A man given a new lease on life finds himself amongst pokemon. From his memories of pokemon as a whole, he assumes the power of pokemon and the world around him runs on convenient fate, rule of cool, and cheesy friendship just like any other anime. Unfortunately for everyone else, he's 100% right.
If Borne of Caution is an attempt at a coherent and realistic look at pokemon, then, Borne of Desire is the opposite. It's all the mindless indulgence I DONT want in a serious fic. It's a very seat-of-my-pants for-fun project and is written with no storyboard. Updates will be inconsistent and quality cannot be assured. Not to be taken too seriously.
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"Good mornin' Mr. Julian."
With a grunt, Julian drops the remaining items from his pocket, his phone and his keys, into the worn plastic basket by the xray scanner and steps through the man-sized metal detector. As it does every morning, the stupid thing wails when it picks up his belt-buckle. "Morning indeed..." he grumbles, looking over at the only adornment on the checkpoint wall; a clock.
It's 6:44 am.
The guard manning the checkpoint, an elderly gentleman that Julian never remembers the name of chuckles. "Just morning?" He asks, slowly rising from his seat behind his computer with a handheld metal detector in hand. The old guard presses a key on his computer before shuffling over, making the conveyor belt under the basket of Julian's things pull the basket through the xray scanner.
"I promise I'm not this grumpy all the time, just the mornings," Julian mutters, suppressing a yawn. "Once I have some state-provided caffeinated swill, that'll fix everything."
The handheld metal detector warbles a grand total of once as it passes Julian's belt, satisfying the security guard who returns to his seat with a sigh. He glances at his monitor, and although Julian can't see what's on it, it's probably the xray readout.
"You're good, Mr. Julian." The guard smiles and waves him forward. "Have a good day!"
Julian just gives the guard a halfhearted wave and collects his things from the basket. Everything but his ID card, which hangs from a lanyard, is thrust into his pockets without much care. He looks down at his ID card with a measure of disdain.
The photo, one from several years ago, shows a blonde, green-eyed man of roughly twenty-five years of age with a wide, eager smile. His face is clean shaven, his hair is short and professional, and what little of his suit that can be seen in the photo is clean and pressed.
Ha! Julian smirks and rubs his stubble-coated chin, looking down at his plain polo shirt and ruffled slacks as he does so. He doesn't bother with taking rebellious pleasure in his messy mane of blonde, which is almost to his shoulders.
Below the photo is a name, his name. Julian Angelo, followed by his title, Network Admin. Just under his name in obnoxious lettering is another name that makes Julian's eye twitch.
DARPA.
One might think working for the mysterious government department of supposed mad scientists would be filled with exciting thrills and discoveries, but really..?
Julian scans his badge at the keypad leading into the facility proper and waits. When the heavy, bullet and blastproof door doesn't budge, he scans his badge again, then again. Finally, he sighs and punches in an obnoxiously long manual PIN number into the keypad. With a click, the thick door swings open with the whine of a motor on its way to being burnt out.
Inside is the most uninspired lobby of any government office ever. Disgusting yellow walls and a ripped up carpet from the 90s draw the eye, and looking up, Julian sees yet another light is out, making a dark spot in the middle of the room. The air vents, clogged with an unspeakable amount of dust, fill the room with a humid, musty odor.
...Really, for all its funding, DARPA is run like any other government agency.
Lazily.
Julian sighs and ignores the young intern manning the lobby front desk, who in turn is too absorbed in web surfing on her computer to look at him. Looking back as he waits for an elevator, he sees what website she's fooling around on and makes a mental note to add a network filter rule to block that site in particular.
The elevator dings and opens, letting Julian in. When he scans his badge and selects a floor inside the elevator, it surprisingly works the first time. The doors shut with a creak, then the elevator descends one floor, two, then stops.
Julian just scans his badge again, and the elevator groans and drops one more floor. It dings, but the LED panel displaying the floor number is blank.
The doors open, letting the blonde man walk out and shiver as the oppressive AC of the 'blacksite' floor hits him fullforce. This early, there is no-one on the floor other than the guard patrol, so that means no shitty interns calling him cousin and making bowling jokes.
'Blacksite. Now that's a real joke.' Julian shakes his head as he walks down the sterile white hallway, passing a single stoic guard who glances at his badge. 'I know there are at least three more floors below this one. Whoever set-up the data center on B3 before I took over as its babysitter did a lazy job. Why would I ignore all the unlabeled, caged racks in the back when the director handed me the keys to them without a second thought? None of that goes to anything in the rest of the building.'
He makes the same turns he does every morning. Left, right, then second set of double doors on the left. He scans his badge once more and slips inside the building's data center.
All around, racks of servers, switches, and other sorts of network equipment hum and whirr as their little LEDs flash merrily. The noise of the cooling fans and HVAC system makes a dull, monotone drone that makes Julian sleepy again just listening. For now, he ignores everything and ventures to his office in the farthest corner of the room. Opening the door and flipping on the light, he looks at the 'office' with a frown.
The office is more of a large closet with just enough room for a desk, a comfortable chair Julian shelled good money out for, and an old laptop.
Closing the door and seating himself, Julian glances over the various alerts and emails sent his way on his laptop. After dismissing all the false positive network equipment alerts and replying to the only important email in the several hundred he gets per day, he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, feeling himself relax.