~~~ Chapter 71 - Incoherence ~~~

Art stared at Leah, as the clearly scarred, should-still-have-been-dead, but Ho-Oh and Lyra can-just-say-no-to-death-apparently, Volcarona whipped around. He frowned, her aggressive posture was not what he was hoping for out of her. It was incredibly predictable that she focused on it, of course.

This wasn't the first time she'd dealt with a fire, and if it wasn't as weak as it was, it could probably put her down without any hassle. A little nervous, he kept his hand on his pokeball, just in case he needed to interrupt a scuffle.

That said, Art was at least a bit impressed with his star pokemon.

Fear of fire and birds in Leah was something she was, even in that moment, overcoming. With relatively little effort on his own part, even! Just a week ago, he was pretty sure she would have run away.

That spare time in the hospital gave him time to pore over guides, blogs and other trainers' discussions on bug/grass combinations and their matchups. It was universally agreed—just don't send them out against anything fire or bird. To say nothing of the clear fear-factor and just… did you really want to treat your pokemon that way?

Even in duos, if you had a water pokemon as their partner, or other ways of mitigating the anti-predator instinct, all the other trainers said it would take years to overcome the innate fear. Most trainers, guides and forum posts he found mentioned how people didn't like how, exactly, you were supposed to "help" them to overcome the fear.

It came from the Lyra school of thought, anyway. Beat them into a pulp or let them beat others into a pulp until eventually they learned their own boundaries and limits.

Still, if he was going to help Alder pick up the slack, Art was a bit worried about how he'd handle it with his growing team of bugs. If your pokemon were stuck in a burning building, or you were being sent to do disaster recon, et cetera, they needed to hold up under that pressure.

Leah being from another reality meant that she either didn't have that same fear, or… He frowned. Leah made a short chirp, and the Volcarona whipped around.

He sighed internally. That hope for peace didn't last very long, did it? Keeping the Volcarona for Lyra was supposed to be a temporary thing, at least. The Volcarona didn't want to return to the battling/gym circuit.

And he couldn't use her in his own battles, of course.

Officially, she was still Alder's, and he didn't want to find out what would happen if he tried to bring it into a pokemon center. Lyra was fairly sure that Unova's pokemon tracking system wouldn't work on pokemon that were brought back by Ho-Oh. But he wasn't about to find out. Alder wasn't ever supposed to know, in either case.

No, Lyra said the moth wanted to be returned to its homeland.

Leah stepped close to Volcarona, who backed up. His eyebrows rose, and he leaned forward. Leah had fallen out of the tree, and the ground around her had been scorched. He'd dreamed of being there, with Leah, to fight Alder and become champion of Unova. But that was where his dream ended.

And he'd seen Darkrai at least once? No, twice with Leah.

She and the moth regarded one another, though it was Leah who stepped forward. At first she was cautious. A slight shaking motion of her head rattled the stiffer-than-natural leaves of her headdress. An arm reached up and latched it into a makeshift helmet.

Volcarona visibly shuddered. It didn't run away, no. But it did back up, and didn't let any flames out. He frowned some more, holding his hand over Leah's pokeball. He didn't throw it yet, as they seemed to know each other. Was the volcarona from Leah's world too? Or had they somehow shared some kind of dream that caused feedback?

Leah turned around, took a step closer to him, then flipped again on a dime, flashing her arms out, spooking the Volcarona into falling down. It landed in the dirt and grass, kicking some up.

Still no fire.

Not even its passive heat aura for defense. Art didn't know if they could have heart attacks but the way it was convulsing on the ground made him sympathetic to its plight. A single extra move and she was back in the pokeball, and he'd have to work out what the hell she'd just done.

But the way she seemed to preen over the moth's reaction showed that the pecking order was apparently established, she took off the helmet and triumphantly marched next to him.

