~~~ 80 - Joy ~~~

  ~=~=~

  It had taken Nurse Avery a few weeks to get acclimated to the hustle of the Castelia City Pokemon Center. The other nurses on staff had assured her it was supposed to be even busier.

  That is, if the gym up the road and around the corner was actually doing gym things. Alder putting the local circuit on pause while he reevaluated his life was a partial blessing in that regard, at least. It wouldn't last though— Castelia needed an operating gym, and not even having anyone to stand in was draining people's patience.

  It was starting to get picked up by those radio stations—the ones that always found fault with everything the league ever did—Locals made passing comments and questions about it.

  Avery didn't care though, Castelia had been plenty refreshing to give her a proper burst of energy for dealing with people. She smiled to herself, that honeymoon phase of being in a new place hadn't faded yet! It was so nice to be out of the sticks and back around actual human beings again.

  Sometimes, she'd wondered if some of the trainers that wandered in were actually human. The thought floated in her head that they were ditto in disguise or zoroark, for how little they spoke. The stories that had come out of Kanto as they tried removing the impostor pokemon not ten years prior were still inspiring movies.

  It didn't help that Unova already had zoroark as a native pokemon, either. She didn't know what she'd do if she'd discovered one of her coworkers, or even a trainer, was a pokemon in disguise. Rumors of two zoroark going into a theme park through the chaos of that Meloetta battle with Darkrai were rampant.

  Still. Here, in the city, with less wild pokemon, it was like a nice vacation. She'd see her mom once a month or so instead of once every six. Following Aurea Juniper, professor Juniper's daughter, meant they at most talked once a week on the phone. She didn't realize it, but Avery had missed the cosmopolity of the city.

  She walked out to the main receiving desk, and sat down. It was Five A.M., and the city center had to be open 24/7 for emergencies. The shitty train town pokecenter would be closed for a couple months, but given recent budget cuts, it was impossible to avoid.

  Rangers would just have to fill in, she mused. She poured over the sign-in log of the last 3 hours. It was a good idea to check on all of the pokemon in the kennels if they were wild, though human and trainer-owned ones were less problematic.

  Not a single wild pokemon, not even a bird-type with a wing shorn off from casual territorial battles over fries at the pier from well-meaning tourists, and that happened at least once a month. She sighed in relief, less paperwork.

  First catches were fine. Trainers bringing in their own pokemon from battle? Also fine, those were simple log entries..

  Home-kept pokemon that weren't being used in the circuits? Paperwork. Wild pokemon? Easily three times more paperwork. Sometimes it felt intentional.

  She went about the day, checking a couple of pokemon, working with Chansey to organize some shelves, make sure some paperwork was buttoned up, handling a Tangela that got overstimulated at a birthday party that panicked during an overexcited hug until it couldn't disentangle itself from the birthday boy.

  The mother complained a lot about the pokemon, the father just chuckling. "I knew getting a pokemon for Ryan was a bad idea!"

  She'd had to play diplomatic with the panicking mother. "This is not going to hurt a bit," she'd told the still-panicking Tangela as she sprayed its face with concentrated, aerosolized sleep powder.

  When the pokemon was asleep, the tangles had not relaxed, tied themselves into knots. The mother had become increasingly irate when the first pass didn't work. With pokemon like Tangela, it never did. She glanced at Chansey, who gently, but forcefully nudged the lady out of the operating room.

  "We're going to have to cut the tangles off," she said. Arceus, Avery would never admit it, but she was having a good time, though that 4pm on the clock had suggested she probably should have had a nutribar before taking the kid in back.

  Nurses tended to be either overweight or under-weight, or just starting their career. Avery had only lost 5 pounds, and for that, she was proud. But going from 145 to 140 was still not the best for her health, since she was 5'9".

  "Is it going to hurt?" The boy had asked, frozen, unwilling to cry but also very clearly worried, as Chansey had shut and locked the door, forcing the parents back into the waiting area. Then she went to the shelf and grabbed a pair of shears.

  The thing with Tangela was that once they tangled on something, they didn't come off for days or weeks. Not until the pokemon started to get hungry. Of course, you, uh, don't starve a Tangela that's already attached to something you wanted to keep alive.

  "Uh, no, you'll be fine," she'd said, her nurse’s smile not comforting the kid in the slightest.

  "I meant Tangela." Tears were starting to form in his eyes at what he probably assumed was a deflection.

