The Myth of Abba Jesus, Part 3
Democracy ensues, The Keeper banishes the False Prophet, Digrat proves his worthiness, and more!
Abba Jesus had vowed to take down the Rocket Party and avenge Abby’s death, but it would take time. He did not have the strength to barge into the Rocket headquarters and kill Blue or his top assistant, Giovanni. Instead, he had to assume a role in society and look for their weaknesses in secret. He pretended to surrender and let them put him to work.
The political turmoil had died down, but most of the people lamented the changes to the city. They did not like to see Pokémon educated and integrated into human society only for the purpose of putting them to work—the electric Pokémon to power the generators, the plant Pokémon to fertilize the crops, and the bird Pokémon to run deliveries all over the city.
More than anything, they lamented the new system of democracy. They said it was oppressive, sucking the joy and freedom out of life. With the intent to clarify what the people wanted, by having them vote on almost every choice across every facet of social life, everything became constrained by bureaucracy. The Rocket Party used it as an excuse to rip people from their homes and put them to work in factories and offices where they were supposedly serving the will of the people. Anarchy, on the other hand, promoted the utmost freedom of the people—creativity, spontaneous joy, the ability to name yourself however you please—but with it came the uncoordinated chaos of an overpopulated city, which led to more accidental deaths and a lack of progress within some of the more complicated factories.
The union members who were the most passionate leftists eventually found a loophole in the system, as there was a measure to vote on how many breaks they could take throughout the workday. They began voting every day to take nine breaks, stretching each one a bit beyond its allotted length, as they lingered from production line, to meal break, and back to production line for a few minutes, then a water break, and so on. They formed the Start9 coalition, which vowed to take nine breaks every single day, and no Party member could penalize them for it, so long as they kept voting.
Productivity came to a complete halt. Food and water dried up. The power went out for weeks at a time. And people grew bitter. Politics consumed everyday life. One could not walk by a mart or sit down in a cafe without hearing people all around debating the merits of anarchy versus democracy. The most passionate supporters of each side would shout at the tops of their lungs as they walked in the streets, “Anarchy!”
And others walking opposite them would shout, “Democracy!”
Blue put messages out to the Party that Abba Jesus was stirring up the contempt. Their henchmen kept control over him and the squad by keeping them confined within the Rocket headquarters, forced to do nothing but eat, sleep, and work in a beige corporate office full of fluorescent lights and fake plants. Although Abba Jesus had grown far too large to move around on the office floor without making a mess, he was useful enough running deliveries from their warehouse floor up to various upper floors. He could even fly up the freight elevator shaft, as it was quite large. Dux and Digrat were put to work in the cafe, running food carts back and forth. They were so overworked and underslept, they often got lost on different floors and found themselves dizzy with confusion trying to navigate the maze of cubicle spaces.
They could have easily broken out and escaped, but Abba Jesus didn’t want the henchmen to even know that. What they wanted was access to the higher floors, where they could execute Blue and sabotage the Party’s mission. Digrat did not seem to know this either, as he frequently perked up his attention when they reached a dark, unused room where they hoped to find an elevator keycard. Twice he began rummaging through crates of paperwork that seemed to be blocking hidden hatches or ventilation systems, but when Dux dared to follow him through, they blundered their way down to the laundry room and once got kicked out to the air conditioning systems below. Dux could never figure out what spurred Digrat’s frenetic searching, but it was never productive.
Almost a year went by, and their glacial-paced infiltration seemed to go nowhere. Abba Jesus had learned every landing of the freight elevator, when the guards changed shifts, and which rooms were left empty throughout the night, but there was never anything new to discover. The freight elevator always blocked the passage to the eighth floor, and the stairwell doors to that level or the three above were always securely locked. He began to wonder if the henchmen were purposely appearing lazy and clueless so that they could sit on the higher floors and laugh while watching him on the security cameras. On a particularly frustrating night, he consulted his Helix Fossil, and he sensed it was telling him to wander into one of the familiar boardrooms, but there was nothing there. He felt hopeless. The Helix Fossil was probably a sham all along. It wasn’t worth having around his neck anymore, so he grabbed it and threw it into the dirt of one of the fake potted plants.
