~~~ Chapter 69 - Churning ~~~

"Well, kid, looks like you're fine," the doctor said, looking up from her datapad.

He stood up from his bed as the iv needles were removed. "You sure?" he asked. He still felt like garbage.

"You've been in here a few days now, no sign of infection. If you're still not feeling well, we can do a routine checkup we give trainers, but usually we only do that if you've been a trainer for a year or two."

Art hadn't caught the full story from Lyra or Jacob, though he really couldn't blame the gym member for trying to return Leah. Still, the bitterness of not having her around, had fed back into some… unpleasant physical effects that the nurse had attributed to general trainer's anxiety.

"The only issue is that your reaction to not being around your pokemon is highly abnormal."

He'd pushed the doctor to examine the assumptions more closely, when Lyra had insisted, over the phone. She'd even told him to lie about how long he'd been with his pokemon— that was how you said the magic words to break past the typical script, after all.

"I know you're concerned, a nearby trainer who'd been training for a while had told you about bond-break?"

"Yep," he nodded, and the Doctor paused. It wasn't a sigh, but he knew he'd put her on the back foot a bit, as that immense confidence that tends to follow doctors, the aura she had, fell away for a moment.

Then, it returned. "It isn't unknown for young trainers to hit the road, and have anxiety and trouble. The lifestyle, having pokemon always under your care, training them, it's a considerable source of stress. There's a reason there's country songs about the life of a trainer not being easy."

He didn't like where this was going.

"Money problems, lovesickness, seeing, doing, being in the proximity of traumatic things the trainers weren't prepared for. They get wound up tight. Then an injury happens, and it's related to the pokemon or in the course of handling them. Then they're forced to take a break from the whole thing that lasts longer than a day or so, and" she snaps her finger "just like that, it all comes rushing in."

Then, she piled it in a little deeper.

"With that in mind—are you certain that it's not anything in there and that unconsciously, everything that's happened and you've been through, since being a trainer for a little over a month now, finally just catching up to you? Things that will even out over time, as you establish yourself?"

She paused, thoughtful, then clearly decided to add a bit more. "I don't want to discourage anyone from being a trainer, it's a way of life for quite a few unovans, and we need every one we can get, and yet, less and less are becoming trainers every year, and even less of those are making it past the first year," she said.

His own aura, his own attitude broke, and he deflated. He had been through a lot. And that niggling voice in the back of his head—Lyra couldn't actually see souls, he knew that. She couldn't even properly say what they were. It amounted to a simple gut check.

Taking his silence as an understanding that it probably was something to do with the lifestyle, she continued. "Because, and I'll tell you this right off—I think you're a fine trainer. You're keeping your clothing together, you don't smell, and you're young. You have a lot of mistakes and choices you can make."

She had a great point, but he wasn't defeated yet.

"I appreciate that, doc, but really—if it was bond-break, what does it mean? I'm tired of being treated like a kid."

The doctor glanced at the clock on the wall, then, apparently, deciding she still had some time to explain the problem to him. "The problem with bond-break as a diagnosis is a few-fold. Like I said earlier, humans don't bond so strongly with pokemon in less than a year. Never to the extent of having physical effects like you said. People having anxiety and panic attacks do have a lot of the symptoms you mentioned, on the other hand."

She paused for a half-step, but he was patient, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Second, there's no real treatment for bond-break. If it were to be happening to someone so young—" like me, he thought. "—like you," she said, mirroring his thoughts. "The only course of action is 'get the pokemon away from the kid, and maybe study that pokemon and see if they bond just as fast to others'."

Oh. He didn't like that at all. If Professor Juniper caught wind of even a fourth of the problems he faced… well, the professor had been extremely forthcoming on shutting the rest of that down. Trainers needed an endorsement, after all, even though he'd never heard of trainers losing theirs without any publicized drama, it was safe to assume that the professor wasn't joking with the threats.

"Thanks for your time, doctor, that helps take some of the stress off," he lied, but smiled anyway. "I'll take myself down to the front desk to check out," he said, freeing her from escorting him down.

She left, with a few more or less minor notes, and he grabbed his stuff. The zoroark had left quite a while ago. Leaf had managed to take the edge off, but it was still torturous, he wasn't going to lie.

With both the silcoon and Leaf on his belt, Art's gut was still twisting in knots. He'd had a lot of time to think about things in a different way than he had before. It was true. There wasn't any real outlet for stress. And yet…

Stomach in knots, he pulled out his phone, and called Lyra.

Even though he hadn't trusted her to take care of Leah, there hadn't been much choice. He still didn't want Leah just hanging out, alone, the hospital's care staff, and Lyra had known that. She'd intercepted Jacob before Leah had been dropped off. As much as he didn't trust Lyra to make the right decisions regarding Leah—no, not even in the short term— He had to leave Leah with someone.

Gut turning over, and half in thought, half-excited to get back on the trail with Leah again, complete the next badge, and fill the next checkboxes on Prof. Juniper's requirements, the still-learning trainer waited for Lyra to pick up, tell them where they were at, and pick his star team member up. He'd need to fill up his own roster, if he was serious about pursuing the entire strategy.

