~~~ Chapter 64 - Famous To A Seven Year Old ~~~

We were sitting on the train, when we heard scrapes over the rooftop of the carriage. For a moment, I thought it was just one of the bats or pokemon flying around taking a landing. Well, I was half-wrong. The burly guy came through the door, but Lanky hadn't fallen asleep. Lanky's arm had turned pale. The conductor had joked that the tourniquet had cut the circulation.

Despite lying down, Lanky hadn't fallen asleep. I didn't really see what happened next—all three of us—me, the silcoon and Fidget, were all recalled. Inside the pokeball, my senses blurred once more. And I tried twisting, I tried churning, pushing, nothing worked. I could feel the mana inside me, even. But I could not get that last image of Kael, staring back at me in his black pajama sweatpants and tank top blinking back at me.

Or the feeling that I'd hurt Lanky. Or the feeling, the longing of emptiness that came from not holding a sewaddle or swadloon in my arms. Or carrying them in my sash. I'd wanted to help the kid. But I couldn't. I couldn't even decide on a plan and stick to it. Become the strongest battler ever?

What a joke.

I couldn't even remember my human name. Running away wasn't exactly working out, now was it? If there was one thing I could work on, to solve… It would be that one gap. Why could I remember Kael's name? Trisha's? Okay, I couldn't remember his kids' name, but I assumed that was mostly because was a terrible aunt.

Falling through the dream realm and finding me in a world that felt like a fake reality. It had to be fake. A dream. A world constructed just from a glitch with my dreams. I didn't have powers to open wormholes. That Z-Stuff?

No fucking way did it drag me back home just because I lost my grip. I needed to talk to Darkrai. Or Cresselia. The falling had to be a fluke. A small part of me was only a little excited at the thought of seeing Oust again. If I were to, hypothetically fall through the hole. I only knew him for a few days, but for those few days… Oust was my kid.

I would try again.

~~~

Art was sitting up, cold sweat dripping off his face in the waiting room of the Emergency Room. He smirked. He'd never had to wait to get a nurse's attention at a pokecenter before. But when he was in the Emergency Room, all of a sudden there was a line.

He pulled out a nutri-bar. The damn things were miracle bars, when you were just tired and your muscles needed a boost. He didn't look forward to having the doctors fix his arm if it caused the break in his arm to heal badly, but he needed something to chew on. It would keep his mind off the throbbing, at least.

Despite the pain, and the headache, his thoughts had turned to Leah while he'd been tied, carried by the Noivern from the train car—he'd be stuck in the hospital for a day, just with the nasty cut in his arm. Probably a couple more just to make sure the silk didn't cause an infection.

He'd already considered seeing if Lyra could help Leah work out her aggression. Lyra was extremely competent, but her methods were comparatively brutal. The woman would probably have Meg beat on Leah until she had to go to the pokecenter. Then she'd call it training. That was a no. He wouldn't subject Leah to that.

His partner and best friend was already a bag of anxiety. Alternatively, while they had still been flying, he'd entertained letting Leah stay in the hospital's daycare area. But Jacob had said it was just an indoor kennel, like the Anville pokecenter.

When they had walked into the waiting room and he saw how many people were in the ER, and the fact that there was a wait time, there would be too many pokemon for a nurse to give one on one attention to. And without anyone to interact with? Leah would get into trouble. Especially when left unwatched.

Leave her alone? Something would go wrong. Basically a law of physics. She would go stir-crazy and cause problems. Of that, he had no doubt. Confined spaces, the way she looked at pokeballs, her habits of escape artistry.

He loved her, but trust her? He did not. Leaving her in the hospital would be a disaster. Her face never showed any emotion, always the permanent smile. But he could tell by her antennae and the way she tracked the poke—

"That's a bad break in your arm, kid," Jacob said. "And you let your Leavanny silk touch the open wound. The doctors are going to put you in bed for days. They'll isolate you until they know you didn't catch any infection."

"And?" Burgh coughed, his head throbbing, his left arm tingling, most of the blood gone and numb. An infection just meant he'd be in the hospital for longer, causing the doctors more work.

