I sprawled on the ground just inside the gates of Violet City and stared up at the sky, my heart racing. It had actually turned into a beautiful day; a few wispy clouds floated across a bright blue sky, and the sunshine was warm enough to be comfortable without being oppressively hot. It felt completely incongruent when I compared it to the scene we had just left behind.
Florence’s head appeared in the air above me, and there was a concerned look on her face. “Are you badly injured?” she asked.
I groaned and sat up properly, finally letting myself pay attention to how my body felt. My arms were sore from the burn I had taken early on, and the part that had been grazed by a Poison Sting radiated with a sharp pain. In addition to that my legs were aching from all the running we had done, it felt like I had an enormous bruise on my chest where the Vulpix had tackled me, and I still had a small stomachache and a big headache from getting a secondhand dose of confusion through Pausso.
“No,” I told Florence, feeling surprised. “Not badly injured, anyway. I just hurt all over.” Honestly, I was kind of amazed that nothing worse had happened to me or my Pokemon.
“That is good,” Isaac said as he walked up to join us. I grinned at him, happy to see he was okay. “I must admit that you worried me when you ran right into the middle of that battle, Monroe.”
Oh, right – he had been watching our groups so he could collect data on the poke ball capture rates. “Well, Luca ran in first. There wasn’t much else we could do.”
Pausso (who was catching his breath next to me) nodded his trunk in agreement, but Florence raised an eyebrow at me like she disagreed. I still thought we had done the right thing, even though it had been a trap. Who knew whether Luca and Piloswine would have survived otherwise?
I looked over to see how the pair was doing. They were a few paces further into the city, and Luca was crouched down next to Piloswine and murmuring something to her. Now that I had more time to look, I could see that Piloswine’s burn was really bad – a good quarter of her hump was missing its fur, and the skin that showed through was red and blistering. Kiah had already produced the burn salve and was rubbing it gently onto the Pokemon while Corsola crooned softly at her, but would that be enough?
Glancing around further revealed something odd: the soldiers stationed nearby were all keeping as far away from us trainers as they could. Then again, maybe that was normal everywhere other than Azalea. Certainly the uneasy way that the door guard kept flicking his eyes towards Pausso and Hoppip suggested that the regular people here weren’t used to Pokemon.
I turned back to Isaac when he started to ask us a question, but we were interrupted by General Finnegan’s arrival on the scene. He descended from one of the ladders that led up to the top of the wall, barking out the remainder of an order to the men at the top as he moved down. Edwin, Fearow, and the soldiers around the area all stood at attention, and Edwin saluted eagerly.
“At ease,” Finnegan told the soldiers briefly. Then he turned to Edwin. “Report.”
“Sir! We neutralized a moderate portion of the enemy using the devices Researcher Isaac Pine provided,” Edwin said, still standing up ramrod straight. “We were also able to capture two of the higher-level majū, the Arcanine and the Nidoking. We have reason to believe they are the leaders of the two factions.” His eyes flicked briefly to his Fearow; then he looked straight ahead again. “I believe we may be able to reach a compromise with them, sir.”
Finnegan grumbled deep in his throat. “These are wild creatures, trainer. You seriously believe they could be capable of negotiation?”
Edwin hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded sharply. “Yes, sir! They demonstrated unusual intelligence on the battlefield. I believe it is worth trying.”
Finnegan stroked his bushy red mustache for a few moments before speaking. “Then we will try your compromise. Let us go to the command center.”
“Wait,” Hisa interrupted. Both men turned to look at him. “We have wounded majū among our party, and some injuries among the trainers as well. Those need to be seen to first.” His eyes flicked over to Piloswine as he spoke, and I found myself nodding in agreement.
The general huffed in annoyance, but he conceded the point. “Fine. Trainer Cyril –“ the man with the Ledyba snapped to attention – “escort the others to the medical center. Trainers Edwin and Donall, I want your full report now.”
Edwin and Fearow, Finnegan, and the Violet trainer who had a Pidgey left right away, quickly disappearing down a side road that led around a corner. That left the Ledyba trainer to round up the rest of us, so Pausso and I jogged over to join him. I side-eyed my Pokemon and frowned as I noticed that a nasty gash had appeared on his shoulder at some point, and that he was favoring his left leg. Hopefully the staff at the medical center would be able to treat him right away.
