The Power of Three Plus One

Episode 52 - Pukemon, gotta catch em all, Part Three Welcome to the Final Boss battle. Anyone who’s faced the final Boss at the end of a game for the first time knows what happens next. Game over… game over… you get the picture. But for Whero and his son Mikaere, they suspect that "game over" for them will literally mean… game over. The end. They will need to work together, old school and new, if they are to have any chance of making it through what seems to be a game that is within the spirit of Pukemon… evolving. They will need to put all the clues together if they are going to figure this last challenge out. The real question is: who is the antagonist, the baddie? I’ll give you a clue… it's not who you think. Final round. Fight! T.A. Whero

Episode 51 - Pukemon Ultra Son, Part Two Mobile games are fun. They can be the perfect release after a hard day's work or even while you're still at work… when the boss is not looking, of course. But what happens when your game comes alive and the little characters in your game crawl out of your phone and start attacking you for real? Is this the latest tech like Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality, simply called “Reality”? The pint-sized Māori Pukemon warriors called Mohoa seemed pretty real after Whero had his car roof redecorated. Then there's the strange greenstone tititourea that materialised after the Mohoa were defeated at the McDonald's drive-through. Their weakness? A Big Mac and fries. BTW, Whero has a major weakness… a Big Mac and fries. So, what or who’s next? Get ready for the next round! T.A. Whero

Episode 50 - Pukemon Whero, Part One This story is about a 50-something year old former-gamer with 9 kids and 9 mokopuna. Oh, hold up, that’s me! I didn’t set out to make it about me, but I was there when Space Invaders hit Aotearoa. I spent most of my time in arcades, making me the foremost 80’s arcade expert, so it just made sense, hence the Whero at the end of the title. But, the Whero also plays on the game name, Pokemon Red. We have to jump forward a few decades, of course, to get to Pokemon, which of course means pocket monsters. I know! But it was one of my moko who came up with the title "Pukemon". He was doing the little kid thing, making up his own little waiata, which only had one word in it, "Pokemon". Except he was saying "Pukumon", and I thought, "Hey, Pukoro monsters, Pocket monsters, same thing." I adjusted the final title though to "Pukemon", as "Pukumon" sounded like monsters in desperate need of Keto… Anyway, this is what I call a whāquel. You know, sequel, threequel, and fourquel in Māori equals Whāquel. And it’s a game/story about gods, monsters, epic battles, and betrayal. Without spoiling any of the stories, all I will say is that all of the taniwhā in these stories are real. Every single one of them. To be honest, I knew some of them; others I had to hunt down... on Google, of course, but hidden under obscure keywords. Some appeared to me as if they were trying to be found. Get ready for realities to merge and blur, where the delicate balance of our world is about to be throttled by a hidden darkness. Long-forgotten taniwhā crawl and slither into our world. Get ready to push the start button. Let's go! T.A. Whero

Episode 49 - The Rainbow in the Sky (Based on a True Story) Thirty years ago, I had a strange dream. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was having a premonition, and I didn’t share it with anybody because I didn’t know that what I was dreaming about was about to come true. But you know how these types of visions go, where the details are cloudy at best. I remember that I was in the pool at my house, underwater, looking up at the house. I could make out the pool steps and thought it was odd that I had all my clothes on. I couldn’t move or swim, nor did I feel the need to. Anyway, a year or so goes by, and I’ve forgotten about the vision, and then tragedy strikes, and only then did I make the connection. I thought the dream was about me, that it was me in the pool. I was wrong. T. A. Whero

Episode 48 - When two iwi go to war (Retelling of an Old Story) E ai ki ngā kōrero, the battle known as Maikukutea, marks the final confrontation between Manaia and Ngātoroirangi. However, it wasn't so much a battle as it was a slaughter. Ancient tales recount how war canoes of Manaia assailed the pā of Ngātoroirangi on Mōtiti Island. In response, Ngātoroirangi dispatched his war god, Aitupawa, to decimate the taua from Manaia. The devastation was so immense that the sole remnants of the conflict were the bleached fingernails—or the Maikukutea—of the warriors belonging to Manaia, which washed ashore the next day. Yet, what occurred in between? Records are absent. The mystery deepens when considering how those fingernails became bleached, as there are only a handful of plausible explanations, given the circumstances. I promise I won't turn full-on CSI, but I've done my research. This story fills in the missing strands of DNA and to speculate on the fate that befell the ill-starred warriors from Manaia. T. A. Whero