Acquisition,
Chapter 1
Stomping through the sliding glass doors, Daisy Oak was cutting a quickest route from the fields of the reserve to the parking lot as quickly as her high dudgeon would take her. It wasn’t as fast as a good run would have been. But she’d taken intervals to kick rocks, and plants, and swear.
Because
why the hell not?
It’d been a bad idea. She knew it. Been told it. But Father’s duties during hatchling season tapered off the time her tour seasons had allowed her her vacation. And instead of hooping it up in say… Galar… meeting pretty boys with pretty accents, she was in good old backwards Kant,o trying to mend a bridge he’d let fall apart ages ago.
Again.
Mew above, she was so damn stupid, it was round six of this dance, and did she learn anything…
noooo…
Hating everything about her bleeding heart.
Double hating that her unmet needs as a kid were rearing up to make her waste a ton of money to come home and poke the good old familial abandonment wound, yet again. Daisy slowed her rampage after water type hatchling lab one.
She didn't want to take a tumble on the slick walkways.
Swiping her eyes, she was embarrassed to find she was running out of similes for stupid. It was feeling downright angry thirteen year old in her head right now.
And to add salt to the wound, she had tapped out her knowledge of the varieties of “bastard” around the time she’d gotten out of the professor’s earshot.
Each step was a clanged splash. Making a mess of her leggings and spooking the 'mon in the tanks along the walls. And her inner fashionista seethed at the loss of good pants.
It didn't stop her from stomping.
This was supposed to be her damned vacation. This happened
every vacation. Every time she stopped working, she started hankering for something she’d never have.. And
smart thing she was, she sunk a charizard's horde in… in this stupid,
stupid,
stupid attempt to have a normal father-daughter relationship with a man who didn't give a damn.
She'd half a mind to call the Sakaki's the second she got off the reserve. Gio might be willing to pick her up in something that screamed
shady as hell just to give Oak something to stew about... He was her type of petty after all, it's why they got along so well...
But her thoughts of revenge were felled with the cold realization.
It
could work. Maybe. But it would likely be a month after she left before Fa-Oa-
He bothered to review the non-'mon footage.
If he bothered to do so at all.
That thought stopped her mid-step. She wrestled with herself, throat tight, eyes burning. Beating back a raw, crying jag by sheer force and a deep breathing exercise.
Appearances and all that.
Under her mask of half-assed composure, her brain was anything but.
Why was she like this? Why was she so stupid!? Those twin demons blasted on repeat inher skull. And no amount of maturity, or acting like a "proper lady" was shutting it up.
Swiping her eyes, she exited the water type reserve. All its fish tanks and grill pathways over artificial waterways were behind her with the hiss of the automatic door snapping closed at her back. While the fire type hatchery wasn't hot enough to dry her tears, the arid environment did a lot towards masking the evidence.
She'd managed to stop stomping at least.
Really, with
everything, she was just too tired. The dust strewn about to make a facsimile of a desert met the residue of her temper and the water type reserve to make an instant coating of mud on her shoes.
Gah. Fatigue was pushed back by sheer exasperation. Daisy all but danced in place. Trying to shake the clinging goop off... and it was in that wild attempt to reclaim the ghost of cleanliness, that she saw it.
Her first thought was "weird". Baby blue, out here? Her brain caught up in bits and pieces. It was a scrap of fabric, maybe some egg wrapped up in baby cloth by an oversentimental trainer dropping off their first mon's hatchling. But then logic caught up.
Despite his genial-seeming nature, Professor Oak was not a sentimental man. Or even a warm one. Aides might have whisked the egg into the chamber bedecked in the softest cloth and gentle assurances that the kid's egg would be treated like spun glass...
But the wrapping wouldn't have been left on. There was a trash can right by the start of the environmental egg hatcheries for stuff like that. Flowers, mementos, or even gifts from the egg's "Mom and Dad" had been chucked into it indiscriminately.
So what made this egg different?
Getting on her tiptoes, Daisy saw the egg wasn't in the first row of the hatchery, but it wasn't in the front either... Other oddities poked out. The shape wasn't perfectly round. That wasn't right... Her feet carried her over, a cautious, slow shuffle, her hand clasped around Amewse's pokeball.
Then it moved, and it wasn't the gentle rocking of something ready to hatch.
But, rather, a weak sort of flatish squirm.
Eyes wide, boots making the rocky sand crackle under each step, she crossed the distance from the path out to the raised earth that served as this hatchery's nest. Curiosity was an invisible string that was wrapped around her very soul, tugging, tugging, drawing her closer.
If her life were a horror story, she'd be the first to die.
She said it constantly. Been told regularly. Grace Sakaki mentioned it once a month in amused tones over cups of coffee while they compared shenanigans and gossip. Her husband, Giovanni, sighed and scolded her for her latest misadventure. Daisy's manager reminded her that any stupidity fueled scenanigans were coming out of her paycheck. Those three older adults were her triad of common sense, taking the place of Mother, Father, and distant Uncle. Nevermind Grace was part enabler part one-upper, and her manager had manipulated a few of her shenanigans into free PR campaigns.
Poor, somber Gio only listened to her tales with an expression of a man considering how much liquor he'd need to partake to forget, but perversely not be a
complete bad example.
