~~~ Chapter 9 - Making the Clasp ~~~

While sitting down, basking in the smell of the sweet berries—which the berries at the nest did not smell quite so nice— and three swadloons, I busied myself a bit more. Lanky looked at me as the nurse and the old guy continued to have their own short exchanges.

We weren’t far from the trees at the side of the building, so there were a bunch of leaves around. While they talked, I decided to look around for some leaves, and continue work on my helmet. If I was going to be around humans more frequently, I’d probably get into more and more dangerous fights.

The best thing I could think of right then— short of meeting a manaphy and being a guinea-pig for their power being heart-swapped and trading bodies with mewtwo or a similar-tier pokemon, provided they consented— was to build a personal set of armor. I’d be trading some speed for the extra durability, but if I did it right, the hardened leaves should take the brunt of some of the nastier pokemon.

I gathered up a small set of leaves, and began patching them together into a kind of clasp. It would begin around my neck area and hold the helmet in place. I’d lose the use of the silk and probably any biting attacks. Lanky was waving a berry at me. He tossed it. I caught it, pulping it before swallowing. My string/silk wasn’t the most useful against the kind of opponent this armor was being crafted for.

I considered the speed loss for a moment.

Against birds? I’d probably lose against them every time, even under the light of the summer sun. Any strong-enough fire-type would probably be able to burn away most of the leaves with a few blasts. A smart opponent would probably try to zone me.

Two-to-three blasts would keep me in one spot. Prime for a final move. If I didn’t turn into a windsail, the armor would probably work. My abdomen would have to have slots on it to release heat, even if I did decide it needed to be completely covered.

Well, if leaves gave me a speed boost during sunlight, then perhaps more leaves meant more speed? I thought of how I looked in the mirror the other day, overlaying that image with way too many leaves. Like a ball-gown, almost. That would be a speed impediment. The nurse tossed me a berry.

The leaves around weren’t exactly fresh. They would do for a little experimentation, though. Making the armor felt like the right thing to do.

~~~

"Don’t worry about it, Ave," Professor Cedric Juniper said, offering the girl a smile. "When I gave you the offer of some personal help when you needed it, I meant it." He paused, taking a short breath. "And, of course, some field study and observation of pokemon behavior always bests the lab. We’re always looking for a new case study."

The girl didn’t say anything in response. The nurses worked long hours without much reward, and Avery was no different. "It takes a lot of love to care for pokemon like this," he told her. "And while every species is different and has different needs, bugs are a special case. I’m glad you called your mom before the rangers. We’ve been studying pokemon migrations the last few years."

"Thank you, professor," Avery said, tossing another berry to the leavanny. The bug had taken to working with the leaves on the ground, chopping and slicing them up, occasionally spitting out some silk and gluing them together.

The professor turned to the boy. "How old are you, boy?" he asked.

"I’m sixteen, about to turn seventeen," the teen responded, maintaining the best formality they could in the presence of Cedric Juniper, the region's national professor and legend.

"And your name?"

"Artemus, sir."

The professor paused, then considered, holding his iconic smile. "And you’re a fan of bugs? That why you volunteered to help Avery here over the next few days?" The man knew he was known to be a hardass, but when it came to care for animals and people he'd respected, there were few who would go further. At least, that's what the enigma of professor Juniper had built.

Artemus nodded. "Yes. The leavanny saved me from having to give up my lunch to some neighborhood kids trying to steal it—" the teen paused, taking a breath, closing his eyes a bit—"and also I am responsible for not following her into the city. And letting her get hurt." The professor's smile didn't fade at the last line.

People seemed to be far more honest in his presence than they were, even in front of the police. Admitting guilt to him was no sign of dependability, even if it meant the individual still cared about the professor's status. He turned away from the kid, to Nurse Avery, his face lighting up under the glow of the pokecenter's front sign.

"Neither of you know of any news from the forest, outside of town, about why the bugs would leave their nest?" the professor asked.

Of course, he had general ideas about why a bug-type pokemon would leave her nest. Outside interference—from humans, predator migrations, mass outbreak, a dispute between two leavannies; however few ended with so many swadloons following them, and even less would lead the pokemon to march right into a town’s center.

If it had been a toxic-type such as a grimer or muk or trubbish—which were known by him and the rest of the region to be spilling out of Anville town's railyards into the local ecosystem, he'd have expected them to have been pushed north or straight south, instead. There were always strange things that had happened, though.

As Artemus shook his head, Avery spoke up. "We don’t know why our little bug-girl here would come down from the forest. The only new thing that I know that was happening about that area," she said, "is that Miles and his grand-daughter, Skyla, had passed through a couple times in the last few weeks."

The professor tossed the swadloon a berry of his own as the blue-haired nurse continued.

