The Unquantifiable [Yuletide 2019]

Hello all! This was my Yuletide gift to shadowlucario50, and in particular the prompt that asked me to explore the bond between human and pokémon. And I'll admit, it was a difficult prospect, and one that I labored over for a long time.

That is, until I played a little mobile game called Pokémon Masters, and went through the sync pair story for an obscure character named Thorton. Please enjoy...



How do you quantify the bond between a human and a pokémon?

Thorton has puzzled over this conundrum for many years. Everything must be quantifiable, at least in his eyes. And from his experience, everything important is. The laws of nature, mathematics, scientific principles, even at their most random and quantum. Websites and databases are formed from algorithms. In some ways, not even human relationships are exempt from formula, as Thorton has noticed that many of his conversations over the years have followed certain types of structures. There is an equation or algorithm for everything.

So why are pokémon so different?

“Bronzong, finish off your opponent with a Zen Headbutt!”

The opponent, a young martial arts aficionado named Marcus, can only watch as his rented pokémon, a machamp, collapses after the bronzong rams him with his glowing metal body. Marcus rushes into the arena after victory is declared, a Revive capsule in one hand and a Potion in the other. Thorton, meanwhile, calmly walks towards the pair, his bronzong floating close behind him. The metallic bell seems joyful, rocking back and forth in a manner that was familiar to the Frontier Brain.

“Your battle was quite admirable,” Thorton says, extending his hand to Marcus. The black belt takes it, nearly pulling Thorton to the ground instead of hoisting himself up. “I am pleasantly surprised with how well you and your rental partner conducted yourselves in the arena,” he continues. “Might I ask how?”

“Why d’you wanna know?” Marcus asks, a puzzled expression on his face.

“It is a question I ask most Trainers who face me in battle. More often than not, my experience in battling Frontier contenders such as yourself is similar to yours, and I feel that it is as good a learning opportunity as any.”

“Well, uh … I mean…” This confusion is, admittedly, also somewhat frequent amongst the Trainers Thorton questions. “Like, I normally use fighting-type pokémon a lot, so it just sorta, y’know, clicked for me to pick the machamp to help me out here.”

“Yes, and he is truly a fine specimen,” Thorton replies, motioning to the recovering four-armed humanoid. “If you can believe it, this machamp is somewhat of a regular amongst Trainers in the Factory.” His bronzong floats over to the machamp, with whom he begins conversing in that way only fellow pokémon can. “And yet, he seems to work best with people like you. I want to know why.”

Marcus lets out a chuckle. “I mean, should be obvious, right?” he says. “We’re both warriors, man. Treat our respective bodies like a temple, y’know? And neither of us care about aesthetic, it’s about power and form!” He strikes a martial arts stance, and the machamp poses with him, flexing all four of his arms like a bodybuilder. “Yeah, see? He gets it!”

Thorton lets out a chuckle of his own. “Clearly.” He begins to walk towards Marcus, his arm extended. “Well, this has been a very enlightening battle. I do hope this loss has not discouraged you in any significant way, as you were a truly fascinating opponent.”

“You kiddin’, man?” Marcus replies, grasping Thorton’s arm in a fighter’s embrace. “You’ve only made me more eager to beat ya. I got close, I could feel it!” He dashes out of the arena in a fit of manic excitement, but not before belting out another “I can feel it!”

And Thorton does not doubt it for a moment.


The sad truth of it is, Thorton’s battle with Marcus leaves him no closer to any meaningful conclusions to his query. He has received similar answers to this question from most every Trainer he has encountered, and it frustrates him. All of these Trainers can tell him why they seem to bond with a specific pokémon, or even a larger subset, but he’s looking for the bigger picture. How does that bond work in a broader sense, and how can you measure it?

He has searched for years, and has come up empty every single time.

All of a sudden, Thorton’s vision goes black, and he feels the light breeze from the AC unit being cut off. He’s not worried, though. Bronzong likes to envelop Thorton when he is deep in thought, almost acting as a barrier between him and the world. It’s oddly comforting, to be honest. Thorton taps Bronzong’s metal interior in thanks, and attempts again to contemplate the new data.

And everything is silent for a time.

“Yo, Thorton! Where ya hiding?”

Oh, no, that was today, wasn’t it? Thorton lifts Bronzong slightly off the ground, just to take a quick peek. A somewhat sloppy-looking man in a dark-green sleeveless t-shirt, and lab coat is staring back at him. His arms are crossed, and he has a slight grin plastered on his face.

