Chapter 3: Suicune
After receiving the information from his colleague, the police officer across the square table from Arthur looked at him with a serious expression.
"Young man, do you remember your name?"
"...Arthur."
After thinking about it, Arthur decided to answer with his real name.
As he expected, the name didn't cause any reaction.
"So, do you remember where you live now? If you do, please answer truthfully. We need to contact your guardians as soon as possible, otherwise the consequences will be severe," the officer said sternly.
Of course, his intention was just to scare the kid. Everyone in modern times knew that even if Arthur played dumb the entire time, they couldn't really do anything to him.
But Arthur didn't know that!
He was very nervous.
He had too little information and didn't know which direction to lie in.
"I..."
After hesitating several times, he finally came up with an excuse.
"I used to live in Moonwhisper Mountain, I grew up with Pokémon."
"Huh?"
Everyone looked bewildered.
How was this getting more and more mysterious?
"The Moonwhisper Mountain you're talking about, is that... the Moonwhisper Mountain Nature Reserve?"
Although Arthur didn't understand, he continued following their lead. "Yes, that's right. I was raised by a group of Kangaskhan when I was little, I never met my parents."
"Ah... this..."
Everyone was stunned for a moment, not knowing how to react.
Was what Arthur said reliable? In fact, it was still possible.
Pokémon were different from beasts that lacked self-awareness; they had higher intelligence, and all intelligent beings had empathy and compassion.
Even in Arthur's time two hundred years ago, when the relationship between humans and wild Pokémon on the border was like fire and water, there were still occasional rumors of Pokémon finding and raising human abandoned babies.
This was determined by the nature of intelligent beings. Arthur thought that even after a hundred years, such cases shouldn't have disappeared.
And indeed, even in modern times, such cases still occurred occasionally.
But in modern times, with the increasingly perfect population census system and identity information network, such cases had not been seen for many years.
Hearing Arthur's statement, the officers' first reaction was: is this kid kidding?
However, the subsequent questioning repeatedly reached an impasse.
First, they couldn't find Arthur's identity information in the public security system;
Second, although the kid was vague about how he got here and couldn't explain anything, he was surprisingly familiar with the geography of Moonwhisper Mountain and the Pokémon groups there. He even said—
"There's a waterfall on Jun Heavenly Peak in the Moonwhisper Mountain Range, the mythical beast Suicune lives upstream of that waterfall. I saw her when I was little."
Another officer immediately frowned and blurted out, "Really?"
However, the team leader, who had been responsible for questioning Arthur, remained silent.
He paused the questioning and pulled his colleagues out of the room.
"Dazhu, we may need to report this to the director."
"Really?" The officer called Dazhu looked incredulous. "Captain, you don't really believe this kid's nonsense, do you? Just a kid's words, how can they be credible? He's probably just running away from home and made up this nonsense, right?
Suicune living upstream of a waterfall? What a load of crap! Why doesn't he say he saw Lugia by the sea when he was little?!"
Fortunately, he didn't say this in the room, or Arthur could have told him that he did see Lugia...
However, his captain unexpectedly looked very serious.
"Mythical beasts have rarely appeared in front of humans in recent years. Even their specific habitats are fourth-level alliance secrets, which require a certain level of alliance contribution to view. This information is generally not available online.
But coincidentally, when I was in college, I did my graduation project and saw relevant records with my tutor. Suicune does indeed live upstream of the waterfall on Jun Heavenly Peak in Moonwhisper Mountain.
Don't spread this information. Report it to the director first. These kinds of things should be handled by the higher-ups."
With that, he patted Dazhu's shoulder.
By this time, the officer called Dazhu had opened his mouth in shock, looking completely stunned.
After a long time, he managed to utter two words—
"Holy crap..."
After that, the news was reported, and because it involved a mythical beast, it was sent to the relevant department for verification. And the result once again verified Arthur's statement.
This time, he had bet correctly. Two hundred years later, Suicune still lived in the Moonwhisper Mountain Range.
As for why he knew Suicune was there?
The reason was simple: two hundred years ago, he personally drove Suicune into that mountain.
Suicune didn't originally live in Moonwhisper Mountain, but in the plains at the foot of the mountain.
At that time, the alliance had just expanded into this area and urgently needed the large tracts of arable land in the plains at the foot of the mountain, so they went to war with the local Pokémon and mythical beasts.
Arthur, who had just reached the Heavenly King level, was responsible for this war zone.
At that time, the young Suicune was not as gentle and approachable as she was now. Facing the alliance's army and trainers, she chose to fight head-on, proud as a queen.
As a result, she was thoroughly beaten by Arthur and his Pokémon in the first battle, rubbed into the ground, and finally captured and taken back.
However, Arthur was never an extreme human supremacist. Although he was loyal to the alliance, he rarely exterminated Pokémon and mythical beasts.
Since the alliance's initial goal was only the arable land and space in the plains, after taking the plains, Arthur made the decision to release most of the captured wild Pokémon, including Suicune, and drove them all into Moonwhisper Mountain to the west, threatening them not to leave the mountain area.
So it wasn't surprising that he was so familiar with the Pokémon groups in Moonwhisper Mountain. Because that was the result of his own actions...
It was from then on that Suicune shed her pride and changed her personality, becoming approachable and gentle, as if she had washed away the dross and seen through the world. In the two hundred years of peace that followed, she gradually became one of the most popular mythical beasts in the human world.
Arthur mentioned Suicune at first because she was the mythical beast he was most familiar with, no exceptions, and he wasn't afraid of being exposed no matter how much he said.
He mentioned Moonwhisper Mountain only because it was nearby.
But he never expected that just casually mentioning Suicune would cause such a sensation.
He, who had been cut off from the world for two hundred years, couldn't understand how popular mythical beasts were in the human world in this era.