“Ow!”
Abba Jesus looked back toward the plant, bewildered. He looked closely, wondering if he had heard the Helix Fossil speak for the first time. It had a feminine voice and sounded a bit muffled. He said, “Who’s there?”
No voice spoke for a moment, then, “Are you gonna get that thing off me?”
He realized it was the plant speaking. He did not know at the time just how well an Oddish Pokémon could blend in with other potted plants. He said, “What’s your name?”
“Cabbage.”
“But you aren’t a cabbage plant.”
“…Maybe that’s the whole point. I’m sneaky!”
She was an Oddish, quite a small one. She was full of sarcasm and arguments—and she loved misdirection. A lifelong radical leftist who could go on long-winded tangents about the validity of anarchy, she opposed the Party with every fiber of her being the moment she had heard of it. After ranting about some of the plans she had heard them speak of in the boardroom, she popped her head up above the line of dirt, and Abba Jesus saw she had a few tattoos beneath her eyes. “Why are you still standing there? You’re gonna blow my cover if they can see you.”
Over the next few days, Abba Jesus devised a plan, and when he pitched it to Cabbage, she agreed before he could even finish. On a rather chaotic night when lots of packages were being shuffled up to the secured floors, he brought several potted plants to the landing of the freight elevator and called up to some henchmen, telling them these plants were being moved in. As usual, they refused to receive anything until he vacated the floor, which he did. A few hours later, Cabbage was able to emerge from her pot and bring the elevator to the squad.
Now they had set off an alarm. They ripped through several opponents all across the floor in their search for Blue, but they could only find his second-in-command, Giovanni, a mobster of the most classic kind, who wore a sleek suit and never lifted a finger because his henchmen did all his work.
They chased him to the roof of the building, where he was visible for half a minute while hanging by the ladder to a cargo helicopter. As he took off, a Rhyhorn and Kangaskhan slammed onto the roof. They were both large even for their species, with thick skin and vicious eyes. Abba Jesus had never fought a Pokémon even half their size. And with one ground stomp from the Rhyhorn, all of his squadmates recoiled and fainted. He was left to fight alone, and he had no reason to believe he could win, but he chose to believe anyway. It was his first time fighting in his fully evolved form, and he discovered a strength he didn’t know he had. He flew high above them and dove into them several times, bashing them apart. He slew them and lived with an inch of life.
He roused his squad mates and went out to the city streets. The city was unraveling into even more chaos as word spread that Giovanni had fled town and Blue was nowhere to be found. People cheered for the squad to prevail, calling this the start of a revolution. Dux, Digrat, Cabbage, and a couple of bystanders all pitched in to help carry Abba Jesus to the nearby Pokémon center. But a flaming boulder crashed in front of the door and blocked their path.
They turned to see the False Prophet standing in the open street. It didn’t matter that Blue and Giovanni were gone, as she could incinerate any defector without hesitation, and she had come to finish the job of burying Abba Jesus. Even in his weakened state, Abba Jesus chose to fight. He didn’t even have the strength to spread his wings. All he could do was clutch the Helix Fossil with his talon and ask it for guidance.
Just as the False Prophet was drooling at the thought of tearing Abba Jesus’s flesh apart, a boy in the crowd shouted that someone or something was approaching. It was a Drowzee, one who appeared familiar to Abba Jesus—the elder Drowzee who had first inspired him to go to Cinnabar Island. He had been trailing their path at his glacial pace for two years and was finally catching up to them.