~~~

The worst thing about being in a pokeball is that time moves differently. You can try to gauge what's going on outside, but no anchor points to reality really didn't help. The world turned to mumbles, but like before I couldn't sleep.

The mumbles grew more frequent, then faded again, until I was released from the pokeball, on a patch of mud, standing in front of Lyra and her meganium. Coming out of the pokeball was always weird.

I was standing, and where I was standing I didn't really know, and I hadn't really had enough experience with fast recall and swaps. Especially if it was anything like I knew the games' competitive streaks.

It was slightly surprising that Lanky had never really practiced it with me? Swapping in and out fairly rapidly was something that happened in the games, especially in type disadvantaged situations.

I looked around. Lanky, and Leaf were nowhere to be seen. Neither were Battie or Macie.

Did she steal me? That was when I noticed it— the scorched trees and burnt grass. A battle of some sort had taken place where we were.

"Ah, right, you're seeing the battle. All the fires were put out a while ago, right Meg?" Lyra said, her overgrown potato chirping in response, burn marks covering its body.

If the remark was intended to make me feel better, it didn't. The smell hung in the air, reiterating that whatever had happened wasn't exactly long ago, but the humidity and amount of water in the area did enough to take the edge off of my concerns.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Lyra continued talking: "Jacob's gotten sick of you already, and as the only smart person who's in Burgh's vicinity, I decided it was time for an intervention."

My blades fell down to my sides. I could have tried to run, but—"Yeah, thought so." She said, shaking her head.

What was that supposed to mean?

The meganium offered no comfort, just deciding to lay down in a patch of sun and recover her surprisingly-surface-level wounds. There would be no assistance or emotional support.

Lyra took a lighter and lit a cigarette, holding it up to her mouth, pausing, and then letting out a large puff of smoke.

"Fuckin' A, these cigs suck. Damn imports," she said.

I offered an attempt at a conciliatory "leee" to her. All that happened was that she locked onto me.

"Burgh-boy's got a bad case of the bond-break, and like I said, that gymrat's already tired of you. You and his little munchkin really tore up his house, so you're hanging with me for a while."

Trying to be a little more talkative, I added a "vaaa", to which she nodded, and slowly lowered herself down.

"He did say you understood human language." She said, sitting down on the ground, leaving her knees up and resting her hands on them as she took another drag.

I nodded.

"Girl, shit sucks. I'm too old for this helping-others bullshit. I just wanted my fucking phd and to stay out of things for a while," she said, bemoaning her situation. "But I guess that's my fault for having a bit too much fun with the detectives. Not that I expect you to understand."

Of course, I didn't understand her, the way I could understand Lanky. She wasn't my human. So in that sense, she was right. I did feel an amount of guilt for hanging out too much with Lanky. He was just starting on his own pokemon journey, and I didn't actually want to battle. I didn't like pokeballs. I didn't like the idea of being an ace in a gym leader's team.

The grind in pokemon was always the stupidest part for me. I just liked collecting all of the cute bug pokemon, and all the ones that looked even vaguely buggy. The grind for battling without the games was a lot more dynamic, yeah, but it was also a lot more grueling and dangerous. I was happy to let Leaf—I mean Fidget become the Ace, though practicing the magic was fun and interesting.

Both Lyra and Meg were staring at me. Not wanting to set either one off, I imitated them, sitting down, using my leaf-dress as a blanket and cushion.

"The problem is—" Lyra said, pointing the drag at me— "you have—" the drag bounced a little, a bit of ash falling down onto the ground "—a heavy soul. I'm not going to get into it, because I have something of a sense for it due to having an extreme bond with a particular god of change, but long story short, it's hurting the kid."

"Eeeeee???" I said, questioningly. I knew I was hurting him, I didn't need anyone else to tell me that.

"Yeah. It's clear he loves you a lot," she said, "but when a pokemon bonds with a human, it's supposed to take a year or more before the physical changes start happening, and the separation even then…" she paused, letting out a puff of shaped smoke that quickly lost form.

I knew where this was going. I had been thinking about it. Lanky didn't really need me. Want me? Sure. I could buy that. But need me? The dream-battle I'd had with Alder's Volcarona was just that— just a dream. He didn't need me, specifically, to hit those tiers. Fidget and the team he was building would have a long way to the top, but they didn't need me for it.

And all these battles, which to be fair, were pretty low-stakes, it was only a matter of time until I missed a razor leaf or a solar beam or similar move and it hit a human. The only thing that mattered to me in battles wasn't just winning, it was surviving. It was demolishing your opponent.

