It was a big, giant, colossal pocket monster in downtown New York. One of those things had tried to contradict the others. It had failed. The thing was still the size of a house! With two stories. Or three.

What was it, though? A small child might not be able to tell you.

A small child looked up at the thing, pointed, and said "What's that, mommy?"

The mother was hopelessly out of sorts. "I don't know," she said.

Across the street, another child pointed up. "What's that, daddy?"

"Ah." The father looked as his iced mocha shook in its glass. The big green creature stomped on by. "That is a Bulbasaur. I am shocked you don't know that, Billy. You play Pokemon all the time."

"It must be one of those ancient ones, or something you get for going to crazy Nintendo conventions or somethin'..." Little Billy grumbled, dropping his eyes back down to his video game's lit screen. It was not natural. It did not sit right with him for his dinosaur of a father to know more about a video game than him. Why couldn't his dad have just said "I don't know" and let him be the all-knowing one who later went to google it?

Tetsuya Shinbo did not have to ask what was shaking mochas and setting off car alarms all up and down the block. He knew. His girlfriend absolutely adored them. Unfortunately, he also had a role to play in this situation. Someone had summoned this. Or made it somehow. And that giant Bulbasaur had to be stopped.

"Unfortunately, Pokeballs are not actually a real thing." He noted wryly. Dropping a few dollars on the counter of the hot dog guy's stand, he stepped away and scarfed it down in a few heartburn-inducing bites. Then, he focused his mind on combating fire with fire.

On the street in front of him, the outline of Pokemon #137 began to coalesce. Slowly, the shape of the Porygon was built up out of tiny triangles created with the Asian's mind.

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.

Click click. The electronic shutter sound opened and closed a few times as he snagged some photographic evidence for Kealey. And then, Shin strengthened his grip on Porygon's neck and climbed up onto his majestic PokéSteed.

His eyes rose from the pink polyhedral body, locking on to the green monster in the distance. Like Godzilla in the distance, it plodded forward, slipping in and out of his vision grid's sights. His eyes narrowed to slits, obscuring parts of his triangular pupils as he focused on it. Was that...?

Down the block, a 5-year old boy tugged on his mommy's hand and pointed. "Mommy, mommy. Can I ride after the big man is done?"

She shook her head.

That's what the little boy saw. A man riding the monster. But what did Shin's Triangle Eyes see?

Zoom, zoom, zoom! There. Atop the Bulbasaur's head. A tiny speck that might have been a baseball cap. Wait. How, you ask, could Shin possibly have noticed that? Five words. Perfect Depth and Angle Perception. He saw the exact dimensions of the speck. Now, he was turning them like a 3D model in his brain, and pondering what that meant.

The Porygon took off. Shin began to close the gap.

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.

The Porygon did not see. It didn't have functioning eyes. Alas, that was just not part of its biology. Shin, though, did.

Had a... weird guy just been flung by some vines into a car? And somehow protected himself with an invisible barrier? Maybe. It was just as likely Bulbasaur simply sucked eggs at actually hitting things. And this Bulbasaur was wearing a tiny hat, which meant something funny.

Shin idly wondered what bulbasaurs wearing baseball caps meant.

Then, Shin flew towards the guy on the car. It was entirely likely the guy could defend himself for hours on end against the onslaught of green tentacles that was now solely focused on him. But then again, maybe it wasn't. He didn't want to take that chance.

Past, Shin swept, snagging hold of the weird guy as he went by. "Hold on to my arms." He shouted over any loudness that may have been police sirens or the national guard.

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.

A man spoke into his walkie talkie, and waved his hand towards the beast of green. Men in SWAT gear 'hut hut'ed into place. The lights on the cap flashed and spun behind him. In the sky, more police. And worse. Some people even had guns.

Was shooting this thing the best option? There had been some chatter about that. Maybe there were other options? And who was that kid buzzing the thing like a fly on crap? Was he with MRC? Maybe he'd be able to sort things before they did this. Or maybe he was with the X-men. Yeah, okay. They'd give him two minutes.

Two minutes was a whole hell of a lot of time to show one's skills. Shin settled for hauling the heavy mime guy up onto the porygon platform. Turns out, dudes have weight. And hauling people on-board of moving flying triangles made from one's mind was a task.

"Did you see the hat?" He insisted.

His eyes focused on the baseball cap in the distance as he helped the guy shift himself around to standing behind him on the shard.

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.

Shaking heads meant 'no'. But what was the 'no' to?

"Sit." He said. Because sitting was sure better than trying to stand on something he could not even stand on.

Nodding, now. After sitting. He saw the hat. So that meant it wasn't a figment of his imagination. Shin frowned, gears grinding in his head. Another set of gears were moving in his gut. An unpleasant feeling. And a worrying tension. He had a hunch. Obviously, this thing was created by a mutant. But if it had a hat, maybe it was one... and if that was the case...

Mr. Mime got his attention again, showed him a notepad. They were of the same mind. He nodded.

So now, what exactly was the solution here? Big guns would hurt it, and it was moving and angry and---

Well. It WAS angry. If Kealey had been here, she'd probably have loved this. Because point 1: Bulbasaur, and point 2: She could help. She could calm it. With her powers. They could calm it, too.

This was a bad. Really bad. Really ridiculously bad idea. But he was feeling stupid, so. "We hug it," He said, as his eyes narrowed to slits focused on the Bulbasaur before them. He navigated through flying whips and thrown debris, hunched over against Porygon's back for speed. The wind from their movement was causing the mime's notepad pages to flutter, but that was okay. He could stow that. He wouldn't have much use for it with all the hugging they were going to do.

The clock was ticking. It wasn't a soft landing. From all his martial arts training, he knew how to roll/. Some people might not have been as lucky. But they made it. And then, the plan was executed. In all its 'cop-eyebrow-raising, weirding-the-whole-world-out, what-the-hell-is-that-kid-doing?' glory. Snugs and all. You could almost imagine the happy red cartoon hearts floating in the air.