Human Pokemon - A Rare Amnesty

Crunch of the Future Today! Vol. 516. Ed. 1. 2094:144 (May 24)
pp. 56: Part 03 of the ongoing Living Hell series: A Growing Amnesty

The term, "Human Pokémon" legally defines any human individual who has been captured by a pokéball, regardless whether or not they are in a trainer's possession. Human pokémon are viewed as scum and vermin by a brainwashed society that prefers to ignore their exploitation.

Trainers are encouraged to use human pokémon in battles and League events, despite the use of other people as pokémon will put trainers at odds with each other. However, as the trainer population increases, so does the population of human pokemon, and so do the horrific incidents of their abuse.

Over the last ten years. a new movement has been challenging the propagated morality concerning human pokémon. The movement is made up of low ranking policy officers in League offices in small towns and rural areas.  At the local League Office in Foothill Town, Hoenn,  policy officer Hiro Raidenson is persuading his colleagues and associates to embrace a compassionate perspective about human pokémon. In the evenings, Hiro holds meetings and workshop classes in the town hall, where he speaks about his cause. Because of the League's official stance on human Pokémon, Hiro is prohibited from associating his cause and the League. His allies also meet and conduct their effort outside of regular work hours.

"We talk with anyone who has lost a family member, a friend, or a loved one to a pokéball, or anyone who has had to cope with their counterparts living as pokémon, and the societal attitude concerning them. Then we encourage civilians and trainers, and anyone else who will listen to come and hear their stories. We especially urge trainers to attend during their stay in town. Our aim is not to condemn them for capturing or abusing another human. That's not what we're about. We want to give them a different view of the realities that we hope will affect their decisions in the future. I cannot expect a trainer to not capture another human, that would be a miracle, but we hope that they don't abuse them."

However, intensive effort is needed to mediate between angry friends and families and trainers. Condemnation will drive the trainers away.

"They will become embittered, and maybe even more firm in their resolve to catch and mistreat human pokémon, simply to combat their own guilt if they have any."

Local goodwill organizations have been popping up across the nation's regions. One function these groups are known for is for their amnesty programs where trainers can anonymously drop off human pokémon and avoid persecution. Most effective are the drop boxes, located behind buildings and in small enclaves, where trainers can deposit pokéballs in private.

In spite of the League's propaganda that promotes the use of human pokémon, the nation is still divided on the issue. Where trainers receive praise for catching and using human pokémon, they also encounter shame-blaming and condemnation.

Most of the disagreement and condemnation comes from trainers, who fear being captured themselves. Before launching the amnesty program in Foothill Town, Hiro Raidenson had heard from hundreds of trainers about the fear they live with, and their own moral crusade.

"Fear drives anger," Hiro explains, "Thousands of trainers pass through Foothill every year, and they hide and live in the shadows of our society that promotes their exploitation. They fear other trainers. And they become frustrated and angry, mostly at fellow trainers who capture other people. Trainers have launched their own crusade and established a new moral code against possession and use of people, and it puts a fear on those who own human pokémon.

"My response was to launch the amnesty box program. We placed boxes in less obvious places, and it took time for word of our boxes to spread among trainers. We have had to avert trouble and hire security to keep people away from the boxes because trainers would confront those looking to deposit their human pokémon."

Violent fights had broken out at drop box locations, and police have ordered to program to be shut down, but Raidenson's case held up in county court when he pledged to hire security to patrol the locations and keep aggressors away.

In other towns in the Foothill county, drop boxes were removed from the streets and placed in offices. To enter, trainers are required to don masks to conceal their identity, enter the room, deposit their pokéball, and quickly exit the building through another door. Security guards and volunteers direct trainers through a short maze to one of three exits to prevent trainers from running into one another on the premises. The room containing the drop box is coined the 'silent room,' due to the rule that absolutely no talking is permitted between trainers. Music or static plays on speakers and acts as an audio cover in case someone coughs or speaks.

The program is funded from the pockets of organizers and volunteers, and is intended to encourage and allow trainers to turn over a new leaf.
In Rinshin, local authorities and businesses have collaborated with the postal service to run a pilot program of their own. Instead using designated drop boxes, trainers may deposit their pokéballs into mailboxes with no documentation, while appearing to deposit mail.