"That… wasn't very nice," he said, his mind beginning to run. Trying to keep his own thoughts about what Leah just did from going too crazy.

It hit him like a ton of bricks. She was probably high on excess calories, and hadn't had any good fights. Still way too much energy to burn, despite spending a day or so with Lyra.

He frowned.

"You still have some energy to burn," he said to Leah.

If she's going to play dumb power games, he thought, letting Fidget out of his pokeball, "we should take advantage of that." Art said, grabbing a stick. Volcarona was content to sit and rest, as Art drew a circle.

Lyra said Leah didn't want to be on a team. She also said Leah was heavy and he should probably find her a new home. A nature preserve.

No, it was his job to either train Leah or work with her to find Leah a new home. And he didn't feel comfortable having a trainer take your pokemon for a day or two, and then going "you should release them!". It didn't feel good.

Lyra had respected his wishes and not gone very hard on Leah. Still, it would have been a little nice if she'd worked Leah out a little bit more. The Leavanny hadn't been either exhausted nor missing any limbs like he'd expected of the Johto champion. He was able to tell, by the way Leah looked at him and then started inspecting herself while the Volcarona rolled around in terror, that she was going to be the source of serious trouble if he didn't do anything.

The thought crept in that perhaps he should have stopped Leah a bit earlier. He'd have to apologize to the moth for that later. Its stay with him was only temporary, after all.

Perhaps it was the bond manipulating him.

He cared a lot about Leah, but letting her go just hadn't felt right. Call it intuition. Call it the manipulation by the bond they shared, she was strong enough that even if she didn't like fighting, when she would build up that extra energy, where would it go? That wouldn't be fair for the wild pokemon.

"This is our little battle-circle," he said, Fidget and Leah stood across from each other, the volcarona in the distance had floated away a solid distance and landed on the ground, munching on a piece of charcoal left from whatever scorching Lyra had done while he was out, keeping one of its eyes on the duo of sparring partners.

"The rules are simple. You get a point if you knock the other one down or out of the ring." Fidget already knew the rules, Art knew.

Even if that didn't happen, her calorie needs were higher than most wild pokemon- she'd eat more than she could reliably find by scavenging or growing herself. Which meant either becoming more territorial or moving back to the city. Which meant attaching herself to another trainer. He'd shuddered at the thought of the trouble she'd accidentally cause if left unattended.

"Ready? Go!" he shouted, and Fidget was already on her, hooking her legs, using an arm on her head for leverage, and with a loud thud, the back of her head hit the dirt, her leaf-dress inverting as her legs did a backward somersault. Between an aluminum door and their head, their heads would win. Between the dirt and their head?

He stepped back to his log, holding the stick, Art pulled out a knife and started carving out. "Reset!" He said, as Leah verbally complained, but didn't leave the circle. Being a trainer, he felt, was more like being a coach and a mentor, than a slave driver.

Let the pokemon practice as much as they have the will and energy for, then let off. Make sure they have what they need, and give them drills, egg them on to doing better and more than they were inclined to, then get badges.

The best trainers, he decided, didn't actually have to say anything while the pokemon were actually in the ring. It was awkward though, but nearly two months into it, he was getting used to it.

But now, on the trail, doing gyms, it was just like marking off a checklist. He'd have four badges soon, between Alder's gym, which the guy gave him just so Art could get the gym membership stipend. He still felt like Lenora gave him a free pass, and Chili had gone easy too. Once he had Elesa's badge, he could go back to the city and work with Fidget.

Watching as Fidget, again smashed Leah into the dirt, Art pulled out his phone, seeing a few text messages and a missed call from Jacob. His daughter wanted to see Leah again before they left town.