Most of us gathered together quickly, but Luca stayed down on the ground by Piloswine. I looked over at them with some concern. Would Piloswine even be able to make it to the center?
Then my eyes widened. Luca was holding a poke ball in his hand.
Luca said something very quietly to Piloswine, and she twitched her nose in response. Then he sighed, reached out, and gently tapped the poke ball on her good side, far from the burn. She was sucked in with no fuss, and the ball didn’t shake at all; it immediately showed a dim light behind the button, signaling a successful capture.
The boy got up shakily, holding Piloswine’s poke ball in both hands, and walked over to us with his head down. He must have felt me watching him, because he looked up and met my eyes when he reached the group. “She is too hurt to keep walking,” he said simply, his voice creaky. “And I promised her she will not have to stay in the ball if she does not like it.”
I nodded silently, not sure what to say. To me, capturing Pokemon was normal, sure. But I knew that Charity still hadn’t captured Maisy in a ball, and none of the trainers we had met seemed interested in using them. Luca was taking a big first step in letting his partner be caught.
The walk to the medical center passed mostly in a blur. I occasionally looked around to see soldiers conducting drills or people hustling about, but mostly I just kept my eyes forward. Now that the adrenaline from all the battling we had done was wearing off, I was very aware of every ache and pain in my body, and those pains were amplified by the grumpy feelings coming from Pausso. Normally I would have been complaining at the top of my lungs, but Luca was walking right in front of me and I knew he had it worse, so I kept my mouth shut.
The medical center was a large, imposing-looking building. It was exactly the opposite of what I expected a hospital to look like – the huge room that took up the first whole floor was enclosed and smoky, and it didn’t look particularly clean. Several sequences of beds lined one side of the room while the other side held a ramshackle assortment of stools and chairs. We were directed to sit on the chairs side, and we all funneled in to sit on the stools closest to the door.
Isaac and Florence started talking quietly as she caught him up to speed on what had happened, but I decided to people-watch instead of participating. A soldier sitting nearby looked over at our assorted Pokemon, then promptly got up and moved to a chair further away. I winced and glanced at Pausso, hoping he hadn’t seen. I supposed it made sense for the people here to be uncomfortable about Pokemon because of the battle happening right outside their walls, but didn’t they know we were on their side?
The Ledyba trainer – Cyrus? No, that wasn’t right – went up to talk to one of the doctors in the back of the room. I squinted to see what they were doing and grimaced. The doctor was pointing at our group and shaking his head; he didn’t seem eager to help either.
Most of the other doctors and nurses around the room apparently shared his opinion, as they were all studiously avoiding us. There was one exception, though. A young nurse who had her pink hair tied back in a tight bun kept glancing at us with clear concern. When she finished treating her current patient, she walked to the back of the room and joined the conversation with the two men. After a few moments the doctor nodded, and the Ledyba trainer came back to rejoin our group with the nurse in tow.
“Everyone,” the Ledyba trainer said, clapping his hands to get our attention, “this is Nurse Amelia. She is going to help treat our majū.”
“Well, I am glad someone is willing,” Hisa said, his voice deceptively bright. I looked around and smiled a little; Misdreavus had already disappeared, and I thought it quite likely that the ghost had decided to go and scare some of the medical staff in retribution for failing to provide proper care.
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Kiah got up and joined Amelia, bowing slightly. “Thank you, nurse. We could especially use your help with Trainer Luca’s partner. Over here.”
Amelia followed him happily enough, but she paused when she passed close by me. Her eyes flicked efficiently from my ravaged arms to the bloody patches close to Florence’s knees. “It looks like we need some assistance for you trainers as well,” she said. I blinked; her voice was gentle and friendly, and strangely familiar. Amelia turned around and scanned the room quickly, then stopped when her eyes settled on a young nurse with dark blue hair who had just finished tying a fresh bandage around a man’s arm nearby. “Martha? Can you come see to the people over here?”
The other nurse’s shoulders visibly slumped, but she still called back “Coming!” and hurried over to join us. Amelia nodded and joined Kiah, and she only looked a little startled when Luca released Piloswine from her poke ball and the hefty Pokemon appeared right there on the floor.
Isaac, who hadn’t been injured at all, quickly got up to go observe how a medical professional would go about treating Pokemon. I was kind of curious to see what Amelia would do as well, but I didn’t get a chance to watch because Nurse Martha descended on us at that moment.