He had already thought all that through, and didn't need to be told—he'd known what he'd signed up for when he made the decision to have Leah and Fidget help stop the bleeding and apply the tourniquet. Leah probably wasn't full of terrible bacteria, but he still knew that growlithe mouths were only so clean because their body heat killed most bacteria and viruses.

"What are your pokemon going to do? Sit in the chain-link kennels the whole time? Look at all these people. There's not enough staff in the hospital to take all the pokemon outside each day."

Even through the throbbing pain and growing pressure in his head, he turned to face Jacob, a man in his early thirties, scruffy beard with a lighter complexion that came with his choice of star pokemon.

"You offering to take Leah?"

As much as Lyra was dragging him around, she was doing her own thing. He'd only let her drag him around to Opelucid because then the trip back to Castelia was a single straight shot south. Even if he was glad she'd mentored him for a few days. Well.

Even if he could let Leah stay with Lyra, after seeing her reaction to Ho-Oh, leaving her with Lyra would simply be a betrayal of the trust she'd extended to him. He couldn't do that to his best friend.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Yeah, I'll take her. I'd take the other Leavanny too."

He felt his pulse in his forehead, watching the small crowd of people passing through, with pokemon and/or accident related injuries. The mass-release of pokeballs from Elesa's EMP blast had not been kind. But at the same time, the hospital was still organized and orderly.

No one was yelling at the nurses or staff on duty, though one girl was crying quietly in the corner. Otherwise, his fellow patients seemed to be in good spirits despite the various broken arms and other traumas.

Not that he was complaining. School had trained him in what to do for basic First Aid, and seeing the priority and urgency queue in action? He'd be tearing up in joy if he weren't half-numb and half-headache. Sometimes, humans could be pretty cool, even when things didn't work out. For a moment, he considered saying no. It was risky—but, as much as he was loath to admit, he didn't really have any other options.

"Fine," he said, curtly, before looping his right hand to the left side of his waist, grabbing Leah's pokeball. He couldn't leave the ER to let her out and explain it, in case the next operating room opened and he lost his spot. "Leave me your phone number."

A lot had gone on since he met her back in the burghs, she'd been panicking more and more frequently, no rhyme or reason to it. It hadn't been a week since he and Leah had seen a donut shop practically mowing down a slew of bugs.

And he still needed to research what was going on with her surprise aggression against Fidget on the train. She was smart, yes, but Leah did not have a surprise streak of sadism, anxiety-driven or otherwise, that much, he was sure.

"Here," Jacob said, handing Art his gym card, picking up Leah's pokeball in exchange. "My personal's on the back."

There were only a few other people in the waiting room now. Well, everyone else left had come in after them. More than one with nasty-looking electrical burns. He didn't want to leave Fidget in the hospital's kennels, so he'd probably give Aurea or Alder a call depending on what the doctors actually said. He doubted they would really need him to be in quarantine, judging by how nonchalantly he had been guided to the waiting area.

"Arty-muss?!?" a nurse called.

"Here, take her shoes. And make sure to talk to her and tell her what's going on. She will panic if you don't." —she might panic anyway— "I'll call as soon as I can." Art said, scrambling to toss the Nuvema gym member Leah's shining purple shoes before he walked away.

~~~

"Sure thing, champ," Jacob smirked as Burgh was ushered to the back. The nurse had been run ragged, already rattling off questions before the door behind them closed shut. Jacob rolled Leah's pokeball in his hand. On the top red side of the leavanny's pokeball was a silver L with a silver heart, the paint scraped off down to the metal.

Jacob smiled. A lunar feather from the goddess of dreams? And now, getting to babysit the dancing Leavanny his daughter had spent the last few weeks obsessed over? He wasn't one to believe in karma. But helping people and pokemon out wasn't so bad.

Walking out, he checked the clock— 1 AM—iIt was earlier in the night than he'd expected it to be, honestly. Not that he hadn't had experience pulling true late-nighters. He left the building, Leah's pokeball in hand. He stopped on the grass in an area well away from the entrance.

Macie was going to give him hell for being out so late when he got home. Assuming she was awake. No one else would be there to put her to bed. But, he needed to do one last thing first. If Leah could understand them, then he needed to avoid a scene. He clicked Leah's pokeball. The Leavanny emerged, before falling face down onto the grass.

Jacob frowned. He wasn't a bug specialist, but most pokemon were brought out of the pseudo-stasis of the pokeball in their neutral stance, able to keep standing with ease. Or lying down. Both Leavanny had been fine when he watched as Burgh recalled them, back on the train. He wasn't super excited at the prospect of a surprise trip to the pokecenter, especially with how busy the hospital had been.

"You all right, buggy?"