“Hah, there you are, pipsqueak,” Noland laughs. “You forget I was coming today?”

“Yes, apologies,” Thorton responds, fully lifting Bronzong away from him. “It slipped my mind, unfortunately. I was busy with a battle, after all.”

“Either that, or your head was just in the cloud again.”

“Excuse me, I was merely –” It suddenly dawns on Thorton what Noland had just said. “Very funny, Noland,” he deadpans. “It’s not like I’ve heard you say that joke forty-two times before.”

“And it never gets old,” Noland laughs. “It’s way too easy.” He pauses, crossing his arms. “I gotta ask, though. What were you thinking about?”

“It’s the same as always,” Thorton says, his head lolling into a slump. “I’m nowhere closer to figuring out how to quantify the Pokémon-Trainer bond than when I started. I’ve gotten so many examples of the specifics, but no evidence towards the broader question. Why can’t they understand that?”

“Ah, a modern-day Socrates, huh?” Noland remarks. “Looking past the specifics for the forms, I see.”

“I’m … actually surprised you know about that reference,” Thorton says.

“Hey, you don’t become a Frontier Brain without having some of your own!” he jokes. He approaches Thorton and holds out a pokéball. “Look, I can’t claim I have your answers, but I honestly think the time we bond with our pokémon the most is through battle. So, let’s give it a shot.” He tosses the ball in the air, releasing his own pokémon. A tough-looking pinsir lands onto the ground. Its spiny horns click together in anticipation at the potential of a new bout. “I mean, he’s ready to go.”

“And what will this accomplish, Noland?” Thorton sighs. “How do you think this battle will bring me any closer to my answers?”

“Well I dunno, you got any better ideas?”

Thorton pauses and considers his options. He can’t think of anything.

“Fine, I’ll play along.” He stands up, cracking his knuckles as he does. “But you’ll have to understand that, unlike you, I don’t have a signature pokémon like your pinsir.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m gonna call BS on that,” Noland remarks, motioning to the large metal bell floating nearby. “I’ve never seen you without your bronzong somewhere nearby. If he’s not your ace, he’s as close to one as you get.”

Thorton turns around to the bronzong. Although the smile on his face is literally built into his metal frame, even Thorton could tell that he is excited to hear Noland’s words. He is bobbing up and down in a manner that Thorton has long equated with happiness. It’s a comforting sight, to be sure.

“I can work with that, sure,” he says, taking out a small tablet-like device from his pocket. He begins to calibrate the device for his blank settings, resetting parameters and –

“Is that the device you were using in Pasio?” Noland asks.

“Yes, you’re correct,” Thorton replies. “Ever since the tournament, I’ve been using the Sync Power analysis machine to attempt to quantify the bond between –”

“Yeah, no, put that away.”

Thorton stops. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Put it away!” Noland repeats. “You won’t need it to figure out what you want to figure out.”

“I …” Thorton struggles to produce the right words. “How, exactly, do you expect me to collect data … without the machine I use to track data?”

“Maybe you’re tracking the wrong data, I dunno, but I wanna get started. Pinsir, X-Scissor!”

“Wait, wait, Bonzong, get out of the way!” Thorton barely has time to react before the pinsir charges at the bronzong horns-first, the spiked appendages glowing green with energy. Bronzong is far too slow to avoid the blow as the pinsir slams into his metal frame.

“Too slow, Thorton, head out of the tablet! Pinsir, keep up the pressure, Brick Break!”

“Psychic, catch him!”

Before the pinsir can land another crushing blow onto the bronzong’s metal frame, the metal bell’s body glows a soft blue color, and the large stag beetle is frozen in place, head forward.

Right where Thorton wants him.

“Flash Cannon, Bronzong, knock him down!”

The bronzong shifts his body so that the opening in the bottom of his frame faces the pinsir. Noland can only watch as an orb of metallic energy coalesces inside the bell, then launches out at high speed, knocking his opponent back a good fifteen feet, landing on his back.

“Now, may I please use my machine?” Thorton exclaims.

“Oh, we’re not even close to out yet,” Noland responds. “Pinsir, on your feet! It’s time for the closer. X-Scissor, Factory Head Style!”

Oh no, I remember what that means. “Bronzong, we’ve analyzed him before, steady yourself!”