She examined and treated me with ruthless efficiency. First she pulled my tunic off roughly when I couldn’t roll the sleeves up far enough for her satisfaction, and then she tutted unhappily at the result. To be fair, I did look pretty awful. My arms were still bright red from the burn, there was a small purple oval of raised skin surrounding the tiny gash where the Poison Sting had grazed me, and the top-center of my chest had turned all sorts of interesting colors from the Vulpix attack.
Martha disappeared briefly to fetch a few medicines, then returned to slather a strange cream on my arms. She also made me drink a cup of water that had a few bitter herbs crushed into it, though when Pausso leaned forward to sniff the cup she jerked backwards and almost spilled it all over herself.
Eventually she finished her work and let me put my top back on (and thank Mew for that – it felt weird to just sit there out in the open around everyone else half-naked). Then she did the same thing to Florence, cleaning up her knees, wrapping bandages around them, and giving her a different cup of water and herbs to drink. About halfway through her treatment of Florence I noticed that the stinging sensation coming from the gash on my arm was gone, and my whole body hurt a lot less; even my headache had mostly disappeared. Whatever was in those herbs worked, thankfully.
Martha moved on to treat Michael next, as he was sitting near us, and she was much chattier with him than she had been with Florence or me. The young woman took her time as she dealt with the small burn on his side and the gash across his left palm. She kept giggling as she cleaned the skin on the side of his torso and spread the same cream she’d used on me over it, even though Michael had insisted on keeping his own tunic on. The trainer put up with the whole thing with a faint look of suffering on his face.
“Stop flirting and focus on your work, Martha,” Amelia said as she, Kiah, and Corsola came to join us, with Isaac hovering right behind them so he could take notes. I looked past her and saw that Piloswine was now resting comfortably with a large bandage secured over her side, and Misdreavus was snoozing happily in Hisa’s arms. Luca looked a great deal less unhappy, so I took that as a good sign.
Martha pouted and moved back, letting Michael drop his tunic back over his side. “You are such a killjoy, Miss Amelia Joy,” she said in a teasing tone.
My eyes widened as I took in this new piece of information. Amelia Joy? As in, Nurse Joy? I covertly looked over at Amelia, and it made sense – her hair was the right shade of pink, and now that I knew to make the connection, her voice matched the voices of all the Nurse Joys I had ever seen working in the Goldenrod Pokemon Center when I went there with my parents for Magneton and Jigglypuff’s checkups.
Well. That made me feel a little better about having her treat Pausso.
“Now, who do we have here?” she asked as she knelt down to look at my Pokemon more closely. He wiggled his ears happily, which made me grin. He didn’t usually take to people so quickly, but if Amelia really was an early iteration of Nurse Joy, it would make sense that Pokemon liked her.
“This is Drowzee,” I said by way of introduction. “He’s got a burn on his leg and a gash on his shoulder, and I’m pretty sure he’s worn out from all the fighting.”
Pausso immediately looked back at me with narrowed eyes, but I just glared right back at him. Most one-on-one Pokemon battles were over in a matter of minutes, and we had spent well over half an hour fighting out there in the clearing. Besides, I could feel his exhaustion through our bond, even though he was trying to hide it.
“I see,” Amelia said, nodding gravely. “For the fatigue the best thing I can prescribe is rest for the next day at least. We have an ointment that should help with the burn, and – oh dear.” She looked more concerned when Pausso suddenly shuddered. “It looks like that burn might have hit a bit deeper than usual. Trainer Kiah, can you get him a rawst berry in addition to the salve?”
The trainer nodded and pulled a full rawst berry out of the medical box, which Pausso promptly ate. He looked a little happier after swallowing it, and he tolerated Kiah rubbing ointment into the burn on his leg and Amelia examining the gash on his shoulder relatively well.
“This is not too bad,” she said, nodding to herself. “With how quickly majū heal, I expect this will close up in just a few days. Let’s just apply a little something extra to help it heal well…”
I watched in interest as she quickly mixed up a new ointment and started rubbing it on Pausso’s shoulder around the edges of the gash. She treated him just like how Martha had treated me – gentler, actually. Before I realized it, I found myself asking a question. “Why are you so comfortable around majū?”
