The Talking Fish

Welp, I'm not a creative writer so this was a bit tough for me. My job has me writing technical papers from time to time - think more statements than sentences, concise facts without much flowery descriptors, and lots of lists and tables. This is for something easy to test the waters a little bit (no pun intended). I write in my usual writing style but I tried to make it more like a creative piece than a technical piece. Hopefully I achieved that.

Title: The Talking Fish
Pokemon I Want to Catch: Magikarp
Character Count: 4761


At first it was thought to just be an undiscovered species of fish. The fisherman who found it was making his rounds on the Amazon when he spotted a glimpse of the creature’s crown-shaped dorsal fin peeking above the river’s surface. Throwing line and bait, the fisherman was able to reel in the creature with minimal effort. The fisherman had never seen anything like it before. Its scales shimmered bright red in the morning sun. Its long, yellow whiskers was nearly the entire length of the creature. The most striking feature was its golden crown-shaped dorsal and ventral fins. However, what shocked the fisherman the most was the sound the fish made from its pouty lips, “Karp. Karp.”

Ai Deus meu! It’s a talking fish! The fisherman lowered it back down into the muddy river water, turned the small boat around, and slowly made his way back to the Hi'aiti'ihi village dragging the fish along behind the vessel. Back at the village, the fisherman showed the village chief the strange creature that he had caught and explained to him the sound the creature had made when it was pulled out of the water. Steeped in tradition, the Hi'aiti'ihi chief looked on in amazement and came to the conclusion that the creature must be a pet of the gods that had gotten lost. The villagers created a makeshift pond by blocking off a portion of the river and released the divine pet into this pond in hopes that the gods would find it and reward the villagers for the rescue of their sacred pet.

Months went by and the gods never came. The strange red fish lived in its makeshift pond eating the daily scraps of food the villagers fed to it. Every once in awhile, the fish would lay on its side, make its signature cry "Karp. Karp. Magikarp," and splash water at an unsuspecting villager walking close to the water’s edge, but nothing happened. The villagers believed the splashing to be some sort of primitive game the fish was trying to play and would splash water back at the fish.

News soon spread of the talking fish in the Hi’aiti’ihi village. The once peaceful and primitive village was now swarmed with reporters, scientists, and animal rights activists all pushing their own agenda. Reporters wanted to exploit the fish to increase views for their blogs or news channels. Scientists wanted to study the fish to see what made it special and able to "talk". While animal rights activists wanted to release the creature back into its natural habitat (even though they had no idea of what that really was). However, none could argue about what the fish actually was. It was a Pokemon. More precisely, it was a Magikarp.

With the recent release of the mobile app Pokemon Go, Pokemon had once again become a household name. And no Pokemon was more infamous than Magikarp. Requiring 400 candies to evolve the Pokemon, Magikarp’s evolution, Gyarados, became a long-term goal for many players. Now a Magikarp has been fished out of the Amazon River by a primitive tribe. Pokemon fans across the globe have become extremely excited with some theorizing that this was a publicity stunt by Niantic to increase popularity for their already popular app.

Famed Pokemon creator, Satoshi Tajiri, was called in to perhaps shed some light on how the mysterious creature from his video game may have appeared in our world. Much to everyone’s surprise, Satoshi answered the questions without hesitation. He explained that this was not the first Pokemon appearance in our world. Within the past two decades, there have been 5 other sightings of Pokemon in the modern world:

• A Sunkern was found sunbathing in a cornfield in the United States
• A Whismur was found causing havoc in the caves of Vietnam
• A Chatot was found flying around the back alleys of the UK
• A Ferroseed was found hanging from a tree in the African jungle
• An Inkay was found floating off the coast of Australia

During the interview, Satoshi revealed how he came about creating the Pokemon video game series. As a child, he would have dreams of visiting a world where these creatures lived, battled, and evolved. Every morning he would wake from his adventures in the magical dream world and write them down into a journal. When Satoshi grew older he pitched his dream journals to Nintendo and the Pokemon series was born.

But not even Satoshi himself knows why his childhood dream creatures are starting to appear in the real world. The Magikarp is only the latest of these Pokemon appearances. Are there more currently in the world that we have yet to find? How much of these creatures resemble their video game counterparts? Satoshi Tajiri has set up a company to study these creatures, but so far the results are classified. The only thing we do know? Pokemon is no longer just a video game. Pokemon are real!

 

claiming ^^ will get you a grade on PWN!