Despite the good intention of these amnesty programs, they faced opposition from the League, Silph, businesses and groups advocating the use of human pokémon. This outrage was mediated when the Hoenn League passed new guidelines behind closed doors.

The regulations concerning the drop box programs demand that human pokémon be handed over to League-approved 'buyers,' mostly whom would use human pokémon as free labor. Lists of buyers have been obtained, and include companies in the porn industry and sex trade, and other businesses that sell human pokémon to trainers and civilians for the very low market price.

When amnesty programs were launched, the League threatened to shut them down, then in 2093, issued a nationwide ultimatum to all amnesty groups, demanding that they turn over human pokémon to the approved buyers, free of charge. Most organizations, focused on getting trainers to pass up their human pokémon, complied with the ultimatum, however, for people like Hiro, seeing the ultimatum and list of buyers was a major blow to the effort.

"We met in Rinshin, the only city where they have not outlawed our gatherings of five people or more. I saw the copies of the agreement and the list of buyers. The Hoenn Supreme Court ordered the League to give us the list of the "approved" buyers, simply for the 'benefit of our understanding of economical process," and I was horrified.

The courts put down our plans to send human pokémon to rehabilitation, and even imprisoned some of our colleagues for attempting to send human pokémon to Sinnoh, on so-called "human trafficking" and yet they approve human trafficking by taking our human pokémon and selling the back to the "buyers" who intern eventually send the human pokémon back to the trainers. It's sickening. They deliberately converted our effort for positive social change into another cog of their economy."

At the trainers' level, more and more trainers have been stopping at the drop boxes. Local groups have begun collecting data of human pokémon who circulate through the program, and the number of pokémon re-appearing are staggering and increasing. They post names and numbers of human pokémon on bulletin boards around town.

In Crossgate Town, off-duty League employees and civil rights groups have begun circulating pamphlets with names of human pokémon in weekly and monthly newspapers. To avoid a crackdown, they have remained anonymous. Rumors allege that local enforcers are bribed, and newspaper employees are handed money and goods to place the pamphlets in the papers.

The pamphlets were the subject of an uproar by the government-run Crossgate Moral Society, an active condemner of human pokémon, who bid to plant volunteers in the print shops. Their attempt failed to halt the distribution of pamphlets. They intended to prevent "further trauma to families."

At the Swellow Post, Crossgate's monthly newspaper, a supervisor explains his case:

"As the print shop supervisor, it is my official responsibility to make sure that the permitted advertisements are printed. I am also to report employees who attempt to print unauthorized articles. If I do my job, I report three, five, even ten employees to the police, and they disappear from our shop. It will take the company a month to find, hire, and train new workers. We have paid workers and volunteers instead of using human pokémon because human pokémon are too high maintenance.

"I go home at the end of day, perhaps I run into a trainer. The trainer could be agitated, irate, and seek to capture me. I have no pokémon or weapons of my own. They might need me to feed their pokémon or sell me for money to buy food or pay off a bounty. Their cause could be anything, and where would I be? I'd be gone. Dead in the eyes of society. My name will appear on a list somewhere, and I will not be home to take care of my wife and three sons. My workers and their families will face the same fate.

"Punishment is mere removal- in a pokéball. And you suffer and die, merely for the entertainment of society. I cannot condemn my workers to that fate. But it is a delicate operation. They must be discreet, and I must be careful when I overlook the paper. Sometimes I must instruct them to be discreet when adding the pokémon list or printing the names.

"I believe that when enough people see the names, they will see the name of someone they know. There will be a lot of outrage, and the League will be forced to change what it is doing, and people will think twice about how they think human pokémon as vermin. Change will happen. Things cannot stay the same forever!"

Lawyers representing Rinshin Amnesty have filed a class action lawsuit against escort companies on behalf of families who have lost sons and daughters to the sex trade. Private investigators acting on their own will have traced the movement and location of human pokémon from drop boxes to the brothels.