~~~

The moth froze, then stared down at me, its wings flapping hard, trying to keep it in the air. It was really struggling. A particular gash was on the side of its abdomen. Everything faded back to the memory of the nightmare, back to the memory of the dream.

In the middle of the field, my helmet had been burning away, the flames burning my carapace and singing my antennae. My senses had been starting to dull. I had fully committed myself to the fight. I would have died, or the other bug would have died.

None of his nightmares ended until you won.

The only way out is through.

The volcarona floated, clearly struggling, far different from the vision and the dream. This one didn't attack, but its wings continued passively, spending its own life-source just to stay afloat. There was no heat.

That rule was especially apparent after nights of 'gifts'. Then, when I get a good sleep, and magically, I'm ready to fight. It was as if I had taken a loan in exchange for a physical boost, and the lack of sleep was the minimum payment.

The fuzz on the volcarona was darker, black, almost. It was hard to tell. My eyes had trouble with certain fine details at all but the closest distances.

In the dream I had leapt up, through the flames, the six tips of its wings lighting up for another hyper beam. The heat of its body and the falling flames were hot enough that the sand underneath had been going molten.

Really, I should have died. I should have lost. Forfeit or even just ran away. The smart thing. Running away— Why had I been fighting it anyway? It was a terrible matchup. I should have been instantly knocked out in that first wave of flames, recalled to my pokeball and woken up at a pokecenter.

With one arm, I had hooked onto Alder's moth, I slashed it in the abdomen, and ripped at its wings, its innards molten like magma melting my leaves before I was forced off and returned to Lanky's side, fallen onto the dirt.

There were no Celebi around. I stared at the volcarona, the moth of fire and brimstone, the scepter of death of fire, in front of me. Not a drop of heat, but no, those gashes—

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They were—

The heat had returned—there was the gash, where I had held on.

There was a scar in its wings where I had sliced. And its abdomen. There were three major scars, but the more I looked, the more I saw.

I—

It was supposed to have been a dream. A dream of the future. I had been saved, brought out of that nightmare by a celebi.

It wasn't supposed to have been real.

It wasn't supposed to have been a shared dream, but it wasn't reacting to me like it recognized me.

The volcarona didn't know it was me that killed it.

Right?

I stepped a little closer to the moth, and it floated back. My arms were close to me, I was keeping myself small.

You just met a being who, in another reality? Dream? Nightmare? Future that never was? Murdered you. I probably would have died too. Should have?

Again, I stepped a little closer, testing it for recognition. Did it want revenge? It tried to float up.

The moth was real.

This wasn't a nightmare.

Well, the volcarona was my nightmare. A future I didn't want. A future I feared! I hadn't been saved by the celebi. Not until it was too late, and we had already been at death's door.

Was I supposed to have even survived that nightmare? I shook my head, and stepped back, away from the moth, who visibly relaxed, wings flapping slower, lowering itself close to the ground.

"A-are you guys okay?" Lanky asked, drawing my attention. I nodded back at him. I wasn't fine, but I was well enough. I just wanted to go back to the nest and build it.

"Alder's volcarona—"

The moth was real.

Sure. I looked down at my blade-arms, then I remembered the soft confidence it had when flying during that… nightmare.

" —is not joining the team," Lanky finished, muttering some other things under his breath, rolling the apparently-illegal pokeball around in his hand. Obviously it wasn't joining the team! It needed me to make it a wheelchair, with how it struggled to fly.

I whipped around at the moth. "Leeee!" I chirped at it. It flinched, losing height, struggling to keep itself from falling into the dirt. I waved my arms in the air, establishing our pecking order.

Lanky just stared at me as I turned back around and stared at him. I raised my arms in a bad attempt at a shrug.

"That was pretty mean, Leah," Lanky said, pulling out my pokeball.

I had killed that thing. It was a realization, but it was also the moment it settled right in, and something inside me clicked. I froze. Lanky looked down from his log, worried, no doubt.

But something was different. I couldn't place it. I moved my arms over my head, used my antennae to tap and check with extra precision and senses that my arms just couldn't do. Lanky looked on, as I inspected myself.

As far as I could tell, everything was fine. I wasn't any different. Physically, anyway. And I could control my magic about as well as before. No vibrations or anything in my abdomen either.

Again, I turned around, glancing at the volcarona, who just hung out in the air as Lanky released Leaf and the silcoon. Leaf looked at me, and I looked at him. He towered over me, but I stood tall.

"Neener neener neener" I would have said, teasing him.

"Fidget, Leah has energy to burn," Lanky said.

Our mouths were permanently stuck in smiles, our faces hard shells that didn't contort, but I could feel the immediate shift in his excitement, the way his antennae perked up, and his body snapped around.

"Unfortunately for you, Leah, we're going to have to burn some of that energy off one way or another if you want to go back into the city."

