. “Hey, do you have the time?”

“Yeah, uh . . . it’s 2:25. Why?”

“I reviewed the television guide earlier today. There’s this thing that’s airing once every three hours for the whole week, discussing how active pokémon holders are to train now. I figured you might want to take a look at it, and see for yourself what G.R.I.P. is expecting from Pokémon Japan. But before it comes on . . .”

Curtis lowered his voice. “I’ve still got something to ask you. What’s this I hear about you wanting Grandpa to make as many Master Balls as he possibly can?”

Valtor looked at Kenta expectantly. He himself had already known from earlier in the morning that a plethora of Master Ball duplicates was part of Kenta’s plan, but he’d been flabbergasted by the news when he first heard it. Kenta gave Valtor a reassuring nod, and motioned to the floor mats around a traditional Japanese ground-level table. “You guys may want to sit down.”

It took Kenta about half an hour to discuss his reasons for needing Kurt to make as many Master Balls as humanly possible. Curtis made a few astonished interjections at Kenta’s daring, but Kurt retained a face of silent awe. When he’d finished, the two pokéball-makers gave each other a lasting look of silent agreement, then gave Kenta a firm nod.

“I’m in. My years are many, and I’ve seen mostly everything there is to see. What can they hope to do to me at this point in my life, if they catch me?”

“And if I’m caught, I can always flee to America . . . joking! Joking!”

Kenta smiled at the two of them. “I appreciate it, you guys. I know this is risky, but we’re not alone. Before long, we’ll have more friends than this entire town can hold, even if they all stood shoulder-to-shoulder.” He clasped his hands together tightly, determinedly, staring down at them as he thought about the long road ahead. “You’d be surprised how quickly a resistance can form when times are desperate. All you need is a common foe.”

“You mean, like this one?” asked Curtis, flipping out a remote from his sleeve and pressing a button. The television came on, and Valtor gave an involuntary grunt of anger at the man’s face on the screen. It was Silvaki Kurisawa, the appointed head of G.R.I.P.

“-may think that pokémon training will be less worthwhile now that there are only two available spaces on your team,” he was saying with a sympathetic smile, looking directly at the camera, at his home audience. “Let me assure you, however, that pokémon has never really been about catching ‘em all, as the popular slogan went in the old days.” He gave a short laugh. “I mean, come on . . . before the pokémon space bacteria spread to the Johto region, we only knew of a hundred and fifty pokémon, and some of them were merely considered mythical creatures for a while. Yet, can you imagine having to feed just twenty pokémon a day? How about forty? How about eighty? It’s just ridiculous, how we used to think.”

“Listen to his voice,” snarled Valtor, glowering with fury. “Listen to how sleek he is. This guy could be the king of dirty lawyers.”

“He makes a valid point though,” said Kenta, with a thoughtful hand under his chin. “This is precisely the reason I’ve only captured four pokémon in my life.”

“My friends, you must have a different goal now,” continued Kurisawa in his reasoning tone. “Rather than catching them all, you should be about battling them all! That’s what pokémon do- they live to battle. And the minor restrictions we’ve placed on usable pokémon will make such a goal far more achievable. Don’t worry- restricted pokémon are not gone forever! G.R.I.P. promises to have five zoos up and running before the end of this very year. Everyone, not just you- your mother, your father, your sister and brother, all will have a chance to see such magnificent pokémon as Sinnoh’s Garchomp, and the Herron Region’s Ungarmax.”

“You know, this guy makes some convincing arguments,” observed Curtis, watching the T.V. with his arms crossed. “He’s doing all the right things. You see how he’s invoking family and friends? And he’s promising that everyone’ll have equality in getting to experience pokémon, trainer or not. He’s really trying to make G.R.I.P.’s vision sound good, here.”

“Yeah, but I wonder how he’ll sugarcoat the fact that he’s torn countless families apart,” muttered Kenta through his teeth. “Every trainer’s team is his family away from home. Bakuphoon, Spear, and Bolt gave me a sort of comfort that overcame my homesickness on the road. You can’t get that sort of intimacy from just anyone.”

“Kenta,” said Curtis quietly, nervously, “no offense, but could you wait on that? Kurisawa’s discussing catching policies now.”

“. . . Alright.”

“Now, there’s a method that you can use which is quite simple, when determining whether or not you should have a certain pokémon,” Kurisawa was saying brightly, smiling in a similar fashion to the Dali Lama. “If your pokémon is the kind you’d naturally run across in the wild, such as a Mareep or a Weepinbel, then you’re fine! On the other hand, if strange circumstances so happen to wind you up with, say, a Metagross, you should get it sorted out as soon as possible on our website. Make sure you do a thorough check on any suspected borderline pokémon, and you’ll do just fine!”

As the website address appeared at the bottom of the screen, www.grippolicies.gov, Kurisawa raised a finger and made a "this-is-important" face like the one Valtor had seen his elementary school teachers often give him. “Be advised! There is one pokémon that is not in the uber category of forbidden candidates, but is still illegal to own by anyone without authorization. Also known for causing blackouts to minor cities, this pokémon is Magneton. For the reason just given-”

“Magneton!” repeated Kurt, looking suddenly overwhelmed. He glanced wildly at Curtis. “Turn that off!”

“O-okay.” The picture of Magneton on the television screen went blank, and Kurt clapped a hand to his forehead. “Just think! Magneton. But it makes sense!”