Ryo Huygen, a private investigator who tracks violent trainers for a living, has revealed the trail of human pokémon from drop boxes in Rinshin to the red light districts in Johto and Kanto's major cities.  The data he has uncovered has revealed the horrific journey.

"God knows where they have been until weary trainers placed them in the drop boxes. For two weeks until the ultimatum, I saw up to 214 people from Rinshin alone, transported to rehab facilities in Sinnoh, where people help them re-build their lives. After the ultimatum, that was finished. Instead, human pokémon are taken from the drop boxes to the pokémon centers, and then moved to Silph Corporation centers.

There they are altered on unimaginable scale. Male humans are forced through sex change procedures and converted into females. That still can't be done digitally, so they are removed from the pokéballs and changed manually. A great many are experimented on for God knows why. Then, after the work is done, they are delivered to the buyers, who use them for all sorts of labor, including prostitution for trainers, even other pokémon, and civilians too. Their memory is maintained by Silph.

"Eventually they wear out and are replaced. The human pokémon who are tossed out are either bought by trainers or passed on to unwary trainers. Eventually, some of those human pokémon wind up back in the drop box, or they are killed.
"I can't tell which is worse, being circulated again or death. We [private investigators] have also tracked human pokémon to facilities where pokémon food is produced, and often to League tournaments."

However, many human pokémon end their lives shredded and splattered on the ground. They receive the worst and cruelest treatment pokémon trainers have to offer. A video tape was circulated in Rinshin showing a human being stabbed and gutted, then having incendiary bombs inserted in the wounds, then detonated. As the young man screamed in agony, he was ripped apart and eaten ablaze by a pack of charmeleons and houndooms.

The League attempted to suppress the movie but it was copied and distributed throughout Hoenn. When the trainers were arrested and brought to court, they were merely charged and jailed for failing to conduct "routine trainer activity" away from peaceful civilians.

Investigators like Huygen blew the whistle on the case, and the League sent security after them. Huygen was forced to flee Hoenn and was able to reach Sinnoh, where he is under police protection. No where other than Sinnoh is the amnesty program having success, not only in obtaining human pokémon, but the Sinnoh League has no arrangement with buyers, not even with Silph like in the other regions.

Under the regime of Sinnoh League Champion Cynthia Shirona, capturing and exploiting humans as pokémon has become strictly outlawed with draconian penalties for those who use human pokémon. The penalty for these crimes is either death or life as a pokémon for non-combat purposes. Even for people sentenced to life as a pokémon, the Shirona regime has called for fair treatment for those convicted and sentenced.

Human pokémon deposited in amnesty boxes in Sinnoh are moved to rehab where they can recover and continue their lives as normal people. Despite remaining prejudice against former human pokémon, they can once enjoy life as they did before they were captured. Amnesty programs are funded by tax money. Despite the harsh policies against human abuse, the Shirona regime allows trainers to evade prosecution by giving up their human pokémon.

The Shirona regime expects people like Huygen to continue their efforts to put an eventual end to pokémon abuse. The way Huygen sees it, it is the only reason he was allowed to seek refuge in Sinnoh.

"I don't always work in Sinnoh, sometimes I go back to Hoenn to continue my investigations and perhaps help set up a viable means of bringing more human pokémon back. But the law and society are against any aid that we want to offer. I fear for my colleagues and family, and wonder if the Hoenn League has done anything to them because of my work. I'd like to bring them here and be reunited with them one day."

Huygen doesn't leave Sinnoh on his own. Despite he carries a Sinnoh resident card and travel permit, he is accompanied by bodyguard trainers loyal to the Shirona regime and its ideals of a compassionate society. It's their duty to protect him should another region's League scouts or even trainers attempt to attack him.

The Leagues in Hoenn, Johto, and Kanto have placed a collective bounty of 400,000 pyen ($5000 US), and have branded him a traitor. In Rinshin, police would arrest him on charges of espionage and subversive activities. In the Pokémon Nation, League scouts are forbidden from fighting each other, and as long as Huygen and his colleagues are with their body guards outside of Sinnoh, they are as safe as they would be in Sinnoh.