"They stopped here after a break a few days ago." She glanced at the leavanny, watching as she folded and applied her silk to the leaves she had scrounged up. "Skyla still seemed nervous around the birds, so maybe they had to land in the woods nearby, and scared this one south? Miles said Skyla needed to be ready to take over the gym in a few years; they'd been doing longer and longer tours. But it would only be enough to spook the bug out of her nest…not drive her into the city, I don't think."

Miles, the old gym leader, was fifteen years older than Cedric himself, and though the airport leader was more active than many teens, and no slouch on the field, being in his late-mid seventies meant the gym leader was clearly getting desperate for someone that could handle caring for his own skarmory. A few more years and Cedric would cede his own labs and the bulk of the research center to his own daughter to spearhead the bulk of the research efforts. Aurea would need to make it through the Elite Four before then, however.

"Do you think she knows that humans mean food? Maybe she was a wild pokemon that a trainer released, had babies, and then left and came back to the city when some predator showed up?" Artemis asked as the three of them stared at the leavanny, stuck in her little world.

"Hmmm," the professor intoned, feeding a berry to the swadloon in his lap, watching the leavanny, who was content to continue working the leaves around her. "There’s a lot of knock-on effects that can happen if a predator, especially one as powerful as that clan’s steel birds, make a regular tour of the area. It doesn’t explain everything, but it makes for a workable beginning theory. Did the leavanny respond to any verbal commands?" he asked Avery.

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"No—aw—" the nurse flushed as she was caught mid-yawn. Cedric knew just how bad nursing shifts could get. Avery's mother, Emily, had consistently complained about the medical establishment's treatment of her daughter.

Unfortunately, the schizophrenic political attitudes of the region had caused the vetting and onboarding processes of nursing to freeze. Should they increase the rigor the medical staff went through, so less harm could happen to pokemon? Or should they increase staff so pokemon could be more readily attended to?

Nurse Avery finished her yawn. "No. She doesn't know any of the common words you'd expect from a licensed trainer who released their pokemon" 'up,' 'down,' 'stay,' etc. I tried to teach her up and down today, but—" The nurse wiped her eye, holding her other hand over her mouth as she yawned again.

Juniper pretended not to notice her fatigue. Emily, Avery's mother, was out on the ocean observing jellicent migratory patterns with his own daughter. He’d seen that same fatigue in Emily and his own assistants far too many times not to notice.

"We can’t be out here all night, as fascinated as I am with discussing our bugs’ behavior," the professor said. "We don’t have enough data, and unfortunately…" He glanced at leavanny. "...pokemon are a bit silent on communicating exactly what they want. At least in a way humans understand, that is," he said, his smile engraved on his face a reflection of his own will of iron.

He turned to Avery: "Go inside and start closing down the pokecenter. Artemis and I will come in before we go. I’ll make arrangements for our new friends."

"Thank you, professor," Avery said, bowing her head as she stood up and made to go back inside. Leavanny watched her and the swadloon leave; she hadn’t shown any of the signs of anxiety the nurse had reported earlier in the conversation. From back before she had demonstrated that she was a veritable escape artist.

The professor turned back to Artemus. "For all we know, another leavanny kicked her from the nest, and the other swadloons followed. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to waffle here. If this leavanny’s already come to the city, we can’t just return her to the wild. You picked up the basics from school, but did you know there's more to the story than just humans meaning food?"

"I didn't," Artemis, sitting straighter. Cedric tossed another berry at the leavanny. His handful was almost out.

"Yes, if they’re acclimated to humans, especially human cities and towns, they know that humans mean food. And a pokemon familiar with humans, but untrained can cause a bunch of bad things to happen, even in their simple search for food."

Artemus nodded.

"The bit that’s less well-known," Cedric said, "is that since there's no limits on catching pokemon inside cities, Unova still has multiple species that are both friendly to humans and threatened, thanks to over-catching. Even ones that were relatively able to adjust to being around us."

The kid just stared at him. "Over-catching?" he asked. The professor sighed. Artemis not being aware of over-catching was a bad sign, especially given the simmering political climate.

"There’s plenty of articles about it online. I’ll have one of my assistants send you some for more reading on the negative effects of caught pokemon and their species’ populations later."

The leavanny had finished her project with the leaves, and was playing with the leaves on her head, pulling them down and around. The swadloon swaddled in his lap was content to sit and watch.

He made to stand up. "Are you committed to this pokemon and her swadloon, Artemis?"

"Yessir, I’ll take the best care of them I can." the kid said, standing up as well.

The professor put the swadloon on his shoulder. "Good, then come with me," he said, walking back inside. The leavanny watched. Cedric held out his last berry. She followed him back in. He smiled. He was already smiling, but he still smiled at the much-more-calm bug.

