Kealey Would Absolutely Love This (Dorian)

When Dorian woke up that morning, he had no idea that he would spend any part of that day riding a giant Bulbasaur through the middle of Manhattan, whacking it in the back of the head with an invisible golf club. If he had known this, he might have planned ahead, and perhaps been a little bit less liberal with his street performance face-paint. The stuff didn't exactly agree with sweat, and trying to wrangle a giant pokemon into submission wasn't exactly light work. Even as he thwacked it with his club, he constantly had to dodge giant green vine whips that were about as wide around as his neck.

It started while he was doing that routine with the balloons. The one where he tied an invisible balloon to his leg to make it look like something was trying to pull him off the ground, and he had to grab hold of an invisible rope attached to the ground in order to stop himself from floating away. It was a pretty clever routine, if he said so himself. Even so, he was going to be completely upstaged by the giant Bulbasaur, which almost seemed to replace the kid who was throwing a fit at his mother down the street. Meaning that kid was probably a giant Bulbasaur now, making him both the coolest kid ever, and a real danger to himself and others.

The coolest kid on the block was also the only kid on the block who could sprout giant vine-whip things from his back and flail them around uncontrollably. Cars were destroyed, people were injured, and mochas were shaken up wherever the pokemon went. Dorian needed to stop it. Not because he had this overwhelming desire to save anyone, mind you, but because he somehow managed to get vine-whipped onto the back of the Bulbasaur's neck, and he would really like to get down now, please. When that big green vine hit him, he reflexively latched on to it. Soon, he found himself hanging on to the flailing tendril for dear life, until he lost his grip somewhere near the back of the thing's head.

Why was Dorian wailing on it with an invisible driver, you ask? He wasn't completely sure either. There wasn't exactly a well-established procedure for placating a giant Bulbasaur-shifting mutant. Or, at least, not as far as he knew; the MRC might've written a whole manual on it, for all he knew. Though, maybe if he hit it enough on the back of the head, it would stop breaking everything and turn back into a human. Perhaps he could manage to knock it out? Or maybe he was just kinda mad that this giant freakin' pokemon just took him away from his hatful of hard-earned cash. Those forty dollars or so probably wouldn't still be there when he got back, and it took time to collect that much.

As it turns out, hitting a giant Pokemon repeatedly with an invisible golf club is a monumentally bad idea. To be honest, it was not very effective. Vine whip, however, was super effective at removing a pesky Mr. Mime from the back of that giant Bulbasaur's neck. One of the vines finally connected with Dorian's side. While he was able to "block" it, to a certain extent, that didn't keep him from stumbling off the giant Pokemon, landing on top of a Mercedes that was parallel-parked against the curb.

The roof of the car caved in a little when he landed on it. Thinking quickly, Dorian pressed his palms against an imaginary concrete barrier directly above him, which became a physical object just in time to stop a giant vine from smashing him to pieces.

He looked up. The Bulbasaur was looking right at him. It didn't look happy. Hitting it with a golf club was definitely a bad idea, he decided. Mr. Mime slid off the car and ran for dear life.

Up ahead, he could see a man flying around on a... was that a Porygon? He hoped that the other Pokemon wouldn't try to kill him, too. One giant Pokemon trying to kill him was more than enough.

To be honest, Dorian didn't expect it to end this way. After so many close calls with robots and the National Guard during the Resistance movement, and with so many chances to have died like some medal-of-honor type of guy back then or in Romania or in his future, it almost seemed laughable that what finally did him in would be a mutant kid turned giant Pokemon. Dorian didn't think it was very funny at the time, though.

Neither did the guy with the Porygon. The mime assumed that grabbing onto this guy's arms would mean salvation, so he did, and gladly. Whatever this mysterious stranger had in store, it couldn't be worse than getting beaten to death by a giant Bulbasaur. He nodded his thanks, lacking any other means of communication.

Apparently, some kind of serious police units were inbound, judging from those sirens and choppers in the distance. Even if the Bulbasaur kid was trying to kill him just now, and generally wrecking everything in its path, Dorian couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him. Those law-enforcement types could be pretty tough on mutants. Poor kid. If only he'd succeeded at giving the guy a good concussion earlier; then they wouldn't still have to be dealing with this mess.

It took Dorian a second to realize that this asian guy was trying to help him stand. On top of a flying Porygon-thing, which was very high in the air, and might have to do some very quick maneuvering at any moment to avoid colliding with a giant vine whip. If it had to do that kind of quick maneuvering while he was standing, he would probably fall off the Porygon and die painfully. If only he had his voice, Dorian could have reacted to this in a far more polite and coherent way than remaining dead weight and trying his best to wrench the man's hand from his arm, all while shaking his head violently. No, he would not be standing up on this thing. He would be keeping his center of gravity low, because he would very much like to not die painfully today.

Hat? Hat. Yes, he saw the hat, he nodded. Dorian tried to stop being selfish and thinking about whether or not he would die painfully from falling of a Porygon, and instead think about stopping the cops from killing this kid. Which is probably what they'd do. You don't stop giant rampaging mosters from destroying cities by giving them hugs and pats on the back and telling them to calm down.

Maybe if more people knew what that thing actually was, they wouldn't try to gun it down with heavy artillery. The only person he could tell at the moment was this Japanese man. Sitting cross-legged on the Porygon, Dorian pulled out his notepad, scribbled on it, then showed it to the man who just saved his life.

'Bulbasaur is really a mutant kid. Can we stop those cops from killing him?'

Dorian knew that the standard Japanese method for dealing with giant monsters involved using giant robots to take them out. Since most of those giant monsters were actually mutant people, the Japanese government was getting trouble from human rights watchdogs, according to a steady stream of international news reports. Hopefully this guy would deviate from the standard Japanese method today.