thefictionvixens Chapter 157 The Listener
Chapter 157 The Listener
Chapter 167 The Listener to the Heart
After being outmaneuvered by Piplup and Chimchar, Smurf immediately chose to run away.
Plans are no longer important; the key is that I, as one of the Seven Sages, absolutely cannot be captured!
With such unwavering conviction, the elderly man displayed a speed and courage rarely seen in his life, turning and running without hesitation. He even knocked over two police officers behind him, managing to squeeze through the gaps in the crowd.
It's really not fair to blame the police in the United States for being incompetent. After all, not everyone in the police force is a frontline officer. Many of the officers gathered here are civilian staff who have only received basic training and whose combat capabilities are not much better than those of ordinary people.
And no one expected that this frail old man with a long white beard could suddenly unleash the indomitable spirit of a rugby player.
Corridors, corners, lobbies, main entrance...
After breaking through the encirclement, the old man ran wildly, overturning tables and chairs along the way, and occasionally letting out half-true, half-false shouts to confuse the police officers who were closing in.
Although his athletic ability was not as good as the young police officers chasing him, he had the advantage of clear thinking and had planned an escape route in advance. Smura actually managed to escape to the police station.
However, at that moment, a sharp monkey cry rang in the ears of the Seven Sages.
Smura whirled around and saw that less than a meter behind her, the little fire monkey, which had been swallowed up by the crowd, had reappeared and was swinging in mid-air, clinging to the door frame. It was still shaking and gathering its strength, seemingly trying to swing onto the old man in one fell swoop.
"Damn it, I don't have time to waste with you."
Smurf, who usually solves problems with his intelligence, had reached his limit. He reached for his waist, intending to send out a powerful Pokémon to take care of that damned tail in one fell swoop.
But they came up empty-handed.
A faint smile appeared on the little fire monkey's lips, its two small fangs standing out prominently.
This was the work of Piplup – earlier, when they were surrounded by police officers in the corridor, the two little guys took advantage of the moment they got close to the old man and stole his Poké Ball.
By this time, the Pokémon they had been holding were scattered throughout the nooks and crannies of the police station. Even if the Pokémon inside jumped out of their balls, they wouldn't be able to come to the rescue in time.
The old man, having lost his trump card, broke out in a cold sweat and could only rely on his frail legs to keep running, trying to shake off the wretched little fire monkey and the police officers who rushed out from behind it.
That damned fire-type beginner Pokémon, as if toying with its prey, maintained a distance that was neither too close nor too far from Smura. It neither rushed to catch up with the panting old man nor slowed down. The cluster of flames rising from behind it was particularly conspicuous in the dim twilight, guiding the police officers in the direction they were heading...
.
"When the first Magnemite came to me, I had no idea what kind of disaster was about to happen."
At Factory Manager William's home, a tall, middle-aged man with a dejected and sluggish expression in his eyes, his resolute jaw, usually so adept at giving orders, opened and closed as he described the specific circumstances of the incident to Bilan, Douzi, and N.
“An engineer named Arno once warned me that if we continued to let Electric-type Pokémon spontaneously generate electricity, it would cause great damage to their physical and mental health. But I did not heed her advice and abandon the plan. On the one hand, I believed that advanced medical and breeding methods could offset the adverse effects of long-term self-destruction. On the other hand, it was because at that time no company considered the health of Pokémon as a problem to be considered, and I actually shared the same view as them.”
"The lives of Pokémon are insignificant—such a statement would be heavily criticized today, but in the past, when there were no Pokémon labor laws, it seemed like common sense. I am not a morally abnormal person who would be happy to mistreat Pokémon, but now that I think about it, when faced with choices, I did subconsciously look down on Pokémon, and I selectively ignored their feelings—perhaps fate punished me for this oversight."
In front of three strangers, William candidly and openly dissects himself.
“The Pokémon’s demands for better treatment come up almost every month, especially at the Liyong Power Plant. Our human employees have great benefits, including long vacations and countless employee bonuses, so many Pokémon are envious and protest. But the company is ultimately profit-driven, and we can’t satisfy all their demands.”
"In dealing with the Pokémon's protests, we've also gained a basic understanding of their behavior patterns. Compared to the angry and malicious marches of humans, the Pokémon's protests lack coordination and are mostly minor squabbles, sometimes even bordering on whining. Since the Pokémon can't speak, their pay raise requests are often relayed by an employee. The human lists the conditions, while the Pokémon nods or shakes its head to express its attitude. The company will respond to the requests made by the representative, sometimes even offering a small increase in pay, but to calm the rioting Pokémon down, it still requires the representative the Pokémon approached to offer reassurance..."