The pinsir shoots up onto its legs, then jumps into the sky. As the wristband on Noland’s left arm flashes, he begins to glow with a rainbow hue. As the bronzong prepares to take the hit (in Thorton’s experience, he’s far too slow to dodge this), a glowing orb of rainbow energy envelops the pinsir for the briefest of moments, before he erupts with a chittering cry. On translucent yellow wings, the pinsir darts at the bronzong with blinding speed, slamming into him with a resounding crash. Unlike before, Bronzong can take no more punishment, and falls to the ground with a metallic thud. Thorton lets out a dejected sigh as he recalls the bronzong into his pokéball.

“Well, that was useless,” Thorton says. “I got no data from either of us. Are you satisfied?”

“What, are you joking?” Noland says, tossing a revive capsule towards the smaller figure. “I think that was super valuable data-wise.”

Thorton stares at Noland, incredulous. “HOW?!”

Noland taps the Mega-Crystal on his wrist. “You wanna know how much research Julien Sycamore put into researching these bad boys?”

“Years, at least.”

“Yep. He’s gotten a bunch of data on the energy levels exhibited when a pokémon Mega-Evolves. Now, can you guess how much he’s been able to quantify the sort of bond that a Trainer needs to have with their pokémon to use it?”

“Well, he would probably know much better than me, but perhaps he’s been able to discover some correlation between the amount of bond someone has with their –”

“Zero.”

This surprises Thorton. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you being serious?”

“Completely.”

“How do you know this?”

“’Cause before I came here, I stopped in Lumiose, paid him a visit.”

“But … but why would you do that?”

“Because you’re obsessed, man, and getting all worked up about missing something in the numbers, especially considering that there’s some other data that you’ve been missing.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What sort of quantitative data might I be overlooking?”

“Not quantitative, qualitative.” Noland gestures to the bronzong’s pokéball, where he is resting. “He’s your first pokémon, right?”

“Well, yes, he is.”

“Same with me and my pinsir,” he responds, placing a hand on the reverted stag-beetle’s scalp. “In the same vein, what’s your bronzong’s personality like?”

“I, um…” Thorton scratches his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“What’s he like, man? How does he act?”

“Uh…” Thorton has never truly considered this. He pauses, lost in thought. “Well … he is very analytical, like me. He, um … he is always fascinated by whenever I conduct my experiments. B-but it’s the same with all of my pokémon,” he stammers, “so it doesn’t demonstrate anything concrete!”

“Actually, I think it does,” Noland says. He plops onto the ground, sitting cross-legged on the arena floor. “Take me, for instance. What do you think of me?”

“You’re loud, abrasive, and obnoxious.”

Noland lets out a bellowing laugh. “Yeah, my wife says the same thing, can’t deny that!” He calms down rather quickly. “But here’s the interesting thing. My pokémon are pretty similar to me, too.” He leans forward. “And I’d wager a guess that the vast majority of the Trainers that come through here on the daily are the same way.”

“They use rental pokémon, Noland, you know this.”

“And yet what sorta pokémon do these Trainers gravitate towards?” He waits for a moment.

“They…” Thorton puzzles over it. “They gravitate towards pokémon that appeal to who they are as people.”

“And the pokémon do the same thing.” Noland hoists himself onto his feet. “Is it any wonder why you’re getting the same data, over and over again?” He extends a hand to Thorton to help him up. Thorton takes it, grabbing onto the muscular man’s arm to hoist himself to his feet. “I mean, is it any wonder why Karen’s so damn popular amongst Trainers today? ‘Don’t go for pokémon that are just strong, or just fast, or anything like that. Go with your favorites.” He looks at Thorton. “Go with the ones that work for you.”

Thorton stares back at Noland, a befuddled look on his face. “So … is my search for a way to quantify the bond between human and pokémon … pointless?”

“No there’s a point to it,” Noland responds. “Maybe just not the one you’re looking for.” He places a hand on Thorton’s shoulder. “For my money, the human-pokémon bond is unquantifiable, and it’s better that way. The less time you spend crunching numbers, and the more you spend interacting with the pokémon and Trainers themselves, the more fulfilled you’ll be. Trust me, I speak from experience.”

“Perhaps…” Thorton sighs. “Perhaps I’d never thought of it that way.”

“No better time to start than the present, right?” Noland smiles. “C’mon, let’s go grab a beer before the full meeting, I know a place ‘round here.”

He begins to walk off, gesturing for Thorton to follow. He hesitates for a moment, taking a second to place the revive capsule on the pokéball sensor to help Bronzong recover. He holds it in front of his face for a second.

“Unquantifiable.” He sighs. “Perhaps I need to change my approach somehow. I need to prove this.”

And with that statement, he follows Noland out of the Sinnoh Battle Factory, ready to begin the next phase of his ongoing experiment.