Lanky would be a gym leader, and as much as I hated battles, it was only a matter of time until something like the pokeball incident from the other night happened again. Could I handle another friendly-fire incident? No, no, I couldn't. I wanted to make things, I wanted to use the things I made, see them used. If that was for a battle, sobeit.

"Relax Meg, the bug's not going to run away," Lyra said, snapping me from my thoughts. "I've been a trainer now for more than fifteen years, I've trained a lot of bug pokemon in that time, too.

You're not that hard to read, when you get over the initial creepiness and the feeling of chaos you all bring to the table. There's a reason your types do so well against psychics, especially the ones so sure about the world, as it is and should be. It's not because of an inherent advantage, you know. Well, it partially is, but it's because you don't fit into their world. It's the unnerving-ness, the uncertainty of it all."

And fire and birds are your great fear, not because they know and understand, but because they can ignore the unnervingness.

"Look, so here's the deal. You clearly understand what I'm saying, and you're not flipping out like I expected. You're at a crossroads here. We've got a few options for you, little bug."

I… didn't like where she was going with this, but, it wasn't exactly like I had a choice but to sit there and listen to her.

"First, we try another psychic connection—"

"LEEEE" I said, quickly.

"No, it wouldn't be like Dawn," Lyra said, "I know a guy who has a few psychic bugs and—"

"VAAA," I said, again. I'd gone this far without having to deal with psychic stuff.

"Uh, well, all right then, primarina." She said, mashing the remains of the cigarette onto the ground. "Next option: Burgh says you're not from this planet. A Faller, basically. And because I have some connections with interpol, we can see about how we could get you sent home, there's a company out in Alola that—"

"Nyy," I said. I wasn't exactly keen on trying to return "home" on purpose. I'm sure if I really wanted to, Oust would know how to take me there. No need to go across the world.

"Okay, that's a maybe… But you want to hear the other options?" I nodded.

"There's a nature reserve, not far from here. And the swadloon who followed you into town might need another leavanny, we could leave you there with them. You'd be retired from battling and marked as released in the pokemon system, so you couldn't be caught (legally) so long as you stay on the reserve. You'll probably see the gym-rat and his daughter a few more times, and he will come out and visit you."

"Leee" I said, softer. This was a bit better. I didn't want to leave Lanky, if he was depending on me, but it was pretty clear I was getting more out of the relationship than he was.

"That works, certainly. Though you do need to know there's still some tricky stuff with you being a Faller and all."

"Nyyy?" I asked.

"Yeah. On top of your heavy soul, you've got traces of Z-energy on you, it marks you, and it's really similar to portals. It's really a bit of luck that you haven't had any trouble because of it."

What does it mean to have a heavy soul, anyway? I thought to myself. The idea of a soul weighing more than others was… gross.

Wrong, even.

As if reading my mind, Lyra spoke up, "It's not soul phrenology don't worry about it. It's just a term I use that refers to how easy it is for bonds to form." She reached down to her side, to her belt, and pulled off a purple-and-red pokeball on it.

"Bonds can be artificially accelerated or—" she paused, as if choking on her words, turning her face to the meganium "—broken," she choked out. She pulled up a hand and wiped her eye, then put the pokeball back on her belt. Apparently, Lyra had decided she was done, when she decided to just lay back onto the ground and close her eyes.

What?

Yeah, look, it doesn't take that much thought to see that my and Lanky's relationship as pokemon wasn't going the greatest anyway, all right?

First of all, he was just a kid. I, however, was a mid-20s girl who'd died and become an adult leavanny. I wanted to see the world and do things, maybe have a nest where I could have pokemon and make things.

Second, I could list off all the problems I knew I'd caused him. Every freak-out, for example. It all was just going to explode, one day. The best of friends know when to give distance, all right?

Third, I'm not exactly going to argue with Lyra. I like being a pokemon, okay? I don't want other people deciding it's some kind of problem to be solved. What's so wrong about just living and enjoying life?

Being healthy and able to do the things you want. What's so wrong about that? Being a human. That's not what that means to me. I can look at Lyra and tell that she's not healthy. She's strong, yes, but she should be dead. Her bones flex too much. She's too tall and too thin. It's not healthy, ok?

And if that was something I would cause to happen around lanky then no, it was going to be better this way. I'd make him a little parting gift, and make sure I found a way of telling him in person. It was something that would have to come from me, not Lyra.

And that's what we did. We discussed strategies. Well, mostly Lyra and her zoroark friends, who showed up later in the day, then left that night, said I needed to be alone with him and to talk to him during that whole thing. When he got out of the hospital.

I could have just disappeared. Gone off into the dream realms, called Oust, or just ran away, I guess. But I knew the kind of person he was. He was expecting me to do something like that. Freak out and run into the forest. He'd wait until I came back or chase me, and if anything happened to him because of that, I'd never forgive myself.

The only problem was how we were going to break it to him.

~~~