She passed the first row of eggs, they were a wild slew of sizes, all spread in a row. Orange and red speckled shells were all around her now; her fingers were ghosting over the brittle shells of unborn fire types. Each touch wasn't quite burning, but at that unpleasant hot tingle that preceded sunburn. Her steps crackled less. The ground was more soft sand than rock now, to spare those delicate shell undersides.
Gio hadn't found the key to his balancing act. The Italian's efforts were probably derailed by the fact that Daisy had joined with him when she turned sixteen, and used his attempt to make the pain stop to do more stupid things. Like to try to drink him under the table. Or get him involved in stunts that made the headlines.
She turned, now not on the edge of the grid pattern, but tippy-toeing among the hatchery's eggs. She made wide sweeping steps, her dance classes paying off in full. Minding balance and shells, each step was more sure than any nerdy sedentary scientist's. It took effort not to toss a few dance moves into the mix.
As if sensing her bravado, the overhead speaker crackled to life, just in time to puncture any gathered pride.
"Please step away from the test subjects. This is your first warning of five; you will be teleported off the premises if you persist."
Seriously? Daisy flicked a glare up to where she thought the camera was. "I'm allergic to psychics, you bastards!"
"Second warning..."
Well crap... The flick of blue was close enough that she could make out the gist. She only needed a few more steps to be able to pick it up. But seeing it clearly froze her in her tracks. Swaddled, loaf-shaped, frizz-topped, it definitely was
not an egg.
"Third warning."
It made a noise, a breathy sort of whine. Horror flitted across Daisy's face as she realized that it wasn't a doll. It was a person. A kid.
An infant.
She wiggled past the last row of eggs between her and.. and the kid. She reached down, not believing, but it opened its wide blue eyes and let out a raspy scream. All red, with a scaling of white blisters and sand, and it's trying to scream. Trying and failing.
"Shit, shit, shit..." She'd trying to hold them, so the screaming would stop, and couldn't find a good hold. Gritting her teeth, she tucked the kid close and turned on her heel, picking a quick path out.
"Fourth warning."
"Wait, wait. Stop!" She howled. "It's a kid,
there's a kid here. Don't '
port me,
get a medic, a first aide kit!"
Anything, anything
sane, anything
compassionate...
"Drop the test subject, and lie on the ground. The Reserve is not responsible for any damages you receive during forced transport."
Darkrai and Yveltal grant her mercy. This was going to be worse than hurt. In the last sane moment, before the purple light shimmered and made the very air between her bones rattle, her sight spun. She crunched into a ball, holding the kid to her chest, as her vision lost all colors save an infinite smear of varied viridian hues. As gravity became a lateral force rather than a grounding aspect of existence, she felt Amewse's pokeball split open. The purple light flared, burning past her shut eyes. Swirling with the greens of her world in a nauseating kaleidoscope.
Then, pain.
Her legs were a slew of conflicting sensations, so hot they froze, so weak they locked. She held the mewling thing to her chest and trembled. Trying not to puke, trying to remember if her mouth was open, fighting to remember how to breathe. Hot bitter surged up her throat, and she wasn't sure if she was able to turn her head away, but knew primal deep she'd gotten sick.
And knew shame, hot bitter shame so deep it made her sick up again.
A world away, Amewse, her perfect, precious, Persian swirled into existence. Not that Daisy was aware. The trainer's world had dissolved into remembering how to breathe in a world where the air was toxic, green, miasma.
Amewse treated the day with typical cat aloofness. Shaking off the irritating buzz of her withdrawal, she craned her white neck about. Seconds later, her tail was up but crooked down. Back arching, wiskers quivering on the wrongness of the air, Amewse's ears flicking back at the utter insult of the atmosphere.
This was worse than rain, worse than Raindance mixed with Hail. Whipping on her paws, Amewse looked about, for Madam Mealserver Warmlap. Madam wasn't supposed to ever
ever be exposed to such energies. She could have a hairball get caught the wrong way and stop breathing.
Then the can opener would never whirl again.
Madam's state made Amewse pause for one second. Sick and rank fell from her mouth, and there was screaming that wasn't Madam but cuddled close. This was wrongness, within wrongness, and the smell in the air was making Amewse nearly gag.
Despite her disgust, Amewse was a TRAINED 'mon. Thus, she knew exactly what to do. Thin red eyes combed the area for assistance for the Madam. But there were no trainers, or white-clad medics, or Joys. There were no roundtound, yarnball, shaped Chancys to mewl her concerns at.
Ears slicked back, tail lashing, Amewse swatted at Madam's belt. Knocking off pokeballs and a purse, making the thing that was cuddled and screaming scream louder. Still, Amewse kept at it until the square-shaped talkie slab was knocked free. It took a few moments to flip it shiny side up and bat it until it warmed and turned a sky blue.
It had taken Amewse a week to learn what "centering" meant, but Amewse was a smart girl. She had got it right and the lesson stuck. A click and flash told her that her "centering" was perfect, as always. Amewse indulged a self-satisfied purr, and the device changed colors as a result. The blue was now not just a color, but with bars and symbols that meant things a bit beyond the feline. It was this "screen" that Amewse meowed at.
When the screen read "Call going through," Amewse gently scruffed the talkie-box and dropped it at Madam's side. Confident that things would be right again, all she had to do was be pretty, wait, and Bite any wild abra with extreme prejudice Amewse settled in to keep Madam company.
Hopefully, it would not be a long wait.