Amelia went all thoughtful for a moment as she considered that, though she kept working steadily. Then she smiled at me. “I suppose I have always been interested in them! They are living, thinking creatures, after all, and the ones like your friend here have shown that they can develop deep bonds with us. Why not treat them with the same respect and care that we show other human beings?”
“Well said,” Kiah agreed quietly. Corsola cheered her agreement from the sidelines.
I leaned forward, interested. “Why not become a trainer, then?”
The nurse chuckled as she finished rubbing the last of the ointment around the gash. “Oh, I could never live the life of a trainer. All that fighting? No thank you.” She moved the bowl that had held the ointment away and inspected Pausso’s shoulder, then nodded. “Besides, that is not how things are done here in Violet. I could not have become a trainer even if I wanted to.”
Florence mumbled something under her breath, probably about how anyone could become a trainer if they wanted to badly enough. I wasn’t sure, though. Florence had been able to escape her small village easily enough, sure. But wouldn’t a kid who grew up in Violet have a harder time getting out of the city, what with all the walls and guards?
It made me feel grumpy. All these ideas about what people were and were not supposed to do, and what it meant to be a trainer; it was so much more constraining then what things were like in my own time. And the idea that someone like Florence wouldn’t have been allowed to become a trainer if she’d grown up in Violet, even though she wanted it so badly? That was just upsetting. I didn’t feel like there was much I could do about it all, though. I was here to stop a wild Pokemon war, not cause a cultural revolution.
Amelia examined Hoppip quickly and determined that the grass Pokemon had escaped the battle unscathed, which made him probably the only one of us that hadn’t been injured in some way after going out into the field. She warned me once more to make sure that Pausso didn’t overextend himself for the next twenty-four hours, then went back to check on Piloswine again, to make sure she was comfortable. That made me realize something: there was one Pokemon she hadn’t seen to.
“Where is Hoothoot?” I asked Michael, peering around the building to see if his partner had flown up into the rafters or something.
Martha had moved on to treat the other trainers a little while before, and Michael had just been staring off into space for the past few minutes. When I spoke he started upright, then blinked at me before replying. “I sent her off to keep an eye on Jordan and his majū,” he said, absently rubbing the place on his shoulder where his Pokemon would normally perch. “That idiot will probably get himself killed anyway, but perhaps she can help keep them alive.”
Oh, right. I had almost forgotten that Jordan had decided to stay outside to keep the mob of Pokemon away from the city. I frowned, feeling puzzled. The more I saw of Violet, the more confused I was about Jordan’s clear aversion to the town. It was very military, yes, but I would have expected that to appeal to a fighter like him.
Florence was frowning too, but she was also looking at Michael in a piercing way. “You seem to be looking out for Trainer Jordan quite a lot, considering you only met him for the first time yesterday,” she said in an oddly casual tone.
For just a moment, Michael’s posture stiffened. Then he relaxed. “That is just because he gets into trouble so often,” he replied, sounding almost bored. “Oh, look – Trainer Edwin has returned. I will go see what our next steps are.”
He quickly got up and left, striding over to the building’s entrance. Florence watched him walk away for a few seconds; then she giggled and nudged me. “I think he likes Jordan,” she whispered conspiratorially.
I looked back at her, confused. “Are you sure? Michael just seems annoyed with him most of the time.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment before rolling her eyes. “I mean he fancies him.”
It took another moment before I figured out what she meant. Once it clicked, I peered over my shoulder at Michael, surprised. “Really?”
Florence smirked. “Did you not see how quickly he ran away from my question? Besides, I have only ever seen him lose his composure with Trainer Richard before, and it took months for that to happen, even though they were at odds from the very first days after he bonded with Hoothoot.”
Huh. I considered the idea for a moment, then decided I didn’t really care. Sure, my dad had had ‘the talk’ with me not that long ago, so I had a vague idea about what people in relationships did, but I just wasn’t interested in that kind of thing. Maybe that would change someday, but right now all I cared about was training and inventions. And figuring out how to get home, of course.
Off by the doorway Michael had been talking with Edwin quietly. Now Edwin moved his hand in a curt gesture and walked past the other trainer, looking around the room for all of us. His gaze latched onto me and he gestured preemptively. “Trainer Monroe,” he called across the room clearly, “we are ready for you and your partner to translate for the wild majū.”
I sighed and stood up, scratching the back of my head. The break had been nice while it lasted, but now it was time to get back to work.