  "Oh! He's fast asleep!" She said, chirpy. That… didn't assuage him at all. Right, kids from the city were generally insulated from some of the more grotesques of pokemon. Avery would put good odds that the child had been sheltered even more than usual, based on the mother's reaction.

  "Oh, well, Pokemon pain and limbs aren't like ours. Tangela's little tangles are alive and move, but detaching them is normal in their lifetime. You can close your eyes if you want!" She said, holding the shears up and closing them with the smooth metallic "chonk".

  Chansey offered a little dance to keep the kid's attention. He smiled. "Think you can hold still? This might get a little messy!" That chipper tone she'd tried was not the best bedside manners.

  He nodded. The tears rolled as he kept his eyes open, occasionally glancing at Chansey, who provided a nice little distraction, Tangela goop dripping all over the boy, mostly protected by the smock.

  "You're doing so good!" Avery said, encouraging him, as she pulled the latest tangle off, and slid the shears under the tangles, and cut them off with enough force to sever a human spine.

  When they finished, the boy had looked away a couple times, but watched in some level of morbid fascination.

  The Tangela tangles were separated, and the boy breathed a sigh of relief. "Chansey, do you want to clean up or help the boy to the showers and replacement clothes?" She'd asked, leaving Tangela, still asleep, on the operating bed.

  Chansey immediately began cleaning the room.

  "Come with me, you'll need new clothes. When you're done, throw them in the bin over by the shower," she said.

  The family hadn't been ready for pokemon, and the blame for it rested as much on the father as it did the mom, but there wasn't really anything she could do. She'd never advocate for more strenuous laws against pokemon partnership.

  Maybe better education, though.

  An hour later, the boy and his parents were gone to get dinner. They'd return at seven, after their new pokemon's bleeding had stopped. It was best to let it regrow its limbs naturally when it was at such a young age.

  That the boy hadn't been killed accidentally meant good things. A lecture, diet, and pointing the family at the encyclopedia pages for their new pokemon was the only long-term remedy. In time, with care and responsibility, they'd learn.

  The parents returned, picked up the pokemon, the mother begrudgingly let the kid carry its sleeping form out of the hospital. Avery settled in for the last hours of the shift. Her day off would be tomorrow, and she might get a second if there were no major rushes. The 14-hour days were still difficult, but at least days off were real!

  The pace was as if whoever designed the program had been hopped up on cocaine and assumed everyone else would be on it too. Which was probably true, given the year the program was designed.

  The office phone rang, and her lovely partner Chansey perked up from its little sleeping spot. It wasn't normal for the front desk to get a call at— she checked the time—7pm, two hours left in the shift.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Despite that incident, it had been a nice, quiet day.

  Plenty of doctors and nurses in the city to handle the load from the patrols and pokemon caught up in commerce, but the summer season was winding down—Less pokemon hit by ships, boatfare, and tourism slowing down until the early fall celebrations responsible for the downswing in cases.

  The phone rang again, snapping her out of her reverie. She picked it up, and put on her happy nurse voice: "Hello, this is Nurse Avery at the Castelia Pokemon Center, how can I help?" she answered.

  "Oh! Nurse! Yeah, uh so this is an. Uh. Ahem, concerned citizen. I've been told there's a bunch of Leavanny and Swadloon locked up in the gym without any caretaker to care for them, and I'd like to ah, uh, report that."

  She paused. Why would anyone report this to the pokecenter of all places?

  "Uh, okay. But if you're worried about anything illegal, you should be reporting it—"

  She'd heard about these kinds of calls before. Someone looking to put a new gym member or gym leader themselves in trouble for neglect or whatever. They had some level of immunity.

  "Uh, no, I mean, I think they're fine, but uh. Shit—"

  "I'm sorry, but if this is serious you really should be calli—"

  She tried.

  The guy wasn't having it.

  "No, look, there's a whole, where you visit pokemon in person. You know about that, right?"

  "Only if they can't be put in a pokeball or there's another extenuating circumstances, but I can't"

  "Look, I have a pokemon I need you to check on, it's not mine, but it's in the Castelia gym, and I can let you in, but I can't take her anywhere"

  "Uh…" Avery accidentally let out, letting the veneer of the nurse persona drop for just a moment, not really sure what to do. Then, Chansey, who'd been listening in, gave her a look. One that stopped Avery in her tracks. "Wait, did you say Leavanny and swadloon?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She hadn't heard from Artemus in months. Not since—not since she'd called Professor Juniper.

  "I'll need to make some calls, but Chansey and I can do a checkup."