I… didn't know what he was talking about, I wasn't attacking anyone! I was just checking whether the volcarona—"Eee!" I chirped, as Leaf launched himself at me.

~~~

"How's our little patient today?" Doctor Anders asked, as he walked into the room. I was sitting on the little bed they have for patients. Normally, I was pretty bad about remembering faces and names, but it was pretty easy to remember your doctor when you were me.

"Yup, I'm thirteen!" I said, dejected, but keeping my tone chipper. Over the prior year, I had spurt up to just under five feet tall, and was hoping to at least hit five feet eight inches. I'd be taller than my mom and a lot of girls if that happened, but for the time being was confined to being a little shorty.

"And it shows," he said, "you're a growing young woman," looking me up and down. "What do we have you in for today?"

"Just a refill on all my inhalers and a tetanus shot," I said. Normally we could just call in and the doctor would approve the prescription but for some reason insurance had changed their policy, which meant I had to go to the doctor.

"Well, let's do a breath test and general oxygen levels check," the doctor said, giving me the red light thing that checked your blood oxygen levels.

A few seconds later, the screen settled to about 95-93%. It wasn't bad. We all knew I'd had worse.

"How's your eczema been?" He asked, glancing down at my hands, which were on my lap. I held them out. They weren't red, but still had a hint of scales and raised skin. Early Fall was better than Spring and Summer.

"It's been all right," I said, Idly brushing at the rash on my lower thigh. That rash, however, was angry and red. Being a walking, biological horror and miracle all at once was certainly a thing I was used to by that point in my life. An immune system that was eternally committed to waging war on everything around that did that to you.

"Do you need triamcinolone or betamethasone?" He asked. I thought about it. Mom had, somehow misplaced all my prescriptions. It was my dad who I'd managed to pester into bringing me to the doctor's office.

"How about your joints? Any tears?"

"No, doctor" I said, with him looking me over. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me.

"Sounds like you're doing good overall then." he paused his hand still on my shoulder, he smiled. I would have shrunk as he towered over me, but instead I just smiled.

"Haha, yep."

"All right, let's test your lung capacity," he said, breaking contact, pulling out the little breath-meters.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally walking out of the office, newly-printed and signed stack of prescriptions. Walking out of there fairly briskly had me a little winded, the papers haphazardly stuffed into my backpack next to my drawing notebook. I walked out to the car, where dad was waiting, on the phone, talking on his phone about how his work was going to handle this or that growth strategy probably, and just hugged my backpack as he drove me to the pharmacy.

I just needed the rescue inhaler. Everything else, I could come when I was on my way home from school. When we got there, dad was still on the phone, so he just gave me his credit card and my insurance card again.

"Hey, <>!" A kid said as I walked in, catching my attention with my name as I walked in, smiling, sitting there on the bench next to his mom. It took a second to line up the face with the name—

"Mason!" his mom said, not-so-discreetly, elbowing him in the ribs. They were apparently waiting for their own refills.

He was one of the kids who smiled a lot. Compulsively.

"H-Hi, Mason!" I said as I stood in line and he blushed, but he still smiled. It wasn't a creepy smile, per se but it was something that I'd never understand. I wasn't an emo kid, not running around and moping about how my soul was black. Not going to wear fishnets and My Chemical Romance paraphernalia and act like I could never—okay, maybe not at thirteen, but at fourteen years old, I would not have said no to the lead singer, Gerard Way showing up and sweeping me off my feet.

But nonsensical teen crushes didn't make you emo. At least, that's what I thought when I was a teen.

"Dropping off some prescriptions?" Mason asked, trying to make small-talk. He was failing, but the way he said it was so hilariously dumb that I couldn't help but laugh. I was breathing so hard, but I just couldn't help it. And when his face went red, he blushed even more and it was even funnier. It wasn't a giggle, and his mom sitting there with her own face getting secondhand embarrassment from Mason brought tears to my eyes.

By the end, I had to stop laughing to drop off my prescriptions. I was wheezing a little again.

"Mason, you're so funny," I said, trying to play it off as innocent as I could. I wasn't very good at it, since I didn't hang out a whole lot, but the kid had no idea why what he did or said was so funny or why I was laughing, so based on how he perked up, he had at least taken the compliment.

At least with the boys your age, they were either too focused on talking about the latest pokemon or halo game, or otherwise too nervous to make any actually-good moves. Mason wasn't ugly, and was definitely taking care of himself. I preferred the awkward kids' company anyway, it was easy to tell when I had the upper hand, at least emotionally.

Everyone grew up in different ways a lot faster, I guessed. Their prescription filled, they left me with a wave, and he tried to give me his phone number. Points for trying.

He was cute. He'd probably have a cute wife and a cute house with a cute first kid in another thirteen years. Maybe be a medium-town lawyer or guy who liked grilling in the Packer stadium's parking lot on game days.

Prescriptions in hand, I walked back to the car, noticing, but pretending not to notice, the occasional guy who failed to hide their glances at me, their heads practically craning. Keeping your head up and marching out the door, being impervious to it was important.

"Sorry about that, honey," my dad said, finally off the phone.

"It's whatever," I said. "Can we go to a new doctor?" I asked as he backed out and we headed to school.

"Why?" he asked. "He's been the family doctor for years, and one of the only ones flexible enough to be able to meet before school starts."

"He's just… gross." I was going through puberty, and my dad knew that. It should be obvious why. "I'm old enough that I need a doctor for adults," I said.

"I guess you are getting old enough that going to the pediatrician is probably starting to not be able to address your needs," he said.

We pulled into the school, "we can ask your mom to schedule you with a new doctor for your next appointment."

Human boys were stupid.

