It seemed like either Audino didn't have any further work to do, which I found unlikely given the scale of the Pokémon Center, or she was slacking off in favor of accompanying me. I would say 'bothering me', but to be honest... I was willing to put up with the intermittent flirting and mischievous taunting just for the sake of having company. Sitting in this room by myself, even with having something on TV as a distraction, wasn't as pleasant as having someone hang around that I could chat with. Actually, now that I think about it, hanging out with me might be Audino doing her job.

Whatever the reasoning was, I passed the next few hours watching amusingly low-budget movies with the medic Pokémon. Every so often I would shift about in place, trying to get a feel for if the medicine was doing me any good. The ache I had dwelling in my core persistently was dulling further and further as time passed, so that was a good sign. I still never tried to actually hop off the bed again, though, worried about another flare-up of pain that the attempt might bring.

I just let myself get engrossed in the entertainment and company, unaware of the passing of time until Audino was stifling a yawn and glancing toward the door. "I think I'm going to call it a night, it's getting late, and I know I'm going to need to be up first thing in the morning."

She rose up from the chair she had drawn over next to my bed, and moved to a cabinet tucked in the corner. Rummaging through it for a moment, she pulled out a duplicate blanket and tossed it across my bedding. "The blankets around here are always too thin, so settle in with an extra. You can just shove it aside if you decide you don't want it."

It was surprising to see her shift back into a rather professional demeanor, acting properly for the job rather than trying to find a way to sound flirty every other sentence. "Thanks. Better to have extra. Have a good night, then." I offered in return, giving a small wave. "I enjoyed watching movies with you."

Audino flashed a bright grin, and moved toward the door. "Me too! Anyway, stay up all night watching movies if you want, but you'll be getting woke up whenever your trainer arrives at the latest, so it's your fault if you don't get enough sleep!" With that, she flicked the lights off as she left the room and the door swung closed with a soft click.

I snuggled myself down into the bedding with a small yawn of my own. Now that I didn't have someone to focus on talking with to keep myself distracted, my own tiredness was coming back to the forefront. Grasping at the remote, I clicked the volume down to a background murmur and let whatever was still on screen play out. The light of the television dimly illuminating the room in a comfy fashion, in my eyes. Dozing off in front of the TV was almost nostalgic, as that had been how I wound up managing to get to sleep almost every night of my previous life.

As I let my eyes drift closed and zoned out to the mumbling monotone of the movie in the background, I felt myself drifting into wandering thoughts. I still wasn't sure what exactly I wanted, with all the opportunities in front of me. I had always assumed that I was going to cement a future as a battler, just because that was almost all I knew about Pokémon. If you weren't a battler, you were performing in contests, right?

Today, though, after seeing the movies with Pokémon actors... it didn't exactly inspire me to try my hand at being an actor, but it reminded me that there was a whole world out there beyond what I felt I knew from my past experiences. No matter what aspect of life, Pokémon were an intrinsic part of it. There's Pokémon serving in the public services, like the police dog Growlithe. There's Pokémon running deliveries. Heck, I wondered if there were even Pokémon running their own businesses!

Can a Pokémon do something like get their own ID and go on a trip by themselves? I need to ask Mable about the different legal technicalities in the future. After all, I refuse to believe that an Alakazam, for example, can't travel on their own and be recognized given the fact they're supposed to be super-geniuses with eidetic memory. So where do they draw the line for Pokémon being able to have certain human-like benefits and recognition? Is there some sort of test you can take?

My mind mused over potential inquiries to make, and I swiftly drifted off to sleep almost before I knew it. After all, if there was anything that could put even the most stubborn insomniac to sleep, it was pondering the legal system.

I slept like a rock that night, and I doubted that even a repeat of the day's incident would have been enough to wake me. I could have slept through a Magnitude ten, probably. Of course, that has nothing on a belligerent and persistent poking on my forehead.

With a low, protesting groan I slowly peeked my eyes open to find Audino all but leaning over me. That sure shocked my system to jolt wide awake, my eyes jumping open as I slouched back against the bedding. "Personal space, Audino!" I protested with my voice pitched slightly more shrill than normal. When she had been trying to prod me into wakefulness, she had barely been a few inches away from my face herself.

That seemed to be just the reaction she wanted, as she backed away obligingly but not without a mischievous snicker at my expense. "Patient is energetic and alert after a good night's rest!" She remarked as if she was making a medical diagnosis, even though there was no one present besides the two of us. "Come on, let's see if you can get out of bed without crying today."

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"I never wound up crying!" I retorted, rolling my eyes. Still, it was with some apprehension that I tensed my figure and bounded off the bed and onto the ground. I didn't even feel so much as a twinge, and I twisted my body from side to side as if to be sure. "Nope. Nothing. I guess that powder stuff is as effective as the taste is foul."