  ~~~

  It was an early night of sleeping for Macie, because they had an early day tomorrow, but as he'd promised, he'd let her sleep in his bed watching cartoons until she'd fallen asleep. She'd be an overactive terror the next day, but they had a lot to do.

  He'd checked his bank account, the number of zeros had made him choke. It was said that you weren't supposed to spend a lot of money after making a lot of money, but there were things he'd been putting off while on that meagre income the gym called equitable.

  He'd received the full deposit of everything he'd asked up front, and it made him sweat. His living options have increased dramatically. Going back to Kalos was an actual option, his ex-wife be damned.

  But, there was one hitch. One major problem.

  That morning, when he'd climbed into the cave, marked by the rangers as a Noibat cavern, he'd scoped it out. They were all gone already. Not dead, not migrated, that would have been caught by the service's pokemon outbreak monitoring tools.

  Gone. And that was a big problem, since he had been tasked with eliminating the flock. And they were gone.

  The moment he'd left the cave, his gut had sunk, his hopes dashed, a message hit his phone, thanking him for his services rendered. The money had been sent two days ago. Their contract was complete. Signed xyz.

  He'd checked with all his co-workers at the gym. And the rangers and the local police, and none had done anything. It smelled worse than a grimer's pit.

  So instead of sticking around, he goes home, grabs Macy, and says they're going on a trip, they're going to be gone for a while, but she can't bring everything.

  She'd started to cry. She didn't know why they were leaving, but something was wrong, and his little girl wasn't even ten yet. And Jacob wasn't having it.

  He towered over her, and glowered her down into quiet sobs. Arn barked, reminding Jacob he's there. Orn's ears were turned direct at him. Jacob stood down, the guilt immediately washing over him.

  Instead, he went to the house's basement and punched the concrete wall and let his knuckles bleed against it. Fuck that company, fuck whatever was going on in the Unova region, he and his daughter were going to get the fuck out as soon as they could.

  It would still take a week or so to do it right, but he still had Kalos citizenship, still reported his taxes there every year. Transferring the money would not be pretty, but the only possible answer was out, and fast.

  "I'm sorry, honey," he'd said, picking her up and holding her in his arms. "But we have a lot we need to do to get ready for our trip!" Was he lying to her? Yes. Was she going to be mad? Yes. If she was anything like him, she'd probably never forgive him.

  "Lea-" she started, reaching her arms out to her leavanny doll. The one he'd gotten her the day after he'd given the Leavanny back to Artemus.

  She grabbed it and pulled it in as he held her, before giving her a kiss on the forehead and sat her onto his bed, watching cartoons. He turned the Air conditioning down 4 degrees, to encourage her snuggling deeper into the covers.