~~~

The first time, Leaf knocked me to the ground in no time flat. The volcarona had decided I wasn't a threat, I guess, because it actually landed and was hobbling around on the ground.

Pathe—and I was on the ground. Again. I got up. Lanky was talking on the phone. The fight was stupid. Fighting was stupid. What was the point of it? But I pooled up my energy, soaking it up, the ones sourced from my leaves, pooling it all into a ball and right as I opened my mouth— Leaf actually smacked it shut with one arm, and then used the back of his other right into my forehead, and before the energy could even dissipate, my head was in the dirt, eyes facing the sky, with a pile of dust coming down.

Ok, well, solar beaming him point-blank wouldn't work.

Was I really as strong as I thought I was?

Never did learn all the tricks of the pokemon game battle techniques. In Heartgold, you were comfortably able to take on everyone just by grinding a little. Exp. shares helped with that too.

I just laid down in the dirt.

"You can do better than that, Leah, we all know you can," Lanky said, egging me on.

"Neeee," I exclaimed, pouting. I crawled before standing up, covered in ash and dust. I stepped over my little crater. The rules were simple.

The first one off their tarsi, or, for a human, it'd be feet, loses the match. The mana swirled a bit inside me. If I left the ring, I'd lose. But it was so stupid. I didn't want to wrestle!

That was dumb. But I wasn't stupid either. The only reason I won against the arcanine was because it was deliberately going easy on me. It would have batted me to the ground and sat on me or just nuked me with a single flamethrower. Or zapped me with its own superspeed.

And I didn't want to bite a chunk out of Leaf's own armor or leaves either.

Aaaahh! The pressure had finally built up and I just rolled across the ground, chittering in frustration, forcing Leaf to jump away.

There was a snap of fingers. Lanky was laughing as he approached our little skirmish arena. "Come on!" he said, holding out his arm. I held out mine, and he grabbed me by the blade and pulled me up.

"You are a bundle of muscle, on top of being a bundle of chaos," he said. "But congratulations, you technically won a round." There were gashes in the ground where I had thrashed about, and, sure enough, I had forced Fidget out of the little skirmish area.

It wasn't honorable, but I stood as tall as I could. Fidget still towered over me, but I took the win. He'd practiced tactical, physical stuff a lot more than I had.

Any time I'd move my arms in a certain way, he was responding. How did he know how to do that already?!? I could lock him out of my arms, then he'd use his tarsi on his legs and trip me up on my abdomen—which was sore.

Fighting close combat was dumb.

"All right, that's enough for now," Lanky said. "Jacob and Macie are on their way here. She wanted to see you again before we left town."

He paused.

Fine by me. At least with an adult there they'd keep her from launching herself at me.

Then, Lanky looked at me again. "I've set up an appointment for tomorrow- to challenge Elesa."

I looked down at my dress and garb. I was covered in dust and dirt.

"Leah—" he said, dragging out my name as he said it. "We'll be her first real challengers with only three badges. Let's try not to have any incidents."

Frankly, I didn't know what he was talking about.

~~~