FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 1: Enter Snowman

DARWIN

Thursday, March 15, 2018

I groaned in pain, groaned in despair. Am I dead yet?

I checked. No, I could still hear the waves and the endless chatter and the growl of the engine. No, my stomach continued to churn and froth at every heave-ho of the deck. No, I was still basking in the scents of water and salt and strong sunshine... No, I was still very much alive, which was unfortunate: death, unconsciousness... I would've taken just about anything  to get out of this atrocious heat. Instead, I had to suffer.

Thomas, my swim buddy, was unsympathetic to my torment. That, or he was just ignorant; it was probably the latter with this fool. He prodded my knee with his foot for the sixth or seventh time and said, "Hey, what's the matter with you? Why're you all laid out like that?"

"Let me die." My words were agonized.

"What?"

"Let me die." I said it a little louder, but I don't think he heard me over the boat's droning engine, or the roaring white surf that was rushing by not far from my head  —  I was partially hanging over the side. It was as close as I could get to the deep, cool blue right now: the enclosure was still five minutes off, which was five minutes too long for me.

In the meantime, the sun had boiled the sky white overhead, and was attempting to cook me like an egg in my diving suit and equipment. And it was succeeding  —  I felt dried out as an old prune, and I braced my feet on the deck of the speedboat, trying to push my face down closer to our frothing wake to catch some sea spray—

"Mr. Blakesley, what are you doing?"

I jerked upright to find six of my classmates turning around to stare at me, and chuckle as I came back from the dead. Ms. Scales, my biology teacher, wasn't so amused: she stood beside Ms. Kayla, one of the Water Safari's program coordinators, hands on her hips. I drew my shoulders in, unsuccessfully trying to make myself small.

"Nothing," I said. Had my skin color not been so dark, I probably would've been red as a Charmeleon. "Sorry. I was just hot."

She wasn't impressed. "You'll be in the water in a few minutes," she said loudly over the engine. "Didn't you bring any sunscreen?"

"Yes ma'am." And a lot of f*cking good it's done me. I'd slathered it on the moment we stepped off the bus, but somehow I was still cooking like holiday roast. And I'd bought the cream with the highest SPF available! Summer, I thought as Ms. Kayla continued her spiel. F*cking summer. The stupidest and most awful part of the year, and I was right smack dab in the middle of it, with nowhere to run. Or hide.

I must've accidentally said some of that aloud, because beside me, Thomas tucked his hands into his armpits and curled in on himself a little, snorting loudly. Ms. Scales ignored him, though, probably because snapping at Thomas for every little thing only made you tired, as other teachers had learned the hard way. Generally ignoring him was a lot easier on the blood pressure. 

"All right, guys, we're approaching the enclosure," Ms. Kayla told us. "See those buoys out there? They mark the edges of the Water Safari Zone. Any Pokémon that you find within their boundaries is fair game."

Some of my other classmates leaned out of their seats and over the boat's side to see what she was talking about; I took the chance to ease back again, just as surge of surf splashed the side of my neck, cooling my feverish tan. From here, I could see it: up ahead was a line of bright red buoys the shape and size of beach balls, connected to one other like beads on a string by cords of blue and white rope; there were a ton of them bobbing helplessly on the white-capped waves like a gigantic necklace and enclosing the center of Slateport City's atoll. Inside were even more: these were different colors, and stretched into the distance in long lines, maring routes that we could take once in the Zone. Different Pokémon lay along different buoy lines.