~~~

I had gathered up the mana. Then felt around, before using that same instinctual pull—my vision faded from a gray nothing, to black. I didn't question myself, instead, surfacing on Darkrai's ocean of nightmares, standing in the grey twilight of his realm, the blackness rippled under me, some splotches of it sticking to my body, leaf-blades and dress. The twilight ocean zone was empty. And I had questions. I was tired of panicking just because I had gaps.

A crystal dot of red floated in front of me. Before two red crystals, which then coalesced into a pair of blue triple-pronged tails, the crystals embedded in each. Staring at me with her two yellow ey—eee was yanked, back out of the dream realm, my body forcibly plunged under the sea of black.

I fell to the ground, lying outside in grass, feeling the outside of a large building. I opened my mouth, getting a good taste of the over-fertilized soil. The vibrations of the large city had returned. I'd just wanted to see Oust again. Or ask a question about my name!

"You all right, buggy?" A man's voice spoke. "You understand our language. Yeah?"

Standing up in the soil, grass and dirt, I turned to the man who was talking to me. The half-pokemon I'd seen was not Darkrai. Or Cresselia. Yeah, no, fuck that shit. I just wanted some answers. Not dragged on more tentacruel games. My eyes slid into place, and I was wholly awake again. I was in a small grass field, thick cover of trees, the vague hint of water and moisture in the air. I would rather take a month of— the man reached his hand out, snapping his finger in my face.

"Burgh said you understood language."

Towering over me, was a three-story concrete building, lights glowing. Presumably, a hospital? Lanky needed someone to patch up his arm, at least. It made sense.

"Well?" the man said, rolling my pokeball in his hands. "Do you?"

I nodded.

"Good. I'll cut this quick, because it's been a long night, my daughter's probably tossing and turning at home."

Lanky was—"Burgh's in the hospital. You cut his arm up pretty good, but said it was an accident. That true?"

It wasn't intentional, even if it was my lapse of judgement. So, I nodded. If I shook my head, what was he going to think? That I'd attacked a human? I could smell the Noiverns. The two pokeballs on his waist. My pokeball in his hand. This was the guy who'd picked us up on the train. Had Lanky given me away? I didn't see Leaf or the Silcoon nearby. Or smell, for that matter.

"Here's the deal. Your trainer's in the hospital. I work for the gym. The hospital will try to treat you well, but you'll be sittin' in a kennel with a sun-lamp. Since I recognized you both from the news the last couple weeks —damn paparazzi— you can stay with me for a few days until your trainer gets out. I've got a yard and some trees you can play in during the day. Burgh, or Artemus, I guess, your trainer, said that your mate" —I jolted upright. Leaf was NOT my mate— "not your mate?" —I nodded, with vigor— The guy chuckled.

"Anyway, Burgh let you come with me. Your fellow leavanny will hang out at the hospital in the meantime. What do you say? Come, stay with me? He'll call in the morning, assuming he's not hopped up on painkillers."

The choice was between sitting in a kennel for a couple days. Or coming to the guy's house. It was only a couple days, right? Lanky had trusted this guy enough to give him my pokeball. I could trust Lanky. I nodded. If he was a part of the gym, I could practice my mana control. Or just fighting in general. I… wasn't about to pull myself into the dream realm again. That was just asking for more trouble.

"Excellent. Macie will be stoked to play with the dancing leavanny. She's been watching videos of you dancing on that Castelia street nonstop for a good week, now."

Wai—I was sucked into the pokeball—he'd asked me to come with him just because he wanted to introduce him to his daughter? No.

I was famous?!?

Did being famous to a seven-year-old girl count?