The Eevee turned to watch him slowly shuffle towards her. She thought nothing of him and nearly laughed at his audacity to invade her space. She exhaled one breath of air, about to blast him away, while he reached up and tapped her on the nose. They both flattened into a static, two-dimensional image and disappeared. Every fire the False Prophet had ignited vanished along with her. The entire street fell silent for a moment until Red, who had stumbled into the city by mistake, yelled that he had heard tales of this Drowzee’s power to banish wicked Pokémon to a forgotten realm. They called him The Keeper.
The people wondered if they had finally found peace. The terror of the False Prophet was gone, but Blue and Giovanni had gone to take control of all the outer cities of Kanto. Cabbage suggested they seek the advice of her old mentor, Mr. Fuji. Abba Jesus was uninterested until she told him Mr. Fuji hailed from Cinnabar Island and knew everything about its wonders. With that, they set off. However, they encountered a depressed and deeply troubled population in Lavender Town. A howling wind stirred up leaves in all the rundown yards. The people were pale and refused to talk. The only man who did converse said, “Mr. Fuji? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
The one place they could search was the mausoleum tower full of dead Pokémon, where Digrat’s eyes and ears perked up, and he began frantically pulling on his leash. Dux said they had better move fast, and they ran to the upper level, where they encountered Blue. He had been planning to ambush them and sent his strongest Pokémon loyalists out to kill them. Abba Jesus was particularly distraught that one of them was a Pidgeotto. He could not stomach the idea of killing one of his own species. But he wouldn’t have to entertain the idea for long. Soon after the brawl broke out, a fleet of dozens of ghosts swarmed in and haunted every living being in the tower. Abba Jesus found himself in a fit of psychosis, attacking figures that vanished at the instant he tried to touch them. He awoke from his trance in a desolate field outside the tower—all of his mates sprawled across the grass. Digrat was the only one with energy, as he dug at some of the gravestones outside the tower. Dux said the tower was a pointless endeavor, that Mr. Fuji was probably a rotting corpse up there. But Abba Jesus refused to give up. He said, “Those ghosts can haunt the minds of the living, but what about a Pokémon that doesn’t have a mind?”
They did not understand what he was getting at. Instead of explaining anything, he led them to the dojo of Saffron City. On the trek, they encountered an old, cackling man who offered to let them sit by his campfire and eat. They soon realized he only wanted company so that he could ask each of them their names and ridicule them. Upon hearing Cabbage’s name, he said, “You call yourself Cabbage with all those poofy leaves atop your head? More like Extra Cabbage!” He broke into a wheezing laugh, though none of the others found him funny except Dux. Cabbage took inspiration from his joke, and she was already planning to tattoo the name X-Cabbage on her arm whenever she had the chance.
Abba Jesus led them to the dojo because he had heard there was an android fighter who had never been defeated. It stood at the back of the dojo, analyzing the fights and adding the movements to its neural network database. It was a state-of-the-art piece of machinery that stood as tall as Abba Jesus, plated in gold, with the name CCC embedded in its chest. The dojo master said each letter stood for his best three attacks: chop, cut kick, and crescent kick. As they stood in awe of its might, the dojo master smirked and said, “I call him C3KO! Survive all three moves and you can survive anything.”
Abba Jesus challenged him to a duel. His squadmates thought he was still delusional from the hauntings of the ghost. The dojo master ordered C3KO to demonstrate all three of its moves, and it instantly complied, whipping itself into action. It chopped Dux’s hockey stick clean out of his grasp, whipped a leaf off X-Cabbage’s head, and snapped Digrat’s leash in half. Dux pleaded with Abba Jesus not to fight the android, but Abba Jesus wasn’t listening. He had complete faith that he was the stronger fighter. C3KO wound up for a blinding crescent kick, but Abba Jesus flared out his wings and blew it back with a gust so strong every window in the dojo shattered. C3KO flew back and slammed into the wall, then collapsed. The dojo master was in awe and said, “You really are Bird Jesus.” He dropped to his knees and offered Abba Jesus anything he wanted.
“We’re taking the droid,” he said. “Be grateful, for your aid in our mission will be remembered.”
