Chapter 99 99-Sociology

“Aughhhhh! I thought we’d never get away!” Tyler says to the sky as the group speedwalks away from the route head and the petitioner. “...He’s not still following us is he?”

Tanya huffs in amusement as the boy looks behind him with a worried expression, but can't blame him for the fear.

It seems that petitioners in this world are as irritatingly persistent as they are anywhere else, especially ones advocating for any kind of fringe political movement.

Amelia chatters with the rest of the trainers, but Tanya finds herself mostly tuning them out as they walk further down another path of scorching hot concrete towards the center of town, urban sprawl growing ever-more dense the further they go.

It’s the first settlement she’s seen that feels like something she’d see in any other world, where there’s a smooth gradient of development spreading out from an urban core, contrasting sharply against every other town’s near perfect line between fully urbanized and untouched wilderness.

If she had to guess, Tanya would say the agrarian nature of the settlement caused the more familiar spread, the farms came first with their fundamental need for land, then as the population grew it’s only natural that an urban core formed.

Walking deeper on narrow streets, she notes the near complete lack of cars even here, despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be any public transit infrastructure to make up for it.

It appears bicycles are the chosen solution here, and judging from the sixty year old woman puttering along at dangerously high speeds on an electric moped, it seems the solution works for all ages.

Cars are simply less common on Hoenn, they do exist no doubt, any map of the island has its highways marked, but they’re mostly in the south with a small buildout anywhere else. Right now Mauville stands as the furthest northwest any cohesive road system goes.

Tanya’s eye catches on someone exiting their house with a bag of garbage, a young woman no older than twenty five, and reflexively returns a cheery wave sent her way. A few seconds later the sound of battling grabs her attention, and as they walk up to an intersection she sees a large park on the other side of the street full of young children.

Most are just playing games amongst themselves, it seems about a quarter of them are playing one massive game of tag, but a few others are ‘battling’ either with equally young partners or far older ‘mon who seem to be humoring their respective child’s callouts.

Tanya’s gaze lingers, first on the children, then the handful of young parents supervising,

It’s moments like this that remind her that, as much as this world feels at times like her Japan with pokemon bolted on, it’s simply not.

There are too many young people most obviously, and perhaps it’s that youth contributing to the fact that –while there is some lip service paid to cultural hierarchy– by and large this society is profoundly individualistic.

Tanya hesitates at the thought as they walk past the park.

…Or perhaps ‘individualistic’ is giving them too much credit, because that implies a spirit of rational self interest, or even irrational self-interest. But it’s not quite that either.

The people here clearly believe that working under a common cause can create great things, even if it’s at their own expense, much like Japan. The difference is that there seems to be this constant… question hanging in the air in all the news and media she’s consumed.

Because it seems that every person is constantly asking whether the group they’re aligned with is the one they should follow, with the implication that the very instant a person believes the group they’re a part of doesn't align with their beliefs, they will oppose it. Presumably finding others who believe the same and organizing into a group along the way.

It cannot be stressed enough how alien she Tanya finds this mode of thinking, this self-sacrificing yet completely conditional loyalty. It stands in near total opposition to both collective identity and rational self interest.

Back in her salaryman days, she did not believe in the mission of the company she worked at. It was in her rational self interest to be loyal to the company that signs her paychecks. But with the benefit of hindsight, as much as she’d like to think she was immune, it’s clear she was influenced by the corporate culture of total loyalty to the company above all else.

Again, she was loyal to the company despite the fact that it was a deeply exploitative system acting against her self interest, which she knew at the time. But she was a part of the company, and it gave her a paycheck and a path toward advancement, and that illogical corporate culture allowed the company to thrive even when it was against the rational self interest of the employees to work there, so she was loyal to it.

It wasn't even really a conscious choice, it just… was.

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But in this world? In Hoenn?

A black company like that wouldn't survive ten minutes here, it couldn't.

Tanya looks down at the flyer the Aqua petitioner had handed her, advertising a rally tomorrow lead by the movement’s leader, one ‘Archibald Petrou’ or ‘Archie’ as the enthusiastic typography says he calls himself.

Perhaps that culture is why there seems to be such a lively and open political scene here.

She flips over the flyer to read the back, picking over political fluff to get a better read on the policies they use as onboarding propaganda.

Before today, Tanya had never even heard of Aqua, but apparently they’re a registered fringe political party with one full blooded member in the senate and two more non-members they support.