  A half hour later, she was fast asleep.

  ~~~

  "Oh, come on, don't give me that look!" Scratch said, holding off a giggle as Liam pouted while they walked down the marina to the location on the docks where they'd meet a professor and their students.

  She was a good friend, she'd helped him close up most of his affairs in the city and was arranging a moving vehicle, which they were going to use to move back to a more rural area.

  With rolling brownouts and the instability of certain data centers coinciding with his waking up as a pokemon, Scratch and Liam, along with his mom, whom Scratch had taken a liking to, had decided it was best to get out of dodge sooner than later. A few volatile fuel refineries had even exploded.

  Gas prices were already up ten cents per gallon and it had only been a few days!

  Regardless, it wasn't his problem any more! He was a pokemon, so he strutted down with her, Scratch leading the way as they proceeded to enter the marina and go to the socks.

  The Los Angeles marina was the go-to place for the local university's biology department. The money had dried up for running actually-detailed long-running studies, but despite that, the university wasn't happy about dissolving their aquatic biology programs.

  No, he wasn't mad that they were taking him out to see biologists. He'd sat around and played at the LA aquarium, to the chagrin of Scratch and the delight of tourist, intern, and marine biologist alike.

  He'd even let them measure him and run a few tests! From hind legs to nose, Liam was about 4' tall. About 9' long from tail to nose, and a solid hundred and thirty pounds. Which was extremely odd, because by sheer volume he should have been much heavier.

  But there was just so much to explore that he wanted to try that they didn't really get to check more of his anatomy.

  The water in the aquarium was actually really nice, free of the weird taste of the water that came out of the faucet.

  And there was even plenty of food.

  He'd wanted to do more tests, but Scratch had said Liam was getting "stir-crazy from being inside all day". His complaints were ignored, and, being nice enough to avoid a scene, he'd conceded to leaving the aquarium without a fuss. Save a couple of light water shots of defiance.

  Until he saw what it did to the concrete, and then they had to leave even faster. She'd apologized for him and promised they’d pay back damages, and then left before more people came.

  For whatever reason, the biologists, as curious as they were, had agreed that it was time for him to leave! Rude.

  "You definitely absorbed more of the fox personality than you think," she'd lectured at him, ignoring the stigma of people looking at her as she "walked" her weird water dog.

  "We're here," she said, walking up to an ocean-going fishing rig, a pair of people in wetsuits greeted them.

  "WOW, he's actually huge." The grad student said.

  "Yeah… Just uh, be careful, he's as smart as you and I," Scratch said, curiously leaving out the fact that he'd been a human before.

  "I have so many questions," a random girl said.

  "We do," an old man with graying hair said, "but it's probably best that we get to them out of sight from the shore…"

  She finally noticed a man in a tan jacket standing inconspicuously on the boat back there.

  "Hey, I don't need that smug look from you, asshole" Scratch said. "Now, get on the damn boat, this whole trip was for you," she waved him on.

  It took a second, retracting his claws, before he hopped on, finally having gotten a hang of the body a bit. It just wouldn't do if he'd accidentally shredded the fiberglass, sinking the boat. They'd just cut his nails with industrial-grade clippers, because they were leaving scratches in the concrete.

  The boat revved up and the 5 people and one newly-turned pokemon found their places as it putted out of their watery parking stall. One of the students kindly tossed Liam a sardine, which went down like water.

  The hum of the boat was nice, the thrum of the beating engine and motors provided a kind of comfort against stress he didn't know he'd been feeling.

  Once the novelty of being a pokemon wore off he'd been lethargic as hell. It was the city. Or the food. Or the oil from all the cars. Or the lack of good water. They'd tried grocery fish, but something about it really didn't agree.

  Too small, not enough, a weird smell. He ate, sure. He hadn't been hungry. Or the feeling of hunger was alien in this body in comparison to what it was like as a human.

  Which, well, just wouldn't make sense.

  Surely, his ability to read and write would have been more impacted since those were so tied to human's ability to process senses. He'd read Other Senses, Other Worlds for fun as a teen.

  "Yeah, things like leaves and sawdust don't just stick to him, they eventually dissolve," she'd said. "I'm pretty sure that's textbook Acid Armor at work."

  Liam just rolled over. "But don't worry, I'm pretty sure it doesn't really take effect for at least two or three days," she'd quickly added, "... and I'm also pretty sure it's activated more by anxiety and stress."

  Or I don't know how to control it yet, he thought lazily. Someone sat down next to him and pushed his tail onto their lap. He'd almost kicked them off, but didn't want to accidentally hurt them.

  Instead, he tuned out their conversation and just basked in the sun, letting the loud hum of the motor drown out their conversation. A hand had made its way to his belly, and—yeah, that was a nice belly rub.

  Yeah, you can sit next to me.

  "He's purring! And oh my god he's got that smug face."

  "Don't let him bully you with it," Scratch said, her eye-roll at him practically audible.

  They had been working on closing out his affairs so that he could retire to his family farm, but there were still a couple more days. The first trips out had taken some work, they'd tried hiding him, in glorp-mode but it was about as weird and awkward as anything else, until Scratch decided it didn't matter any more.

  This had been their first day out and about in public during the day. And it was nice. Which was what he'd expected—some people did gawk a bit—but it wasn't much different from some street performers doing a dance on a large sidewalk in terms of attention.

  It just meant that they were on a timer for getting the heck out of dodge. They had two, maybe three days left before it "clicked" for people.

  The nice thing he'd learned from the aquarium, and a couple midnight trips to the beach, was he'd largely gotten over his fear of the ocean.

  Or being a pokemon had eliminated it. They'd tested it until Scratch had been fairly confident that part of his brain had been muted.

  Or something like that.

  ~~~