"In our company, the person who most often plays this role of proxy is Arno. Before that fatal production accident, she would often leave her work and lead her Pokémon to make all sorts of unreasonable demands on the factory. She even once led her group of Magnemite and Voltorb to propose abolishing the night shift system for power-generating Pokémon—we are a power plant, and a department's regular shutdown could destroy the entire quarter's production capacity."
"So you believe that this explosion is actually a continuation of Ms. Arnault's past activities?"
Azure reacted quickly: "But Arno had a perfect alibi when the explosion occurred. All the evidence also shows that the demonstration was spontaneously caused by the Electric-type Pokémon."
"This is precisely what I find most perplexing, because the agent didn't appear until the very last moment. It wasn't until then that I understood the intentions of those Electric-type Pokémon—when seventy-one Electric-type Pokémon lined up neatly in front of me, and the lead Magneton placed a countdown clock in front of me, silently gathering a white light to unleash its 'Explosion' move, I finally realized my past ignorance—"
William sighed deeply: "Pokémon that are used to generating electricity with the 'Big Bang' move don't seem to think that a mass self-destruction is a terrifying thing at all."
"Why don't you grant all the elves' requests immediately?" Douzi asked bluntly. "That way, the crisis can be temporarily resolved."
“Because it was too late then,” the middle-aged man said, shaking his head heavily. “When the first Magnemite approached me, it gestured wildly, trying to show me its intentions, but I refused its request without thinking. After I saw the Pokémon start preparing for their mass self-destruction, no matter how much I changed my mind, they wouldn’t listen to me. The only mercy they showed me was that moment when the clock started counting down…”
“In those fifteen minutes, I did my best to minimize the damage from the impending explosion. I evacuated the employees in time and notified the police and fire department. After the explosion, I contacted Arnault immediately, partly to confirm whether she was responsible for the incident, and partly to ask her to temporarily conceal the power generation unit’s functionality so that the unemployed employees could find new jobs… I did everything I could.”
"But the Pokémon's behavior is completely illogical."
Even Douzi noticed something was wrong at this point.
"Normally, shouldn't they demonstrate their force first, and then negotiate? And since they don't realize the power of the 'big explosion,' why did they give you, the factory manager, time to evacuate the employees? Shouldn't they have just exploded without a care in the world?"
The conversation fell silent, as neither the parties involved nor the assistant who had received guidance from the detective could answer the two questions.
Just as the atmosphere was about to freeze—
"Don't you understand?"
The green-haired youth stood up and uttered a cold, demanding question. His face was filled with grief and indignation.
"You still treat this explosion as an accident, as if it could have been avoided by taking some countermeasures. But please don't forget that the essence of this explosion is a long-standing revolution of resentment. The elves have never received the respect and equal treatment from humans!"
"You're still wondering why the elves didn't adopt a strategy that maximized their profits, thus losing their lives for nothing! But what you don't know is that they wanted to use this earth-shattering explosion to prove their existence! We exist here! We want equal treatment! We may be kind enough to be indifferent to the world, or we may be foolish enough to be unreasonable, but we also hope that humanity can hear our cries! Even if this lament is written with lives!"
N smirked self-deprecatingly: "I was so stupid. I kept investigating the incident and searching for the truth, thinking that as long as I found out the truth, the idea of treating Pokémon equally would take root in people's hearts. But even now, when the few people in the whole city who know the most about this incident get together, they still realize what the voices of those dead Pokémon were."
"N, what exactly are you trying to say?"
Azure became alert, its brown eyes fixed on the nominal leader of the Plasma Group.
The traces of the torrential rain a few days ago have completely disappeared. Now, the cold winter wind blows over Liyong City, and countless plumes of smoke stretching into the sky change direction with the wind, but the one belonging to the Liyong Power Plant is no longer among them.
Inside, the hint of bewilderment that had lingered in the green-haired youth's eyes had vanished. He stood tall before the two young girls and the bankrupt businessman, proclaiming his verdict on the old world, as if standing at the very center of the universe—
“Smura and his team did the right thing. Compromise and tolerance can never earn respect.”
The world needs a little noise.