Dick Slavum - [Hiatus]

Shit got real fast. Team Rocket had almost immediately switched to human trafficking instead of Poké-trafficking. Whether they sold captured people back to their loved ones, or did more nefarious things to them, people were disappearing left and right. Before too long, the purchase of humans was outlawed, even if they were a direct family member. This measure proposed by the Elite Four was meant to reduce the demand for the **** trade, and thus reduce the frequency of caught people. Which it did, for a time. They were not able to figure out a method to fairly prosecute for accidental captures, however. Since these glitched Pokeballs occasionally triggered in someone's hand or pocket, or the catch assistance of the Pokeball curved towards a nearby person, accidental captures were frequent. So anyone found in possession of a person, with no clear evidence of a **** capture or known association with Team Rocket, was allowed to either trade or keep their ****. These Pokéslaves, as they came to be called, were either treated as Pokémon, or returned to their families out of goodwill. Due to the physical and psychological modifications, Pokéslaves were considered more Pokémon than human. Since some Pokémon like Alakazam were significantly smarter than any human, this logic was readily accepted. The restriction against selling Pokéslaves was meant to reduce the number of humans becoming Pokéslaves, rather than out of the rights of the Pokéslaves themselves. You were even allowed to treat them at Pokécenters and battle them in the Pokémon league, although they were typically weaker than Pokémon.

It was later found that the AI managing the Poké-Whitelist had become prone to corruption overtime, while Bill, the genius coder behind it had died long ago in some mysterious Poké-fusion experiment. So a team of coders was working on fixing the issue, but glitched balls were still being distributed. So far, the only advancement they'd managed to produce was a scanner that could determine the viability of the AI in Pokéballs. Pokéballs were scanned before and after distribution to Pokémarts. This was your job.

Dick Slavum: 24 Year old Trainer Dropout.

Pokémon seemed to dislike you, which frustrated you greatly. The only Pokémon that seemed to obey you for a time was your Pikachu. However, he used Thunderbolt on his own Pokéball after you yelled at him for losing a battle and ran away. No Pokémon you had since had obeyed you in any regard, and you had to give up your dream of Pokémon training. You were bitter about it still, 6 years after the start and end of your journey. Luckily, a lot of non-trainer related jobs opened up recently, due to the need to double verify the AI of Pokéballs. Occasionally, a batch of Pokéballs containing one or two defects was delivered to the local Pokémart. It was your job to check each and every one of them and destroy the defective ones. You secretly kept six on hand, however. These defective balls had become something of a popular self defense weapon. Even if you were caught on camera capturing an attacker, it was considered a legal defense. It wasn't illegal to possess them, they were widespread even with these measures. Sometimes the AI of old Pokéballs that had passed the scan later degraded, and it wasn't possible to eliminate defective ones altogether. You could lose your job for failing to destroy them, but there would be no legal prosecution.

Although the reason you told others was self defense, a part of you wanted something more out of them.

A bell declaring the end of your shift rang out, silencing your thoughts as you mounted your scanner in its charger and left for the day. As you were exiting from the back of the Pokémart, you heard a commotion from the front and decided to investigate.