Archibald doesn't seem to run for office, instead he looks to be an energetic populist hype man and lobbyist. According to the flyer, the man is traveling around Hoenn on his ship, making a stop at every shoreside city and town to give speeches and drum up support for his political movement.

Looking at their stated policy goals, Tanya finds them… largely inoffensive, if a bit strange by her cultural standpoint. Because Aqua seems to be a movement of mildly militant environmentalists in a world that, by comparison to every other world she’s been on, absolutely does not need them.

Their key issues, at least the issues that they use to get support, are all about combating things like the spread of human cities that crowd out pokemon, or creating new regulations so route creation and maintenance are less disruptive to natural pokemon migration.

The fact that almost every town she’s been to are in highly dense pockets between vast stretches of untouched wilderness makes that seem… a bit silly, but Tanya won't claim it’s not something to be cautious about, especially in a population boom.

It's the latter issue that has Tanya more concerned. It was what the petitioner was getting signatures for actually, Aqua took offence to the concrete bike trails, stairs, and excessive route management. Specifically the petition was to get the town council to replace the concrete with gravel and either remove the metal stairs or replace them with terraced earth.

Honestly Tanya wouldn't be opposed to most of those measures, but these policies stem from their main issue with the philosophy on how all routes are managed. According to the flyer and the rapidfire spiel from the aggressively enthusiastic petitioner, Aqua wants to introduce some ‘moderate’ reforms to allow for less interference from rangers while still keeping everyone safe. But unless Tanya does more research she’s not going to make an opinion on a policy with terms that vague.

Because that idea is where politics run the risk of going contrary to reality. The route regulations they’re describing as ‘too restrictive’ aren't just a beautification measure, it’s the legal framework for how rangers prevent stampedes.

Coming to another intersection, Tanya glances up as she falls under the shadow of the first five story building she’d seen in a while.

‘Stampedes,’ a term Aqua also seems to take umbrage with, are a phenomenon where a large group of pokemon start rapidly moving in one direction, seemingly at random. This pushes them into the territory of other ‘mon, which if left unchecked can trigger more stampedes in a dangerous chain reaction.

Those kinds of cascading pokemon migrations are one of the things the forestry service warns about, and has forced them to close trails at least once a season. Out of an abundance of caution Tanya had looked into it back at the nursery, and what she’d learned about how dangerous a stampede was in the past made it very clear to her why the protections exist.

It was also, more broadly, an interesting look into how the forestry service came to exist in the first place.

As recently as two hundred years ago entire towns were simply wiped off the map by an exponential chain reaction, and even now one of the main duties of a ranger is to carefully observe and moderate the large-scale movements that still happen.

That is the system this fringe political party is trying to ‘reform’, and forgive her for being conservative, but if it ain’t broke…

The thought trails off as they approach their destination, the dual automatic doors of a pokecenter lit from within by cheery lights.

It's common practice for any battler ‘mon to get a basic checkup after walking a route, training, battling, even just moving a long distance, all of it can cause latent injuries that are much easier to heal if they’re caught early. This is doubly true for new ‘mon, and while Teddiursa doesn't quite qualify in the traditional sense, a checkup can only help.

Walking across the final distance to the doors, Tanya notices that the gaggle of trainers have fallen silent, and that each and every one of them are very consciously not looking at Amelia.

The Joy clearly notices and lets out a short huff, to which Sam flinches and looks over at her with his hands held up in surrender.

“Hey! We didn't say anything!” He defends, to which the others give dirty looks, but Amelia just looks exasperated.

“Well either I’m psychic or you guys are terrible at acting casual!” She rebuts with an irritated grunt, walking up to the door. “I’m not doing any of my residency hours here so I’ve not called ahead, and I’ve not even met all of my first cousins! My family is so large we’re a checkbox on the national census! The chances I personally know the woman at the counter right now are–”

“Amelia!?” A shocked voice shouts from within the pokecenter just as the doors open, cutting Amelia off with an expression of shocked disbelief locked on her face. “What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since I went on my overseas residency! ”

Amelia is still just standing there in the doorway, frozen, but after a long second she woodenly turns to look at the Joy on the counter, a surprisingly young looking girl just a few years older than her.

The nurse behind the counter takes the silence to continue talking with almost aggressive enthusiasm.

“How’s my favorite baby cousin doing nowadays, huh? What are you doing in Fallarbor?”

With that final burst of questions the Joy falls silent, leaving Amelia to glance backward at the other trainers, then stare back at the acting nurse.

After a few seconds, she seems to force her mouth open.

“...Hey Tori.”