The droid was damaged, but two Zubats by the names of X-Wing and Dashbat—its dedicated mechanics—fluttered down and went to work with their miniature wrenches and blowtorches. They revived the droid within a minute. With it back in working order, Abba Jesus herded the squad back to Lavender Town, confident that they could not be defeated.
They entered the haunted tower with their ears plugged and eyes squinted. They hoped to see nothing other than C3KO connecting its kicks to some morsel of physicality within the ghosts. On the second floor, a Gastly materialized in front of them, and C3KO’s sensors lit up. It took on a fighting stance and lunged a cut kick at the ghost, which hit nothing. The Gastly sent out a shrieking howl, and C3KO’s plating immediately turned to rust. Its wires sparked and vaporized, and its body collapsed into a pile of junk. X-Wing and Dashbat cried and swooped down to work on it, but it was gone. Gastly howled again, and X-Wing’s flesh dried to stone. Dashbat, upon seeing its lifelong partner suffer immediate death, dropped her tools and fled out a window.
Digrat panicked and began digging furiously into a spot where the boards were soft. Abba Jesus tried to grab him, to prevent him from collapsing the floor, but he could barely see past the hallucinations, and he thought maybe it was best to let Digrat dig, as the rest of the squad was on the verge of losing their minds. After a moment, the Gastly squealed in pain, and the hallucinations withered. They found Digrat tossing the corpse of some unidentifiable Pokémon out the window.
Finally, they had come to understand the psychosis of Digrat, for he was constantly seeing and avoiding the wandering spirits of dead Pokémon. But with this came an ability to sniff out the corpse of disturbed spirits. As he dug each of them out of their graves and threw them out of the tower, they could ascend the tower.
“Digrat making use of himself for once?” Dux said.
They cheered him on as he expelled dozens of corpses from the tower. He worked with so much vigor and gained so much strength that he evolved into a Raticate right before their eyes, and they began to call him Big Dig.
With his command over the haunted spirits, they reached the top of the tower where Mr. Fuji, in a decrepit state, was still alive. The spirit of a tormented Marowak had nearly killed him, and it unleashed on the entire squad. Big Dig dug into the floor, but the Marowak corpse was too heavy for him to move. Mr. Fuji regained just enough sanity to reach for his flute and play a tune he had been trying to play for the past year, a tune that could calm the soul of any spirit that heard it. With that, the spirits subsided, and all could rest.
The old man had been camped in the attic, living on beef jerky and dried oats for so long that everyone in town thought he was dead, and indeed he was close to being so. X-Cabbage ran to his side and tried to comfort him. Abba Jesus also approached, wanting to ask him what they might find if they made the trip to Cinnabar Island. Mr. Fuji opened his eyes and studied Abba Jesus, then locked his gaze on the Helix Fossil hanging from his neck. His eyes shot wide open, and he reached for the fossil. “That fossil,” he said. “Take that… Take that to…” He coughed and struggled for breath. He could not speak. In a gruesome struggle to get one more word out, he died.
X-Cabbage was devastated, and she blamed Abba Jesus for agitating Mr. Fuji in such a weakened state. Abba Jesus said they could fulfill Mr. Fuji’s wishes by taking the fossil to Cinnabar Island, but she didn’t listen to him. All they had gained from their months of struggle to navigate the tower was a wooden flute she had played many years ago, and her only intent now was to learn to play it again.
Out in the fields of Lavender Town, they rested and argued for weeks about what to do. They knew time was limited, as more news spread of Blue and Giovanni taking over all of western Kanto. Throughout the day, Abba Jesus looked to the sky, wishing he could see that legendary electric bird in the sky again. He asked Dux and Cabbage if they had ever managed to see it on a clear day, flying in the distance. Dux laughed and said, “You’re out of your mind. Those stories of legendary birds are myths.”
Abba Jesus shrugged. He wouldn’t argue with them. But on his journey, he wouldn’t stop believing the bird was out there.