"So you don't want another dose? I'm sure I could get you some, just in case." Audino teased with a mile-wide grin, and I crossed both my arms in front of me in an 'x' to express my firm denial. "I was just teasing! Relax. I'm not going to waste medicine on a healthy patient. Now, if you can move just fine, we're going to go ahead and head to the backyard and do some of your physical testing a little early. Your trainer isn't here yet, but it looks like it's going to rain something fierce later today... so unless you want to do your speed test in the pouring rain, let's do that first!"

I shrugged my shoulders, agreeing readily. "Sounds fine to me. It's not like Mable being present is going to change the results. So... speed test? What, like a hundred meter dash or something?"

"Yup! Pretty much exactly that. And it's hardly safe to have you sprinting- or well, bouncing- through the halls at a breakneck pace. So we have an area out back for that explicit purpose, and we don't have to worry about someone walking out in front of you or anything."

"Doesn't nurse Joy or someone need to be present for this?" I asked as we both left the room, entering one of the plain, unassuming halls where the patient rooms were located. It was just plain white tile and white walls, with a single red stripe that ran along the center of each wall.

Audino raised a clipboard she had in one hand, and hoisted a stopwatch in the other. "Nah, I've got this under control. It's just a matter of keeping track and writing things down to hand off to nurse Joy later. Still, don't think that I'm going to help you improve your time unjustly just because you've been flirting with me all the time. I'm a Pokémon of integrity!"

"You're the one- no, I'm not going to start this. You're thriving off me reacting to your nonsense, I'm sure." I shook my head slowly, exasperated with the medical Pokémon. At least it seemed like she wasn't going to mess with my numbers, not that I was sure it would matter.

After a short walk through the halls, we emerged into a fenced-in yard at the rear of the Pokémon Center. The sky was a steely grey, or should I say that the clouds were. Not a single bit of actual sky was in sight. It was all gloomy, overcast cloud cover. While the yard was by no means expansive, it seemed to have a little bit of everything, and to be designed for both practical purposes and leisure.

A few picnic tables were arranged in an area of shrubs and flowers, with a young man in gardener's attire sitting at one and sipping at a steaming mug. A few plant Pokémon lingered nearby, which promptly caught my eye as I was always eager to add new forms to my growing repertoire.

Gnawing away at the leaves around the base of one of the shrubs was a leafy Pokémon that almost seemed to blend into the bushes, with a dark blue rounded body and leafy green fronds of hair. An Oddish, and it seemed to be encroaching on the gardener's job of trimming the hedges behind his back.

The next was resting atop the gardener's head, or more accurately clinging to it. A puffy ball-like arrangement of fluff, Cottonee. With the moderate breeze drifting through and stirring the clouds overhead, it was likely clinging to its trainer desperately to avoid being blown away completely.

Audino knocked me on the head with the clipboard in the next moment, interrupting my staring. "Ow! Is that any way to treat a patient?" I asked, reaching up and rubbing at the top of my head. It had mostly just made a loud 'THWAP' sound more than it had actually hurt, but she still shouldn't be hitting someone who was in medical care!

"You're already recovered, so it's fine." She brushed off the question, and pointed toward an area a little further back. There was a worn dirt track that stretched in a straight line, with a painted white starting and finishing line. Yeah, if this was their facilities for testing speed I can see why Audino recommended I get it done before the downpour started. I wasn't about to be out here getting my sprinting done in the mud. "Go ahead and get to the starting line. I'll be at the finish line to watch you cross, and just get to me as quick as you can after I yell 'go', got it?"

"I never would have figured that out without you. Where would I be without your sage instruction- Ow!"

My sass earned me another, harder smack of the clipboard. This time the 'THWAP' noise was loud enough it actually got the gardener's attention as he put his mug down. Audino smiled at his questioning stare, and merely pointed at the Oddish that was still devouring one of the bushes. The man followed her pointed finger with his gaze, before all but staggering out of his seat to pick the Oddish up. "How many times have I told you not to eat the gardens!?" He scolded his Pokémon, completely forgetting us in the process.

Audino moved to the finishing line, and I took my place at the start. "Get ready. Three. Two. One. Go!" She shouted out and clicked the stopwatch at the same time. I already had my body tensed up for my first leap, and made it a surprising distance in one go. Unfortunately, over longer distances I had to pause between each motion to tense my body up for my next leap. It was one reason I was glad I was able to transform to battle, as my motions were far too predictable in my natural form.

I managed to keep up a hurried pace of my best long-distance hops to shoot myself down the track, crossing the finish line and stumbling my way to a stop, scooting a short distance across the ground before I could manage to stop. "How'd I do?" I asked, staring upward toward Audino as she checked the stop watch and wrote down my time.

"Nineteen point two. I'm not sure if that's a good pace or not, I'm afraid, so you'll have to wait for nurse Joy to look over it later. I'm sure the computers have the average numbers for things like this to compare your results to!"

I tried to run the numbers in my head, but I'd never been the best at math. A hundred meters, divided by the time... that would give me meters per second, right? So, a hundred divided by... uh... you know what? I think I will just wait for the computer to tell me if I did good or not, after all.