"Taking care of the sewaddle line takes a lot of patience and effort," he told Artemis, looking at the leavanny’s makeshift helmet that was forming, the leavanny clasping it off and on as they walked. "One of Nature's more prolific and creative crafters. So long as they’re comfortable, anyway. You’re going to need more room to raise these bugs, at least until you can get a property of your own."

It was bad policy to offer people a place to stay at his property by the lab in Nuvema Town, but Anville wasn’t the place to raise bugs. The police and ranger forces were already run as ragged as Avery was, just trying to keep the exploding poison population from overrunning the local forests. Nor did the professor trust that the forces would release the pokemon they did catch. One less pokemon in the wild for them, was one less they had to deal with in a future mass outbreak.

"So what do you suggest I do?" Artemis asked.

"I suggest," the professor responded, locking the front door of the pokecenter from the inside, "that you come to Nuvema, and learn to raise bugs, and I help you become a pokemon trainer." He looked back at the leavanny, who’d seemed content with her leaf-helmet release mechanism.

The boy's face was in shock. "We need a few more people who can learn to love the bugs," he said. And it was true. The world did need more bug-trainers, and he couldn't be too picky. But the world needed competent bug-trainers. Ones who could actually care for the pokemon. The way the pokemon needed to be cared for. Not the way the human wanted to care for them.

Which was a big problem for pokemon trainers. Even well-bonded ones. Bugs had radically different psychologies, ways of communicating. Ways of thinking. Ways of processing information. Even psychic bugs pokemon, the ones who could operate on a semblance of human level, clearly perceived the world differently than humans.

Some seventeen year old kid who wore their heart on the sleeve? The region really couldn't afford to be too picky, even if he did want better—he had given Emily a promise to help Nurse Avery lighten her load, after all. And denying this kid the opportunity to fail wouldn't help anyone. He gave the boy a year before he'd have to surrender the pokemon. Not out of abuse, no.

Bugs were unique, and the sewaddle line were especially unique, even among bugs. Their emotional tells were completely different from other, more naturally-emotive species and types. It wasn't like most dog-like-types, where their head and face told the trainer everything they needed to know.

Leavannies relied on scent in order to tell if you were friend or foe, they rubbed their blades when anxious, and tended to imitate behaviors of their trainers, giving off an impression of stronger intelligence. And while the professor knew this, the kid needed to do his own study and research and learn this on their own.

Behind the professor's grinning mouth and eyes, he refused to do more than the absolute basics for any kids.

Artemus would need to learn to deal with how independent bugs are. Having a human there, telling her what to do? The trees in his own backyard were going to be missing half their leaves by the time the kid had this leavanny following him around. He wrote the poor trees in his front and back yard off in his mind.

No, Cedric knew. He had seen it all before. By the end of the year, the leavanny would have the kid chasing after her, and unable to handle her. Behind the man's smile, as he prepared to leave, he pulled out his pokeball, already decided on the plan, the one he used for the people he'd expected to wash out.

And he hadn't been wrong yet.

~~~

I rubbed my claws together as they pulled out the pokeball. One swadloon, the one held by Lanky, was sucked in with a flash of red before being loaded back into the bag. Yeah, that smell was strong. The old nest-mates were still present. I wasn’t sure how many swadloons I had left behind.

It was hard to count the pokeballs without getting dangrously close. From scent, there were at least five swadloons in pokeballs, it and their annoyance floated so strongly through the air. The clanking of the balls said there could be more too, but my ability to parse sounds wasn't great, either.

The older man in beige took swadly and walked into the hallway. I followed him as he went. He made a coughing noise as he saw the cage that had been left open. Swadly went into his kennel without a fuss. I supposed it was time for me to go back into my cage; I waited back in the room as the old man forgot to open the door to mine. He turned around, made a face, then coughed a bit more, waving at me to follow.

Lanky was there in the main lobby area, Chansey eyeing us. The taste of the swadloon’s scent was still strong in the air. Lanky was wearing the backpack, water in his eyes. The nurse came in and said some stuff before the old man pulled out a pokeball of his own. Another red flash of light, and before us was something that looked like a human, but with an egg for a head instead, with what looked like red, green, and yellow buttons on its hands.

Pressure temporarily passed over my mind as the pokemon seemingly got its bearings, then turned to look at the man. I shifted next to and behind Lanky, who held a hand out towards me. I held out a claw, stepping behind his leg, peeking out at the freaky looking thing. The old man said something, grabbing Lanky’s hand, then put his own hand on the alien’s head. A quick snap, and all three of us were in another room.

I didn’t have to "know" it, but I understood what the last thing he’d said was.

"Teleport."