"You have questions," Zam said confidently as he sat down, cup of coffee in hand. Taylor was across from him and had already begun sipping her own beverage. They were in a completely empty coffee shop, watching the aftermath of the robbery on the silent television. Eventually, the screen changed to some other, much more boring news coverage. Something really dull about how it was the driest September on record. 

"Just a few," she nodded. "Can you really understand Pokémon?"

"Of course," Zam grinned. "I'd always wondered why people always seem to struggle to understand what Pokémon are saying. I'd be watching a movie with my family and a Pokémon in the scene would say something completely random, usually about how they weren't getting paid for whatever they were doing and nobody would find it odd. Eventually, I realised that my parents couldn't understand what the Pokémon were saying."

"But how do you understand?"

"It's all up here," Zam smiled, tapping his forehead. "You see, I'm not just some madman. I'm not even a man. I have the brain of an Alakazam. I'm a Pokémon-human hybrid. It took me years to learn how to speak human because it's not my first language. Speaking to Pokémon comes naturally because it's what my brain is hardwired to do."

"You're mad, aren't you?" Taylor asked, looking suitably shocked. Zam was used to it at this point in his life. At first, nobody ever believed his ludicrous story.

"Yes, but I'm also always right." Zam paused, taking a sip of the disgusting drink. He hated coffee with a passion. It tasted as though somebody had ground up some mud and mixed it with Pidgey droppings before adding a dash toilet water. However, it was fuel and he needed fuel. "Next question?"

"Did you know that those robbers were coming?" she asked.

"Of course."

"So you took me to an armed robbery on purpose?" Zam nodded. "Well, you definitely know how to treat a girl."

"I know how to treat myself. If a female happens to be in the vicinity then lucky enough for them," Zam shrugged. At no point this morning had it occurred to him that he was putting Taylor in danger. He'd had the situation under control.

"Lucky that I almost died."

"You think I would attend a heist if I thought death was a possibility?" Zam chuckled, shaking his head. "I planned out my every move this morning, being prepared to counter the robbers' known tactics. Over the last year, those criminals had become infamous. I knew exactly how to beat them."

"But haven't the police been after them for ages?" Taylor pointed out. "I thought they couldn't find a pattern. I thought it was impossible to predict the time and location of their next target."

"Have a look at this," Zam smiled, taking out his phone and bringing up a spreadsheet. It was a calendar that highlighted the date, time and location of every bank robbery carried out by those notorious thieves. "See if you can spot the pattern."

"I can't see it," she conceded after a few minutes. "It just looks completely random."

"Oh, your little human brains are funny sometimes," Zam laughed. Everyone could see the pattern. It was so blindingly obvious to anyone who had ever studied the robberies properly, including the police unit in charge of bringing the crooks in.

"You're an arsehole, aren't you?"

"Actually, I'm a person," Zam informed her. Where she got the idea that he was a buttocks region was beyond him.

"Ok, fine, don't worry about it. Humour me. Why are our little human brains so amusing?"

"Well, you, like the many detectives who viewed this spreadsheet, instantly spotted the pattern and followed up by saying there is no pattern."

"But there is no pattern!" Taylor insisted.

"Exactly!" Zam exclaimed. "The pattern is that there is no pattern!"

"That makes literally no sense."

"Think about it for a moment," Zam said. "These mixtures of times, dates and locations when loaded into any computer system in the world yields a negative response. There isn't a single computer or person alive that can find a pattern here. Don't you find that a bit odd?"

"I suppose..."

"Well, I too supposed," Zam grinned. He could see the penny was beginning to drop, he just needed to push it over the edge. "I wondered what the chances of that were so I ran a simulation. I pretended that I was going to go about robbing banks and I selected everything completely at random. Then, I input the results into my laptop and what do you know, an accidental pattern shows up. This spreadsheet is designed to look random but it isn't. It's carefully manipulated and meticulously planned so that nobody could predict where they would strike next. All I had to do was use their past robberies to deduce where and when they would go next to avoid creating an accidental pattern. I predicted Barclays, today at quarter to twelve. They were three and a half minutes late."

"That's amazing," Taylor smiled.

"Trivial." Taylor really did do a good impressed look. It filled Zam with confidence which wasn't something he was used to feeling in social situations, especially around women. There was probably some human hormone in him that made his heart beat unusually quickly around them and Taylor was no exception. In fact, she made this feeling worse. But was that a good thing? Zam's confusion was confused by yet another seemingly pointless meeting of the lips. Trapped in his own thoughts, Zam hadn't seen the blonde leaning towards him and planting another kiss on him and now that strange spark of... something or other was back. Whatever the feeling was, Zam figured it was good.

"So where to next?" she whispered when she finally broke the kiss, allowing Zam to breathe. Their faces were still only an inch apart.

"First things first, we've got to catch a magnet train to Saffron City. I've challenged the world chess champion to a match and it's even being televised. With me being a completely unknown player, the odds are a hundred to one for me to win so Tristan gets to win lots of money that he'll no doubt lose instantly and I become the best in the world at something."

"You already know you're going to win?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I've studied this man and his every strategy and have prepared a counter strategy for his every move. I may have only taken up chess three days ago but I'd say that victory is a certainty. There is no foreseeable combination of moves that he could come up with that could defeat me."

"You're really cocky, aren't you?"

"No, I'm just very clever," Zam grinned. He checked his watch and stood up. They had a train to catch. "You coming?"

"How could I not?" she replied. She took his hand and they walked out of the shop together before making their way towards Goldenrod Station. "And what are you going to do after all that?"

"Taylor my dear," Zam grinned, "I'm Zam the Hybrid. I do whatever the hell I want."

"Does that involve bedroom antics with me?"

"Stick around and you'll find out."