Everyone looked at him, and Valtor raised an eyebrow. “What makes sense, sir?” he asked, trying to sound polite. “Is Magneton special?”

“Well . . . yes, and no.” Kurt held up Kenta’s Master Ball in his hand, and all eyes turned to the forbidden object. Kurt cleared his throat. “Though I live in this little out- of-the-way town, I am not ignorant to the many pokéballs invented by designers over the years,” he said importantly. “Other than the compound and expand mechanism, they’re really not all that complex. The power of a pokéball comes from its magnetic potential.”

“Magnetism?” said Kenta. “Is that really all there is to it?”

“Indeed. My family’s been making pokéballs for almost a hundred years.” Kurt held up one of his custom-made apricorn pokéballs: a Lure Ball. “Back in the nineteen- twenties, we didn’t have much to work with other than natural materials like apricorn shells and magnetic rocks from the cave east of Azalea. Pokémon themselves are the ones that turn into energy when being sucked into pokéballs; the ball itself has nothing to do with that part. I mean, have you ever seen a regular cat go into a pokéball? It doesn’t work.

“Anyway, the first pokéballs were so weak that their only purpose was to hold pokémon already tamed. Then as time went on, we eventually learned to make better magnets for the balls so they would stay snapped shut when activated, and temporarily turn off when the pokémon needed out. These were the electromagnets.”

Kurt turned his head towards the television screen. “What’s fishy about this is the fact that the most powerful electromagnet currently known to man is being dubbed a forbidden pokémon . . .” He again raised the Master Ball. “And meanwhile, the crowned jewel of the pokéball collection is made of something very much like Magneton!”

A heavy silence fell following Kurt’s words as the meaning clicked, and Valtor recalled what Kenta had remembered seeing and hearing back at Silph Corporation. The trainers there used mostly Electrode and Magneton! Of course . . . it’s so obvious now!

“Hold on a second,” said Kenta, suddenly looking horrified. “If this really is a Magneton, does that mean . . .” His eyes widened. “No! They can’t! Are they killing pokémon just to turn them into balls?”

“Well, wait a minute,” said Kurt, as Kenta leaped to his feet in alarm. “I didn’t say your Master Ball necessarily was a Magneton. It just bears similar features in metallic structure.”

“I still have to be sure!” Kenta hefted up Valtor’s backpack and darted into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. The three remaining people at the table barely had time to exchange wondering glances when Kenta was back out, in his Brendan Birch clothes again. He turned his eyes gravely to Valtor. “Put up your hood. We’re going to Kanto!”

***

“Kenta, was this part of the plan?” Valtor asked him sometime later, as the two brothers soared through the clouds of Kanto on Bolt’s back. “We didn’t know until about twenty minutes ago that the Master Ball was a pokémon.”

“The plan was originally to get the necessary raw materials for Kurt to make dozens of Master Balls with,” Kenta shouted to him over the screaming of the passing wind. “But all that changes if it means killing innocent creatures. Silph probably could’ve made the Master Ball years ago, and their project may have only been halted by ethical dilemmas.”

So we don’t have a plan now, thought Valtor nervously as they dropped lower towards a nearby mountain peak. This is scaring me. We need to be thinking out loud here, or we might finally make the fatal blunder that gets us locked away before anything can happen!

“Hey, bro,” he said again, pulling Kenta’s sleeve to hold his attention. “Sorry, but what makes you so certain that we need to be going this way?”

“Oh, just a little incident that happened not long after I got shot.” Kenta looked down past Bolt’s neck, at the ground far below. “Bolt, pull down here. You remember this spot, don’cha, boy?”

They were approaching a village nearby a great mountain to the north. A transmission tower was lodged in the mountain, and a pathway ran down from it and into the village. Bolt touched down just beyond the town’s boundaries, and Valtor shaded his eyes to get a clear look at the houses. Up above, he hadn’t noticed it, but each and every building within the town had a long, metallic stick rising out of the highest part of the roof. He dismounted from Bolt’s back, and automatically covered his mouth as the dust from the dirt road swirled around him. Kenta patted his Salamence on the head, tossed him a pokéblock, and gave him a quick salute. “Nice flying today, Bolt. You’re going to sleep well tonight!”

Bolt munched the pokéblock happily, then raised his wings and looked at Kenta inquisitively. Kenta smiled. “There’s a good soldier. Keep an eye in the sky, and let me know if you see any suspicious activity.”

Valtor again covered his face as Bolt took off once more, kicking up a dust storm in the process. He didn’t lower his arms again until he felt Kenta’s hand on his back, guiding him forward. “We have to keep moving,” said Kenta, picking up a light jog. Valtor kept with him, and looked once more at the town before them. Again, something had escaped his notice; a chain-linked fence surrounded the place on all sides, and only where the road led in was there an open gate. He turned to eyes to Kenta, and saw that he was smiling.

“On first impression, it may seem like these people don’t like outsiders, but they’re really very friendly. Welcome to Henna Villa, the town where everyone owns a jeep.”

They passed through the gates, and Kenta looked around the village with relish. “This takes me back,” he said, as they continued jogging past houses. “Ready for another story, Valtor? It’s relevant to what we’re doing now.”

“Uh, sure.” You never did get to mentioning what happened to you after the Silph incident.

Kenta pointed at one of the random houses as they passed it, with a grayish-green cement wall. “This was the place where I was nursed back to health. I suppose I’ll begin here.”

***